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1Author:  Friedland, Louis S.Add
 Title:  Anton Chekhov  
 Published:  1998 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text 
 Description: We are about to come into possession of Chekhov. It will be a priceless possession, for Chekhov is indispensable to our understanding of the psychology of the great people that has introduced into the present world situation an element so complex, so disturbing, so tragic and beautiful. Chekhov is the faithful reporter, unerring, intuitive, direct. He never bears false witness. The essence of his art lies in a fine restraint, an avoidance of the sensational and the spectacular. His reticence reveals the elusive and lights up the enigmatic. And what a keen, voracious observer he was! Endless is the procession of types that passes through his pages — the whole world of Russians of his day: country gentlemen, chinovniks, waitresses, ladies of fashion, shopgirls, town physicians, Zemstvo doctors, innkeepers, peasants, herdsmen, soldiers, tradesmen, every type of the intelligentsia, children, men and women of every class and occupation. Chekhov describes them all with a pen that knows no bias. He eschews specialization in types. In a letter written to his friend Plescheyev, Chekhov draws in one stroke a swift, subtle parallel between the two authors, Shcheglov and Korolenko, and then he goes on to say, "But, Allah, Kerim! Why do they both specialize? One refuses to part with his prisoners, the other feeds his readers on staff officers. I recognize specialization in art, such as genres, landscape, history; I understand the 'emploi' of the actor, the school of the musician, but I cannot accept such specialization as prisoners, officers, priests. This is no longer specialization; it is bias." Chekhov ignores no phase of the life of his day. This inclusiveness, this large and noble avidity that refuses to be circumscribed by class or kind or importance, makes the sum of his stories both ample and satisfying. His work illuminates the whole of Russian life, the main thoroughfares, the bypaths, the unfrequented recesses. Without Chekhov, how are we to embark on the discovery of Russia?
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