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Updated: June 6, 2025
Baring, in his book "Landmarks in Russian Literature," has an excellent chapter on the plays of Chekhov, which partially explains the difficulties an outsider has in studying Russian drama. But this chapter, like the other parts of his book, is marred by exaggeration. He says, "Chekhov's plays are as interesting to read as the work of any first-rate novelist."
Travelling with Suvorin, who did not stint himself, drew him into spending more than he intended, and he owed Suvorin a sum which was further increased at Monte Carlo by Chekhov's losing nine hundred roubles at roulette. But this loss was a blessing to him in so far as, for some reason, it made him feel satisfied with himself.
And, if I realized that the revolution had come to stay, if I realized that Chekhov's play had become a play of historical interest, I realized also that Chekhov was a great master in that his work carried across the gulf between the old life and the new, and affected a revolutionary audience of to-day as strongly as it affected that very different audience of a few years ago.
That's all nonsense. All my inside is full of coughs, wet and dry, but I bathe and walk about, and yet I am alive.... Why these reproaches! I send you my portrait. To-morrow we shall meet. Do not forget your Petya. A thousand kisses!!! I have bought Chekhov's stories. How delightful! Mind you buy them. Remember me to Masha Chekhov. What a darling you are!
Chekhov's story "Happiness" was written under the influence of one of his nurse's tales, which were always of the mysterious, of the extraordinary, of the terrible, and poetical.
Everything fascinated him and then there was a change in the weather and a steady downpour of rain. Chekhov's spirits drooped. Venice was damp and seemed horrible, and he longed to escape from it. He had had just such a change of mood in Singapore, which interested him immensely and suddenly filled him with such misery that he wanted to cry.
English plays are centripetal; they draw the attention of the audience to the group of characters on the stage; but Chekhov's, says Mr. Calderon, are centrifugal; they throw our regard off from the actors to the whole class of humanity they represent. Just such a remark applies to Home Burial; it makes the reader think of the thousands of farmhouses darkened by similar tragedies.
Chekhov's sympathy with Imagination and his hatred for commonplace folk who stupidly try to repress its manifestations are shown again and again in his tales. He loves especially the imagination of children; and he shows them as infinitely wiser than their practical parents.
Indeed, the play seemed almost to have gained by the revolution, which had lent it, perhaps, more irony than was in Chekhov's mind as he wrote. Was this the old life? I thought, as I stepped out into the snow. If so, then thank God it has gone! February 22nd.
In 1876 Pavel Yegorovitch closed his shop, and went to join his sons in Moscow. While earning their own living, one was a student at the University, and the other a student at the School of Sculpture and Painting. The house was sold by auction, one of the creditors took all the furniture, and Chekhov's mother was left with nothing.
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