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Updated: May 27, 2025
Tchekoff unconsciously gave up the "genre" of pleasant anecdote in order to concentrate all his attention on facts. This practice made him sad. Russia was, at this time, going through a period of prostration as a result of the last Russo-Turkish war.
Tchekoff has also tried himself out on the drama, and he has there established himself in a peculiar manner. His plays, like his other literary productions, belong to two distinct periods. There are some amusing little trifles that do not amount to much. Among these are: "The Bear," "The Asking in Marriage," and others.
Tchekoff was still living when new symptoms of fermentation appeared in Russia, and he could have alluded to this in his later works. But he did not have a fighting nature, and, in his solitude, he looked at conditions with melancholy scepticism.
While Tchekoff lived his literary aspect was enigmatical. Some judged him to be indifferent, because they did not find in his writings that revolutionary spirit which is felt in almost all modern writers. Others thought of him as a pessimist who saw nothing good in Russian life, because he described principally resigned suffering or useless striving for a better life.
Let us now look at those numerous stories of Tchekoff which treat of peasant life: "The Peasants," "The Murder," "In the Ravine," and others.
But from this ocean of ignorance, of barbarity, of misery which makes up the life of a peasant, Tchekoff has taken out the things of most importance, things that always happen in the most solemn moments of their existence.
This certainly is the dominant note of Tchekoff's philosophy: the impotency of living mitigated by a vague hope of progress. The last, and perhaps the most important play of Tchekoff, is "The Cherry Garden." Human beings, locked up in themselves, morally bounded, impotent and isolated, wander about in the old seignioral estate of the Cherry Garden. The house is several centuries old.
Such, then, are the contents of the first two volumes which came from the pen of Tchekoff. However, this melancholy little note, met from time to time, gradually grew in intensity in the third volume, until later on it lost all trace of the old carelessness, and developed, on the contrary, into a profound sadness.
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