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On Chekhov's Craftsmanship: The Anatomy of a Story
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2017
Extract
In January, 1888, when Chekhov was working on his first long story, “The Steppe,” he wrote to his friend, the poet Pleshcheev, at whose instigation he was writing that story for the review The Northern Messenger:
All through January I have been working away at my steppe, not writing anything else, and am therefore absolutely ruined. If the Steppe is published later than March I shall howl like a wolf. I'll mail it to you by February 1st. If you foresee that there will be no room for it in the March issue, let me know, my dear man: I shan't hurry with the Steppe and shall write something for the New Times and the Petersburg Gazette for the sake of an honorarium. To write long things is most boring and much more difficult than to write trifles.
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- Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1961
References
1
(Moscow, 1944-51), XIII, 21.Google Scholar In subsequent quotations from Chekhov's letters, volume and page are given in parentheses at the end of each quotation.
2 See
, II (Moscow, 1914), 235–36.
3
, II, 204–5.
4
… XIV, 12.
5 Quoted in IO. CoбoaeB,
(Moscow, 1930), p. 59.
6
, XXXVIII, No. 6 (Sofia: 
, 1942), pp. 37–40.
7 See H. K.
a nemx H O T. 'lexoBe,ConuneHUM, VI (St. Petersburg, 1897), pp. 771–84. In his artistic detachment Chekhov is closer to Pushkin than to iny other writer in Russian literature. It is interesting to note that Pasternak's protagonist inDoctor Zhivago brings the two names together when he writes in his diary: “What I have come to like best in the whole of Russian literature is the childlike Russian quality of Pushkin and Chekhov, their modest reticence in such high-sounding matters as the ultimate Purpose of mankind or their own salvation. It isn't that they didn't think about these :hings, and to good effect, but to talk about such things seemed to them pretentious, pre-mmptuous.”
Pasternak, Boris,Doctor Zhivago (New York: Pantheon, 1958), p .285.Google Scholar
8 Cf.
, VII, 517.
9 Chekhov's place in Russian literature as an impressionist is discussed pertinently by Professor D. Tschizhewsky in the same volume in which my paper on Chekhov and Grigoro-vich was published (“Über die Stellung čechovs innerhalb der russischen Literaturentwicklung,” inAnton Chekhov: 1860–1960, pp. 293–310).