Best Russian Short Stories | Page 4

hammer his blows fell upon the decaying fabric of the old society. His
was no longer a feeble, despairing protest. With the strength and
confidence of victory he made onslaught upon onslaught on the old
institutions until they shook and almost tumbled. And when reaction
celebrated its short-lived triumph and gloom settled again upon his
country and most of his co-fighters withdrew from the battle in despair,
some returning to the old-time Russian mood of hopelessness, passivity
and apathy, and some even backsliding into wild orgies of literary

debauchery, Gorky never wavered, never lost his faith and hope, never
for a moment was untrue to his principles. Now, with the revolution
victorious, he has come into his right, one of the most respected,
beloved and picturesque figures in the Russian democracy.
Kuprin, the most facile and talented short-story writer next to Chekhov,
has, on the whole, kept well to the best literary traditions of Russia,
though he has frequently wandered off to extravagant sex themes, for
which he seems to display as great a fondness as Artzybashev.
Semyonov is a unique character in Russian literature, a peasant who
had scarcely mastered the most elementary mechanics of writing when
he penned his first story. But that story pleased Tolstoy, who
befriended and encouraged him. His tales deal altogether with peasant
life in country and city, and have a lifelikeness, an artlessness, a
simplicity striking even in a Russian author.
There is a small group of writers detached from the main current of
Russian literature who worship at the shrine of beauty and mysticism.
Of these Sologub has attained the highest reputation.
Rich as Russia has become in the short story, Anton Chekhov still
stands out as the supreme master, one of the greatest short-story writers
of the world. He was born in Taganarok, in the Ukraine, in 1860, the
son of a peasant serf who succeeded in buying his freedom. Anton
Chekhov studied medicine, but devoted himself largely to writing, in
which, he acknowledged, his scientific training was of great service.
Though he lived only forty-four years, dying of tuberculosis in 1904,
his collected works consist of sixteen fair-sized volumes of short stories,
and several dramas besides. A few volumes of his works have already
appeared in English translation.
Critics, among them Tolstoy, have often compared Chekhov to
Maupassant. I find it hard to discover the resemblance. Maupassant
holds a supreme position as a short-story writer; so does Chekhov. But
there, it seems to me, the likeness ends.
The chill wind that blows from the atmosphere created by the
Frenchman's objective artistry is by the Russian commingled with the

warm breath of a great human sympathy. Maupassant never tells where
his sympathies lie, and you don't know; you only guess. Chekhov does
not tell you where his sympathies lie, either, but you know all the same;
you don't have to guess. And yet Chekhov is as objective as
Maupassant. In the chronicling of facts, conditions, and situations, in
the reproduction of characters, he is scrupulously true, hard, and
inexorable. But without obtruding his personality, he somehow
manages to let you know that he is always present, always at hand. If
you laugh, he is there to laugh with you; if you cry, he is there to shed a
tear with you; if you are horrified, he is horrified, too. It is a subtle art
by which he contrives to make one feel the nearness of himself for all
his objectiveness, so subtle that it defies analysis. And yet it constitutes
one of the great charms of his tales.
Chekhov's works show an astounding resourcefulness and versatility.
There is no monotony, no repetition. Neither in incident nor in
character are any two stories alike. The range of Chekhov's knowledge
of men and things seems to be unlimited, and he is extravagant in the
use of it. Some great idea which many a writer would consider
sufficient to expand into a whole novel he disposes of in a story of a
few pages. Take, for example, Vanka, apparently but a mere episode in
the childhood of a nine-year-old boy; while it is really the tragedy of a
whole life in its tempting glimpses into a past environment and
ominous forebodings of the future--all contracted into the space of four
or five pages. Chekhov is lavish with his inventiveness. Apparently, it
cost him no effort to invent.
I have used the word inventiveness for lack of a better name. It
expresses but lamely the peculiar faculty that distinguishes Chekhov.
Chekhov does not really invent. He reveals. He reveals things that no
author before him has revealed. It is as though he possessed a special
organ which enabled him to see, hear and feel things of which we other
mortals did not even dream the existence. Yet