Swan Song | Page 3

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This file contains the chronology, the introduction, Swan Song.

Swan Song
by Anton Checkov

PLAYS BY ANTON TCHEKOFF
TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN, WITH AN
INTRODUCTION BY MARIAN FELL

CONTENTS
Introduction Chronological List of Works The Swan Song

INTRODUCTION
ANTON TCHEKOFF
THE last years of the nineteenth century were for Russia tinged with
doubt and gloom. The high-tide of vitality that had risen during the
Turkish war ebbed in the early eighties, leaving behind it a dead level
of apathy which lasted until life was again quickened by the high
interests of the Revolution. During these grey years the lonely country
and stagnant provincial towns of Russia buried a peasantry which was
enslaved by want and toil, and an educated upper class which was

enslaved by idleness and tedium. Most of the "Intellectuals," with no
outlet for their energies, were content to forget their ennui in vodka and
card-playing; only the more idealistic gasped for air in the stifling
atmosphere, crying out in despair against life as they saw it, and
looking forward with a pathetic hope to happiness for humanity in "two
or three hundred years." It is the inevitable tragedy of their existence,
and the pitiful humour of their surroundings, that are portrayed with
such insight and sympathy by Anton Tchekoff who is, perhaps, of
modern writers, the dearest to the Russian people.
Anton Tchekoff was born in the old Black Sea port of Taganrog on
January 17, 1860. His grandfather had been a serf; his father married a
merchant's daughter and settled in Taganrog, where, during Anton's
boyhood, he carried on a small and unsuccessful trade in provisions.
The young Tchekoff was soon impressed into the services of the large,
poverty-stricken family, and he spoke regretfully in after years of his
hard-worked childhood. But he was obedient and good-natured, and
worked cheerfully in his father's shop, closely observing the idlers that
assembled there, and gathering the drollest stories, which he would
afterward whisper in class to his laughing schoolfellows. Many were
the punishments which he incurred by this habit, which was
incorrigible.
His grandfather had now become manager of an estate near Taganrog,
in the wild steppe country of the Don Cossacks, and here the boy spent
his summers, fishing in the river, and roving about the countryside as
brown as a gipsy, sowing the seeds of that love for nature which he
retained all his life. His evenings he liked best to spend in the kitchen
of the master's house among the work people and peasants who
gathered there, taking part in their games, and setting them all laughing
by his witty and telling observations.
When Tchekoff was about fourteen, his father moved the family to
Moscow, leaving Anton in Taganrog, and now, relieved of work in