4 - Anton Chekhov in His Time

Summary

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) reached the widening public of his day. He captured the turn to a popular perspective, driving the transformation of Russian culture well into the twentieth century. His inclusive style lent dignity to nearly every character, though he could be ruthlessly ironic. He empathized with his readers and probed new views of identity, otherness, and the nation. In late works he emphasized beauty and the arts as superlative human values. He could engage with popular fiction well because he both read and wrote it. He honed skills that led to innovations in the short story and drama through his reading (and occasional writing) of serialized novels for the boulevard press of the 1880s. He read and corresponded about the best-known serialized bandit story of his day, N. I. Pastukhov’s The Bandit Churkin, which was serialized in The Moscow Sheet from 1882-1885. Chekhov turned the traditional Russian idea of the bandit’s spree or the binge into a deeper inquiry into the positive attributes of freedom. By the time of his death, he had arrived at his own understanding that freedom to create resides in a space coexistent with the world but beyond the encroachment of Church, state, and the market.