The Portable Chekhov (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Three stars for Anton Checkhov? What could I be thinking. First of all, having read my fair share of Russian literature in translation, I've discovered what a difference a good translator can make. The question of "true to the material" is one I can not answer since I do not speak Russian. However, as far as good writing in English goes... this I can judge. Exceptional stories like "Daydreams", "The Kiss", and "Gusev" stand out with stellar content: "Daydreams" finds a man whose hopes for the future are constantly bashed by the two police he is with. "The Kiss" deals with a soldier who creates an entire fantasy affair with a woman based on a single accidental kiss. And "Gusev" follows the title character's slow descent from sickness into death on board a battleship. "The Kiss", the finest of the bunch, was translated by Constance Garnett, while Yarmolinsky translated almost all the others. Stories like "The Peasants" are bogged down in Yarmolinsky's stilted style. It is difficult to follow or care about characters doing every day things when the reading of these things is so difficult.

This edition also has certain letters collected toward the end. Any relationship between the letters and the rest of the volume is lost to me. There is no mention of any stories we've just read, or any theme amongst the letters themselves. Perhaps more letters to a specific person, or revolving around the writing of a story would have been more appropriate. As is, the tiny letters section is very cutable, offering such a small glimpse as to prove useless. Granted, Yarmolinsky had an almost impossible task. There can be no "portable" Checkhov. The man wrote hundreds upon hundreds of stories, and even more letters. His collected work could, and does, fill volumes. Selecting six hundred pages, translating them, and hoping that they can somehow represent a man is fallacy. Yet, until a better collection comes along, we are forced to read what we can.

The outstanding review of Fr.Kurt Messick on this site is a very good introduction to the life of Chekhov, and to this particular collection of his writings.

In this review I would like to think a bit about why Chekhov is as I believe a great writer , and just what makes his writing , for me especially in the stories, so powerful.

First, I believe he has a tremendous feeling for human character. Each of his characters is both described in physical and moral terms. But Chekhov in describing his characters gives us a strong sense that he is in touch with real life, with its difficulties, sufferings , complications and impossibilities. He also gives such a strong sense of the special quality of Russian life and society , of its values of its saints and its sinners.

Some of the stories in this selection are heartbreaking, arouse in us a sense of wonder and compassion . The story ' Heartbreak' the story of a poor coach driver who has lost his son and wants to tell the story of this to someone. And who in the course of his work meets only selfishness, cruelty, indifference. And in the end finally pours out this story to his horse, because the horse at least stands still long enough to as it were listen.

My cliche summary cannot do justice to the power of the story. In another of the stories a seemingly minor character begins to speak about the lunch the court officials he is working with might have. In the course of it he presents the whole world of Russian food , and does this with such humor and such colorfulness as to give a real feeling of joy to the reader. In what is arguably Chekhov's most famous story ,'The Lady with the Pet Dog' he not simply tells a story of romantic love he does so in a way in which we most deeply are made to feel the irony and beauty and pain of life.

Chekhov is a writer deeply in touch with human beings, their real quirks and nature, their passions. I do not agree with the cliche that his stories are not stories, that they do not really have plot or narrative. It seems to me that very often the story is told in a description, or in a monologue almost as an aside. And that the reader does get a sense of some kind of real happening.

I said that Chekhov looks into the Russian soul. What is surprising that the ' secular writer' does understand so much about Russian religiosity. And that he presents something more complex than a simple one- sided condemnation of church corruption. Chekhov's work is too filled with dreamers , and in the story 'Daydreaming' one outcast tramp tells his dream of making a new life to the two wardens taking him to a far different fate.

There is a richness of character and soul in this work. And such wonderful humor.

Great literature is one of the great joys and consolations of life.

Like so many Russian writers, Anton Chekov was very prolific, with a literary output seemingly designed to match the vastness of the country of his origin. Chekov was indeed born the son of a serf, whose grandfather managed to the redeem the family into freedom; Chekov himself was largely a self-made man, valuing education if not the particular educators he was exposed to a child, and learned the aspects of the different levels of Russian society, as well as a good deal about foreign societies, most particularly the Greeks. Chekov's family moved to Moscow (so his father could avoid debtor's prison in his hometown), where Chekov became a medical student; once, to buy food for the family, he wrote a small piece for a local weekly paper. The rest, as one might say, is history. He did in fact finish medical school, but his life was set on a different path.

Chekov is perhaps best known for his short stories and his plays. He wrote literally hundreds of short stories. He was admired in St. Petersburg, the intellectual centre of the country, and won critical prizes and made a nice living from his writing. Chekov spent time in various pursuits that might seem rather strange -- traveling to the Siberian plains and to Sakhalin, to see the prison conditions; he headed a hospital, but found this interfered with his writing. He revered Tolstoy, but could not become an ardent disciple. Always in ill health, he traveled abroad to France, returning to Russia to live in the south, near Yalta, which he always considered no better than a warm Siberia. In all, Chekov lived a varied life, and was convinced that, within a year or so of his death, no one would be reading him any more. He died in 1904, at the age of 44. His writing career spanned some twenty-five years. While his reputation was eclipsed briefly during the Russian Revolutionary period, his reputation remains stronger than ever.

Chekov's short story career was always strong, which is somewhat surprising to modern Western readers. His stories tend to lack strong narrative plots and strong characters. Almost universally they are set in Russia, dealing with the various peoples he encountered in his life, incorporating the feelings and spirit of the place. Many of the stories seem somewhat desperate and desolate, with a quiet resignation as big as the country. Chekov's career as a playwright got off to a relatively slow start, but by the end of his life, his plays were greatly admired and regularly performed in Russia and beyond. Indeed, his 44th birthday was an occasion of the opening of his last play, 'The Cherry Orchard', included in this anthology.

Editor and translator Avrahm Yarmolinsky has an introductory essay, in which he describes Chekov as the 'knell of old Russia' rather than a leader into the new Russia. When reading his stories and plays, one gets a sense for the pre-Revolutionary Russia, the old guard. Never one to go in for novels, which he considered required far more development than he thought he had, Chekov is the scene crafter for late imperial Russia. Interesting, stimulating -- it is hard to anthologise Chekov, and I take a star off here because some of my favourite stories and my favourite play ('The Seagull') are not here, but I can understand the difficulty in deciding.

This anthology includes 40 pages of correspondence; Chekov's correspondence was vast (he wrote his wife nearly every day in the last several years of his life, for example), so again, any representative sample must needs be selective.

This is a good, one-volume introduction to a great Russian writer, one whose influence continues to grow.