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Lateinthe19thcentury Anton Chekhov revolutionized the short story. Chekhov began as a humorist, churning out hundreds of brief comic stories for humor magazines and daily newspapers. Gradually he began to take his talent more seriously. He developed a coolly objective style that presents, in compact form, the specific circumstances of a character’s life and allows the reader to make final judgments about that character. The subject matter of his stories is the common and unexceptional in everyday life, related in ordinary yet poetic prose. The typical Chekhovian story has little external plot. The point of the story is most often found in what happens within a given character, and that is conveyed indirectly, by suggestion or by significant detail. The protagonist of one of his finest stories, “Dama s sobachkoi” (1899; “The Lady with the Little Dog”), for instance, begins to realize that what began as a brief, adulterous affair has become the great love of his life. Chekhov’s stories also present a panorama of Russian life in the last decades of the 19th century. They portray children (“Vanka,” 1886), clergymen (“Arkhierei,” 1902; translated as “The Bishop”), peasants (“Muzhiki,” 1897; “Peasants”), intellectuals (“Skuchnaia istoriia,” 1889; “A Dreary Story”), and other characters from a broad range of professions and social circumstances.
Beforethe19thcentury, drama received little attention from Russian writers. By the end of the century, several memorable plays and the masterpieces of Anton Chekhov had been written.
Twogenuineclassicsof Russian drama originated early in the century. Aleksandr Griboedov satirized Muscovite society in lively and witty verse in his Gore ot uma (1833; The Woes of Wit). His protagonist, Chatsky, belongs to a long line of alienated and cynical heroes. Gogol’s dramatic masterpiece, Revizor (1836; The Inspector General), uses the well-worn device of mistaken identity to create a brilliantly inventive satirical comedy. The play centers on Khlestakov, a young good-for-nothing who, while traveling through Russia’s provinces, is mistaken for a government inspector. Before escaping, Khlestakov cheerfully accepts the attention and the bribes that local officials lavish upon him. Pushkin and Lermontov also wrote several significant dramas in the 1830s. Pushkin’s play Boris Godunov (1831), a tragedy based on events from Russian history, is now seldom performed, but it survives as an opera by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky. Pushkin’s “little tragedies” are brief but intense dramatic dialogues in verse that best reveal his dramatic talents. Lermontov produced Maskarad (1835; Masquerade), a melodrama of passion and murder.
AleksandrOstrovskyis the best known of Russia’s mid-century dramatists. The most famous of his 50 plays, Groza (1860; The Thunderstorm), focuses on a liaison between a young married woman and her lover in the tradition-bound merchant milieu of a town on the Volga River. Other authors who wrote dramas include Turgenev, Pisemsky, and Tolstoy. Turgenev’s play Mesiats v derevne (1850; A Month in the Country) was innovative in that it concentrated on the revelation of character rather than on plot. Its complex psychological currents and evocation of atmosphere anticipate the plays of Chekhov. Pisemsky’s most important play, Gor’kaia sud’bina (A Bitter Fate, 1859), details a tragic love affair between a landowner and a married peasant woman. Tolstoy’s grim and powerful Vlast’ tmy (1888; The Power of Darkness) dramatizes the brutality of peasant life.
Lateinthecentury,Chekhov transformed drama, as he had done with the short story. Like his stories, Chekhov’s plays moved away from traditional ideas of plot and dramatic dialogue. The plays convey the feel of ordinary life unfolding, with seemingly haphazard dialogue and few conventionally dramatic scenes. True, his first real success on the stage, Chaika (1896; The Seagull), ends with the suicide of the central character, but the suicide happens offstage and the unconcerned chatter of the characters onstage undercuts its impact. Diadia Vanya (1899; Uncle Vanya), the bleakest of Chekhov’s four major plays, dramatizes the futility and waste of life in provincial Russia. Tri sestry (1901; Three Sisters), also set in the depths of the Russian provinces, focuses on tragic subject matter that is undercut by comic absurdities. Chekhov’s last play, Vishnevyi sad (1904; The Cherry Orchard), likewise blends pathos and humor, never allowing the audience to be dominated by one mood for long. Although the complex texture of Chekhov’s plays cannot be properly summarized in a single sentence, they all deal with the loss of illusions, a subject that can be both painful and enriching.
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