Word: chekhovs
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...PERSONAL PAPERS OF ANTON CHEKHOV (235 pp.)-Introduction by Matthew Josephson-Lear...
...admirers of a great writer, even his casual notes and scraps of abandoned work have a fascination; so Chekhov readers will pounce on this new collection of his notebooks, diaries and selected letters with delight. But even those outside the circle of initiates may find much solid pleasure...
From 1892 to 1904 Chekhov, then at the height of his fame, kept a set of unpretentious workbooks. In them he jotted judgments brief and sufficient as a child's ("He who tells lies is dirty"). He sketched ideas for Stories, many of which he never wrote. Readers can wonder for themselves what Chekhov might have done with this synopsis: "A radical lady, who crosses herself at night, is secretly full of prejudice and superstition, hears that in order to be happy one should boil a black cat by night. She steals a cat and tries to boil...
...Gregor's mouth Novelist Blunden has put three stories, in the manner of Gogol, Chekhov and Dostoevsky respectively. Interspersed with these are chapters of action: Ivan at the front, stopping a Nazi light tank 25 kilometers from Moscow; his lieutenant, Kostia, dying in a hospital after a double amputation; Rachel's son, Karl, starving in a concentration camp to which he had been sent for remarking that Hitler's strategy was "cunning." Karl's hatred of the regime that imprisoned him hardens into conviction...
...Wait a Bit." In one of Chekhov's short stories, some city people, whom we may take as symbolic of the Western world, try to make friends with the peasants of a nearby village, only to be repulsed time after time. The last attempt is made by the mother of the family, Elena Ivanovna, who goes to the village with her little girl, and tries to have a heart-to-heart talk with the peasants. It is not successful. Here is what Chekhov tells...