Word: troyat
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...American readers, Tolstoy's life sometimes reads like a 19th century version of Portnoy's Complaint, in which the protagonist never stops griping that his desires are repugnant to his morals. Tolstoy's diaries and instructional writings are engorged with this seriocomic theme, a fact that led Biographer Henri Troyat to conclude more than 20 years ago that Russia's literary icon was "a billy-goat pining for purity...
CHEKHOV, Henri Troyat -- GOING SOLO, Roald Dahl -- MY FATHER, MY SON, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt Jr. and Lieut. Elmo Zumwalt III -- THE PAPER, Richard Kluger...
...Troyat points out, Chekhov "drew the line at glorifying the 'holy Russian muzhik.' " He knew better; his grandfather was a peasant and his father an incompetent grocer and religious fanatic who spent most of his time praying, preaching and beating his six children. The family lived in Taganrog, a small port, a "deaf town," on the Sea of Azov, and as soon as they were able, the young Chekhovs were put to work in the unheated shop. On Sundays they were made to stand for hours in church. Wrote the author years later: "When I was a child...
...need for a career to support his family after his father became a bankrupt and a drunk. Chekhov never shirked this responsibility; it became one reason not to start a family of his own. The other, more powerful rationale was his attraction to writing. In this matter, Troyat is particularly poignant, one might even say Chekhovian: "What was a woman to him, no matter how desirable, when his life was all pen and paper...
There was more than figurative truth in the statement. Chekhov suffered a variety of chronic illnesses. Symptoms of tuberculosis appeared when he was graduated from medical school. The fatal disease surely contributed to his doleful outlook, though it does not appear to have affected his compassion. As Troyat suggests, while Chekhov's journey to a remote penal colony was motivated by sympathy, writing The Island of Sakhalin was not a labor of love. Yet the book riveted attention on the inhuman conditions at the Czar's gulag and eventually led to reforms...