The Short Stories of Anton Chekhov

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"The aim of fiction," said Anton Chekhov, in one of his letters, "is absolute and honest truth." In the success with which he achieved this aim, Chekhov is supreme among short story writers. He never deludes his readers with a trick end- ing, preferring rather to get his effects by revealing new aspects of life in seemingly commonplace situations; un- suspected shades of character in ordinary individuals. He understands his people so completely that every gesture they make is in character and adds to our knowledge of them. As a result, he sets them before the reader with the utmost economy of words, without interposing description or moraliz- ing, and in such a way that we accept their actions as in- evitable.

Born at Taganrog, Russia, the son of a poverty-ridden shop-keeper, the grandson of a serf, Chekhov first took up writing in order to support himself while studying to be a doctor, a career which he gradually abandoned as he found fiction and the drama more congenial. He had a healthy ability to take life on its own terms. His gaiety was not crushed by the poverty of his early years, nor by his long, losing struggle with tuberculosis. Success did not corrupt him. Always he fought against stupidity, cruelty, blind con- servatism; fought in the shadow of an incurable disease without losing his zest for life; without growing harsh or bitter. Although remaining aloof from politics, he had an acutely practical social conscience. While others talked, he acted. Before the tfays of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, he journeyed alone aV across Asia to Saghalien to investigate conditions in the penal settlement. When Gorki denied admission to the Russian Academy, be resigned his much- coveted membership in protest.

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