"Checkov, Anton - Swan Song" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chekhov Anton)

Swan Song

by Anton Checkov




PLAYS BY ANTON TCHEKOFF


TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN, WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MARIAN FELL




CONTENTS

Introduction
Chronological List of Works
The Swan Song




INTRODUCTION

ANTON TCHEKOFF

THE last years of the nineteenth century were for Russia tinged
with doubt and gloom. The high-tide of vitality that had risen
during the Turkish war ebbed in the early eighties, leaving
behind it a dead level of apathy which lasted until life was
again quickened by the high interests of the Revolution. During
these grey years the lonely country and stagnant provincial towns
of Russia buried a peasantry which was enslaved by want and toil,
and an educated upper class which was enslaved by idleness and
tedium. Most of the "Intellectuals," with no outlet for their
energies, were content to forget their ennui in vodka and
card-playing; only the more idealistic gasped for air in the
stifling atmosphere, crying out in despair against life as they
saw it, and looking forward with a pathetic hope to happiness for
humanity in "two or three hundred years." It is the inevitable
tragedy of their existence, and the pitiful humour of their
surroundings, that are portrayed with such insight and sympathy
by Anton Tchekoff who is, perhaps, of modern writers, the dearest
to the Russian people.

Anton Tchekoff was born in the old Black Sea port of Taganrog on
January 17, 1860. His grandfather had been a serf; his father
married a merchant's daughter and settled in Taganrog, where,