A peculiar biography that justifies its addition to an overcrowded
shelf by focusing on the landscapes most important to the Russian
writer. It's a good idea-for a magazine article or an academic
monograph. Drawn out to book length, this geographical survey
eventually palls as the text wanders from Taganrog, where Chekhov
was born in 1860, through Moscow and St. Petersburg to Melikhovo,
his country home outside Moscow, and Yalta, the Crimean resort to
which he relocated in a vain attempt to stem the progress of his
tuberculosis. British scholar Bartlett (Russian/Univ. of Durham;
Wagner and Russia, not reviewed) admits to taking "an
impressionistic approach," and early chapters provide atmospheric
context for his work by the evoking flat, unpopulated steppe,
dotted with ancient Scythian burial mounds, of his childhood; and
the arcadian meadows, forests and rivers he enjoyed when summering
in a dacha outside Moscow. But her occasional schematic linking of
these vistas to a particular story through lengthy quotes merely
serves to underscore how little information this book provides
about Chekhov's literary life, apart from his surprising friendship
with reactionary St. Petersburg magazine publisher Alexei Suvorin.
The plays in particular get very short shrift here; in a typical
passage, the author writes, "When [Chekhov] returned to Nice for
that last visit, he spent the first week of his stay putting the
final touches on Three Sisters"-which has hardly been mentioned
before. Happily, we learn a good deal more about Chekhov the man
than Chekhov the writer. He quietly improved every place he lived,
treating the local peasants long after he had given up practicing
medicine and raising funds for local schools and post offices. The
chronology of his existence, largely abandoned for long stretches,
reasserts itself in the final chapters about his slow decline and
death at a German spa in 1904, which make the previous emphasis on
the physical terrain seem even more arbitrary. Some interesting
material on hitherto unexplored aspects of Chekhov's life, but this
one's strictly for specialists. (Kirkus Reviews)
What made Chekhov tick? What served as a source of creative
inspiration in his life? In answering these questions, Russian
scholar Rosamund Bartlett focuses on the writer's intimate
relationship with the places where he lived and traveled--Taganrog
and the southern Russian steppes, Moscow, Petersburg, Siberia, the
French Riviera, and Yalta. By looking at his life through the prism
of these landscapes, it is possible to gain a far greater insight
into one of the most enigmatic writers who ever lived. "Chekhov:
Scenes from a Life" restores the humor and warmth to a man too
often seen as merely melancholic, and reminds us why many consider
him to be the greatest short-story writer of all time.
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