Antón Chekhov
(Antón Pávlovich Chekhov; Taganrog, 1860-Badenweiler, 1904) Russian narrator and playwright.Considered the most prominent representative of the realist school in Russia, his work is one of the most important in the dramaturgy and narrative of universal literature.
Antón Chekhov
Chekhov's style is marked by a strong expressive laconism and by the absence of complex plots, on which atmospheres are superimposed lyrics that the author creates aided by the most subtle thoughts of his characters.Chekhov decidedly departed from the moralism and pedagogical intentionality typical of the literati of his time (in a troubled Russia worried about his destiny) to bet on a type of writer lacking in commitment and passion, embodying an idea of literature that rejected the principle of the author as omniscient narrator.
As in dramas, it is also possible to perceive a certain atmosphere in narratives: that which was precisely called "Chekhovian", a particular state of mind defined by Korolenko as that of a joyful melancholic.It should be noted that there is a nexus between the jovial and thoughtless Chekhov of adolescence and early youth, interested, as his brother describes, in the collection of anecdotes designed to facilitate his collaboration in humorous magazines, and that of maturity, restless as a seagull that, in flight over the sea, does not know where to perch (according to the beautiful image used by the actress Olga Knipper, who in 1898 became his wife).
The keen intuition of the sadness of life, which many erroneously attribute only to Chekhov of the mature years, was already in him precisely behind the joy and unconcern of the young medical student, hidden, as if to reveal his own nature he was ashamed, under some pseudonyms.In the same way, the ability to see human creatures in wrappings purposely made to provoke laughter continued to characterize his style, even when toned down in shades of parody, fantasy or mirage, and finally transposed out of everyday reality, towards a hypothetical far future.
Within its diversity, indeed, Chekhov was uniform in terms of artistic and spiritual aspects.As he affirmed of existence, he was both extraordinarily simple and complex, and if despite not being pessimistic he highlighted the saddest and most hidden folds of human nature, it was precisely because, as he himself said, he loved the lifetime.All this, of course, was also reflected in the form, that is, in the style itself.However, full awareness of the artistic value of Chekhov's work was not reached until later; Be that as it may, it is worth remembering the admiration that Tolstoy and Gorky experienced for her and the influence exerted by Chekhov, outside Russia, on Katherine Mansfield.
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