No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov
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No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov
1–10 of 34 posts
Re: No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov
#2Pevear and Volokhonsky are unreadable. Choose any other translation for your Russian lit.
Re: No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov
#3Man I haven’t successfully read his short story “Misery” without tearing up. The Grief and loneliness of the protagonist is always super poignant to me.
Re: No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov
#4You can download his entire short story corpus for free at Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/anton-chekhov/short-fictio...
The translator is Constance Garnett, who is fairly well regarded. The collection is huge but there are a lot of gems in there!
Re: No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov
#5The Death of a Government Clerk is one of the stories I read when I was a kid, and had never forgotten since. It's so short, but so affecting, especially that ending.
There is a sense of absurdity and bleakness in Chekhov's writing that chills me to the bone every time. The endings, although I know things are going to end badly, are always somehow more forlorn and absurd.
Re: No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov
#6Pevear and Volokhonsky are unreadable. Choose any other translation for your Russian lit.
They're the best.
Re: No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov
#7You can download his entire short story corpus for free at Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/anton-chekhov/short-fictio... The translator is Constance Garnett, who is fairly well regarded. The collection is huge but there are a lot of gems in there!
Constance Garnett was well regarded 80 years ago, very much less so now.
She was not rigorous, would drop entire words or phrases she didn't understand. She worked at breakneck speed with minimal thought to trying to capture idiom or literary devices. This is especially bad with an artful writer like Chekov.
There's a quite fascinating discussion of this in the forward to the Norton collection of Checkov (https://wwnorton.com/books/Anton-Chekhovs-Selected-Stories/).
Re: No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov
#8Pevear and Volokhonsky are unreadable. Choose any other translation for your Russian lit.
I have read their translations of War and Peace, The Idiot, and Brothers Karamazov.
I don't know how accurate the translations are because I don't know Russian, but the English was readable and pleasurable to read.
Re: No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov
#9As a playwright, Chekhov is second only to Shakespeare.
And you get get through his 4 major plays in only a few days. There are even great adaptations on YouTube in English or Russian (with subtitles). Highly recommended.
Re: No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov
#10:-) Interesting to read many describe that feeling you get when you read Chekhov. A Russian friend once told me it is тоска (toska) - an unbearable, inescapable anguish - "Really you have to be Russian to understand it. toska is rent for being Russian. More Vodka?"