Long
and to his publisher. Tchehkoff's stories are really remarkable. If any
one of authority stated that they rank him with the fixed stars of Russian
fiction--Dostoievsky, Tourgeniev, Gogol, and Tolstoy--I should not be
ready to contradict. To read them, after even the finest stories of de
Maupassant or Murray Gilchrist, is like having a bath after a ball. Their
effect is extraordinarily one of ingenuousness. Of course they are not in
the least ingenuous, as a fact, but self-conscious and elaborate to the
highest degree. The progress of every art is an apparent progress from
conventionality to realism. The basis of convention remains, but as the
art develops it finds more and more subtle methods fitting life to the
convention or the convention to life--whichever you please. Tchehkoff's
tales mark a definite new conquest in this long struggle. As you read him
you fancy that he must always have been saying to himself: "Life is good
enough for me. I won't alter it. I will set it down as it is." Such is the
tribute to his success which he forces from you.
* * * * *
He seems to have achieved absolute realism. (But there is no absolute, and
one day somebody--probably a Russian--will carry realism further.
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