The Black Monk, and Other Stories

Anton Tchekhoff, the writer of the stories and sketches here translated, although hardly known in this country, and but little better known on the western continent of Europe, has during the last fifteen years been regarded as the most talented of the younger generation of Russian writers. Even the remarkable popularity attained during the last few years by Maxim Gorky has not eclipsed his fame, though it has probably done much to prevent the recognition of his talents abroad. Tchekhoff's stories lack the striking incidents and lurid colouring of the younger writer's, and thus, while they appeal more strongly to the cultivated Russian, they are devoid of the more obvious qualities that attract the translator and the public which read translations. Though they have gone into numberless editions in Russia, they are almost unknown abroad, being, in fact, represented only by a few scattered translations and small volumes published in France and Germany, and by a few critical articles in the reviews of those countries. In England, Tchekhoff is only a name to most of those interested in Eastern literature, and not even a name to the general public.
Anton Pavlovitch Tchekhoff was born in 1860, spent his infancy in South Russia, and was educated in the Medical Faculty of Moscow University. Although a doctor by profession, and actually practising for some years as a municipal medical officer, he began his literary career as a story writer before completing his professional education, contributing, when a student, sketches to the weekly comic journals, and feuilletons to the St. Petersburg newspapers. Tchekhoff's early stories turn largely upon domestic misunderstandings; they are brief, avowedly humorous, and even farcical. They attracted early attention by their irresponsible gaiety, seldom untinged with a certain bitterness. The Steppe , a panorama of travel through the great plains of South Russia, published serially in the now extinct Sieverni Viestnik , was the first of his productions of sustained merit. It was followed by a series of stories and sketches and one volume of dramas, which have, in the opinion of Russian critics, established the writer on a level with the best native fiction writers, and on a much higher level than any of his contemporaries.