A few
volumes of his works have already appeared in English translation.
Critics, among them Tolstoy, have often compared Chekhov to
Maupassant. I find it hard to discover the resemblance. Maupassant
holds a supreme position as a short-story writer; so does Chekhov. But
there, it seems to me, the likeness ends.
The chill wind that blows from the atmosphere created by the
Frenchman's objective artistry is by the Russian commingled with the
warm breath of a great human sympathy. Maupassant never tells where
his sympathies lie, and you don't know; you only guess. Chekhov does
not tell you where his sympathies lie, either, but you know all the
same; you don't have to guess. And yet Chekhov is as objective as
Maupassant. In the chronicling of facts, conditions, and situations,
in the reproduction of characters, he is scrupulously true, hard, and
inexorable. But without obtruding his personality, he somehow manages
to let you know that he is always present, always at hand. If you
laugh, he is there to laugh with you; if you cry, he is there to shed
a tear with you; if you are horrified, he is horrified, too. It is a
subtle art by which he contrives to make one feel the nearness of
himself for all his objectiveness, so subtle that it defies analysis.
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