Gooseberries, Anton Chekhov - Valentine T. Bill (essay date 1974)
Valentine T. Bill (essay date 1974)
SOURCE: "Nature in Chekhov's Fiction," in The Russian Review, Vol. 33, No. 2, April, 1974, pp. 153-66.
[In the essay below, the critic contends that Chekhov believed in "the unity of all living things and of a disturbed harmony in nature to the end of his life." Bill then shows how this perspective influenced Chekhov's short fiction, including "Gooseberries."]
He (Chekhov) was the first one in literature to include man's relation to nature into the sphere of ethics.
A. P. Chudakov, Poetika Chekhova, 1971.
At a relatively early stage in his artistic development Chekhov formulated his basic view of life on this planet. In the story "The Reed Pipe" (Svirel') (1887), we hear the lament of an old shepherd: "The sun and the skies and the forests and the rivers and the creatures—all this is created, adapted,...
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