THE BLACK MONK
AND OTHER STORIES
By
ANTON TCHEKHOFF
Translated from the Russian by
R. E. C. Long
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
1915
PREFACE
Anton Tchekhoff, the writer of the stories and sketches heretranslated, although hardly known in this country, and but littlebetter known on the western continent of Europe, has during the lastfifteen years been regarded as the most talented of the youngergeneration of Russian writers. Even the remarkable popularity attainedduring the last few years by Maxim Gorky has not eclipsed his fame,though it has probably done much to prevent the recognition of histalents abroad. Tchekhoff's stories lack the striking incidents andlurid colouring of the younger writer's, and thus, while they appealmore strongly to the cultivated Russian, they are devoid of the moreobvious qualities that attract the translator and the public whichread translations. Though they have gone into numberless editions inRussia, they are almost unknown abroad, being, in fact, representedonly by a few scattered translations and small volumes published inFrance and Germany, and by a few critical articles in the reviews ofthose countries. In England, Tchekhoff is only a name to most of thoseinterested in Eastern literature, and not even a name to the generalpublic.
Anton Pavlovitch Tchekhoff was born in 1860, spent his infancy in SouthRussia, and was educated in the Medical Faculty of Moscow University.Although a doctor by profession, and actually practising for some yearsas a municipal medical officer, he began his literary career as a storywriter before completing his professional education, contributing, whena student, sketches to the weekly comic journals, and feuilletons tothe St. Petersburg newspapers. Tchekhoff's early stories turn largelyupon domestic misunderstandings; they are brief, avowedly humorous, andeven farcical. They attracted early attention by their irresponsiblegaiety, seldom untinged with a certain bitterness. The Steppe, apanorama of travel through the great plains of South Russia, publishedserially in the now extinct Sieverni Viestnik, was the first of hisproductions of sustained merit. It was followed by a series of storiesand sketches and one volume of dramas, which have, in the opinionof Russian critics, established the writer on a level with the bestnative fiction writers, and on a much higher level than any of hiscontemporaries.
Tchekhoff in his manner of thought is essentially a Russian; as anartist essentially Western, having perhaps only one thing in commonwith the writers of his own country. Russian novelists, with fewexceptions—Turgenieff, a man of Western training and sympathies,was one—have commonly lacked the instinct of coherency, the lack ofwhich in fiction is redeemed only by genius. The novels of Dostoyeffskyand Tolstoy are notoriously defective in this respect. Tchekhoff andGorky suffer from the same deficiency. Unlike Gorky, Tchekhoff hasnever essayed the long novel; and even his longer short stories, oneof which is included in this volume, are redeemed from failure chieflyby their humour and close observation of Russian life. With thisexception, Tchekhoff has little in common with other Russian writers.He is more objective, less diffuse, less inspiring, and less human. Hiscompatriots, Count Tolstoy among them, compare him with Maupassant Hismethod of treatment presents many parallels; he has the same brevity,the same remorselessness, the same insistence upon the significantlylittle.
But in his teaching, if teaching it can be calle