When Western literature was
plunging with enthusiasm into one _cul de sac_ after another, incapable
of diagnosing its own disease, Tchehov in Russia, unknown to the West,
had achieved a clear vision and a sense of perspective.
To-day we begin to feel how intimately Tchehov belongs to us; to-morrow
we may feel how infinitely he is still in advance of us. A genius will
always be in advance of a talent, and in so far as we are concerned with
the genius of Tchehov we must accept the inevitable. We must analyse and
seek to understand it; we must, above all, make up our minds that since
Tchehov has written and his writings have been made accessible to us, a
vast amount of our modern literary production is simply unpardonable.
Writers who would be modern and ignore Tchehov's achievement are,
however much they may persuade themselves that they are devoted artists,
merely engaged in satisfying their vanity or in the exercise of a
profession like any other; for Tchehov is a standard by which modern
literary effort must be measured, and the writer of prose or poetry who
is not sufficiently single-minded to apply the standard to himself is of
no particular account.
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