Chekhov's Letters

The Chekhov that emerges from these insightful essays is a warm, generous, and deeply empathetic man. Appropriately, Lapushin concludes the scintillating volume by shedding light on the open ending of Chekhov’s two last letters and his enduring legacy. Chekhov’s Letters is as rigorous in its scholarship as it is delightful in its creative detours. One only wishes that more individual letters were covered, but given the sheer volume of Chekhov’s correspondence, that would be impossible. This marvelous book instructs, entertains, and inspires to delve into the letters themselves. * The Russian Review *

Authoritative, careful, and scholarly, and yet charming, balanced, and well-written—what a fantastic combination of epithets to bring together for this delightful volume. Carol Apollonio and Radislav Lapushin have gathered the best Russian, British, and North American scholars and writers to offer fascinating historical background, textual analysis, and personal insight into the most intimate genre of writing—the epistolary—and the most approachable of Russian writers—Chekhov. These chapters give us Anton Chekhov from new angles. We see him and his thoughts—thoughtful, witty, philosophical, funny, humane—as we have never seen them before. This is a volume to dip into or to read cover to cover, and always with one or more editions of Chekhov’s letters to hand.

-- Angela Brintlinger, Ohio State University

Chekhov’s letters are entertaining, witty, and moving; they are self-ironical, reflective-philosophical, and they illuminate his innermost beliefs. His ‘postal prose’ was also his creative laboratory. Yet Chekhov’s epistolary legacy was rarely discussed as a genre in its own right. The inspired editorial initiative by professors Carol Apollonio and Radislav Lapushin has changed that state of affairs by bringing both specialists and general readers a unique collection of seminal ‘meta-epistolary’ articles, the first such collection in either English or Russian. Outstanding Russian, European, Canadian and American Chekhov scholars share their broad range of insights into the ‘novel Chekhov never wrote,’ i.e., the ‘life narrative’ of his more than four thousand preserved letters. This collection, which also includes the delightful section ‘My Favorite Letter,’ shows its authors as kindred spirits following in Chekhov’s footsteps: they are innovative, perspicacious and unafraid of undermining traditional ‘truths,’ while adding important facets to our understanding of this author’s elusive personality and ‘artless’ art. Chekhov’s Letters is undoubtedly the splendid portal to a productive new era of Chekhov scholarship.

-- Irene Masing-Delic, Ohio State University

In his fiction, Chekhov is notoriously reserved, keeping his thoughts to himself. This unique collection of essays mines his letters for information about his life, personality, opinions, works, poetics, and times. It also tells the fascinating story of their preservation (or loss) and publication. The authors include writers as well as scholars, and the collection ends with ruminations, all different, on favorite letters. There is something here for every reader interested in Chekhov. Taken in the aggregate, the essays reveal how the letters—themselves a pinnacle of Russian psychological prose—give voice to a complex inner life that we puzzle over, identify with, and learn from.

-- Donna Tussing Orwin, University of Toronto