Reading Chekhov

Pic: ANU E Press

I'm reading background and secondary texts for an essay on Chekhov (due on Thursday) as part of my creative writing unit at the Australian National University. This afternoon I read a couple of chapters from Interpreting Chekhov by Geoffrey Borny, published electronically (co-incidentally) by the ANU E Press. It's been a valuable afternoon's reading (alongside Professors Bloom and Florence Goyet on Anton Pavlovich). 

In writing our essays we're asked, in part, to reflect on the connection, influence (or otherwise) of the author we're looking at on our own writing. Reading Mr. Borny's book on the great, dead Russian there were lots of resonances for a (very) late-flowering novice like me. But I was particularly struck by this extract from one on Chekhov's letters.

Literature is called artistic when it depicts life as it actually is. Its purpose is truth, honest and indisputable. To limit its functions to special tasks, such as the finding of ‘pearls’, does it mortal injury … I agree that a ‘pearl’ is a good thing, but a writer is not a confectioner, not a cosmetician, not an entertainer; he is a man with an obligation, under contract to his duty, his conscience; he must do what he has set out to do; he is bound to fight his squeamishness and dirty his imagination with what is dirty in life. He is like an ordinary reporter.

Not dead yet, Douglas. Keep on writing.