The Steppe (novella)

"The Steppe," subtitled "The Story of a Journey," is a novella by Anton Chekhov first published in 1888.

Publication

In 1887, exhausted from overwork and ill health, Chekhov took a trip to Ukraine, which reawakened him to the beauty of the steppe.[1] On his return, he began the novella-length short story, which he called "something rather odd and much too original," and which was eventually published in Severny Vestnik (The Northern Herald).[2] In a narrative that drifts with the thought processes of the characters, Chekhov evokes a chaise journey across the steppe through the eyes of a young boy sent to live away from home, and his companions, a priest and a merchant. "The Steppe" has been called a "dictionary of Chekhov's poetics", and it represented a significant advance for Chekhov, exhibiting much of the quality of his mature fiction and winning him publication in a literary journal rather than a newspaper.[3]

References

  1. "There is a scent of the steppe and one hears the birds sing. I see my old friends the ravens flying over the steppe." Letter to sister Masha, 2 April 1887. Letters of Anton Chekhov.
  2. Letter to Grigorovich, 12 January 1888. Quoted by Malcolm, 137.
  3. "'The Steppe,' as Michael Finke suggests, is 'a sort of dictionary of Chekhov's poetics,' a kind of sample case of the concealed literary weapons Chekhov would deploy in his work to come." Malcolm, 147.

External links

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