The Steppe (novella)
The Steppe, subtitled The Story of a Journey, is a novella by Russian playwright 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
- ↑ "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.
- ↑ Letter to Grigorovich, 12 January 1888. Quoted by Malcolm, 137.
- ↑ "'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.
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