Tchéhoff wrote a couple of stories from peasant life. But peasants and village life are not his proper sphere. His true domain is the world of the “intellectuals”--the educated and the half-educated portion of Russian society--and these he knows in perfection. He shows their bankruptcy, their inaptitude to solve the great historical problem of renovation which fell upon them, and the meanness and vulgarity of everyday life under which an immense number of them succumb. Since the times of Gógol no writer in Russia has so wonderfully represented human meanness under its varied aspects. And yet, what a difference between the two! Gógol took mainly the outer meanness, which strikes the eye and often degenerates into farce, and therefore in most cases brings a smile on your lips or makes you laugh. But laughter is always a step towards reconciliation. Tchéhoff also makes you laugh in his earlier productions, but in proportion as he advances in age, and looks more seriously upon life, the laughter disappears, and although a fine humour remains, you feel that he now deals with a kind of meanness and philistinism which provokes, not smiles but suffering in the author. A “Tchéhoff sorrow” is as much characteristic of his writings as the deep furrow between the brows of his lively eyes is characteristic of his good-natured face. Moreover, the meanness which Tchéhoff depicts is much deeper than the one which Gógol knew. Deeper conflicts are now going on in the depths of the modern educated men, of which Gógol knew nothing seventy years ago. The “sorrow” of Tchéhoff is also that of a much more sensitive and a more refined nature than the “unseen tears” of Gógol’s satire. Better than any Russian novelist, Tchéhoff understands the fundamental vice of that mass of Russian “intellectuals,” who very well _see_ the dark sides of Russian life but have no force to join that small minority of younger people who dare to rebel against the evil. In this respect, only one more writer--and this one was a woman, Hvóschinskaya (“Krestóvskiy-pseudonyme”), who can be placed by the side of Tchéhoff. He knew, and more than knew--he felt with every nerve of his poetical mind--that, apart from a handful of stronger men and women, the true curse of the Russian “intellectual” is the weakness of his will, the insufficient strength of his desires. Perhaps he felt it in himself. And when he was asked once (in 1894) in a letter--“What should a Russian desire at the present time?” he wrote in return: “Here is my reply: desire! He needs most of all desire--force of character. We have enough of that whining shapelessness.” This absence of strong desire and weakness of will he continually, over and over again, represented in his heroes. But this predilection was not a mere accident of temperament and character. It was a direct product of the times he lived in.