poliphilo

Chekhov's stories are all very much the same. The narrator or protagonist is looking back on his life (as often as not he's dying) and he wonders what the point of it was. There have been good times but they're long ago and opportunities were missed and love has faded. Nothing lasts and all we're really doing here on earth is trying to fill up the time before death claims us.

It's a point of view.

Crepuscular, fin de siecle, mildly depressive, sleepy...

The harmonies he achieves make one think he's told it all and told it true, but he's working with a highly restricted palette- all greys and browns and olive drab.

There's a revolution coming- only twenty years away- and people like the people he writes about are going to be disinherited and sent into exile and shot in their hundreds of thousands. And where are the intimations of that?