Sabrana djela A. P. Čehova #5: Kaštanka i druge novele

Although at the time of writing these short stories Chekhov still worked a lot for daily newspapers and Sunday magazines (Novoye Vremya, Petrogradske novine), after the publication of his first books he gained the reputation of a famous writer, literary affirmation was much easier for him, and that is why this book is a fairly visible turning point in his work.

Although we will still find a few humorous ones in this book (for example, The Avenger in which Chekhov mocks a confident and helpless husband) with an almost banal motif, this book still marks a major turning point. The observation of life and the world in general seems to have begun to acquire special sides, through a spectrum and colors. There is so much nostalgia, the struggle for the suffering of others, so much imagery of the struggle and the overthrow by force of the natural laws of ordinary, everyday life, which even the death of loved ones (In Drought) cannot violate or throw out of the rut. The characteristic act of helping one's neighbor, which actually brings about his death, is marked in the humorous (Ambulance) by helping a drowning man in such a way that he dies as soon as possible!

However, the most important part of Chekhov's work is contained in his novelistic work, where he delved into observing deeper problems than human entertainment. To some extent, his profession, but even more so his keen eye for observation and empathy with all living things, gave him the material to create, for example, his Kashtanka. Man's eternal aspiration and longing for the unattainable and unfathomable is very well and unobtrusively expressed and framed in a completely ordinary plot in the novella The Kiss.