if you get married you’ll regret it, and if you don’t get married you’ll regret that, too. Chekhov’s characters also remind one of Flaubert’s character, Madame Bovary, who found that reality never lived up to her expectations; Chekhov must have been influenced by Flaubert. Layevsky, a character in Chekhov’s story, “The Duel,” is typical of Chekhov’s characters. “Two years ago,” Chekhov writes, “when [Layevsky] fell in love with Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, it seemed to him that he had only to join his life to hers, go to the Caucasus, and he would be saved from the vulgarity and emptiness of his life; now he was just as certain that he had only to forsake Nadyezhda Fyodorovna and go to Petersburg to have everything he wanted.” Like many modern writers and painters, Chekhov doesn’t depict reality as it is, but reality as it is perceived. Instead of describing a woman’s personality, Chekhov describes the impression that she made on people; he says of one of his characters that since she was always seen with her dog, people thought of her as “the lady with the dog.” Chekhov believed that art should be realistic and true to life; in this respect, he’s similar to other late-nineteenth-century writers, such as Ibsen, Flaubert and Zola. Chekhov’s specialty is detail; in Chekhov’s stories, the parts are more important than the whole. Chekhov depicts the absurdity of life, as Kafka does. But Chekhov is more realistic and less imaginative than Kafka. Chekhov composed his works from notes that he jotted down during the course of his daily life, while Kafka composed his works during inspired periods, periods in which he surrendered himself to his unconscious. 19. Kafka Philosophers often have one central idea around which their entire philosophy revolves. Likewise, imaginative writers often have one central theme that is expressed in al...
