Swan Song

THE last years of the nineteenth century were for Russia tinged with doubt and gloom. The high-tide of vitality that had risen during the Turkish war ebbed in the early eighties, leaving behind it a dead level of apat­hy which lasted until life was again quickened by the high interests of the Revolution. During these grey ye­ars the lonely country and stagnant provincial towns of Russia buried a peas-antry which was enslaved by want and toil, and an educated upper class which was ensla­ved by idle-ness and tedium. Most of the “Intellectu­als,” with no outlet for their energies, were content to forget their ennui in vodka and card-playing; only the more ide-alistic gasped for air in the stifling atmosphe­re, cry-ing out in despair against life as they saw it, and looking forward with a pathetic hope to happiness for humanity in “two or three hundred years.” It is the inevi­table tragedy of their existence, and the pit-iful humour of their surroundings, that are por-trayed with such in­sight and sympathy by Anton Tchekoff who is, perhaps, of modern writers, the dearest to the Russian people.