SOURCE: Grossman, Leonid. “The Naturalism of Chekhov.” In Chekhov, A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Robert Louis Jackson, pp. 32–48. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967.

In the following essay, originally published in Vestnik Evropy in 1914, Grossman describes the influence of several authors, including Maupassant and Flaubert, upon Chekhov and his use of symbolism.

“In Goethe the naturalist got along wonderfully with the poet,” Chekhov wrote in one of his letters. And did he not in this brief sentence express with his usual compactness his view of the perfect artist while at the same time he neatly characterized his own art?

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In Chekhov, as in Goethe, the poet wonderfully harmonized with the naturalist. His medical training and practice unquestionably played a decisive role in his creative work. They laid guidelines for his artistic method, introduced to him extraordinarily rich, living material for literary processing, structured his world view, deepened...