SOURCE: "Three Sisters," in Chekhov: A Study of the Major Stories and Plays, Cambridge University Press, 1977, pp. 284-309.

In this essay, Hahn examines Chekhov's carefully constructed balance of opposing tensions in Three Sisters.

D. S. Mirsky defined something of the essential character of Chekhov's art when he said, in the course of an otherwise hostile account, 'Chekhov … must appeal to Classicist and Romanticist alike: the former will admire the balance and measure of his art and mind; the latter the naturalness of the balance, which in its very harmony remains true to self, and imposes no constraint on spontaneous experience.'¹ The satisfaction with which one reads the best Chekhov stories has undoubtedly to do with this peculiar quality of his art: the measure and clarity with which it balances one aspect of a situation against another, seeking a tentative result, and yet at the same time its...