MikeK
05-22-2006, 07:26 PM
I came across the following passage in Richard Pevear's introduction to his collection of Chekhov stories:
"In the autumn of 1844 a young writer named Dmitri Grigorovich was sharing rooms with a friend of his from military engineering school, the twenty-three-year-old Fyodor Dostoevsky, who was at work on his first novel, 'Poor Folk'. Through Grigorovich the finished manuscript reached the hands of Vissarion Belinsky, the most influential critic of the time, whose enthusiasm launched Dostoevsky's career. More than four decades later, in 1886, this same Grigorovich, now an elder statesman of literature, came across the humorous sketches of someone who signed himself 'Antosha Chekhonte', brought them to the attention of the publisher Alexei Suvorin, and thus "recognized" the last great Russian writer of the nineteenth century - Anton Chekhov."
I know, I know, Dostoevsky and Chekhov would've eventually been "discovered" regardless. But still, it's an amazing literary anecdote. It would be very like the same baseball scout "discovering" both Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron.
"In the autumn of 1844 a young writer named Dmitri Grigorovich was sharing rooms with a friend of his from military engineering school, the twenty-three-year-old Fyodor Dostoevsky, who was at work on his first novel, 'Poor Folk'. Through Grigorovich the finished manuscript reached the hands of Vissarion Belinsky, the most influential critic of the time, whose enthusiasm launched Dostoevsky's career. More than four decades later, in 1886, this same Grigorovich, now an elder statesman of literature, came across the humorous sketches of someone who signed himself 'Antosha Chekhonte', brought them to the attention of the publisher Alexei Suvorin, and thus "recognized" the last great Russian writer of the nineteenth century - Anton Chekhov."
I know, I know, Dostoevsky and Chekhov would've eventually been "discovered" regardless. But still, it's an amazing literary anecdote. It would be very like the same baseball scout "discovering" both Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron.