Cornel West on Chekhov
In short, Chekhov provides exemplary tragicomic dramas, subject to multiple interpretations, for serious thinking and wise living. His art yields the most intelligent reflection and depiction of the limits of critical intelligence in confronting our worldly existence. Yet his acute sense of the incongruity in our lives is grounded in a magnificent compassion for each of us. Chekhov understands what drives the cynic without himself succumbing to cynicism. He appreciates the childlike fantasies of the sentimentalist without yielding to the childishness of sentimentalism… He stays in touch with the everyday realities of ordinary people and highlights our peculiar wrestlings with appearance and reality, opinion and knowledge, illusion and truth – of beauty, love, and the collective struggle for a decent society. Like his literary ancestors Sophocles and Shakespeare and his Twentieth Century progeny Kafka and Beckett, Chekhov leads us through our contemporary inferno with love and sorrow, but no cheap pity or promise of ultimate happiness. –Cornel West
Source:
West, Cornel. The Cornel West Reader. New York, NY: Basic Civitas, 1999. Print.
Source:
West, Cornel. The Cornel West Reader. New York, NY: Basic Civitas, 1999. Print.