Williams, Harold Whitmore (1876-1928) Russia of the Russians - London 1914
VI. Literature
...Saltykov's extremely idiomatic style and the obscurity of many of his allusions have prevented the translation of his work into foreign languages, and will probably have the effect of rendering much of his work unintelligible to future generations of Russians.
...There is a Russian word, skuka, which means boredom, and very much more than boredom - a sense of emptiness and insipidity of life leading to nerveless inactivity that may just stop short of being tragical, and recoils the more heavily upon itself because it fails to reach the poignancy of a tragical solution. This gloomily pervasive element in the Russian life of his time Chehov depicted with a masterly hand. He does not spare his readers, nor does he spare himself or reality. He does not set himself great problems, he rather shrinks from them. He sees life piecemeal with the eyes of a sceptic, and it is characteristic of his temper that he wrote not novels, but short stories and tales.
...Saltykov's extremely idiomatic style and the obscurity of many of his allusions have prevented the translation of his work into foreign languages, and will probably have the effect of rendering much of his work unintelligible to future generations of Russians.
...There is a Russian word, skuka, which means boredom, and very much more than boredom - a sense of emptiness and insipidity of life leading to nerveless inactivity that may just stop short of being tragical, and recoils the more heavily upon itself because it fails to reach the poignancy of a tragical solution. This gloomily pervasive element in the Russian life of his time Chehov depicted with a masterly hand. He does not spare his readers, nor does he spare himself or reality. He does not set himself great problems, he rather shrinks from them. He sees life piecemeal with the eyes of a sceptic, and it is characteristic of his temper that he wrote not novels, but short stories and tales.