148

...everything in nature is consistent and can be explained, only I'll tell you what I don't understand. There are, you know, little beasts no bigger than rats, rather handsome to look at, but nasty and immoral in the extreme. Suppose such a little beast is running in the woods. He see a bird, he catches it and devours it. He goes on and sees in the grass a nest of eggs; he does not want to eat them - he is not hungry, but yet he tastes one egg and scatters the others out of the nest with his paw. Then he meets a frog and begins to play with it; when he has tormented the frog he goes on licking himself and meets a beetle; he crushes the beetle with his paw... and so he spoils and destroys everything on his way.... He creeps into other beasts holes, tears up the anthills, cracks the snails shell. If he meets a rat, he fights with it, if he meets a snake or a mouse he must strangle it; and so the whole day long.

149

Come, tell me: what is the use of a beast like that? Why was he created? p91-92

The Duel - Chekov trans. Garnett

No longer can Chekov follow Tolstoy towards a rural Eden that will save mankind from the Sodom and Gomorial of urban civilization... he sensed that social evils and individual unhappiness were inextricably involved; his ethics lost their sharp edge of blame and discrimination.

p114 Chekov, evolution of his art by Donald Royfield

The novelist's function, I believe, is both to observe life and to produce his own universe, offering his readers (wrote Marcel Proust) 'a revelation of the world that we ourselves see and that our fellows cannot see. The pleasure the artist gives us depends on his ability to disclose a second universe beyond the one we know.' p3

It was the details he valued; 'caress the details.'