Černý mnich - CDmp3 (Čte Viktor Preiss)

The most extensive part of the work of ANTON PAVLOVICH CHEKHOV (1860-1904) consists of short stories. He wrote around five hundred of them. Not all are as famous as his six plays, but a large portion is still being translated and published in various collections around the world. Among them is The Black Monk.

The author wrote it in 1893, shortly after he bought a country estate in Melikhovo with fields, ponds, an orchard, and forests for himself and his family. According to the memories of his brother Mikhail, they once observed a sunset here, pondering how a fata morgana occurs, and fantasizing whether one could reflect eternally and wander through the universe...

The initial idea for the story was born. The setting of the Pesotsky country estate, with its vast fruit orchard and flower beds, where the protagonist Kovrin arrives to rest his frayed nerves, reflects in many ways the environment of Melikhovo, where Chekhov hoped to find peace for his literary work. However, a shadow soon falls over the idyll. Doctor Chekhov can recognize the symptoms of tuberculosis in himself just as his character Kovrin recognizes his madness in the fata morgana of the black monk. In Kovrin's final spitting of blood, Chekhov inadvertently prefigured the form of his own death.