Flores tardías y otros relatos

Chekhov's fame often obscures or overlooks his talent for comedy, something he, judging by his disputes with Stanislavski, would surely reproach us for. But in both "Live Commodity" (1882) —where a man catches his wife and her lover in the act but agrees to a financial settlement with unexpected consequences— and "Late Flowers" (1882) —the story of an aristocratic family's downfall and a princess's blind love for a doctor born into servitude— humor, ambiguous situations, and comic degradation reveal themselves as essential parts of his universe. Even more "impeccably" Chekhovian is "My Wife" (1892), a masterpiece of point-of-view technique that gradually unveils the odious personality of a man who has lost his wife's love and, also gradually, amidst famine, the transformation that allows him to win it back. In "A Murder" (1892), religious disagreements and a silent conflict over an inheritance lead to a family tragedy, recounted, in its preparation and in its aftermath, with meticulousness and without suspense.