" ... Just look what time does!"

I've been reading a lot of Chekhov short stories (and a new biography of him) recently and the cherry blossom appearing on some trees reminds me that I know next to nothing of his plays (The Cherry Orchard being the link). I went and saw an adaptaiton of The Three Sisters in the Tramway about 30 years ago but that was because it was The Worcester Group and Willem Dafoe was part of it.
I know he is venerated as the proto-modernist short story writer but I haven't really got into him until now, and I am now in all the way.  There is so so much to love in his many and varied stories, but I think I'm most moved by how he writes with such a light touch but manages to convey deep emotions and insights. His descriptions of landscape are equally light yet bring them to vivid life. He is such an even handed and generous writer. I know that much of this is down to having the right translator and I've been reading more of Chekhov using Rosamund Bartletts translations which makes them all the more contemporary and bang up to date .
She also wrote a translation of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and one day I'd like to read that, but it'll need to wait because I have just finished another translation of it and also War and Peace and need to recover a few years before entering Tolstoy's gargantuanly rich and magnificently realised worlds again. I now realise what all the fuss was about.
So, my winter has been warmed and lit up by reading these Russian giants and I feel all the better for it. And look:  cherry blossom - Spring is here!