Source — Gary Saul Morson, "The Master of Toska," The New York Review of Books (2023)
- Title: "The Master of Toska" (review of Bob Blaisdell, Chekhov Becomes Chekhov: The Emergence of a Literary Genius, 1886–1887, Pegasus, 444 pp.)
- Author: Gary Saul Morson
- Publication: The New York Review of Books
- Date: April 6, 2023
- URL: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/04/06/the-master-of-toska-chekhov-becomes-chekhov-blaisdell/
- Type: secondary (literary criticism/book review by a named Slavic-studies scholar), stance: engaged but explicitly skeptical of over-mystifying the word.
- Accessed: 2026-09-04
Extract
- States plainly that the Russian title of Chekhov's 1886 story «Тоска» "has no English equivalent," and that the word "suggests — as well as sorrow, dreariness, and loneliness — a sense of longing"; used as a verb, "it means to miss someone."
- Direct quote: "Toska may, indeed, be the defining emotion of Chekhov's stories" — treats the word/concept as central to Chekhov's entire oeuvre, not just this one story title.
- Reports the story's title is typically rendered in English as either "Misery" or "Anguish" (the latter is Pevear & Volokhonsky's choice, per this project's cross-checking with
mostlyaboutstories-toska-translation.md, which independently confirms "Misery" via Garnett and Payne's "Heartache") — and states plainly that both common renderings are "inadequate," failing to capture the longing/yearning dimension. - Illustrates the concept beyond this one story: in "The Steppe," landscape itself is written to embody toska — nature "seemed now endless, petrified with dreariness."
- Explicitly critiques Nabokov's tendency to over-elaborate/mystify the word ("Nabokov ... tends to overstate the word's significance, suggesting such commentary can obscure rather than illuminate the term's actual usage in Russian") — a rare instance in this project's sourcing of one prominent, credentialed authority directly pushing back on another's popularized gloss of the same word.
Gaps
- Does not give the exact publication year or edition details for the Pevear & Volokhonsky "Anguish" translation.
- Does not discuss dictionary/lexicographic treatment of the word, only its literary use.