A lifetime told in a few paragraphs: Chekhov

Even relatively early in his writing career- the 1880s - Anton Chekhov was pushing at the edges of the short-story form, and we can see this in his story in the Pevear-Volokhonsky collection, Sleepy, a very short piece that on the surface is just a moment in the life of a young nanny - I had to go back to the begin to check, but she's only 13 years old - what's striking is how this story is entirely locked in her consciousness, she's trying to care for a colicky baby and she's constantly abused by her employer, a nasty shoemaker, not very well off himself, and his wife - and the nanny tries to stay awake and care for the crying child but her mind keeps drifting off into sleep : Chekhov plays at the borders between sleep and waking brilliantly, so that as we're reading we feel we're drifting into a waking dreams. In her dreams, in just a few paragraphs, we get the story of her troubled life, father dead, leaves home with mother, trekking down what seems to be a mud-soaked road, heading for the nearest town and some possibility of survival - and that's all we get of the past and all we need to know, now we're back in the present and we know why she's caring for a baby, we understand that she's separated now from all of her family - in fact we know and understand more about her than do her employers - for them, she just someone to order about - she becomes increasingly weary, she's just a kid, and then does something quite reckless (and a bit improbable) at the end of the story - Chekhov showing in this short piece how a single action and a brief moment in time can convey an entire life story and a social crisis: much more effectively than polemical works of 100 times the length. Next story in the collection, Chekhov is bold enough to title "A Boring Story," which is a sure sign that it isn't: there's boredom and tedium on the surface, an elderly professor worried about money and social status, but his superficial placidity hides a roiling depth of sexual drive and social perversion (I think - haven't finished it yet - it's almost novella length). Chekhov's output, in far too short a lifetime,during which he also carried on his medical practice, is nothing short of astounding.