person
Edouard Rod
Rod
also: Rod'a, Rod, Эдуард Род
Swiss-French novelist and critic (1857-1910) associated in this period with a turn from naturalism toward moral/spiritualist fiction; Suvorin had praised him to Chekhov and reported that Tolstoy admired him. Chekhov, having now read one of Rod's novels, dismisses him as pretentious and derivative -- "our own Machtet, only a little cleverer" -- and quotes with scorn a line from Rod's preface renouncing naturalism for spiritualism.
Reading notes
- To A. S. Suvorin, 24 July 1891. Bogimovo. §5 You once praised Rod to me, the French writer
Edouard Rod (1857-1910), Swiss-French novelist and critic associated in this period with a turn from naturalism toward moral/spiritualist fiction; Suvorin had praised him to Chekhov and reported that Tolstoy liked him. Chekhov, having now read one of Rod's novels, judges him pretentious and derivative -- comparing him unfavorably to the Russian populist writer Grigory Machtet -- and quotes with scorn a line from Rod's preface renouncing naturalism for spiritualism.