One-man avant garde …

… Anton Chekhov: A Post-Modernist Way Ahead of His Time | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

It is hard to believe that much of what Chekhov was publishing during this time was written some 30 years before Dada and the other experimental movements of the early 20th century. His story “Dirty Tragedians and Leprous Playwrights” is written in the form of a short play and is set in the crater of an active volcano, one of the characters being “Tarnovsky: a playwright who is on nodding terms with devils, whales, and crocodiles; has a pulse of 225, and a temperature of 109.4,” another character being: “Charles XII: King of Sweden; has all the polish and charm of a Tatar longshoreman.”