Anton Chekhov :: :: University of Virginia Library

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Anton Chekhov

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THE TALES OF CHEKHOV (to be complete in eight volumes). Four volumes: The Darling, and Other Stories; The Duel, and Other Stories; The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories; The Party, and Other Stories. (New York: Macmillan Co.; $1.50 each.)
THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE, AND OTHER STORIES. (New York: Scribner's; $1.25.)

We are about to come into possession of Chekhov. It will be a priceless possession, for Chekhov is indispensable to our understanding of the psychology of the great people that has introduced into the present world situation an element so complex, so disturbing, so tragic and beautiful. Chekhov is the faithful reporter, unerring, intuitive, direct. He never bears false witness. The essence of his art lies in a fine restraint, an avoidance of the sensational and the spectacular. His reticence reveals the elusive and lights up the enigmatic. And what a keen, voracious observer he was! Endless is the procession of types that passes through his pages — the whole world of Russians of his day: country gentlemen, chinovniks, waitresses, ladies of fashion, shopgirls, town physicians, Zemstvo doctors, innkeepers, peasants, herdsmen, soldiers, tradesmen, every type of the intelligentsia, children, men and women of every class and occupation. Chekhov describes them all with a pen that knows no bias. He eschews specialization in types. In a letter written to his friend Plescheyev, Chekhov draws in one stroke a swift, subtle parallel between the two authors, Shcheglov and Korolenko, and then he goes on to say, "But, Allah, Kerim! Why do they both specialize? One refuses to part with his prisoners, the other feeds his readers on staff officers. I recognize specialization in art, such as genres, landscape, history; I understand the 'emploi' of the actor, the school of the musician, but I cannot accept such specialization as prisoners, officers, priests. This is no longer specialization; it is bias." Chekhov ignores no phase of the life of his day. This inclusiveness, this large and noble avidity that refuses to be circumscribed by class or kind or importance, makes the sum of his stories both ample and satisfying. His work illuminates the whole of Russian life, the main thoroughfares, the bypaths, the unfrequented recesses. Without Chekhov, how are we to embark on the discovery of Russia?

Within the limits of his day Chekhov is the perfect guide because his interpretations of a life that is alien to us have the essential qualities of

veracity and credibility. It is the spirit of wide-eyed, tolerant, dispassionate perception that gives Chekhov's works their character of true evidence. For him, subtle and balanced in his sensibilities, all reality is innately artistic. With no apparent effort, he lifts everything: the commonplace, the threadbare, even the banal, to the high plane of art. The relations of ordinary existence, the sombre dullness, the gray emptiness of uninspired life acquire interest and meaning. He creates, as the Russian critic Leon Shestov says, "from the void." Others flee from these things as from the valley of the shadow of death; Chekhov gives them color, harmony, inevitability; they become significant, infinitely sad, infinitely human. We may wish to turn away from these aspects of reality, we may wish to take refuge in dreams and visions and hopes, but the artist constrains us to stay; his tales become credible and strangely familiar. With poignant regret we acknowledge them as a true representation of our own lives.

A representation of life, but not an explanation. Chekhov, almost alone among the great Russians, does not set himself the task of solving the riddles of the universe. He is the honest physician who knows no panaceas and is skeptical as to palliatives. Explanations, commandments, reconciliations, consolings — he has none of these to offer. He shuns the admonitions and the comfortable words of the moral teacher, the impatient outcries of the embittered rebel, the grandiose creations of the symbolist, the vicarious solace of the mystic. He counsels neither rebellion nor acceptance.

For this shrinking from all forms of dogmatism, for this absence of burning indignation and passionate protest, most Russians hold Chekhov strictly to account. They refuse to forgive him for not coming to conclusions with life. Against what some of them are pleased to call his "complacency in political and social matters" they invoke the lines of the poet Nekrassov:

He loves not the land of his fathers
Who sings without sorrow and anger.

Chekhov was not unaware of his countrymen's predilection for strong, flaming words on the "accursed problems of life." But he was resolved to remain true to his temperament. And what was Chekhov's temperament? In one of his letters to his friend Souvorin, after dwelling on the soothing effects of Nature on his spirits, he writes, "Nature reconciles man, that is, makes him indifferent. And in this world one must be indifferent. Only dissatisfied people can look at things clearly, can be just, and do work. Of course, this includes only thoughtful and noble persons; egoists and empty folk are indifferent as it is." These words, I think, will give us a clue to an understanding of Chekhov's attitude to life. Nor do they stand alone. Again and again, in his letters, Chekhov replies in the same strain to those who complain that he has not solved the moral or ethical questions that arise in his stories. I quote from a few of his letters to Souvorin:

"The business of the writer of fiction is only to depict how and under what circumstances people speak and think about such problems as God, pessimism, etc. The artist should not be a judge of his personages and of what they say, but only an unbiassed witness. I overhear a conversation on pessimism between two Russians, and my business is to report the conversation as I heard it, and let the jury, I. e., the readers, decide as to its value. My business is only to be talented, that is, to be able to distinguish between important and unimportant testimony, to be able to illuminate the characters and speak in their language. . . And if an artist in whom the crowd has faith dares announce that he understands nothing of what he sees — this alone constitutes a large acquisition in the realm of thought and is a great step forward." "In my talks with the writing brethren I always maintain that it is not the business of the artist to decide narrowly specific questions. It is bad if the artist undertakes something he does not understand. For special problems there are specialists. . . But an artist is to judge only of what he understands. His sphere is just as limited as that of any other specialist. This I repeat and on this I always insist. That in his sphere there are no problems but only answers, may be said by one who never wrote and never had to deal with images. The artist observes, selects, guesses, contracts. These acts alone, in their nature, presuppose the existence of problems. If he had no problem before him there would be no need of selecting and of guessing. . . You are right in demanding from an artist a serious attitude to his work. You confuse two conceptions: the solution of the problem and the correct statement of the problem." "You scold me for being objective and attribute this in me to an indifference toward good and evil and to a lack of ideals, etc. When I depict horse-thieves you want me to say: 'To steal horses is evil.' But everybody knows this without my saying it. Let the thieves be judged by a sworn jury — my business is to show them as they are. . . Of course, it would be fine to harmonize art with sermons, but in my case it would be very difficult, and, so far as my technique goes, almost impossible. You realize, do you not, that to depict horse-thieves within the space of seven hundred lines I must always speak and think as they do, feel as they feel? Otherwise, if I were to add subjective elements, the image would become blurred and the story would not be compact, as all short stories should be."

This artistic credo does not express the spirit of heartless indifference. It comes from the

resolve to present reality as seen by a calm, balanced, comprehensive, luminous temperament. Chekhov's attitude is one of clear-eyed refusal to grapple with the unattainable. In the stories and plays of this artist there is no coldness and hardness. Despite the reticence and the stern suppression of emotion personal to the author, you discern in these works, in the letters, and in the volume on the convict-colony at Sakhalin, the tender, sensitive physician, the mild, understanding eye, the kindly, aching heart.

To the everlasting question of the Russians, "What is to be done?" Chekhov answers, sometimes with a sad wistfulness, sometimes with a tender compassion, now with a merry twinkle, now with quiet resignation, "I do not know." "Is there a way out?" And again the reply, "I do not know." For him, too, the rest is silence. Life goes on, but it has no swing, no forward propulsion. It is a strange, rhythmless life that Chekhov surveys, a life without great adventures or feverish activity. It is life playing on muted strings, under gray skies, and in a time of dark reaction. And Chekhov stands awed in the presence of failure, of tragic insufficiency, of death-in-life, of broken hopes, broken hearts. Disillusionment has come to blight the energies and the spirit of these men and women and children. In all but a few there is some sad imperfection, some fatal ámartia that makes them the playthings of the imperturbable Fates. And the story of every one in the long procession is only another of life's little ironies. To view this stagnation over which the spirit of the Lord has not passed, to discern it all, to bear the consciousness of it in the heart, one must possess something of the imperturbability, the impassivity, the indifference of Nature. One must be, as Chekhov was, a physician who knew himself doomed to an early death.

I have been asked, "Are Chekhov's stories true to life? Do they convey the impression of reality? Is the life of the greater number of men and women so colorless, so passive, so full of dull regret, so unfulfilled of all desire?" I do not know. But I have stood in the great City, on Broadway, at the time when the clock struck the hour of six, and I have seen the men and women pour forth from the shops and stores and factories. Thousands upon thousands, they emerge after the long confinement of the day's work, and in a swift procession they walk home in the gathering dusk. What are the sudden revelations, the wondrous surprises that the future has in store for them — for the millions like them to whom the great adventures in life are a journey underground, supper, the marvels of the motion pictures, sleep? Ah, Chekhov knew! He knew of the glory of childhood, the dreams of youth, the miracle of hope and fresh beginnings; and he knew the dreary emptiness in the hearts of those who return home at the end of the day. He knew of the ceaseless quest for happiness, for a fuller life, for rest. And he knew that, high or low, whatever the path we follow, we are never far from the endless procession of the disillusioned.

But is there no release, and no fulfilment? Whenever I stand where the long line of those who hurry home in the gathering dusk passes by, I can see, in the west, through the great canyon that is the city street, the glory of the setting sun. There the sky is strangely beautiful. It seems to bend over a new and a different world. Who can tell? But in that world there seems to be joy and work, beauty and laughter, sunshine, freedom, stretching of limbs, rest. And, wondering whether we can create that world, no longer from the void, I recall Chekhov's many quiet words of encouragement and hope. Sonia speaks such words in the closing scene of "Uncle Vanya":

"What can we do? We must live our lives. [A pause.] Yes, we shall live, Uncle Vanya. We shall live through the long procession of days before us, and through the long evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials that fate imposes on us; we shall work for others without rest, both now and when we are old; and when our last hour comes we shall meet it humbly, and there, beyond the grave, we shall say that we have suffered and wept, that our life was bitter, and God will have pity on us. Ah, then, dear, dear Uncle, we shall see that bright and beautiful life; we shall rejoice and look back upon our sorrow here; a tender smile — and — we shall rest. I have faith, Uncle, fervent, passionate faith. [Sonia kneels down before her uncle and lays her head upon his hands] We shall rest. We shall rest. We shall see heaven shining like a jewel. We shall see all evil and all our pain sink away in the great compassion that shall enfold the world. Our life will be as peaceful and tender as a caress. I have faith; I have faith."

LOUIS S. FRIEDLAND.