CLASSICS REVISITED
Chekhov A hundred years on
RAVI VYAS
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`Chekhov became an interpreter of the underneath life through small observations and comical imitations of daily life even as his characters appear to be cut off from inwardness.'
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Medicine is my lawful wife; literature my mistress. When I am tired of one, I spend the night with the other...
Antov Chekhov (January 1860-July 1904)
WHEN Chekhov died of tuberculosis in 1904, he had tossed off all kinds of things, very short, hastily jotted down: anecdotes, dialogues, humorous gossip, thumbnail sketches of provincial weddings, drunken tradesmen, bickering wives or those gone astray, an ex-sergeant who kept on shouting at everything, and so on — all of which found their way, in one form or another, in his 600 short and long-short stories, and plays. "Life should be observed through a prism," Chekhov used to say, "that's to say, it should be seen through refractions, should be divided into its simplest elements, and then each element studied separately."
Hence, Chekhov became an interpreter of the underneath life through small observations and comical imitations of daily life even as his characters appear to be cut off from inwardness. "Chekhovian" is the adjective that describes this unique style: "elusive, inconclusive, flickering, nuanced through an underlying disquiet, though never morbid or disgruntled; unerringly intuitive, catching out of the air inferences, faint turnings of the heart, tendrils thinner than hairs, drift." It is a world suffused with subtle social observations, faint sorrows and compassionate humour that removed the ancient barriers between comedy and tragedy.
From the 600 stories that bear his name (short stories are Chekhov's most important work) what does one choose for the Centenary Year?
Gentle sadness
"A Tedious Tale" is a fascinating story whose atmosphere of strange, gentle sadness is unlike anything in world literature. It is "tedious" because it is put in the mouth of an old man who is a world-famous scholar, an Excellency, a term by which he frequently refers to himself in his confessions. For, although high up in the official hierarchy, he has enough intelligence, self-criticism and criticism in general to look upon the fame and respect paid to him as absurd. In the depths of his soul, he is a desperate man because he realises that despite all its rewards his life has always lacked a spiritual centre, a "central idea"; that basically, it has become a meaningless life. "And if this is lacking, then there is nothing.... If there is nothing in a human being's life stronger and more important than outer circumstances, then indeed a common cold is sufficient to upset his equilibrium..."
"And my ending is despair," Prospero's last line keeps recurring in the mind while reading the confessions of the famous old Nikolai Stepanytsch.
The question "What's to be done?" keeps cropping up in a deliberately confused manner throughout Chekhov's work; the strange, helpless, stilted way in which his characters hold forth on the problem of existence almost borders on the ludicrous. It is ludicrous because truth, to show things as they really are, is ironical.
For example, "My Life", is a story told in the first person. The "I" with a nickname "Better-Than-Nothing" is an utopian socialist in revolt against the existing order; he believes in the necessity of manual labour for all, deserts his own educated class and dedicates himself to an ugly proletarian existence whose brutal reality exposes him to many painful disappointments.
One character, Doctor Blagovo, says to the narrator: "I respect you, you are a noble soul, a true idealist. But don't you think that if instead of spending all this will-power, intensity, and energy on changing your life you had spent it on gradually becoming a great scientist or artist, your life would have been both wider and deeper, in every respect more productive?" No, answers "Better-Than-Nothing" and the conversation meanders off on the meaning of progress.
Dr. Blagovo is arguing with great fervour, yet it is clear that his mind is occupied with other thoughts. "I suppose your sister is not coming?" he says, consulting his watch.
"She mentioned yesterday that she might call on you this afternoon." So, he has come simply to meet his sister with whom he is in love and has been talking to while away the time! By this human motive underlying his words and clearly written on his face, anything he says turns into irony and is therefore devalued.
Poet of inertia
Chekhov had no contact with the working class, nor had he studied Marx. Although he wrote that work was all that mattered in life, he was not a workers' poet. Yet he expressed grief over social injustice in sounds that moved the hearts of his people, as in that tragic, magnificent social panorama "Peasants". Here at a religious festival, the ikon of the Holy Virgin, "The Giver of Life" is carried through a village in a procession. "A vast crowd of villagers and strangers surge forward to meet the ikon; the people stretch out their hands to it, gaze at it eagerly, weeping: `Patroness! Mother!' It was as though everyone suddenly realized that there was no void between heaven and earth, that the rich and powerful had not taken possession of everything, that there still existed a refuge from poverty, from slavish bondage, from crushing unendurable poverty, from the terrible vodka...Patroness! Mother! But hardly had the thanksgiving service ended and the ikon carried off, when everything went on in the same old way."
Dramas of boredom
Perhaps the greatest short story is the classic, "Ward Number 6" in which a doctor, disgusted by the stupidity and misery of the world of normal men, forms such a close relationship with an interesting lunatic that this world declares him a lunatic, too, and locks him up.
Chekhov has often been described as "the poet of inertia" which is reflected in his plays: "Ivanov", "The Seagull", "Uncle Vanya", "Three Sisters", "The Cherry Orchard", "The Bear", "The Proposal" and "A Jubilee". Nothing much happens; nevertheless the characters' frustration at their inability to effect anything gives rise to tensions which occasionally break out, only to be disconsolately dropped. His drama exudes boredom and resignation; in its forced gaiety it hides the feelings of abandonment and despair, but hope is sustained in a better world around the corner, even in the midst of torrid weather which gives the lie to any such hope.
Read Chekhov. As a critic put it: "He teaches us us."
Lady with Lapdog and Other Stories; Plays; The Duel and Other Stories, Chekhov, all in Penguin Classics.
Selected Works (Two Volumes), Anton Chekhov, Progress Publishers, Moscow.
"Chekhov" in Last Essays, Thomas Mann.
The Letters of Antov Chekhov, with an Introduction by Lillian Hellman, Picador Books.
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