Classics Revisited
Three Russian short stories
BY RAVI VYAS
UNLIKE the classical novel, where no story is ever told as if it is the only one, the short story confines itself to a single overpowering incident, an extreme condition that serves as an emblem of the universal. It is fiercely condensed, almost like a lyric poem; it explodes in a burst of revelation or illumination. Even in the long short story, there isn't much opportunity to develop character through extensive action. There just isn't the space in which to show the changes, whether toward growth or decline that occur in human beings across a span of time. In fact, the very idea of character loses its significance, seems to drop out of sight. We see human figures in a momentary flash, in a fleeting profile. Situation tends to replace character, a representative condition to replace individuality. Everything depends upon intensity, one sweeping blow of perception. The writer gets no second chance; either he strikes through or he's lost.
We see this in 19th century Russian literature which includes more short stories than the literature of any other European country. Perhaps this is because there is no major Russian prose-writer who has not written short stories; in fact, many of the major prose writers wrote chiefly in this form. So, here are three masterpieces where circumstances eclipse character as fate crowds out individuality. These are: Leo Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Illych", Chekhov's "Ward Number Six" and Gogol's "The Overcoat". All three are a slice of life taken at random — a philosophy expressed in images.
Sad hours
As the title implies, "The Death of Ivan Illych" is a description of Ivan's last hours. It is said that as the end comes nearer, the whole of your life flashes before you and a terrible solitude overtakes the individual. To many clinical physicians, the story's strength lies in its uncanny accuracy and in the lessons it teaches. Tolstoy wrote as though possessed of an inborn knowledge greater than he could possibly have acquired in life. How else could he have intuited the terrible solitude of death made lonely by withholding the truth, "the solitude through which (Ivan) was passing, as he lay with his face turned to the back of the divan — a solitude amid a populous city, and amid his numerous circle of friends and family, a solitude deeper than which could not be found anywhere, either in the depths of the sea, or in the earth?" Ivan could share this terrible knowledge with no one, "and he had to live thus on the edge of destruction — alone, without anyone to understand and pity him."
Ivan is not surrounded by people who love him. What makes his condition worse is his wish to be an object of pity, a graceless state to which few of us would willingly fall at the end of life. His wife's attempted deception was probably because she felt the truth would precipitate the end. Such deceptions arise from scorn or from misguided affection but they always leave the victim to deal with his leave-taking alone. In her case, a patronising contempt is the basis on which she convinces herself that her husband's death would be easier for both of them if it went undiscussed. It is herself she is thinking about, not her husband, whose mortal illness is an inconvenience to her, and even an imposition on her home. Nobody can forget the solitary image: the old man left alone, content to ruminate about his life or perhaps just to stare into unresponsive space.
Across the line
In Chekhov's "Ward Number Six", Dr. Ragin, disgusted by the stupidity and misery of the world of normal men, forms such a close relationship with an interesting lunatic, Darya, that the world declares him a lunatic too, and locks him up. Although this 87-page story avoids any direct accusation, it is so devastatingly symbolic of the corruption and hopelessness of Russia (and many others, including ourselves) that it prompted young Lenin to say to his sister: "Last night after finishing that story I felt very uneasy. I couldn't sit still in my room. I had to get up and go out. I felt as though I myself were locked up in Ward Number Six." Dr. Ragin dies unable to fathom the ways of the world. Only Darya and a postmaster are present at the funeral; none of the hospital staff turn up. "And my ending is despair," Prospero's last line keeps coming to the mind while reading the confessions of the lunatic and the doctor. What and where is the dividing line between sanity and madness?
Symptomatic of an age
Gogol's "Overcoat" is the story of an insignificant civil service clerk, who, discovering that his overcoat had reached the final stages of disintegration and he had become the laughing-stock of the whole office, manages to scrap together enough money to buy himself a new one. On his way home after a reception, given by his office colleagues to celebrate the new overcoat he is robbed of it. The shock brings on high fever from which he dies.
"We have all come from under The Overcoat," Dostoevsky said which means it is much more than a story with a moral. Is it the defence of "the little man" against an oppressive bureaucracy? Or our quest for significance, for something substantial and important, symbolised by the overcoat? Or about material temptation, the overcoat being a devilish lure?
Whatever else Tolstoy, Chekhov and Gogol have written, these stories alone will ensure their place in the classics of world literature.
The three stories, written between 1852 and 1900, have been collected in a number of Penguin Classics, translated by Rosemary Edmonds, David Magarshack and recently by others.
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