Anton Tchekhov, and Other Essays

I must remind my reader, though it is a matter of general knowledge, that in his earlier work Tchekhov is most unlike the Tchekhov to whom we became accustomed in late years. The young Tchekhov is gay and careless, perhaps even like a flying bird. He published his work in the comic papers. But in 1888 and 1889, when he was only twenty-seven and twenty-eight years old, there appeared The Tedious Story and the drama Ivanov, two pieces of work which laid the foundations of a new creation. Obviously a sharp and sudden change had taken place in him, which was completely reflected in his works. There is no detailed biography of Tchekhov, and probably will never be, because there is no such thing as a full biography--I, at all events, cannot name one. Generally biographies tell us everything except what it is important to know. Perhaps in the future it will be revealed to us with the fullest details who was Tchekhov's tailor; but we shall never know what happened to Tchekhov in the time which elapsed between the completion of his story The Steppe and the appearance of his first drama. If we would know, we must rely upon his works and our own insight.

Ivanov and The Tedious Story seem to me the most autobiographical of all his works. In them almost every line is a sob; and it is hard to suppose that a man could sob so, looking only at another's grief. And it is plain that his grief is a new one, unexpected as though it had fallen from the sky. Here it is, it will endure for ever, and he does not know how to fight against it.

In Ivanov the hero compares himself to an overstrained labourer. I do not believe we shall be mistaken if we apply this comparison to the author of the drama as well. There can be practically no doubt that Tchekhov had overstrained himself. And the overstrain came not from hard and heavy labour; no mighty overpowering exploit broke him: he stumbled and fell, he slipped. There comes this nonsensical, stupid, all but invisible accident, and the old Tchekhov of gaiety and mirth is no more. No more stories for The Alarm Clock. Instead, a morose and overshadowed man, a 'criminal' whose words frighten even the experienced and the omniscient.

If you desire it, you can easily be rid of Tchekhov and his work as well. Our language contains two magic words: 'pathological,' and its brother 'abnormal.' Once Tchekhov had overstrained himself, you have a perfectly legal right, sanctified by science and every tradition, to leave him out of all account, particularly seeing that he is already dead, and therefore cannot be hurt by your neglect. That is if you desire to be rid of Tchekhov. But if the desire is for some reason absent, the words 'pathological' and 'abnormal' will have no effect upon you. Perhaps you will go further and attempt to find in Tchekhov's experiences a criterion of the most irrefragable truths and axioms of this consciousness of ours. There is no third way: you must either renounce Tchekhov, or become his accomplice.

The hero of The Tedious Story is an old professor; the hero of Ivanov a young landlord. But the theme of both works is the same. The professor had overstrained himself, and thereby cut himself off from his past life and from the possibility of taking an active part in human affairs. Ivanov also had overstrained himself and become a superfluous, useless person. Had life been so arranged that death should supervene simultaneously with the loss of health, strength and capacity, then the old professor and young Ivanov could not have lived for one single hour. Even a blind man could see that they are both broken and are unfit for life. But for reasons unknown to us, wise nature has rejected coincidence of this kind. A man very often goes on living after he has completely lost the capacity of taking from life that wherein we are wont to see its essence and meaning. More striking still, a broken man is generally deprived of everything except the ability to acknowledge and feel his position. Nay, for the most part in such cases the intellectual abilities are refined and sharpened and increased to colossal proportions. It frequently happens that an average man, banal and mediocre, is changed beyond all recognition when he falls into the exceptional situation of Ivanov or the old professor. In him appear signs of a gift, a talent, even of genius. Nietzsche once asked: 'Can an ass be tragical?' He left his question unanswered, but Tolstoi answered for him in The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Ivan Ilyich, it is evident from Tolstoi's description of his life, is a mediocre, average character, one of those men who pass through life avoiding anything that is difficult or problematical, caring exclusively for the calm and pleasantness of earthly existence. Hardly had the cold wind of tragedy blown upon him, than he was utterly transformed. The story of Ivan Ilyich in his last days is as deeply interesting as the life-story of Socrates or Pascal.

In passing I would point out a fact which I consider of great importance. In his work Tchekhov was influenced by Tolstoi, and particularly by Tolstoi's later writings. It is important, because thus a part of Tchekhov's 'guilt' falls upon the great writer of the Russian land. I think that had there been no Death of Ivan Ilyich, there would have been no Ivanov, and no Tedious Story, nor many others of Tchekhov's most remarkable works. But this by no means implies that Tchekhov borrowed a single word from his great predecessor. Tchekhov had enough material of his own: in that respect he needed no help. But a young writer would hardly dare to come forward at his own risk with the thoughts that make the content of The Tedious Story. When Tolstoi wrote The Death of Ivan Ilyich, he had behind him War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and the firmly established reputation of an artist of the highest rank. All things were permitted to him. But Tchekhov was a young man, whose literary baggage amounted in all to a few dozen tiny stories, hidden in the pages of little known and uninfluential papers. Had Tolstoi not paved the way, had Tolstoi not shown by his example, that in literature it was permitted to tell the truth, to tell everything, then perhaps Tchekhov would have had to struggle long with himself before finding the courage of a public confession, even though it took the form of stories. And even with Tolstoi before him, how terribly did Tchekhov have to struggle with public opinion. 'Why does he write his horrible stories and plays?' every one asked himself. 'Why does the writer systematically choose for his heroes situations from which there is not, and cannot possibly be, any escape?' What can be said in answer to the endless complaints of the old professor and Katy, his pupil? This means that there is, essentially, something to be said. From times immemorial, literature has accumulated a large and varied store of all kinds of general ideas and conceptions, material and metaphysical, to which the masters have recourse the moment the over-exacting and over-restless human voice begins to be heard. This is exactly the point. Tchekhov himself, a writer and an educated man, refused in advance every possible consolation, material or metaphysical. Not even in Tolstoi, who set no great store by philosophical systems, will you find such keenly expressed disgust for every kind of conceptions and ideas as in Tchekhov. He is well aware that conceptions ought to be esteemed and respected, and he reckons his inability to bend the knee before that which educated people consider holy as a defect against which he must struggle with all his strength. And he does struggle with all his strength against this defect. But not only is the struggle unavailing; the longer Tchekhov lives, the weaker grows the power of lofty words over him, in spite of his own reason and his conscious will. Finally, he frees himself entirely from ideas of every kind, and loses even the notion of connection between the happenings of life. Herein lies the most important and original characteristic of his creation. Anticipating a little, I would here point to his comedy, The Sea-Gull, where, in defiance of all literary principles, the basis of action appears to be not the logical development of passions, or the inevitable connection between cause and effect, but naked accident, ostentatiously nude. As one reads the play, it seems at times that one has before one a copy of a newspaper with an endless series of news paragraphs, heaped upon one another, without order and without previous plan. Sovereign accident reigns everywhere and in everything, this time boldly throwing the gauntlet to all conceptions. In this, I repeat, is Tchekhov's greatest originality, and this, strangely enough, is the source of his most bitter experiences. He did not want to be original; he made super-human efforts to be like everybody else: but there is no escaping one's destiny. How many men, above all among writers, wear their fingers to the bone in the effort to be unlike others, and yet they cannot shake themselves free of _cliché_--yet Tchekhov was original against his will! Evidently originality does not depend upon the readiness to proclaim revolutionary opinions at all costs. The newest and boldest idea may and often does appear tedious and vulgar. In order to become original, instead of inventing an idea, one must achieve a difficult and painful labour; and, since men avoid labour and suffering, the really new is for the most part born in man against his will.