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| Anton Chekhov 1860-1904 |
Another blog post in this series, another master Russian short story author to Chekhov our list. Don't worry--that's the worst of the bad puns I'm likely to use on this blog.
In truth, we could devote a whole series of essays to Chekhov alone. His prose is constructed like a star: dense, full of gravity, tending to draw you in. His writing is underscored by a mature, highly concentrated realism--detailed, yet with a keen economy of words. The stories themselves use plain language and on first glance appear to be straightforward in terms of premise and plot (where there is one to be found), but within these compact pieces can be found a depth and complexity that rivals the very best--and much longer--novels. These stories bear the watermark of the dramatist, drawing our attention to setting, mood, appearance and proxemics, giving us an inside view of the thoughts and motivations of his characters. In prose and drama, Chekhov is a master, and these stories represent a perfect combination of his talents.
Project Gutenberg has a thirteen volume set of stories available that represent some of the very best of Chekhov's five hundred sixty eight stories written before his untimely death in 1904 at the age of forty four. This is the first one, which is plenty to get you started.
The Darling and Other Stories (1917) by Anton Chekhov
English novelist and essayist E.M. Forster said that the five factors of human life are "birth, food, sleep, love and death". While Russian literature as a whole is keenly preoccupied with the last two, for Chekhov, love and death act as an ample springboard for exploring fundamentally human existential themes.
"The Darling" (1899) ss a famous story that is said to be the author's favorite in his sizable canon. Olenka is a woman who takes on the attitudes and opinions of the men in her life. When married to a theater owner, she works tirelessly to help her husband run his business and shoulders his concerns, repeating his words and taking on his view of life. After his death, she takes up with a man who runs a lumber business and after that, a veterinarian, always the backbone of support and always taking on their concerns and ideas for her own. When paired with someone, she feels a sense of purpose and when she finds herself between beaus, she feels empty and rudderless. While this is certainly a portrait that rings true with our perceptions of a nineteenth century woman, I think Chekhov says more about human nature and the longing for love and identity than he does about women in particular. Her chameleonic ways help her to cling to love in the persistent shadow of death.
In "Ariadne" (1895), we find another recurring theme in Chekhov's work---that of love that is overly idealized by one who loves with more intensity than the other. In Chekhov, regretful, unevenly reciprocal pairings result and inequities of feeling bring unhappiness and frustration. This story tells of a man whose standards and longing for an unrealized, unrealistic love leads to bitterness when his expectations aren't realized. Interestingly, in "Three Years" (1895) the novella that takes up the entire second half of this collection, the inequity of feeling between a married couple at the beginning of their relationship leads to a familiarity and negotiation of love that takes place over time. More about that later.
"Polinka" (1887) is a story that lacks plot and resolution, giving us a sketch of a moment in life that is full of the dramatist's craft. We witness a lover's quarrel played out in a busy fabric shop. A young salesman is visited by the woman he loves, and the two engage in a double conversation--one full-voiced about the sale of fabrics for the sake of propriety, and one in hushed tones about the state of things between them. There quarrel concerns Polinka's dalliance with a young student who is trying to woo her and whom her jealous lover fears is only after her money. Amidst the shelves and talk of women's garments, in tones muted but harsh, he gives her a good dressing down for her infidelity and her naïveté. At the crux of their conflict is a struggle between gentility and commonness, both as the subject of their disagreement and in the way they navigate their very private conflict in a public place. One can easily envision this scene on a stage, which is why the story works so well.
In "Anyuta" (1886) a medical student wants to ditch his lover and caretaker at the end of the academic term. We learn a great deal about his feeling toward her in one instance when he draws the outline of her ribs on her skin as an aid to his study, treating her in essence like a cadaver. Chekhov also draws our attention to how physically cold she is and the fact that her lips are turning blue like a corpse. The student even lends her out to an artist upstairs who needs a model for his work. We learn that living in the apartments of medical students as a lover is a way of life for her, and although she is allowed to stay after a tearful protest, we can find the resolution only a temporary one. This is the kind of deftly wielded symbolism for which the author is known. We also get a glimpse of a typically Chekhovian woman who is brunette, pale, 5' 5'', with large eyes, deep sadness, possible neurosis, unbearable longing and often a fatal flaw or at least an unfortunate circumstance.
A woman finds herself torn between the man she loves and the man she marries in "The Two Volodyas" (1893). After an outing with these two men ends up in a few too many drinks, the conflicted and unhappy Olga, once a socialite given to parties and courting, considers her miserable fate. She orders the carriage to stop at a church to visit her sister who has become an orthodox nun. After the visit, she ponders the possibility of finding a deeper meaning in life to escape from her present situation. She seeks self abnegation, yet revels in the very forces of life that constrain her and supplicates herself to the advances and attentions of her lover with the same sense of desperation with which she supplicates herself to the inevitability of God, or at least the attainment of a higher moral purpose, although the latter is a hopelessly large chasm to cross. Another unhappy Chekhovian pairing that leads to misery and self recrimination.
When hope becomes its own heaviest burden, life tends to stand still as time slips by. Such is the case in the story, "The Trousseau" (1883), in which a man on an errand discovers a curious house with equally curious inhabitants--a plump, forty-ish mother, her plain daughter and an uncle who, ruined by drink and excluded from joining a monastery, lives in seclusion. The details of the structure of the house gives us a great deal of information about its inhabitants; It is cloaked by beautiful surrounding foliage and closed off from the outside world. Here, the mother and daughter sew garments for the daughter's trousseau or hope chest. The visitor's return to the same house reveals that little has changed, and the inhabitants have merely grown older and living in perpetual stasis. Such is also the case in "Talent" (18??), a story of three painters whose ambitions and dreams eclipse their output, and their dreams of success become an obstacle to their growth.
The title of "The Helpmate" (18??) refers to a solution to a theoretical chess problem in which both sides cooperate to checkmate Black. Here again we see a mismatched couple. A man marries for passion, but his joy fades soon after and he later contracts tuberculosis. A found telegram confirms his suspicions that his wife is cheating on him. He confronts her and she confesses. He offers her money and to let her go to her lover, but she refuses to leave him. A short while later, she accepts the money but stays. The husband is ruined in any case, brought down by mutual effort.
"An Artist's Story" (1896) is about a fairly well known painter who befriends a mother and two daughters. The younger daughter is lovely, sweet and demure, the older bold and opinionated, especially about social justice. The painter blows his chance with the younger daughter by criticizing the older daughter's involvement in local government and in her work helping to provide necessary services for the poor. She criticizes him for being a fine artist whose work lacks social relevance and fails to benefit society. He questions her motivations, claiming that such efforts will do no lasting good and will further hold the working people in bondage. In retaliation, the older daughter packs off her sister and mother to where she is out of the artist's reach. By asserting himself to the one, he has lost the other.
I loved "Three Years" (1895). the novella that concludes this collection. It is about a man whose family runs a successful dry goods business and who has a passionate unrequited love for Yulia, the daughter of a doctor who is treating his sister who is dying of cancer. Yulia agrees to marry him out of fear of ending up alone and lured by the promise of living a good life in Moscow. Both soon realize their mistake and are plunged into misery. The rest of the story is partially about the negotiative process that leads to the flowering of affection between the two. In truth, this is a much more complex story that could easily merit its own essay. Love and death figure prominently in these characters' motivations. We get intimate portraits of their backgrounds and family relations in a way that points toward themes fully explored in twentieth century fiction. Just trust me; read it for yourself. It's good stuff.
Next time, we'll finish our series on the Russian short story with a couple of anthologies and a few books about Russian literature.
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