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Anton Chekhov
Himadri Chatterjee
When one discusses the short story, it is impossible not to touch on Chekhov. Practitioners of the form, from Katherine Mansfield to Raymond Carver, from V. S. Pritchett to William Trevor, have all acknowledged their debt. And yet, no matter how well we think we may know these stories, they are difficult to pin down: Chekhov remains a very elusive writer. One can say just about anything about him, only to find that the opposite can be just as true. This makes it very hard to write about Chekhov’s works in general terms.
 There are many misconceptions about Chekhov’s work. One is that his stories are lyrical, but rather pallid, and that not much happens; that these are essentially mood pieces – just people sitting around drinking tea or vodka, as their lives slip by. There’s some justification for this view: both in the plays and in the short stories, change often comes in peoples’ lives as a result of accumulations of small things, rather than as a result of dramatic events (e.g. “Unce Vanya”, “Ionych”, “A Dreary Story”, etc.). Yes, Chekhov could be deeply poetical at times (one of his late stories, "The Bishop", reads almost like a prose poem); and many of the significant events are internal changes within the characters (as in "Ionych", say). But at times, the stories burst with external action also. In "Ward No 6", a doctor has a nervous breakdown, is admitted to the psychiatric ward, and is subject to the horrendous brutality that he had done nothing to challenge earlier; in "The Black Monk", a young man is subject to hallucinations in which a ghostly monk speaks to him; and "In the Gully" has a climax as sickening and as horrific as anything one encounters in Zola.
But generally, Chekhov is more interested in what happens inside a character. In "Ionych", one of his most perfect stories, there are hardly any incidents at all. A young doctor takes up his position in a provincial town, and, over time, loses what idealism and high spirits he had possessed, and becomes middle-aged, fat, and obsessed with money. It is not merely one or two incidents that cause this change: it is an accumulation of many apparently trivial things happening over the years. And this is what Chekhov depicts: change that is so gradual that it is virtually imperceptible, but which happens all the same.
Sometimes, Chekhov deliberately avoids depiction of incident altogether. In "The Black Monk", for instance, one of the most important incidents - where the husband tells his wife that he had only proposed to her because her father had asked him to - is mentioned casually in passing. Any other author would have made a huge dramatic climax out of a scene like that. Similarly in "Three Years": after spending two whole pages describing a nocturnal walk taken by a couple of subsidiary characters, Chekhov tells us in a couple of sentences of the death of principal characters’ child. And he barely bothers describing of the parents’ grief.
The reason for this is that Chekhov was not primarily interested in what we usually think of as plot, i.e. events and incidents. If something occurs, Chekhov focuses on the characters’ actions - and the motivations for those actions - that lead to the incident; their reactions to the incident; and the effect the incident has on the development of the character. The incident itself is comparatively unimportant. And if the reaction of the characters is obvious - e.g. in "Three Years", the grief of the Laptevs on losing their child - Chekhov doesn’t bother telling us. What, after all, is the point of telling the reader what they could easily work out for themselves? Similarly in "My Life": Misail’s reactions to his wife leaving him, or to the tragedy that occurs at the end, are hardly mentioned. All this makes the stories very difficult to read. Chekhov expects much from his readers, and refuses to spoon-feed.
In these stories, Chekhov reflects sadly on the waste of human life, of how it appears to pass without contributing anything of significance, and without even achieving a semblance of happiness or contentment. He muses on the imperceptible changes that drag everything down to the level of mediocrity and worse. Even in something like "The Black Monk" - which appears to be more Poe’s territory than Chekhov’s - we may see these familiar themes. The protagonist of this story is an academic, but is aware of his mediocrity, and frustrated. In recuperating from a nervous breakdown, he has visions of a ghostly monk who convinces him that he is, in some way, special, and elevated from the vulgar mediocrity around him. And these visions give his life a meaning it had otherwise lacked. Of course, this meaning is illusory; but without this illusion, what is there to sustain him? Even a successful and brilliant man - like the narrator of "A Dreary Story" – can see his life as a failure as he faces death alienated from all around him, even his own family.
Another piece of perceived wisdom about Chekhov is that he was a detached, impartial observer who did not judge his characters. One can see why he sometimes gives this effect, but a close reading reveals an author who is neither detached nor impartial. True, there is much sympathy for all sorts of characters: but Chekhov’s sympathy is not by any means all-encompassing. It is a cliché to talk of an "all-encompassing humanism": it is a cliché that does not apply to Chekhov. The old patriarch in "Three Years” is simply an exploiter and a tyrant, an excrescence who has poisoned the life of all around him. The principal character of "The Two Volodyas" is a shallow, stupid, vain woman without the slightest semblance of moral fibre. And so on. There is no reason to waste sympathy on them.
Sometimes, Chekhov plays with our sympathy. In "Anna Around the Neck" a young woman from an impoverished family is forced into a loveless marriage with a pompous, middle-aged, wealthy bureaucrat. To start with, all the sympathy is enlisted on behalf of this young woman, who is sacrificing herself for the sake of her family. But then, Chekhov turns the tables. This woman, being beautiful, charming, and young, becomes a hit in high society, and a great favourite of those with whom her husband tries to ingratiate himself. Once she realizes what power she has, she takes control. She tells her husband where to get off; and then, a darling of high society, she cuts her family, who remain as impoverished as before. Chekhov doesn’t comment on any of this - he doesn’t need to. But the reader’s sympathies are very confused by the end. We can take nothing for granted in these works.
This is the sort of story someone like August Strindberg may have written. Indeed, the rapacious or grasping woman, or the stupid, shallow woman appears quite frequently in these stories. There are also many deeply sympathetic portrayals of women. In one of his finest early stories, "The Party", the principal character, a pregnant woman, increasingly frustrated by the insensitivity and the boorishness of the party guests and of her husband, has a breakdown which leads to a miscarriage. In a late story, "The Fiancee", a young woman breaks off an engagement with a very eligible young man in order to go to college and educate herself. (This remarkable story could almost be read as a feminist tract! Except, of course - as with Ibsen in "A Doll’s House" - Chekhov was more interested in the truthful depiction of people rather than with promoting an ideology.) In one of his most moving stories, "A Woman’s Kingdom", he depicts the utter isolation of a young woman who has inherited a factory. She is aware of dreadful exploitation in the factory, and of the appalling living standards of the working there. But she has absolutely no idea of how to set these things right. She knows nothing of the workings of the factory, and has to rely on various people who she knows are cheating her. And the factory destroys her morally and spiritually, as sure as it destroys its workers bodily.
There are so many stories of such varied brilliance that it is hard making general statements about them. There is "Peasants", apparently a series of loosely connected vignettes describing the animal existence and the brutality of peasant life, but which has all the impact of a full-length novel; there is "In the Gully", dealing with the merchant classes, and which is as horrific as anything I have read; there is "Lady with Lapdog", a lyrical gem, and a rare example of a love story that actually convinces. (With typical daring, it stops before any resolution is reached.) Each of these stories illuminates some aspect of life. The best move me more than I could explain.
If I had to pick a personal favourite, it would probably be "Three Years". It describes three years in the lives of a few characters, picking up the story at an apparently random point, and stopping at what may appear to be an equally random point. We follow the development of these characters over these three years. Julia marries Laptev, unprepossessing but generally decent, because that is the only chance she has of escaping from her dull town, and her increasingly eccentric father. Laptev belongs to a merchant family: he knows of the abuses and exploitation that go on in the family business, but feels unable to tackle any of it. The marriage is, predictably, unhappy: but characters develop, and - since Chekhov was not an incurable pessimist - the change is not always for the worse. After three years, the marriage that had started off so inauspiciously finds a renewed force and vigour as husband and wife develop a respect for each other. Other things happen to the circle of friends and family: people become old, and ill; people die; people grow up. And, after three years, Chekhov stops. What will happen afterwards? They’ll go on developing, and other changes will take place, as imperceptibly as before. This is a most inadequate summary of a very great masterpiece. The technique is very different from that of Tolstoy - whom Chekhov revered as an artist, if not necessarily as a moral philosopher - but Tolstoy himself, I think, would have been proud of an achievement such as this. Within these hundred or so pages, Chekhov seems to capture the very essence and mystery of life itself.
Himadri Chatterjee currently works as an operational research analyst for an airline, and lives near London, UK, with his wife and two children. What spare time he has apart from his day job and family commitments, he likes to spend reading, and listening to classical music. He also loves the theatre, good conversation, and good whisky (he is a long-standing member of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society).
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