Chekhov, the Doctor As Dramatist: a Study of the Four Major Plays

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1981 Chekhov, the Doctor as Dramatist: A Study of the Four Major Plays Gloria Rhoads Eastern Illinois University This research is a product of the graduate program in English at Eastern Illinois University. Find out more about the program.

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m CHEKHOV, THE DOCTOR ASDRAMATIST: -

A STUDY OF THE FOUR MAJOR PLAYS (TITLE)

Gloria Rhoads �

THESIS

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE OF

Masterof Arts in English IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL, EASTERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY

CHARLESTON, ILLINOIS

1981 YEAR

I HEREBY RECOMMEND THIS THESIS BE ACCEPTED AS FULFILLING THIS PART OF THE GRADUATE DEGREE CITED ABOVE

? I/:z,., DATE b1 CHEKHOV, THE DOCTOR AS DRAMATIST:

A STUDY OF THE FOUR MAJOR PLAYS

GLORIA HHOADS

B.A. IN FlIBNCH

EASTERN ILLINOIS UNlVElllilTY

1973

ABSTRACT OF A THESIS

Submitted in partial fulfillmen t of the requircmenLs for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Lhe Graduate School of

Bas tern I llino.is Uni vc:rH i t.1

CIIARLES'l'ON , I.LL TN OlS

4l0j.QQ StudyinG the relationship of Che�hov's being a doctor to his being a dramatist reveals one reason for the scientifjc objectivity in his writing . Moreover , extensive reading of his letters and notes as well as careful �eadings of his µJays leaves little doubt that he himself considered that his career· as a doc tor had a great impact on the pl�ys he crea ted.

Chekhov felt that a writer mus t not beautify reality o�· gloss over it but carefully presen t it as it is . He wrote that the writer mus t ren ounce subjectivity and report tl1c grime of life along with the good; he sugg�sted thut, no mat ter h6w unpleasan t the task migh t be, the writer mus t realize that dungheaps are no less a necessary part in a landscap� than the scenic beauty. Briefly, he was convinced that the dramatist should dispassionately witness life, record it honestly, and not judge any part of it.

Chekhov set himself to give an accurate pic ture of all of Russian life by delving to its very core. No iota of

. Russian life escaped his disc�rning vision as he studied the relationship between will and en vironmen t, freedom and neces sity, and man's character and his fa te. As he pursued thiu theme through ordinary , pedestrian characters , Chekhov revealed his judgement against cruelty , sreed, hypocrisy , against whatever degrades man and preven ts him from achieving full stature.

Chekhov was most illum�hating when he wrote about doc tors, whom he considered moral people , for they do useful work.

Being a doctor himself, he was able to draw insightful por traits of them--exploiting their shortcomings as well as 2

their virtues . His doctors are fallible human beings first and doctors only second.

Chekhov's doctors were helpless to cure their patients , for most suffered from soul sickness rather than actual phys ical ailments . To him , soul sickness was largely a matter of self-indulgence and the essential result of individual and societal bumbling. It is only through suffering that his characters can become of service to society .

Chekhov believed that the pain of existence could not be overcome although it might be eased. He carefully presented his characters in a state natural to themselves and, in so do�ng, revealed some of hls own admirable personality traits, such as his strong belief in conservation.

The key to Chekhov's ob j ectivity is his sensibility to the fact that one's own fate, plus his mistakes , bound with the threads of one's environment, education, heredity , and thousands of circumstantial happenings determine the life of a man. The consciousness that man is created for great thint:s forced Chekhov to deal with everyday pettiness in order to show how incompatible man's daily existence is with his in herent possibilities.

Chekhov's not ueing a typical, traditional turn-of-the century playwright accounts for much of his success today .

He did not write to please the critics or the masses, but to satisfy that within himself which said he must portray life as it really is. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction •...... 1

Elements of Concern and Detachment in Chekhov's Drama 4

Doc to-rs ...... 8

Treatment of Diseases ...... Jo

Curing Moral Malaise • ...... J9

Objective but Sympathetic View of Mankind 25

Conclusion ...... 27

Footnotes . • ...... 29

Bibliography ...... 1

INTRO.DU CTI ON

The main purpose of this paper is to explore the influ ence Chekhov's being a doctor had on the style and content of his plays. Such influences include a detached attitud e, a keen perception of detail , an understanding of a doctor's lot , some concern with the treatment of diseases, especially that of moral malaise , and an objective but sympathetic view of mankind.

Not only did Chekhov reveal these characteris tics in hls literature but also in his many letters so much so that almost no work about Anton Chekhov can be considered complete without recourse to one or more of his letters. Since he was a volu- minous letter writer who frequently revealed many things about himself and his works in this. mode, it seems only appropriate to begin with the words which Chekhov himself wrote about the realism and objectivity that characterize his artistic con- cerns:

The writer is not a pastry cook, a beautician , or an entertainer. How ever unpleasant it may be to him, he must conquer his squeamishness, must soil his imagination with the grime of life. He is the same as an ordinary reporter. For chemists there is nothing unclean on the earth. The writer also must be objective, like the chemist; he must renounce everyday subjectivity and know that dungheaps in a land scape play a very respectable role and evil passions are just as much part of life as good ones. l 2

Chekhov was not content merely to observe surfaces; 2 his

special talent was the ability to penetrate to the core around

which the outer life is shaped. 3 At the same time, he sought

to achieve the utmost brevity by eliminating anything super-

fluous without necessitating an emphasis on advising, instruct-

ing, or explaining to establish the clarity and fore� of hiu

main topic: the unhappiness of Russian life. Rather, his

technique in rendering this unhappiness both convincinr, and

striking was to utilize humdrum everyday trifles to evoke

"that state of pervasive inner toxicity in which man lives

from day to day ."4

In examining everyday life, medicine was a precious tool

for Chekhov, writer and doctor, for ob tain ing knowledge of

man and his society and as a sclentific �upport for his arLis-

c:: tic observation and analysis of material.J The benefits of

his medical training and practice unquestionably influeuced his artistic career; they "brought hornc to Chekhov with rC'

markable fulln·ess the horror of life, the crtielty of nattirc, 6 and the impotence of man." He wrote the following concernin1,

the influence of medicine on his writing:

It enlarged considerably my circle of observation, enriched my knowledge, the value of which for me as a writer only a doctor can understand; ... and it kept me from making many mis takes. Acquaintance with natural sci ence, with the scientific method al ways kept me on my guard, and I tried� wherever possible, to keep to scien tific facts, and where that was im possible--preferred not to write at all ....To those men of letters who do no t like science, I don' t belong; and to those who reach all conclusions by their own wits,--I should not want to belong.7 3

Helying on his scien tific objectivi ty, Chekhov expressed the credo of a physician: "My holy of holies is the human body, health , intelligence , talen t, inspiration , love and absolute freedom--freedom from force and fal sehood, no matter how the 8 last two manifest themselves. 11 As a doctor, Chekhov knew that medicine begins with the problem of diagnosis and ends with the problem of treatment; as a writer, he diagnosed the· problem, but said that an artist should not solve the probl em.

He should state the problem correctly , transcend the contra dictions between social and personal , large and small .9

Chekhov could be neither just a doctor nor just a wri ter; for him, bo th careers had vi tal roles in his life as he explained to a friend in a letter:

Medicine is my lawful wife, and lit erature ls my mistress. When I get tired of on e, I sleep with the other. It may be d f orderly, but it is not monotonous. 5

While recognizing Chekhov's talent as a writer, N.K.

Mikhailovsky , a prominent wriler an d thinker of the time , was distressed over Chekhov's cold-blooded (scientific) approach to reality.11 But wh ile it is true that Chekhov's method occasioned a certain aloofn ess, a principled objectivity,

Chekhov saw this as a necessary stance : "the artist must not be a judge of his characters , but only a dispassionate wit ness. 1112 4

ELEMENTS OF CONCERN AND DETACHMENT

IN CHEKHOV' S DRAMA

"Man will become better when you show him what he is like.1113 Believing this, Chekhov set himself to give a pie- ture of all of Russian life; there is no profession, no class, no iota of Russian life into which he did not delve.14 Chekhov revealed, in delving to the core of Russian life, his funda- mental philosophical interest in the relationship, usually tragic, between will and environment, freedom and necessity, and man's character and his fate. He explored this theme through "minor, pedestrian personalities" who have failed to rea1 ize. th emse 1 ves ratl 1er than unusua1 or h eroic. in . d ivi. . d ua 1 s. l 5

As he explored these ordinary people, his judgement against cruelty, greed, hypocrisy, stupidity, snobbery, sloth, against whatever degrades man and prevents him from achieving his fuJ l stature became implicit in his writings.

This judgement leads to his point of view which resides in an interaction between the realist Chekhov disclosing man's tragic actuality and the positive, voluntaristic Chekhov main taining faith in human potentiai.16 Blemcnts of Chekho vian style which reveal this view are: the "flitting past" of reality (Masha, Irina, and Olga); the unexpected, unmotiv�led, and mutually contradictory experiences which rapidly repla�e themselves Crreplev); and the sudden disappearance ')f eco.11 ty ')

which induces sensations and, just an suddenly , the dying 17 away of those sensations (Vanya).

Another important elemen t of Chekhovian style is· the limiting and reduction of his remarks to mere scenic direc- tions . The theme and situa tion are revealed by the charac ters, not the author; it is as if .Chekhov had stepped aside and allowed his characters to say and do just what they con� 18 s1. d ere d necessary. He believed that the reader (viewer) could get closer to the charac ters and comprehend them better when they were freed from the author's interference. In fac t, he claimed: "It is best of all to avoid describ_img the spiritual state of one's heroes, one must enable the reader to unders tand what is happening from the course of the story , 19 from the characters' conversations, from their actions. . ..11

Ironi cally, W. Somerset Maugham recognized th e success of Chekhov's method of illuminating characters when he wro t�:

They are not lit by hard lieht of common day but suffused .in a mys terious grayness . They rnove in this as though they were disembodied spirits . It is their souls that you seem to see. The subconscious seems to come to the surface and they communicate with one another directly , withou t the impedimen t of speech. Strange , futile crea tures, wi th descriptions of Lheir outward seeming tacked on them like a card on an exhibit in a museum , they move as mys teriously as the tortured souls who crowded al.Jout Dan te when he walked jn Hell. You have the feeling of a vast,� gray , los t throng wandering 2 m less in some dim underworld.

Maugham in tended this criticism mos t unkindly, bu L, o vc ral.L, it is a fair, adequate description o.r Chekhovian �haractcr portrayal.

In presenting his characters thus, Chekhov revealed in his art his traits of sincerity, simpliciLy , and a sense of the obvious . Real ity--which includes these--must never b� sacrificed , he mainLaln ed :

In life, people don't spend all their time shooting each other, hanging themsel ves or declaring their love for someone. Nor ls every minute spent in saying clever things. Mostly they just eat , drink, flirt and talk non sense--and this is what should be shown on the stage. A play should be written in which people come, go , eat their dinner, chat about the weather and play cards, not because that is how the author wants it, but beca�se th�! is how it happens in real life.

He wrote to his brother Alexander admonishing him not to invent sufferings he had not experienced, "for a lie in a s tory j_s a

"22 hundred times more boring than in a con versa t.ion . . . .

Chekhov had an extraordi_nary ability to detect the slightest insincerity in the relationships between people; he could see throueh sham sentiments with which people cover up, and he hated lies. He never accepted anyon e or anything at face balue; instead he was capable of digging below the surface of life , of exposing the hidden motives of the actions of hi s characters and of revealin& the influence of society's forces upon them. 2 3

Bruford notes Chekhov's detached approach when he de scribes Chekhov's drama as ideal, paychological naturaliu1n (o f term which Chekhov would have detested) which he de ines as ' (

"a drama which should be con L�n L Lo make the t; pee La tor fully aware of the complicated states of mind in a group of lnve11 Led characters without asking whether the result fitted .in wlth any accepted notions about comedy or tragedy, so long as Jt interpreted convincingly the general sense of l ife as wc know ' 112 l.t • 4 And, as Chekhov noted and strove to show, in llfe a� we know it, "People eat thelr dinner, jusL cat their dinner, and at that moment their happiness is bein& rnade or their 2 lives are beinr, ru.ined .11 5

Chekhov's desire to show his characters ln the round with all their faults and absurdities in plain view resulted 26 in a comic yet disastrous effect. According to Eichenbaum ,

Chekhov's entire system was based on the lyrical elemenl--on 27 laughter and sadness. The playwright fuoect comedy and tr"�- edy in order to more nearly approximate life, to express the 28 en tire range of human emo tions. Thus his seeming lightnens was not due to lack of abj lity or writer's levity , but to hJ � discovery of a whole realm previously unexploited by litera ture, a realm of everyday trifles and occurences which are . 20 really quite typical and worthy of his concentrated focus. - -

Praising this element of Chekhov's creatjviLy , Gorky wrote,

"Chekhov has somethinp; more than a world v.iew • . . Ile illu-

tedlurn, alrnurdity, n r minates its (life's) jts its t .ivi nr:�3, all of its chaos from a hjgher point of view .. 1130 8

DOCTORS

Chekhov's "more than a world view" is the result of his exploiting everyday situations affecting everyday people. He is perhaps most successful at illuminating doctors whom he defines as men who:

have the most awful days and hours . Heaven forbid anybody going through the experience they do. It is true that it is possible to find coarse and ignorant brutes among them , but then so do you among writers, engineers and the public in een eral . Yet only doctors suffer the frio-htful0 · days and hours which. I 31 men tioned, . . . ·

It is this definition which usually classifies doctors among his moral characters, for they do useful work; their practical act�vity makes them good. Dorn (The S eagull) and Astrov

(Uncle Vanya) ·are such examples while Chebutykin (The Three

Sis ters) honestly recogn izes his shortcomings.

Being a doctor himself, Chekhov was able to draw insightful portraits of them in his plays--and, in the case o f As trov , a strongly autobiographical one. (His similari ty to Dorn and

Chebutykin is much less di rec t .) Yet, as the following com ments will show , they are fallible human beings first and doctors only second.

Astrov is an example of th� introverted doctor who is a go-between in the struggle of the strong and the weak and �,., who embodies mun' s s truggl c to find meaning in the cosmos. Jt.

He sees life as a precise and unalterable round of birth, copu 33 lation, and death. It is because of this belief that Dorn, a similar character, refuses medication to Sorin; he believes that the old man is reaching the incvj Ln.hle completion of rLis life's cycle and should do notllinr, Lo delay it, so he proclaim[;,

"but when it comes to taking cures at sixty and regretting that . you didn't get enough pleasure out of life ...--all that, 34 forgive me, is just a waste of time. 11

Dorn is called a "raisonneur" l>y Valency; and while the doctor's comments are frequently inconsequential and irrele- vant, Dorn is the character who interprets the action of the play most clearly, and Chekhov may be said to have used an extremely effective ploy in putting the truth of the play ln 35 the least expressive character. For whlle Dorn may not always speak articulately, he is always understandable.

It is noteworthy that Dorn is most articulate when he speaks to Treplev. As a critic of art, Dorn is the only person who recognizes the possible scope of Treplev's talent and, according to Magarshack, the fact that the young artist was capable of being a much better writer than the already famous 36 Trigorin. (While Chekhov's own practice as a writer contains elements of both Treplev's and Trigorin's styles, he is more consistent with that of Trigorin. However, I believe his heart went out to the struggling innovations attempted by

Treplev. ) Dorn, reacting to the play within the play, ex plains to the troubled Treplev what a writer should be: 10

Dorn: Kostya, I like your play very much. . . . �·Ihat I mean to say is this: You're dealing with abstract ideas, and that's good and as it should be, because a work of art must express some grea t idea or it will fail . Only the sublime, those things conceived with grea t seriousness, can l�ver be truly beautiful. . . . Bu t you must only write about thines that are significant and permanent ....Just one more thing. There must be a clear and definite iJea in a work of art--you must know why you' re writing--if not, if you walk alone lhis en chanted highway without any definite aim, you will lose your way and your talent will ruin you. ( SG, 138-9)

But while he is able to express himself freely and ar ticulately to Treplev, Dorn cannot do so with rolina. (lt might be assumed that the hesitan cy of his doclors to m�rry or confront any emotional involvements stems from Chekhov's reluctanc� to marry or become _emotionally involved with another individual. ) Indications are that they have had an affair and that, possibly, Masha is their child , and yet he either ig nores Polina or responds irrelevantly to her questions. Fo r example, when Polina nags him about his health and his in ter- est in women , he hums lin es from songs which, on the surface , have absolutely no relevance to wha t she has said. He ignores her, by talking to Nina, when she begs to be allowed to live with him; in fact , he ignores her completely from that point on.

Astrov reacts similarly to Sonya on ce he learns how 11

deeply she cares for him. While he does not completely evad� her, he feels awkward in her presence and sees as Jittle of

her as possible; in fact, when Yelena tells him of Sonya's love, he responds, "If you had spoken a month or two ago, perhaps I might have been able to consider it, but now. Of

course, if she is sufferjng... " (UV, 206).

It is during this conversation concernin8 Sonya that

Astrov realizes that Yelena is interested in him: "A sly one!

Suppose Sonya is unhappy. . . , but what is the real meaning of your interrogation?" (UV, 207). He says that she (Yelena) knows why he is there every day and that she is very pleased about it. He offers himself in submission and tries to arrange a rendez-vous. Because Astrov is so overwhelmed and possessed by Yelena's beauty, he succumbs willinRlY to a physical attach ment although he shuns any emotional involvement with Sony\J.

(Chekhov himself was highly susceptible to feinule beauty and was quite a flirt, but he, like his doctors, shunned any per sonal in�olvement.) Even though he submits to her beauty, he

indicates that he realizes the unhco.l tbinesc of his .interest:

"Here I've been doing nothing for a whole month, l' ve dropped everything, I seek you greedily, . . . T' m conquered" (UV,

207).

His spiritual weakness is shown by his ignorinr; hi:.; work

in order to see Yelena; he knowi:; that work is tht! human lot

and happiness is but an unattainaule mirage,37 and he iB overwhelmingly aware of the wasted lives on the Screbryakov

estate, even those of the peasants, when he says to Vanya, .l" c

It may be that our posterity , despisine us for our blind and stupid lives , will find some road Lo happiness , but we- you and I--have but one hope , the hope that perhaps pleasant dreams will haunt us in ·our graves. y'es , my friend , in this en tire community Lht�re were only two decen t and intelligent men, you an d I. Ten years or so of this life of ours, this wretched life of the com monplace and the trivial, have sucked us under and poisoned us with their destructive vapors , and we have be come as contemptible, as petty , and a.s despicable as the others .... (UV, 217)

Astrov said that this emotional dullness and cruel t.v were caused by meaningless routine. Bu t almost as strong as his feeling that his efforts were hopeless wao his dedication 38 to his vocation, for he wan a vigorous worker. He claimed ,

"I like life as life, but I hate and despise it when it means frittering it away in a little Hussian village. As far as my

personal existence is concerned . . . God! •••it is absolutely beyond redemption! . ..I work , as you know, perhaps harder than anyore else around here". (UV, 196). (An opinion Chekhov shared). Ye t he denied the idea of work being meaninful only in itself; as a result, we hear his lengthy speeches on conservation and its positive results�

You can burn peat in your stoves and build your barns of stone. Oh , I don't object, of course, to cutting wood when you have to , but why destroy the fores ts'? . . . '11he homes of wild animals and the birds have been laid desolate; the rivers a1:e shrinkln�, and many beau tiful landscapes are gone £orever. And why? Because men are too lazy and stupid to bend over and pick up their fuel from the

ground .•..He has not created ,

he has only des troyed ....But when I cross these peasan t fores tB 15

which I h av e saved from the axe, •.. I fee l as if I had had some small share in improving the climate, and that if mankind is happy a thousand years from now I shall have been partly re spon sible. . . (_111, 186)

According to Magarshack, Astrov planLu the trees because of Yl his faith in man, not because of h.i.s love of nature . ( 1'1;c conservation and faith in the future of mankind vJel'e also important to Chekhov, but the love of natural beauty aJso in fluenced many of his ga rd ening ent0rpriseu.)

Chebutykin, on the other hand, was useless as a doctor· or a man because he believed in noLhing; both hio mind and his soul were empty. Magarshack states that ChebuLykin, having been stripped of the finer attributes of a man, is "not a 1140 human being at all. He had been human once because .of hi.r; devoted love for a woman, but now life nu long�r exists for

4J him; he is completely divorced from life and liv.i.ng people.

We see the final degradation of Chcl.Jutykin in Act III after he broke the block which had been treasured by the woman he

" had loved. So he said, . We don't really exist, no Lhini: does, we only think so.. . And anyway, what difference does it make?" (1rs, 278). To hlm, e v e r y thin g or everyone is nonsense and does not make any difference.

This ignorance is first revealed Ln his reading newspapers so voraciously; the first clue to his absurdity is his notetaking of "important facts" and prescriptions from the popular ne wspapers. He has forgotten all of the medicine he had ever learned. The absurdity of Chebutykin's habit is amplified when one knows how Chekhov scorned the popular 14

newspapers; after the failure of The Seagull and the scathjng criticism it received, Chekhov reportedly commented to Pota penko about a newsvendor, "What a goodnatured face he has, and

42 yet his hands are full of poison. 11

Not only did Chekhov reveal his scorn for such newspa pers. but he also mentioned frequently the neceasity of a doctor's keeping up with medicine and not laggine behind, for he felt· that he himself was unable to keep up sufficiently with the latest medical knowledge because of the other demands on his time. Chebutykin, however, had forgotten all his medical knowledge because he did not care to remember and was reduced to copying interesting prescriptions from newspapers. When

Andrey asked him what he should do about his shortness of breath, he repljed, "Don't ask me. l can' L rem�mber, 111y boy--

I rea 11 y don 't know" ( •.rs, 2 '.J7 ) . Che bu Ly k in d i d n o t e v en k n o \·: how to help, and he did not care to help.

He was so preoccupied with l1irnself that he did not care ' about anyone else' s problems or illnesses, and he never really listened to anyone else who was talking. He was a 60-year-old man still playing the role of the broken-hearted lo ver· ; to him,

Irina was indispensau.le and, one might concl ude, had taken her· mother's place in his affections. Chebutykin cuuld easily have stopped tile duel between Tu senlHlCll v nd S o1yony, but he did not want to because he wanted lrino Lo s Lay with him instead of getting marr ied . He did nut even stop to th ink tlow she mieht react to her finnc� 's being murdered in a duel.

After he returned from the site of the duel, he calmly announ aed

�,usenbach' s death and then sat down, luokcd at a newnpaµer, 15

and sang to himself. He had been ruduced to an idiot, an ir1- dividual to whom nothing mattered; that is how he kept his relatively good humor regardless of what was going on around him. '.l'REA 'l'M EN 'P 0 l<' lJ 1 SEA� ES

While we see Chekhov's doctors doine very little actual healing on the stage, several diseases and prescriptions are mentioned. It is interesting to note that a contemporary do�- tor states that, in reading Chekhov, "no medical man could fail to learn both about himself and his patients, particu1:-tr· '13 ly those in the 1 onel iness of grave i llnens. "

Not only can a doctor learn about himself, but anyone who sees or reads Chekhov can do the same. He maintained a positivist outlook as a physician and "man of the people" to whom "soul-sickness" sc.::>emed larcely a matter of self-i.ndul- gence and who saw suffcrine as the essenLia1 result of indi 44 vidual and societal bumbling. His characters are'1ike sick people, s_tricken with an ailment and dreaming of health, but 45 powerless themselves to cope with the sickness.11

What few physical ailments Chekhov did mention (the

Professor's gout, Andrey's shortness of breath) are aggravated by the emotions. For example, it was because of Serebryakov's gout that Astrov had been summoned to the estate, but, since the Professor refused to fol.low doctor's orders, Astrov could not treat him effectively. Not only was asLrov unabJ.e to treat the Professor's gout, but he was also helpless aGain:.>L the soul sickness he observed in the members of the estate and even in himself. As he told the old Nurse in Act 11, 1 '(

All our friends are smuJl ln their ideas and small in their feelings. They see no farther than their own noses; or perhaps, more bluntly, they are dull and stupid. The ones who have brains and intelligence are hysterical, morbidly absorbed and consumed in introspection and analysis. They whine, they hate, they find fault everywhere. . . . Simple, natural, and genuine re lations between man and man or between man and nature have no existence in their eyes. . . . (UV, 196-7)

Not only is the preceding statement an accuru tc ding- nosis of the people housed on the Serebryakov estate, but it also accurately describes Solyony. Nothing rnattered to him but his own opinion; no matter what he said he believed it was righ t . His ridiculous argument with Chebutykin in Act II over the proper meanings of the word�.; "chehartma" and "cher- eshma," his preoccupation with being a lie nnontov , and his con- stant challenging of others to duels are examples of his ignorant egotism .

. Self-concern was also very important to Sorin in The

Seagull, for nothing mattered to him except retardinc his aging and stalling his approaching death. He refused to accept the reality that he was an oltl man whDse death was inev itable. He regretted the life he had llved (or wactcd ) becauHe he had wanted only two things--to �et mnrried and to be a writer, but he had done nothing to ·achieve either goal. Now that his death was surely approaching, Sorin explained, "l've worked in the Department of Justice for twenty-eight years, but I haven't really lived, I haven't really experienced any thing, I want to go on living" ( TS, 143). 18

Although the three sisters are much younger than the

60-year-old Sorin, they, too, have no t lived, but yet desire to do so. They pay lip service to their dream of returning

to Moscow where life is important, but they never make any plans to leave nor take any action which will insure their arrival in the place of their birth.

It is this spiritual or soul sickness--rather than actu al physical illness--that dooms most of Chekhov'n characters , for, though they dream of a better life, they are hopeless and helpless in doing any thing to achieve their goal. His charac-

ters were, in a word , powerless because of the uncontrollable

circumstances life presented and because of their ins ignificance

in an impersonal world.

Chekhov, according to Lavrin, equates bewilderment with

surplus sensitivity , not weakness: "According to hi.m , a liiehly

sensitive person, confronted by the rough and ruthless compc-

titian in .modern life, is almost doomed to failure, which,

morally speaking, does him credit. On the other hand , success

is a prerogative of the unscrupulous , th e cvars e and the vul 4 gar. 11 6 In Chekhov's world, livine; means suffering, and thoBr.'

who suffer least arc the least vital . His favori te characters

are those in whom a sudden desire reveals a tragic lack of 7 energy.4 It is through suffering Lhat hls characters become

of service to society (Irina, As trov, Vanya, Sonya). Yet this

same suffering is due to a sickness of the soul for which his

doctors offer no effective cure--only valarian drops to n�omen-

tarily ease the pain of cxistance. l .

CURING MORAL MALAISI�

The pain of existance was never eased for Chekhov during

his lifetime; perhaps the pain of his unhappy childhood is

what prompted him to write the following in a letter to his

Uncle Mitrofan : " People must never be hurniliated--that is the 8 main thing. 114 He maintained th.is premis e as he wrote, never

allowing any of his characters to be humiliated . He was alf30

careful to present h is characters in a sta te natural to them

and not one supposedly trumped up to please an audience or a

theatre critic. But in this presentation of his characters ,

Chekhov occasionally revealed some of hi s own admirable char

acter traits and personal beliefs--which provide a kind of

cure for the moral malaise so many of his characters suffer

from.

For example, he believed that it was immoral to thwart nature and worse than immoral to do so under the guise of 49 moral obligation . It is for this reason that the theme of

conservation appears so frequen tl y in h is writing. Not only

did Chekhov consider the des truction of the environmen t as

evil , but he also considered human suffering as wastage of 50 res ources.

As trov, a conscientious and overworked country doctor as was Chekhov, promoted the same values as Chekhov in .:.>akha.l in

Island; he proposed a doctor's going beyond mere m edi ca l treat

ment to a scientifically ordered impro vement of the climate, �o

peasant economy , and . general environment by planting trees, 51 etc. He was Chekhov's most ardent supporter of forestry conservation ; Astrov, like Chekhov, not only spoke against the destruction of the environment , bu t actually planted trees and did whatever he could to rebuild what other men had de- strayed.

One scene of wanton destruction which haun ted Chekhov throughou t his lifetime was the hunting incident in which

Levitan wounded a woodcock, but he (Chekhov) had to pu t it oul of its misery. Tha t idea of careless wa ste apparently wan carried over to Th e Seagu ll and, hence, transferred to Ni11a.

Although the author was referring to the wounded woodcock wi th these words, "There was one beautiful creature of love less in the world, and two fools went home, and sat down to dinner 152 ., 1 the message a.J so a ppl' ie s t o bo ·th_ the d ea d scaeu11 and Nina. One beautiful creature had been destroyed , but tha � did not prevent anyo�e from carrying on his habitual existence without another thought of the crushed soul .

It is this same theme of careless abandon and destruction which allows Yelena to briefly speak for Chekhov in Uncle

Vanya as she says, "You are all possessed by a devil of de structiveness; you have no feeling, no, not even pity, for either the woods or the birds or women, or for one ano thc�'

(UV, 187) . Even though she hersel.f was not an active con- servationist, the words are those expressing Chekhov's opinion of the uncaring, insensitive people who destroy without a thought of restoration. (_ j

Interlaced with Chekhov's fai Lh in conservation is his belief that all people presently living mus t pay the bill for the happiness of future .generations . His characters must realize some meaning to their 1 i ves which, j n turn, gives some hope for them and generations to come. Characters who speak out for Chekhov on this idea are As trov, Vershinin, and Trofi- mov.

Vershinin, in particular, demonstrates a profound under standing of Chekhov's vi ew of the des tiny of man. 53 He Explains, in Act 11, that while we will all be forgo tten, for that ls our fate, and there is nothing we can do about it, yet we are not without our individual importance. He explains to Masha just how vital her "useless" knowledge really is :

•••It seems to me that there' s no place on earth, no matter how du ll and depressing it may be, where in telligent and educated people aren' t needed. Let' s suppose that among the hundred thousand people living here , there are· just three people like . you--all the rest being uneducated and uncultured. Ob�iously , you can' t hope to win out over the ignorance of masses around you ; in the course of your life, you' lJ have to give in littl e by little

until vou are lost •...Life will swallow you up, but no t cornplet.c l,y, for you' 11 have made so1nc li.1pression. After you' ve gone, there' ll be six

more people like you , then twel ve, . �h• y , in two or three huncl rC'd years life on this earth will be wonder fully beau tiful. Man longa for a life like that , and if he doesn' t have lt right now, he must imagine it, wa it for it, dream abou L it,

prepare for lt . . . 1 ·rs , _ , '23G-7) 22

Also a spokesman for Chekhov on the state of the con-

tinually advancing mankind, Trofimov acts additionally as the author' s mouthpiece on the idiocy of pride and idle indul-

gence:

Why be proud when you real ize that Man , as a species , is poorly con structed phyaiologically , and is usually coar�e, stupid , and pro foundly unhappy , too? We ought to jus t go to work. (co, 313)

But sometimes the Chekhovian character sinks in to the illness

instead of actively seeking a way ou t, a cure.

While work was a very necessary part of life to Cheklluv

(the only way in which one can be useful and healthy) , there

is no doubt that he considered both of his chosen profess ions as very disadvantageous at times. There is also littl e doubt

that it is Trigorin who voices the author' s thoughts concern-

ing the disadvantages of a writing career. He tried to ex-

plain the painful reality of his supposedly "beau ti·ful life"

to Nina:

What' s beautiful about it?... Do you know what it's like to have a compulsion? ...I'm obsessed by one thought: I must write, I must write , l must . . . I w r i t e w itho u t stopping. Now , what' s so bright and beautiful about that? . . . I take every word, every sentence I speak, and every word you say , too, and quickly lock them up in my literary warehouse--in case they might come in handy sometime. . . . I have no rest from myself. I feel as though I'm devouring my own life, and tha t for the sake of the honey I give to everybody else I strip my best flowers of their pollen , tearing them up, and trainpling on their roots . 148) (S_G , Also like Chekhov, Trigorin complalned bitterly of his

soul's emptiness , saying that he was forced to nourish his art at all costs and ruefully regretted the sacrifice forced upon him.54 He even used Nina, his one possible road to freedom, as material for an all-too true story : "A young girl , li ke you , has lived in a house on the shore of a lake ..., she loves the lake like a sea gull, and she' s as fr ee and happy as a sea gull . Th�n a man comes along, secs her, and having nothing better to do, des troys her" (:1G, 150-1) . It is inter-

es ting that TriBorin , like Chekhov , uses his notebook for rnore

than jus t notetaking; the notebook is a tool by which he can 5 remain detached and escape emotional situations . 5 By busily

occupying himself with jotting down importan t ideas , Trigorin , or Chekhov, can avoid any scene in which he does 11ot wish to partake, for no one would dare disturb his creative flow.

This skepticism and avoidance of all unpleasan tries is

echoed by Lyubov and Chebutykin although in very differen t situations. Lyubov points out the boring reality of life, but she, like Chekhov, believes in , or at leas t hopes for, the future. She replies to Lopahin ' s ram bl ings , "Ins tead of goi n1�

to plays , you should tak e a good look at yourself. ,J us t th ink how dull your life is , and how much nonsense you Lalk !" tCO,

311).

Everything is nonsense to the old skeptic Chebu ty ki11 ; he believes in nothin g and no one an d expects nothing from anyone. Chebutykin has three standard moans of communication :

either (1) things don' t matter, or (2) they're nonsense, or 2tt

(3) he hums or sings nonsensical refrains and ignores th e situation at hand.

It is the dual nature of Chekhov--the skeptic doub ter and the eternal optimist--whlch we see in so many of his roos t prominent characters . They exhibit his good-natured con tempL, which is tempered by his warm-hearLed sympathy , for a person struggl ing against the forces of an unkind universe. ') t L ")

OBJECTIVE BUT S YMPA'rHETIC VIEW OF MA NKIND

Chekhov' s sensibility to the fact that it is one's own fate, plus his mistakes, bound with the threads of one' s environment, education , heredity, and literally thousands of circumstantial happenings which determine the life of a man , 56 is the key to his objectivity. His concern for objeclivity is expressed in a letter to a friend :

•.•to divide men into successful and unsucces sful is to look at human nature from a narrow, preconceived point of view . Are you a success or

not? Am I? . • . What is the criter ion? One must be a god to be able to tell successes fro� failure with out making a mis take .?7

His attitude of sympathy mixed with pity and humor and of con tempt tempered with kindness al lows for his being able to see

. an individual · in his totality' and accept an y shortcomings he might have.

The consciousness that man is crNl Led for great tilinv,s forced Chekhov to deal with everyday pc LLlness in ord er Lo show how incompatible man's daily exis tence is with his i-:1- 58 herent possibilitics . Ile is distressed uecause his hon en L_y compels him to observe that people lJve in a motionless world where they can onl y gaze at and lon� for, but never move to 59 ward , their destination . By their own passivity and irres- olu tion, his characters often destroy one another; tlrnse who are otherwise kind and attentive lose in tcrest in one an other ?E

because they are ab::;or.bed uy their own em otions and probl ems . ()O

He complements this with his pr esentat ion of the complexity and im possib il ity of mutu al understand ing, and with his . per cept ion of man's difficulty in ex pr cs sine all that he thinks

61 an d feels.

Focus in G his a tt en ti on on the j mpo�rnL bi ll ty that man will

62 ever cross the chasm lying between himself an d ot hers, Chekhov realizes that the bitterness of life lies not in any on e par- ticularly sad event, but pr ecisely in the drawn -out, drab, monotonous du ll n ess of ev eryday life. 63 lt is thi:; life th:tt

Chekhov shows us; Jackson expl ains it thus: "Man 's tragedy,

. lies pr imar ily not in any ab solute helpl essne ss before his fat e, but in the fact that he is cont in ually aff irming

64 fate's au tonomy through ab dicat ion of his own responsibility.11

An other reason that the Chekhov ian character cann ot cross the chasm betw een himse lf and others is that he, like mos t pe ople, ten ds to hide his tru e self from others ; one can ob serve this in his characters ohly if he observes very car efully because:

Tchekhov 's characters nev er, of theij own accord, take off their masks for the bene fit of the aud ien ce, but they retain them in exactly the same degr ee as people re tain them in real li fe; that is to say, we somet im es gu ess by a word, a phrase, a gest ure, the hum ming of a tune, or the sme ll in g of a flower, what is going on behind the mask ... He shows us the deli cate 65 webs that reach from soul to soul...

Chekhov demon strates ob je ctively th�oug h hi s character analysis that, while no one character seeks activ ely to destr oy an ot her, it is a self ish interest an d lack of concern for one an oth�r that deepens an othe r's depression, com poun ds hiu g�ief. CONCLUSION

Chekhov's not being a typical , traditional playwri6ht of the turn-of- the-cen tury accounts for much of his Gucccss today. He did not write to please the cri tics or the masses·, but to satisfy that within himself which said he must portray life as it really is.

A large part of this desire came frorn his detached , nci entific trainine as a doctor. First, he observed a patient

(character) and then reported meticulously what he had seen .

He was able to remain as ob jective about his literary charac ters as he was about the real-life pa Li.ents he Ilea.led.

The major difference beLween Chekhov the doctor and

Chekhov the writer is that he could cure his patien ts au a doctor. As a writer, he felt he must diagnose the problern first, then state it precisely , and finally leave the soluti.011 up to the individual reader. As a physician, Chekhov was not a very good surgeon , probably due to the fact tha t he had had very little actual experience, but he became q ui L c skilled al soul surgery in his 1 i tera tu re. Chekhov exposed fo1· us , layer by layer, the problems or sickn esses of his churactel'G until we could see right to the core of the individual . Ilu L, again , Chekhov did not remove the prol>J ern ; he merely exposed it to us in its en tirety. 2H

In exposing the depths of an individual's soul slckncss ,

he showed us th e entire personality of the character-- the bad

as well as the good--and why that individual ac ted as he did.

Chekhov never criticized or accused anyone for his ac tions

because he unders tood both the virtues and the shortcominr,s.

He was also concerned that the ind ividual's problems were

increased by facing an uncaring universe and friend and fam

ily too involved with their own problems to notice an other' s.

Chekhov viewed all this sympa Lhe tJ cally since he be

lieved that it was useless to struggJ.e aeainst one' s envi ron

ment and that most people would rather stay in their miserable,

familiar habitat than face the unknown. Hj s charac ters always

talk about making radical changes in their lives , but never

take a single step forward ; such is the lot of mos t men .

I applaud Chekhov' s keen obse1·vation of human nature and his courage to carefully portray it as he deemed necessary ,

especially in the face of his hand icap, tuberculos is . While,

it seems to me, some of his melancholia does appear in his

writing, he did not doom mankind� Ins tead he maintained higl1

hopes for future generations and believed mankind could attain

them. ) t I '- ·

FOO'rN O'.rES

1Leonid. Grossman , "The Naturalism of Chekhov," in Chekhov : A Collection of Critical Bssays , ed . Hobert Louis ,J ackson "(°Englewood Cliffs , N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc. , 1'}67) , p. 38.

2John Gassner, "The Duality of Chekhov," in Jackson , p. 178.

3Maurice Valency, The Breakinp; Strinr; (New York: Oxford University rress , 19G6) , p. 295 .

4 A. S kaf tymo v, "l'rin c iples of S true tu re ln Chekliov' c Plays ," in Jackson, p. 77.

5Boris Eichenbaum, "Chekhov at Large," in Jackson , p.

6 Grossman , p. 34.

7Helen Muchnic, An lntroduct.i.on to Russ i an Li teratu1·c (New York: E.P. Dutton& Co. , .Lnc ., 19b4) , pp. 1()7-8. 8 Avrahm Yarmolinsky , The Unknown Chekhov (New York : F111J1· & Wagnalls , 1968) , p. 16.

9Eichenbaum , p. 26.

lOn�niel- .Gilles , Observe� Without Il lusion (New York: Funk & Wagnal ls, 1968) , p. 16. ll11Introduction ,11 in Jackson , p. 3. 12 Grossman , p. 44.

13Avrahm Yarmolinsky , The Rus3ian Li terary Imagina tion (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1969), pp. 95-G. 14 Eichenbaum, p. 23. l5 Jackson , p. 2. 16 Ibid.

17Dm itri Chizhevsky , "Chekhov .in the Development of Hus sian Literature ," in Jackson, pp. 59-60. 18Eichenbaum , p. 28. 5U

l9 Ibid.

20Edmund Wilson , ! Window on Hussia (New York : Farrar, Straus an d Girou� , 1972), pp. 55-6.

2 1M. H. Shotton , "Chekhov," in N incteen th-Ccn tury Russ ian Literature , ed. John Fennell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 340-1 . 22 Magarshack, p. 1 32. 2 3David Magars chack, Chekhov: A Life (New York: Grove Press , 1952) , p. 54. 24 w.H. Bruford, Anton Chekhov (London : Bowes & Bowes , 1957) ' p. 4 3 . 25 shotton , p. 341. 6 2 Valency, p. 279.

27Eichenbaum, p. 29. 2 8James H. Brandon , "Towards a Middle-View of Chekhov," Educational Theatre Journal 12 (1960) , 273 . 29 Eichenbaum , p. 22.

30 I b id. , p. 2 5 . 1 3 John Tulloch, Chekhov: A Structural ist Study (New York : Harper & Row Publishers , Inc. , 1980), pp. 55-6. 2 3 Don.ald Rayfield , Chekhov: :£he Evolution of His Ar t (NP\·: York : Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. , 1975) , p. 8. 33Alvin B. Kernan, "Tru th and Dramatic Mod e ln the Modern Theatre : Chekhov, Pirand ello, and Williams ," Modern Drama 1 (1958), 104 .

34 Robert W. Corr i.8an , The Sea (; ull .Ln !J ix of Ch12kho v (New York: Hol t, Rinehart and Winston, lnc. , 19 t2lYy , s Act II, p. 143 . Subsequent quotations from the plays will be ci tcd j n the text.

35valency , p. 146. 6 3 Magarshack, Real Chekhov, p. 67 .

37valency, p. 200 .

38c1ayton A. Hubbs , "Repe ti tion in th e Plays of C.:hekhov," Modern Drama 22 (1979) , 121. 9 3 Magarshack, Heal Chekhov, p. 118. 31

40lbid. , the Dramatis L , p. 243.

41Ibid.

42Ibid. , p. 295 .

4 3Alexander Macdon�ld, "An ton Chekhov: The Phy3i<.:ia11 and Ma j or Writer," American Medical Association .Journal 229 (1974) , 1204 .

44Gassner, p. 177.

45Jackson , p. 2 5. r 6 4 Janko Lavrin , From Puskin to Mayakovsky (London : Sylvan Press Ltd. , 1948) , p. 180

47valency , p. 187.

48Norman Silverstein, "Chekhov' s Cornie Spi ri L and. The Cherry Orcharc\" Modern Drama 1 ( 1958) , 92. 49valency, p. 188.

50Rayfield , p. 6.

51Tulloch , p. 5.

52 valency , pp . 139-40.

53Magarshack, Real Ch e kho v , p. 136.

54val ency, p. 1 39. . 55Ker nan , p. 1 04 . 6 5 Jackson , p. 10.

57Richard Gilman , The Mak ing of Modern Drama (New York : Farrar, Straus , & Giroux;-1974) , p-.-14 1 . 8 5 Eichenbaum , p. 24 . 9 5 Muchnic, p. 225 .

60Geor8ii To vs tonogov, "Chekhov 's ''l'hrce �is terG' at the Gorky Theatre:' Tulane Dram a Hevicw 13, ii \1968) , 149.

61Ibid. , p. 148.

62Bernard Beckerman , "The Artifice o.f 'Reality' in Chek hov and Pinte�' Mod ern Drama 21 \ 1978) , 159-60 .

63skaftymov , p. 77. -z_ ') )•.

64Jackson , p. 12 .

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