'A man cannot reconcile himself to the accomplished fact; neither can
he refuse so to reconcile himself: and there is no third course. Under
such conditions "action" is impossible. He can only fall down and weep
and beat his head against the floor.' So Tchekhov speaks of one of his
heroes; but he might say the same of them all, without exception. The
author takes care to put them in such a situation that only one thing
is left for them,--to fall down and beat their heads against the floor.
With strange, mysterious obstinacy they refuse all the accepted means
of salvation. Nicolai Stepanovich, the old professor in _The Tedious
Story,_ might have attempted to forget himself for a while or to
console himself with memories of the past. But memories only irritate
him. He was once an eminent scholar: now he cannot work. Once he was
able to hold the attention of his audience for two hours on end; now
he cannot do it even for a quarter of an hour. He used to have friends
and comrades, he used to love his pupils and assistants, his wife
and children; now he cannot concern himself with any one. If people
do arouse any feelings at all within him, then they are only feelings
of hatred, malice and envy. He has to confess it to himself with
the truthfulness which came to him--he knows not why nor whence--in
place of the old diplomatic skill, possessed by all clever and normal
men, whereby he saw and said only that which makes for decent human
relations and healthy states of mind. Now everything which he sees or
thinks only serves to poison, in himself and others, the few joys which
adorn human life. With a certainty which he never attained on the best
days and hours of his old theoretical research, he feels that he is
become a criminal, having committed no crime. All that he was engaged
in before was good, necessary, and useful. He tells you of his past,
and you can see that he was always right and ready at any moment of
the day or the night to answer the severest judge who should examine
not only his actions, but his thoughts as well. Now not only would an
outsider condemn him, he condemns himself. He confesses openly that he
is all compact of envy and hatred.
'The best and most sacred right of kings,' he says, 'is the right to
pardon. And I have always felt myself a king so long as I used this
right prodigally. I never judged, I was compassionate, I pardoned every
one right and left.... But now I am king no more. There's something
going on in me which belongs only to slaves. Day and night evil
thoughts roam about in my head, and feelings which I never knew before
have made their home in my soul. I hate and despise; I'm exasperated,
disturbed, and afraid. I've become strict beyond measure, exacting,
unkind and suspicious.... What does it all mean? If my new thoughts and
feelings come from a change of my convictions, where could the change
come from? Has the world grown worse and I better, or was I blind and
indifferent before? But if the change is due to the general decline
of my physical and mental powers--I am sick and losing weight every
day--then I am in a pitiable position. It means that my new thoughts
are abnormal and unhealthy, that I must be ashamed of them and consider
them valueless....
The question is asked by the old professor on the point of death, and
in his person by Tchekhov himself. Which is better, to be a king, or an
old, envious, malicious 'toad,' as he calls himself elsewhere? There
is no denying the originality of the question. In the words above you
feel the price which Tchekhov had to pay for his originality, and with
how great joy he would have exchanged all his original thoughts--at
the moment when his 'new' point of view had become clear to him--for
the most ordinary, banal capacity for benevolence. He has, no doubt
felt that his way of thinking is pitiable, shameful and disgusting.
His moods revolt him no less than his appearance, which he describes
in the following lines: '... I am a man of sixty-two, with a bald
head, false teeth and an incurable tic. My name is as brilliant and
prepossessing, as I myself am dull and ugly. My head and hands tremble
from weakness; my neck, like that of one of Turgeniev's heroines,
resembles the handle of a counter-bass; my chest is hollow and my
back narrow. When I speak or read my mouth twists, and when I smile
my whole face is covered with senile, deathly wrinkles.' Unpleasant
face, unpleasant moods! Let the most sweet natures and compassionate
person but give a side-glance at such a monster, and despite himself
a cruel thought would awaken in him: that he should lose no time in
killing, in utterly destroying this pitiful and disgusting vermin, or
if the laws forbid recourse to such strong measures, at least in hiding
him as far as possible from human eyes, in some prison or hospital
or asylum. These are measures of suppression sanctioned, I believe,
not only by legislation, but by eternal morality as well. But here
you encounter resistance of a particular kind. Physical strength to
struggle with the warders, executioners, attendants, moralists--the old
professor has none; a little child could knock him down. Persuasion
and prayer, he knows well, will avail him nothing. So he strikes out
in despair: he begins to cry over all the world in a terrible, wild,
heartrending voice about some rights of his: '... I have a passionate
and hysterical desire to stretch out my hands and moan aloud. I want to
cry out that fate has doomed me, a famous man, to death; that in some
six months here in the auditorium another will be master. I want to cry
out that I am poisoned; that new ideas that I did not know before have
poisoned the last days of my life, and sting my brain incessantly like
mosquitoes. At that moment my position seems so terrible to me that
I want all my students to be terrified, to jump from their seats and
rush panic-stricken to the door, shrieking in despair.' The professor's
arguments will hardly move any one. Indeed I do not know if there is
any argument in those words. But this awful, inhuman moan.... Imagine
the picture: a bald, ugly old man, with trembling hands, and twisted
mouth, and skinny neck, eyes mad with fear, wallowing like a beast on
the ground and wailing, wailing, wailing.... What does he want? He had
lived a long and interesting life; now he had only to round it off
nicely, with all possible calm, quietly and solemnly to take leave of
this earthly existence. Instead he rends himself, and flings himself
about, calls almost the whole universe to judgment, and clutches
convulsively at the few days left to him. And Tchekhov--what did
Tchekhov do? Instead of passing by on the other side, he supports the
prodigious monster, devotes pages and pages to the 'experiences of his
soul,' and gradually brings the reader to a point at which, instead of
a natural and lawful sense of indignation, unprofitable and dangerous
sympathies for the decomposing, decaying creature are awakened in
his heart. But every one knows that it is impossible to _help_ the
professor; and if it is impossible to help, then it follows we must
forget. That is as plain as _a b c._ What use or what meaning could
there be in the endless picturing--daubing, as Tolstoi would say--of
the intolerable pains of the agony which inevitably leads to death?
If the professor's 'new' thoughts and feelings shone bright with
beauty, nobility or heroism, the case would be different. The reader
could learn something from it. But Tchekhov's story shows that these
qualities belonged to his hero's old thoughts. Now that his illness has
begun, there has sprung up within him a revulsion from everything which
even remotely resembles a lofty feeling. When his pupil Katy turns to
him for advice what she should do, the famous scholar, the friend of
Pirogov, Kavelin and Nekrassov, who had taught so many generations
of young men, does not know what to answer. Absurdly he chooses from
his memory a whole series of pleasant-sounding words; but they have
lost all meaning for him. What answer shall he give? he asks himself.
'It is easy to say, Work, or divide your property among the poor, or
know yourself, and because it is easy, I do not know what to answer.'
Katy, still young, healthy and beautiful, has by Tchekhov's offices
fallen like the professor into a trap from which no human power can
deliver her. From the moment that she knew hopelessness, she had won
all the author's sympathy. While a person is settled to some work,
while he has a future of some kind before him, Tchekhov is utterly
indifferent to him. If he does describe him, then he usually does it
hastily and in a tone of scornful irony. But when he is entangled, and
so entangled that he cannot be disentangled by any means, then Tchekhov
begins to wake up. Colour, energy, creative force, inspiration make
their appearance. Therein perhaps lies the secret of his political
indifferentism. Notwithstanding all his distrust of projects for a
brighter future, Tchekhov like Dostoevsky was evidently not wholly
convinced that social reforms and social science were important.
However difficult the social question may be, still it may be solved.
Some day, perhaps people will so arrange themselves on the earth as
to live and die without suffering: further than that ideal humanity
cannot go. Perhaps the authors of stout volumes on Progress do guess
and foresee something. But just for that reason their work is alien to
Tchekhov. At first by instinct, then consciously, he was attracted to
problems which are by essence insoluble like that presented in _The
Tedious Story_: there you have helplessness, sickness, the prospect of
inevitable death, and no hope whatever to change the situation by a
hair. This infatuation, whether conscious or instinctive, clearly runs
counter to the demands of common sense and normal will. But there is
nothing else to expect from Tchekhov, an overstrained man. Every one
knows, or has heard, of hopelessness. On every side, before our very
eyes, are happening terrible and intolerable tragedies, and if every
doomed man were to raise such an awful alarm about his destruction as
Nicolai Stepanovich, life would become an inferno; Nicolai Stepanovich
must not cry his sufferings aloud over the world, but be careful to
trouble people as little as possible. And Tchekhov should have assisted
this reputable endeavour by every means in his power. As though there
were not thousands of tedious stories in the world--they cannot be
counted! And above all stories of the kind that Tchekhov tells should
be hidden with special care from human eyes. We have here to do with
the decomposition of a living organism. What should we say to a man
who would prevent corpses from being buried, and would dig decaying
bodies from the grave, even though it were on the ground, or rather on
the pretext, that they were the bodies of his intimate friends, even
famous men of reputation and genius? Such an occupation would rouse
in a normal and healthy mind nothing but disgust and terror. Once upon
a time, according to popular superstition, sorcerers, necromancers
and wizards kept company with the dead, and found a certain pleasure
or even a real satisfaction in that ghastly occupation. But they
generally hid themselves away from mankind in forests and caves, or
betook themselves to deserts where they might in isolation surrender
themselves to their unnatural inclinations; and if their deeds were
eventually brought to light, healthy men requited them with the stake,
the gallows, and the rack. The worst kind of that which is called
evil, as a rule, had for its source and origin an interest and taste
for carrion. Man forgave every crime--cruelty, violence, murder; but
he never forgave the unmotived love of death and the seeking of its
secret. In this matter modern times, being free from prejudices, have
advanced little from the Middle Ages. Perhaps the only difference is
that we, engaged in practical affairs, have lost the natural _flair_
for good and evil. Theoretically we are even convinced that in our time
there are not and cannot be wizards and necromancers. Our confidence
and carelessness in this reached such a point, that almost everybody
saw even in Dostoevsky only an artist and a publicist, and seriously
discussed with him whether the Russian peasant needed to be flogged and
whether we ought to lay hands on Constantinople.
Mihailovsky alone vaguely conjectured what it all might be when he
called the author of _The Brothers Karamazov_ a 'treasure-digger.'
I say he 'dimly conjectured, because I think that the deceased
critic made the remark partly in allegory, even in joke. But none of
Dostoevsky's other critics made, even by accident, a truer slip of the
pen. Tchekhov, too, was a 'treasure-digger,' a sorcerer, a necromancer,
an adept in the black art; and this explains his singular infatuation
for death, decay and hopelessness.
Tchekhov was not of course the only writer to make death the subject
of his works. But not the theme is important but the manner of its
treatment. Tchekhov understands that. 'In all the thoughts, feelings,
and ideas,' he says, '[which] I form about anything, there is wanting
the something universal which could bind all these together in one
whole. Each feeling and each thought lives detached in me, and in all
my opinions about science, the theatre, literature, and my pupils,
and in all the little pictures which my imagination paints, not even
the most cunning analyst will discover what is called the general
idea, or the god of the living man. And if this is not there, then
nothing is there. In poverty such as this, a serious infirmity, fear
of death, influence of circumstances and people would have been
enough to over-throw and shatter all that I formerly considered as my
conception of the world, and all wherein I saw the meaning and joy of
my life....' In these words one of the 'newest' of Tchekhov's ideas
finds expression, one by which the whole of his subsequent creation is
defined. It is expressed in a modest, apologetic form: a man confesses
that he is unable to subordinate his thoughts to a higher idea, and
in that inability he sees his weakness. This was enough to avert from
him to some extent the thunders of criticism and the judgment of
public opinion. We readily forgive the repentant sinner! But it is an
unprofitable clemency: to expiate one's guilt, it is not enough to
confess it. What was the good of Tchekhov's putting on sackcloth; and
ashes and publicly confessing his guilt, if he was inwardly unchanged?
If, while his words acknowledged the general idea as god (without a
capital, indeed), he did nothing whatever for it? In words he burns
incense to god, in deed he curses him. Before his disease a conception
of the world brought him happiness, now it had shattered into
fragments. Is it not natural to ask whether the conception actually did
ever bring him happiness? Perhaps the happiness had its own independent
origin, and the conception was invited only as a general to a wedding,
for outward show, and never played any essential part. Tchekhov tells
us circumstantially what joys the professor found in his scientific
work, his lectures to the students, his family, and in a good dinner.
In all these were present together the conception of the world and
the idea, and they did not take away from, but as it were embellished
life; so that it seemed that he was working for the ideal, as well
as creating a family and dining. But now, when for the same ideal's
sake he has to remain inactive, to suffer, to remain awake of nights,
to swallow with effort food that has become loathsome to him--the
conception of the world is shattered into fragments! And it amounts to
this, that a conception with a dinner is right, and a dinner without a
conception equally right--this needs no argument--and a conception _an
und für sich_ is of no value whatever. Here is the essence of the words
quoted from Tchekhov. He confesses with horror the presence within him
of that 'new' idea. It seems to him that he alone of all men is so weak
and insignificant, that the others ... well, they need only ideals
and conceptions. And so it is, surely, if we may believe what people
write in books. Tchekhov plagues, tortures and worries himself in every
possible way, but he can alter nothing; nay worse, conceptions and
ideas, towards which a great many people behave quite carelessly--after
all, these innocent things do not merit any other attitude--in Tchekhov
become the objects of bitter, inexorable, and merciless hatred. He
cannot free himself at one single stroke from the power of ideas:
therefore he begins a long, slow and stubborn war, I would call it
a guerilla war, against the tyrant who had enslaved him. The whole
history and the separate episodes of his struggle are of absorbing
interest, because the most conspicuous representatives of literature
have hitherto been convinced that ideas have a magical power. What
are the majority of writers doing but constructing conceptions of the
world--and believing that they are engaged in a work of extraordinary
importance and sanctity? Tchekhov offended very many literary men. If
his punishment was comparatively slight, that was because he was very
cautious, and waged war with the air of bringing tribute to the enemy,
and secondly, because to talent much is forgiven.