Part 3

The content of _The Tedious Story_ thus reduces to the fact that the professor, expressing his 'new' thoughts, in essence declares that he finds it impossible to acknowledge the power of the 'idea' over himself, or conscientiously to fulfil that which men consider the supreme purpose, and in the service whereof they see the mission, the sacred mission of man. 'God be my judge, I haven't courage enough to act according to my conscience,' such is the only answer which Tchekhov finds in his soul to all demands for a 'conception.' This attitude towards 'conceptions' becomes second nature with Tchekhov. A conception makes demands; a man acknowledges the justice of these demands and methodically satisfies none of them. Moreover, the justice of the demands meets with less and less acknowledgment from him. In _The Tedious Story_ the idea still judges the man and tortures him with the mercilessness peculiar to all things inanimate. Exactly like a splinter stuck into a living body, the idea, alien and hostile, mercilessly performs its high mission, until at length the man firmly resolves to draw the splinter out of his flesh, however painful that difficult operation may be. In _Ivanov_ the rôle of the idea is already changed. There not the idea persecutes Tchekhov, but Tchekhov the idea, and with the subtlest division and contempt. The voice of the living nature rises above the artificial habits of civilisation. True, the struggle still continues, if you will, with alternating fortunes. But the old humility is no more. More and more Tchekhov emancipates himself from old prejudices and goes--he himself could hardly say whither, were he asked. But he prefers to remain without an answer, rather than to accept any of the traditional answers. 'I know quite well I have no more than six months to live; and it would seem that now I ought to be mainly occupied with questions of the darkness beyond the grave, and the visions which will visit my sleep in the earth. But somehow my soul is not curious of these questions, though my mind grants every atom of their importance.' In contrast to the habits of the past, reason is once more pushed out of the door with all due respect, while its rights are handed over to the 'soul,' to the dark, vague aspiration which Tchekhov by instinct trusts more than the bright, clear consciousness which beforehand determines the beyond, now that he stands before the fatal pale which divides man from the eternal mystery. Is scientific philosophy indignant? Is Tchekhov undermining its surest foundations? But he is an overstrained, abnormal man. Certainly you are not bound to listen to him; but once you have decided to do so then you must be prepared for anything. A normal person, even though he be a metaphysician of the extremest ethereal brand, always adjusts his theories to the requirements of the moment; he destroys only to build up from the old material once more. This is the reason why material never fails him. Obedient to the fundamental law of human nature, long since noted and formulated by the wise, he is content to confine himself to the modest part of a seeker after forms. Out of iron, which he finds in nature ready to his hand, he forges a sword or a plough, a lance or a sickle. The idea of creating out of a void hardly even enters his mind. But Tchekhov's heroes, persons abnormal _par excellence,_ are faced with this abnormal and dreadful necessity. Before them always lies hopelessness, helplessness, the utter impossibility of any action whatsoever. And yet they live on, they do not die. A strange question, and one of extraordinary moment, here suggests itself. I said that it was foreign to human nature to create out of a void. Yet nature often deprives man of ready material, while at the same time she demands imperatively that he should create. Does this mean that nature contradicts herself, or that she perverts her creatures? Is it not more correct to admit that the conception of perversion is of purely human origin. Perhaps nature is much more economical and wise than our wisdom, and maybe we should discover much more if instead of dividing people into necessary and superfluous, useful and noxious, good and bad, we suppressed the tendency to subjective valuation in ourselves and endeavoured with greater confidence to accept her creations? Otherwise you come immediately--to 'the evil gleam,' 'treasure-digging,' sorcery and black magic--and a wall is raised between men which neither logical argument nor even a battery of artillery can break down. I hardly dare hope that this consideration will appear convincing to those who are used to maintaining the norm; and it is probably unnecessary that the notion of the great opposition of good and bad which is alive among men should die away, just as it is unnecessary that children should be born with the experience of men, or that red cheeks and curly hair should vanish from the earth. At any rate it is impossible. The world has many centuries to its reckoning, many nations have lived and died upon the earth, yet as far as we know from the books and traditions that have survived to us, the dispute between good and evil was never hushed. And it always so happened that good was not afraid of the light of day, and good men lived a united, social life; while evil hid itself in darkness, and the wicked always stood alone. Nor could it have been otherwise.

All Tchekhov's heroes fear the light. They are lonely. They are ashamed of their hopelessness, and they know that men cannot help them. They go somewhere, perhaps even forward, but they call to no one to follow. All things are taken from them: they must create everything anew. Thence most probably is derived the unconcealed contempt with which they behave to the most precious products of common human creativeness. On whatever subject you begin to talk with a Tchekhov hero he has one reply to everything: _Nobody can teach me anything._ You offer him a new conception of the world: already in your very first words he feels that they all reduce to an attempt to lay the old bricks and stones over again, and he turns from you with impatience, and often with rudeness. Tchekhov is an extremely cautious writer. He fears and takes into account public opinion. Yet how unconcealed is the aversion he displays to accepted ideas and conceptions of the world. In _The Tedious Story,_ he at any rate preserves the tone and attitude of outward obedience. Later he throws aside all precautions, and instead of reproaching himself for his inability to submit to the general idea, openly rebels against it and jeers at it. In _Ivanov_ it already is sufficiently expressed; there was reason for the outburst of indignation which this play provoked in its day. Ivanov, I have already said, is a dead man. The only thing the artist can do with him is to bury him decently, that is, to praise his past, pity his present, and then, in order to mitigate the cheerless impression produced by death, to invite the general idea to the funeral. He might recall the universal problems of humanity in any one of the many stereotyped forms, and thus the difficult case which seemed insoluble would be removed. Together with Ivanov's death he should portray a bright young life, full of promise, and the impression of death and destruction would lose all its sting and bitterness. Tchekhov does just the opposite. Instead of endowing youth and ideals with power over destruction and death, as all philosophical systems and many works of art had done, he ostentatiously makes the good-for-nothing wreck Ivanov the centre of all events. Side by side with Ivanov there are young lives, and the idea is also given her representatives. But the young Sasha, a wonderful and charming girl, who falls utterly in love with the broken hero, not only does not save her lover, but herself perishes under the burden of the impossible task. And the idea? It is enough to recall the figure of Doctor Lvov alone, whom Tchekhov entrusted with the responsible rôle of a representative of the all-powerful idea, and you will at once perceive that he considers himself not as subject and vassal, but as the bitterest enemy of the idea. The moment Doctor Lvov opens his mouth, all the characters, as though acting on a previous agreement, vie with each other in their haste to interrupt him in the most insulting way, by jests, threats, and almost by smacks in the face. But the doctor fulfils his duties as a representative of the great power with no less skill and conscientiousness than his predecessors--Starodoum[1] and the other reputable heroes of the old drama. He champions the wronged, seeks to restore rights that have been trodden underfoot, sets himself dead against injustice. Has he stepped beyond the limits of his plenipotentiary powers? Of course not; but where Ivanovs and hopelessness reign there is not and cannot be room for the idea.

They cannot possibly live together. And the eyes of the reader, who is accustomed to think that every kingdom may fall and perish, yet the kingdom of the idea stands firm _in saecula saeculorum,_ behold a spectacle unheard of: the idea dethroned by a helpless, broken, good-for-nothing man! What is there that Ivanov does not say? In the very first act he fires off a tremendous tirade, not at a chance comer, but at the incarnate idea--Starodoum-Lvov. 'I have the right to give you advice. Don't you marry a Jewess, or an abnormal, or a blue-stocking. Choose something ordinary, greyish, without any bright colours or superfluous shades. Make it a principle to build your life of _clichés._ The more grey and monotonous the background, the better. My dear man, don't fight thousands single-handed, don't tilt at windmills, don't run your head against the wall. God save you from all kinds of Back-to-the-Landers' advanced doctrines, passionate speeches.... Shut yourself tight in your own shell, and do the tiny little work set you by God.... It's cosier, honester, and healthier.'

Doctor Lvov, the representative of the all-powerful, sovereign idea, feels that his sovereign's majesty is injured, that to suffer such an offence really means to abdicate the throne. Surely Ivanov was a vassal, and so he must remain. How dare he let his tongue advise, how dare he raise his voice when it is his part to listen reverently, and to obey in silent resignation? This is rank rebellion! Lvov attempts to draw himself up to his full height and answer the arrogant rebel with dignity. Nothing comes of it. In a weak, trembling voice he mutters the accustomed words, which but lately had invincible power. But they do not produce their customary effect. Their virtue is departed. Whither? Lvov dares not own it even to himself. But it is no longer a secret to any one. Whatever mean and ugly things Ivanov may have done--Tchekhov is not close-fisted in this matter: in his hero's conduct-book are written all manner of offences; almost to the deliberate murder of a woman devoted to him--it is to him and not to Lvov that public opinion bows. Ivanov is the spirit of destruction, rude, violent, pitiless, sticking at nothing: yet the word 'scoundrel,' which the doctor tears out of himself with a painful effort and hurls at him, does not stick to him. He is somehow right, with his own peculiar right, to others inconceivable, yet still, if we may believe Tchekhov, incontestable. Sasha, a creature of youth and insight and talent, passes by the honest Starodoum-Lvov unheeding, on her way to render worship to him. The whole play is based on that. It is true, Ivanov in the end shoots himself, and that may, if you like, give you a formal ground for believing that the final victory remained with Lvov. And Tchekhov did well to end the drama in this way--it could not be spun out to infinity. It would have been no easy matter to tell the whole of Ivanov's history. Tchekhov went on writing for fifteen years after, all the time telling the unfinished story, yet even then he had to break it off without reaching the end....

It would show small understanding of Tchekhov to take it into one's head to interpret Ivanov's words to Lvov as meaning that Tchekhov, like the Tolstoi of the _War and Peace_ period, saw his ideal in the everyday arrangement of life. Tchekhov was only fighting against the idea, and he said to it the most abusive thing that entered his head. For what can be more insulting to the idea than to be forced to listen to the praise of everyday life? But when the opportunity came his way, Tchekhov could describe everyday life with equal venom. The story, _The Teacher of Literature,_ may serve as an example. The teacher lives entirely by Ivanov's prescription. He has his job, and his wife--neither Jewess nor abnormal, nor blue-stocking--and a home that fits like a shell...; but all this does not prevent Tchekhov from driving the poor teacher by slow degrees into the usual trap, and bringing him to a condition wherein it is left to him only 'to fall down and weep, and beat his head against the floor.' Tchekhov had no 'ideal,' not even the ideal of 'everyday life' which Tolstoi glorified with such inimitable and incomparable mastery in his early works. An ideal presupposes submission, the voluntary denial of one's own right to independence, freedom and power; and demands of this kind, even a hint of such demands, roused in Tchekhov all that force of disgust and repulsion of which he alone was capable.

[Footnote 1: A hero from Fon-Vizin's play _The Minor._ Starodoum is a _raisonneur,_ a 'positive' type, always uttering truisms.]

V

Thus the real, the only hero of Tchekhov, is the hopeless man. He has absolutely no _action_ left for him in life, save to beat his head against the stones. It is not surprising that such a man should be intolerable to his neighbours. Everywhere he brings death and destruction with him. He himself is aware of it, but he has not the power to go apart from men. With all his soul he endeavours to tear himself out of his horrible condition. Above all he is attracted to fresh, young, untouched beings; with their help he hopes to recover his right to life which he has lost. The hope is vain. The beginning of decay always appears, all-conquering, and at the end Tchekhov's hero is left to himself alone. He has nothing, he must create everything for himself. And this 'creation out of the void,' or more truly the possibility of this creation, is the only problem which can occupy and inspire Tchekhov. When he has stripped his hero of the last shred, when nothing is left for him but to beat his head against the wall, Tchekhov begins to feel something like satisfaction, a strange fire lights in his burnt-out eyes, a fire which Mihailovsky did not call 'evil' in vain.

Creation out of the void! Is not this task beyond the limit of human powers, of human _rights_? Mihailovsky obviously had one straight answer to the question.... As for Tchekhov himself, if the question were put to him in such a deliberately definite form, he would probably be unable to answer, although he was continually engaged in the activity, or more properly, because he was continually so engaged. Without fear of mistake, one may say that the people who answer the question without hesitation in either sense have never come near to it, or to any of the so-called ultimate questions of life. Hesitation is a necessary and integral element in the judgment of those men whom Fate has brought near to false problems. How Tchekhov's hand trembled while he wrote the concluding lines of his _Tedious Story_! The professor's pupil--the being nearest and dearest to him, but like himself, for all her youth, overstrained and bereft of all hope--has come to Kharkov to seek his advice. The following conversation takes place:

"Nicolai Stepanich!" she says, growing pale and pressing her hands to her breast. "Nicolai Stepanich! I can't go on like this any longer. For God's sake tell me now, immediately. What shall I do? Tell me, what shall I do?"

"What can I say? I am beaten. I can say nothing."

"But tell me, I implore you," she continues, out of breath and trembling all over her body. "I swear to you, I can't go on like this any longer. I haven't the strength."

She drops into a chair and begins to sob. She throws her head back, wrings her hands, stamps with her feet; her hat falls from her head and dangles by its string, her hair is loosened.

"Help me, help," she implores. "I can't bear it any more."

"There's nothing that I can say to you, Katy," I say.

"Help me," she sobs, seizing my hand and kissing it. "You 're my father, my only friend. You're wise and learned, and you've lived long I You were a teacher. Tell me what to do."

'"Upon my conscience, Katy, I do not know."

'I am bewildered and surprised, stirred by her sobbing, and I can hardly stand upright.

'"Let's have some breakfast, Katy," I say with a constrained smile.

'Instantly I add in a sinking voice: "I shall be dead soon, Katy...."

'"Only one word, only one word," she weeps and stretches out her hands to me. "What shall I do?..."'

But the professor has not the word to give. He turns the conversation to the weather, Kharkov and other indifferent matters. Katy gets up and holds out her hand to him, without looking at him. 'I want to ask her,' he concludes his story. '"So it means you won't be at my funeral?" But she does not look at me; her hand is cold and like a stranger's ... I escort her to the door in silence.... She goes out of my room and walks down the long passage, without looking back. She knows that my eyes are following her, and probably on the landing she will look back. No, she did not look back. The black dress showed for the last time, her steps were stilled.... Good-bye, my treasure!...'

The only answer which the wise, educated, long-lived Nicolai Stepanovich, a teacher all his life, can give to Katy's question is, 'I don't know.' There is not, in all his great experience of the past, a single method, rule, or suggestion, which might apply, even in the smallest degree, to the wild incongruity of the new conditions of Katy's life and his own. Katy can live thus no longer; neither can he himself continue to endure his disgusting and shameful helplessness. They both, old and young, with their whole hearts desire to support each other; they can between them find no way. To her question: 'What shall I do?' he replied: 'I shall soon be dead.' To his 'I shall soon be dead' she answers with wild sobbing, wringing her hands, and absurdly repeating the same words over and over again. It would have been better to have asked no question, not to have begun that frank conversation of souls. But they do not yet understand that. In their old life talk would bring them relief and frank confession, intimacy. But now, after such a meeting they can suffer each other no longer. Katy leaves the old professor, her foster-father, her true father and friend, in the knowledge that he has become a stranger to her. She did not even turn round towards him as she went away. Both felt that nothing remained save to beat their heads against the wall. Therein each acts at his own peril, and there can be no dreaming of a consoling union of souls.

VI

Tchekhov knew what conclusions he had reached in _The Tedious Story_ and _Ivanov._ Some of his critics also knew, and told him so. I cannot venture to say what was the cause--whether fear of public opinion, or his horror at his own discoveries, or both together--but evidently there came a moment to Tchekhov when he decided at all costs to surrender his position and retreat. The fruit of this decision was _Ward No. 6._ In this story the hero of the drama is the same familiar Tchekhov character, the doctor. The setting, too, is quite the usual one, though changed to a slight extent. Nothing in particular has occurred in the doctor's life. He happened to come to an out-of-the-way place in the provinces, and gradually, by continually avoiding life and people, he reached a condition of utter will-lessness, which he represented to himself as the ideal of human happiness. He is indifferent to everything, beginning with his hospital, where he can hardly ever be found, where under the reign of the drunken brute of an assistant the patients are swindled and neglected.

In the mental ward reigns a porter who is a discharged soldier: he punches his restless patients into shape. The doctor does not care, as though he were living in some distant other world, and does not understand what is going on before his very eyes. He happens to enter his ward and to have a conversation with one of his patients. He listens quietly to him; but his answer is words instead of deeds. He tries to show his lunatic acquaintance that external influences cannot affect us in any way at all. The lunatic does not agree, becomes impertinent, presents objections, in which, as in the thoughts of many lunatics, nonsensical assertions are mixed with very profound remarks. Indeed, there is so little nonsense that from the conversation you would hardly imagine that you have to do with a lunatic. The doctor is delighted with his new friend, but does nothing whatsoever to make him more comfortable. The patient is still under the porter's thumb as he used to be, and the porter gives him a thrashing on the least provocation. The patient, the doctor, the people round, the whole setting of the hospital and the doctor's rooms, are described with wonderful talent. Everything induces you to make absolutely no resistance and to become fatalistically indifferent:--let them get drunk, let them fight, let them thieve, let them be brutal--what does it matter! Evidently it is so predestined by the supreme council of nature. The philosophy of inactivity which the doctor professes is as it were prompted and whispered by the immutable laws of human existence. Apparently there is no force which may tear one from its power. So far everything is more or less in the Tchekhov style. But the end is completely different. By the intrigues of his colleague, the doctor himself is taken as a patient into the mental ward. He is deprived of freedom, shut up in a wing of the hospital, and even thrashed, thrashed by the same porter whose behaviour he had taught his lunatic acquaintance to accept, thrashed before his acquaintance's very eyes. The doctor instantly awakens as though out of a dream. A fierce desire to struggle and to protest manifests itself in him. True, at this moment he dies; but the idea is triumphant, still. The critics could consider themselves quite satisfied. Tchekhov had openly repented and renounced the theory of non-resistance; and, I believe, _Ward No. 6_ met with a sympathetic reception at the time. In passing I would say that the doctor dies very beautifully: in his last moments he sees a herd of deer....