He rather contorted himself when he wrote to old Grigorovich on February 12 about a story of Grigorovich’s that he had just read in the Petersburg Gazette, “Karelin’s Dream” (a reviewer had called it “irreproachable”).6 “Karelin’s Dream” was presented as a section of a novel, Petersburg of Past Time, but Grigorovich never completed the novel. There are no English translations of “Karelin’s Dream,” so (reminding myself that this is one of the reasons I learned Russian), I read the excerpt that Chekhov had read and began a makeshift translation.
Chekhov’s restrained, all-too-careful questioning observations on it suggest that Grigorovich’s pre-cinematic cinematic representations of Karelin’s dream made Chekhov wonder if he himself was representing dreams correctly. Because if what Grigorovich had written was right and true to actual dreams, then Chekhov’s dreams were not. The critic Gleb Struve notes that in the midst of “Karelin’s Dream,” “the reader almost forgets that all this is supposed to be happening in a dream.”7 In the letter, Chekhov ventured into a discussion of dreams, an area where his own representations, from which he demanded faithfulness to psychology and physiology, excelled.
Chekhov dashed off letters, but he didn’t dash off this one; he made himself copy it over from a rough, heavily edited draft.8 Chekhov dipped a toe in and then splashed about:
I have just read “Karelin’s Dream,” and I am very much interested to know how far the dream you describe really is a dream.9
The essence of Chekhov’s criticism is there: You call this a “dream,” but is it?
I think your description of the workings of the brain and of the general feeling of a person who is asleep is physiologically correct and remarkably artistic.
“Remarkably artistic” is his acknowledgment of Grigorovich’s effort to make it so. But Chekhov does not as a rule praise attempts to make writing look artistic. Grigorovich might have been vain, but I believe he would have understood this as criticism. Chekhov makes a plainer compliment: “the sensation of cold is given by you with remarkable subtlety.”
Maybe Chekhov was indicating this next passage, which to my mind is excessive and literary rather than “subtle”:
The wind increased and began tearing unbearably at my face. It was so cold, so unbearably cold, that it seemed all of the Arctic Ocean had moved from its place, moving and remaining there, somewhere beyond Vasilevsky Island. I finally came out from under the collar of my coat. In a moment, lifting my eyelids, I saw to my right the statue of Peter. The rider and the horse under him running so fast on the cliff, it seemed frozen in granite; the very cliff seemed to me frozen to the depth of its heart. On the outside of the statue, in the simple expanse with the covered bronze shell of the horse and rider, there was a thick layer of icy needles; on the outside, on the protruding parts of the statue, the bronze shone with a cold gloss […]
Chekhov was very much interested in an individual’s experience of dreaming, but he doesn’t assert rank or privilege over Grigorovich on the basis of his medical knowledge. Instead, he makes it very personal and as usual is very particular:
When at night the quilt falls off I begin to dream of huge slippery stones, of cold autumnal water, naked banks—and all this dim, misty, without a patch of blue sky; sad and dejected like one who has lost his way, I look at the stones and feel that for some reason I cannot avoid crossing a deep river; I see then small tugs that drag huge barges, floating beams…. All this is infinitely gray, damp, and dismal. When I run from the river I come across the fallen cemetery gates, funerals, my schoolteachers…. And all the time I am cold through and through with that oppressive nightmare-like cold which is impossible in waking life, and which is only felt by those who are asleep. The first pages of “Karelin’s Dream” vividly brought it to my memory—especially the first half of page five, where you speak of the cold and loneliness of the grave.
In “Karelin’s Dream,” Grigorovich muddies the actual dreamlike core of the dream. In contrast, to clarify the point for himself at least, Chekhov returns to unusually personal experiences:
One does dream of people, and always of unpleasant ones…. I, for instance, when I feel cold, always dream of my teacher of scripture, a learned priest of imposing appearance, who insulted my mother when I was a little boy; I dream of vindictive, implacable, intriguing people, smiling with spiteful glee—such as one can never see in waking life. The laughter at the carriage window is a characteristic symptom of Karelin’s nightmare. When in dreams one feels the presence of some evil will, the inevitable ruin brought about by some outside force, one always hears something like such laughter…. One dreams of people one loves, too, but they generally appear to suffer together with the dreamer.
Chekhov is now sharing something never elsewhere revealed about his personal and domestic life:
But when my body gets accustomed to the cold, or one of my family covers me up, the sensation of cold, of loneliness, and of an oppressive evil will, gradually disappears….
This midwinter, who came in and covered chilly Anton? Mama? Maria? Mikhail?
With the returning warmth I begin to feel that I walk on soft carpets or on grass, I see sunshine, women, children…. The pictures change gradually, but more rapidly than they do in waking life, so that on awaking it is difficult to remember the transitions from one scene to another.
He was laying bare the kinds of particular experiences he only usually described in fiction. Chekhov did not often describe his personal experiences in his letters with the precision that he used in the fiction.
Having ventured far into a critical discussion of Grigorovich’s story, he returned to humble mode:
Forgive me, I so like your story that I am ready to write you a dozen sheets, though I know I can tell you nothing new or good…. I restrain myself and am silent, fearing to bore you and to say something silly. I will say once more that your story is magnificent. […] Hard as I tried I could detect only two small blots, even those are rather farfetched! (1) the characteristics of the people interrupt the picture of the dream and give the impression of explanation notes, which in gardens botanists nail on trees and spoil the scenery;10 (2) at the beginning of the story the feeling of cold is soon blunted in the reader and becomes too usual, owing to the frequent repetition of the word “cold.”
There is nothing else I could find, and I feel that as one is always feeling the need of refreshing models, “Karelin’s Dream” is a splendid event in my existence as an author.
There is more feeling of apology in that sentence than praise. It’s as if the more Chekhov looked and wrote about the story, the less satisfactory it became.
In further apology and to assure Grigorovich that he was not asserting any superiority of artistic judgment, Chekhov defamed himself:
There is little good I can say about myself. I write not what I want to be writing, and I have not enough energy or solitude to write as you advised me…. There are many good subjects jostling in my head—and that is all. I am sustained by hopes of the future, and watch the present slip fruitlessly away.
Forgive this long letter, and accept the sincere good wishes of your devoted [signature]
Chekhov, the greater artist by a mile and a half, could only defer to Grigorovich on the basis of age and prestige. He would eventually resent the crouching that he was expected to do. Two years later he would write to Suvorin: “I am very fond of Grigorovich, but I do not believe that he really is anxious about me. He is a tendentious writer himself and only pretends to be an enemy of tendentiousness. I can’t help thinking that he is terrified of losing the respect of people he likes, hence his quite amazing insincerity.”11 The biographer David Magarshack notes that “Chekhov never really regarded Grigorovich as a major writer, and as time passed he got tired of being lectured by him. He certainly never accepted the generally held view that Grigorovich had ‘discovered’ him.”12