Not that the other plays are wholly wanting in theat- rical moments. In fact, they are punctuated by pistol shots, accounting for two suicides, one fatal duel, and one attempted murder. But these outbursts of violence are of little dramatic significance and merely serve to underscore the static condition into which they irrupt. They are like stones flung into a stream and soon covered by the waters. With the exception of a few indurate egotists, the characters in all the plays are unhappy, defeated, and mostly futile, though restive, individuals, caught in situations that are pathetic and that skirt trag- edy by suggesting what is irremediable in life. Aware of their failings, these people reach out for the meaning of their sufferings and on occasion dream of a glorious and distant future which would compensate for their wasted lives. For the rest, they are ordinary men and women, typical of the strata of society to which they belong, chiefly the intelligentsia and the rural gentry. The characters engage in much anguished talk about the shortcomings of Russian life and hold up work as the salvation of the country, but the heart of the plays lies not in action or in programs, but rather in states of mind, in the ebb and flow of feeling, in the nuances of inner experience. The frustration, the self-probing, the emotionalism, the starry-eyed aspiration—all this, with the enveloping mood of wistful musing, relieved by a saving touch of the grotesque, bathes the plays in an atmosphere peculiarly their own, gives them a lyrical quality which to a large degree compensates for their lack of drama.
Russian audiences are still receptive to the spell of Chekhov's plays, though one imagines that it is difficult for them to identify themselves with his weary, lacka- daisical heroes. The foreign spectator, too, is apt to sur- render to the emotional tone of The Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. As for the reader, by an imagina- tive effort he should be able to establish rapport with this elegiac poet of the theater.
Chekhov's stories are by far the larger and the more rewarding, as well as the more influential portion of his work. He limited himself to the short narrative' not with- out a struggle. When his writing first assumed a serious cast, he was harassed by the feeling that he was doing less than his best. Characters, situations, scenes were crowding his mind, begging to be realized: what wed- dings, what funerals, what splendid women! The un- born figments were jealous, as he put it, of those that had seen the light. But he was hoarding this wealth, he was not going to throw it away on trifles, he was going to save it for some substantial work, for a novel. And he did start the novel. He kept mentioning it in his letters. He called it: "Stories from the Lives of My Friends." In spite of the suspicious title, he insisted that it was not going to be a patchwork, but a composed whole. He even chose a dedicatee. And then, about 1891, all ref- erences to the work cease, and no trace of the manu- script has been found to this day. Now and again, in later years his desire to write a novel would reawaken, and indeed he did produce several long narratives, but not one of them quite achieves the stature of a novel.
Perhaps to account for his failure, Chekhov threw out the rather dubious suggestion that the writing of novels required a degree of cultivation, a mastery, a conscious- ness of personal freedom possessed only by members of the privileged classes, and that the art was beyond the powers of plebeians like himself. Aggravating the sense of his inadequacy was the beb'ef that he belonged to a generation of epigoni, unworthy descendants of giants like Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy. In any case, the short story remained his vehicle to the end. It offered a form admirably suited to his genius.
With few exceptions, the locale of his tales is the na- tive one, their time that in which Chekhov himself lived, their approach realistic. Within these limits, their vari- ety is enormous, taking in, as they do, men and women, old and young, rich and poor, people in every station: peasants, landowners, priests, policemen, school teach^ ers, prostitutes, doctors, merchants, government officials. The human comedy, at least a large part of it, is enacted in a series of short scenes, some of them farcical, many of them deeply tinged with pathos, a few verging on tragedy or having a touch of irony. The interest may at- tach to a simple situation, as in "Vanka," or it may lie in a complex of relations, as in "The Name-Day Party," or again it may center on a psychological type, as in "The Man in a Shell."
In his notebook Chekhov entered this quotation from Daudet: " 'Why are your songs so short?' a bird was asked. 'Is it because you are short of breath?' 'I have a great many songs and I should like to sing them all.' " He wrote seven or eight hundred stories. A large number of them, including much, though by no means all, of his best work and every one of his longer narratives, are available in English. He was an uneven writer, and many pieces were omitted from the present volume without regret. Where he attempts a story involving ac- tion and suspense, one with a plot, a sharp point, a neat solution, the result is apt to be wanting in distinction. Probably his lack of dramatic instinct was responsible for this. Where, however, he uses the method that he made peculiarly his o^, though it had been employed before his time by Turgenev and other Russians, he is one of the masters, and he shows his gifts often enough to embarrass an editor with riches.
The most characteristic of Chekhov's stories lack purely narrative interest. They no more bear retelling than does a poem. Nothing thrilling happens in them, nor are the few reflective passages particularly compell- ing. Some of the tales, having neither beginning nor end, are, as Galsworthy put it, "all middle like a tor- toise." Others have a static quality, with no more pro- gression than there is in a dance. Instead of moving toward a definite conclusion, they are apt to trail off or drop to an anti-climax. And yet they manage to take hold of the imagination in an amazing fashion. Precisely because of the lack of invention and contrivance, the absence of cleverness, the fact that the loose ends are not tucked up nor the rough edges beveled, and that they remain unfinished in more senses than one, they have the impact of a direct experience.
It lay within Chekhov's gift to create characters who have come to be a by-word in Russia. And this although the creatures of his imagination are somewhat shadowy, since he is inclined to sketch a type rather than to paint the portrait of an individual. He had an intimate under- standing of the complexities, the non-sequiturs of the mind and particularly of the heart. His was an observant eye for the telling detail of appearance or behavior, for whatever would contribute to placing his characters within the proper physical or social setting. His stories have an atmosphere as distinct as an odor.
Chekhov's preoccupation is with existences that are commonplace, drab, narrow. The life he pictures is one in which there is cruelty, want, boredom, misunder- standing, with only an occasional interval of happiness or serenity, a rare intimation that justice and goodness may ultimately prevail—in sum, an unintelligible and largely painful business. A man and woman are involved with one another and can live neither together nor apart. A cabman loses his son and can find no one to give ear to his grief but his horse. A woman wastes her youth in the provinces. Human beings are broken by the machinery of the State. Chekhov's characters may long for something that would lend meaning and beauty to their existence, yet they do not act to bring that con- summation nearer. Their frustration is apt to be the re- sult of their own helplessness. Often we encounter them in the midst of their feeble struggles, or, already de- feated, facing an impasse. Chekhov preached the gospel of work as the panacea for his country's ills, and his heart went out to non-conformists and to enterprising, courageous men, such as the explorers of the Russian North, and yet he was incapable of projecting success- fully a fighter, a rebel, a man of steadfast purpose. It is as though he were so suspicious of power, associating it with its abuse, that he looked upon weakness with a for- giving, almost an affectionate eye. The situations he usually presents are at the opposite pole from melo- drama, as is his style from the melodramatic. His lan- guage is simple, rather slovenly, with rare strokes of bold imagery, sometimes very expressive, always free from the emphatic, the rhetorical, the florid.