Though he feels physical weariness and boredom, he does not understand what the trouble is and what has happened. In terror he says to the doctor (Act I, scene 3), "You tell me she is dying, but I don't feel any love, or pity, but a sort of loneliness and weariness. If you just judge me as a stranger, you would probably think this horrible. I myself do not understand what is happening to me."
When narrow and unconscientious people find themselves in such a situation, they usually place the blame on their environ- ment, or enter the ranks of the unwanted and unneeded Ham- lets, and then their minds are at rest. . . . But Ivanov, who is straightforward, openly declares to the doctor and audience that he does not understand himself. "I don't understand, don't understand . . ." That he really does not understand himself is apparent from the long monologue in Act III, where, speaking directly to the audience, he confesses to it, and even weeps!
The change taking place within him outrages his integrity. He seeks reasons from within and doesn't find them; he begins to seek outside of himself and finds only an undefined feeling of guilt. This feeling is Russian. If someone dies in a Russian's house, or falls sick, or if somebody owes him money, or if he wants to make a loan—the Russian always feels a sense of guilt. Ivanov is continually discoursing on some fault or other that he has, and every jolt increases the sense of guilt. In Act I he says, "Probably I am terribly guilty, but my thoughts have be- come confused, my soul is shackled with a kind of indolence, and I am not in a strong enough state to understand myself. . . . " In Act II he says to Sasha, "Day and night my conscience aches, I feel I am profoundly to blame, but I do not under- stand where I have done anything wrong."
To exhaustion, boredom and the sense of guilt add still an- other enemy. That is solitude. \Vere Ivanov a government official, an actor, a priest or professor, he would get used to his situation. But he lives on an estate in the country, in a rural district. The people there are either drunkards or card players, or such as the doctor. They are not concerned with his feelings and with the changes occurring within him. He is lonely. The long winters, the long evenings, the empty garden, the empty rooms, the morose count, the ailing wife . . . There is nowhere to go. Hence he is continually tormented by the question of what to do with himself.
Now for the fifth enemy. Ivanov is tired, doesn't understand himself, but life is not concerned with these things. It sets its legitimate demands before him and he—like it or not—must solve the problems. The sick wife is a problem. It should be plain from the monologue in Act III and from the contents of the last two acts how he resolves these problems. Such people as Ivanov do not settle questions, they are crushed by them. They are at their wit's end, throw up their hands, their nerves are on edge, they complain, commit stupidities and in the last analysis, in giving way to their loose, flabby nerves, the ground slips from under their feet and they join the ranks of the "broken" and "misunderstood."
Disillusion, apathy, nervousness and exhaustion are the in- evitable consequences of inordinate excitability, and this char- acteristic is inherent in our young people to an extreme degree. Take literature. Take the present day. . . . Socialism is one aspect of excitability. .. Where is liberalism? Even Mikhailovski says there is nothing worth fighting for. And what do all these
Russian enthusiasms come to? The war has wearied, Bulgaria has degenerated into a joke. . . .
This weariness (and Dr. Bertenson will corroborate it) doesn't only express itself in grumbling or in the sensation of boredom. You cannot chart the life of a tired man this way [here Chekhov drew a gently undulating line], for it is very uneven. All these tired people don't lose their capacity for emotional stimulation, but they aren't able to remain at that pitch for any length of time; rather an ever greater apathy follows every state of ex- citement: Graphically you can represent it this way [here Chekhov drew an undulating line interrupted by peaks and valleys]:
As you can see, the depressed condition doesn't show up as a gradual drop, but follows a rather different course. ^faen Sasha declares her love, Ivanov cries in ecstasy, "A new life!" but by next morning his belief in this life is as sincere as his belief in fairies (monologue in Act III) ; when his wife's words outrage him, he is beside himself and in a fit of nerves he flings a cruel insult at her. People call him a scoundrel. Either this will prove fatal to his crumbling brain or else will arouse him to fresh heights and he is done for.
So as not to weary you to a state of exhaustion, I'll transfer my attention to Dr. Lvov. He is a type of honest, straight- forward, ardent but narrow and strait-laced person. Clever peo- ple refer to his kind like this: "He may be stupid, but he's got a good heart." Anything that resembles breadth of view or spon- taneity of feeling is foreign to Lvov. He is a stereotype in- carnate, a walking tendency. He looks out of his narrow frame on every phenomenon and face, and judges everything precon- ceivedly. He idolizes the man who exclaims, "Make way for honest toil!" and anyone who does not echo these sentiments is a rascal and a kulak. There is no middle way. He was educated on the novels of Mikhailov;2 he has seen "new people" on the stage, i.e., kulaks and children of the age depicted by the new
2 Mikhailov was the author of social-political novels.
playwrights, "moneygrubbers". . . . He has turned all of this over in his mind and done it so forcibly that when he reads "Rudin" he is bound to ask himself, "Is Rudin a scoundrel or isn't he?" Literature and the stage have so educated him that he applies this question to every person he meets in life or litera- ture. . . .
He arrived in the country district already convinced. He could immediately discern that all the well-to-do peasants were kulaks, and that Ivanov, whom he couldn't figure out, was a knave. The man's wife is ill and he visits a rich woman neigh- bor—isn't he a villain? He is obviously killing his wife in order to marry the rich woman.
Lvov is honest, direct, and hits straight from the shoulder, whatever the consequences. If necessary he would throw a bomb under a carriage, punch an official in the puss, call a man a scoundrel to his face. He stops at nothing. He never feels pangs of conscience—he is an "honest toiler" with a mission, and is out to battle with "the powers of darkness."
We need people like him and for the most part they are lik- able. It is dishonest as well as pointless to portray them in caricature, merely to heighten the dramatic interest. True, a caricature is sharper and therefore easier to understand, but it is better to blur the portrait than to overdo it.
. . . Now as to the women. \Vhy do they love him? Sara loves Ivanov because he is a good man, ardent, brilliant and quite as fervent a talker as Lvov (Act I, scene 7). She loves him as long as he is high-spirited and attractive; but when his personality becomes shrouded in gloom and loses its distinctive quality, she can no longer understand him and at the end of the third act she unburdens herself directly and sharply.
Sasha is a maiden poured from the newest mold. She is cul- ti\atcd, intelligent, honest and so on. Among the blind the one-eyed is king, and that is why she makes much of the thirty- five-year-old Ivanov. He is the best person she knows. She knew him when she was small and observed his activities at close range at a period when he was not yet exhausted. He is a friend of her father's.