‘The Grasshopper’ (1892) was the source of considerable scandal at the time of its publication, since numerous readers of Chekhov’s acquaintance perceived in it a fictionalized account of the affair between S. P. Kuvshinnikova, a minor artist and doctor’s wife, and the writer’s friend, the painter Isaak Levitan. Chekhov himself was indignant that his readers should so trivialize the story, and, indeed, the point of it lies elsewhere. On the philosophical level the story is about the dichotomy between the aesthetic movement of fin de siècle culture and scientific positivism, symbolized respectively by the impressionist painter Ryabovsky and Olga Ivanovna’s husband, the doctor Dymov. Ryabovsky defends the notion that all is appearance and all that counts is the moment; it is typical of Chekhov’s ironic humour that Ryabovsky’s speechifying on the subject should simply be a device to get Olga into bed. Dymov, on the other hand, is wedded to scientific progress; his self-absorption is different from that of Ryabovsky, but no less complete. Ironically, Ryabovsky is always declaring that he is tired, when it is Dymov who is working late into the night; Ryabovsky declares to Olga that it would be good to die, while Dymov does precisely that.
In the story Chekhov draws an understated but devastating portrait of the lack of communication between husband and wife; the tragedy receives additional emphasis through the missed opportunity for a renewal of the relationship when Dymov defends his dissertation successfully. If the title of the story – a reference to the Krylov fable of the grasshopper who sings all summer and makes no provision for the winter – would seem to point the finger of indictment at Olga, the carelessness to the point of suicide with which Dymov carries out postmortems suggests that he is just as responsible as she is for the breakdown of the marriage and the tragic outcome. Both Dymov and Olga suffer from an infantile inadequacy in dealing with life. This is subtly suggested by his calling her ‘Mother’ (something that is totally bizarre in her case), while she transfers to him her dependence on her deceased father. Typically for many of Chekhov’s works, on the deepest level the story is about perception – the ironical gap between appearance and reality, the way we see things as we would like them to be, not as they are. This is expressed in the text by the frequent use of the verb ‘to seem’ and its synonyms, by the obsession with appearances common to Dymov, Ryabovsky and Olga Ivanovna, and by Olga Ivanovna’s talentless and inappropriate comparisons of her husband to different artistic subjects – she paints him as a Bedouin, for example. Typically also, the self-deception is followed by a moment of recognition, an epiphany, when the hero (in this case Olga) sees him or herself as others do.
As a writer Chekhov was acutely aware that he was following in the footsteps of the ‘greats’ of the previous generation – Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. In ‘Ward No. 6’ he is generally seen as overcoming Tolstoy’s credo of non-resistance to evil; however, as Andrew Durkin has shown, the tale can also be read as an ironic pastiche of Dostoyevsky. This accounts for the abandonment of his usual style, with its understatement and oblique use of detail, in favour of an overtly satirical stance, and adoption of Dostoyevsky’s practice of an intrusive narrator who addresses the reader directly. The depressing details of life in the mental ward of a provincial hospital – the guard Nikita and the grey fence topped with nails – can hardly be interpreted as anything other than a metaphor of the Russian state, to be read allegorically in the best ‘Aesopian’ tradition of Russian literature. Evidently, Chekhov’s observation of the prisons and prison hospitals on Sakhalin had also left a deep impression, as well as his reading of a report on Russian mental hospitals. The carefully sketched inmates of the ward – the Jew who has lost his business, the totally insensate peasant, the minor functionary of the postal service who is obsessed with receiving a medal for good service – all serve as devastating, sarcastic indictments of the system, which is maintained by the indiscriminate beatings meted out by Nikita.
However, the principal target of Chekhov’s satire is the Russian educated class, represented by the doctor Ragin and the paranoid inmate of noble origin, Ivan Dmitrich. A typical and telling detail in both their portraits is the passion for indiscriminate reading and their ability to indulge in endless and meaningless discussions about life. Ragin’s vapid chatter ultimately serves one purpose – to justify inaction and complacency. His readings of Marcus Aurelius reflect the pessimism and indifferentism that was fashionable at the end of the nineteenth century (and which greatly interested Chekhov himself), and continue on a different plane Ryabovsky’s self-serving arguments about the meaninglessness of reality. In Ivan Dmitrich’s tauntings of the doctor who denies the reality of pain it is difficult not to hear Chekhov’s exasperation with the inertia and complacency of many of his profession. The terrifying irony of the doctor’s fate – to become himself an inmate of the ward that it was his function to supervise – serves as an unspoken expression of Chekhov’s conclusion that if, despite everything, one does not do one’s best to improve the lot of one’s countrymen, one deserves to share their fate. It conveys too his anger and frustration at the self-serving attitudes of the Russian intellectual class.
Chekhov was acutely aware of the most fashionable preoccupations of the 1890s, for example, the notion of ‘degeneration’ or the excessive, morbid refinement of the nervous system, propagated by the appearance of Max Nordau’s book on the subject, Degeneration; the Nietzschean idea of the genius who would advance humanity ‘ten thousand years’; and the general interest in psychology, mysticism and subconscious states. All these are reflected in ‘The Black Monk’, written in Melikhovo in 1893. In it Kovrin wavers between two poles: extreme refinement and preoccupation with the mysteries of aesthetic pleasure – the path that defines him as a genius – or capitulation to the banality and meaninglessness of the ‘herd’ – the state to which he is reduced when he is being treated for his illness. The fantastic hallucinations that cause him to see the black monk may have one source in the stimulants – wine and tobacco – that Kovrin indulges in, and in the repeated motif of the violin music, but much more substantial is the fact, gradually conveyed to the reader, that he has tuberculosis. That is to say, the moments of intense bliss that he experiences are the result of the heightened nervous state caused by the disease, and may be seen as the precursors of death. Indeed it is in death that Kovrin attains the ultimate happiness, as suggested by the last words of the text – the ‘smile’ that appears on his face as he dies.
There is evidence from Chekhov’s contemporaries that he himself experienced hallucinations (because of his illness), so that this aspect of Kovrin has certain roots in his own biography, but at the same time in the image of the old man Pesotsky we see another aspect of Chekhov’s life at Melikhovo, namely his preoccupation with horticulture – planting trees and cultivating the garden. The descriptions of the orchards and garden have a carefully detailed poetry to them that affirms Chekhov’s attachment to and interest in the scientifically perceived realia of the world, and his desire to improve that world. While evoking echoes of the myth of Eden, these descriptions also correspond to Chekhov’s socially reformist vision of a regenerated landscape, to be expressed more fully in the image of Astrov in Uncle Vanya. Related to the descriptions of the estate is the issue of inheritance and preservation of a family enterprise. Pesotsky’s only child is Tanya, who, despite her interest, will scarcely be able to maintain things after the death of the old man. Pesotsky’s desire to see Kovrin as his son-in-law is therefore ironical, since it is motivated by respect for the ‘magister’ Kovrin and his scholarly career, and not by any common interest in horticulture. (Kovrin, despite his learning, has to have explained to him why the smoke protects the orchard from frost.) It is an unspoken element of the end of the story that the earthly Eden, on which Pesotsky has lavished so much care, is destined to be destroyed.