How, we may now ask, does Chekhov fit into the general pattern of nineteenth-century Russian literature? His is the last big name among the great Russian masters. He was the last gteat representative of the 'realist' school which has origins in the work of Pushkin and Lermon- tov, but which really began—according to a commonly accepted view—with Gogol, continuing with Turgcncv, Goncharov, Dostoyev- sky, Tolstoy and others.
Realist authors were concerned—some more, some less—to describe Russia contemporary to themselves, evoking a feeling of authenticity by a plain, factual, functional descriptive technique, emphasizing character rather than plot' and showing sympathy with all manner of men: even with such unfashionable targets for compassion as the rich and virtuous as well as with those more conventionally patronized: the poor, the downtrodden and the criminal. Determined to be more than mere story-tellers, all cultivating in some degree the role of prophets, teachers or guides, they surveyed the Russian and general human condition with high seriousness and deep concern. Some of them (notably Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Saltykov-Shchedrin) were at times actively engaged in propagating specific philosophical, social, political or religious doctrines. Others—such as' Turgenev, Leskov and Goncharov—considered the doctrines and social problems of their time from a less committed angle, yet often seemed to feel bound by an obligation at least to include these weighty issues in their thematic material.
Chekhov shared with these formidable predecessors a preference for subject-matter taken from contemporary Russian life experienced at first hand. He too tended to emphasize character rather than plot. He showed comparably wide human sympathies, he was similarly concerned with the Russian and general human predicament. He was, however, far less committed than his great predecessors to the propagation, illustration or exposition of specific social, political, philosophical and religious panaceas. He differed from them also in adopting a less heavy and detailed descriptive technique. Hardly, indeed, did he need such a technique since he possessed an uncanny flair for conjuring up a human personality, a social setting or an entire complex situation with one or two deft strokes—as when (in Ariadne) he sums up the boredom of jaded tourists with the magnificent phrase 'like gorged boa-constrictors, we only noticed things that glittered'.
Adept at knowing what to leave unsaid, Chekhov is laconic, terse, pointed. He proceeds by hints, suggestions and telling silences. Where his great predecessors had orchestrated major climaxes in multi-decker novels, Chekhov did not even find it necessary to write novels at all, for he could say more in twenty pages than many another could convey in eight hundred. Where they dealt in climaxes, he cultivated anticlimaxes. He was above all the master of the miscued effect, the misdirected pistol shot, the bungled seduction, the whimper which replaces the expected bang. Murder, lunacy, prostitution, felony .. . Chekhov by no means avoided such themes, as he himself liked to claim. On the contrary, he handled them expertly, with a deadly touch, while yet preserving his usual economy of means. His rare scenes of violence— such as Dr. Ragin's death in Ward Number Six and the slaughter of a religious maniac in Murder—are depicted with a lightness of touch spectacularly un-Tolstoyan, un-Dostoyevskian and un-Gogolesque; but are no less horrific for that.
Himself well aware of the gulf separating him from the literary dinosaurs of Russia's past, Chekhov takes issue with them in occasional ironical passages of fiction, as is well illustrated by his story The Duel. From Pushkin's and Lermontov's time onwards almost all major Russian writers had gone out of their way to portray splendid duelling scenes, these armed clashes between individuals being superbly qualified to provide fictional conflicts of the most dramatic kind. How differently though, does the anti-dramatic Chekhov handle this same bloody theme! When, at the climax of his narrative, pistols have been duly produced at dawn, it turns out that neither the contestants nor their seconds have the faintest idea what to do next.
A hitch occurred . ... It transpired that none of those present had ever attended a duel in his life, and no one knew exactly how they should stand, or what the seconds should say and do. . . . 'Any of you remember Lermontov's description?' Von Koren asked with a laugh. 'Turgenev's Bazarov also exchanged shots with someone or other '
That Chekhov's duel ends in fiasco—with one contestant firing into the air and the other put off his aim by a comic intruding cleric— need hardly be said.
In the present volume we find Chekhov once again pointing to the generation gap in Russian fiction. Zinaida, the heroine of An Anonymous Story, in effect gives up everything to follow her lover to the ends of the earth, and is thus a parody of the idealistic self-sacrificing girls whom Turgenev created in such large numbers. Unfortunately for her she does not find herself matched with one of Turgenev's no less numerous wishy-washy young men, but has a more modern lover to reckon with: the urbane and cynical Orlov, who explicitly states that he is not a Turgenev hero. He also goes out of his way to dissociate himselffrom Turgenev's Insarov; the heroic Bulgarian freedom-fighter in On the Eve, whose Russian lady-friend—the heroically self-sacrificing Helen—joins him in the battle to free his country from Turkish oppression. Orlov's is, as he points out, a different nature. 'Should I ever require to liberate Bulgaria I could dispense with any female escort/
Such was the irony with which Cheknov occasionally referred to his great precursors, and he could go beyond mere ironic flashes. In a private letter he once called Dostoyevsky's work long, immodest and pretentious. He seems to have held a fairly low opinion of Gon- charov. And though an unstinting admirer ofTolstoy's art, he came to reject Tolstoy's teachings and didacticism. But Chekhov came nowhere near to any blanket condemnation of earlier Russian writers and their work. Nothing could have been further from the temperament of a man who was always generous in his praise of fellow-authors and quite incapable of disparaging others in order to boost himself. Throughout his life he showed a modesty astounding in anyone and especially remarkable in a creative artist. Certainly he did not regard himself as the superior of his chief precursors as writers of Russian fiction. Equally certainly, though, he knew that he was a different man using different techniques and operating in a different age.
What of Chekhov's outlook on life as expressed in his stories?
To this question no neat, all-embracing answer will ever be given. Chekhov was no builder of watertight philosophical systems, but even less was he a pure aesthete indifferent to the ethical or other non- artistic implications of his work. A few of his stories are explicitly didactic—especially those reflecting his brief and fictionally disastrous flirtation with Tolstoyism in the late I88os. Others, by contrast, are mere 'slices of life' devoid of any homiletic element. More typical are items, of which all those in the present volume are samples, which fall between these two extremes. Here the author is doing more than just describing people and situations: he also seems to be saying something about how they ought—or at least about how they ought not— to behave.