SOURCE: Chizhevsky, Dmitri. “Chekhov in the Development of Russian Literature.” In Chekhov, A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Robert Louis Jackson, pp. 49–61 Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967.

Chekhov still has no firm place in the history of Russian literature. Of course, one often ranks him among the “realists”; thus one is compelled for chronological reasons to place him alongside such epigones of realism as V. Korolenko and D. Mamin-Sibiryak. Or should one identify him with such representatives of the new realistic trends as Maxim Gorky? Or find a place for him in the ranks of the modernists and early symbolists? This kind of classifying of a literary artist in a definite literary group, naturally, is not the most important problem of literary history, and it is also not absolutely necessary. It is, however, by no means unimportant to determine whether Chekhov was in close relationship to one or another literary trend of his time, or whether he ran his poetic course as an independent.

As is well known, Chekhov frequently helped young and minor writers and delivered gracious and friendly judgments about them; many of these judgments now evoke our surprise and lead us to doubt either the soundness of Chekhov's literary judgments or his sincerity. In many cases, however, Chekhov, in the form of critical letters of reply, gave the nascent writers some rather sharply worded suggestions for improvement. And frequently we encounter in his correspondence a sharp and pessimistic judgment of the whole body of contemporary literature. Thus Chekhov wrote to A. Suvorin in a letter of November 25, 1892:

In our works there is no alcohol which could make us drunk and carry us away. … Who among my contemporaries, i.e., men between thirty and forty-five years old, has given the world even one single drop of alcohol? Aren't Korolenko, Nadson, and all of today's playwrights simply lemonade? … For people like us this time is feeble, sour, and boring, and we ourselves are sour and boring. … Remember that all writers whom we characterize as great or simply as good and who make us drunk have one common and very essential trait: they go in a definite direction and summon us to go that way too. … We have, however, neither immediate nor distant goals, and our souls are weak and empty. We have no politics, we do not believe in revolution, there is [for us] no God, we don't fear ghosts. … He who wants nothing, hopes for nothing, has no fears, can be no artist.

This letter contains still more; we find a more or less transparent allusion to the fact that even V. Garshin, as well as those writers who “want to conceal their emptiness with old rags such as the ideas of the 1860s” or D. Grigorovich and other representatives of the older generation who are still living, cannot make the readers “drunk.”

This scathing criticism of Russian literature of the time is much sharper than that of D. S. Merezhkovsky, whose programmatic articles appeared in the following year (1893) as a pamphlet, The Reasons for the Decline of Russian Literature and Its New Trends. Merezhkovsky has words of praise for all the writers mentioned in the pamphlet, and therefore, one can scarcely understand today just what—except the bold title—could have upset the literary circle of the time about so essentially moderate a document. Chekhov, to be sure, makes no prognosis and offers no programs. He understood only too well that the wish to become, or to make others, drunk cannot bring forth drops of “alcohol.”

Merezhkovsky's pamphlet was followed in the next year, 1894, by the small collections of poetry, Russian Symbolists. These collections explained why readers and critics were so indignant (even such a one as Vladimir Soloviev, who himself had contributed to the rise of symbolist poetry). But Chekhov, as an innovator, and, consequently, as a dangerous destroyer of the then accepted canon of poetics, had been for a decade the object of attacks by nearly all recognized and established critics. Up until almost 1900 they saw in his works a complete break with sacred realism. This was the opinion not only of Chekhov's opponents but also of his friends, for example, Gorky, who did not consider himself at that time to be a “realist” at all. He wrote to Chekhov in 1900:

Do you know what you are doing? You are killing realism, and you will soon finish it off—finally and for a long time. This form has outlived its time—that is a fact! … You will wipe out realism. I am especially glad about that. Enough! It should go to the devil! We have arrived at a time when the heroic is necessary; everyone wants something exciting, dazzling, something which is not like life but better and more beautiful than life could be. Now it is absolutely necessary that the literature of today somewhat embellish life, and when it begins to do that, life too will be more beautiful, that is, men will live more buoyantly, more brightly.

The last words, to be sure, contain Gorky's own artistic program at that time. This program, however, has nothing to do with the creative work of Chekhov. One could hardly expect the author who wrote “A Boring Story” (1889) and who had entitled two collections of stories In the Twilight (1887) and Gloomy People (1890) to paint life “more beautifully,” to present life in brighter colors. At that time a successful literary daredevil, Gorky could hardly imagine that the future might belong to literary ideals other than his own. He had, however, at least correctly sensed that Chekhov fundamentally differed from the realistic portrayers of “reality.” In what way? Gorky, with his characteristic undeviating primitive way of thinking, could hardly formulate this question correctly—perhaps not even understand it.

It was clear to Chekhov that he was not able and was not permitted to go the old ways; it was clear to Gorky that Chekhov had begun something new and “killed” something old in Russian literature. The same was also clear to those critics who represented the poetic ideals of realism. As we have already said, these critics attacked Chekhov as a dangerous innovator who did not share their world view, and as an author who through his works was indicating to literature new paths which, for the adherents of realism, were wrong ways. The critics uttered these opinions with the same coarse frankness with which for decades they had habitually and futilely fought Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Leskov, and Fet.

.....

It is of significance for us, however, that the critics and even the authors of negative judgments nonetheless noted and, albeit clumsily, brought into the foreground many features of Chekhov's style.

As early as the 1880s Chekhov came to the realization that he was creating “new paths” in literature. He wrote to Lazarev-Gruzinsky on October 20, 1888:

Everything that I have written will be forgotten in five to ten years; but the paths which I am creating will remain safe and sound—therein lies my sole merit.

No one among Chekhov's early patrons and admirers, it seems, noticed the individuality of his creative work; in any case, no one spoke of it either in letters or in printed remarks. Most characteristic of all are the remarks of Leo Tolstoy who in his diary entry of March 15, 1889, called Chekhov's stories “pretty trifles” and who two days later, upon further reading, believed he could only characterize them as “poor, insignificant.” Yet in 1890 Tolstoy already speaks of Chekhov as a “great talent” and, in fact, puts him on a par with Maupassant. As one can see from later known comments of Tolstoy, he was able to judge Chekhov, as he did most writers, primarily by the ideological content of his works. Thus, Tolstoy says, “Chekhov does not always know what he wants.” “Chekhov often has no idea, no sense of the whole; one does not know why a particular story was written.” Above all, Tolstoy rejects Chekhov's plays. The Seagull is, in his opinion, but “worthless nonsense.” Tolstoy is “indignant” over Uncle Vanya, it seems, mainly because the heroes of the play are “idlers” and immoral people. While Tolstoy prized many stories of Chekhov, he could characterize “The Peasants” as “a sin against the people.”

Only the old and at that time no longer active literary gourmet Dmitri Grigorovich (1822–1899) took an early interest in Chekhov. He did not limit himself to vague expressions of praise, but also frequently stressed what he found noteworthy in Chekhov's works: the excellent handling of details and the depiction of characters and landscapes precisely through these details and trivia. In the summer of 1885 Grigorovich noticed one of Chekhov's stories, “The Gamekeeper,” in an otherwise completely uninteresting daily, Peterburgskaya Gazeta; he immediately called the young writer to the attention of the editor of Novoe Vremya (New Times), A. Suvorin. And in a letter of March 1886 Grigorovich warns Chekhov against further freelancing for the daily press. In that same letter Grigorovich emphasizes Chekhov's “mastery in description” with these words: “In a few lines a complete picture appears: little clouds against the background of fading twilight ‘like ashes on dying coals.’” Grigorovich also repeats his warning in a letter from Nice in 1888. It was not without Grigorovich's influence that in 1888 the Petersburg Academy awarded Chekhov a part of the Pushkin Prize. Grigorovich expresses his astonishment in a letter of December 27, 1888, that at a reading of Chekhov's “An Attack of Nerves” to a group which included several writers, no one was struck by the sentence: “And how is it that the snow does not feel ashamed when it falls in this street?” (the street where the houses of pleasure were located; this is, however, an inexact quotation). A few days later the old writer sends Chekhov a letter with remarks about the stories “Dreams” and “Agafya.” The figures in these stories, he writes, are

barely touched [i.e., with the brush], and in spite of this nothing can be added which would make them more alive; and the same is true for the description of natural images and the impressions of them—barely touched, yet [the image] stands directly before the eyes; such mastery in the rendering of impressions we encounter only in Turgenev and Tolstoy (descriptions such as we find in Anna Karenina).

Tolstoy, too, could observe the meaning of “details” in Chekhov, that is, in those stories whose content was congenial to him. Unfortunately, we know of such comments by Tolstoy (1900–1901) only from the notes of his friend A. B. Goldenweizer: Chekhov is

a singular writer: he throws in words seemingly haphazardly, and nevertheless everything in him lives. And how clever! He never has superfluous details; on the contrary, each is either necessary or beautiful.

And again: Chekhov has the

mastery of a higher order. … Nevertheless, it is all only mosaic without a genuinely governing idea. … He casts in words apparently without order, but he achieves nonetheless an astounding effect, like an impressionist painter with his brush strokes.

Here we come upon the right word: impressionist. Unfortunately, one cannot be sure as to whether Tolstoy used this word himself or whether it was only an elucidation by Goldenweizer on Tolstoy's remarks.

Chekhov's impressionist painting is not simply the exterior form. As we shall see, it is also connected with the deeper motifs of his world view. But it should be emphasized that in this respect, Chekhov does not stand entirely outside Russian literary tradition. We may mention Chekhov's contemporaries who were impressionist poets, such as A. A. Fet (1820–1892) and K. Fofanov (1862–1911)—I. F. Annensky (1820–1892), however, was at that time hardly known as a poet. But, setting aside these writers, Leo Tolstoy is without doubt the Russian writer who first brought the impressionistic style into currency. Turgenev early took note of this, and his critical comments on Tolstoy's novels are in this respect very significant. Turgenev's comments on the great novels may be found in his letters (in which, indeed, Turgenev in no way denies the artistic achievements of these novels). “All these little fragments, skillfully observed and primly expressed, the little psychological remarks … how trivial that all is against the background of the historical novel,” he writes P. Borisov on March 16, 1865. In his letter to Annenkov on March 26, 1868, Turgenev says that Tolstoy strives to “reproduce the oscillations, the vibrations of the same feelings and the same attitudes.” In his letter to Polonsky on March 6, 1868, Turgenev offers the opinion that Tolstoy's historical portrayals “strike the eye with their fine detail,” but his psychological art is only “moody, monotonous preoccupation with ever the same sensations.” … These comments represent nothing other than an attack on Tolstoy's impressionistic style. …

If, however, we want to analyze the style of Chekhov's novelle, we should not be struck simply by the sporadic use of the impressionistic device—such as was emphasized in the above cited remarks by the pitiless critics or by those critics who appreciated Chekhov's style, such as Grigorovich and Tolstoy. No! Chekhov's short stories, like his longer novelle and his plays, bear throughout the traits of literary impressionism.

The main characteristics of literary impressionism can be briefly formulated as follows. In respect to outer form: 1) vagueness of the total picture, and 2) in opposition to this, the prominence of details and trivia. These two characteristics correspond somewhat to the technique of painting with separate brush strokes. The content of impressionistic literary works reveals these further traits: 3) the renunciation of the formulation of thoughts, above all, the renunciation of such elements of “didactic” art as the use of aphorisms and maxims which are supposed to communicate to the reader the intent, the “tendency” of the work; 4) in opposition to that, the creation of a “general mood” through which, if need be, certain “results” of the artistic presentation may be suggested to the feelings of the reader, to the capacity to feel, if not to the intellect. However, 5) certain small features, lines, particularities, details, speak to the feeling of the reader—these are the bearers of the soft and gentle shadings, the “differentials of mood.” Chekhov uses all these devices of literary impressionism systematically, intentionally, and masterfully. …

We wish to direct our attention especially to such works of Chekhov as “The Steppe,” “A Boring Story,” “My Life,” “Three Years,” and the plays. Even now Chekhov passes as a “humorist” for the European reader; and this notion is deeply rooted among Russian readers as well, since new editions of Chekhov's works have become available. These new editions include a multitude of early stories which the author himself excluded from the original complete edition of his works; the little humorous stories fill up a good half of the volumes dedicated to Chekhov's prose fiction. No judgment will be given here on the artistic merit of these “bagatelles.” However, it should be said that reading these “humoresques” is more apt to evoke a deep melancholy than a humorous mood. One sees in them, on the one hand, the extremely low intellectual and moral standards of the so-called “upper” classes; especially evident are the obtuseness, the coarseness, and the inhumanity of these rich and sated ones toward the poor and hungry. But even the “little” and “insulted” men are also often depicted in such a way that one can hardly find a human trait in them.

.....

In short, the world of Chekhov the “humorist” is a sad, dark, uncanny world. And one can hardly conclude from it that a “cheery young writer” later turned into a melancholy pessimist. Rather, the pessimism of Chekhov's last years is much brighter and more life-affirming than the “humor” of his youthful years. In the later Chekhov we never encounter an irreconcilable condemnation of the “bad” or of the “nonconformist,” a condemnation which otherwise is found so often in Russian literature. It is sufficient only to recall the harshness with which Leo Tolstoy in his “folk tales” and in Resurrection depicts quite harmless or even good men who, however, do not live up to his ideal of man. A comparison of Chekhov with Tolstoy in this sense would certainly be a rewarding task.

The forgiving, tolerant attitude of the later Chekhov toward human beings may be explained in part, at least, by those thoughts which came to him in connection with the development of his impressionistic style. Let us now, in conclusion, examine this style somewhat more closely. Much of importance was said about Chekhov's style in a little-known essay by N. Shapir, “Chekhov as a Realist-Innovator,”¹ and Balukhaty has said much about Chekhov's dramas. The whole scope of the problem, however, should first be examined thoroughly.

Chekhov to a great extent forgoes the exhaustive motivation—so characteristic for realism—of the speeches and actions of the characters of his works. So much happens in his longer stories “without any reason” that we may see in him an anticipation of the basic tendency of symbolist poetry—the tendency to explain phenomena through blind chance. Perhaps this very feature drew Chekhov to Maeterlinck's dramas which, in any case, he first read with enthusiasm in 1897 (cf. Chekhov's letter to Suvorin of July 12, 1897). He read precisely those plays, Les aveugles and L'intruse, which depict the intrusion of blind, ruthless forces into human lives; and, according to the testimony of Stanislavsky, Chekhov later took an active interest in the performances of both plays which were prepared in the spring of 1904 by the Moscow Art Theater.

While the realistic tradition searches for and presents a tight connection between the experiences and actions of a man and the events of his life, in Chekhov an abyss almost always gapes between the events and the experiences of the heroes, as well as between their experiences and their actions. Chekhov, like the realists, tends to stay close to reality in the dates, indications of setting, and other realistic details of his works. But this reality appears and operates in the experiences of the heroes only in a form that is unmotivated, one that is distorted, insufficient [to explain the reality]; between the “outer cause” and the inner experience there exists a strange incongruity.

The decisive changes of human life and fate are either unmotivated or dependent upon minor causes. Even more, the changes in life often do not correspond to the events which actually should lead to entirely different consequences. Thus, the weak, characterless idler Laevsky in “The Duel” experiences a kind of moral “rebirth” precisely at the moment of his deepest decline; and the infidelity of his girlfriend—under the most ugly of circumstances—does not lead him to a break with her but, quite the contrary, unexpectedly strengthens their relationship. This “rebirth,” the change in Laevsky, is his victory over the Darwinist von Koren, a strong character who is firmly convinced of his ideological and moral principles. The process of Laevsky's transformation is not shown—probably intentionally. The entire life of the hero of “My Life” passes as a series of such strangely unmotivated changes. And also completely without motivation are the meaningful actions “by chance” not carried through to completion. Chekhov readily depicts lovers who without any reason, or almost without reason, decide to make no declaration: the series of such scenes extends from “Verochka” (1887) up to The Cherry Orchard (1904). A story such as “A Doctor's Visit” (1898) shows that even simple human relationships like friendship, good acquaintance, or just peaceful neighborliness often cannot come into being—and for no apparent reason, as though here, too, blind chance darkens the relations of men. Often quite minor causes determine the whole life of a man as, for example, in “The Cossack” (1887): A peasant refuses to give Easter bread to an ailing person during the Easter holidays. “With that began the destruction,” Chekhov firmly states, of the spiritual balance of the peasant and the ruin of his home and of his whole life. Often Chekhov shows the reason for an action to be a certain mood, although the immediate motive seems to be trivial. Thus, in the story “The Murder” (1895), a fratricide occurs because the victim wanted to eat vegetable oil on a fast day. Love, marriage, and friendship also can “by chance” originate, as in “An Anonymous Story,” “Three Years,” “At Home,” “The Lady with the Pet Dog,” and other stories.

Without analyzing a long series of Chekhov's stories it will be enough to point up a few further stylistic traits which we meet in almost all of Chekhov's stories from about 1890.

Reality, the “events,” cannot be measured or judged in any way “objectively” for the very reason that they do not appear immediately to the person but rather in the form of a reflection in the mind of the individual in question. It would appear that Chekhov's first longer stories, where this fact is stressed, are “psychopathological portrayals” of one or another kind. Thus, the pregnancy of the heroine of “The Nameday Party” (1888), the too keen moral consciousness of the student in “An Attack of Nerves” (1888), the process of aging in the old professor in “A Boring Story” (1889) all permit the persons and events to be judged as unmotivated, often apparently falsely (as the author emphasizes) and ambiguously. From that time on Chekhov introduces the thoughts, experiences, and decisions (for the most part never executed) of the completely “normal” heroes as well as of the “sick” by means of constantly recurring formulas, such as: “it seemed to her”; “she saw in each and every person only the false”; “whereas they were all average and not bad people”; “everyone appeared to her to be untalented, pale, plain, narrow, false, heartless”; “it seemed to him that”; or, in the words of the hero, “something strange is happening to me,” small causes such as sounds are “enough to fill me with a feeling of happiness,” and so forth. The use of this formula reaches its high point in the years 1893 and following. In “A Woman's Kingdom” (1894) we read at every step: “she became happy” (for no obvious reason); “it seemed to her that”; “it seemed to her as though”; “she wanted to”; “she imagined”; “she dreamed”; “she was already convinced” (without reason); “this recollection—just why is not known—agitated her.” The heroine experiences the “anguish of expectation”; “she passionately wanted the change in her life to occur immediately, at that very moment” (and after a short time this wish vanishes without a trace). We encounter the same phenomenon in the story “Teacher of Literature” (1894): “it seemed”; “he sensed in his soul an unpleasant impression”; “and in no way at all could he understand why”; “nevertheless, it was unpleasant”; “he began to get angry at the little white cat.” And in the same way the hero of “Three Years” (1895) “was annoyed at himself and at the black dog”; “his mood changed suddenly. … It seemed to him that everything he said was nauseatingly stupid.” The experiences of the heroine of this same story occur similarly. The hero of “Three Years” had the feeling that it was not he himself but “his double” who was thinking and acting; and to the murderer in “The Murder” (1895) it seemed that not he himself but some kind of beast, a monstrous and terrible beast, was walking around”—and all this before he even thought about the murder which occurs later.

The heroes of Chekhov's impressionistic stories vacillate between various moods, thoughts, and resolutions, and frequently experience opposite feelings simultaneously, without feeling their contradiction. Chekhov places special stress on the fact that sensations, experiences, are in a continual flux, in a process of change. Above all, he tried to record the fading of experiences and events. Examples of this can be found in “The Story of Mrs. N. N.” (1887): “Everything for me, as for everybody, has vanished, quickly, without a trace, was not appreciated, and faded like mist. … Where is it all?”; in “The Wife” (1891): “How beautiful life could have been”; in “She Yawned” (1892): “I let it slip by, let it slip by”; in “A Woman's Kingdom” (1894): “It is already too late to dream.” This motif operates perhaps most strongly at the end of Chekhov's last story, “The Bishop” (1902). Not only have all the experiences of the bishop passed away, vanished, with his death, but his existence now no longer appears to have been real: whenever his mother told about him “not everyone believed her.” In this way “reality” recedes into the background, and the events which apparently constitute the causes or motivations of experiences have an effect only in the form which they assume, as they are broken up and reshaped in people's psyches.

When “reality” transformed in this way (which for Chekhov was not at all an “objective” reality) is brought into the flux of the individual spiritual life, the presentation of the spiritual life becomes the central, most important task of literary art. And, since the spiritual life of a man knows only isolated peaks and high points, and for the most part runs its course in the “lowlands” of the commonplace, this presentation must reckon with numerous “empty places.” These “empty places,” these insignificant moments—even periods—of human life, need to be touched upon only fleetingly in artistic prose; they must not, however, remain unnoticed in dramatic works—these certainly should present in full certain segments of time. The composition of the Chekovian play is determined to a large extent in this way: between the peaks of spiritual experiences and the turning points of the plot are inserted elements of “filling.” This “filling” consists of witty episodes, such as those with Epikhodov and Semeonov-Pishchik in The Cherry Orchard, of “everyday” conversations which say nothing, such as are found in long sections of the second act of the same comedy, and even of silences. In the stories the author can dispose more freely of the “empty times” of the action, and so even the descriptions of nature and the theoretical observations of the author appear here with the function of filling these intervals. Such is the origin of the impressionistic composition which builds up characterizations of heroes and the portrayal of events (as we have said—seen through the eyes of the heroes) by means of isolated strokes and patches of color.

It is not without significance that in Chekhov's stories the characters are usually transients in the place of action, often staying on only by chance. The persons through whose eyes the reader is supposed to view the events are doctors who are visiting their patients, surveyors, examining magistrates, guests, and chance passersby. Or, should the heroes of the stories find themselves at home, then the other persons of the action are only guests who often appear in the heroes' lives for the first time. One sees the world to a certain degree from the window of a railroad train. In general, the railroad plays an unusually large role in Chekhov's works! How many of his heroes live at railroad stations or in the neighborhood of the railroad! Before them people flit by “like shooting stars.” This kind of situation is just that of an impressionist observing life. In this respect “In the Cart” (1897) is a most characteristic story. A woman school teacher is traveling back to her native village in a miserable peasant's cart along a wretched highway.

The tollgate on the railway overpass was let down: an express train departed from the station. … There was the train—the windows glittered with a dazzling light … so that it was painful to look at. In a front compartment of a first-class car stood a lady.

It seems to the school teacher that this lady bears great resemblance to her own mother, and she imagines with astounding clarity her life in Moscow thirteen years ago, when her mother was still alive.

And she cried, not knowing why. … And it seemed to her that everywhere, in the windows, in the trees, her happiness, her triumph, was shining. Yes, her father and her mother had never died, she had never been a school teacher: that had been a long, difficult, strange dream, and now she had awakened. … And suddenly everything disappeared.

Here we find in a few lines the typical traits of the Chekhovian style: the “flitting past” of reality, the unexpected, unmotivated, and mutually contradictory experiences (“she cried,” “it seemed to her that everywhere … her happiness was shining”) which in rapid flux replace one another; the “sudden disappearance” of reality which induces sensations—and, just as suddenly, the dying away of the sensations.

These main characteristics of Chekhov's style are not the only elements of his impressionism. The attention to details, which to the critics of the time seemed so unnecessary, even nonsensical, belongs to the author's method of presentation as well as to the manner in which the heroes perceive reality and react to it. Reality and people are apprehended and characterized by apparently random and inessential traits. Thus, people are characterized by their odor—“smelled of coffee grounds,” “smelled of raw meat,” and so forth—or by their manner of speech more than by the content of what they say—“The Man in the Case” (1898), Chebutykin in The Three Sisters, and others. Nature is presented through separate patches of color, as in “The Steppe”—a device which critics correctly identified as an innovation—or through completely indefinite pictures, as “in the imperceptible distance … hazy, odd figures arose and climbed upon one another” (“The Steppe”). Finally, indeterminate sounds which above all fulfill a vital symbolic function as a feature of the author's presentation of reality: for example, the following section from “The Steppe.” “There resounded, disturbing the motionless air, some kind of wondrous ‘Ah-ah,’ and one heard the cry of a wakeful or dreaming bird.” An almost identical passage occurs a few pages later on in this same story. One finds another example of this kind of sound in Act II of The Cheery Orchard: “suddenly a distant sound, right from the sky, the sound of a breaking string which dies away sadly.” Almost an identical sentence is repeated in the concluding stage directions of Act IV of the same play.

Chekhov's work comes immediately before the appearance of symbolism; this is not merely a chronological fact. His impressionism, exactly like that of V. Garshin and Fet and some other writers, in a certain sense prepared the way for symbolism. One must not forget that fact when one poses the question of Chekhov's place in the development of Russian literature. There is poor documentation of Chekhov's views on symbolism, and what there is is frequently contradictory. But one can expect no unequivocal opinion about the new literary trends from a writer who always stressed his antipathy toward every “bias.” Chekhov's “impartiality,” moreover, was one of the reasons for the intense attacks against this allegedly “faceless” and “viewless” writer, the author of “meaningless trifles.” However, it must be emphasized in conclusion that Chekhov was, as we have seen, a serious and keen satirist even in his “humoresques.” And his later impressionistic style rests on a definite conception of the world and of man, a conception which deserves special attention. … But it is still more significant that Chekhov attempts to give his own answers to old questions posed by the great Russian writers. Thus, his story “The Duel” is an answer to Tolstoy's Anna Karenina; alongside that there is an argument with the Russian Darwinists and with Nietzsche—that is, with Nietzsche as he was interpreted (and wrongly) by the Russians. The investigation of such references and direct discussion of ideological problems in Chekhov is a further task for research to which I can here only allude.

Note

1. Cf. N. Shapir, “Chekhov kak realist-novator,” Voprosy filosofii i psikhologii (1904–1905), Vol. 79–80.

“Chekhov in the Development of Russian Literature” by Dmitri Chizhevsky. From Anton Čechov: 1860–1960. Some Essays, ed. T. Eekman (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960), pp. 293–310. Copyright © 1961 by E. J. Brill, Leiden, Netherlands. Translated from the German by Andrew Comings. Reprinted in abridged form by permission of the author and E. J. Brill.