Narrative Technique and the Art of Story-telling in Anton Chekhov's 'Little Trilogy'
[In the following essay, Freedman attributes the lack of critical consensus concerning Chekhov's political and social views to the author's maintenance of "a distinction between his own opinions and those of his characters." Freedman demonstrates how this distinction functions in "The Man in a Shell," "Gooseberries," and "About Love."]
The elusiveness of Anton Chekhov's art has caused no end of confusion among critics and readers ever since he began to publish serious literature in the latter half of the 1880s. The socially oriented critical industry of Russia of the late nineteenth century was alternately baffled and outraged by what it perceived to be an unprincipled, immoral writer. In time, Chekhov came to be known as the bard of twilight Russia. Soviet critics throughout much of the twentieth century have been wont to see in him an unabashed optimist and even a budding revolutionary. Recent times have generally seen a more sober attitude in his work, although there still exists no general consensus. Two examples demonstrate well the extremes to which Chekhov criticism has sometimes gone in the past. In 1926 Janko Lavrin wrote about Chekhov's "meek, evasive smile" and "sad voice" ["Chekhov and Maupassant," Slavonic Review, Vol. 13, June 1926], and in 1909 Leon Shestov opined that "Chekhov was doing one thing alone: by one means or another he was killing human hopes" ["Creation from the Void," Chekhov and Other Essays, 1966].
More recently, Georges Nivat has returned to the idea of Chekhov's cruelty [in Vers la fin du mythe russe, 1982]. After noting the contradictory nature of Chekhov criticism, he writes: "On parle de sa 'bonté,' de son 'humanisme,' de ce qu'il [Chekhov] appelait lui-même le 'talent humain de la compassion'; mais on doit bien constater que l'oeuvre tchekhovienne est une de plus cruelles qui soit." And, while no one entirely repeats Lavrin's excesses any more, such epithets as "sweet," "gentle," and "melancholic" still abound in descriptions of Chekhov's art. It should not surprise us, then, that the young, though perceptive Vladimir Maiakovskii entitled his 1914 article about Chekhov "Two Chekhovs."
The source of this confusion lies primarily in the nature of Chekhov's writing, in which he always maintained a distinction between his own opinions and those of his characters. A close look at a series of stories that the so-called mature Chekhov wrote in 1898—the "little trilogy," as it is frequently referred to, consisting of the stories "The Man in a Shell," "Gooseberries," and "About Love"—will allow us to define better the nature of Chekhov's story-telling art. In so doing, we may resolve some of the confusion concerning the writer's apparent split personality.
Each of the three stories is a frame story narrated by a different teller: "The Man in a Shell" by Burkin, a teacher at a gymnasium; "Gooseberries" by the veterinarian Ivan Ivanych Chimsha-Gimalaiskii; "About Love" by the miller and petty land-owner Pavel Konstantinovich Alekhin. In all three cases, Chekhov's narrator sets the stage for his story-teller and then almost entirely disappears during the course of the frame story. Upon completion of each narrated story, he intrudes once again to wrap up the story as a whole with maximum efficiency. In each of the frame stories there is a bare minimum of interruption from the narrator and the listeners. Each teller becomes, as it were, the independent author of his own story. The trilogy as a whole is marked by four distinct and widely varying voices: Burkin, Ivan Ivanych, Alekhin, and the narrator. There is a progressive movement of the tellers' points of view: from third-person (story one), to split third/first-person (story two), to first-person (story three). This movement causes a parallel shift in the attitudes of the tellers toward their subjects. Burkin, as we will see, displays a thinly veiled animosity for the "hero" of his tale; Ivan Ivanych displays something bordering on a love-hate relationship both to his brother and to himself; Alekhin tells of a love for Anna Alekseevna that is both passionate and tender. Any involvement, regardless of its position on a scale of positivity or negativity, will produce a skewed picture of events and personalities. Naturally, then, each story contains its own point of view, its own inconsistencies, its own peculiarities, and the point of view of one teller does not necessarily belong to any other teller—including the narrator—or to Chekhov himself.
"The Man in a Shell" is most often interpreted as a story about Belikov the Greek teacher, and in many respects this view is justified. However, to see Belikov as the focal point not only limits the story's scope but distorts its intention. Certainly Belikov is a "man in a shell." However, it is also frequently indicated that he is not the only one. "The Man in a Shell," like the other stories in the trilogy, begins with a folkloric prelude-story, a priskazka, in which Burkin and Ivan Ivanych encounter Mavra, who herself is a "woman in a shell." This meeting prompts Burkin to tell his story about Belikov, and he begins his narrative by indicating that there are not a few people in the world who, like hermit crabs or snails, try to hide in their shells. Upon completing his story, Burkin exclaims no less than three times how many men in shells there are, to which Ivan Ivanych replies, "'Isn't that the way it is'." Hints abound, then, that Belikov is not the only one who must be considered a man in a shell.
The teller in each story is a prominent figure in his own right: Burkin spins such a skewed tale that he cannot but be considered an active focus of the reader's and narrator's attention; In "Gooseberries," there is an overt indication that Ivan Ivanych is worthy of our careful attention when he states that the focal point of his story is not his brother's story but his own; Alekhin in "About Love" is both teller and actor in his own tale. Upon reading the group of stories as a whole, then, one wonders why critical discussion has seldom centered around Burkin as a character. Many critics never even mention him, assuming that he is Chekhov's unmediated voice, and quoting his words as though they are Chekhov's own. This failure to note Burkin's independent voice has distorted the story's ultimate significance.
Belikov's story is revealed entirely through Burkin's eyes, so that in order to appraise the legitimacy of Burkin's frequently harsh judgments it is necessary first to determine whether these observations are well-founded. Several moments indicate that they are not. Burkin tells his story in an omniscient mode, claiming to be privy to Belikov's thoughts at moments when no one could possibly have access to them. Burkin clearly perceives himself as a literary narrator and uses the common tricks of the trade to embellish his story. Perhaps it is this element of the story as much as any that has induced readers to accept Burkin's tale as Chekhov's. Let us then focus on a few isolated moments in the story that may allow us to distinguish between the points of view of Burkin and of the actual narrator of the story as a whole.
Early on Burkin provides us with a good reason to believe that his account of Belikov's life may not be strictly objective. He explains to Ivan Ivanych that Belikov oppressed everyone with his cautiousness and suspiciousness: "'With his sighs, his whimpering, the dark glasses on his pale little face, you know, like a polecat's face, he weighed us all down . . .' ." Burkin has an axe to grind and it is evident that we cannot expect from him an uncolored view. This in itself, however, does not yet provide sufficient reason to question the objectivity of his story. If in fact Belikov tyrannically imposed his will on others, his poor reputation among the townspeople would be justified. But the story reveals that Belikov was hardly a willful character. In fact, he was a meek, frightened recluse who almost never ventured out of his own private world. The romance which arises between him and Varenka is entirely the result of meddling on the part of the townspeople, Burkin included. His outrage at seeing Varenka ride a bicycle in public with her brother is less aimed at condemning Varenka than at protecting the privacy and stability of his fragile world, since he now knows that he is linked with Varenka in public opinion. His uncharacteristic outburst at Kovalenko's apartment is also more an effort to preserve his own anonymity than it is an overt attempt to exert control over others. In short, a disparity begins to arise between Burkin's Belikov and the Belikov who ostensibly gave rise to the story. This disparity is highlighted when we contrast Kovalenko's casual dismissal of Belikov with the difficulty Burkin and the other townspeople experience in interacting with him. As noted above, Burkin complains that Belikov's narrow-mindedness oppressed the entire town. He goes so far as to say that Belikov held the town hostage for fifteen years, during which time the town ladies were afraid to arrange theatrical gatherings and the clergy was afraid to eat meat during Lent or to play cards. In fact, Burkin says, "'We were afraid to talk out loud, to send letters, to make acquaintances, to read books, to help the poor, to teach others how to read and write'."
Despite Burkin's assertions to the contrary, such exaggerated fear could not have been induced by the likes of a Belikov unless the townspeople themselves were Belikovs of a sort. Prior to this passage Burkin attempts to characterize the teachers at the gymnasium as decent, thoughtful, and well-educated, but their meddling in Belikov's "romance" with Varenka is cruel. One need only consider the confrontation between Kovalenko and Belikov to see the extent of Belikov's "oppressive" nature. Belikov is frightened by Kovalenko's crude retorts and in order to preserve his insular existence, he threatens to report the conversation to the authorities. Unlike the other teachers or the rest of the townspeople, however, Kovalenko is undaunted, and before giving him a shove out of the door, he tells him to make his report. It is the humiliation of the rebuff—not the fall down the stairs—that ultimately brings about Belikov's rather Gogolian death.
Curiously, the plausibility of Belikov's "reign of terror" was called into question by one of Chekhov's contemporaries, although he did not develop his observation. After listing Belikov's nasty characteristics in detail, Evgenii Liatskii writes: "However, reader, does this really make sense? Is it conceivable that a gymnasium faculty and their director, consisting of educated people who have read Shchedrin, would submit to the influence of this pale caricature of Shchedrin's Judas for fifteen years?" But the critic is content to explain away this inconsistency as merely a small flaw in the story.
Certain of Burkin's comments that cause a careful reader to question his reliability are connected with his observations of the "outsiders" in the story, the Ukrainian Kovalenko and his sister Varenka. Both of these characters are drawn superficially. Varenka particularly is presented mockingly as a stereotypical "Little Russian" who is "'always singing Little Russian songs and laughing'"; she is said to be "'not a maiden, but marmelade,'" and is frequently referred to as a "'new Aphrodite'"; none of these descriptions are borne out by the subsequent portrayal of her in the story. Kovalenko himself is superficially portrayed as a rather gruff, self-assured, loud man, presumably in contrast to the more refined Great Russian inhabitants of the town (who are, Burkin assures us, a thoughtful lot, well-versed in Turgenev and Shchedrin). This inability to comprehend someone from outside the town's narrow confines borders on crude nationalist chauvinism at one point when Burkin says: " 'I have noticed that khokhlushki, top knots [a derogatory Russian term for Ukrainians], only cry or laugh; they don't have any in-between moods.'" Burkin is incapable of seeing these people as individuals, and the true narrator of the story certainly does not expect his reader to accept these observations as truths. They serve instead to undermine the reader's confidence in Burkin's authority as an observer.
As has been noted more than once, Burkin claims to be privy to information that only an omniscient narrator could possess. One particularly striking instance of this occurs when he undertakes to describe Belikov's paranoia even while lying in bed at night: " 'When he went to bed he would pull the covers over his head. It was hot and stuffy. The wind knocked at the door and the stove hummed. Sighs, ominous sighs, could be heard coming from the kitchen. . . . He was terrified there beneath the covers.'" That these details are Burkin's own narrative creations is easily discerned from other moments in the story. For instance, Burkin describes Belikov's state on the morning following one of these hypothetical nights: " 'When we would go to school together he was drawn and pale and it was obvious that the bustling school to which he was going was terrible for him; that it was repulsive to his entire being; and that it was difficult for him, a solitary man by nature, to walk along beside me.'" Belikov's few utterances are entirely devoid of substance, and he does not share with Burkin his personal thoughts or feelings. Hence, it does not appear that Burkin has the right to speak of what Belikov was thinking the previous night while lying beneath the covers. In fact, Belikov's pale and drawn appearance may represent the discomfort he feels in the company of his hostile neighbor. This, of course, does not occur to Burkin.
Burkin's description of Belikov's occasional social visits to his colleagues also leads us to doubt that he could have learned of Belikov's inner thoughts from the teacher himself. Says Burkin, " 'He would call on some teacher, sit down and silently stare as though he were looking at something. He would sit there like that silently for an hour or two and then leave.'" This is hardly the picture of a man who would share his private moments with an unfriendly neighbor. Only after the idea of marriage has been planted in his head and he comes to think he is enamored of Varenka does he actually venture to engage Burkin in a conversation of any substance. But even then the conversation never ventures beyond the subject of Varenka, and his speech mannerisms (he speaks with a feeble, twisted little smile) and actual statements ("I must admit, I'm afraid.") once again indicate that Belikov does not present a threat to the town's stability.
In fact, Belikov is an outcast who is ostracized by the townspeople. When the idea of marrying him off to Varenka arises, everyone joins in the machinations with malicious joy, and no opportunity is missed to foist this unwanted, unthought-of event on Belikov, who is no match for the likes of the town busybodies. Burkin describes Belikov on an outing to the theater with Varenka as "a hunched-over little man, who looked as though he had been pulled out of his apartment with pincers." This is hardly the picture of a man who holds a town hostage.
The details of this story that point to an interpretation of Burkin and his fellow townspeople as the real oppressors are myriad. Let it suffice to conclude with an observation of Burkin's upon returning home after Belikov's burial: "'We returned from the cemetery in good humor. But not a week passed before the same severe, tedious, senseless life began anew.'"
It is evident, then, that our perception of Belikov is heavily colored by the picture Burkin draws of him, and as the details are examined it becomes clear that Burkin's fictionalization of Belikov actually becomes a major element in the story. We may certainly assume that the Belikov who prompted this story shared some characteristics with the one whom Burkin creates for us—his meekness, his fear of spontaneity, even his occasional petty cruelty—but the ferocity attributed to him by Burkin is fabricated. Burkin, and thus the element of story-telling itself, is as much an object of observation in this story as Belikov, and this fundamentally alters the basic premise of the story.
This inability to distinguish between Chekhov's narrative voice and that of his characters has also caused particular confusion in interpretations of "Gooseberries." In this story the good-hearted, sentimental Ivan Ivanych tells the story of his brother Nikolai who devoted his life's labors to acquiring an estate on which he could grow his own gooseberries. For Nikolai the idea of the estate and particularly that of the gooseberries are emblems of bourgeois success that naturally bring with them happiness. As Ivan Ivanych develops his narrative he becomes increasingly carried away by the moral that he perceives to exist in his story, since, for all his hopes, efforts, and transgressions, the "happiness" that Nikolai achieves is nothing but a lie. The gooseberries are hard and sour, and his pathetic, rundown estate, squeezed between two factories, one of which calcinates bones and the other of which makes bricks and turns the nearby river brackish, is far from being an idyll of the Russian countryside.
While Nikolai does not recognize that the realization of the dream is a fraud, Ivan Ivanych does, and as he warms to his subject he seeks to turn his story into a homily. At one point he interrupts his narrative to say: "'But he's not the point. I am I want to tell you about the change that took place in me. . . . '" This is the sort of red herring frequently employed by Chekhov to mislead those of his readers who were forever seeking tendentious statements in their literature. Shortly thereafter Ivan Ivanych launches into his now famous pronouncement that happy people are only happy because the unhappy bear their burden silently. Developing this notion with frequent rhetorical questions and exclamations, he finally implores Alekhin: "There is no happiness and there shouldn't be. And if there is any sense or purpose in life, then this sense and purpose are not at all to be found in our happiness but in something more rational and great. Do good!'"
On the other hand, Chekhov's narrator offers several other, more fruitful, hints that Ivan Ivanych's story is not what he thinks it is. When Ivan Ivanych completes his tale, the narrator describes the three men's surroundings and states of mind. Ivan is said to have told his whole story with a "pitiful, imploring smile"; the two listeners, Burkin and Alekhin, are said to be very "dissatisfied" with Ivan's story; and finally, Burkin is unable to fall asleep because of a mysterious, unpleasant stench that is in fact emanating from Burkin's burned-out pipe. Together, these details indicate that something is amiss with the story that has just been told. When juxtaposed against the narrator's neutral observations, the hyperbole of Ivan's narration takes on an almost grotesque tinge. That is, the contrast between the idealistic, impassioned, but misplaced harangue against "happiness" is suddenly revealed to be as much a "lie" as was his brother Nikolai's achievement of "happiness." Milton A. Mays cleverly puts it this way: "Ivan Ivanych's story is a 'bad smell' in the context in which he tells it, and his 'truth' traduces reality." ["'Gooseberries' and Chekhov's Concreteness," Southern Humanities Review, Vol. 6, Winter, 1972].
Even within the frame story itself there are hints that Ivan Ivanych's moralistic diatribe is not to be taken at face value. Ivan frequently arouses the careful reader's suspicions by committing slips of the tongue or by contradicting himself. He misquotes an excerpt from a dialog in Pushkin's "Geroi" (Hero), transforming the lyrical statement of an individualized character-poet into a generalized, aphoristic phrase. Whereas Pushkin's character proclaims, " 'I value more an ennobling deception than a multitude of base truths.'" Ivan Ivanych quotes, "'We find more dear a deception which ennobles us than a multitude of truths.'" His erroneous attribution of a statement by one of Pushkin's characters to Pushkin himself is a fittingly ironic twist.
After delivering a lulling, lyrical description of his youth in the country at the outset of his narration, Ivan expresses a nostalgic longing for the country. But later he reacts critically to his brother's desire to set up house on his estate and calls the exodus of the intelligentsia from the city to the country nothing more than selfishness and sloth. This inconsistency is uttered in the first paragraph of Ivan's story and should clearly induce the reader to doubt his reliability.
There is also a more organic perhaps it might be called psychological—flaw in Ivan's character that serves to undermine his reliability. Following his fervent soliloquy on the nature of happiness, during which he supposedly exposes the false nature of the concept, he passionately asks why man must wait for time to free him of his shackles. He implies that decisive action and a radical reevaluation of attitudes would make it possible to overcome the lethargy of social change and to institute a new order. But he no sooner expresses this idea than he ironically reveals his own incompetence and impotence: He is "too old," he says, and no longer capable of pursuing the struggle. He pleads with Alekhin to "do good" while he is young and able, justifying his own apathy with the impotent phrase " 'Oh, if only I were young!'" By the end of the story, then, the careful reader is wary of accepting what Ivan Ivanych says at face value, and it becomes evident that Chekhov's intent in writing this story is not to instill in it "instructive" qualities.
The third story of the trilogy, "About Love," presents somewhat different complications from the first two since there is a fundamental shift in the relationship of the story-teller to his tale. In "The Man in a Shell," as we have seen, Burkin recounts an essentially third-person narrative about Belikov. In "Gooseberries" Ivan Ivanych spins a tale that is approximately half third-person narrative (the elements of plot that touch upon his brother Nikolai) and half first-person (his essentially plotless portrayal of himself in relation to his brother's experience, most of which is taken up with his moral and philosophical concerns). The frame story in "About Love" is told entirely in the first-person. The teller in this case is the subject of his own tale. However, the relationship of each of the story-tellers to verisimilitude is constant: Alekhin, as will become apparent, is no more a reliable source of information than were Burkin or Ivan Ivanych. David E. Maxwell's observation that Alekhin frequently speaks in the subjunctive mood is illuminating in that it indicates his story may have no basis in fact ["The Unity of Chekhov's 'Little Trilogy'," in Chekhov's Art of Writing: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Paul Sebreczeng and Thomas Eekman, 1977]. As a result, the narrative irony of "About Love" is of a subtler nature than that of the other stories. In "The Man in a Shell" and "Gooseberries" the reader is able to achieve a measure of perspective by means of the distance that exists between the tellers and their tales, but that distance is lost in "About Love." In the final story the reader must rely on key phrases and omissions in the narrative to reconstruct the gulf that exists between the event as it may have happened and the event as it is related by Alekhin.
As does Ivan Ivanych in "Gooseberries," Alekhin inadvertently gives his listeners reason to doubt his full credibility early on. After his short prelude story about the beautiful Pelageia, Alekhin acknowledges the inscrutability of love and says, " 'Each case must be individualized, as the doctors say'." Burkin readily approves, initially reinforcing in the readers mind the apparent truth of the matter. However, Alekhin immediately reverses himself and launches into a generalization about love: "'We Russians, cultivated people, have a predilection for these questions which remain unsolved. People usually poeticize love, embellish it with roses and nightingales, but we Russians embellish our loves with fatal questions . . .'." He appears to be unaware of the inconsistency in his statements.
In light of the problems of point of view and teller's credibility raised in the previous stories, the reader's primary problem here is to achieve a reasonable understanding of Anna Alekseevna, the object of Alekhin's love. This problem is highly complex, since with one exception (to be discussed later) our only information about her comes from Alekhin, whose love for her makes him far from an objective observer. Can we accept Alekhin's account of the alleged love affair at face value? I think not.
Alekhin's first meeting with Anna provides us with a major insight into the probable nature of his relationship with her. Images of childhood (Alekhin's included) and motherhood are constantly repeated. The second time he mentions Anna, Alekhin notes that she has just given birth to her first child. He then describes how she first appeared to him: " 'I saw a young, beautiful, good, intelligent, charming woman, a woman such as I had never met before. And immediately I sensed in her a being close to me, already familiar, as though I had already seen this face, these friendly, intelligent eyes sometime in my childhood, in a picture-album which lay on my mother's chest of drawers'."
Alekhin's first impression of Anna, then, is closely intertwined with his memories of childhood and his own mother. As will subsequently become apparent, Anna's relationship to Alekhin is in fact quite maternal, and does not have the sensual nature that he comes to experience, and that he attributes to her feeling for him. The lonely Alekhin, isolated in the country with his mundane cares of running an estate, is smitten by the vision of a beautiful young woman who arouses in him a feeling of warmth, comfort, and a longing for maternal love.
As this vague and undefined feeling develops into a true sensual passion, Alekhin begins to question the nature of the relationship between Anna and her older husband, ultimately concluding that it is an unhappy marriage. But this is likely to be wishful thinking on Alekhin's part. Following is his account of the first evening he spends with the Luganoviches: " 'Both husband and wife tried to make me eat and drink more. From a few insignificant details, for instance, the way they made coffee together, and the way they understood each other without finishing their sentences, I was able to conclude that their life was peaceful and successful, and that they were glad to have a visitor. After dinner they played a duet on the piano . . .'."
These "few insignificant details" are apparently insignificant only for Alekhin, for they actually suggest the closeness that may well exist between the couple. This is not an isolated picture. The husband and wife are frequently mentioned together as a close unit ("both of them," "both husband and wife," "the Luganoviches," etc.). Anna is frequently referred to as either "the wife" or the "young mother." It is through this interplay of words between the true narrator and the character Alekhin that the ironic distance in the story looms large. Chekhov's narrator allows his character to speak of a love that he believes to have existed (and which presumably did exist for him), while by carefully selecting Alekhin's vocabulary and the scenes that he relates, Chekhov also allows his reader to arrive at a very different interpretation of the affair.
Alekhin introduces several instances that he believes corroborate his conclusion that Anna shared his love. The first occurs in his account of their friendship. After his first visit to the Luganoviches, Alekhin does not see them for nearly six months. One evening he meets Anna by chance at the theater. She tells Alekhin: " 'I must confess I was a little taken with you. For some reason you frequently came to mind during the course of the summer, and today when I was getting ready for the theater it seemed that I would see you'." She concludes by laughing and telling him that his tired appearance makes him look old. On the following day Alekhin accompanies them back to their summer home where, Alekhin relates, " 'I had tea at their place in quiet, domestic surroundings while the fireplace crackled and the young mother often went out to see whether her little daughter was sleeping'." Within the context of Anna's placid family life her comments made at the theater are probably little more than polite, endearing, perhaps lightly flirtatious conversation.
Over a period of years the friendship between Alekhin and the Luganoviches grows and Alekhin develops a particularly close relationship with the children, almost as though he himself were one of them. He even describes himself once as a child in relation to Anna: " 'I used to carry her packages for her, and for some reason I carried those packages with such devotion and ceremony as though I were a little boy'." Alekhin's utterance of "for some reason" is far from incidental, although he does not seem to recognize its significance. Hence, the relationship between Anna and Alekhin far more resembles that of mother and son than that of two lovers. Their long conversations (none of which is reproduced in the story) are often marked by silence, which Alekhin interprets as their mutual fear of acknowledging their love. He begins to speak of "our love" and "our lives," although nothing has transpired to justify this romantic link. Claiming a (novelistic) omniscient knowledge of Anna's thought processes, he reasons that Anna would have run away with him were it not for social constrictions and family concerns, but neither Anna's words nor her behavior provide any reason for such assumptions.
Toward the end of Anna's stay in the country the relationship sours. Alekhin tells us: "'Anna Alekseevna began to go away more often to her mother's and her sister's. She was frequently in bad spirits, she appeared to recognize that her life was unsatisfactory and ruined, and she didn't want to see either her husband or her children. She was already taking a cure for nervous prostration'."
Anna's dissatisfaction with her life reflects on her relationship with Alekhin as well. Their conversations more and more come to be marked by silences and she frequently responds to Alekhin's comments harshly and sarcastically. Alekhin describes it this way: " 'She displayed some sort of strange irritation with me'." The phrase "some sort of," as the previously mentioned "for some reason," is an indication that Alekhin fails to understand what the narrator, the reader, and, presumably, Anna herself do understand. Anna's irritation is "strange" only for Alekhin, whose perception of the "affair" is very different from hers.
In order to find a satisfactory explanation for Anna's dissatisfaction, we may turn to one of the central themes of the trilogy as a whole: the indolence and boredom of life in the Russian countryside. While this theme was openly dealt with in the first two stories, it is alluded to much more subtly in "About Love." Chekhov's narrator in "Gooseberries" had already exposed the futility of Alekhin's life in the country, and thus the reader comes to Alekhin's story with a ready understanding of his situation. While the narrator in "About Love" has little more to add on this account, the idea that Alekhin has squandered his talents buried in the country is supported by Anna's responses to him, by occasional comments that Alekhin makes about himself, and by an observation shared by Burkin and Ivan Ivanych. Certainly the oppressive atmosphere that poisoned the lives of the people in "The Man in a Shell," seduced the simpleton Nikolai and brought Ivan Ivanych to a state of impotent indignation, and caused Alekhin to squander his talents had a similar effect on the "young, beautiful, good, intelligent, charming" Anna. The difference is that while none of the other characters of the stories had the good sense to combat this killing life, Anna does. Her trips to her mother and sister are quite probably an attempt to escape the prison-like atmosphere of the country, and her irritation with Alekhin is more apt to be an informed expression of disgust with a capable man who has allowed himself to wither away aimlessly.
For Alekhin the climax of his tale is the final proof of Anna's love for him, while the careful reader is left far from convinced. The scene takes place at the train station as Alekhin, Luganovich, and the Luganovich children see Anna off. Alekhin follows her into the train car where he finally confesses his love for her. The tearful scene is striking in that, with one exception, the only "actor" is Alekhin himself. Here is the scene as Alekhin tells it:
It was necessary to say good-bye. When our eyes met in the train car our emotional strength abandoned us both. I embraced her, she lay her face on my breast, and tears began to flow. While kissing her face, shoulders, hands wet from tears,—oh, how unhappy we were!—I confessed to her my love and with a bitter pain in my heart I understood how senseless, insignificant and deceptive everything was which had stopped us from loving. . . .
I kissed her one last time, took her hand, and we parted—forever. The train was already moving. I took a seat in the next car—it was nearly empty—and I sat there weeping until we reached the next station. Then I went home to Sofyino on foot. . . .
Alekhin kisses Anna, Alekhin embraces Anna, Alekhin confesses his love to Anna. Nothing here suggests that Alekhin can justify his claim that "our emotional strength abandoned us both." Anna's only response is to rest her head on Alekhin's chest and perhaps to shed a few tears, although it is not entirely clear that even this is so. The phrase "tears began to flow" is an impersonal construction, so that we cannot say for certain whose tears they were. They may be Alekhin's and not Anna's. In any event, that Anna rests her head on his chest and perhaps even sheds a few tears is hardly proof that she passionately loves him and is suffering from the same tragedy as he is. There is more than ample proof in the text that she feels an affection for this family friend, probably understands his attraction to her, and even sympathizes with him. However, there is little to justify Alekhin's invoking of the pronoun "we" to relate what he perceives to be a shared experience of tragic sorrow. The small degree of affection that Anna does express may be a magnanimous, even frustrated, expression of sympathy rather than love. Even more convincing is the finale of the incident: Anna attempts neither to stop him when he goes, nor to follow him into the neighboring car where he sits alone and weeps. It would appear that Alekhin has "poeticized" and "embellished with roses" this instance just as he has the entire "affair."
In effect, Alekhin's outburst on the nature of loving is a reprise of Ivan Ivanych's similar outburst on the nature of happiness and strikes a similar discordant note. Here is what Alekhin has to say: " 'I understood that with love, one's thoughts must begin with something exalted, something more important than happiness or unhappiness, sin or virtue in their common sense, or one must not think about it at all'." Whatever truth there may be in this utterance, it is entirely out of place in the context of the story that has just been told. Even if Alekhin had acted in accordance with this reasoning, there is no real indication that anything would have come of it. The pathos of the situation arises not from the tragedy of unrequited love—as Alekhin sees it—but from the tragedy of Alekhin's misguided life: He has become obsessed by a dubious love while failing to notice that his life was wasting away in the depths of the country. The disparity between these two views is created by a gap that exists between the point of view of Chekhov's narrator and the point of view of his created character, Alekhin.
Following Alekhin's retelling of the train scene, the narrator once again steps in and describes the effect that the story has had on Burkin and Ivan Ivanych. The two of them "regretted that this man with good, intelligent eyes who had told his story with such sincerity truly was spinning 'round here like a squirrel in a cage on his enormous estate instead of busying himself with science or something else. . . ." The narrator deflects or attention from the story of unrequited love, indicating that Alekhin's real tragedy is his inability to comprehend the more probable source of his unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Our final meeting with Anna—the first and only one that is not portrayed through Alekhin's consciousness—occurs in the story's final sentence when the narrator laconically tells us that Burkin and Ivan Ivanych both occasionally met her in town and that "Burkin was even acquainted with her and found her to be pretty." This almost flippant observation about Anna stands in stark contrast to the more intense portrayal we have received of her throughout the story. What a difference from the string of adjectives Alekhin used to describe her at their first meeting! Once again, the narrator redirects the reader's attention away from the atmosphere of the story Alekhin has told.
If Chekhov was not interested in providing his readers with instructive social or moral tales through the narratives of Burkin, Ivan Ivanych, and Alekhin, what did he intend by imparting authorial bias to the characters and situations of his trilogy? Somerset Maugham offers a fitting insight: "It is natural for men to tell tales, and I suppose the short story was created in the night of time when the hunter, to beguile the leisure of his fellows when they had eaten and drunk their fill, narrated by the cavern fire some fantastic incident he had heard of" ["The Short Story," in Points of View, 1958]. Each story in the trilogy contains numerous references to the theme of story-telling, and in almost all cases the message is borne by Chekhov's narrator, either by direct narrative statement or by the manipulation of dialog, setting, and mood. It is in this manner that the characters all serve their primary function. Burkin, Ivan Ivanych, and Alekhin are, above all, story-tellers. Within the world of the work Burkin may have been a teacher of Greek, Ivan Ivanych a veterinarian, and Alekhin a petty landowner, but for Chekhov's narrator they are hunters after stories; raconteurs, not raisonneurs.
Burkin, whose tale most resembles a traditional "story," seems to be the most conscious story-teller of the three. His tale is not a personal confession as are the tales of Ivan Ivanych and Alekhin, and he narrates it with "presumptuous" omniscience. He selects for his subject the eccentric Belikov and employs innuendo, prejudice, elaboration, and exaggeration for the sake of a good story. Burkin foils Ivan Ivanych whenever the latter wants to intrude on the flow of Burkin's story, and he plays the role of Ivan Ivanych's "editor" in "Gooseberries" by invariably cutting him short whenever he begins to digress.
Chekhov's narrator frequently tells us that both Ivan Ivanych and Alekhin want to say or tell something. Each of the three frame stories begins with similar overt statements (my italics): "They were telling various stories" ("The Man in a Shell"); "Ivan Ivanych sighed heavily and lit his pipe so he could begin to tell a story" ("Gooseberries"); Alekhin told about how beautiful Pelageia was in love with the cook" ("About Love"). In "Gooseberries" Ivan Ivanych's initial attempt to tell his story is frustrated by a sudden downpour, but when he does begin his tale the narrator points out that "Ivan Ivanych launched into his story." In "About Love" Chekhov's narrator elaborates on the theme of story-telling:
It appeared that he [Alekhin] wanted to tell something. People who live alone always have something they would willingly tell about. In the city bachelors purposefully go to the baths and restaurants for no other reason than to talk and sometimes they tell the bath attendants or waiters very interesting stories. In the country on the other hand, they usually pour out their soul to their guests. In the window the gray sky and trees, wet from the rain, were visible. There was nowhere to go in such weather and there was nothing left to do but tell stories and listen.
Story-telling, then, in addition to being a form of entertainment, is a way for people to share and participate in their lives. For Chekhov, whose appetite for religion had long ago been squelched, and for whom tendentiousness was synonymous with narrow-mindedness, honesty and art stood on the highest pedestal. There can be little doubt he would have heartily agreed with John Updike's assertion that, "Being ourselves is the one religious experience we all have, an experience shareable only partially, through the exertions of talk and art" [Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, 1979]. Ultimately, it is not the "truth" of the tale that matters but the telling of it.
Even Chekhov's narrator cannot help but have a word to say in the final story of the trilogy. He too is struck by the beautiful Pelageia, who so astounds Burkin and Ivan Ivanych, and he too cannot refrain from admiring her beauty. While Alekhin may occasionally refer to her merely as Pelageia, Chekhov will not let his narrator be so indifferent. For him she is invariably the beautiful Pelageia, as she might be characterized in a folk tale. It is as though the cathartic act of story-telling has had its effect even on him. For those readers who have sought to find Chekhov in his stories, here he is: The craftily "absent author" who commands, as Virginia Woolf wrote [in "The Russian Point of view"], "exquisitely original and fastidious taste," whose "melancholy" is distortion, whose "cruelty" is misinterpretation, and whose honesty, appreciation of beauty, and ability to spin an intriguing yarn are always the hallmark of his best stories.
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