Nature in Chekhov's Fiction
[In the essay below, the critic contends that Chekhov believed in "the unity of all living things and of a disturbed harmony in nature to the end of his life." Bill then shows how this perspective influenced Chekhov's short fiction, including "Gooseberries."]
He (Chekhov) was the first one in literature to include man's relation to nature into the sphere of ethics.
A. P. Chudakov, Poetika Chekhova, 1971.
At a relatively early stage in his artistic development Chekhov formulated his basic view of life on this planet. In the story "The Reed Pipe" (Svirel') (1887), we hear the lament of an old shepherd: "The sun and the skies and the forests and the rivers and the creatures—all this is created, adapted, adjusted to each other. Each is at work and knows its place. And all this is doomed to perish." [Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Polnoe sobrante sochinenii i pisem, 20 vols. (Moscow, 1944-1951), 6:253. All quotations from Chekhov's writings are based on this edition of Chekhov's works. The translation of all quotations is my own.] He bewails the declining abundance of game, of animals, of bees, of fish . . . Rivers are drying up, forests are cut down or burn, plant life is diminishing . . . At least people are getting more intelligent, the shepherd's listener, the bailiff Meliton, interjects, trying to introduce a more cheerful note into the conversation. This may be so, the shepherd agrees, but "what use is intelligence to a hunter if there is no game? I am of a mind that God has given man intelligence but has taken away his strength. People have grown weak, extremely weak . . ." The name of the old shepherd is revealed only toward the end of the story as if to stress the significance of a heretofore anonymous lament: Luka Bednyi—Lucas the Poor.
Chekhov adhered to this basic view of the unity of all living things and of a disturbed harmony in nature to the end of his life. The lament of Luka Bednyi sounds like a prelude to the marvellously musical opening words of Treplev's play in the first act of the Seagull (1895)—a melodiousness which can be only inadequately conveyed in translation: "People, lions, eagles and partridges, antlered deer, geese, spiders, silent fish living in water, star fish and stars invisible to the eye—in short all lives, all lives, all lives, having completed their doleful cycle, are extinct . . ."
In "The Reed Pipe" Luka Bednyi plays a simple, melancholy melody on his crude instrument, a melody which consists of five or six notes only, the highest note sounding like human weeping. The opening words of Treplev's play sound, in Russian, like a poetic transcript of Luka's plaintive motif.
Man's life is inseparable from that of nature, but this unity is presented by Chekhov in a manner far different from the traditional treatment of nature in literature as backdrop for human experiences and emotions. To Chekhov, Man and Nature are one and neither is more important than the other. Trees, grass, flowers, birds, clouds—each particle, large and small, of life on this earth leads its own individual existence and at the same time is integrated into the universal process of life.
To show this interplay of integration and separation, Chekhov frequently presents us with images in which man contemplates or participates in a natural scene while at the same time the independence and autonomy of the particular piece of nature are stressed. Such images abound in the story "The Steppe" ("Step"'), that lyrical hymn to the Russian steppe. For instance: The two boys, Egorushka and Deniska, catch a grasshopper and offer him a fat fly which has just feasted on horse blood. The grasshopper moves his large jaws non-chalantly "as if Deniska were an old acquaintance" and bites the fly's belly off. The boys let him go. Settling in the grass he immediately begins to chirp. The fly is let off too: "It spreads its wings and flies, minus a belly, toward the horses."
In "An Unpleasantness" the windows of doctor Ovchinnikov's reception room are open. Outside, a group of starlings are hopping along a path. When disturbed by a noise from the window, the starlings turn their foolish noses to investigate and to decide: "should they get frightened or not? And, deciding to get frightened, they rush off one by one toward the tops of the birch trees, shouting gaily as if mocking the doctor who does not know how to fly."
In "The Peasants" young Sasha has been delegated by the grandmother to watch the geese who like to invade the vegetable garden. The little girl neglects her assignment, and the geese do invade the garden. After expelling the geese the grandmother whips Sasha. While Sasha is crying from pain and fright, "the gander came up to the old woman and hissed something; when he returned to his flock all the geese greeted him with an approving 'go-gogo'."
To stress that nature's existence is independent from man's, Chekhov frequently conjures images of a rapport between two elements of nature, a rapport in which man is not participating. In "The Steppe" an evening after a scorchingly hot summer day is described:
But then, at last, as the sun began to sink westward, the steppe, the hills, and the air could no longer endure the oppression, and, worn out, patience exhausted, they tried to throw off the yoke. Unexpectedly, from behind the hills appeared an ash-grey curly cloud. It exchanged a glance with the steppe saying: 'I am ready,' and glowered.
In "In the Ravine" ("V ovrage") the sun has gone down. It "took cover under a crimson golden brocade while long clouds, red and purple, stretched across the sky, guarding its rest."
Images of man and animal or even man and plant sharing an experience abound in Chekhov's stories. In "Three Years" Laptev, who feels trapped by his wealth and commercial enterprise, sees a black dog lying in the middle of the yard. And he asks himself: "What is it that keeps me here? And he felt annoyed at himself and at this black dog who lay around on the stones instead of running to the fields or woods . . . Apparently what prevented him and this dog from escaping was one and the same thing: habit of captivity, of slavery."
In "The Teacher of Literature," after Nikitin tells Maniusia of his love for her they run out to the garden: "A half-moon shone above the garden and on the ground; out of the shadows of the grass, feebly lit by this half-moon, sleepy tulips and irises reached out, as if they too were begging for a declaration of love."
In "A Case from Practice" ("Sluchai iz praktiki") a crowd of workers is walking home from the factory on a Saturday evening, and "it seemed that together with the workers on the eve of this holiday the field, the forest, the sun, too, were getting ready to rest—to rest and perhaps to pray."
A comparison of Chekhov's views with those of the two greatest bards of nature in nineteenth-century Russian literature, Tolstoy and Turgenev, is essential for an evaluation of the measure of Chekhov's originality. The alienation of modern man from his natural environment is one of the central themes of Tolstoy. Without nature man cannot be happy, nor can he hope for human dignity. "Majestically beautiful" is the simple girl Mar'iana in The Cossacks and valiant, proud, and tenacious the Caucasian rebel Khadzhi Murat in their unspoiled primitive environment.
Against a background of nature in its pristine majesty, grandeur, and nobility, Tolstoy paints a vast panorama of human folly, weakness, and aberration. In the famous scene of the battle of Austerlitz in War and Peace when the wounded prince Andrei gazes at the "immeasurably high sky" above, he muses how quietly, calmly, and solemnly the grey clouds float by—a movement so different from the running, shouting, and fighting of the men below. The noble death of the tree in "Three Deaths" is an indictment of human pettiness. The dying peasant Fedor gives his boots to young Serega in return for a promise to erect a stone on his, Fedor's, grave. But Serega fails to fulfill this promise. Driven by remorse, though still unwilling to go to any expense to buy a stone, he cuts down the young tree to make a cross over Fedor's grave. The simultaneously majestic and pitiful old age of the horse Kholstomer in the story of the same title contrasts with the reprehensible moral deterioration and ugly physical decline of his former owner Serpukhovskoy. After Kholstomer's death every bit of his body re-enters the eternal cycle of life. His hide is worked into leather, his flesh is eaten by a pack of young wolves, and his bones are gathered by a peasant and will be ground up. The "eating and drinking dead body of Serpukhovskoy," on the other hand, walked this earth for quite a while longer. When he was finally buried, "neither his skin, nor his flesh, nor his bones were of any use whatsoever."
It is interesting to note here the different treatment of a similar theme by Chekhov. "Gusev" is one of the few stories in which the author's attention to his hero continues beyond the point of death. The soldier Gusev, returning after five years of service in the Far East, dies of tuberculosis on board ship. His body is sewn into a canvas and now "resembles a carrot or a horseradish: wide at the top and narrow at the feet." The body is lowered into the sea. A shark approaches the sinking and drifting shape. It "lazily opens its jaws with two rows of teeth." After playing around with his find, the shark cautiously touches the shape with its teeth and "the canvas rips from head to toe." Like that of the horse Kholstomer, the body of Gusev will re-enter the eternal cycle of life.
The majesty and beauty of nature occupy Turgenev no less than Tolstoy. Yet, while Tolstoy places nature above modern man and indicts the human being's alienation from the natural environment, Turgenev sees a precipice which dooms man to eternal loneliness and isolation from nature. Turgenev paints his nature scenes with infinite love and care, blending colors, sounds, lights and shadows into compositions which highlight and reflect the emotions and experiences of his heroes. Turgenev knows the botanical names of every tree, bush, and grass; the species and characteristics of every bird and animal are observed and registered. Yet, there is a gulf impassable to man. "You are no concern of mine," says nature to man in "A Trip to the Forests." "I reign supreme and you see to it that you don't die." "No matter how much you knock at nature's door, you will not receive an intelligible word in response because nature is mute" says Shubin in On the Eve.
While Chekhov's starlings gayly shout and mock the doctor who cannot fly, the sight of a sparrow jumping and calling leads Chulkaturin in Turgenev's "Diary of A Superfluous Man" to muse: "He is healthy, and he has the right to shout and to rumple his feathers. And I am sick and I shall die—that's all." The hero of "A Trip to the Forests" watches a big fly basking motionless in the sun and feels that this spectacle has brought him a sudden understanding of nature's life, of its healthy equilibrium and serenity which is inaccessible to man. Coldly and indifferently, nature gazes at man who is doomed by death the day he is born—frail, insignificant, and fortuitous.
Chekhov, too, speaks of nature's indifference. In "A Lady with a Dog," Gurov and Anna Sergeevna sit on a bench in Oreanda and gaze down upon the sea:
. . . the monotonous, hollow sound of the sea coming up from below spoke of peace, of the eternal sleep awaiting us. The same sounds could be heard down there when there was neither a Yalta nor an Oreanda, they are audible today and they will continue equally indifferently and dully when we will no longer be on earth. And this constancy, this total indifference toward the life and death of every single one among us harbors, perhaps, a promise of our eternal salvation, of the continuous movement of life on earth, of continuous perfection.
There is none of Turgenev's sense of tragedy and assertion of human loneliness and frailty here. Man is part of the eternal cycle of life. And he is not frail.
In contrast to Turgenev's view of man's passive role vis-à-vis nature, the mature Chekhov came to speak with increasing insistence of man's active role, of man's responsibility toward preservation and restoration of natural harmony and balance. Tolstoy looked at nature as the savior of man. Chekhov sought man to become the savior of nature.
The trip to Sakhalin in 1890, so crucial for the evolution of Chekhov's views on human character and society, supplied him also with important observations of man's relations to his natural environment. In spite of the severe climate and grim setting of the penal colony, Chekhov found that Sakhalin could be a paradise for hunters and fishermen. Yet, the fabulous abundance of salmon and herring runs goes to waste. And the wealth of fur-bearing animals, of sable, fox, and bear, is untapped, for to engage in professional fishing or hunting man must be free, courageous, and healthy. The penal population of Sakhalin has none of these qualities. Thus, Luka Bednyi's observation in "The Reed Pipe" of the decreasing strength of man is supplemented by the assertion that freedom, courage, and health are prerequisites for man's successful exploitation of nature's bounty.
In the post-Sakhalin period Chekhov increasingly uses attitudes and behavior toward nature as a measure of the character and moral stature of individuals and groups. Indifference or thoughtlessness or cruelty to nature is seen as evidence of character and moral deficiency. Of Lubkov, the flighty, dissolute, irresponsible, forever laughing character in "Ariadna," Chekhov says: "Lubkov loved nature but regarded it as something long familiar and moreover actually infinitely inferior to himself, something created only for his pleasure. He would stop before a magnificent panoramic view and say: "Wouldn't it be nice to have a tea party here'?" Later, preparing to seduce the beautiful, cold Ariadna, Lubkov says: "I respect women . . . but I think that certain relationships are compatible with lyricism. Lyricism is one thing, and a lover is another thing. The same as in farming: beauty of nature is one thing, and the income from forests and fields is another thing."
In the story "Pecheneg," the old cossack Zhmukhin has thus been dubbed by his neighbors, for his lifestyle resembles that of the tenth-century wild nomadic steppe tribe of the Pechenegs. Untutored and uncouth, he keeps his wife in pitiful subjection and his two illiterate teenage sons in total neglect. "To tell the truth I do not consider woman to be a human being." Zhmukhin invites a chance acquaintance—a middle-aged attorney whom he meets on a train ride—to spend the night at his house. As Zhmukhin and his guest arrive at the house, they see the two boys: "The younger one threw a chicken into the air which flew in an arc, cackling; the older one, holding a rifle, fired, and the chicken, killed, hit the ground. "Those are my sons learning to shoot on the wing' said Zhmukhin."
Conversely, Tania's father in "The Black Monk," a straightforward, kind, and ebullient, though irrascible, man is portrayed as the loving and efficient guardian of his huge and profitable fruit orchards and flower gardens. Another Chekhov character devoted to the care of the things of nature—"clever, very kind, and universally respected"—is the hero of "A Story of the Head Gardener."
Misail, the hero of "My Life," speaks of his provincial town as inhabited by lazy, stupid, dishonest people. And as he looks back upon "a long, long row of suppressed, agonizingly slow sufferings he has incessantly observed in this town since his childhood," he thinks of "the tortured dogs that went mad, the sparrows plucked bare while alive by boys and then thrown into the water . . ."
It is when Chekhov turns his attention to human activities which ravage the face of the earth or result in widespread natural disturbances that the question of man's responsibilities toward nature comes most forcefully to the fore. And it is then that the idea of unity and solidarity between man and his environment is most vividly and insistently expressed.
Deforestation is the first reprehensible intrusion of man upon nature discussed by Chekhov. Doctor Khrushchev in the play The Wood Demon (1889) is a devoted conservationist. His ardor has earned him a nickname—the title of the play. He cuts peat to reduce the burning of wood logs and tends tree nurseries to counteract the depletion of forests. His monologue in the first act is a forceful variation on Luka Bednyi's lament in "The Reed Pipe": "All Russian forests crumble under the blows of axes, billions of trees perish, the abodes of animals and birds are ravaged, rivers grow shallow and dry up, wonderful landscapes vanish irrevocably, and all this because lazy man does not have enough sense to stoop and to pick up fuel available on the ground."
By 1896 Chekhov had reworked The Wood Demon into Uncle Vania. The number of characters was reduced and the action partly changed and concentrated in one place, but the role of Doctor Khrushchev, who now became Doctor Astrov, was retained and expanded, although he is no longer the only central figure. With minor changes Khrushchev's monologue was repeated by Astrov in the first act of Uncle Vania and graphically enlarged upon in the third act: Astrov, like Khrushchev before him, has prepared a map of the local district and now explains its meaning at length. Different colors are used on the map to show the distribution of flora and fauna as it was fifty years ago, twenty-five years ago, and as it is today. The picture is one of continuing depletion of forested areas, a drastic decline in some animal and bird species, and a complete disappearance of others: elk, swans, and grouse are gone:
"A picture of gradual and indubitable regeneration," remarks Astrov, ". . . if in place of these destroyed forests we would see highways, railroads, plants, factories, schools—people would be healthier, richer, more intelligent, but there is nothing of the sort here. We have in the district the same swamps, mosquitoes, lack of roads, poverty, typhus, diphtheria, fires . . ."
Chekhov also observes the beginnings of water pollution. In the humorous skit "Fish Love" (1892), a carp, sole inhabitant of a large pond situated near a foundry, falls madly in love with a young girl who daily comes to swim in the pond. "Due to proximity to the foundry . . . the water in the pond has long since turned brown, but nevertheless the carp could see everything." In "Gooseberries," the estate bought by Nikolai Ivanovich in fulfillment of his life's dream is situated near a river, "but the water in it was the color of coffee because on one side of the estate stood a brick factory and on the other a bone-processing plant." A leather factory ("In the Ravine," 1900) lay on the outskirts of Ukleevo. This factory was responsible for the fact that
the water in the stream often turned malodorous; the factory's wastematter contaminated the meadow, the peasants' cattle suffered from anthrax, and the factory was ordered closed. It was considered closed but operated secretly with the knowledge of the district's police officer and doctor, who each received ten roubles a month from the owner.
Survival of man and nature are tied. Doctor Khrushchev sees human destiny closely bound to the success and failure of his foresting: "When I hear the rustling of my young forest planted with these very hands, I realize that climate is a little bit in my power, and if in a thousand years man will be happy, in some small measure the responsibility will be mine."
Even more forcefully the same theme is expressed by the unhappy Elena Andreevna:
"There, as 'the Wood Demon' has just said, you all recklessly destroy forests, and soon nothing will be left on earth; in the same way you recklessly destroy humans, and soon, thanks to you, there will be neither faithfulness, nor purity, nor ability for self-sacrifice left on earth . . . You have pity neither for forests, nor for birds, nor for women, nor for each other."
By denying Astrov the central position which Khrushchev enjoys in The Wood Demon, Chekhov only strengthens and underscores the parallel between people and trees in Uncle Vania. The survival of trees and the survival of sensitive, self-effacing, humble people like Uncle Vania and Sonia merge into one. Both are two sides of the same theme: beauty—moral and natural—and its senseless destruction. As Tuzenbakh remarks in The Three Sisters shortly before his fatal duel: "What beautiful trees and, actually, how beautiful life should be near them!"
The heartless Iakov in "Rothschild's Fiddle" (1894) is totally absorbed in his business of making coffins and money. The fear of financial loss if an anticipated order for a coffin does not materialize is forever uppermost in his mind, though he earns some extra money by playing the fiddle in a local Jewish orchestra. Only when his wife is dying does he suddenly remember that during their long life together he has never had a kind word for her. The dying woman speaks of the little girl with blond hair that was born to them fifty years ago and died. "At that time," she says, "you and I used to sit by the river and sing songs under the willow tree." But Iakov cannot remember the child or the willow tree. After his wife's funeral he goes for a stroll along the river:
There was a spreading old willow tree with a huge hollow and with crows' nests in its branches . . . And suddenly there arose in Iakov's memory, as if alive, the baby with the blond hair and the willow tree his wife had spoken of. Yes, this is that very same willow tree—green, quiet, sad . . . How it has aged, the poor thing!
Iakov sits down and memories crowd upon him. Where he now sees a water meadow, there used to be a large birch forest. The bare hill on the horizon used to be covered by an old pine forest . . . Remorse about his own past life merges with apprehension of the changes he observes around him. Why did they cut down the birch trees and the pines? Why did he, all his life, scold, growl, brandish his fists, mistreat his wife? "The results are such losses, such terrible losses!"
Clearly there is unity between man and nature. But what of man himself? Does Chekhov view man as simply a more complex organism, more destructive perhaps than other beings, or is there something which distinguishes him from other creatures? À significant indication of Chekhov's answer to this question is found in the scene already mentioned from "A Lady with a Dog." Gurov ponders how beautiful everything is in this world, "everything except what we ourselves think and do when we forget about the higher goals of existence, about our human dignity." The concept of human dignity appears again in The Wood Demon. Khrushchev in his monologue and after him Astrov in Uncle Vania say: "Man has been given intelligence and creative power in order to increase what has been given to him, but until now he has not created, he has only destroyed." A small plot of land is not what man needs—exclaims the narrator in "Gooseberries" when he visits his brother Nikolai Ivanovich and finds him sunk to a level of vegetating existence which he enjoys—man needs "the entire terrestrial globe, the entire nature where, unhampered, he would be able to display all traits and features of his free spirit."
Man's spirit is the only living force on earth capable of voluntary and emotional acts, capable of creative achievements. While the animal and plant world lives immersed in its environment, powerless to change reality, man can detach himself from his environment, he can destroy it, to be sure, but he can also rise above it. Such a detachment, such a rise is shown by Chekhov in "Rothschild's Fiddle." To alleviate his remorse over a cheerless, wasted life and his anguish at surveying a ravaged environment, Iakov reaches for his fiddle. "Thinking about a lost, unprofitable life, he began to play he did not himself know what, but it came out plaintive and touching, and tears began to stream down his cheeks. And the deeper he thought, the sadder sang the fiddle." A member of the Jewish orchestra Iakov belongs to, by the nickname of Rothschild, listens, enraptured, to the sad and beautiful melody. Iakov has always been mean to Rothschild but now, at death's door, decides to give him his fiddle. Played by Rothschild, Iakov's melody lives on after his death, moving the local inhabitants again and again to tears.
"A Letter"—begun a year or so before Chekhov's death—was left unfinished. In it, Chekhov extolls the proud potentialities of the human spirit, saying through the author of the letter that "the most beautiful and the most rational, powerful, invincible part of nature is the part created by the genius of man, independently from nature's will." Genius of man, to Chekhov, is not only the ability of outstanding, gifted individuals to create works of art and excellence; he includes the spiritual potentialities to be found in every man as well. In "A House with a Mezzanine—a Story of an Artist" (1896) the plight of the peasantry is discussed and the artist says:
The whole horror of their situation is that they have no time to think about their soul, no time to remember their own image and likeness; hunger, cold, blind fear, a mountain of labor, have blocked, like avalanches, all roads to spiritual activity, to the very thing which distinguishes man from animal and constitutes the only thing that makes life worth living.
Later he adds: "The mission of every human being is spiritual activity—an incessant search for truth and meaning of life."
None of Chekhov's heroes who speak of man's place in the world, of man's responsibilities and unique attributes are endowed with exceptional abilities or achievements. In no way do they rise above the mass of simple, ordinary people who crowd the pages of Chekhov's fiction. Quite the contrary. Khrushchev in The Wood Demon says that every day he is gaining in stupidity and pettiness and losing in talent. Astrov in Uncle Vania feels sucked in by the surrounding provincialism and has taken to drink. Nikolai Ivanovich's brother in "Gooseberries," a veterinarian, is old, "unfit to struggle," as he puts it, and bemoans the fact that he is no longer young. The coffin maker Iakov in "Rothschild's Fiddle" is morose and engrossed in his petty business. Gurov in "The Lady with a Dog" is a Muscovite businessman of average means and standing. The author of the unfinished "Letter" is an invalid and former seminary student who left the academy without finishing his studies. And the artist in "A House with a Mezzanine" confesses to total idleness and to endless hours of aimless dreaming and roaming the countryside.
Yet, every one of these characters who express Chekhov's views on man and nature experiences or is aware of something which belongs to the realm of the spirit, that realm accessible only to man. In the last act of The Wood Demon Khrushchev experiences a great upsurge of will and determination. A forest fire is raging in the distance: "I may not be a hero," he exclaims, "but I will become one! I shall grow wings like an eagle and nothing will frighten me—neither this fiery glow nor the devil himself. Let the forests burn—I shall plant new ones!" Astrov's spiritual experience in Uncle Vania—aside from his love for his trees—is esthetic. He is temporarily drawn to the beautiful Elena Andreevna, yet neither in lust nor in love. It is beauty that attracts him: "I do not love anyone and I will not fall in love either. What still captivates me is beauty. I am drawn to it." The sight of the vegetating Nikolai Ivanovich in "Gooseberries" leads his brother to an acute outburst of despair and indignation over people who sink into the stupor of material contentment to the exclusion of higher goals and interests. Out of Iakov's remorse and sadness in "Rothschild's Fiddle" springs the beautiful melody that lived on after his death. The middle-aged, cynical Gurov in "The Lady with a Dog," who used to speak of women as "the inferior race," experiences deep and poignant attachment to Anna Sergeevna. The author of "A Letter" writes to a Maria Sergeevna of the sense of wonder, reverence, and ecstasy he felt while reading the book he is sending her. And the idling artist in "A House with a Mezzanine" dreams of "genuine sciences and art which would be oriented toward eternal and lofty goals rather than be concerned with passing needs and current problems of the day."
The spark of the sublime is there in every one of them, though it be only a spark. Resignation and enthusiasm, despondency and esthetic transport, pettiness and creative inspiration, cynicism and love, physical deficiency and mental ecstasy, inertia and artistic insight—they are all there side by side in man. So, Chekhov's vision of life on this earth was one of a cherry orchard in bloom, be it fifty, one hundred, two hundred or perhaps even one thousand years away.
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