#anton chekhov

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Isaac Levitan - Portrait of A.P. Chekhov (1885-1886)

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— Anton Chekhov

“A woman can become a man's friend only in the following stages — first an acquantaince, next a mistress, and only then a friend.”

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I drag my whole life behind me like the train of a dress, an endless train.

The Sea Gull by Anton Chekhov

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Here we touch on the paradox that Lev Shestov finds at the heart of Chekhov's work: ‘Idealism of every kind, whether open or concealed, roused feelings of intolerable bitterness in Chekhov. He found it more pleasant to listen to the merciless menaces of a downright materialist than to accept the dry-as-dust consolations of humanising idealism. An invincible power is in the world, crushing and crippling man— this is clear and even palpable. The least indiscretion, and the mightiest and the most insignificant alike fall victims to it. One can only deceive oneself about it as long as one knows of it only by hearsay. But the man who has once been in the iron claws of necessity loses forever his taste for idealistic self-delusion.

Thus the real, the only hero of Chekhov, is the hopeless man. He has absolutely no action left for him in life, save to beat his head against the stones... He has nothing, he must create everything for himself. And this "creation out of the void," or more truly the possibility of this creation, is the only problem which can occupy and inspire Chekhov. When he has stripped his hero of the last shred, when nothing is left for him but to beat his head against the wall, Chekhov begins to feel something like satisfaction, a strange fire lights in his burnt-out eyes, a fire which Mikhailovsky did not call ‘evil’ in vain.

Like Hamlet, he would dig beneath his opponent a mine one yard deeper, so that he may at one moment blow engineer and engine into the air. His patience and fortitude in this hard, underground toil are amazing and to many intolerable. Everywhere is darkness, not a ray, not a spark, but Chekhov goes forward, slowly, hardly, hardly moving... An inexperienced or impatient eye will perhaps observe no movement at all. It may be Chekhov himself does not know for certain whether he is moving forward or marking time.’

Richard Pevear, from Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov (2009)

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But what sort of knowledge did [Chekhov] draw from science and the scientific worldview?

The chief thing it taught him was that the order of the world is implacable and indifferent to human suffering. He could observe its operation in the progress of his own illness, the first definite symptoms of which appeared in 1889, the year he wrote "A Boring Story," which marked the beginning of his maturity. He could also observe it in his medical practice, which, as Leonid Grossman has written, "brought home to Chekhov with remarkable fullness the horror of life, the cruelty of nature, and the impotence of man." Doctor-protagonists confront the same cruelty and impotence in scenes repeated throughout his work— with the brutality and indifference of human beings added to it, or simply making one with it.

Richard Pevear, from Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov (2009)

[littledreamsnothingmore]

Everything is crumbling & decrepit, but poetical, sad, & beautiful in the extreme.

// Anton Chekhov

[scoobydoomed]

All these horrors had been, existed now and would continue to do so. The passing of another thousand years would bring no improvement. He didn't feel like going home.

[scoobydoomed]

'So much space, freedom, peace here!' Kovrin thought as he walked along the path. 'The whole world seems to be looking at me, has gone silent, and is waiting for me to understand it.'