My Kind of Saint

 

I have a confession to make.

The pundits tell us that Antonin Chekhov (1860-1904) was one of the four greatest authors in his language, but I must admit his stories elicit little yawns with me. It’s not the most gripping stuff. But that’s just me. And there is one short novel of Chekhov I really like: Vladimir Nabokov’s Mashenka is the best Chekhovian story Chekhov has never written.

No, I shall not concern myself too much with the writer. It is the man I am interested in, a good man, one of the few who deserve to be called a “saint.” Someone who fulfills the first condition of genuine sainthood: “Standing in the second rank and quietly get on with it” (Gottfried Benn). Chekhov had many opportunities to stand in the limelight - as an author and a playwright – but his humanity was of a wholesome anonymity.

People who knew him, remembered a young giant with broad shoulders and an open face, who smoked cigars, frequented the nightclubs in Moscow, and had affairs with celebrated actresses; a man who knew when and where to send flowers. By the early eighties his literary activities had taken on a permanent and professional character. In 1888 he was awarded the Pushkin Prize. In 1890 he traveled on his own initiative to the Island of Sakhalin, conducted a survey of the prison facilities and wrote a very matter of fact account about the penal colony and hard labor, which was all the more damning because it avoided any exaggerating rhetoric. Apart from his literary activities, Chekhov continued writing for the press, reported on trials, wrote reviews, short news, the odd article, and daily columns. In 1899 he had published more than 48,000 pages of novellas and stories, not counting the plays.

Anton Chekhov was born into a family of serfs.

He was one year old when Tsar Alexander II, after the defeat in the Crimean War, initiated sweeping reforms. Three years before a reluctant Lincoln would sign the act that abolished slavery in the United States, the Tsar had lifted some fifty-two million souls from the state of human chattel to free human beings. Other reforms followed. Trial by jury replaced the Byzantine judicial procedures in which the court could withhold proceedings from the parties to the case and would communicate only in writing. A network of elected county committees was given considerable powers to establish schools and hospitals, to build roads and to provide veterinary and insurance services. Tsarist Russia was one of the first countries in the world to offer its citizens free medical care. Certain countries, I am not saying which, still wait for this to happen.

The father ran a little grocery store but folded during Chekhov’s years at the Taganrog gymnasium. The family moved to Moscow and the adolescent Chekhov was left behind to finish his education. On his bicycle he toured the district and provided private tuition.

In 1879, Chekhov left Taganrog and enrolled in the Medical School of Moscow University. Chekhov was still an intern when he began publishing. It was Chekhov’s fate to write in a time when literature, according to the pundits, was supposed to be a sober depiction of social facts. Fantasy and imagination was frowned upon; humor that was not topical or satirical was met with suspicion. Everything that smacked of formal and stylistic innovation was received almost as an offence. This kind of criticism continued to rain on Chekhov from left and right, but ironically, when it came to matters of sex, the very same critics who always opposed the government, would line up in a united front with their opposite numbers in Church and censorship. His critics liked to represent him as a provincial dullard, who was somehow granted a magnificent writing talent, but whose essential shallowness prevented him from writing anything of lasting importance.

People who knew him better appreciated his way with plants. He loved animals. His neighbors wrote letters and asked his advice on the care and treatment of roses. His dachshunds produced puppies for Nabokov’s parents. "I've always loved intelligent people, heightened sensibilities, courtesy and wit, and paid little attention to whether people pick their corns, have foot-clothes of a suffocating smell, or whether young ladies walk about in the morning with curl-papers on" (Chekhov).

In 1896 he finally had to accept the diagnosis of his illness. By then he was a recognized and popular writer, but even recognition would never come without a sting in the tail.

After Chekhov’s death the great Tolstoy (1828-1910) gave him an unstinting endorsement: "His language is extraordinary. I remember that it seemed most peculiar and awkward (sic!) to me the first time I read him, but when I began to pay closer attention, I was utterly captivated by it. With no false modesty, I maintain that Chekhov is technically far superior to me." Something Chekhov, I am sure, would have loved to hear when he was still alive. Instead Tolstoy used to put his arm around his shoulders and announce with brutal gusto: "Shakespeare’s plays are bad enough, but yours, my friend, are even worse." And a little later we hear the count telling Gorky that Chekhov would be an even better writer, if he weren’t a doctor. Tolstoy added in a grave tone: "Chekhov is not a religious man."

It is difficult not to get the feeling, that even Tolstoy would have liked to agree with Chekhov’s worst critics; at least in principle. But Chekhov himself considered his medical training and scientific outlook not only as beneficial but essential for writing truthfully: "I am not the one to negate the value of science and do not even wish to be one of those writers who believe they can figure out everything for themselves." Chekhov showed himself incapable to see any virtue in "exposes, bile, anger and criticism directed against liberals. I have peasant blood flowing in my veins, and I am not the one to be impressed with peasant virtues. I acquired my belief in progress when still a child; I couldn’t help believing in it, because the difference between the period when they flogged me and the period when they stopped flogging me was enormous." And in a letter to his publisher, Chekhov could no longer hold back on his frustration with the leading intellectuals of his period: "To hell with the philosophy of the great men of this world! All great wise men are as despotic as generals and as impolite and insensitive as generals because they are confident of their impunity. Diogenes spat in people’s beards knowing that he would not be called to account; Tolstoy calls doctors scoundrels and flaunts his ignorance of important issues because he is another Diogenes whom no one will report to the police or denounce in the papers"

I share the sentiment. When Tolstoy and Gorky got all the publicity for their histrionic and very public acts of defiance, Chekhov, at his own private clinic, without fussing about gave free medical treatment to more than a thousand local peasants and provided for medication.

He approached the authorities over the mistreatment of ethnic minorities, and he raised the alarm over the disappearance of wildlife. He took charge of the building of local schools, buying building materials himself and supervising personally the contractors and the work; he persuaded the authorities to construct a much needed local highway, and he helped the peasants in his neighborhood to a new beautiful belfry for their church. He collected and donated books for public libraries at his own expense. Together with the painter Ilya Repin he organized a Museum of Painting and Fine Arts in the place of his birth. He raised funds for a new clinic for skin diseases in Moscow. "There is more love for mankind in electricity and steam,” he said, “than in chastity and abnegation from meat. War is an evil, and the court system is an evil, but it doesn’t follow that I should wear bast sandals for it." Something that had been eluding the “great souls” of Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa. It also seems to elude the Nobel committee in Stockholm. You guessed it, I am not a fan of Gandhi or Ms. Bojaxhiu, or for that matter, of Jesus Christ.

"Overstating something is as inept as not saying it at all," Chekhov said, and this is the essence not only of Chekhov’s art but of the man.

It was in July 2, 1904 in Badenweiler, a German spa. Shortly after midnight Chekhov woke up his wife and asked her to send for the doctor. His pulse was extremely weak. The doctor gave him camphor injections and had an oxygen pillow brought in; then he ordered for his patient a bottle of champagne. Chekhov sat up on his bed and in a loud and emphatic voice he said to the doctor in German: "I am dying." Then he took the glass and smiled at his wife: "It’s a long time since I’ve had champagne." He drank, sank back, turned over to his left side, and laying still in this position, he died. “The doctor had long left the room, when suddenly, with a tremendous pop, the cork flew out of the half emptied champagne bottle" (Olga Chekhova).

Chekhov was brought back to Russia in a refrigerated railroad car, bearing the inscription: "For Oysters." His grave is in the New Virgin Cemetery in Moscow.

 

© - 1/17/2008 - by michael sympson,

1,600 words, all rights reserved