My
Kind of Saint
|
What aristocratic writers take from nature
gratis, the less privileged must pay for with their youth.
|
Antonin Chekhov, 1899
|

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