My Kind of Saint – Antonin Chekhov

 

Born into a family of serfs, Antonin Chechov (1860 – 1904) was one year old when Tsar Alexander II initiated sweeping reforms. Three years before a reluctant President Lincoln signed the emancipation act, the Tsar had already lifted some 52 million souls from the state of human chattel. The legal system received an overhaul and trial by jury replaced the Byzantine practices of withholding proceedings from the parties to the case. A network of elective 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 won’t say which, still wait for this to happen.

The family moved to Moscow, leaving behind the adolescent Chekhov to complete his education at the grammar school of Taganrog. There was no support, young Antonin had to fend for himself, giving private tuition. In 1879, Chekhov began studying medicine in Moscow. People who knew him remembered a young giant with broad shoulders and an open face, smoking cigars, frequenting the nightclubs and having affairs with celebrated actresses. He not only knew when and where to send roses, neighbors from his hometown asked for his advice about the care and treatment of their garden plants. He loved animals. His dachshunds produced puppies for Nabokov’s parents.

Still an intern, Chekhov began publishing in weekly magazines and newspapers. In 1890 he traveled on his own initiative to the Island of Sakhalin and wrote a report on the penal colony and the conditions of hard labor. In 1899 he had published more than 48,000 pages of novellas and stories, not counting the plays. He was not a verbal innovator. Chekhov knew that "Genuine literature is as indifferent to a rough-hewn phrase as it is to a smooth sentence" (Borges). In his own words: "Don’t sacrifice beauty and power for something as trivial as a highlight." By keeping his stories in the same tinge of grey, "a tint somewhere between the color of an old fence and a low cloud" (Nabokov), he achieved musical flow and lyrical precision. "Overstating something is as inept as not saying it at all," he said, and made it look deceptively easy: "The neck of a broken bottle glistening on a river-dam and the black shadow under the water-mill’s wheel;’ – and ready is the moonlight" (Chekhov).

Many of his critics liked to denounce him as a provincial dullard, somehow granted a magnificent writing talent, but too shallow ever to write anything of lasting importance. Only after his death the great Tolstoy (1828 – 1910) gave Chekhov the seal of approval: "With no false modesty, Chekhov is technically far superior to me." Something the author certainly would have loved to hear when he was still alive. Instead Tolstoy put his arm around his shoulders and said to him with brutal gusto: "Shakespeare’s plays are bad enough, but yours, my friend, are even worse." Not a joke, Tolstoy really meant it. To a visitor Tolstoy imparted that Chekhov would be an even better writer, “if he weren’t a doctor.” The count lifted his finger and in a grave tone announced: "Chekhov is not a religious man." 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” he said, “and do not even wish to be one of those writers who believe they can figure out everything for themselves" (Chekhov). In a letter to his publisher, Chekhov vented his anger: "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" (Chekhov). My sentiment exactly! When others got all the publicity for their acts of defiance, Chekhov was giving free medical treatment to more than a thousand local peasants and provided for medication without as much as mentioning it.

He protested to the authorities over the mistreatment of ethnic minorities in the Crimea, he raised the alarm over the disappearance of wildlife. He took charge of the building of local schools. He bought the building materials, contracted the craftsmen and supervised the work in person. On his initiative the local committee construct a much-needed local highway, and Chekhov helped the peasants in his neighborhood to a new belfry for their church. He collected and donated books for public libraries at his own expense. He and the painter Ilya Repin pooled resources for a museum of fine arts in Taganrog. In Moscow, he raised funds for a new clinic treating skin diseases. (“Skin disease” was in those days a euphemism for the clap and the syphilis.) "There is more love for mankind in electricity and steam” he said, “than in chastity and abnegation from meat. The world is full of evils, but it doesn’t follow that I should wear straw sandals because of it."

In 1896 he finally had to accept the diagnosis of his illness: tuberculosis.

It was in July 2, 1904 in Badenweiler, a German spa. Short 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 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 “Ich sterbe – I am dying." He took the glass and smiled at his wife: "It’s a long time since I’ve had champagne." After drinking up to the last drop, Chekhov sank back, turned over to his left side, and lying still in this position, he died. The night completely silent except for a nocturnal moth, which kept crashing into the light bulbs. The doctor had long left the room, when suddenly, with a tremendous pop, the cork flew out of the half emptied champagne bottle.

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.

© – 4/17/2009 – by michael sympson, 1,100 words, all rights reserved