them to the extent of one or two or three roubles, spending money on cabs for the sake of patients who do not pay me a penny--altogether it is such a hotch-potch that I feel like running away from home. People borrow money from me and don't pay it back, they take my books, they waste my time.... Blighted love is the one thing that is missing.
* * * * *
December 26, 1888.
... You say that from compassion women fall in love, from compassion they get married.... And what about men? I don't like realistic writers to slander women, but I don't like it either when people put women on a pedestal and attempt to prove that even if they are worse than men, anyway they are angels and men scoundrels. Neither men nor women are worth a brass farthing, but men are more just and more intelligent.
December 30, 1888.
... This is how I understand my characters. [Translator's Note: In the play 'Ivanov.'] Ivanov is a gentleman, a University man, and not remarkable in any way. He is excitable, hotheaded, easily carried away, honest and straightforward like most people of his class. He has lived on his estate and served on the Zemstvo. What he has been doing and how he has behaved, what he has been interested in and enthusiastic over, can be seen from the following words of his, addressed to the doctor (Act I., Scene 5): 'Don't marry Jewesses or neurotic women or blue-stockings ... don't fight with thousands single-handed, don't wage war on windmills, don't batter your head against the wall ... God preserve you from scientific farming, wonderful schools, enthusiastic speeches....' This is what he has in his past. Sarra, who has seen his scientific farming and other crazes, says about him to the doctor: 'He is a remarkable man, doctor, and I am sorry you did not meet him two or three years ago. Now he is depressed and melancholy, he doesn't talk or do anything, but in old days ... how charming he was!' (Act I., Scene 7). His past is beautiful, as is generally the case with educated Russians. There is not, or there hardly is, a single Russian gentleman or University man who does not boast of his past. The present is always worse than the past. Why? Because Russian excitability has one specific characteristic: it is quickly followed by exhaustion. A man has scarcely left the class-room before he rushes to take up a burden beyond his strength; he tackles at once the schools, the peasants, scientific farming, and the
'Don't marry, my dear fellow.... Trust my experience,' or, 'After all, what does Liberalism come to? Between ourselves Katkov was often right....' He is ready to reject the Zemstvo and scientific farming, and science and love. My Ivanov says to the doctor (Act I., Scene 5): 'You took your degree only last year, my dear friend, you are still young and vigorous, while I am thirty-five. I have a right to advise you....' That is how these prematurely exhausted people talk. Further down, sighing authoritatively, he advises: 'Don't you marry in this or that way (see above), but choose something commonplace, grey, with no vivid colours or superfluous flourishes. Altogether build your life according to the conventional pattern. The greyer and more monotonous the background the better.... The life that I have led--how tiring it is! Ah, how tiring!'
Conscious of physical exhaustion and boredom, he does not understand what is the matter with him, and what has happened. Horrified, he says to the doctor (Act I., Scene 3): 'Here you tell me she is soon going to die and I feel neither love nor pity, but a sort of emptiness and weariness.... If one looks at me from outside it must be horrible. I don't understand what is happening to my soul.' Finding themselves in such a position, narrow and unconscientious people generally throw the whole blame on their environment, or write themselves down as Hamlets and superfluous people, and are satisfied with that. But Ivanov, a straightforward man, openly says to the doctor and to the public that he does not understand his own mind. 'I don't understand! I don't understand!' That he really doesn't understand can be seen from his long monologue in Act III., where,
The change that has taken place in him offends his sense of what is fitting. He looks for the causes outside himself and fails to find them; he begins to look for them inside and finds only an indefinite feeling of guilt. It is a Russian feeling. Whether there is a death or illness in his family, whether he owes money or lends it, a Russian always feels guilty. Ivanov talks all the time about being to blame in some way, and the feeling of guilt increases in him at every juncture. In Act I. he says: 'Suppose I am terribly to blame, yet my thoughts are in a tangle, my soul is in bondage to a sort of sloth, and I am incapable of understanding myself....' In Act II. he says to Sasha: 'My conscience aches day and night, I feel that I am profoundly to blame, but in what exactly I have done wrong I cannot make out.'
To exhaustion, boredom, and the feeling of guilt add one more enemy: loneliness. Were Ivanov an official, an actor, a priest, a professor, he would have grown used to his position. But he lives on his estate. He is in the country. His neighbours are either drunkards or fond of cards, or are of the same type as the doctor. None of them care about his feelings or the change that has taken place in him. He is lonely. Long winters, long evenings, an empty garden, empty rooms, the grumbling Count, the ailing wife.... He has nowhere to go. This is why he is every minute tortured by the question: what is he to do with himself?
Now about his fifth enemy. Ivanov is tired and does not understand himself, but life has nothing to do with that! It makes its legitimate demands upon him, and whether he will or no, he must settle problems. His sick wife is a problem, his numerous debts are a problem, Sasha flinging herself on his neck is a problem. The way in which he settles all these problems must be evident from his monologue in Act III., and from the contents of the last two acts. Men like Ivanov do not solve difficulties but collapse under their weight. They lose their heads, gesticulate, become nervous, complain, do silly things, and finally, giving rein to their flabby, undisciplined nerves, lose the ground under their feet and enter the class of the 'broken down' and 'misunderstood.'
Disappointment, apathy, nervous limpness and exhaustion are the inevitable consequence of extreme excitability, and such excitability is extremely characteristic of our young people. Take literature. Take the present time.... Socialism is one of the forms of this excitement. But where is socialism? You see it in Tihomirov's letter to the Tsar. The socialists are married and are criticizing the Zemstvo. Where is Liberalism? Mihailovsky himself says that all the labels have been mixed up now. And what are all the Russian enthusiasms worth? The war has wearied us, Bulgaria has wearied us till we can only be ironical about it. Zucchi has wearied us and so has the comic opera.
Exhaustion (Dr. Bertensen will confirm this) finds expression not only in complaining or the sensation of boredom. The life of an over-tired man cannot be represented like this:
[Transcriber's note: The line graph in the print version depicts a wavy horizontal 'line' with minimal variation in the vertical direction. The ASCII diagram below gives a rough approximation.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It is very unequal. Over-tired people never lose the capacity for becoming extremely excited, but cannot keep it up for long, and each excitement is followed by still greater apathy.... Graphically, it could be represented like this:
[Transcriber's note: The line graph in the print version depicts a series of wavy horizontal segments punctuated by sharp 'dips,' each horizontal segment a little lower than the one before. The ASCII illustration below gives a rough approximation.]
~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ / ~~~~~~ / / ~~~~~~ / / /
The fall, as you see, is not continuous but broken. Sasha declares her love and Ivanov cries out in ecstasy, 'A new life!'--and next morning he believes in this new life as little as he does in spooks (the monologue in Act III.); his wife insults him, and, fearfully worked up and beside himself with anger, he flings a cruel insult at her. He is called a scoundrel. This is either fatal to his tottering brain, or stimulates him to a fresh paroxysm and he pronounces sentence on himself.
Not to tire you out altogether I pass now to Dr. Lvov. He is the type of an honest, straightforward, hotheaded, but narrow and uncompromising man. Clever people say of such men: 'He is stupid but his heart is in the right place.' Anything like width of outlook or unreflecting feeling is foreign to Lvov. He is the embodiment of a programme, a walking tendency. He looks through a narrow frame at every person and event, he judges everything according to preconceived notions. Those who shout, 'Make way for honest labour!' are an object of worship to him;
