The Complete Short Novels

My Life has been seen as both an advocacy and a send-up of Tolstoyan ‘‘simplification.’’ It is neither. ‘‘Chekhov does not debunk Tolstoy,’’ writes Donald Rayfield, ‘‘but strips his ideas of sanctimony.’’ Misail, who is the instrument of that process, is an unlikely hero – slow, passive, not very articulate, tolerant except in his revolt against philistine deadness and his search for an alternative way of life. He persists, but in solitude, not in some ‘‘rural Eden’’ of saved humanity. He accepts the consequences of his choice, which Count Tolstoy never had to consider.

The story is symmetrically structured, ending with a final confrontation between Misail and his father that matches the opening scene. It is preceded by another of those uncanny moments in Chekhov. The housepainter Radish has just told Misail’s friend, the young Dr. Blagovo (his name means ‘‘goodness’’), that he will not find the Kingdom of Heaven. ‘‘No help for it,’’ the doctor jokes, ‘‘somebody has to be in hell as well.’’ At those words, something suddenly happens to the consciousness of Misail, who has been listening; he has a waking dream, the recapitulation of an earlier episode, but this time verging on the recognition that hell is exactly where they are.

In 1899, Chekhov wrote to his friend Dr. Orlov, a colleague from the district of Melikhovo: ‘‘I have no faith in our intelligentsia . . . I have faith in individuals, I see salvation in individuals scattered here and there, all over Russia, be they intellectuals or peasants, for they’re the ones who really matter, though they are few.’’ Misail’s victory is personal and solitary. The ambiguity of his nickname, ‘‘Small Profit’’ – is it ironic or not? – is characteristic of Chekhov’s mature vision. In his refusal to force the contradictions of his stories to a resolution, Chekhov seems to come to an impasse. Interestingly, of these five short novels, the last three end with a man left with an orphaned girl on his hands, a being who, beyond all intellectual disputes and human betrayals, simply needs to be cared for. And we may remember the moment in The Duel when the deacon, in a comical reverie, imagines himself as a bishop, intoning the bishop’s liturgical prayer: ‘‘Look down from heaven, O God, and behold and visit this vineyard which Thy right hand hath planted.’’ The quality of Chekhov’s attention is akin to prayer. Though he was often accused of being indifferent, and sometimes claimed it himself, that is the last thing he was.

Richard Pevear

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

PHILLIP CALLOW, Chekhov: The Hidden Ground: A Biography, Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 1998.

JULIE W. DE SHERBININ, Chekhov and Russian Religious Culture, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 1997. An excellent study of an essential and often ignored aspect of Chekhov’s artistic vision.

MICHAEL FINKE, Metapoesis: The Russian Tradition from Pushkin to Chekhov, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 1995.

VERA GOTTLIEB and PAUL ALLEN, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Chekhov , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2000. Essays by various hands on Chekhov’s fiction and plays.

ROBERT LOUIS JACKSON, ed., Reading Chekhov’s Text, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 1993. An interesting collection of recent critical studies.

SIMON KARLINSKY, ed., Anton Chekhov’s Life and Thought: Selected Letters and Commentary, translated by Michael Henry Heim, commentary by Simon Karlinsky, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 1997.

VLADIMIR KATAEV, If Only We Could Know: An Interpretation of Chekhov , translated by Harvey Pitcher, Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 2002. An important new work by a leading Russian Chekhov scholar.

AILEEN M. KELLY, Views from the Other Shore: Essays on Herzen, Chekhov, and Bakhtin, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1999. Studies by a reputed intellectual historian.

CATHY POPKIN, The Pragmatics of Insignificance, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, 1993.

V. S. PRITCHETT, Chekhov: A Spirit Set Free, Random House, New York, 1988. A critical biography by an English master of the short story and longtime admirer of Chekhov.

DONALD RAYFIELD, Chekhov: A Life, Henry Holt, New York, 1997.

The most complete and detailed biography of Chekhov in English to date.

———, Understanding Chekhov, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 1999. An update of Rayfield’s Chekhov: The Evolution of His Art, Elek Books Ltd., London, 1975.

SAVELY SENDEROVICH and MUNIR SENDICH, eds., Anton Chekhov Rediscovered , Russian Language Journal, East Lansing, MI, 1988. A collection including some fine recent studies and a comprehensive bibliography.

LEV SHESTOV, Chekhov and Other Essays, translation anonymous, new introduction by Sidney Monas, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI, 1966. Essays by a major Russian thinker of the twentieth century, including ‘‘Creation from the Void,’’ written on the occasion of Chekhov’s death in 1904 and still one of the most penetrating interpretations of his art.

CHRONOLOGY

HISTORICAL EVENTS

Alexander II (tsar since 1855) following a reformist policy, in complete opposition to his predecessor, the reactionary Nicholas I. Port of Vladivostok founded to serve Russia’s recent annexations (from China). Huge investment in railway building begins.

Emancipation of the serfs (February), the climax of the tsar’s program of reform. While his achievement had great moral and symbolic significance, many peasants felt themselves cheated by the terms of the complex emancipation statute. Outbreak of American Civil War. Unification of Italy. Bismarck prime minister of Prussia. 1860s and 1870s: ‘‘Nihilism’’ – rationalist philosophy skeptical of all forms of established authority – becomes widespread among young radical intelligentsia in Russia.

Polish rebellion. Poland incorporated into Russia. Itinerant movement formed by young artists, led by Ivan Kramskoi and later joined by Ivan Shishkin: drawing inspiration from the Russian countryside and peasant life, they are also concerned with taking art to the people.

The first International. Establishment of the Zemstva, organs of self-government and a significant liberal influence in tsarist Russia. Legal reforms do much towards removing class bias from the administration of justice. Trial by jury instituted and a Russian bar established. Russian colonial expansion in Central Asia (to 1868).