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Chekhov's Response to Dostoevskii: The Case of “Ward Six”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Andrew R. Durkin
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Extract

The relationship between Chekhov's fiction and earlier nineteenth-century Russian fiction still awaits thorough critical investigation. Certain aspects of the problem, notably Chekhov's intellectual and literary reaction to Tolstoi, have frequently been discussed, but the question as a whole, as well as many specific facets of it, has not been adequately treated. For instance, until very recently, the name of Dostoevskii has been virtually absent from Chekhov criticism. The reasons for this are under-standable. In contrast to abundant information on Chekhov's attitudes toward Tolstoi and his works, the documentary record contains little evidence which sheds strong light either on the extent of Chekhov's familiarity with Dostoevskii's works or his opinion of them. Political or literary-historical preconceptions may also have imposed critical blinders. Despite the dearth of external evidence, it seems highly improbable that so widely ranging a reader as Chekhov would not have made some acquaintance with the major works of a writer of Dostoevskii's artistic stature and public prominence.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , Spring 1981 , pp. 49 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1981

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References

1. See, among others, Evnin, F. I., “Chekhov i Tolstoi,” in Tvorchestvo L. N. Tolstogo, ed. D. D. Blagoi et al. (Moscow, 1959), pp. 388–458 Google Scholar; V., Lakshin, Tohtoii Chekhov, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1975)Google Scholar; Gleb, Struve, “Chekhov i Grigorovich: ikh lichnye i literaturnye otnosheniia,” in Anton Čechov 1860-1960. Some Essays, ed. T. Eekman (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960, p. 207–66 Google Scholar; Petr Bicilli (Bitsilli), Anton P. Čechov. Das Werk unci sein Stil, trans. Vincent Sieveking (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1966.Google Scholar

2. The problem is raised directly in Gromov, M. P., “Skrytye tsitaty (Chekhov i Dostoevskii),” in Chekhov i ego vremia, ed. L. D. Opul'skaia et al. (Moscow, 1977), pp. 39–52 Google Scholar; and by Rumiantseva, E. L., “Dostoevskii i rasskazy Chekhova kontsa 80-kh godov,” in F. M. Dostoevskii, N. A. Nekrasov: Sbornik nauchnykh trudov, ed. N. N. Skatov (Leningrad, 1974), p. 87–102.Google Scholar Indirect comparison can be found in Polotskaia, E. A., “Chelovek v khudozhestvennom mire Dostoevskogo i Chekhova,” in Dostoevskii i russkie pisateli, comp. V. la. Kirpotin (Moscow, 1971), pp. 184-245,Google Scholar but Polotskaia does not make specific textual comparisons.

3. Direct references to Dostoevskii in Chekhov's letters are few (no more than a dozen) and are all quite brief and rather uninformative. According to V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, Chekhov once told him he was waiting until he was forty to read Crime and Punishment; when he reached forty, Chekhov told Nemirovich-Danchenko that he had read the novel, but that it made no great impression on him (see V. 1. Nemirovich-Danchenko, “Chekhov,” in A. P. Chekhov v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov, ed. N. V. Gitovichand I. V. Fedorov [Moscow, 1960], p. 428).Google Scholar In a letter of March 5, 1889 to A. C. Suvorin, however, Chekhov mentions that he has purchased a set of Dostoevskii's works and adds: “I am reading (it) now. Good, but awfully long and immodest (neskromno). Many pretensions” (see Chekhov, A. P., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii ipisem, 30 vols. [Moscow, 1974-]Google Scholar, Pis'ma, 3: 169) (hereafter cited as Sochineniia or Pis'ma). The edition of Dostoevskii Chekhov refers to is Suvorin's ( Dostoevskii, F. M., Sochineniia F. M. Dostoevskogo, 12 vols. [St. Petersburg, 1889])Google Scholar and Chekhov's set is now in the Chekhov Museum in Yalta ( Balukhatyi, cf. S., “Biblioteka Chekhova,” in Chekhov i ego sreda, ed. N. F. Bel'chikov [Leningrad, 1930], p. 236).Google Scholar In addition to this indication that Chekhov had read at least some of Dostoevskii's works by the early 1890s, a letter of July 13, 1892, to N. A. Leikin contains a phrase ( “v izbakh Hi na chistom vozdukhe” ) which has been identified as an allusion to two chapter titles in The Brothers Karamazov, “V izbe” and “Na chistom vozdukhe” (cf. Chekhov, Pis ‘ma, 5: 92 and 405). If this conjecture is correct, the letter suggests that Chekhov was quite familiar with the text of The Brothers Karamazov shortly after he wrote “Palata No. 6,” which was completed in the spring of 1892 and with which Chekhov was still concerned in the summer of that year.

4. Cf. Gromov, “Skrytye tsitaty,” for various examples.

5. See I. N., Kubikov, “'PalataNo. 6'vrazvitiitvorchestvaA. Chekhova,” in Chekhovskiisbornik. Naidennye stat'i i pis'ma (Moscow, 1929), p. 192–219.Google Scholar Kubikov also points out the presence of Stoic and Schopenhauerian notions in the story, but equates them with Tolstoianism on class grounds and sees the story as rejecting them all (ibid., p. 199). A. Derman treats the story as pivotal in Chekhov's rejection of Tolstoianism (see Derman, , Tvorcheskii portrel Chekhova [Moscow, 1929]).Google Scholar First published in 1948, A. P. Skaftymov's “O povestiakh Chekhova ‘Palata No. 6’ i ‘Moia zhizn” ” takes exception to the anti- Tolstoian interpretation (see Skaftymov, A. P., Nravstvennye iskaniia russkikhpisatelei, ed. E. Pokusaev [Moscow, 1972], pp. 381-403).Google Scholar Making allowance for Skaftymov's argument, Evnin ( “Chekhov i Tolstoi,” p. 429) assumes the story is aimed not at Tolstoianism as a doctrine but at abuse of Tolstoian notions by the bourgeoisie. This position is shared by G. Berdnikov (see A. P. Chekhov: Ideinye i tvorcheskie iskaniia [Leningrad, 1961]), although Berdnikov also maintains that the story marks the abandonment of Tolstoian ideas by Chekhov, which Evnin places later. Lakshin also discusses the story in the context of Chekhov's attitude toward Tolstoi (Lakshin, Tolstoi i Chekhov). Criticism in English has tended to follow the lead of Russian criticism. See, for example, Thomas, Winner, Chekhov and his Prose (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), pp. 106ff.;Google Scholar Beverly, Hahn, Chekhov: A Study of the Major Stories and Plays (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 147ff.Google Scholar; and Donald, Rayfield, Chekhov: The Evolution of his Art (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1975, p. 129.Google Scholar Rayfield seems to follow Skaftymov in pointing to Schopenhauer as a primary target.

6. The danger of equating characters’ statements with authorial views in Chekhov is discussed by V. B., Kataev, “Geroi i ideia v proizvedeniiakh Chekhova 90-kh godov,” Vestnik moskovskogo universiteta, 1968, no. 6, pp. 35–47.Google Scholar

7. The issue of the narrator in "Ward Six" is in itself a complex one. In the present context, we must confine ourselves to the narrator's Dostoevskian features. a paper delivered at the Midwest Slavic Conference, Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 4, 1979.

8. Chekhov, Sochineniia, 8: 90.

9. Ibid., p. 94.

10. Dostoevskii, F. M., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 30 vols. (Leningrad, 1972-), 14: 129Google Scholar (hereafter cited as PSS). We might note here that Ivan Karamazov quotes his own phrase about reptiles when he turns on the courtroom audience during his outburst at Dmitrii's trial ( “Liars! Everyone wishes his father's death. One reptile devours another” [ “Lguny! Vse zhelaiut smerti ottsa. Odin gad s” edaet druguiu gadinu “] [ibid., 15: 117]). Thus the phrase is already generalized and ” prepackaged” by Ivan during his final, dramatic appearance in the novel.

11. Ibid., 14: 220.

12. Ibid., 15: 25.

13. Chekhov, Sochineniia, 8: 103.

14. Dostoevskii, PSS, 14: 217.

15. Chekhov, Sochineniia, 8: 97.

16. Dostoevskii, PSS, 14: 213-14. The phrase in fact occurs twice in Voltaire. The first appearance is in epistle 104, “A L'Auteur du livre des Trois imposteurs” (1769), found in Oeuvres completes de Voltaire, ed. L. Moland, 52 vols. (Paris: Gamier, 1877-85), 10: 403. In “Discours de M. Bellequier, ancien avocat, sur le texte proposé par l'université de la ville de Paris pour le sujet du prix de l'année 1773,” Voltaire quotes his earlier lines (ibid., 29: 10). I am indebted to Professor William H. Trapnell Jr. of Indiana University for this information

17. Chekhov, Sochineniia, 8: 97.

18. Dostoevskii, PSS, 14: 209.

19. Love of life has been singled out as one of the key elements in the complex of features that constitutes Karamazovism. Cf. Robert L. Belknap, The Structure of “The Brothers Karamazov” (The Hague: Mouton, 1967, pp. 30–31.Google Scholar

20. Dostoevskii, PSS, 14: 366.

21. Cf. Skaftymov, “O povestiakh Chekhova,” pp. 387 ff.

22. Chekhov, Sochineniia, 8: 98.

23. Ibid., p. 105.

24. L. M. Tsilevich quite aptly comments that, for Ragin, Gromov is “not so much a living, unfortunate, suffering person as he is yet another book, this one a ‘talking’ book” (L. M. Tsilevich, Siuzhet chekhovskogo rasskaza [Riga, 1976], p. 58).

25. Chekhov, Sochineniia, 8: 101.

26. On these parodies of Ivan and their role in the rhetorical structure of The Brothers Karamazov, see Vetlovskaia, V. E., Poetikaromana Brat'ia Karamazovy (Leningrad, 1977), pp. 79ff.Google Scholar See also Belknap, Robert L., “The Rhetoric of an Ideological Novel,” William Mills Todd III, ed., Literature and Society in Imperial Russia 1800-1914 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1978), pp. 186ff.Google Scholar

27. Dostoevskii, PSS, 15: 84.

28. Chekhov, Sochineniia, 8: 117.

29. Ibid.

30. Dostoevskii, PSS, 15: 73, 75.

31. Chekhov, Sochineniia, 8: 114.

32. Rayfield notes similarities between Gromov and Ragin (see Chekhov: The Evolution of his Art, pp. 128, 130).

33. Chekhov, Sochineniia, 8: 80.

34. Dostoevskii, PSS, 14: 456-57.

35. On the moral element in Marcus Aurelius's stoicism, see Frederick Coppleston, S.J., A History of Philosophy, rev. ed., vol. 1, Greece and Rome (Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1966), p. 435. The passage of Marcus Aurelius (from the Meditations of Emperor Marcus Antoninus, book seven, chapter sixty-four) which Ragin distorts may have already been distorted in the Russian translation of the Meditations Chekhov used (that of L. Urusov published in Tula in 1882) (cf. Bulakhatyi, “Biblioteka Chekhova,” p. 319). In particular, Urusov's phrase “pain is above all your notion of pain” ( “bol’ est'prezhde vsego tvoepredstavlenie o boli” ) (quoted in Skaftymov, “O povestiakh Chekhova,” p. 384), distorts the Greek, which may be a quotation from Epicurus. A closer rendering would read: “Pain is neither intolerable nor continuing provided you remember its limits and do not let your imagination add to it” (The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus, ed., trans., and commentary by A. S. L. Farquharson, 2 vols. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1944), 1: 143). The key word in the Greek, prosdoxdzis, is interpreted by Farquharson as implying “to add illegitimately a subjective interpretation to the presentations of sense” (ibid., 2: 748). Thus Marcus Aurelius seems to be arguing that we do not create pain, but can add to it through subjective mental anguish, which we are capable of controlling, though we may not be able to control pain itself. It is little wonder that Chekhov, a doctor, took exception to the apparent implication of the Urusov translation that pain is entirely subjective. I am indebted to Professor Cecil W. Wooten III of the University of North Carolina for his comments on the Greek text of this passage in Marcus Aurelius and its background.

36. It may be worth noting that Ragin in his Stoic phase is less precise in his quoting than Gromov. Ragin distorts and weakens by omission, whereas Gromov, by selection and conflation, heightens emotional impact. When Ragin “converts” to Dostoevskian behavior and speech, his allusions become more precise.

37. I. Gurvich, Proza Chekhova. Chelovek ideistvitel'nost’ (Moscow, 1970), p.72, pointsoutthat Ragin's problem lies not in which specific philosophy he seems to espouse, but rather in philosophizing per se. Gurvich, however, does not apply this observation to Gromov.

38. Chekhov, Sochineniia, 8: 121.

39. We have discussed “Ward Six” only in relation to the literary past, diachronically, as it were. A complete interpretation of the story would also have to consider it synchronically, that is in the context of Chekhov's own stories of the late eighties and early nineties. The present article is in part intended as a preliminary to such a broader study, which of course requires a different, integrative approach, even with regard to the question of Chekhov's use of Dostoevskii.