Anton Chekhov

⁴On The Highway'

Chekhov wrote this 'dramatic etude' - which he privately referred to as a 'little nonsense for the stage' in autumn 1884. The piece was based on a short story 'Autumn' that had appeared the previous year. Story and play share the same locale, Uncle Tikhon's pothouse, and the same basic premise: a nobleman on the skids gives the tavernkeeper a medallion with the portrait of his unfaithful but still loved wife, to pay for another tot of vodka. A peasant who used to be in his service recognizes the gentleman and relates his unhappy history.

Adapting this for the stage, Chekhov conscientiously enlarged his canvas. The anonymous 'company of cabmen and pilgrims' is differentiated into the pilgrims Nazarovna and Yefimovna, the religious itinerant Savva, and the factory worker Fedya. But the valuable new astringent in the dramatic blend is the tramp Yegor Merik, who had also suffered an unhappy love affair in the past. Unfortunately, Chekhov felt that his prose sketch was too static as it stood, and so he had recourse to a violent climax. The gentleman's wife, by the most unlikely of coincidences, takes shelter in the pothouse and is almost killed by the delirious Merik. The story had ended with the author's rhetorical question, 'Spring, where art thou?' The play concludes with Merik's overwrought exclamation, 'My anguish! My vicious anguish! Pity me, orthodox folk!'

The play was submitted to the censor, an unavoidable step if it was to be performed on a public stage. This particular censor, who bore the burlesque name of E. I. Kaiser-von-Nilckheim, indignantly underlined the word 'gentleman' (barin) every time it appeared in the manu­script, and in his unfavourable report, commented that 'among all the vagrants and transients come to the pot­house to get warm and spend the night, there appears a decayed aristocrat (dyoryanin) who prays the tapster to give him a drink on credit . . . This gloomy and squalid play, in my opinion, cannot be allowed for production.'¹ Kaiser- von-Nilckheim has thus the dubious distinction of being the first of a long string of critics to complain that Chekhov's plays are gloomy.

The play was not published until 1914, ten years after Chekhov's death, when a production was mounted at the Malakhov Theatre in Moscow. Reviewers varied in their assessments from ecstatic - one of them saw Fedya as an archetype of Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard - to, mostly, hostile. Used to the lyrical qualities of Chekhov's mature works, they were appalled by the raw melodrama of On the Highway.

'On The Harmfulness of Tobacco'

Originally, Chekhov intended this as a monologue for the talented though alcoholic comedian Gradov-Sokolov, and dashed it off in two and a half hours in February, 1886. He spent the rest of his career returning to it, revising and emending it, until it reached the shape in which it is ordinarily reprinted today. Six distinct variants exist, the more serious changes concomitant with the greater depth of psychology of Chekhov's works throughout the 1890s. Over the course of this recension, Chekhov heightened the emotional tone of the monologue, refined the comedy and increased the pathos. The speaker's pseudo-scientific jar­gon became more attenuated, with a concurrent introduc­tion of cliches.

Nyukhin (the name suggests sniffing snuff, the perfect comic tag for a lecturer on the evils of tobacco) has been forced by his wife to deliver a lecture. During this half-hearted address, he reveals his henpecked existence and his insignificance in the life of his family. As draft followed draft, Nyukhin began to cast more aspersions on his unseen wife and to reveal more hatred for his enforced nullity. What Chekhov had earlier left the audience to deduce was now spelled out in tones of complaint. The pure ridicule that had been showered on his hero was turned to pity, and Nyukhin became the latest in the Russian tradition of the put-upon 'little man'.

'Swan Song' (Calchas)