Reading Chekhov

… I'm ending up with something rather odd and much too original. Since I'm not used to writing anything long and am constantly, as is my wont, afraid of writing too much, I've gone to the other extreme. All the pages come out compact, as if they had been condensed, and impressions keep crowding each other, piling up, and pushing one another out of the way. The short scenes… are squeezed tightly together; they move in an unbroken chain and are therefore fatiguing; instead of a scene I end up with a dry, detailed list of impressions, very much like an outline; instead of an artistically integrated depiction of the steppe, I offer the reader an encyclopedia of the steppe. Chekhov sounds as if he could not quite come to terms with his own originality. He is like a resistant reader of an avant-garde work. The compression about which he frets is, of course, the compression that is the signature of his mature work. The writing that is "very much like an outline" is precisely the writing that demands "the attention accorded poetry." It is prose as pared down-and as charged-as poetry. Early in "The Steppe" (subtitled "The Story of a Journey") Chekhov draws a crucial contrast-one that will hover over the story-between the merchant and the priest as travelers. Kuzmitchov is like the businessmen one sees today on planes and trains working on laptops and talking on cell phones. He is oblivious of his surroundings. He only wants to get there. "Fanatically devoted to his work, Kuzmitchov always, even in his sleep and at church when they were singing 'Like the cherubim,' thought about his business and could never forget it for a moment; and now"-the men are taking a nap-"he was probably dreaming about bales of wool, wagons, prices, Varlamov." Father Christopher, in contrast, had never in all his life been conscious of anything which could, like a boa constrictor, coil about his soul and hold it tight. In all the numerous enterprises he had undertaken in his day, what attracted him was not so much the business itself, but the bustle and the contact with other people involved in every undertaking. Thus in the present expedition, he was not so much interested in wool, in Varlamov, or in prices, as in the long journey, the conversations on the way, the sleeping under a chaise, and the meals at odd times… He must have been dreaming of… all sorts of things that Kuzmitchov could not possibly dream of. How should one live? Like a Kuzmitchov or a Father «In iitopher? The story is borne like a canopy on these two poles of possibility. Kuzmitchov is desperate to find Varlamov, who has always just left the place at which the travelers have arrived. He searches for him the way we search in dreams for someone we will never find. Father Christopher is calm: "A man isn't a needle-we shall find him." As Kuzmitchov looks at him "almost with hatred," the priest faces east and for a quarter of an hour Kuzmitchov must wait while he recites his psalms for the day. The quest for Varlamov threads its way through the pages of "The Steppe" with a similar lack of urgency, as though Chekhov were reluctant to allow a conventional plot device to coil about his narrative. But when Varlamov finally comes into view-a short, gray older man on a small horse, showing his displeasure to a subordinate who has not followed orders-he is a figure of electrifying authority. "It's people like that the earth rests upon," a peasant says of him. Varlamov's face has the same expression of businesslike coldness as Ivan Ivanitch's face, the same look of fanatical zeal for business. But yet what a difference could be felt between him and Kuzmitchov! Uncle Ivan Ivanitch always had on his face, together with his businesslike reserve, a look of anxiety and apprehension that he would not find Varlamov, that he would be late, that he would miss a good price; nothing of that sort, so characteristic of small and dependent persons, could be seen in the face or figure of Varlamov. This man made the price himself, was not looking for anyone, and did not depend on anyone; however ordinary his exterior, yet in everything, even in the manner of holding his whip, there was a sense of power and habitual authority over the steppe.