Reading Chekhov

In April 1892, Chekhov described "Ward No. 6" to Avilova-surely not without irony-as "very boring… since woman and the element of love are entirely absent from it." (He added, "I can't bear such tales, and as for writing this one, I did it inadvertently somehow, and frivolously.") In fact, however, the element of love is very much present in the story. How else to describe the pleasure and excitement aroused in Ragin by his encounter with Gromov, a genuinely interesting and appealing man, someone with whom he can finally engage? Ragin starts coming regularly to Ward 6 and holding philosophical debates with Gromov. He comes alive. Gromov is a precursor of R. D. Laing's sane madman in a mad world. His paranoia is a too acute awareness of the wrongs of the world. Ragin takes the position that active efforts to alleviate the wrongs of the world are useless and pointless, since we all will die. He advocates a stoic indifference to external reality. "There is no real difference between a warm, snug study and this ward," he says. "A man's peace and contentment do not lie outside a man, but in himself." The cold and starved and beaten Gromov wonderfully replies, "You should go and preach that philosophy in Greece, where it's warm and fragrant with the scent of pomegranates, but here it is not suited to the climate… Diogenes did not need a study or a warm habitation; it's hot there without. You can lie in your tub and eat oranges and olives. But bring him to Russia to live: he'd be begging to be let indoors in May, let alone December. He'd be doubled up with the cold." As the conversation continues, the madman eloquently challenges the sane doctor's quietism, and draws a devastating portrait of him: "You are naturally a flabby, lazy man, and so you have tried to arrange your life so that nothing should disturb you or make you move. You have handed over your work to the assistant and the rest of the rabble while you sit in peace and warmth, save money, read, amuse yourself with reflections, with all sorts of lofty nonsense… in fact you have seen nothing of life, you know absolutely nothing of it, and are only theoretically acquainted with reality… You see a peasant beating his wife, for instance. Why interfere? Let him beat her, they will both die sooner or later, anyway… A peasant woman comes with toothache… well, what of it? Pain is the idea of pain, and besides 'there is no living in this world without illness; we shall all die, and so, go away, woman, don't hinder me from thinking and drinking vodka.'… We are kept here behind barred windows, tortured, left to rot; but that is very good and reasonable, because there is no difference at all between this ward and a warm snug study. A convenient philosophy. You can do nothing, and your conscience is clear, and you feel you are wise… No sir, it is not philosophy, it's not thinking, it's not breadth of vision, but laziness, fakirism, drowsy stupefaction…"

None of this penetrates. Ragin can only laugh with pleasure at having found such an interesting and intelligent man to talk to. "That's original," he says to Gromov of his harsh portrait. Only when he is himself thrown into the ward- this is the story's incredible plot twist, which Chekhov succeeds in making believable-does he at last confront reality. Here is the form the confrontation takes: Nikita opened the door quickly, and roughly, with both his hands and his knee, shoved Andrey Yefimitch back, then swung his arm and punched him in the face with his fist. It seemed to Andrey Yefimitch as though a huge salt wave enveloped him from his head downwards and dragged him to the bed; there really was a salt taste in his mouth: most likely the blood was running from his teeth. He waved his arms as though he were trying to swim out and clutched at a bedstead, and at the same moment felt Nikita hit him twice on the back… Then all was still, the faint moonlight came through the grating, and a shadow like a net lay on the floor. It was terrible. Andrey Yefimitch lay and held his breath: he was expecting with horror to be struck again. He felt as though someone had taken a sickle, thrust it into him, and turned it round several times in his breast and bowels. He bit the pillow from pain and clenched his teeth, and all at once through the chaos in his brain there flashed the terrible, unbearable thought that these people, who seemed now like black shadows in the moonlight, had to endure such pain day after day for years. How could it have happened that for more than twenty years he had known it and had refused to know it? The next day, Ragin dies of a stroke, and the story ends.