(no subject)
Chekhov's Story of an Unknown Man - I think translated by Garnett as Anonymous Story - made me feel guilty about my Turgenev post, among other things it made me feel guilty about. It's something of a tribute to On the Eve, though it's also an early version of "The Fiancée" and sort of companion piece to "Boring Story" - hence perhaps Garnett's title?
It's a great story, but I wonder to what extent he wrote the whole thing as appropriate context, oven mitts really, for the climactic rant letter, aimed essentially at his reader. Sample:
And your irony? Oh, how well I understand it! Living, free, spirited thought is inquisitive and imperious; for a lazy, idle mind, it is unbearable. To keep it from disturbing your peace, you, like thousands of your peers, hastened while still young to set limits to it; you armed yourself with an ironic attitude toward life, or whatever you want to call it, and your restricted, intimidated thought does not dare jump over the little palisade you have set around it, and when you jeer at the ideas that are supposedly all known to you, you are like a deserter who shamefully runs away from the field of battle but, to stifle his shame, mocks at war and courage. Cynicism stifles pain. In one of Dostoevsky's stories, an old man tramples underfoot the portrait of his beloved daughter because he is in the wrong before her, and you vilely and tritely make fun of the ideas of good and truth because you are no longer able to get back to them. Any sincere and truthful hint at your fall is frightening to you, and you have deliberately surrounded yourself with people who know only how to flatter your weakness.
That gets taken back a little, if you want it to be.
I'm a little confused about his religious position. I'd thought he firmly disbelieved but bits in "Ward 6" and "The Black Monk" make me wonder. The latter confused me completely, in fact - was he attacking bipolar-type mania, contemplating it wistfully, attacking religion, contemplating it wistfully, attacking all searches for immortality, contemplating them wistfully? Life is the only thing, should be our only God, but we don't yet know how or even if that can be done seems the position he stops at. Sometimes he seems close to late Mann, who believed in believing in God, but pretty much just as some summary of all the things that could or ought to be and a general notion of its oncomingness and that one needs to connect oneself with that. Even there you need a promise, that the oncomingness was intended, was assured, and he assumed you'd lose hold of meaning itself if you ever thought there wasn't one. I have similar troubles with Dickinson's (late?) "better an ignis fatuus than no illume at all," since no light "makes the behavior small," assuming she meant it straight. An earthbound Pascal's wager, presumably that of many 'moderate' or 'liberal' believers.
Which I don't know that Chekhov even meant, of course. In most of the other stories it seems like for him there was a sort of god and a sort of devil, material but similar to the theological entities in being shapeless, ubiquitous, determining, and he allowed his readers to permeate that with their own spiritual associations to whatever extent they liked, since the important thing was that they see evil where he did. A less explicit version of Shaw's glorious, gloriously mendacious Preface to Androcles and the Lion. Whether politics or censorship or personal gnosis or agnosis were behind it, probably all to different degrees at different times, it's an interesting effect. The part of me tempted to disapprove is reminded of Borges' take on God as a sort of ultimate work of human art. I guess you borrow what works.
The element in the reader he's trying to reach is always presented as female (that letter's directed at a man but it's understood by all that the man won't listen). A female the Chekhov representation doesn't seek to sleep with, often to that female's confusion. I guess we're always being worked on when we read, but Chekhov keeps that disarmingly highlighted, perhaps as a way to keep his own voice honest, untendentious even as it seeks ultimately to persuade. That we're female to his male, particularly a courted female (sort of), yields us a set of rights strange in this context. His famous ambiguities and unsettled points are often not a way of working on us but an acknowledgment of our right to refuse, see things differently. Not sure I've run into anything quite like this in an author, even Calvino.
I'm coming to love best his own ranting intrusions, and this hilariously, almost Celine-and-Julily literal one maybe best of all so far.
It's a great story, but I wonder to what extent he wrote the whole thing as appropriate context, oven mitts really, for the climactic rant letter, aimed essentially at his reader. Sample:
And your irony? Oh, how well I understand it! Living, free, spirited thought is inquisitive and imperious; for a lazy, idle mind, it is unbearable. To keep it from disturbing your peace, you, like thousands of your peers, hastened while still young to set limits to it; you armed yourself with an ironic attitude toward life, or whatever you want to call it, and your restricted, intimidated thought does not dare jump over the little palisade you have set around it, and when you jeer at the ideas that are supposedly all known to you, you are like a deserter who shamefully runs away from the field of battle but, to stifle his shame, mocks at war and courage. Cynicism stifles pain. In one of Dostoevsky's stories, an old man tramples underfoot the portrait of his beloved daughter because he is in the wrong before her, and you vilely and tritely make fun of the ideas of good and truth because you are no longer able to get back to them. Any sincere and truthful hint at your fall is frightening to you, and you have deliberately surrounded yourself with people who know only how to flatter your weakness.
That gets taken back a little, if you want it to be.
I'm a little confused about his religious position. I'd thought he firmly disbelieved but bits in "Ward 6" and "The Black Monk" make me wonder. The latter confused me completely, in fact - was he attacking bipolar-type mania, contemplating it wistfully, attacking religion, contemplating it wistfully, attacking all searches for immortality, contemplating them wistfully? Life is the only thing, should be our only God, but we don't yet know how or even if that can be done seems the position he stops at. Sometimes he seems close to late Mann, who believed in believing in God, but pretty much just as some summary of all the things that could or ought to be and a general notion of its oncomingness and that one needs to connect oneself with that. Even there you need a promise, that the oncomingness was intended, was assured, and he assumed you'd lose hold of meaning itself if you ever thought there wasn't one. I have similar troubles with Dickinson's (late?) "better an ignis fatuus than no illume at all," since no light "makes the behavior small," assuming she meant it straight. An earthbound Pascal's wager, presumably that of many 'moderate' or 'liberal' believers.
Which I don't know that Chekhov even meant, of course. In most of the other stories it seems like for him there was a sort of god and a sort of devil, material but similar to the theological entities in being shapeless, ubiquitous, determining, and he allowed his readers to permeate that with their own spiritual associations to whatever extent they liked, since the important thing was that they see evil where he did. A less explicit version of Shaw's glorious, gloriously mendacious Preface to Androcles and the Lion. Whether politics or censorship or personal gnosis or agnosis were behind it, probably all to different degrees at different times, it's an interesting effect. The part of me tempted to disapprove is reminded of Borges' take on God as a sort of ultimate work of human art. I guess you borrow what works.
The element in the reader he's trying to reach is always presented as female (that letter's directed at a man but it's understood by all that the man won't listen). A female the Chekhov representation doesn't seek to sleep with, often to that female's confusion. I guess we're always being worked on when we read, but Chekhov keeps that disarmingly highlighted, perhaps as a way to keep his own voice honest, untendentious even as it seeks ultimately to persuade. That we're female to his male, particularly a courted female (sort of), yields us a set of rights strange in this context. His famous ambiguities and unsettled points are often not a way of working on us but an acknowledgment of our right to refuse, see things differently. Not sure I've run into anything quite like this in an author, even Calvino.
I'm coming to love best his own ranting intrusions, and this hilariously, almost Celine-and-Julily literal one maybe best of all so far.