GREAT RUSSIAN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17567, 18 June 1925, Page 6

GREAT RUSSIAN.

ANTON TCHEKHOV. Anton Tchekhov is one cf the halldozen Russian writers whose work is well known in Western Europe, writes "John o’ London’s Weekly.” lie has none cf fhc tremendous moral fervour , of Tolstoy, nor is he, perhaps, on the same plane of greatness as Turgenieff and Dostoievsky. lie has something of the humour cf Gogol; and a great deal of the hopelessness of his younger contemporary, Maxim Gorki. As i a short-story writer, Tchekhov ranks ■with the greatest. He -is the peer of 1 Dc Maupassant himself. Most of his short stories have been translated into English by Mrs Garnett, and are published in moderately-priced volumes by Messrs Chat to and Windus, as are the plaj-s which made Tchekhov famous in his own country. Our knowledge of a remarkable literary artist is now increased by the publication of a selection of his letters: “ The Life and Letters of Anton Tchekhov,” translated and edited by S. S. Kotjeliansky and Philip Tomlinson (Cassell, 16s). Over eighteen hundred of the letters have been published in Russia, and from them the editors have selected the three hundred which are contained in this volume. TchekhoV was born in Taganrog in 1860. His father was a small shopkeeper, and his grandfather had been a serf who by persistent thrift had contrived to buy the freedom of himself and his family. The Tchekhovs were very poor, and when he was sixteen Anton had to fend for himself. He began to write comic sketches, and with the dnoney that he earned lie contrived to pay for his education as a doctor at Moscow University, where lie graduated in 1884. Two years later* he was able to escape from the drudgery of comic “ pot-boilers,” and the Petrograd " Xovovc Yreinya ” began to print his serious work. In 188 S Tchekhov was a writer cf established reputation. He was still, however, obliged to work persistently, as he himself said, “ squeezing stories out of himself,” and his life was made harder by the beginning of the consumption of which he was eventually to die. In 1890 he spent some mnoths in Siberia, visiting the notorious penal settlement at Saghalien. The result of this journey was the publication of a book which compelled the Czarist Government to introduce some reforms into that hell on eartk. On his return he bought a small estate near Moscow, and lived there until 1898, and it was during this period that he wrote his best stories, xnanv of them bitterlv realistic studies of peasant life. In 1895 his play, ” The Seagull,” was produced in Petrograd and was a failure. In 1898 a violent haemorrhage of the lungs compelled him to leave Moscow for the warmer climate cf the Crimea. In the last years of his life his plays, “ The Seagull,” “ Uncle Vanya,” and “The Cherry Orchard” were produced with great success by the Moscow Art Theatre. Tchekhov married in 1901 and died in Germany in 1904. “No one has ever succeeded as Tchekhov has,” wrote Prince Kropotkin, “ in representing the failures of human nature in our present civilisation, and especially the failure, the bankruptcy of the educated man in the face of the ail-invading meanness of everyday life.” Tolstoy declared that he was " only a very clever photographer." He himself frequently admitted that he had no politics, that his stories were not written with a purpose. But they are revelations of the hopelessness of the Russian intellectuals, of their inability to save the country which they loved with patriotic fervour, and whose ruin they foresaw. It was this essential weakness that made the Bolshevist revolution and the domination of foreign rulers inevitable. Of Tchekhovs plays, Miss Storm Jameson, has said:— The atmosphere of the plays ia perfect in tlioir sense or despair and fuulu cflort. iheir technique is new; the charades wander across tlio Btage in tlio inconsequent, fashion of life, tnlkinfi perpetually. 11 'ey are constantly interrupted ami drnt away, but the talk poos on. it is excellenttne distinctive speech of cultured, tliousrut,;>l people. Gradually a vision of them shapes itself from their conversation intimate. of intense interest. Beyond them n vision ot' life unrolls from their words rnd slow self-revelation. Behind the individual man is humanity and the vision of humancalls VM'. present"'m astfry or” suhmisto the past are making the years to come. Strife is born of this ceaseless nct-.l of tho future to free itself from the pjo-r. Life id this continued struggle, its ebu-f-Jeion given coherence and value by an understanding of-Its eternal creatno need. Only in this effort towards the highe-1 ideal he knows may a. man solve the problem of life. Himself, his use of his inheritance, determine his future and the future of humanity. Then what is failure, provided the protest- has been made in all the strength of will and action? Some such vision is the significance of TehekhoFs plays. This seems to me very acute. The impression both of the stories ajid the plays is blank despair. In “ Uncle Vanya,” for instance, the lives of a young woman and a middle-aged man have been sacrificed for the selfish vanity of an old professor, and there *3 no escape. What has been must be until the end. The play concludes:--SONYA - There is nothing- for it. Wc mU st €0 on living-! V*'e shall go on living Un-lo Vanya! We shall live through a lone lonehain of days and weary evening*shall patiently bear tho triala which fato eends us ; we shall work for others, both "oj nnd In our old ago, and have no rest; without a murmur, and there beyond the-gra-ve we shall say that we have suffered that wo hare wept, that life has been bitter to us. and God will have pity on u« and you and 1. uncle, dear uncle, shall e-ee a life that is bright, lovely, beautiful. Wo shall rejoice and look back at those smile—and wo sbaH rest. I have faith* shalf restT' 0 I,asaiolmtt falth - Wo The Tchekhov that we meet in his work is also the Tchekhov of the letters. which are brave and self-revealing, and sometimes as gay as the letters ■ f Stevenson. In Siberia he was horrili’d by the character of his fellowcountrymen. “ One honest man to ninety-nine thieves who are defiling the name of Russia.” On his read home, at Hong Kong, he was amused when liis Russian fellow-travellers sbused the English for exploiting the natives. “Yes, the English exploit the Chinese, the Sepoys, the Hindus, but for that they give them roads, water supplies, museums, Christianity. And you also exploit, but what do you give them ? ” His fancies are morbid. lie lias no religion. He is frequently bored, particularly when in exile in the Crimea. Tor other writers lie has generous appreciation In a letter to Gorki writt :i

' in 1889. he says: "You are artist, x wise man; you feel superbly, you ire plastic, that is, 'when you describe a thing you sec it and. touch it with your hands. That is real art.” For Tolstoy he had an admiration that was almost veneration, and Ibsen was his master. In a biographical note in this volume of letters we are told that “ acquaintances lie had many, but friends, friends v h m he would let into his soul, he had none.” Gorki has told us of " that | tender, charming smile of his which attracted one so irresistibly to him and made one listen attentively to his words.” And as I have said, in the letters there are many jolly passages. But if there was always a _§vnile behind his tears, tears were always # i:ear his • unhappy,” he wrote. It was a grey world indeed in which Tchekhov lived and in which he wrote.