Chekhov described the rented house (clearly the house in the story) in a letter to Suvorin on 18 May 1891: ‘If only you knew how charming it is! Huge rooms… a wonderful garden with avenues of which I’ve never seen the like, a river, pond, church… and every comfort.’ And Chekhov’s brother Mikhail writes: ‘Anton Pavlovich occupied the large drawing-room in Bogimovo, a vast room with columns and a couch of such improbable size that you could sit twelve men on it side by side. He slept on that couch. When a storm passed over at night those huge windows were illuminated in the lightning.’
The main theme of Lida’s quarrel with the artist – the state of the peasantry – had become particularly topical since the famine and cholera epidemic of 1891–2.
Chekhov’s attitude to the peasant (exemplified in the artist’s speeches in the story) echoes some of Tolstoy’s pronouncements at the time, especially the articles What Then Must We Do? (1886) and On Famine (1891), where, like the artist in the story, Tolstoy stresses that the condition of the suffering peasants cannot be improved without changing one’s own life.
1. Amos stoves: A special kind of stove invented by Major-General Nikolay Amosov (1787–1868).
2. Lake Baikal: So-called ‘pearl of Siberia’, seventh largest lake in the world and the deepest.
3. Buryat: A Mongol people, forming a large indigenous group in southeastern Siberia, living near Lake Baikal and in Irkutsk district.
4. Ryurik’s: Ryurik was a Varangian prince of Kiev, traditionally said to be the founder of the Russian state (A D 862). The Varangians were Viking warriors.
5. Gogol’s Petrushka’s: Chichikov’s comically inept (and bibulous) manservant in Gogol’s Dead Souls (1842), renowned for reading with little comprehension.
6. Vichy: Famous spa in central France.
7. ‘God sent a crow a piece of cheese’: from the fable The Crow and the Fox, by I. A. Krylov (1769–1844).
Peasants
‘Peasants’ was first published in Russian Thought in 1897 and subsequently in a separate edition (1897), together with ‘My Life’, with Suvorin the publisher. The story was written at Melikhovo and, according to Chekhov’s brother Mikhail, ‘every page reflects Melikhovo scenes and characters’, particularly the fire of 1895 (Around Chekhov, Moscow/Leningrad, 1933, p. 280). Later, when explaining to Suvorin his intention of selling Melikhovo, he wrote: ‘From a literary point of view, after “Peasants” Melikhovo ran dry and it lost its value for me’ (letter of 26 June 1899).
Writing to Yelena Shavrova on 1 January 1897 Chekhov mentions his work on ‘Peasants’: ‘I’m up to my eyes in work. I write and cross out, write and cross out…’ On 1 March that year he wrote to Suvorin: ‘I’ve written a story about peasant life, but they say it won’t pass the censors and I’ll have to cut it by half.’ Later that month Chekhov went to Moscow to check the proofs but on the day of his arrival suffered a severe lung haemorrhage and had to stay in the Ostroumovsky Clinic until 10 April. At his request, Lidiya Avilova took the proofs from V. A. Goltsev, editor of Russian Thought, to the clinic for Chekhov to correct.
Whether from his own instincts or following the advice of the editors of Russian Thought, Chekhov deemed it prudent completely to drop the chapter describing the peasants’ conversation about God and the authorities, for censorship considerations. The text of this chapter is unknown.
‘Peasants’ was severely mutilated by the censors – particularly because, according to them, it painted far too dark a picture of peasant life. One censor complained: ‘On first impressions this is something highly suspect’ and a telegram from St Petersburg to the Moscow Censorship Committee stated in no uncertain terms: ‘Omit p. 193 of the Chekhov. To be arrested if in disagreement.’ Accordingly, Goltsev dropped this particular page where the drunkenness of the peasants is described.
Other sections, some substantial, were excised and on 16 April 1897 Chekhov wrote to M. O. Menshikov (editor of the monthly magazine The Week): ‘The censors have taken quite a large chunk out of “Peasants”.’ However, in later editions, sections were reinstated. Some of the most ‘offensive’ passages, depicting the general depravity of the peasants, were toned down when published in Suvorin’s edition. In effect, so true to life were the descriptions of the downtrodden, exploited peasants that the censorship committee looked upon the story as a documentary article.
In a letter to his brother Mikhail, Chekhov states that the fire in the story was based on an actual occurrence at Melikhovo, his country estate, two years previously. Mikhail writes in his memoirs most revealingly: ‘These five years in Melikhovo were not wasted by Anton. They laid their special imprint on his works of this period, influenced his literary activity and made him a profounder and more serious writer.’ Chekhov’s brother categorically states that Chekhov’s direct dealings with peasants on the estate had a strong influence on both ‘Peasants’ and ‘In the Ravine’. As one would expect, Chekhov was a good master and life at Melikhovo was peaceful. Chekhov’s picture of the peasants’ sad lot contrasts sharply with Tolstoy’s idealization of the peasant with his ‘unsullied virtues’, and in both ‘Peasants’ and ‘In the Ravine’ he shows up the cardinal error of regarding these poor creatures as the living embodiment of God-like purity and true guardians of Christian morality.
The unfinished continuation of ‘Peasants’ (chapters X and XI) has survived in draft form, but it is difficult to date precisely – possibly 1900. However, the idea of a continuation probably arose earlier, since Goltsev wrote to Chekhov in March 1897: ‘I need your “Peasants” and their continuation…’ These final two chapters considerably broaden the canvas, describing the further lives of Olga and her daughter Sasha in Moscow, after leaving the village. Although Chekhov possibly intended continuing the story with a portrayal of low city life, as intimated in the Introduction (p. xiii), he may have come to feel that this would clash with the harrowing depiction of the peasantry in preceding chapters.
1. Slav Fair: (Slavyansky Bazaar) Famous Moscow hotel and restaurant, frequently mentioned in Chekhov’s stories. Chekhov often stayed there.
2. ‘But whosoever shall smite thee…’: Matthew 5:39.
3. ‘Come unto me…’: Matthew 11:28.
4. Vladimir: Ancient city about 120 miles east of Moscow, formerly the capital of central Russia.
5. Hermitage Garden [or Variety] Theatre: In Karetny Ryad (Coach Row) where Stanislavsky first achieved success with the Moscow Art Theatre’s production of Chekhov’s The Seagull (1898). This Hermitage has no connection with either the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg or the Hermitage restaurant in Moscow.
6. Aumont’s: Well-known amusement house.
7. ‘And when they were departed…’: Matthew 2:13.
8. Exaltation of the Cross: 14 September.
9. I lo-ove the flowers that bloom…: According to Chekhov’s sister Masha, Chekhov had often heard the village girls at Melikhovo singing this song.
10. Fast of the Assumption: One of the strictest fasts, a two-week period preceding the Feast of the Assumption which took place on 15 August.
11. kasha: A kind of porridge or gruel made of cooked grain or boiled groats. Staple peasant food.
12. the serfs were emancipated: The serfs were officially emancipated in 1861.
13. used to ride out with wolfhounds… : The skilled hunters were from Pskov province. They would work in threes and drive the wolves or foxes from cover for the huntsmen.
14. Tver: Large town on the Volga, about 100 miles north-west of Moscow. Known as Kalinin in Soviet era (after Stalin’s puppet president).
15. freedom: Marya means freedom from serfdom.
16. portrait of Battenberg: Alexander of Battenberg, Prince of Bulgaria (1879–86), forced to abdicate by Alexander III of Russia, after being kidnapped by Russian officers and deported to Russian territory. W. H. Bruford, in his Chekhov and His Russia (1948; 1971), states: ‘These details … indicated perhaps the elder’s ignorance, for one so loyal would not otherwise have given th
e place of honour to an enemy of his Tsar.’
17. Elijah’s Day: 20 July.
18. Patriarch’s Ponds: Actually one large pond formed from three fishponds that were dug out of the medieval Goat’s Marsh. Patriarch’s Ponds is where two literary hacks meet the Devil in the first chapter of Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita.
19. Filippov’s: Moscow’s most fashionable coffee house before the Revolution, richly decorated with stuccoed ceiling and caryatids. Founded by the court baker Filippov.
20. Tversky Boulevard: Long thoroughfare in west central Moscow, stretching from Nikitsky Gates to Pushkin Square.
21. Little Bronny: A Moscow street frequented by prostitutes.
Trilogy: Man in a Case, Gooseberries, About Love
That ‘Man in a Case’, ‘Gooseberries’ and ‘About Love’, all published in Russian Thought, 1898, were to be considered a cycle, or trilogy, was stressed by Chekhov in a letter to a female translator of his stories into English, O. R. Vasilyeva, who for some reason decided to translate only the second two stories: ‘Do as you please, but if you leave out “Man in a Case” it will be unclear who’s talking and why’ (5 January 1899). Chekhov had intended continuing the trilogy – this is clear from a letter to the publisher A. F. Marks: ‘The stories “Man in a Case”, “Gooseberries” and “About Love” are a part of a series which is far from finished…’ (28 September 1899). But this projected series was never written, possibly because of mental exhaustion at the time. After the trilogy was completed he wrote to Lidiya Avilova: ‘Writing revolts me and I don’t know what to do’ (23–27 July 1898). This mood soon passed, but with the coming of autumn Chekhov was forced to go south for health reasons. From Yalta he wrote to P. F. Iordanov (a Taganrog doctor): ‘I’m unsettled and hardly working. This enforced idleness and wandering around resorts is worse than any bacilli’ (21 September 1898). Eventually he started writing again – but independent stories such as ‘A Case History’ and ‘On Official Duty’.
These three stories are the only case of interconnectedness in Chekhov’s work. The ideas for the stories had long been fermenting in his mind: this is clear from notes made in Paris and Nice and from his First Notebook. On 2 July he wrote to N. A. Leykin6: ‘As you know, I spent the winter in the South of France, where I was bored without snow and couldn’t work. In the spring I was in Paris, where I spent about four weeks. Now I’m at home and writing. I’ve sent my story to [The] Cornfield and another to Russian Thought.’ This second story was ‘Man in a Case’. Separate publishing histories and notes for each of the three stories in the trilogy now follow in the order in which they appear in this volume.
In early June 1898 ‘Man in a Case’ was prepared for the press and on the 12th of that month Chekhov wrote to Suvorin: ‘I’m fussing about and doing a little bit of work. I’ve already written a long and a short story.’ These were ‘Ionych’ and ‘Man in a Case’.
Chekhov’s brother Mikhail states that the prototype for the main character, Belikov, was a certain Dyakanov, an inspector at the Taganrog Gymnasium where Anton had studied (this attribution is now disputed), adding that his brother also drew on events at the school – the annual spring outing, for example (A. P. Chekhov and His Subjects, Moscow, 1923). It is also possible that the prototype could have been the journalist M. O. Menshikov, editor of the journal The Week, as Chekhov refers to him in his diary for 1896: ‘Menshikov goes around with galoshes in dry weather, carrying an umbrella so as not to perish from sunstroke and is scared of washing in cold water…’ In addition, Professor Serebryakov in Uncle Vanya never ventures out without umbrella and galoshes. Clearly, Chekhov was fascinated by this type of encapsulated, cocooned individual and ‘Man in a Case’ is his fullest portrayal of this strange manifestation of extreme eccentricity. However, it is likely that Belikov is an amalgam of various characters Chekhov had known.
The second story in the trilogy, ‘Gooseberries’, links the first and last and contemporary critics were quick to see the similarity of the thematic material running through the three stories: lack of will, moral cowardice, pettiness and bigotry generated by a complacent society. Chekhov thought that all these defects could be pinned on his own generation.
The story was written at Melikhovo in July 1898 and published the following month in Russian Thought. On 20 July Chekhov wrote in mock-serious tone to Goltsev, editor of Russian Thought: ‘Nine tenths of the story for the August issue are ready and if nothing prevents the happy conclusion of the aforementioned story you will receive it from my own hands on 1 August.’
According to Mikhail Chekhov, several features of the estate of Bakumovka, owned by S. I. Smagin, are incorporated in the story – for example, swimming in the river. Chekhov’s brother interestingly relates the origin of the extraordinary surname Chimsha-Gimalaysky: ‘When Anton Pavlovich travelled right across Siberia to Sakhalin, somewhere, on the very edge of the world, a local gentleman came forth and wanted to make his acquaintance. He gave him his card on which was written: “Rymsha-Pilsudsky”. Anton Pavlovich took this card away and for a long time laughed at a name you couldn’t invent even if you were drunk, and decided to use it when the opportunity arose’ (A. P. Chekhov and His Subjects, Moscow, 1923).
The third story in the trilogy, ‘About Love’ was first published in Russian Thought in 1898. The plot for the story is outlined in Chekhov’s First Notebook. Like the other two stories in the trilogy, ‘About Love’ was written at Melikhovo in the summer of 1898 and was prepared for the August issue of Russian Thought. The first version of the story ended with a matter-of-fact dialogue about Ivan Ivanych’s departure, but in the Collected Edition of 1903 it ends on a lyrical note, with poetic descriptions of Nature and sad reflections about those who had heard Alyokhin’s story.
In her memoirs, A. P. Chekhov in My Life: A Love Story (London, 1950), Lidiya Avilova wrote: ‘“About Love” concerned me, I had no doubt about it…’ According to her, her relations with Chekhov are reflected in the story and she refers to a ten-year relationship. After reading the story she sent Chekhov a hostile letter in which she ‘thanked him for the honour of figuring as a heroine, even if only in a little story’. However, Avilova’s memoirs are now considered highly suspect and mainly based on delusion.
Man in a Case
1. Shchedrin: M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (1826–89), Russia’s greatest satirical novelist.
2. Henry Buckles: Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–62), English social historian whose History of Civilisation (1858, 1861) was extremely popular in Russia.
3. ‘Breezes of the South…’: From a popular Ukrainian folksong.
4. Gadyach: Small Ukrainian town, in Poltava province.
5. Mr Creepy-Crawly: (Ukrainian) Lit. The Bloodsucker or Spider, a four-act drama by M. L. Kropivnitsky, written for the actress M. K. Zankovetsky, whom Chekhov had first met at the Suvorins in 1892.
6. Nikolay Aleksandrovich Leykin (1841–1906), journalist, novelist and writer of satirical short stories. He was publisher and editor of the highly popular comic magazine Oskolki (Fragments), to which Chekhov contributed more than 200 short stories between 1882 and 1887.
Gooseberries
1. only six feet of earth: A possible allusion to Tolstoy’s famous story ‘How Much Land Does a Man Need?’.
2. ‘Uplifting illusion…’: Inaccurate quotation from the poem The Hero (1830). The original reads: ‘Uplifting illusion is dearer to me than a host of vile truths.’
About Love
1. European Herald: Liberal monthly journal that published works by leading writers (Ostrovsky, Turgenev, Goncharov). It was published from 1866 to 1918.
A Visit to Friends
First published in the journal Cosmopolis, 1898, and written at the request of F. D. Batyushkov (1857–1920; literary historian and critic, editor of Russian section of Cosmopolis. Author of interesting memoirs and articles about Chekhov). From Nice, Chekhov wrote to Batyushkov: ‘I promise to write a story for Cosmopolis at the first opportunity and if nothin
g gets in the way I’ll send it in December.’ (letter of 9 November 1897).
In December he wrote a highly interesting letter from Nice to Batyushkov which throws much light on his creative methods: ‘I’m writing the story for Cosmopolis, slowly, in fits and starts. I usually write slowly, with much effort, but here, in a hotel room, at a strange table, in good weather, when I yearn to go out, I write even worse… and therefore I can’t promise the story earlier than in two weeks. I’ll send it before 1 January… You expressed the wish… for me to send an international story, with a subject from the local life here. I can only write such stories in Russia, from memory. I can write only from memory and have never written direct from nature. My memory has to sieve the subject so that only what’s important or typical is left on it, as on a filter’ (letter of 15 December 1897).
Early the following year he wrote to the sociologist M. M. Kovalevsky: ‘I sent a story to Cosmopolis and have already received a thank-you telegram from the editor, although the story isn’t quite right – rather poor, I think’ (letter of 8 January 1898).
‘A Visit to Friends’ was the only late story of Chekhov’s to be excluded from the Collected Edition – for some reason he took a dislike to it.
1. Tula: Large town about 120 miles south of Moscow, famous for the manufacture of guns and samovars. Peter the Great established a small-arms factory there in 1712. The gunsmiths were renowned for the quality of their workmanship.
2. Slav Fair: See ‘Peasants’, note 1, p. 333.
3. Hermitage: Restaurant in Trubny Place in Moscow.
4. Little Bronny Street: See ‘Peasants’, note 21, p. 334.
5. Is something rotten in the state of Denmark?: Cf. Hamlet, Act I, Scene 4, ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’.