An Estimate of Anton Tchekhov

How the Russian Playwright Evokes "Atmosphere" for His Dramatic "Effects"

A. B. WALKLEY

TRAVELLERS returned from Russia tell me that at the Tchekhov Theatre there AL they no longer play Tchekhov. His people havebccomeobsolete, unrecognizable. Meanwhile, outside Russia, his vogue is gradually increasing. A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country. Moreover, Tchekhov's people arc not obsolete for us Occidentals, because for us they never existed, never existed, that is, as real, concrete people. Nor are they unrecognizable. Far from that, we recognize them more plainly every day, recognize their mood and views as ours, their thwarted loves and ineffectual hates as ours, their snatches of happiness and their prevailing unhappiness as ours. It is the old story, mutato nomine de te fabula narratin'. And it is just because J'chckhov's " fable" is never fabulous, because under a superficial gloss of personages unlike ourselves and (since Tzarist Russia turned Soviet) unlike anything on earth he reveals feelings and ideas permanently true to human nature, that we recognize ourselves in his plays.

BUT to recognize we must be willing cooperate. A preliminary task is requisite, which not everybody is disposed to undertake. We have, first, to unlearn much that we have learned in the old theatre, the Aristotelian notion, for instance, that drama is quintessentially the "imitation of an action", and that other notion erroneously attributed to the same Stagirite, but really (as my learned friend, Mr. Spingarn, knows) no other than the Renaissance, the notion of "unity" in action. Hippolytas, vowed to perpetual celibacy, rejects the advances of his enamoured stepmother, Phaedra, who, after "compromising" him in the eves of his father, Theseus, miserably dies. Banished by the enraged Theseus, Hippolytas is devoured bv a sea-monster. Othello, a Moor, marries a white woman, Desdcmona, daughter of a Venetian senator, whom the treacherous Iago artfullv represents as unfaithful. The jealous Othello smothers her and cuts his own throat. The hypocritical Tartuffc dominates the household of the credulous Orgon until he makes love to Kim ire, Orgon's wife, while her husband is hidden under the table. The exposed Tartuffe is finally hailed off to prison for general misdemeanours. Aubrey Tanqucray marries a lady with a "past", Paula, who, after a period of intolerable boredom, finds that Captain Ardale, sweetheart to Aubrey's daughter Kllean, is one of her anciens, and commits suicide. All these people arc engaged in doing or suffering things. They are engaged in a common "action"; the dramatist tells you their "storv".

Well, we must not expect this sort of thing from Anton Tchekhov. He aims not at "action" but at "atmosphere". I know that "atmosphere" has become a cant-word, handv when one doesn't know what else to saw But it has a meaning, and a very definite meaning with Tchekhov. It means the prevalence of moods, "soul-states" as the French call them, deeds. It means that what people are feeling is of more interest to us than what they are doing. And when these moods, these feelings, are common to the various people of the play, in varying degrees, you get a dominant mood, you get an "atmosphere". In The SeaCull you have an atmosphere of thwarted desires and frustrated aspirations. They arc all love-lorn and all love the wrong person. Medvidenko is in love with Masha, who marries him to forget her hopeless love for Constantine, who loves Nina, who thinks she loves him until she discovers that she loves Trigorin, who is in love with love but still more with the art ol literary composition and, after using Nina's love as material for a "short story", abandons her. Then there is the mature Paulina in love with the elderly Dom, who after being a universal lover, the darling of the ladies, has now detele and contents himself with a philosophic appreciation of the world at cross-purposes in love. The atmosphere, you see, is distinct]}' amoristic. Yet love is never, as in the old theatre, catastrophic. If Constantine shoots himself it is not so much for disappointed love as for general disgust with life. If Nina is heartbroken by Trigorin's desertion, she recovers to go on the stage and to harden herself into a competent actress. It is for the frustration, not the love, that our interest is solicited. The cynic's definition of life as "just one damn thing after another" is consistently illustrated. It is, indeed, the burden of all Tchekhov's plays.

Take, again, the most famous of them all, The Cherry Orchard. There you have an atmosphere of "drift". Inertia, a kind of paralysis of the will, is the general complaint. 'The old family estate is going to the hammer, but they are helpless to stop the course of events. Not merely are they without will-power, but they seem to lack the faculty of concentrating attention. They are happy-go-lucky people. When the news is brought to Madame Rancvsky of the sale of her estate, it is at an improvised dance. Everybody's attention wanders. Someone twangs a guitar. The German governess "longs to talk and has no one to talk to", so she talks to herself, and wanders about—"who I am, or why I exist, is a mystery." Ephikhodov doesn't know whether he wants to live or to shoot himself. "But in order to be ready for all contingencies, I always carry a revolver in my pocket." Gayef munches candy and plays imaginary strokes at billiards. Or else he yawns. So does Yasha. And so, you might suppose, do we all. But not for a moment! The general listlessness only emphasizes the sense of human futility; we are too absorbed in the relentless veracity of the scene, too oppressed in spirit, to be bored. Bores presented with art do not bore us. Why else are we, not bored, but delighted, with Jane Austen's Miss Bates? Such is the magic transvaluation effected by art!

ANOTHER memory of the old theatre Ay we have to dismiss from our minds is the habit of considering the characters as participants in an action. Tchekhov's contribute, more or less unconstantly, to the prevailing atmosphere, but anything like "team work", concerted action, is unknown to them. The very dialogue is without giveand-take. Each personage seems to live a part, lost in his own dreams. When he opens his mouth, it is to talk about himself—and nobody listens. The dialogue, in short, is a mosaic of soliloquies. Sometimes their monologues merely depict the egoism of the speaker; as when Madame Arcadina, the stage-queen in The Sea-Gull, expatiates on her triumph at Kharkov and the students' showers of bouquets, or when Kosykl, the card bore in Ivanov, buttonholes everybody about the grand slam that failed until, refused a hearing, he exclaims in disgust "Good God! there's not a soul to talk to anywhere. One might as well be in Australia; no solidarity; no common interests; each lives his own life."

But there arc precious moments when the monologue opens up vistas far beyond the speaker or lays bare the inmost fibres of his being, so that one is suddenly brought up against life's stark reality. Here is a bit of self revelation of Trigorin which for sheer truth as a picture of literary temperament is a marvel:— "Nina; What a delightful life is yours!

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Trigorin: .... {meditating) You have heard of obsessions, when a man is haunted day and night, say, by the idea of the moon or something? Well, I've got my moon. Day and night I am obsessed by the same persistent thought; I must write, I must write, I must write. . . . No sooner have I finished one story than I am somehow compelled to write another, then a third, after the third a fourth. . Never for one moment do I forget that there is an unfinished story waiting for me indoors. I see a cloud like a grand piano. I think: I must mention somewhere in the story that a cloud went by, shaped like a grand piano. I smell heliotrope. I say to myself: sickly smell, mourning shade, must be mentioned in describing a summer evening. I lie in wait for each phrase, for each word that falls from my lips or yours, and hasten to lock all these phrases and words away in my literary storeroom ."

It is for things like this that you feel Tchekhov to be worthwhile. You will search the old drama for them in vain. The fact is, I think— and here is the novelty and the aesthetic value of his work—that Tchekhov put more of himself into his plays than is put by other playwrights; they are introspective, selfexpressive under a spacious exterior of objective drama, so that we get the vraie verite instead of an arranged, a conventional truth or half truth; and insofar as he expresses himself, he cannot choose but express us.

And that is why I have insisted on the special need for mental preparation in the case of Tchekhov. If we will not make it, we shall go astray at the outset and be merely irritated and bewildered. Nothing is easier than to "guy" Tchekhov. His people have the misfortune to be foreigners and, what is worse, Russians of the ancien regime. Manners they have none. They all talk about themselves, their inmost selves, without reticence. Fortunately, nobody even pretends to listen. They are incorrigibly sentimental and, indeed, (men as well as women) lachrymose. They are frivolous when we are serious and brave to solemnity over what provokes our sense of humour. They have no self-restraint, never attempt to disguise their natural egoism, and, when it is thwarted, fill the air with lamentation. In short, they behave like grown-up children. Their domestics are basely servile or insolently familiar. They shamelessly sponge upon one another for money and then fling it out of the window. Their girls unblushingly chase the men, who only "fall" because they are too lazy to run away. At the slightest provocation they burst into song. The men are wholly innocent of "good form". They never cut their hair, and even in drawing rooms, wear ready-made neckties and look like rustic louts in reach-me-down clothes. Some of the women openly drink too much vodka, and the servants as openly tipple the champagne. All together, you decide with disgust, a frowsy, lusty, flatulent crew . . .

And so on. There will always be playgoers to fasten upon these externals, and to see no further than the ends of their noses. They are the same people who "cannot read" the later novels of Henry James and for whom Marcel Proust is "too tiresome".