Catskillet

Chekhov Disappoints

I remember reading Anton Chekhov’s short story “The Lady with the Dog” years ago and liking it quite a bit. Thinking Chekhov must be a decent writer since he is hailed as one of the greatest writers of all time, I decided to pick up a book with five of his short stories on the topic of love and attraction, which I’ve been getting through on my subway commutes.

I had finished D.H. Lawrence’s “The Virgin and the Gipsy”, a precursor to his controversial “Lady Chatterly’s Lover”, a piece that was filled with depth of feeling, perception and lyrical metaphors. I could tell D.H. Lawrence was an artist and made a mental note to give his other works a chance. I had then come to Chekhov expecting him to blow me away.

He did, in a bad sort of repulsive way. I don’t get it. His main characters are always vapid, lifeless and utterly pathetic men who think they understand women and love. He writes about an artist in one story (a painter that never paints!), only to reveal how little his character embodies the mentality of a serious artist. His supporting male characters are even less admirable, exhibiting qualities like gross obesity, ineptitude, ungratefulness, jealousy and excessive sweating. One might think he portrays women as the superior sex with all his talk of how beautiful they are, but he only knows how to create 2-dimensional valley girls. D.H. Lawrence gave his women depth and emotion and even the complexity of thoughts (who would think!), Anton Chekhov strips away all of that. He describes his women the same way story after story:

Nadezhda was “ethereal… very fair, pale-faced and slim, with kind, loving eyes”.
Tatyana was “healthy, young, intelligent”.
Zhenya had a “pale face… slender neck… kind eyes”.
Lida was “slim, pretty”. 
Vera was “thin and attractive”. 
Yekaterina was (and I quote!) “just as thin and attractive”. 

And on and on. They never have a deeper intelligence than their youthful appearance, and you get the feeling that all his men are self-portraits whom he pairs with the most beautiful woman as if he were consumed by his own fantasies (that’s the same baseness of most romance novels, in my opinion). They display affections towards one another, but they’re just motions. It’s as if Chekhov never felt a thing in his life.

Of course, the most annoying part is that he’ll take off on long tangents about politics and social reform and all that menial crap in the middle of a conversation between a man and a woman who are supposed to be having a believable rapport (and of course, this is after getting the impression that none of his women have brains). Like I said, I just don’t get it. Are you writing social commentary? Are you writing about relationships? Is this an appropriate insertion? Bulgakov was a master of satire and humor, and yes, it was political but tons of fun and to the point (he knows how to move his story along). Austen comments on social conventions and relationships, and infuses humor into her work successfully. Chekhov does neither and none, and all of it very badly indeed. There is nothing literary in his writing. No humor, no irony. It reminds me of a teenager’s angsty journal with all of its longings and regrets and unexamined desires. Most of all, he is dull and repetitive. Hemingway wrote in a straightforward way, but there was always an ocean under the surface of his words. By contrast, Chekhov is a puddle.

The funny thing is that I found this on Wiki when I tried to read a little about Chekhov to understand where he was coming from:

Ernest Hemingway, another writer influenced by Chekhov, was more grudging: “Chekhov wrote about 6 good stories. But he was an amateur writer.”^[98] And Vladimir Nabokov once complained of Chekhov’s “medley of dreadful prosaisms, ready-made epithets, repetitions.”^[99] But he also declared The Lady with the Dog ”one of the greatest stories ever written” and described Chekhov as writing “the way one person relates to another the most important things in his life, slowly and yet without a break, in a slightly subdued voice.”^[100]

Both Hemingway and Nabokov are among my favorite writers, so that even they found Chekhov unbearable might say something about his writing. In any case, I’m about to re-read “The Lady with the Dog” where I hope to find some forgiveness in my heart for Chekhov.

Of course, if anyone else has some insight to offer on the topic of Chekhov, I am retaining an open mind to the value of his contributions.