Steven Brett Shaklan
Mapping the Artistic "Поле":
Chekhov's "Little Trilogy" as a Style Guide for the Successful
Story1
"Человек в футляре," "Крыжовник," and "О любви," commonly referred to as Anton Chekhov's "Little Trilogy," are stories that seem to scream out for thematic interpretation. Each story begins and ends in the third person, but within this narrative framework, a major character steps forward to tell a story for the benefit of the others. These internal stories are intended to expand on some topic that emerges over the course of casual conversation; our natural inclination is to attempt to piece together the often-convoluted philosophies of these character-narrators. And while we might spend our time parsing Burkin's views on the tyranny of conservativism, Ivan Ivanich's conception of social progress, or Alekhin's take on love, we would be better served by noting the ways in which these three storytellers communicate once they take the narrative reins.
Conservative critics like D.S. Mirsky note that, "Chekhov's characters are singularly lacking in individual personality . . . His characters all speak (within class limits and apart from little tricks of catchwords he lends them from time to time) the same language, which is Chekhov's own."2 There is superficial justification for this pose. Chekhov's protagonists tend toward the articulate. Whether through their first person speech acts or through narrative voice appropriations, they reveal themselves as lucid emotional or ideological explicators. Compare the following statements by Burkin, Ivan Ivanich, and Alekhin:
Burkin: Людей, одиноких по натуре, которые, как рак-отшелышк или улитка, стараются уйти в свою скорлупу, на этом свете не мало. Быть может, тут явление атавизма, возвращение к тому времени, когда предок человека не был еще общественным животным и жил одиноко в своей берлоге, а может быть, это просто одна из разновидностей человеческого характера, - кто знает?3
Ivan Ivanich: Уходить из города, от борьбы, от житейского шума, уходить и прятаться у себя в усадьбе - это не жизнь, это эгоизм, лень, это своего рода монашество, но монашество без подвига. Человеку нужно не три аршина земли, не усадьба, а весь земной шар, вся природа, где на просторе он мог бы проявить все свойства и особенности своего свободного духа.4
Alekhin: До сих пор о любви была сказана только одна неоспоримая правда, а именно, что "тайна сия велика есть", всё же остальное, что писали и говорили о любви, было не решением, а только постановкой вопросов, которые так и оставались неразрешенными. То объяснение, которое, казалось бы, годится для одного случая, уже не годится для десяти других, и самое лучшее, по-моему, - это объяснять каждый случай в отдельности, не пытаясь обобщать. Надо, как говорят доктора, индивидуализировать каждый отдельный случай.5
All three share a desire to explicate the state of human existence, and do so in a decidedly educated, eloquent manner. They demonstrate an almost literary flair in their choice of figuration ("как рак-отшелышк или улитка, стараются уйти в свою скорлупу" / "это своего рода монашество, но монашество без подвига"/ "Надо, как говорят доктора, индивидуализировать каждый отдельный случай"), and in their repetitions, elaborations, and verbal asides that reach far beyond the norms of standard conversation. Although these characters are in the midst of a conscious act of storytelling (and are therefore attentive to their use of language) we find a less heightened, but still comparable brand of articulate explication in characters as far ranging as Grigory Vasilev in "Припадок," Korolyov of "Случай из практики," or Ivan Velikopolski of "Студент." And although these characters may be completely devoid of self-knowledge or of a legitimate view of the world around them -- and they often demonstrate both -- we find a thread of clean, lucid expression that binds them; this provides facile justification for Mirsky's characterization.
But a closer inspection of the ways in which Burkin, Ivan Ivanich, and Alekhin tell their tales reveals deep distinctions between them. When we speak of sensibility, we are inevitably speaking of style as well. Sensibility is instantiated by style; style reveals sensibility. Through their choice of language and subject matter, Chekhov's characters map out their individual emotional territory; through the successes and failures resulting from these choices, Chekhov maps out a framework for the stylistic construction of a successful tale.
This is not the first article to turn to the "Little Trilogy" in attempts to define Chekhov's artistic technique and consequently, his emotional and ideological position vis
а vis the world. In "Narrative Technique and the Art of Story-telling in Anton Chekhov's 'Little Trilogy'," John Freedman sets out to "define better the nature of Chekhov's story-telling art."6 Freedman attempts to do so by noting how Burkin, Ivan Ivanich, and Alekhin distort or misrepresent what Freedman posits as some sort of objective narrative reality. Having denuded these narrators of their "reliability," Freedman then claims that reliability is not at all the point of their tales. Instead, he claims that Chekhov is valorizing storytelling itself. Freedman writes, "Storytelling, then, in addition to being a form of entertainment, is a way for people to share and participate in their lives."7
But what has Freedman really told us? The "unreliable narrator" is hardly a Chekhovian invention. It is a structural device as old as prose fiction itself, and the discontinuity between narrator/author and character that results is just as old. Furthermore, his notion that Chekhov's focus is on the "cathartic" act of emotional communion through storytelling presumes some degree of communicative success on the part of these internal narratives. But has any communication really occurred in these stories? Do we find these character-narrators "cleansed" at the end of their tales? Have they really shared something of themselves with their addressees?
Freedman rightly redirects our attention away from the overt ideological content of these tales, and his contention that, "Ultimately it is not the 'truth' of the tale that matters, but the telling of it," is reasonable enough.8 However, he erroneously assumes that just because "reliability" as a criterion is jettisoned, successful communication - whether intended or unintended by the raconteur -- follows. On the contrary, a closer inspection of the interactions between tale-teller and audience demonstrates not only that these internal narratives fail, but that they do so because their prose is somehow unconvincing, not because it is "unreliable." It is a failure of craft, not of factual accuracy.
Indeed, we can categorize Burkin, Ivan Ivanich, and Alekhin by their artistic failures. That is, by the verbal habits that lose or overshoot or underestimate their intended audiences. In Burkin, we find the consummate Caricaturist, the artist who reduces his characters to comic objects through a process of physical and emotional exaggeration. In Ivan Ivanich we find the concerted Moralist, a figure who cannot resist preaching to his audience in the form of earnest ideological explication. And last, but certainly not least, Alekhin proves an unflappable Sentimentalist. All three have their artistic successes, but it is where they veer outside of the optimal zone of style that interests us for through a kind of process-of-elimination we can mark the borders of that optimal zone.
Burkin: I Just Flew in from the Поле, and Boy Are My Arms Tired
In "Человек в футляре," an overnight stop on hunting trip provides the venue for storytelling. Ivan Ivanich and Burkin discuss the wife of a local villager, Mavra, who reportedly has never left her native village. This becomes a departure point for Burkin's tale of his colleague Belikov, the "человек" of the story's title. Burkin quite explicitly introduces his tale's supposed message: an illustration of man's inclination to live "in a case," enclosed within his own protective world. This preamble generates the expectation of some sort of explanation of that which he and Ivan Ivanich, his audience, have identified as a problem.
But almost immediately, Burkin engages in his primary mode of storytelling, that of caricature, which in this case is a brand of stylistic excess that lends itself more readily to pure entertainment than "serious," idea-driven storytelling.9 Burkin renders Belikov a comic oddity, bending and stretching and literalizing his central metaphor of "the man in a case" such that Belikov is almost obliterated out of realistic existence. Describing Belikov, Burkin recounts:
Он был замечателен тем, что всегда, даже в очень хорошую погоду, выходил в калошах и с зонтиком и непременно в теплом пальто на вате. И зонтик у него был в чехле, и часы в чехле из серой замши, и когда вынимал перочинный нож, чтобы очинить карандаш, то и нож у него был в чехольчике; и лицо, казалось, тоже было в чехле, так как он всё время прятал его в поднятый воротник. Он носил темные очки, фуфайку, уши закладывал ватой, и когда садился на извозчика, то приказывал поднимать верх. Одним словом, у этого человека наблюдалось постоянное и непреодолимое стремление окружить себя оболочкой, создать себе, так сказать, футляр, который уединил бы его, защитил бы от внешних влияний.10
Belikov is quite literally "encased", his every physical and emotional feature placed "в чехле". Burkin goes on to describe how this "человечек", this half-a-man, terrorized an entire community for fifteen years. What's more, Burkin offers a kind of "unsolicited" testimonial to the benefits of the grotesque when he mentions that Belikov was, quite literally, subject of a caricature by a local artist. Commenting on the quality of this drawing, Burkin notes that "Выражение схвачено, понимаете ли, удивительно."11 For Burkin, only in caricature are things attuned to "the real."
And of course, Belikov is not the only character who receives this brand of stylistic treatment. In Varya, Belikov's love object, Burkin presents an equally caricatured image of lusty Ukrainian girlhood:
А она уже не молодая, лет тридцати, но тоже высокая, стройная, чернобровая, краснощекая, - одним словом, не девица, а мармелад, и такая разбитная, шумная, всё поет малороссийские романсы и хохочет. Чуть что, так и зальется голосистым смехом: ха-ха-ха!12
This description extends beyond mere sentimental exaggeration; Burkin adds a palpable dose of mockery in his account, which is further revealed in his description of Belikov's interactions with this "новая Афродита":
Это польстило ей, и она стала рассказывать ему с чувством и убедительно, что в Гадячском уезде у нее есть хутор, а на хуторе живет мамочка, и там такие груши, такие дыни, такие кабаки! У хохлов тыквы называются кабаками, а кабаки шинками, и варят у них борщ с красненькими и с синенькими "такой вкусный, такой вкусный, что просто - ужас!13
Burkin recounts Varya's speech with all of its singsong simplicity and exuberance for "такие груши, такие дыни, такие кабаки." However, by assimilating it into his own narrative voice instead of quoting it directly, Burkin generates the type of distanced ironic relationship that highlights not her emotional sincereity, but her bumpkinish simple-mindedness.
Burkin continues with the tale of Belikov's embarrassment before Varya and his eventual death, but any moment of empathy that might complicate the character is, if alluded to, done so either unwittingly or soon cast aside. Whatever momentary sympathy Burkin admits to is dashed by such statements as "Признаюсь, хоронить таких людей, как Беликов, это большое удовольствие."14 Burkin confesses, in a rare moment of self-reflection, "Чего только не делается у нас в провинции от скуки, сколько ненужного, вздорного! И это потому, что совсем не делается то, что нужно. Ну вот к чему нам вдруг понадобилось женить этого Беликова, которого даже и вообразить нельзя было женатым?"15 He and his cohorts have arranged the ill-fated marriage of Belikov and Varya out of sheer boredom. And just as he orchestrated Belikov's death for public amusement, so to does he arrange the retelling of that series of events for the amusement of his audience. Life is sport for Burkin, and storytelling falls under life's purview. Stories are valued only in so far as they cut the boredom.
However, his audience, Ivan Ivanich, has a very different conception of the style and substance of proper storytelling. As Burkin recounts Belikov's effect on the town, we find Ivan Ivanich virtually chomping at the bit to wring potent social criticism from Burkin's words. In what will become Ivan Ivanich's trademark gesture of sententiousness, he lights his pipe. He then levies his "reading" of Burkin's story, a comment on the blatant hypocrisy of the Turgenev-reading liberal set. However, Burkin pays little heed, and continues his story seemingly without noting Ivan Ivanich's intrusion.
The same pattern repeats itself, twice over. Ivan Ivanich lights his pipe as if steeling himself for a great intellectual effort, levies his social critique, and is either silenced by Burkin with the admonition "уж пора спать" or, more presciently "уж это вы из другой оперы, Иван Иваныч."16 Ivan Ivanich's moralistic interpretations are indeed "from a different opera" in that Burkin sees no more in his own tale than a mild entertainment, a means of whiling away the hours. In " Человек в футляре," we find a communicative failure resulting from very different conceptions of storytelling's purpose and very different stylistic modes of realizing that purpose.
Ivan Ivanich: So Do Good! (For Goodness' Sake)
In "Крыжовник," Ivan Ivanich initially demonstrates the kind of subtle ironic deftness we might find in the narrative proper of a Chekhov tale.
In the frame narrative itself, we find a mix of almost lyric portrait painting and light ironic commentary on the mentality of the tale's subjects. The story opens
Еще с раннего утра всё небо обложили дождевые тучи; было тихо, не жарко и скучно, как бывает в серые пасмурные дни, когда над полем давно уже нависли тучи, ждешь дождя, а его нет. Ветеринарный врач Иван Иваныч и учитель гимназии Буркин уже утомились идти, и поле представлялось им бесконечным.17
Chekhov creates a "thick" portrait of the surrounding landscape, loading it with overtly negative emotional adjectives, and physical adjectives with negative emotional connotations. In three sentences Chekhov tells us in ten different ways that the setting is "bleak." But, at the end of the paragraph, he enters the mind of his characters, Ivan Ivanich and Burkin, who favor a markedly different appraisal of their surroundings. They are "проникнуты любовью к этому полю" and wistfully think "как велика, как прекрасна эта страна." The characters' appraisal of the landscape jars against the third-person narrator's appraisal and this bleak landscape is suddenly an opportunity for patriotic fervor. This direct contradiction forces us to view the content of Ivanich and Burkin's sensibility as suspect. In fact, their obliviousness to the narrative "reality" establishes the distance between narrator and character necessary for ironic play.
Initially, Ivan Ivanich seems capable of the very same type subtle ironic treatment of his own subjects. In describing his childhood, Ivan Ivanich favors lists of phrases with parallel structures that establish an almost lyric cadence. His speech has the marks of at least passable literary discourse:
Мы, всё равно как крестьянские дети, дни и ночи проводили в поле, в лесу, стерегли лошадей, драли лыко, ловили рыбу и прочее тому подобное...
18 But Ivan Ivanich's language is a little too determined, too hyperbolic, to be totally trusted. Just as Chekhov embedded a subtle wink in his description of Burkin and Ivan Ivanich's appraisal of the landscape, Ivan Ivanich does the same with reference to his own subjects. In the passage quoted above, we find both a representation of the wistful, pastoral wanderings of childhood, and the beginnings of a kind of commentary upon them. Several paragraphs later we find a comparable treatment of his brother:
Брат мой Николай, сидя у себя в канцелярии, мечтал о том, как он будет есть свои собственные щи, от которых идет такой вкусный запах по всему двору, есть на зеленой травке, спать на солнышке, сидеть по целым часам за воротами на лавочке и глядеть на поле и лес.19
Clearly, there is at least a mild dose of mockery in his treatment of his brother's pastoral fantasy. Additional instances of this mock-lyric mode are punctuated with ellipses and expressions such as "знаете, всякая эта штука" ("all that sort of thing"), which convey a sense of dismissiveness on the part of the Ivanich and further highlight the ironic cast of the hyperbolic speech that tends to precede them.
However, Ivan Ivanich's intense need to communicate infects his tale with a brand of pedantic message-making that gradually destroys its early stylistic promise:
Уходить из города, от борьбы, от житейского шума, уходить и прятаться у себя в усадьбе - это не жизнь, это эгоизм, лень, это своего рода монашество, но монашество без подвига.20
In the short space of this passage, the language begins to shrink from the elaborate to the bluntly pedantic. And when Ivan Ivanich is presented with the image of his thoroughly contented brother, the floodgates open, and he embarks on a lengthy and painfully sincere tirade on the need to redress social grievances:
Надо, чтобы за дверью каждого довольного, счастливого человека стоял кто-нибудь с молоточком и постоянно напоминал бы стуком, что есть несчастные, что, как бы он ни был счастлив, жизнь рано или поздно покажет ему свои когти, стрясется беда - болезнь, бедность, потери, и его никто не увидит и не услышит, как теперь он не видит и не слышит других.21
And while Ivan Ivanich's rant is earnest, it represents a complete loss of ironic distance and signals his major failure as a storyteller. As he completes his tirade with the words "Делайте добро!" he is greeted not with concord and action on the part of his listeners, but with mute incomprehension and that which is complete anathema to all storytellers - boredom. Burkin and Alekhin's stunted reaction to the story is presented in an act of voice appropriation, and overtly posited as objective truth:
Когда из золотых рам глядели генералы и дамы, которые в сумерках казались живыми, слушать рассказ про беднягу чиновника, который ел крыжовник, было скучно. Хотелось почему-то говорить и слушать про изящных людей, про женщин.22
Coming on the heels of Ivan Ivanich's exhaustive tirade, the sentence is an ironic kick in the gut. This contrast between Ivan Ivanich's desperation and the latters' complete lack of interest results in a tonal mix of comedy and sadness that demarcates Chekhov's particular brand of irony. Commentary is levied at Burkin and Alekhin who fail to understand Ivan Ivanich's sincerity, but also at Ivan Ivanich, whose social conscience (and mode of expression) is portrayed as sadly misguided.
Alekhin: The Confusion of Things Past
"О любви," by its very title, suggests that it will reveal some sort of pungent statement regarding the nature of human love. However, our final narrator, Alekhin, disdains the very notion of generalizations regarding this "тайна велика" and utters the maxim often attributed to Chekhov himself, "Надо, как говорят доктора, индивидуализировать каждый отдельный случай."23
And Alekhin largely abides by his own maxim. The body of his tale is not given to moral or ideological explication. It is primarily a narration of his personal experience with a married woman. While the rest of the world tends to poeticize love:
Мы, русские, порядочные люди, питаем пристрастие к этим вопросам, остающимся без разрешения. Обыкновенно любовь поэтизируют, украшают ее розами, соловьями, мы же, русские, украшаем нашу любовь этими роковыми вопросами, и притом выбираем из них самые неинтересные.24
Alekhin then proceeds to cast in his lot not with the "порядочные люди", but with the poeticizers. The very subject matter of his tale - love forbidden by the bonds of social convention -- is the stuff of classic melodrama and his prose is adorned with the "розами" and "соловьями" of sentimental discourse.
. . . и сразу я почувствовал в ней существо близкое, уже знакомое, точно это лицо, эти приветливые, умные глаза я видел уже когда-то в детстве, в альбоме, который лежал на комоде у моей матери.25
And later:
. . . и было мне некогда даже подумать о городе, но воспоминание о стройной белокурой женщине оставалось во мне все дни; я не думал о ней, но точно легкая тень ее лежала на моей душе.26
And again soon after:
. . . рядом с губернаторшей Анна Алексеевна, и опять то же самое неотразимое, бьющее впечатление красоты и милых, ласковых глаз, и опять то же чувство близости.27
His reverential reflections on the beauty of his love object, Anna Alekseevna, his precious references to his own childhood, his talk of the "soul," and the amplified tenor of every emotion -everything is "striking" and "irresistible"-- reek of a kind of archaic sentimentality that stands in stark contrast to the kind of philosophizing he disdains.
Again, Freidman strongly contends that Alekhin has "decorated" his tale to the point that it departs from reality - that his supposed love affair with Anna Alekseevna is a self-construction, a one-sided affair. Indeed, there is no indication (in the form of quoted speech or definitive action) that Anna Aleekseevna returns Alekhin's sentiments; and some of Alekhin's descriptions of their "mutual" love do sound vaguely suspicious. Despite Alekhin's claims of their "близость," we might imagine that her ease in parting from him "как чужие", as he says, lies in the fact that, in her mind, he is simply a friend of the family.
However, the degree to which Alekhin's version of the tale accords with some sort of objective reality is important only to the extent that it highlights his communicative failure. And this failure is fully revealed by the closing paragraph of the tale, in which Alekhin literally loses his audience. He is left to trail off into ellipses ("Потом пошел к себе в Софьино пешком . . ."28 Perhaps there is more, but the audience is not around to hear it. They drift off to the balcony to bask in the sunshine.
And while the narrator reports that Burkin and Ivan Ivanich do feel some sympathy for Alekhin, their emotional level is so inadequate to the intended emotional freight of Alkehin's tale, that the net result is an ironic undercutting of both Alekhin's efforts and the audience's response in a dynamic that parallels the close of both Gooseberries and The Man in a Case. Indeed, Ivan Ivanich and Burkin's response to Alekhin's supposedly heart wrenching tale is almost comically mundane:
Они любовались и в то же время жалели, что этот человек с добрыми, умными глазами, который рассказывал им с таким чистосердечием, в самом деле вертелся здесь, в этом громадном имении, как белка в колесе, а не занимался наукой или чем-нибудь другим, что делало бы его жизнь более приятной . . .
29 They feel he should be "devoting himself to science or something else that would have made his life more pleasant," which is tantamount to suggesting that he "get a hobby." And while they reflect on the potential pathos of the parting scene, the final sentence ("Оба они встречали ее в городе, а Буркин был даже знаком с ней и находил ее красивой,") in its simplicity of expression is so divorced from Alekhin's own style that it sounds almost like an aside.30 Anna Alekseevna becomes, in this sentence, a common beauty. Chekhov recounts all of these perspectival contrasts through acts of voice appropriation, without overt commentary, heightening the irony and resulting in a dark-comic undercutting of Burkin and Ivan Ivanich's response, and more importantly, of Alekhin's storytelling efforts. Alekhin, despite his obvious emotional exertion, fails here.
Mapping a New Поле
So we see that the extent to which Burkin, Ivan Ivanich and Alekhin indulge in caricature, moralism, and sentimentalism -- is the extent to which they fail as storytellers. As they stray too far into entertaining mockery, ideological explication or emotional reverie, the substance of communication is lost. Contra Mirsky, these are stylistic crimes which Chekhov himself (as embodied by his third person narrators) would never commit, smashing the notion that his language and the language of his characters are one and the same.
But we seem to have marked out what good storytelling is
not. The question remains - How do we tell a successful tale? What is the correct mixture of style and sensibility? Here it is helpful to draw on Chekhov's metaphor of the "человек поля," or "man of the field." Chekhov employed this metaphor in an 1897 notebook entry in order to describe his relationship to religious belief. He claimed that the wise man travels in a field bordered on one side by pure belief, and on the other by concerted atheism, carving out a middle position of neither acceptance, nor rejection, of both tentative embrace and critical distance. This paradigm also serves as a viable metaphor for Chekhov's artistic system; and if we were to visually depict this "artistic" field pursuant to the implied dictates of the "Little Trilogy," it would be neither round, nor rectangular, nor square, but triangular in shape, with caricature, moralism, and sentimentalism as its borders. The true storyteller walks the hard road between the need to explicate, the need to sentimentalize, and the need to mock. The extent to which Ivan Ivanich, Alekhin and Burkin fail as storytellers corresponds to the extent to which they depart from the field, from the mix of sympathy and criticism, feeling and fooling, that make up the emotional and stylistic character of Chekhov's optimal zone.
So what is the artistic position of the wise man? It is the zone of the true Ironist. The ironic pose represents a stylistic and emotional middle position. It allows for that mix of engagement and skepticism that cannot be reduced to a tidy system of pure belief or disbelief. It is a perspective on content without being an absolute affirmation or negation of the content of that utterance. It is a kind of essential and ever-present undercutting, only through which can we realize the true complexity of the world. It is the wise man's careful consideration, tinged with a comic wink. And it is also the dominant component of the third-person portions of these tales.
We should note that Burkin, Ivan Ivanich, and Alekhin cannot be
fully reduced to the discrete categories laid out in this article. In isolated instances, they each take part in the language favored by the others, and a certain amount of simplification is necessary for the sake of cohesive argument. Nor can Chekhov's own voice itself be tidily reduced to one, homogenous ironic style. However, we can parse a stylistic thread that predominates in each case, and it is that thread bears a large degree of responsibility for the success or failure of each raconteur.
Notes:
© S. Shaklan
|