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ANTON TCHEKHOV

AND OTHER ESSAIS

BY

LEON SHESTOV

TRANSLATED BY

S. KOTELIANSKY AND J. M. MURRY

MAUNSEL AND CO. LTD.

DUBLIN AND LONDON

1916

    CONTENTS

    ANTON TCHEKHOV (CREATION FROM THE VOID)
    THE GIFT OF PROPHECY
    PENULTIMATE WORDS
    THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

INTRODUCTION

It is not to be denied that Russian thought is chiefly manifested in
the great Russian novelists. Tolstoi, Dostoevsky, and Tchekhov made
explicit in their works conceptions of the world which yield nothing in
definiteness to the philosophic schemes of the great dogmatists of old,
and perhaps may be regarded as even superior to them in that by their
nature they emphasise a relation of which the professional philosopher
is too often careless--the intimate connection between philosophy and
life. They attacked fearlessly and with a high devotion of which we
English readers are slowly becoming sensible the fundamental problem of
all philosophy worthy the name. They were preoccupied with the answer
to the question: Is life worth living? And the great assumption which
they made, at least in the beginning of the quest, was that to live
life must mean to live it wholly. To live was not to pass by life on
the other side, not suppress the deep or even the dark passions of body
or soul, not to lull by some lying and narcotic phrase the urgent
questions of the mind, not to deny life. To them life was the sum of
all human potentialities. They accepted them all, loved them all, and
strove to find a place for them all in a pattern in which none should
be distorted. They failed, but not one of them fainted by the way,
and there was not one of them but with his latest breath bravely held
to his belief that there was a way and that the way might be found.
Tolstoi went out alone to die, yet more manifestly than he had lived,
a seeker after the secret; death overtook Dostoevsky in his supreme
attempt to wrest a hope for mankind out of the abyss of the imagined
future; and Tchekhov died when his most delicate fingers had been
finally eager in lighting _The Cherry Orchard_ with the tremulous glint
of laughing tears, which may perhaps be the ultimate secret of the
process which leaves us all bewildered and full of pity and wonder.

There were great men and great philosophers. It may be that this
cruelly conscious world will henceforward recognise no man as great
unless he has greatly sought: for to seek and not to think is the
essence of philosophy. To have greatly sought, I say, should be the
measure of man's greatness in the strange world of which there will be
only a tense, sorrowful, disillusioned remnant when this grim ordeal
is over. It should be so: and we, who are, according to our strength,
faithful to humanity, must also strive according to our strength to
make it so. We are not, and we shall not be, great men: but we have
the elements of greatness. We have an impulse to honesty, to think
honestly, to see honestly, and to speak the truth to ourselves in the
lonely hours. It is only an impulse, which, in these barren, bitter,
years, so quickly withers and dies. It is almost that we dare not be
honest now. Our hearts are dead: we cannot wake the old wounds again.
And yet if anything of this generation that suffered is to remain, if
we are to hand any spark of the fire which once burned so brightly,
if we are to be human still, then we must still be honest at whatever
cost. We--and I speak of that generation which was hardly man when the
war burst upon it, which was ardent and generous and dreamed dreams
of devotion to an ideal of art or love or life--are maimed and broken
for ever. Let us not deceive ourselves. The dead voices will never be
silent in our ears to remind us of that which we once were, and that
which we have lost. We shall die as we shall live, lonely and haunted
by memories that will grow stranger, more beautiful, more terrible,
and more tormenting as the years go on, and at the last we shall not
know which was the dream--the years of plenty or the barren years that
descended like a storm in the night and swept our youth away.

Yet something remains. Not those lying things that they who cannot feel
how icy cold is sudden and senseless death to all-daring youth, din in
our ears. We shall not be inspired by the memory of heroism. We shall
be shattered by the thought of splendid and wonderful lives that were
vilely cast away. What remains is that we should be honest as we shall
be pitiful. We shall never again be drunk with hope: let us never be
blind with fear. There can be in the lap of destiny now no worse thing
which may befall us. We can afford to be honest now.

We can afford to be honest: but we need to learn how, or to increase
our knowledge. The Russian writers will help us in this; and not the
great Russians only, but the lesser also. For a century of bitter
necessity has taught that nation that the spirit is mightier than the
flesh, until those eager qualities of soul that a century of social
ease has almost killed in us are in them well-nigh an instinct. Let
us look among ourselves if we can find a Wordsworth, a Shelley, a
Coleridge, or a Byron to lift this struggle to the stars as they did
the French Revolution. There is none.--It will be said: 'But that was
a great fight for freedom. Humanity itself marched forward with the
Revolutionary armies.' But if the future of mankind is not in issue
now, if we are fighting for the victory of no precious and passionate
idea, why is no voice of true poetry uplifted in protest? There is
no third way. Either this is the greatest struggle for right, or the
greatest crime, that has ever been. The unmistakable voice of poetry
should be certain either in protest or enthusiasm: it is silent or
it is trivial. And the cause must be that the keen edge of the soul
of those century-old poets which cut through false patriotism so
surely is in us dulled and blunted. We must learn honesty again:
not the laborious and meagre honesty of those who weigh advantage
against advantage in the ledger of their minds, but the honesty that
cries aloud in instant and passionate anger against the lie and the
half-truth, and by an instinct knows the authentic thrill of contact
with the living human soul.

The Russians, and not least the lesser Russians, may teach us this
thing once more. Among these lesser, Leon Shestov holds an honourable
place. He is hardly what we should call a philosopher, hardly again
what we would understand by an essayist. The Russians, great and small
alike, are hardly ever what we understand by the terms which we victims
of tradition apply to them. In a hundred years they have accomplished
an evolution which has with us slowly unrolled in a thousand. The very
foundations of their achievement are new and laid within the memory of
man. Where we have sharply divided art from art, and from science and
philosophy, and given to each a name, the Russians have still the sense
of a living connection between all the great activities of the human
soul. From us this connection is too often concealed by the tyranny
of names. We have come to believe, or at least it costs us great
pains not to believe, that the name is a particular reality, which to
confuse with another name is a crime. Whereas in truth the energies of
the human soul are not divided from each other by any such impassable
barriers: they flow into each other indistinguishably, modify, control,
support, and decide each other. In their large unity they are real;
isolated, they seem to be poised uneasily between the real and the
unreal, and become deceptive, barren half-truths. Plato, who first
discovered the miraculous hierarchy of names, though he was sometimes
drunk with the new wine of his discovery, never forgot that the unity
of the human soul was the final outcome of its diversity; and those
who read aright his most perfect of all books--_The Republic_--know
that it is a parable which fore-shadows the complete harmony of all the
soul's activities.

Not the least of Shestov's merits is that he is alive to this truth in
its twofold working. He is aware of himself as a soul seeking an answer
to its own question; and he is aware of other souls on the same quest.
As in his own case he knows that he has in him something truer than
names and divisions and authorities, which will live in spite of them,
so towards others he remembers that all that they wrote or thought or
said is precious and permanent in so far as it is the manifestation
of the undivided soul seeking an answer to its question. To know a
man's work for this, to have divined the direct relation between his
utterance and his living soul, is criticism: to make that relation
between one's own soul and one's speech direct and true is creation.
In essence they are the same: creation is a man's lonely attempt to
fix an intimacy with his own strange and secret soul, criticism is the
satisfaction of the impulse of loneliness to find friends and secret
sharers among the souls that are or have been. As creation drives a man
to the knowledge of his own intolerable secrets, so it drives him to
find others with whom he may whisper of the things which he has found.
Other criticism than this is, in the final issue, only the criminal and
mad desire to enforce material order in a realm where all is spiritual
and vague and true. It is only the jealous protest of the small soul
against the great, of the slave against the free.

Against this smallness and jealousy Shestov has set his face. To have
done so does not make him a great writer; but it does make him a real
one. He is honest and he is not deceived. But honesty, unless a man is
big enough to bear it, and often even when he is big enough to bear it,
may make him afraid. Where angels fear to tread, fools rush in: but
though the folly of the fool is condemned, some one must enter, lest
a rich kingdom be lost to the human spirit. Perhaps Shestov will seem
at times too fearful. Then we must remember that Shestov is Russian in
another sense than that I have tried to make explicit above. He is a
citizen of a country where the human spirit has at all times been so
highly prized that the name of thinker has been a key to unlock not
merely the mind but the heart also. The Russians not only respect,
but they love a man who has thought and sought for humanity, and, I
think, their love but seldom stops 'this side idolatry.' They will
exalt a philosopher to a god; they are even able to make of materialism
a religion. Because they are so loyal to the human spirit they will
load it with chains, believing that they are garlands. And that is why
dogmatism has never come so fully into its own as in Russia.

When Shestov began to write nearly twenty years ago, Karl Marx was
enthroned and infallible. The fear of such tyrannies has never
departed from Shestov. He has fought against them so long and so
persistently--even in this book one must always remember that he
is face to face with an enemy of which we English have no real
conception--that he is at times almost unnerved by the fear that he
too may be made an authority and a rule. I do not think that this
ultimate hesitation, if understood rightly, diminishes in any way from
the interest of his writings: but it does suggest that there may be
awaiting him a certain paralysis of endeavour. There is indeed no
absolute truth of which we need take account other than the living
personality, and absolute truths are valuable only in so far as they
are seen to be necessary manifestations of this mysterious reality.
Nevertheless it is in the nature of man, if not to live by absolute
truths, at least to live by enunciating them; and to hesitate to
satisfy this imperious need is to have resigned a certain measure of
one's own creative strength. We may trust to the men of insight who
will follow us to read our dogmatisms, our momentary angers, and our
unshakable convictions, in terms of our personalities, if these shall
be found worthy of their curiosity or their love. And it seems to me
that Shestov would have gained in strength if he could have more firmly
believed that there would surely be other Shestovs who would read him
according to his own intention. But this, I also know, is a counsel of
perfection: the courage which he has not would not have been acquired
by any intellectual process, and its possession would have deprived him
of the courage which he has. As dogmatism in Russia enjoys a supremacy
of which we can hardly form an idea, so a continual challenge to its
claims demands in the challenger a courage which it is hard for us
rightly to appreciate.

I have not written this foreword in order to prejudice the issue.
Shestov will, no doubt, be judged by English readers according to
English standards, and I wish no more than to suggest that his
greatest quality is one which has become rare among us, and that his
peculiarities are due to Russian conditions which have long since
ceased to obtain in England. The Russians have much to teach us, and
the only way we shall learn, or even know, what we should accept
and what reject, is to take count as much as we can of the Russian
realities. And the first of these and the last is that in Russia the
things of the spirit are held in honour above all others. Because of
this the Russian soul is tormented by problems to which we have long
been dead, and to which we need to be alive again. J. M. M.

_Postscript._--Leon Shestov is fifty years old. He was born at Kiev,
and studied at the university there. His first book was written
in 1898. As a writer of small production, he has made his way to
recognition slowly: but now he occupies a sure position as one of the
most delicate and individual of modern Russian critics. The essays
contained in this volume are taken from the fourth and fifth works in
the following list:--

1898. _Shakespeare and his Critic, Brandes._

1900. _Good in the teaching of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche: Philosophy and
Preaching._

1903. _Dostoevsky and Nietzsche: The Philosophy of Tragedy._

1905. _The Apotheosis of Groundlessness: An Essay on Dogmatism._

1908. _Beginnings and Ends._

1912. _Great Vigils._

ANTON TCHEKHOV

(CREATION FROM THE VOID)

Résigne-toi, mon cœur, dors ton sommeil de brute.

(CHARLES BAUDELAIRE.)

Tchekhov is dead; therefore we may now speak freely of him. For to
speak of an artist means to disentangle and reveal the 'tendency'
hidden in his works, an operation not always permissible when the
subject is still living. Certainly he had a reason for hiding himself,
and of course the reason was serious and important. I believe many felt
it, and that it was partly on this account that we have as yet had no
proper appreciation of Tchekhov. Hitherto in analysing his works the
critics have confined themselves to common-place and _cliché_. Of course
they knew they were wrong; but anything is better than to extort the
truth from a living person. Mihailovsky alone attempted to approach
closer to the source of Tchekhov's creation, and as everybody knows,
turned away from it with aversion and even with disgust. Here, by the
way, the deceased critic might have convinced himself once again of
the extravagance of the so-called theory of 'art for art's sake.' Every
artist has his definite task, his life's work, to which he devotes
all his forces. A tendency is absurd when it endeavours to take the
place of talent, and to cover impotence and lack of content, or when
it is borrowed from the stock of ideas which happen to be in demand
at the moment. 'I defend ideals, therefore every one must give me his
sympathies.' Such pretences we often see made in literature, and the
notorious controversy concerning 'art for art's sake' was evidently
maintained upon the double meaning given to the word 'tendency' by its
opponents. Some wished to believe that a writer can be saved by the
nobility of his tendency; others feared that a tendency would bind them
to the performance of alien tasks. Much ado about nothing: ready-made
ideas will never endow mediocrity with talent; on the contrary, an
original writer will at all costs set himself his own task. And
Tchekhov had his _own_ business, though there were critics who said
that he was the servant of art for its own sake, and even compared him
to a bird, carelessly flying. To define his tendency in a word, I would
say that Tchekhov was the poet of hopelessness. Stubbornly, sadly,
monotonously, during all the years of his literary activity, nearly a
quarter of a century long, Tchekhov was doing one thing alone: by one
means or another he was killing human hopes. Herein, I hold, lies the
essence of his creation. Hitherto it has been little spoken of. The
reasons are quite intelligible. In ordinary language what Tchekhov
was doing is called crime, and is visited by condign punishment. But
how can a man of talent be punished? Even Mihailovsky, who more than
once in his lifetime gave an example of merciless severity, did not
raise his hand against Tchekhov. He warned his readers and pointed
out the 'evil fire' which he had noticed in Tchekhov's eyes. But he
went no further. Tchekhov's immense talent overcame the strict and
rigorous critic. It may be, however, that Mihailovsky's own position
in literature had more than a little to do with the comparative
mildness of his sentence. The younger generation had listened to him
uninterruptedly for thirty years, and his word had been law. But
afterwards every one was bored with eternally repeating: 'Aristides
is just, Aristides is right.' The younger generation began to desire
to live and to speak in its own way, and finally the old master was
ostracised. There is the same custom in literature as in Terra del
Fuego. The young, growing men kill and eat the old. Mihailovsky
struggled with all his might, but he no longer felt the strength of
conviction that comes from the sense of right. Inwardly, he felt that
the young were right, not because they knew the truth--what truth did
the economic materialists know?--but because they were young and had
their lives before them. The rising star shines always brighter than
the setting, and the old must of their own will yield themselves up to
be devoured by the young. Mihailovsky felt this, and perhaps it was
this which undermined his former assurance and the firmness of his
opinion of old. True, he was still like Gretchen's mother in Goethe: he
did not take rich gifts from chance without having previously consulted
his confessor. Tchekhov's talent too was taken to the priest, by whom
it was evidently rejected as suspect; but Mihailovsky no longer had the
courage to set himself against public opinion. The younger generation
prized Tchekhov for his talent, his immense talent, and it was plain
they would riot disown him. What remained for Mihailovsky He attempted,
as I say, to warn them. But no one listened to him, and Tchekhov became
one of the most beloved of Russian writers.

Yet the just Aristides was right this time too, as he was right when
he gave his warning against Dostoevsky. Now that Tchekhov is no more,
we may speak openly. Take Tchekhov's stories, each one separately, or
better still, all together; look at him at work. He is constantly,
as it were, in ambush, to watch and waylay human hopes. He will not
miss a single one of them, not one of them will escape its fate. Art,
science, love, inspiration, ideals--choose out all the words with which
humanity is wont, or has been in the past, to be consoled or to be
amused--Tchekhov has only to touch them and they instantly wither and
die. And Tchekhov himself faded, withered and died before our eyes.
Only his wonderful art did not die--his art to kill by a mere touch,
a breath, a glance, everything whereby men live and wherein they take
their pride. And in this art he was constantly perfecting himself, and
he attained to a virtuosity beyond the reach of any of his rivals in
European literature. Maupassant often had to strain every effort to
overcome his victim. The victim often escaped from Maupassant, though
crushed and broken, yet with his life. In Tchekhov's hands, nothing
escaped death.

II

I must remind my reader, though it is a matter of general knowledge,
that in his earlier work Tchekhov is most unlike the Tchekhov to whom
we became accustomed in late years. The young Tchekhov is gay and
careless, perhaps even like a flying bird. He published his work in
the comic papers. But in 1888 and 1889, when he was only twenty-seven
and twenty-eight years old, there appeared _The Tedious Story_ and the
drama _Ivanov,_ two pieces of work which laid the foundations of a
new creation. Obviously a sharp and sudden change had taken place in
him, which was completely reflected in his works. There is no detailed
biography of Tchekhov, and probably will never be, because there is no
such thing as a full biography--I, at all events, cannot name one.
Generally biographies tell us everything except what it is important
to know. Perhaps in the future it will be revealed to us with the
fullest details who was Tchekhov's tailor; but we shall never know what
happened to Tchekhov in the time which elapsed between the completion
of his story _The Steppe_ and the appearance of his first drama. If we
would know, we must rely upon his works and our own insight.

_Ivanov_ and _The Tedious Story_ seem to me the most autobiographical
of all his works. In them almost every line is a sob; and it is hard to
suppose that a man could sob so, looking only at another's grief. And
it is plain that his grief is a new one, unexpected as though it had
fallen from the sky. Here it is, it will endure for ever, and he does
not know how to fight against it.

In _Ivanov_ the hero compares himself to an overstrained labourer. I
do not believe we shall be mistaken if we apply this comparison to the
author of the drama as well. There can be practically no doubt that
Tchekhov had overstrained himself. And the overstrain came not from
hard and heavy labour; no mighty overpowering exploit broke him: he
stumbled and fell, he slipped. There comes this nonsensical, stupid,
all but invisible accident, and the old Tchekhov of gaiety and mirth
is no more. No more stories for _The Alarm Clock._ Instead, a morose
and overshadowed man, a 'criminal' whose words frighten even the
experienced and the omniscient.

If you desire it, you can easily be rid of Tchekhov and his work as
well. Our language contains two magic words: 'pathological,' and its
brother 'abnormal.' Once Tchekhov had overstrained himself, you have a
perfectly legal right, sanctified by science and every tradition, to
leave him out of all account, particularly seeing that he is already
dead, and therefore cannot be hurt by your neglect. That is if you
desire to be rid of Tchekhov. But if the desire is for some reason
absent, the words 'pathological' and 'abnormal' will have no effect
upon you. Perhaps you will go further and attempt to find in Tchekhov's
experiences a criterion of the most irrefragable truths and axioms of
this consciousness of ours. There is no third way: you must either
renounce Tchekhov, or become his accomplice.

The hero of _The Tedious Story_ is an old professor; the hero of
_Ivanov_ a young landlord. But the theme of both works is the same.
The professor had overstrained himself, and thereby cut himself off
from his past life and from the possibility of taking an active part
in human affairs. Ivanov also had overstrained himself and become a
superfluous, useless person. Had life been so arranged that death
should supervene simultaneously with the loss of health, strength and
capacity, then the old professor and young Ivanov could not have lived
for one single hour. Even a blind man could see that they are both
broken and are unfit for life. But for reasons unknown to us, wise
nature has rejected coincidence of this kind. A man very often goes on
living after he has completely lost the capacity of taking from life
that wherein we are wont to see its essence and meaning. More striking
still, a broken man is generally deprived of everything except the
ability to acknowledge and feel his position. Nay, for the most part
in such cases the intellectual abilities are refined and sharpened
and increased to colossal proportions. It frequently happens that an
average man, banal and mediocre, is changed beyond all recognition when
he falls into the exceptional situation of Ivanov or the old professor.
In him appear signs of a gift, a talent, even of genius. Nietzsche once
asked: 'Can an ass be tragical?' He left his question unanswered, but
Tolstoi answered for him in _The Death of Ivan Ilyich._ Ivan Ilyich,
it is evident from Tolstoi's description of his life, is a mediocre,
average character, one of those men who pass through life avoiding
anything that is difficult or problematical, caring exclusively for the
calm and pleasantness of earthly existence. Hardly had the cold wind of
tragedy blown upon him, than he was utterly transformed. The story of
Ivan Ilyich in his last days is as deeply interesting as the life-story
of Socrates or Pascal.

In passing I would point out a fact which I consider of great
importance. In his work Tchekhov was influenced by Tolstoi, and
particularly by Tolstoi's later writings. It is important, because thus
a part of Tchekhov's 'guilt' falls upon the great writer of the Russian
land. I think that had there been no _Death of Ivan Ilyich,_ there
would have been no _Ivanov,_ and no _Tedious Story,_ nor many others
of Tchekhov's most remarkable works. But this by no means implies that
Tchekhov borrowed a single word from his great predecessor. Tchekhov
had enough material of his own: in that respect he needed no help. But
a young writer would hardly dare to come forward at his own risk with
the thoughts that make the content of _The Tedious Story._ When Tolstoi
wrote _The Death of Ivan Ilyich,_ he had behind him _War and Peace,
Anna Karenina,_ and the firmly established reputation of an artist of
the highest rank. All things were permitted to him. But Tchekhov was
a young man, whose literary baggage amounted in all to a few dozen
tiny stories, hidden in the pages of little known and uninfluential
papers. Had Tolstoi not paved the way, had Tolstoi not shown by his
example, that in literature it was permitted to tell the truth, to
tell everything, then perhaps Tchekhov would have had to struggle long
with himself before finding the courage of a public confession, even
though it took the form of stories. And even with Tolstoi before him,
how terribly did Tchekhov have to struggle with public opinion. 'Why
does he write his horrible stories and plays?' every one asked himself.
'Why does the writer systematically choose for his heroes situations
from which there is not, and cannot possibly be, any escape?' What
can be said in answer to the endless complaints of the old professor
and Katy, his pupil? This means that there is, essentially, something
to be said. From times immemorial, literature has accumulated a large
and varied store of all kinds of general ideas and conceptions,
material and metaphysical, to which the masters have recourse the
moment the over-exacting and over-restless human voice begins to be
heard. This is exactly the point. Tchekhov himself, a writer and an
educated man, refused in advance every possible consolation, material
or metaphysical. Not even in Tolstoi, who set no great store by
philosophical systems, will you find such keenly expressed disgust for
every kind of conceptions and ideas as in Tchekhov. He is well aware
that conceptions ought to be esteemed and respected, and he reckons his
inability to bend the knee before that which educated people consider
holy as a defect against which he must struggle with all his strength.
And he does struggle with all his strength against this defect. But
not only is the struggle unavailing; the longer Tchekhov lives, the
weaker grows the power of lofty words over him, in spite of his own
reason and his conscious will. Finally, he frees himself entirely
from ideas of every kind, and loses even the notion of connection
between the happenings of life. Herein lies the most important and
original characteristic of his creation. Anticipating a little, I would
here point to his comedy, _The Sea-Gull,_ where, in defiance of all
literary principles, the basis of action appears to be not the logical
development of passions, or the inevitable connection between cause and
effect, but naked accident, ostentatiously nude. As one reads the play,
it seems at times that one has before one a copy of a newspaper with
an endless series of news paragraphs, heaped upon one another, without
order and without previous plan. Sovereign accident reigns everywhere
and in everything, this time boldly throwing the gauntlet to all
conceptions. In this, I repeat, is Tchekhov's greatest originality, and
this, strangely enough, is the source of his most bitter experiences.
He did not want to be original; he made super-human efforts to be
like everybody else: but there is no escaping one's destiny. How
many men, above all among writers, wear their fingers to the bone in
the effort to be unlike others, and yet they cannot shake themselves
free of _cliché_--yet Tchekhov was original against his will!
Evidently originality does not depend upon the readiness to proclaim
revolutionary opinions at all costs. The newest and boldest idea may
and often does appear tedious and vulgar. In order to become original,
instead of inventing an idea, one must achieve a difficult and painful
labour; and, since men avoid labour and suffering, the really new is
for the most part born in man against his will.

'A man cannot reconcile himself to the accomplished fact; neither can
he refuse so to reconcile himself: and there is no third course. Under
such conditions "action" is impossible. He can only fall down and weep
and beat his head against the floor.' So Tchekhov speaks of one of his
heroes; but he might say the same of them all, without exception. The
author takes care to put them in such a situation that only one thing
is left for them,--to fall down and beat their heads against the floor.
With strange, mysterious obstinacy they refuse all the accepted means
of salvation. Nicolai Stepanovich, the old professor in _The Tedious
Story,_ might have attempted to forget himself for a while or to
console himself with memories of the past. But memories only irritate
him. He was once an eminent scholar: now he cannot work. Once he was
able to hold the attention of his audience for two hours on end; now
he cannot do it even for a quarter of an hour. He used to have friends
and comrades, he used to love his pupils and assistants, his wife
and children; now he cannot concern himself with any one. If people
do arouse any feelings at all within him, then they are only feelings
of hatred, malice and envy. He has to confess it to himself with
the truthfulness which came to him--he knows not why nor whence--in
place of the old diplomatic skill, possessed by all clever and normal
men, whereby he saw and said only that which makes for decent human
relations and healthy states of mind. Now everything which he sees or
thinks only serves to poison, in himself and others, the few joys which
adorn human life. With a certainty which he never attained on the best
days and hours of his old theoretical research, he feels that he is
become a criminal, having committed no crime. All that he was engaged
in before was good, necessary, and useful. He tells you of his past,
and you can see that he was always right and ready at any moment of
the day or the night to answer the severest judge who should examine
not only his actions, but his thoughts as well. Now not only would an
outsider condemn him, he condemns himself. He confesses openly that he
is all compact of envy and hatred.

'The best and most sacred right of kings,' he says, 'is the right to
pardon. And I have always felt myself a king so long as I used this
right prodigally. I never judged, I was compassionate, I pardoned every
one right and left.... But now I am king no more. There's something
going on in me which belongs only to slaves. Day and night evil
thoughts roam about in my head, and feelings which I never knew before
have made their home in my soul. I hate and despise; I'm exasperated,
disturbed, and afraid. I've become strict beyond measure, exacting,
unkind and suspicious.... What does it all mean? If my new thoughts and
feelings come from a change of my convictions, where could the change
come from? Has the world grown worse and I better, or was I blind and
indifferent before? But if the change is due to the general decline
of my physical and mental powers--I am sick and losing weight every
day--then I am in a pitiable position. It means that my new thoughts
are abnormal and unhealthy, that I must be ashamed of them and consider
them valueless....

The question is asked by the old professor on the point of death, and
in his person by Tchekhov himself. Which is better, to be a king, or an
old, envious, malicious 'toad,' as he calls himself elsewhere? There
is no denying the originality of the question. In the words above you
feel the price which Tchekhov had to pay for his originality, and with
how great joy he would have exchanged all his original thoughts--at
the moment when his 'new' point of view had become clear to him--for
the most ordinary, banal capacity for benevolence. He has, no doubt
felt that his way of thinking is pitiable, shameful and disgusting.
His moods revolt him no less than his appearance, which he describes
in the following lines: '... I am a man of sixty-two, with a bald
head, false teeth and an incurable tic. My name is as brilliant and
prepossessing, as I myself am dull and ugly. My head and hands tremble
from weakness; my neck, like that of one of Turgeniev's heroines,
resembles the handle of a counter-bass; my chest is hollow and my
back narrow. When I speak or read my mouth twists, and when I smile
my whole face is covered with senile, deathly wrinkles.' Unpleasant
face, unpleasant moods! Let the most sweet natures and compassionate
person but give a side-glance at such a monster, and despite himself
a cruel thought would awaken in him: that he should lose no time in
killing, in utterly destroying this pitiful and disgusting vermin, or
if the laws forbid recourse to such strong measures, at least in hiding
him as far as possible from human eyes, in some prison or hospital
or asylum. These are measures of suppression sanctioned, I believe,
not only by legislation, but by eternal morality as well. But here
you encounter resistance of a particular kind. Physical strength to
struggle with the warders, executioners, attendants, moralists--the old
professor has none; a little child could knock him down. Persuasion
and prayer, he knows well, will avail him nothing. So he strikes out
in despair: he begins to cry over all the world in a terrible, wild,
heartrending voice about some rights of his: '... I have a passionate
and hysterical desire to stretch out my hands and moan aloud. I want to
cry out that fate has doomed me, a famous man, to death; that in some
six months here in the auditorium another will be master. I want to cry
out that I am poisoned; that new ideas that I did not know before have
poisoned the last days of my life, and sting my brain incessantly like
mosquitoes. At that moment my position seems so terrible to me that
I want all my students to be terrified, to jump from their seats and
rush panic-stricken to the door, shrieking in despair.' The professor's
arguments will hardly move any one. Indeed I do not know if there is
any argument in those words. But this awful, inhuman moan.... Imagine
the picture: a bald, ugly old man, with trembling hands, and twisted
mouth, and skinny neck, eyes mad with fear, wallowing like a beast on
the ground and wailing, wailing, wailing.... What does he want? He had
lived a long and interesting life; now he had only to round it off
nicely, with all possible calm, quietly and solemnly to take leave of
this earthly existence. Instead he rends himself, and flings himself
about, calls almost the whole universe to judgment, and clutches
convulsively at the few days left to him. And Tchekhov--what did
Tchekhov do? Instead of passing by on the other side, he supports the
prodigious monster, devotes pages and pages to the 'experiences of his
soul,' and gradually brings the reader to a point at which, instead of
a natural and lawful sense of indignation, unprofitable and dangerous
sympathies for the decomposing, decaying creature are awakened in
his heart. But every one knows that it is impossible to _help_ the
professor; and if it is impossible to help, then it follows we must
forget. That is as plain as _a b c._ What use or what meaning could
there be in the endless picturing--daubing, as Tolstoi would say--of
the intolerable pains of the agony which inevitably leads to death?

If the professor's 'new' thoughts and feelings shone bright with
beauty, nobility or heroism, the case would be different. The reader
could learn something from it. But Tchekhov's story shows that these
qualities belonged to his hero's old thoughts. Now that his illness has
begun, there has sprung up within him a revulsion from everything which
even remotely resembles a lofty feeling. When his pupil Katy turns to
him for advice what she should do, the famous scholar, the friend of
Pirogov, Kavelin and Nekrassov, who had taught so many generations
of young men, does not know what to answer. Absurdly he chooses from
his memory a whole series of pleasant-sounding words; but they have
lost all meaning for him. What answer shall he give? he asks himself.
'It is easy to say, Work, or divide your property among the poor, or
know yourself, and because it is easy, I do not know what to answer.'
Katy, still young, healthy and beautiful, has by Tchekhov's offices
fallen like the professor into a trap from which no human power can
deliver her. From the moment that she knew hopelessness, she had won
all the author's sympathy. While a person is settled to some work,
while he has a future of some kind before him, Tchekhov is utterly
indifferent to him. If he does describe him, then he usually does it
hastily and in a tone of scornful irony. But when he is entangled, and
so entangled that he cannot be disentangled by any means, then Tchekhov
begins to wake up. Colour, energy, creative force, inspiration make
their appearance. Therein perhaps lies the secret of his political
indifferentism. Notwithstanding all his distrust of projects for a
brighter future, Tchekhov like Dostoevsky was evidently not wholly
convinced that social reforms and social science were important.
However difficult the social question may be, still it may be solved.
Some day, perhaps people will so arrange themselves on the earth as
to live and die without suffering: further than that ideal humanity
cannot go. Perhaps the authors of stout volumes on Progress do guess
and foresee something. But just for that reason their work is alien to
Tchekhov. At first by instinct, then consciously, he was attracted to
problems which are by essence insoluble like that presented in _The
Tedious Story_: there you have helplessness, sickness, the prospect of
inevitable death, and no hope whatever to change the situation by a
hair. This infatuation, whether conscious or instinctive, clearly runs
counter to the demands of common sense and normal will. But there is
nothing else to expect from Tchekhov, an overstrained man. Every one
knows, or has heard, of hopelessness. On every side, before our very
eyes, are happening terrible and intolerable tragedies, and if every
doomed man were to raise such an awful alarm about his destruction as
Nicolai Stepanovich, life would become an inferno; Nicolai Stepanovich
must not cry his sufferings aloud over the world, but be careful to
trouble people as little as possible. And Tchekhov should have assisted
this reputable endeavour by every means in his power. As though there
were not thousands of tedious stories in the world--they cannot be
counted! And above all stories of the kind that Tchekhov tells should
be hidden with special care from human eyes. We have here to do with
the decomposition of a living organism. What should we say to a man
who would prevent corpses from being buried, and would dig decaying
bodies from the grave, even though it were on the ground, or rather on
the pretext, that they were the bodies of his intimate friends, even
famous men of reputation and genius? Such an occupation would rouse
in a normal and healthy mind nothing but disgust and terror. Once upon
a time, according to popular superstition, sorcerers, necromancers
and wizards kept company with the dead, and found a certain pleasure
or even a real satisfaction in that ghastly occupation. But they
generally hid themselves away from mankind in forests and caves, or
betook themselves to deserts where they might in isolation surrender
themselves to their unnatural inclinations; and if their deeds were
eventually brought to light, healthy men requited them with the stake,
the gallows, and the rack. The worst kind of that which is called
evil, as a rule, had for its source and origin an interest and taste
for carrion. Man forgave every crime--cruelty, violence, murder; but
he never forgave the unmotived love of death and the seeking of its
secret. In this matter modern times, being free from prejudices, have
advanced little from the Middle Ages. Perhaps the only difference is
that we, engaged in practical affairs, have lost the natural _flair_
for good and evil. Theoretically we are even convinced that in our time
there are not and cannot be wizards and necromancers. Our confidence
and carelessness in this reached such a point, that almost everybody
saw even in Dostoevsky only an artist and a publicist, and seriously
discussed with him whether the Russian peasant needed to be flogged and
whether we ought to lay hands on Constantinople.

Mihailovsky alone vaguely conjectured what it all might be when he
called the author of _The Brothers Karamazov_ a 'treasure-digger.'
I say he 'dimly conjectured, because I think that the deceased
critic made the remark partly in allegory, even in joke. But none of
Dostoevsky's other critics made, even by accident, a truer slip of the
pen. Tchekhov, too, was a 'treasure-digger,' a sorcerer, a necromancer,
an adept in the black art; and this explains his singular infatuation
for death, decay and hopelessness.

Tchekhov was not of course the only writer to make death the subject
of his works. But not the theme is important but the manner of its
treatment. Tchekhov understands that. 'In all the thoughts, feelings,
and ideas,' he says, '[which] I form about anything, there is wanting
the something universal which could bind all these together in one
whole. Each feeling and each thought lives detached in me, and in all
my opinions about science, the theatre, literature, and my pupils,
and in all the little pictures which my imagination paints, not even
the most cunning analyst will discover what is called the general
idea, or the god of the living man. And if this is not there, then
nothing is there. In poverty such as this, a serious infirmity, fear
of death, influence of circumstances and people would have been
enough to over-throw and shatter all that I formerly considered as my
conception of the world, and all wherein I saw the meaning and joy of
my life....' In these words one of the 'newest' of Tchekhov's ideas
finds expression, one by which the whole of his subsequent creation is
defined. It is expressed in a modest, apologetic form: a man confesses
that he is unable to subordinate his thoughts to a higher idea, and
in that inability he sees his weakness. This was enough to avert from
him to some extent the thunders of criticism and the judgment of
public opinion. We readily forgive the repentant sinner! But it is an
unprofitable clemency: to expiate one's guilt, it is not enough to
confess it. What was the good of Tchekhov's putting on sackcloth; and
ashes and publicly confessing his guilt, if he was inwardly unchanged?
If, while his words acknowledged the general idea as god (without a
capital, indeed), he did nothing whatever for it? In words he burns
incense to god, in deed he curses him. Before his disease a conception
of the world brought him happiness, now it had shattered into
fragments. Is it not natural to ask whether the conception actually did
ever bring him happiness? Perhaps the happiness had its own independent
origin, and the conception was invited only as a general to a wedding,
for outward show, and never played any essential part. Tchekhov tells
us circumstantially what joys the professor found in his scientific
work, his lectures to the students, his family, and in a good dinner.
In all these were present together the conception of the world and
the idea, and they did not take away from, but as it were embellished
life; so that it seemed that he was working for the ideal, as well
as creating a family and dining. But now, when for the same ideal's
sake he has to remain inactive, to suffer, to remain awake of nights,
to swallow with effort food that has become loathsome to him--the
conception of the world is shattered into fragments! And it amounts to
this, that a conception with a dinner is right, and a dinner without a
conception equally right--this needs no argument--and a conception _an
und für sich_ is of no value whatever. Here is the essence of the words
quoted from Tchekhov. He confesses with horror the presence within him
of that 'new' idea. It seems to him that he alone of all men is so weak
and insignificant, that the others ... well, they need only ideals
and conceptions. And so it is, surely, if we may believe what people
write in books. Tchekhov plagues, tortures and worries himself in every
possible way, but he can alter nothing; nay worse, conceptions and
ideas, towards which a great many people behave quite carelessly--after
all, these innocent things do not merit any other attitude--in Tchekhov
become the objects of bitter, inexorable, and merciless hatred. He
cannot free himself at one single stroke from the power of ideas:
therefore he begins a long, slow and stubborn war, I would call it
a guerilla war, against the tyrant who had enslaved him. The whole
history and the separate episodes of his struggle are of absorbing
interest, because the most conspicuous representatives of literature
have hitherto been convinced that ideas have a magical power. What
are the majority of writers doing but constructing conceptions of the
world--and believing that they are engaged in a work of extraordinary
importance and sanctity? Tchekhov offended very many literary men. If
his punishment was comparatively slight, that was because he was very
cautious, and waged war with the air of bringing tribute to the enemy,
and secondly, because to talent much is forgiven.

IV

The content of _The Tedious Story_ thus reduces to the fact that the
professor, expressing his 'new' thoughts, in essence declares that
he finds it impossible to acknowledge the power of the 'idea' over
himself, or conscientiously to fulfil that which men consider the
supreme purpose, and in the service whereof they see the mission, the
sacred mission of man. 'God be my judge, I haven't courage enough
to act according to my conscience,' such is the only answer which
Tchekhov finds in his soul to all demands for a 'conception.' This
attitude towards 'conceptions' becomes second nature with Tchekhov.
A conception makes demands; a man acknowledges the justice of these
demands and methodically satisfies none of them. Moreover, the justice
of the demands meets with less and less acknowledgment from him. In
_The Tedious Story_ the idea still judges the man and tortures him
with the mercilessness peculiar to all things inanimate. Exactly like
a splinter stuck into a living body, the idea, alien and hostile,
mercilessly performs its high mission, until at length the man firmly
resolves to draw the splinter out of his flesh, however painful that
difficult operation may be. In _Ivanov_ the rôle of the idea is
already changed. There not the idea persecutes Tchekhov, but Tchekhov
the idea, and with the subtlest division and contempt. The voice of
the living nature rises above the artificial habits of civilisation.
True, the struggle still continues, if you will, with alternating
fortunes. But the old humility is no more. More and more Tchekhov
emancipates himself from old prejudices and goes--he himself could
hardly say whither, were he asked. But he prefers to remain without
an answer, rather than to accept any of the traditional answers. 'I
know quite well I have no more than six months to live; and it would
seem that now I ought to be mainly occupied with questions of the
darkness beyond the grave, and the visions which will visit my sleep
in the earth. But somehow my soul is not curious of these questions,
though my mind grants every atom of their importance.' In contrast to
the habits of the past, reason is once more pushed out of the door
with all due respect, while its rights are handed over to the 'soul,'
to the dark, vague aspiration which Tchekhov by instinct trusts more
than the bright, clear consciousness which beforehand determines the
beyond, now that he stands before the fatal pale which divides man from
the eternal mystery. Is scientific philosophy indignant? Is Tchekhov
undermining its surest foundations? But he is an overstrained, abnormal
man. Certainly you are not bound to listen to him; but once you have
decided to do so then you must be prepared for anything. A normal
person, even though he be a metaphysician of the extremest ethereal
brand, always adjusts his theories to the requirements of the moment;
he destroys only to build up from the old material once more. This is
the reason why material never fails him. Obedient to the fundamental
law of human nature, long since noted and formulated by the wise, he
is content to confine himself to the modest part of a seeker after
forms. Out of iron, which he finds in nature ready to his hand, he
forges a sword or a plough, a lance or a sickle. The idea of creating
out of a void hardly even enters his mind. But Tchekhov's heroes,
persons abnormal _par excellence,_ are faced with this abnormal and
dreadful necessity. Before them always lies hopelessness, helplessness,
the utter impossibility of any action whatsoever. And yet they live
on, they do not die. A strange question, and one of extraordinary
moment, here suggests itself. I said that it was foreign to human
nature to create out of a void. Yet nature often deprives man of
ready material, while at the same time she demands imperatively that
he should create. Does this mean that nature contradicts herself,
or that she perverts her creatures? Is it not more correct to admit
that the conception of perversion is of purely human origin. Perhaps
nature is much more economical and wise than our wisdom, and maybe we
should discover much more if instead of dividing people into necessary
and superfluous, useful and noxious, good and bad, we suppressed
the tendency to subjective valuation in ourselves and endeavoured
with greater confidence to accept her creations? Otherwise you come
immediately--to 'the evil gleam,' 'treasure-digging,' sorcery and
black magic--and a wall is raised between men which neither logical
argument nor even a battery of artillery can break down. I hardly dare
hope that this consideration will appear convincing to those who are
used to maintaining the norm; and it is probably unnecessary that the
notion of the great opposition of good and bad which is alive among
men should die away, just as it is unnecessary that children should
be born with the experience of men, or that red cheeks and curly hair
should vanish from the earth. At any rate it is impossible. The world
has many centuries to its reckoning, many nations have lived and died
upon the earth, yet as far as we know from the books and traditions
that have survived to us, the dispute between good and evil was never
hushed. And it always so happened that good was not afraid of the light
of day, and good men lived a united, social life; while evil hid itself
in darkness, and the wicked always stood alone. Nor could it have been
otherwise.

All Tchekhov's heroes fear the light. They are lonely. They are ashamed
of their hopelessness, and they know that men cannot help them.
They go somewhere, perhaps even forward, but they call to no one to
follow. All things are taken from them: they must create everything
anew. Thence most probably is derived the unconcealed contempt with
which they behave to the most precious products of common human
creativeness. On whatever subject you begin to talk with a Tchekhov
hero he has one reply to everything: _Nobody can teach me anything._
You offer him a new conception of the world: already in your very
first words he feels that they all reduce to an attempt to lay the old
bricks and stones over again, and he turns from you with impatience,
and often with rudeness. Tchekhov is an extremely cautious writer.
He fears and takes into account public opinion. Yet how unconcealed
is the aversion he displays to accepted ideas and conceptions of the
world. In _The Tedious Story,_ he at any rate preserves the tone and
attitude of outward obedience. Later he throws aside all precautions,
and instead of reproaching himself for his inability to submit to the
general idea, openly rebels against it and jeers at it. In _Ivanov_ it
already is sufficiently expressed; there was reason for the outburst
of indignation which this play provoked in its day. Ivanov, I have
already said, is a dead man. The only thing the artist can do with
him is to bury him decently, that is, to praise his past, pity his
present, and then, in order to mitigate the cheerless impression
produced by death, to invite the general idea to the funeral. He might
recall the universal problems of humanity in any one of the many
stereotyped forms, and thus the difficult case which seemed insoluble
would be removed. Together with Ivanov's death he should portray a
bright young life, full of promise, and the impression of death and
destruction would lose all its sting and bitterness. Tchekhov does just
the opposite. Instead of endowing youth and ideals with power over
destruction and death, as all philosophical systems and many works of
art had done, he ostentatiously makes the good-for-nothing wreck Ivanov
the centre of all events. Side by side with Ivanov there are young
lives, and the idea is also given her representatives. But the young
Sasha, a wonderful and charming girl, who falls utterly in love with
the broken hero, not only does not save her lover, but herself perishes
under the burden of the impossible task. And the idea? It is enough
to recall the figure of Doctor Lvov alone, whom Tchekhov entrusted
with the responsible rôle of a representative of the all-powerful
idea, and you will at once perceive that he considers himself not as
subject and vassal, but as the bitterest enemy of the idea. The moment
Doctor Lvov opens his mouth, all the characters, as though acting on
a previous agreement, vie with each other in their haste to interrupt
him in the most insulting way, by jests, threats, and almost by smacks
in the face. But the doctor fulfils his duties as a representative
of the great power with no less skill and conscientiousness than his
predecessors--Starodoum[1] and the other reputable heroes of the old
drama. He champions the wronged, seeks to restore rights that have been
trodden underfoot, sets himself dead against injustice. Has he stepped
beyond the limits of his plenipotentiary powers? Of course not; but
where Ivanovs and hopelessness reign there is not and cannot be room
for the idea.

They cannot possibly live together. And the eyes of the reader, who
is accustomed to think that every kingdom may fall and perish, yet
the kingdom of the idea stands firm _in saecula saeculorum,_ behold
a spectacle unheard of: the idea dethroned by a helpless, broken,
good-for-nothing man! What is there that Ivanov does not say? In the
very first act he fires off a tremendous tirade, not at a chance
comer, but at the incarnate idea--Starodoum-Lvov. 'I have the right
to give you advice. Don't you marry a Jewess, or an abnormal, or a
blue-stocking. Choose something ordinary, greyish, without any bright
colours or superfluous shades. Make it a principle to build your
life of _clichés._ The more grey and monotonous the background, the
better. My dear man, don't fight thousands single-handed, don't tilt
at windmills, don't run your head against the wall. God save you from
all kinds of Back-to-the-Landers' advanced doctrines, passionate
speeches.... Shut yourself tight in your own shell, and do the tiny
little work set you by God.... It's cosier, honester, and healthier.'

Doctor Lvov, the representative of the all-powerful, sovereign idea,
feels that his sovereign's majesty is injured, that to suffer such
an offence really means to abdicate the throne. Surely Ivanov was a
vassal, and so he must remain. How dare he let his tongue advise, how
dare he raise his voice when it is his part to listen reverently, and
to obey in silent resignation? This is rank rebellion! Lvov attempts to
draw himself up to his full height and answer the arrogant rebel with
dignity. Nothing comes of it. In a weak, trembling voice he mutters the
accustomed words, which but lately had invincible power. But they do
not produce their customary effect. Their virtue is departed. Whither?
Lvov dares not own it even to himself. But it is no longer a secret
to any one. Whatever mean and ugly things Ivanov may have done--Tchekhov
is not close-fisted in this matter: in his hero's conduct-book
are written all manner of offences; almost to the deliberate murder
of a woman devoted to him--it is to him and not to Lvov that public
opinion bows. Ivanov is the spirit of destruction, rude, violent,
pitiless, sticking at nothing: yet the word 'scoundrel,' which the
doctor tears out of himself with a painful effort and hurls at him,
does not stick to him. He is somehow right, with his own peculiar
right, to others inconceivable, yet still, if we may believe Tchekhov,
incontestable. Sasha, a creature of youth and insight and talent,
passes by the honest Starodoum-Lvov unheeding, on her way to render
worship to him. The whole play is based on that. It is true, Ivanov in
the end shoots himself, and that may, if you like, give you a formal
ground for believing that the final victory remained with Lvov. And
Tchekhov did well to end the drama in this way--it could not be spun
out to infinity. It would have been no easy matter to tell the whole of
Ivanov's history. Tchekhov went on writing for fifteen years after, all
the time telling the unfinished story, yet even then he had to break it
off without reaching the end....

It would show small understanding of Tchekhov to take it into one's
head to interpret Ivanov's words to Lvov as meaning that Tchekhov,
like the Tolstoi of the _War and Peace_ period, saw his ideal in the
everyday arrangement of life. Tchekhov was only fighting against
the idea, and he said to it the most abusive thing that entered his
head. For what can be more insulting to the idea than to be forced
to listen to the praise of everyday life? But when the opportunity
came his way, Tchekhov could describe everyday life with equal venom.
The story, _The Teacher of Literature,_ may serve as an example. The
teacher lives entirely by Ivanov's prescription. He has his job, and
his wife--neither Jewess nor abnormal, nor blue-stocking--and a home
that fits like a shell...; but all this does not prevent Tchekhov
from driving the poor teacher by slow degrees into the usual trap, and
bringing him to a condition wherein it is left to him only 'to fall
down and weep, and beat his head against the floor.' Tchekhov had no
'ideal,' not even the ideal of 'everyday life' which Tolstoi glorified
with such inimitable and incomparable mastery in his early works. An
ideal presupposes submission, the voluntary denial of one's own right
to independence, freedom and power; and demands of this kind, even a
hint of such demands, roused in Tchekhov all that force of disgust and
repulsion of which he alone was capable.

[Footnote 1: A hero from Fon-Vizin's play _The Minor._ Starodoum is a
_raisonneur,_ a 'positive' type, always uttering truisms.]

V

Thus the real, the only hero of Tchekhov, is the hopeless man. He
has absolutely no _action_ left for him in life, save to beat his
head against the stones. It is not surprising that such a man should
be intolerable to his neighbours. Everywhere he brings death and
destruction with him. He himself is aware of it, but he has not the
power to go apart from men. With all his soul he endeavours to tear
himself out of his horrible condition. Above all he is attracted to
fresh, young, untouched beings; with their help he hopes to recover his
right to life which he has lost. The hope is vain. The beginning of
decay always appears, all-conquering, and at the end Tchekhov's hero
is left to himself alone. He has nothing, he must create everything
for himself. And this 'creation out of the void,' or more truly the
possibility of this creation, is the only problem which can occupy and
inspire Tchekhov. When he has stripped his hero of the last shred, when
nothing is left for him but to beat his head against the wall, Tchekhov
begins to feel something like satisfaction, a strange fire lights in
his burnt-out eyes, a fire which Mihailovsky did not call 'evil' in
vain.

Creation out of the void! Is not this task beyond the limit of human
powers, of human _rights_? Mihailovsky obviously had one straight
answer to the question.... As for Tchekhov himself, if the question
were put to him in such a deliberately definite form, he would probably
be unable to answer, although he was continually engaged in the
activity, or more properly, because he was continually so engaged.
Without fear of mistake, one may say that the people who answer the
question without hesitation in either sense have never come near to
it, or to any of the so-called ultimate questions of life. Hesitation
is a necessary and integral element in the judgment of those men
whom Fate has brought near to false problems. How Tchekhov's hand
trembled while he wrote the concluding lines of his _Tedious Story_!
The professor's pupil--the being nearest and dearest to him, but like
himself, for all her youth, overstrained and bereft of all hope--has
come to Kharkov to seek his advice. The following conversation takes
place:

"Nicolai Stepanich!" she says, growing pale and pressing her hands to
her breast. "Nicolai Stepanich! I can't go on like this any longer. For
God's sake tell me now, immediately. What shall I do? Tell me, what
shall I do?"

"What can I say? I am beaten. I can say nothing."

"But tell me, I implore you," she continues, out of breath and
trembling all over her body. "I swear to you, I can't go on like this
any longer. I haven't the strength."

She drops into a chair and begins to sob. She throws her head back,
wrings her hands, stamps with her feet; her hat falls from her head and
dangles by its string, her hair is loosened.

"Help me, help," she implores. "I can't bear it any more."

"There's nothing that I can say to you, Katy," I say.

"Help me," she sobs, seizing my hand and kissing it. "You 're my
father, my only friend. You're wise and learned, and you've lived long
I You were a teacher. Tell me what to do."

'"Upon my conscience, Katy, I do not know."

'I am bewildered and surprised, stirred by her sobbing, and I can
hardly stand upright.

'"Let's have some breakfast, Katy," I say with a constrained smile.

'Instantly I add in a sinking voice: "I shall be dead soon, Katy...."

'"Only one word, only one word," she weeps and stretches out her hands
to me. "What shall I do?..."'

But the professor has not the word to give. He turns the conversation
to the weather, Kharkov and other indifferent matters. Katy gets up and
holds out her hand to him, without looking at him. 'I want to ask her,'
he concludes his story. '"So it means you won't be at my funeral?" But
she does not look at me; her hand is cold and like a stranger's ... I
escort her to the door in silence.... She goes out of my room and walks
down the long passage, without looking back. She knows that my eyes are
following her, and probably on the landing she will look back. No, she
did not look back. The black dress showed for the last time, her steps
were stilled.... Good-bye, my treasure!...'

The only answer which the wise, educated, long-lived Nicolai
Stepanovich, a teacher all his life, can give to Katy's question is,
'I don't know.' There is not, in all his great experience of the
past, a single method, rule, or suggestion, which might apply, even in
the smallest degree, to the wild incongruity of the new conditions of
Katy's life and his own. Katy can live thus no longer; neither can he
himself continue to endure his disgusting and shameful helplessness.
They both, old and young, with their whole hearts desire to support
each other; they can between them find no way. To her question: 'What
shall I do?' he replied: 'I shall soon be dead.' To his 'I shall
soon be dead' she answers with wild sobbing, wringing her hands, and
absurdly repeating the same words over and over again. It would have
been better to have asked no question, not to have begun that frank
conversation of souls. But they do not yet understand that. In their
old life talk would bring them relief and frank confession, intimacy.
But now, after such a meeting they can suffer each other no longer.
Katy leaves the old professor, her foster-father, her true father and
friend, in the knowledge that he has become a stranger to her. She
did not even turn round towards him as she went away. Both felt that
nothing remained save to beat their heads against the wall. Therein
each acts at his own peril, and there can be no dreaming of a consoling
union of souls.

VI

Tchekhov knew what conclusions he had reached in _The Tedious Story_
and _Ivanov._ Some of his critics also knew, and told him so. I
cannot venture to say what was the cause--whether fear of public
opinion, or his horror at his own discoveries, or both together--but
evidently there came a moment to Tchekhov when he decided at all costs
to surrender his position and retreat. The fruit of this decision was
_Ward No. 6._ In this story the hero of the drama is the same familiar
Tchekhov character, the doctor. The setting, too, is quite the usual
one, though changed to a slight extent. Nothing in particular has
occurred in the doctor's life. He happened to come to an out-of-the-way
place in the provinces, and gradually, by continually avoiding
life and people, he reached a condition of utter will-lessness, which
he represented to himself as the ideal of human happiness. He is
indifferent to everything, beginning with his hospital, where he can
hardly ever be found, where under the reign of the drunken brute of an
assistant the patients are swindled and neglected.

In the mental ward reigns a porter who is a discharged soldier: he
punches his restless patients into shape. The doctor does not care,
as though he were living in some distant other world, and does not
understand what is going on before his very eyes. He happens to enter
his ward and to have a conversation with one of his patients. He
listens quietly to him; but his answer is words instead of deeds. He
tries to show his lunatic acquaintance that external influences cannot
affect us in any way at all. The lunatic does not agree, becomes
impertinent, presents objections, in which, as in the thoughts of many
lunatics, nonsensical assertions are mixed with very profound remarks.
Indeed, there is so little nonsense that from the conversation you
would hardly imagine that you have to do with a lunatic. The doctor
is delighted with his new friend, but does nothing whatsoever to
make him more comfortable. The patient is still under the porter's
thumb as he used to be, and the porter gives him a thrashing on the
least provocation. The patient, the doctor, the people round, the
whole setting of the hospital and the doctor's rooms, are described
with wonderful talent. Everything induces you to make absolutely no
resistance and to become fatalistically indifferent:--let them get
drunk, let them fight, let them thieve, let them be brutal--what does
it matter! Evidently it is so predestined by the supreme council of
nature. The philosophy of inactivity which the doctor professes is
as it were prompted and whispered by the immutable laws of human
existence. Apparently there is no force which may tear one from its
power. So far everything is more or less in the Tchekhov style. But
the end is completely different. By the intrigues of his colleague,
the doctor himself is taken as a patient into the mental ward. He
is deprived of freedom, shut up in a wing of the hospital, and even
thrashed, thrashed by the same porter whose behaviour he had taught his
lunatic acquaintance to accept, thrashed before his acquaintance's
very eyes. The doctor instantly awakens as though out of a dream. A
fierce desire to struggle and to protest manifests itself in him. True,
at this moment he dies; but the idea is triumphant, still. The critics
could consider themselves quite satisfied. Tchekhov had openly repented
and renounced the theory of non-resistance; and, I believe, _Ward No.
6_ met with a sympathetic reception at the time. In passing I would say
that the doctor dies very beautifully: in his last moments he sees a
herd of deer....

Indeed, the construction of this story leaves no doubt in the mind.
Tchekhov wished to compromise, and he compromised. He had come to feel
how intolerable was hopelessness, how impossible the creation from a
void. To beat one's head against the stones, eternally to beat one's
head against the stones, is so horrible that it were better to return
to idealism. Then the truth of the wonderful Russian saying was proved:
'Don't forswear the beggar's wallet nor the prison.' Tchekhov joined
the choir of Russian writers, and began to praise the idea. But not
for long. His very next story, _The Duel,_ has a different character.
Its conclusion is also apparently idealistic, but only in appearance.
The principal hero Layevsky is a parasite like all Tchekhov's heroes.
He does nothing, can do nothing, does not even wish to do anything,
lives chiefly at others' expense, runs up debts, seduces women.... His
condition is intolerable. He is living with another man's wife, whom he
had come to loathe as he loathes himself, yet he cannot get rid of her.
He is always in straitened circumstances and in debt everywhere: his
friends dislike and despise him. His state of mind is always such that
he is ready to run no matter where, never looking backwards, only away
from the place where he is living now. His illegal wife is in roughly
the same position, unless it be even more horrible. Without knowing
why, without love, without even being attracted, she gives herself to
the first, commonplace man she meets; and then she feels as though
she had been covered from head to foot in filth, and the filth had
stuck so close to her that not ocean itself could wash her clean. This
couple lives in the world, in a remote little place in the Caucasus,
and naturally attracts Tchekhov's attention. There is no denying the
interest of the subject: two persons befouled, who can neither tolerate
others nor themselves....

For contrast's sake Tchekhov brings Layevsky into collision with the
zoologist, Von Koren, who has come to the seaside town on important
business--every one recognises its importance--to study the embryology
of the medusa. Von Koren, as one may see from his name, is of German
origin, and therefore deliberately represented as a healthy, normal,
clean man, the grandchild of Goncharov's Stolz, the direct opposite
of Layevsky, who on his side is nearly related to our old friend
Oblomov. But in Goncharov the contrast between Stolz and Oblomov is
quite different in nature and meaning to the contrast in Tchekhov. The
novelist of the 'forties hoped that a _rapprochement_ with Western
culture would renew and resuscitate Russia. And Oblomov himself is not
represented as an utterly hopeless person. He is only lazy, inactive,
unenterprising. You have the feeling that were he to awaken he would
be a match for a dozen Stolzs. Layevsky is a different affair. He is
awake already, he was awakened years ago, but his awakening did him no
good.... 'He does not love nature; he has no God; he or his companions
had ruined every trustful girl he had known; all his life long he
had not planted one single little tree, nor grown one blade of grass
in his own garden, nor while he lived among the living, had he saved
the life of one single fly; but only ruined and destroyed, and lied,
and lied....' The good-natured sluggard Oblomov degenerated into a
disgusting, terrible animal, while the clean Stolz lived and remained
clean in his posterity! But to the new Oblomov he speaks differently.
Von Koren calls Layevsky a scoundrel and a rogue, and demands that
he should be punished with the utmost severity. To reconcile them is
impossible. The more they meet, the deeper, the more merciless, the
more implacable is their hatred for each other. It is impossible that
they should live together on the earth. It must be one or the other:
either the normal Von Koren, or the degenerate decadent Layevsky.
Of course, all the external, material force is on Von Koren's side
in the struggle. He is always in the right, always victorious,
always triumphant--in act no less than in theory. It is curious that
Tchekhov, the irreconcilable enemy of all kinds of philosophy--not
one of his heroes philosophises, or if he does, his philosophising is
unsuccessful, ridiculous, weak and unconvincing--makes an exception
for Von Koren, a typical representative of the positive, materialistic
school. His words breathe vigour and conviction. They have in them even
pathos and a maximum of logical sequence. There are many materialist
heroes in Tchekhov's stories, but in their materialism there is a
tinge of veiled idealism, according to the stereotyped prescription of
the 'sixties. Such heroes Tchekhov ridicules and derides. Idealism of
every kind, whether open or concealed, roused feelings of intolerable
bitterness in Tchekhov. He found it more pleasant to listen to the
merciless menaces of a downright materialist than to accept the
dry-as-dust consolations of humanising idealism. An invincible power
is in the world, crushing and crippling man--this is clear and even
palpable. The least indiscretion, and the mightiest and the most
insignificant alike fall victims to it. One can only deceive oneself
about it so long as one knows of it only by hearsay. But the man who
had once been in the iron claws of necessity loses for ever his taste
for idealistic self-delusion. No more does he diminish the enemy's
power, he will rather exaggerate it. And the pure logical materialism
which Von Koren professes gives the most complete expression of our
dependence upon the elemental powers of nature. Von Koren's speech
has the stroke of a hammer, and each blow strikes not Layevsky but
Tchekhov himself on his wounds. He gives more and more strength to
Von Koren's arm, he puts himself in the way of his blows. For what
reason? Decide as you may. Perhaps Tchekhov cherished a secret hope
that self-inflicted torment might be the one road to a new life? He
has not told us so. Perhaps he did not know the reason himself, and
perhaps he was afraid to offend the positive idealism which held such
undisputed sway over contemporary literature. As yet he dared not
lift up his voice against the public opinion of Europe--for we do not
ourselves invent our philosophical conceptions; they drift down on the
wind from Europe! And, to avoid quarrelling with people, he devised
a commonplace, happy ending for his terrible story. At the end of
the story Layevsky 'reforms': he marries his mistress; gives up his
dissolute life; and begins to devote himself to transcribing documents,
in order to pay his debts. Normal people can be perfectly satisfied,
since normal people read only the last lines of the fable,--the moral;
and the moral of _The Duel_ is most wholesome: Layevsky reforms and
begins transcribing documents. Of course it may seem that such an
ending is more like a gibe at morality; but normal people are not too
penetrating psychologists. They are scared of double meanings and, with
the 'sincerity' peculiar to themselves, they take every word of the
writer for good coin. Good luck to them!

VII

The only philosophy which Tchekhov took seriously, and therefore
seriously fought, was positivist materialism--just the positivist
materialism, the limited materialism which does not pretend to
theoretical completeness. With all his soul Tchekhov felt the awful
dependence of a living being upon the invisible but invincible and
ostentatiously soulless laws of nature. And materialism, above all
scientific materialism, which is reserved and does not hasten in
pursuit of the final word, and eschews logical completeness, wholly
reduces to the definition of the external conditions of our existence.
The experience of every day, every hour, every minute, convinces us
that lonely and weak man brought to face with the laws of nature,
must always adapt himself and give way, give way, give way. The old
professor could not regain his youth; the overstrained Ivanov could
not recover his strength; Layevsky could not wash away the filth
with which he was covered--interminable series of implacable, purely
materialistic _non possumus,_ against which human genius can set
nothing but submission or forgetfulness. _Résigne-toi, mon cœur,
dors ton sommeil de brute--_we shall find no other words before
the pictures which are unfolded in Tchekhov's books. The submission
is but an outward show; under it lies concealed a hard, malignant
hatred of the unknown enemy. Sleep and oblivion are only seeming.
Does a man sleep, does he forget, when he calls his sleep, _sommeil
de brute_? But how can he change? The tempestuous protests with which
_The Tedious Story_ is filled, the need to pour forth the pent-up
indignation, soon begin to appear useless, and even insulting to
human dignity. Tchekhov's last rebellious work is _Uncle Vanya._ Like
the old professor and like Ivanov, Uncle Vanya raises the alarm and
makes an incredible pother about his ruined life. He, too, in a voice
not his own, fills the stage with his cries: 'Life is over, life
is over,'--as though indeed any of these about him, any one in the
whole world, could be responsible for his misfortune. But wailing and
lamentation is not sufficient for him. He covers his own mother with
insults. Aimlessly, like a lunatic, without need or purpose, he begins
shooting at his imaginary enemy, Sonya's pitiable and unhappy father.
His voice is not enough, he turns to the revolver. He is ready to fire
all the cannon on earth, to beat every drum, to ring every bell. To
him it seems that the whole of mankind, the whole of the universe, is
sleeping, that the neighbours must be awakened. He is prepared for
any extravagance, having no rational way of escape; for to confess at
once that there is no escape is beyond the capacity of any man. Then
begins a Tchekhov history: 'He cannot reconcile himself, neither can
he refuse so to reconcile himself. He can only weep and beat his head
against the wall.' Uncle Vanya does it openly, before men's eyes; but
how painful to him is the memory of this frank unreserve! When every
one has departed after a stupid and painful scene, Uncle Vanya realises
that he should have kept silence, that it is no use to confess certain
things to any one, not even to one's nearest friend. A stranger's eye
cannot endure the sight of hopelessness. 'Your life is over--you have
yourself to thank for it: you are a human being no more, all human
things are ah en to you. Your neighbours are no more neighbours to you,
but strangers. You have no right either to help others or to expect
help from them. Your destiny is--absolute loneliness.' Little by little
Tchekhov becomes convinced of this truth: _Uncle Vanya_ is the last
trial of loud public protest, of a vigorous 'declaration of rights.'
And even in this drama Uncle Vanya is the only one to rage, although
there are among the characters Doctor Astrov and poor Sonya, who might
also avail themselves of their right to rage, and even to fire the
cannon. But they are silent. They even repeat certain comfortable and
angelic words concerning the happy future of mankind; which is to say
that their silence is doubly deep, seeing that 'comfortable words' upon
the lips of such people are the evidence of their final severance from
life: they have left the whole world, and now they admit no one to
their presence. They have fenced themselves with comfortable words, as
with the Great Wall of China, from the curiosity and attention of their
neighbours. Outwardly they resemble all men, therefore no man dares to
touch their inward life.

What is the meaning and significance of this straining inward labour
in those whose lives are over? Probably Tchekhov would answer this
question as Nicolai Stepanovich answered Katy's, with 'I do not
know.' He would add nothing. But this life alone, more like to death
than life, attracted and engaged him. Therefore his utterance grew
softer and slower with every year. Of all our writers Tchekhov has
the softest voice. All the energy of his heroes is turned inwards.
They create nothing visible; worse, they destroy all things visible
by their outward passivity and inertia. A 'positive thinker' like Von
Koren brands them with terrible words, and the more content is he with
himself and his justice, the more energy he puts into his anathemas.
'Scoundrels, villains, degenerates, degraded animals!'--what did Von
Koren not devise to fit the Layevskys? The manifestly positive thinker
wants to force Layevsky to transcribe documents. The surreptitiously
positive thinkers--idealists and metaphysicians--do not use abusive
words. Instead they bury Tchekhov's nerves alive in their idealistic
cemeteries, which are called conceptions of the world. Tchekhov himself
abstains from the 'solution of the question' with a persistency to
which most of the critics probably wished a better fate, and he
continues his long stories of men and the life of men, who have nothing
to lose, as though the only interest in life were this nightmare
suspension between life and death. What does it teach us of life or
death? Again we must answer: 'I do not know,'--those words which
arouse the greatest aversion in positive thinkers, but appear in some
mysterious way to be the permanent elements in the ideas of Tchekhov's
people. This is the reason why the philosophy of materialism, though
so hostile, is yet so near to them. It contains no answer which can
compel man to cheerful submission. It bruises and destroys him, but
it does not call itself rational; it does not demand gratitude; it
does not demand anything, since it has neither soul nor speech. A
man may acknowledge it and hate it. If he manages to get square with
it--he is right; if he fails--_vae victis._ How comfortably sounds
the voice of the unconcealed ruthlessness of inanimate, impersonal,
indifferent nature, compared with the hypocritical and cloying melodies
of idealistic, humanistic conceptions of the world! Then again--and
this is the chiefest thing of all--men can struggle with nature still!
And in the struggle with nature every weapon is lawful. In the struggle
with nature man always remains man, and, therefore, right, whatever
means he tries for his salvation, even if he were to refuse to accept
the fundamental principle of the world's being--the indestructibility
of matter and energy, the law of inertia and the rest--since who will
dispute that the most colossal dead force must be subservient to
man? But a conception of the world is an utterly different affair!
Before uttering a word it puts forward an irreducible demand: man must
serve the idea. And this demand is considered not merely as something
understood, but as of extraordinary sublimity. Is it strange then
that in the choice between idealism and materialism Tchekhov inclined
to the latter--the strong but honest adversary? With idealism a man
can struggle only by contempt, and Tchekhov's works leave nothing
to be desired in this respect.... But how shall a man struggle with
materialism? And can it be overcome? Perhaps Tchekhov's method may
seem strange to my reader, nevertheless it is clear that he came to
the conclusion that there was only one way to struggle, to which the
prophets of old turned themselves: to beat one's head against the wall.
Without thunder or cannon or alarm, in loneliness and silence, remote
from their fellows and their fellows' fellows, to gather all the forces
of despair for an absurd attempt long since condemned by science.
Have you any right to expect from Tchekhov an approval of scientific
methods? Science has robbed him of everything: he is condemned to
create from the void, to an activity of which a normal man, using
normal means, is utterly incapable. To achieve the impossible one must
first leave the road of routine. However obstinately we may pursue
our scientific quests, they will not lead us to the elixir of life.
Science began with casting away the longing for human omnipotence as in
principle unattainable: her methods are such that success along certain
of her paths preclude even seeking along others. In other words,
scientific method is defined by the character of the problems which
she puts to herself. Indeed, not one of her problems can be solved by
beating one's head against the wall. But this method, old-fashioned
though it is--I repeat, it was known to the prophets and used by
them--promised more to Tchekhov and his nerves than all inductions and
deductions (which were not invented by science, but have existed since
the beginning of the world). This prompts a man with some mysterious
instinct, and appears upon the scene whenever the need of it arises.
Science condemns it. But that is nothing strange: it condemns science.

VIII

Now perhaps the further development and direction of Tchekhov's
creation will be intelligible, and that peculiar and unique blend
in him of sober materialism and fanatical stubbornness in seeking
new paths, always round about and hazardous. Like Hamlet, he would
dig beneath his opponent a mine one yard deeper, so that he may
at one moment blow engineer and engine into the air. His patience
and fortitude in this hard, underground toil are amazing and to
many intolerable. Everywhere is darkness, not a ray, not a spark,
but Tchekhov goes forward, slowly, hardly, hardly moving.... An
inexperienced or impatient eye will perhaps observe no movement at all.
It may be Tchekhov himself does not know for certain whether he is
moving forward or marking time. To calculate beforehand is impossible.
Impossible even to hope. Man has entered that stage of his existence
wherein the cheerful and foreseeing mind refuses its service. It is
impossible for him to present to himself a clear and distinct notion of
what is going on. Everything takes on a tinge of fantastical absurdity.
One believes and disbelieves--everything. In _The Black Monk_ Tchekhov
tells of a new reality, and in a tone which suggests that he is himself
at a loss to say where the reality ends and the phantasmagoria begins.
The black monk leads the young scholar into some mysterious remoteness,
where the best dreams of mankind shall be realised. The people about
call the monk a hallucination and fight him with medicines--drugs,
better foods and milk. Kovrin himself does not know who is right. When
he is speaking to the monk, it seems to him that the monk is right;
when he sees before him his weeping wife and the serious, anxious
faces of the doctors, he confesses that he is under the influence of
fixed ideas, which lead him straight to lunacy. Finally the black
monk is victorious. Kovrin has not the power to support the banality
which surrounds him; he breaks with his wife and her relations, who
appear like inquisitors in his eyes, and goes away somewhere--but in
our sight he arrives nowhere. At the end of the story he dies in order
to give the author the right to make an end. This is always the case:
when the author does not know what to do with his hero he kills him.
Sooner or later in all probability this habit will be abandoned. In
the future, probably, writers will convince themselves and the public
that any kind of artificial completion is absolutely superfluous.
The matter is exhausted--stop the tale short, even though it be on
a half-word. Tchekhov did so sometimes, but only sometimes. In most
cases he preferred to satisfy the traditional demands and to supply his
readers with an end. This habit is not so unimportant as at first sight
it may seem. Consider even _The Black Monk._ The death of the hero is
as it were an indication that abnormality must, in Tchekhov's opinion,
necessarily lead through an absurd life to an absurd death: but this
was hardly Tchekhov's firm conviction. It is clear that he expected
something from abnormality, and therefore gave no deep attention to
men who had left the common track. True, he came to no firm or definite
conclusions, for all the tense effort of his creation. He became so
firmly convinced that there was no issue from the entangled labyrinth,
that the labyrinth with its infinite wanderings, its perpetual
hesitations and strayings, its uncaused griefs and joys uncaused--in
brief, all things which normal men so fear and shun--became the very
essence of his life. Of this and this alone must a man tell. Not of our
invention is normal life, nor abnormal. Why then should the first alone
be considered as the real reality?

_The Sea-Gull_ must be considered one of the most characteristic, and
therefore one of the most remarkable of Tchekhov's works. Therein the
artist's true attitude to life received its most complete expression.
Here all the characters are either blind, and afraid to move from
their seats in case they lose the way home, or half-mad, struggling
and tossing about to no end nor purpose. Arkadzina the famous actress
clings with her teeth to her seventy thousand roubles, her fame, and
her last lover. Tregovin the famous writer writes day in, day out;
he writes and writes, knowing neither end nor aim. People read his
works and praise them, but he is not his own master; like Marko, the
ferryman in the tale, he labours on without taking his hand from the
oar, carrying passengers from one bank to the other. The boat, the
passengers, and the river too, bore him to death. But how can he get
rid of them? He might give the oars over to the first-comer: the
solution is simple, but after it, as in the tale, he must go to heaven.
Not Tregovin alone, but all the people in Tchekhov's books who are
no longer young remind one of Marko the ferryman. It is plain that
they dislike their work, but, exactly as though they were hypnotised,
they cannot break away from the influence of the alien power. The
monotonous, even dismal, rhythm of life has lulled their consciousness
and will to sleep. Everywhere Tchekhov underlines this strange and
mysterious trait of human life. His people always speak, always think,
always do one and the same thing. One builds houses according to a plan
made once for all (_My Life_); another goes on his round of visits
from morn to night, collecting roubles (_Yonitch_); a third is always
buying up houses (_Three Years_). Even the language of his characters
is deliberately monotonous. They are all monotonous, to the point of
stupidity, and they are all afraid to break the monotony, as though it
were the source of extraordinary joys. Read Tregovin's monologue:

'... Let us talk.... Let us talk of my beautiful life.... What shall
I begin with? [Musing a little.] ... There are such things as fixed
ideas, when a person thinks day and night, for instance, of the moon,
always of the moon. I too have my moon. Day and night I am at the
mercy of one besetting idea: "I must write, I must write, I must." I
have hardly finished one story than, for some reason or other, I must
write a second, then a third, and after the third, a fourth. I write
incessantly, post-haste. I cannot do otherwise. Where then, I ask you,
is beauty and serenity? What a monstrous life it is! I am sitting with
you now, I am excited, but meanwhile every second I remember that
an unfinished story is waiting for me. I see a cloud, like a grand
piano. It smells of heliotrope. I say to myself: a sickly smell, a
half-mourning colour.... I must not forget to use these words when
describing a summer evening. I catch up myself and you on every phrase,
on every word, and hurry to lock all these words and phrases into my
literary storehouse. Perhaps they will be useful. When I finish work
I run to the theatre, or go off fishing: at last I shall rest, forget
myself. But no! a heavy ball of iron is dragging on my fetters,--a new
subject, which draws me to the desk, and I must make haste to write and
write again. And so on for ever, for ever. I have no rest from myself,
and I feel that I am eating away my own life. I feel that the honey
which I give to others has been made of the pollen of my most precious
flowers, that I have plucked the flowers themselves and trampled them
down to the roots. Surely, I am mad. Do my neighbours and friends treat
me as a sane person? "What are you writing? What have you got ready
for us?" The same thing, the same thing eternally, and it seems to me
that the attention, the praise, the enthusiasm of my friends is all
a fraud. I am being robbed like a sick man, and sometimes I am afraid
that they will creep up to me and seize me, and put me away in an
asylum.'

But why these torments? Throw up the oars and begin a new life.
_Impossible._ While no answer comes down from heaven, Tregovin will
not throw up the oars, will not begin a new life. In Tchekhov's work,
only young, very young and inexperienced people speak of a new life.
They are always dreaming of happiness, regeneration, light, joy. They
fly head-long into the flame, and are burned like silly butterflies.
In _The Sea-Gull,_ Nina Zaryechnaya and Trepliev, in other works other
heroes, men and women alike--all are seeking for something, yearning
for something, but not one of them does that which he desires. Each
one lives in isolation; each is wholly absorbed in his life, and is
indifferent to the lives of others. And the strange fate of Tchekhov's
heroes is that they strain to the last limit of their inward powers,
but there are no visible results at all. They are all pitiable.
The woman takes snuff, dresses slovenly, wears her hair loose, is
uninteresting. The man is irritable, grumbling, takes to drink, bores
every one about him. They act, they speak--always out of season.
They cannot, I would even say they do not want to, adapt the outer
world to themselves. Matter and energy unite according to their own
laws;--people live according to their own, as though matter and energy
had no existence at all. In this Tchekhov's intellectuals do not differ
from illiterate peasants and the half-educated bourgeois. Life in the
manor is the same as in the valley farm, the same as in the village.
Not one believes that by changing his outward conditions he would
change his fate as well. Everywhere reigns an unconscious but deep and
ineradicable conviction that our will must be directed towards ends
which have nothing in common with the organised life of mankind. Worse
still, the organisation appears to be the enemy of the will and of man.
One must spoil, devour, destroy, ruin. To think out things quietly, to
anticipate the future--that is impossible. One must beat one's head,
beat one's head eternally against the wall. And to what purpose? Is
there any purpose at all? Is it a beginning or an end? Is it possible
to see in it the warrant of a new and inhuman creation, a creation out
of the void? 'I do not know' was the old professor's answer to Katy.
'I do not know' was Tchekhov's answer to the sobs of those tormented
unto death. With these words, and only these, can an essay upon
Tchekhov end. _Résigne-toi, mon cœur, dors ton sommeil de brute._

THE GIFT OF PROPHECY

(For the twenty-fifth anniversary of F. M. Dostoevsky's death.)

Vladimir Soloviev used to call Dostoevsky 'the prophet,' and even
'the prophet of God.' Immediately after Soloviev, though often in
complete independence of him, very many people looked upon Dostoevsky
as the man to whom the books of human destiny were opened; and this
happened not only after his death, but even while he was yet alive.
Apparently Dostoevsky himself too, if he did not regard himself as a
prophet--he was too eagle-eyed for that--at least thought it right
that all people should see a prophet in him. To this bears witness
the tone of _The Journal of an Author,_ no less than the questions
upon which he generally touches therein. _The Journal of an Author_
began to appear in 1873, that is on Dostoevsky's return from abroad,
and therefore coincides with what his biographers call 'the highest
period of his life.' Dostoevsky was then the happy father of a family,
a man of secure position, a famous writer, the author of a whole
series of novels known to all: _The House of the Dead, The Idiot, The
Possessed._ He has everything which can be required _from_ life, or,
more truly, he has taken everything which can be taken from life. You
remember Tolstoi's deliberations in his _Confession_? 'Finally, I shall
be as famous as Pushkin, Gogol, Goethe and Shakespeare--and what shall
come after?' Indeed, it is difficult to become a more famous writer
than Shakespeare; and even if one succeeded, the inevitable question,
'And what shall come after?' would by no means be removed. Sooner or
later in the activity of a great writer a moment comes when further
perfection seems impossible. How shall a man be greater than himself
in the world of literature? If he would move, then by his own will or
in spite of it he must step on to another plane. And this is plainly
the beginning of prophecy in a writer. In the general view the prophet
is greater than the writer; and even the possession of genius is not
always a guarantee against the general view. Even men so sceptical as
Tolstoi and Dostoevsky, men always ready to doubt everything, more than
once were the victims of prejudices. Prophetic words were expected
of them, and they went out to meet men's desires, Dostoevsky even
more readily than Tolstoi. Moreover both prophesied clumsily: they
promised one thing, and something wholly different happened. So Tolstoi
promised long ago that men would awake to their error soon and would
put away from them fratricidal war, and would begin to live as true
Christians should, fulfilling the Gospel commandment of love. Tolstoi
prophesied and preached; people read him, as, it seems, they read no
other writer: but they have not changed their habits nor their tastes.
For the last ten years Tolstoi has perforce been a witness of a whole
series of horrible and most savage wars. And now there is our present
revolution[1]--armed mobs rioting, the gallows set up, men shot down,
bombs--the revolution which came to replace the bloody war in the Far
East!

And this is in Russia, where Tolstoi was born, lived, taught and
prophesied, where millions of people sincerely hold him to be the
greatest genius of all! Even in his own family Tolstoi could not
effect the change that he desired. One of his sons is an officer
in the army; the other writes in the _Novoïe Vremya,_ as though he
were Souvorin's[2] son, not Tolstoi's.... Where, then, is the gift
of prophecy? Why is it that a man so great as Tolstoi can foresee
nothing, and seems to peer his way through life? 'What will to-morrow
bring forth?' 'To-morrow I'll work miracles,' said the magician to
the Russian prince of old. For reply the prince drew his sword and
struck off the magician's head; and the excited mob, which believed in
the magician-prophet, became calm and departed home. History is ever
striking off the heads of prophetic predictions, and yet the crowd
still runs after the prophets. Of little faith, the crowd looks for
a sign, because it desires a miracle. But can the ability to predict
be accounted as evidence of the power to work miracles? It is possible
to predict an eclipse of the sun or the appearance of a comet, but
this surely means a miracle only to the ignorant. An enlightened mind
is secure in the knowledge that where prediction is possible, there
is no miracle, since the possibility of prediction and of foreseeing
presupposes a strict uniformity. Therefore not he will appear a prophet
who has great spiritual gifts, nor he who desires to dominate the world
and to command the very laws, neither the magician, nor the sorcerer,
nor the artist, but he who, having yielded himself beforehand to the
actual and its laws, has devoted himself to the mechanical labour of
record and calculation. Bismarck could foretell the greatness of Russia
and Germany; and not only Bismarck, but an ordinary German politician,
for whom everything is reduced to _Deutschland, Deutschland über
alles,_ could read the future for many years ahead; yet Dostoevsky and
Tolstoi could foresee nothing. In Dostoevsky the failure is still more
remarkable than in Tolstoi, because he more often attempted prediction:
more than half of his _Journal_ consists in unfulfilled prophecies. So
often did he commit his prophetic genius.

[Footnote 1: This essay was written during the revolution of 1905.]

[Footnote 2: The famous editor of the _Novoïe Vremya._]

II

To some it may perhaps seem out of place that in an article devoted to
the twenty-fifth anniversary of the writer's death, I call to mind his
mistakes and errors. The reproach is hardly just. A certain kind of
defect in a great man is at least as characteristic and important as
his qualities.

Dostoevsky was not a Bismarck. But is that so terrible that we must
lament it? Moreover, for writers of the type of Tolstoi and Dostoevsky,
their social and political ideas are without any value. They know well
that no one obeys them. Whatever they may say, history and political
life will go on in the same way, since it is not their books and
articles which guide events. And, probably, here is the explanation
of the amazing boldness of their opinions. If Tolstoi really imagined
that it would be enough for him to write an article demanding that
all 'soldiers, policemen, judges, ministers' and the rest, all those
guardians of the public peace, whom he detested--and, by the way, who
loves them?--should be dismissed, for all prison-doors to be flung
wide before the murderers and robbers--who can tell whether he would
have shown himself sufficiently firm and resolute in his opinions, to
take upon himself the responsibility for the effects of the measures
which he proposed? But he knows beyond all doubt that he will not be
obeyed, and therefore he calmly preaches anarchy. Dostoevsky's part as
a preacher was quite different; but it too was, so to speak, platonic.
Probably it came as a surprise even to himself, that he became the
prophet, not of 'ideal' politics, but of those most realistic tasks
which governments always set themselves in countries where a few men
direct the destinies of peoples. Listening to Dostoevsky, one may
imagine that he is discovering ideas which the government must take
for its guidance and set itself to realise. But you will soon convince
yourself that Dostoevsky did not discover one single original political
idea. Everything of the kind that he possessed he had borrowed without
examination from the Slavophiles, who in their turn appeared original
only to the extent to which they were able without outside assistance
to translate from the German and the French: _Russland, Russland
über alles._ (Even the rhythm of the verse is not affected by the
substitution of the one word.) But what is most important is, that
the Slavophiles with their Russo-German glorification of nationality,
and with them Dostoevsky who joined the chorus, have neither taught
nor educated one single man among the ruling classes. Our government
knew all that it needed to know by itself, without the Slavophiles
and without Dostoevsky. From time immemorial it had gone its way by
the road which the theorists so passionately praised: so that nothing
was left to them but to eulogise those in power and to defend the
policy of the Russian government against the public opinion which was
hostile to it. Autocracy, Orthodoxy, Nationality--all these were held
so firmly in Russia that in the 'seventies when Dostoevsky began to
preach they needed no support whatever. And surely every one knows that
power never seriously reckons upon the help of literature. Certainly it
requires that the Muses should pay tribute to it with the others, nobly
formulating its demands in the words: _Blessed be the union of the
sword and the lyre._ It used to happen that the Muses did not refuse
the request, sometimes sincerely, sometimes because, as Heine said, it
is particularly disagreeable to wear iron chains in Russia, on account
of the heavy frosts. In any case the Muses were only allowed to sing
the praises of the sword, but by no means to wield it. There are all
kinds of unions. And here again Dostoevsky, for all his independent
nature, still appeared in the rôle of a prophet of the Russian
government: that is, he divined the secret devices of the powers
that were, and in this connection then recalled all the 'high and
beautiful' words which he had managed to hoard up in the course of his
long wanderings. For instance, the government began to cast covetous
glances towards the East (at that time the Near East still); Dostoevsky
begins to argue that we must have Constantinople, and to prophesy that
Constantinople will soon be ours. His 'argument' is, of course, of a
purely 'moral character,' and, sure enough, he is a writer. Only from
Constantinople, he says, can we make avail the purely Russian ideal
of embracing all humanity. Of course our government, though indeed
we had no Bismarcks, perfectly well understood the value of moral
argument and of prophecy based upon them, and would have preferred a
few well-equipped divisions and improved guns. To realist politicians
one single soldier, armed not with a gun but with a blunderbuss, is
of more importance than the sublimest conception of moral philosophy.
But still they do not drive away the humble prophet, if the prophet
knows his place. Dostoevsky accepted the rôle, since it gave him still
the opportunity of displaying his refractory nature in the struggle
with Liberal literature. He sang paeans, made protests, uttered
absurdities--and worse than absurdities. For instance, he counselled
all the Slav peoples to unite under the aegis of Russia, assuring
them that only thus would full independence be guaranteed them, and
the right of shaping themselves by their own culture, and so on--and
that in the face of the millions of Polish Slavs living in Russia. Or
again, the _Moscow Gazette_ gives its opinion that it would be well
for the Crimean Tartars to emigrate to Turkey, since it would then be
possible for Russians to settle in the peninsula. Dostoevsky catches up
this original idea with enthusiasm. 'Indeed,' he says, 'on political
and state and similar considerations'--I do not know how it is with
other people, but when I hear such words as 'state' and 'political'
on Dostoevsky's lips, I cannot help smiling--'it is necessary to expel
the Tartars and to settle Russians on their lands.' When the _Moscow
Gazette_ projects such a measure, it is intelligible. But Dostoevsky!
Dostoevsky who called himself a Christian, who so passionately preaches
love to one's neighbour, self-abasement, self-renunciation, who taught
that Russia must 'serve the nations'--how could he be taken with an
idea so rapacious? And indeed almost all his political ideas have the
mark of rapacity upon them: to grab and grab, and still to grab....
As the occasion demands, he now expresses the hope that we may have
Germany's friendship, and again threatens her; now he argues that we
have need of England, and again he asserts that we could do without
her,--just like a leader-writer in a _bien-pensant_ provincial paper.
One thing alone makes itself felt among all these ludicrous and
eternally contradictory assertions,--Dostoevsky understands nothing,
absolutely nothing, about politics, and moreover, he has nothing at all
to do with politics. He is forced to go in tow of others who, compared
with him, are utter nonentities, and he goes. Even his ambition--and he
had a colossal ambition, an ambition unique in its kind, as befitted
a universal man--suffers not one whit: chiefly because men expected
prophecy from him, because the next title to that of a great writer is
that of a prophet, and because a ring of conviction and a loud voice
are the signs of the prophetic gift. Dostoevsky could speak aloud: he
could also speak with the tone of one who knows secrets, and of one
with authority. One learns much in the underworld. All these things
served him. Men took the poet-laureate of the existing order for the
inspirer of thoughts and the governor of Russia's remotest destinies.
It was enough for Dostoevsky. It was even necessary for Dostoevsky. He
knew of course that he was no prophet; but he knew that there had never
been one on earth, and that those who were prophets had no better right
to the title than he.

I will permit myself to remind the reader of Tolstoi's letter to his
son, lately published by the latter in the newspapers. It is very
interesting. Once more, not from the standpoint of the practical man
who has to decide the questions of the day--from this standpoint
Tolstoi, Dostoevsky, and their similars are quite useless--but man does
not live by bread alone.

Even now in the terrible days through which we have to live, now, if
you will, more than ever before, one cannot read newspapers alone, nor
think only of the awful surprises which to-morrow prepares for us. To
every one is left an hour of leisure between the reading of newspapers
and party programmes, if it be not an hour in the day when the noise
of events and the pressure of immediate work distracts, then an hour
in the deep night, when everything that was possible has been already
done, and everything that was required has been said. Then come flying
in the old thoughts and questions, frightened away by business, and
for the thousandth time one returns to the mystery of human genius and
human greatness. Where and how far can genius know and accomplish more
than ordinary men?

Then Tolstoi's letter, which during the day aroused only anger and
indignation,--is it not outrageous and revolting, think some, that
in the great collision of forces which contend with one another in
Russia, Tolstoi cannot distinguish the right force from the wrong, but
stigmatises all the struggling combatants by the one name of ungodly?
During the day, I say, it is surely outrageous: in the daytime we would
like Tolstoi to be with us and for us, because we are convinced that
we and we alone are seeking the truth,--nay, that we know the truth,
while our enemies are defending evil and falsehood, whether in malice
or in ignorance. But this is during the day. In the night-time, things
are changed. One remembers that Goethe also overlooked, simply did not
notice, the great French Revolution. True, he was a German who lived
far from Paris, while Tolstoi lives close to Moscow, where men, women,
and children have been shot, cut down, and burnt alive. Moreover,
there is no doubt that Tolstoi has overlooked not merely Moscow, but
everything that went before Moscow. What is happening now does not seem
to him important or extraordinary. For him only that is important to
which he, Tolstoi, has set his hand: all that occurs outside and beside
him, for him has no existence. This is the great prerogative of great
men. And sometimes it seems to me--perhaps it is only that I would have
it seem so--as though there were in that prerogative a deep and hidden
meaning.

When we have no more strength in us to listen to the endless tales
of horrible atrocities which have already been committed, and to
anticipate in imagination all that the future holds in store for us,
then we recall Tolstoi and his indifference. It is not in our human
power to return the murdered fathers and mothers to the children nor
the children to their fathers and mothers. Nor stands it even in our
power to revenge ourselves upon the murderers, nor will vengeance
reconcile every one to his loss. And we try no longer to think with
logic, and to seek a justification of the horrors there where there is
and can be none. What if we ask ourselves whether Tolstoi and Goethe
did not sec the Revolution and did not suffer its pain, only because
they saw something else, something, it may even be, more necessary and
important? Maybe there are indeed more things in heaven and earth than
are dreamed of in our philosophy.

Now we may return to Dostoevsky and his 'ideas'; we may call them
fearlessly by the names which they deserve, for though Dostoevsky is
a writer of genius, this does not mean that we must forget our daily
needs. The night and the day have each their rights. Dostoevsky wanted
to be a prophet, he wanted people to listen to him and cry 'Hosanna!'
because, I say again, he thought that if men had ever cried 'Hosanna!'
to any one, then there was no reason why he, Dostoevsky, should be
denied the honour. That is the reason why in the 'seventies he made his
appearance in the new rôle of a preacher of Christianity, and not of
Christianity merely, but of orthodoxy.

Again, I would draw attention to the far from accidental circumstances
that his preaching coincided with the 'serenest' period of his life. He
who had in time past been a homeless wanderer, a poor man who had not
where to lay his head, had provided himself with a family and a house
of his own, even with money (for his wife was saving). The failure
had become a celebrity; the convict a full citizen. The underworld,
where-into his fate had but lately driven him, it might seem for ever,
now appeared to him a phantasmagoria which never had been real. In the
galleys and the underworld had been born within him a great hunger for
God which lived long; there he fought a great fight, the fight of life
against death; there for the first time were made the new and awful
experiments which allied Dostoevsky with everything that is rebellious
and restless on earth. What Dostoevsky wrote during the closing years
of his life (not merely _The Journal of an Author,_ but _The Brothers
Karamazov_ as well) has value only in so far as Dostoevsky's _past_
is reflected therein. He made no new step onwards. As he was, so he
remained, on the eve of a great truth. But in the old days that did
not suffice him, he hungered for something beyond; but now he does not
want to struggle, and he cannot explain to himself or to others what is
really happening within him. He pretends to be struggling still, nay,
more, he behaves as though he had won the final victory, and demands
that his triumph should be acknowledged by public opinion. He loves to
think that the night is already past and the actual day begun: and the
galleys and the underworld, reminding him that the day is not yet, are
no more. All the evidences of a complete illusion of victory seem to
be there--let him only choose the text and preach! Dostoevsky clutched
at orthodoxy. Why not Christianity? Because Christianity is not for
him who has a house, a family, money, fame, and a father-land. Christ
said: 'Let him leave all that he hath and follow me.' But Dostoevsky
was afraid of solitude, he desired to be the prophet of modern, settled
men to whom pure Christianity, unadapted to the needs of civilised
existence in a governed state, is unfitted. How should a Christian
seize Constantinople, drive out the Tartars from the Crimea, reduce
all Slavs to the condition of the Poles, and the rest--for all the
projects of Dostoevsky and the _Moscow Gazette_ defy enumeration? So,
before accepting the Gospel, he must explain it....

However strange it may appear, it must be confessed that one cannot
find in the whole of literature a single man who is prepared to accept
the Gospel as a whole, without interpretation. One man wants to seize
Constantinople according to the Gospel, another to justify the existing
order, a third to exalt himself or to thrust down his enemy; and each
considers it as his right to diminish from, or even to supplement,
the text of Holy Writ. I have, of course, only those in view who
acknowledge, at least in word, the divine origin of the New Testament;
since he who sees in the Gospel only one of the more or less remarkable
books of his library, naturally has the right to subject it to whatever
critical operations he may choose.

But here we have Tolstoi, Dostoevsky, and Vladimir Soloviev. It is
generally believed, and the belief is particularly supported and
developed by the most recent criticism, that Tolstoi alone rationalised
Christianity, while Dostoevsky and Soloviev accepted it in all the
fullness of its mysticism, denying reason the right to separate
truth from falsehood in the Gospel. I consider this belief mistaken:
for Dostoevsky and Soloviev were afraid to accept the Gospel as the
fountain of knowledge, and relied much more upon their own reason and
their experience of life than upon the words of Christ. But, if there
was a man among us who, though but in part, took the risk of accepting
the mysterious and obviously dangerous words of the Gospel precepts,
that man was Leo Tolstoi. I will explain myself.

We are told that Tolstoi made the attempt, in his works published
abroad, to explain the miracles of the Gospel in a way intelligible
to human reason. Dostoevsky and Soloviev, on the other hand, readily
accepted the inexplicable. But generally the miracles of the Gospel
attract the people who believe least, for it is impossible to repeat
the miracles, and this being so, then it follows that a merely external
faith is sufficient, a mere verbal assertion. A man says that he
believes in miracles: 'his reputation as a religious man is made, both
in his own mind and in others', and as for the rest of the Gospel,
there remains 'interpretation.' Consider, for instance, the doctrine
of non-resistance to evil. It need not be said that the doctrine of
non-resistance is the most terrible, and the most irrational, and
mysterious thing that we read in the Gospel. All our reasoning soul is
indignant at the thought that full material freedom should be given
to the murderer to accomplish his murderous acts. How can you allow a
murderer to kill an innocent child before your very eyes, and yet not
draw the sword? Who has the right to give that abominable precept?
Soloviev[3] and Dostoevsky alike repeat that question, the one in a
disguised, the other in an open attack on Tolstoi. Yet since the
Gospel plainly declares 'Resist not evil,' both of our believers in
miracles have suddenly remembered reason and turned to its testimony,
knowing that reason will naturally destroy any meaning whatever that
may be in the precept. In other words, they repeat the question of
the doubting Jews concerning Christ: 'Who is He that speaketh as one
having authority?' God commanded Abraham that he should offer up his
son. By his reason, his human reason, Abraham refused to acknowledge
any intelligible meaning in the cruel command, but yet made ready to
act according to the word of God and made no attempt to rid himself
of the hard and inhuman obligation by cunning interpretation. But
Dostoevsky and Soloviev refuse to fulfil Christ's demands so soon as
they find no justification in the human reason. Yet they say that they
believe that Lazarus was raised from the dead and that the man who
was sick of a palsy was cured, and all the other miracles which are
related by the Apostles. Why then does their belief end just at the
point where it begins to place obligations upon them? Why the sudden
recourse to reason, when we know exactly that Dostoevsky came to the
Gospels only to be rid of the power of reason? But that was in the
days of the underworld. Now the 'serene' period of his life has begun.
But Soloviev, evidently, had never even known the underworld. Only
Tolstoi boldly and resolutely tries to test the truth of the Christian
teaching, not in his thoughts alone, but in part in his life also.
From the human point of view it is mad to make no resistance to evil.
He knows that every whit as well as Dostoevsky, Soloviev and the rest
of his many opponents. But he is really seeking in the Gospels that
divine madness, since human reason does not satisfy him. Tolstoi began
to follow the Gospel in that clouded period of his life when he was
haunted by the phantoms of Ivan Ilyich and Pozdnyshiev. Here belief in
miracles, belief in the abstract, divorced from life, avails nothing.
For belief's sake one must surrender all that is dearest--even a
son--to the sacrifice. Who is He that spake as one having authority?
We cannot now verify whether He did in truth raise Lazarus from the
dead, or satisfy thousands with a few handfuls of loaves. But if we
unhesitatingly perform His precepts, then we may discover whether He
has given us the truth.... So it was with Tolstoi; and he turned to
the Gospel which is the sole and original source of Christianity.
But Dostoevsky turned to the Slavophiles and the teachings of their
state-religion. Orthodoxy infallible, not Catholicism nor Protestantism
nor even simple Christianity; and then, the original idea: _Russland,
Russland über alles._ Tolstoi could prophesy nothing in history, but
then, as if deliberately, he does not interfere with the historical
life. For him our present reality does not exist: he concentrates
himself wholly upon the riddle which God set Abraham. But Dostoevsky
desired at all costs to prophesy, prophesied constantly and was
constantly mistaken. We have not taken Constantinople, we have not
united the Slavs, and even the Tartars still live in the Crimea. He
terrified us by prophesying that Europe would be drenched in rivers
of blood because of the warfare between the classes, while in Russia,
thanks to our Russian ideal of universal humanity, not only would our
internal problems be peacefully solved, but a new unheard-of word would
still be found whereby we should save hapless Europe. A quarter of
a century has passed. So far nothing has happened in Europe. But we
are drowning ourselves, literally drowning ourselves, with blood. Not
only is our alien population oppressed, Slav and non-Slav alike, but
our own brother is tortured, the miserable starving Russian peasant
who understands nothing at all. In Moscow, in the heart of Russia,
women, children, and old men have been shot down. Where now is the
Russian universal soul of which Dostoevsky prophesied in his speech on
Pushkin? Where is love, where are the Christian precepts? We see only
'Governmentalism,' over which the Western nations also fought; but they
fought with means less cruel and less hostile to civilisation. Russia
will again have to learn from the West as she had to learn more than
once before. And Dostoevsky would have done far better had he never
attempted to prophesy.

But there is no great harm done even if he did prophesy. I am glad
with all my heart even now that he rested a little while from the
galleys at the end of his life. I am deeply convinced that even had he
remained in the underworld until the day of his death, yet he would
have found no solution of the questions which tormented him. However
much energy of soul a man puts into his work, he will still remain 'on
the eve' of truth, and will not find the solution he desires. That is
the law of human kind. And Dostoevsky's preaching has done no harm.
Those listened to him who, even without his voice, would have marched
on Constantinople, oppressed the Poles, and made ready the sufferings
which are necessary to the soul of the peasant. Though Dostoevsky gave
them his sanction, on the whole he adds nothing to them. They had no
need of literary sanction, quite correctly judging that in practical
matters not the printed page, but bayonets and artillery are of
deciding value.

All that he had to tell, Dostoevsky told us in his novels, which even
now, twenty-five years after his death, attract all those who would
wrest from life her secrets. And the title of prophet, which he sought
so diligently, considering that it was his by right, did not suit him
at all. Prophets are Bismarcks, but they are Chancellors too. The
first in the village is the first in Rome.... Is a Dostoevsky doomed
eternally to be 'on the eve'? Let us once more try to reject logic,
this time perhaps not logic alone, and say: 'So let it be.'

[Footnote 3: _War and Christianity,_ by Vladimir Soloviev.]

PENULTIMATE WORDS

_De omnibus dubitandum_

There are but few orthodox Hegelians left among philosophers nowadays,
yet Hegel is still supreme over the minds of our contemporaries. It
may even be that certain of his ideas have taken deeper root nowadays
than when Hegelianism was in full bloom: for instance, the conception
that history is the unfolding of the idea in reality, or, to put it
more briefly and in terms more familiar to the modern mind--the idea of
progress. Try to convince an educated person of the contrary: you are
sure to be worsted. But, _de omnibus dubitandum,_ which means in other
words, that doubt is called upon to fulfil its mission above all in
those cases where a conviction is particularly strong and unshakable.
Therefore one must admit, whether he will or no, that progress so
called--the development of mankind in time--is a fiction.

We have wireless telegraphy, radium and the rest, yet we stand no
higher than the Romans or the Greeks of old. You admit this? Then,
one step further: although we have wireless telegraphy and all the
other blessings of civilisation, still we stand no higher than red-or
black-skinned savages. You protest: but the principle compels. You
began to doubt: then what is the use of drawing back?

For myself, I must confess that the idea of the spiritual perfection
of savages entered my mind but lately, when, for the first time for
many years, I looked through the works of Tylor, Lubbock and Spencer.
They speak with such certainty of the advantages of our spiritual
organisation, and have such sincere contempt for the moral misery
of the savage, that in spite of myself stole in the thought: Is it
not exactly here, where all are so certain that no one ever examines
the question, that the source of error is to be found? High time to
recall Descartes and his rule! And as soon as I began to doubt, all my
former certainty--of course I fully shared the opinion of the English
anthropologists--disappeared in a moment.... It began to appear that
the savage indeed is higher and more important than our savants,
and not our materialists only, as Professor Paulsen thinks, but our