how to read and understand Chekhov?
One of the main reasons why I started this blog on Medium was because I wanted to help people understand complicated texts of Russian literature. I wrote a post about keys to Nabokov’s texts, and this post I want to devote to Chekhov. When I read Chekhov’s dramas in school I felt that these were great texts, but frankly speaking I also felt that I was unable to make head or tail of them… In this text I will share some characteristic features of Chekhov’s poetic knowledge that can ease the understanding of his dramas for you.
Let’s go!
Absence of the major event
Thanks to classical literature we got used to the fact that there happens one main event in a drama. A death of the hero, somebody’s wedding, a duel, you name it. But Chekhov’s dramas stand out of the canon in this sense, because in his texts no great events happen. Well, actually there are episodes which claim to be events: in every Chekhov’s drama somebody dies; in the «Cherry Orchard» there is an orchard auctioned off; and in the «Three Sisters» a duel happens. But all these events do not become the center of the drama. The event is obscured, often it even happens behind the scenes (like the duel in the «Three Sisters» and the sale of the orchard in the «Cherry Orchard»).
It happens so, because in Chekhov’s plays everyday life is equal to (or even more important than) any major event.
Chekhov depicts not an event, he depicts the ordinary life which is the sphere of the life drama as such. The basic of his dramas is the daily life.
Undercurrents
This is a term which was suggested by one of the researchers of Chekhov’s texts (Skaftymov) and which describes specifics of construction of Chekhov’s drama. It means, that the word in Chekhov’s drama acquires a special feature: what heroes say or do carries only a part of the integral meaning. The other part (bigger one) is hidden between the lines and the reader has to decipher it himself [3].
For example, in the «Three Sisters» there is an episode in which Masha is talking to Chebutykin about her mother:
Masha. Nothing… (Sits down) A pause. Were you in love with my mother?
Chebutykin. Very much.
Masha. And did she love you?
Chebutykin (after a pause) I don’t remember [2].
Behind short words which they exchange there is deep meaning hidden. Masha is asking Chebutykin, because she is thinking if she can find support for her illicit love. Chebutykin loved her mother, who was a married woman, and now Masha loves Vershinin — a married man, and she is also a married woman herself. She wants to know how the relationship between Chebutykin and her mother developed, because she wants to clarify how she should behave. Chebutykin probably understands her intention. And the pause which he takes before answering Masha is the time during which he figures all this out and refuses to answer.
This is how the «undercurrent» works. It requires constant reader’s analysis and attention, because several short replicas might imply long and deep dialogues, which were just not verbalized.
Disintegration of the plot
It is so difficult to perceive Chekhov’s texts partly because the play is split into episodes which are loosely related to each other. When you read them it seems like there is no plot at all and the reader struggles to understand the connections between separated scenes.
There is a plot in Chekhov’s text, but it is organized as a punctuation of related cause-effect events and these events often do not have consequences.
For example, in «Uncle Vanya» there is an episode at the very end of the third act when Voynitsky shoots Serebryakov thinking that professor is his main enemy, because he ruined his life. A shot in a play normally can not pass without any effect, because it is an event and an extremely important one. But in Chekhov’s play it has no consequences, no effect: after the shot Voynitsky and Serebryakov just shake hands and decide that everything will stay the course.
Such episodes might confuse readers, but when reading them one should remember, that such things as shot in Chekhov’s poetics are not considered to be events. So it is the everyday life depicted in the play that we should pay more attention to, but not the episodes which would have been considered events in dramas before Chekhov.
There are also a lot of details in his plays which fragment the action, cause reader’s confusion and complicate the reading process if you do not know how to approach them. For example, in the «Seagull» Masha (one of the characters) mentions, that her foot has gone to sleep. This replica might blow the reader’s mind if he tries to figure out which secret role this fact plays in the text. But it does not play any. The function of words like these in Chekhov’s dramas is not to bring some special sense to the course of action, but to provide the feeling of the real life which is manifested in these replicas. We act like this in our everyday life — and so do the characters of Chekhov’s plays.
Symbolic details
There are many episodes, words and naturalistic items in Chekhov’s dramas which acquire symbolic meaning in the text. Chekhov often balances on the edge of realism and symbolism.
It means, that the same object or event has two functions at the same time — realistic and metaphorical one.
For example, you might have noticed that in the «Cherry Orchard» the sound of bursting string was mentioned several times in different acts. It is not a coincidence, of course. On the one hand, there is a very realistic explanation of this sound: in the text it is mentioned that somewhere far in the mines a bucket broke (it might have created this sound). On the other hand, there is a symbolic explanation: this sound symbolizes that the link of times was torn. The sound creates a special mood in the play — mood of anxiety and fear, of the feeling that great life changes are around the corner.
That is how Chekhov’s symbols work — one can always find several explanations to some facts of his plays, of which one will be an ordinary, lifelike and the other one will be metaphorical, will act as a symbol.
Communication gaps
One more feature of Chekhov’s texts which makes his dramas so difficult to understand is the communication breakdown, which consistently happens among the characters. Specifics of the dialogues in Chekhov’s plays is characterized by dislocation, inconsistency and roughness of the thematic lines. When reading for example the «Cherry Orchard» one can get confused at the sight of many disparate replicas of different characters that are supposed to be conducting a dialogue, while in fact they seem like talking not to each other, but to themselves.
For example, one of the characters interrupts the topic which another character has just brought up:
Varya. Two telegrams came for you, mama. (Chooses a key and with a ringing noise opens the old bookcase) Here they are.
Lubov Andreevna. From Paris… (Tears up the telegrams without reading them) I’m through with Paris…
Gaev. Do you know how old this bookcase is, Luba? Last week I pulled out the lower drawer, I look, there are numbers burnt into it. This bookcase was made exactly a hundred years ago. How about that? Eh? We could celebrate its jubilee. It’s an inanimate object, but still, all the same, it’s a bookcase [1].
In this episode Gaev interrupts Ranevsky’s replica voicing his own thoughts, which have no connection with Ranevsky’s troubles.
Sometimes it happens so, that the interlocutor does not want to continue on the topic and avoids the straight answer:
Lopakhin. You’ve got to decide once and for all — time is running out. The question is simple. Do you agree to lease the land for the construction of summer houses or do you not? Answer in one word: yes or no? Just one word!
Lubov Andreevna. Who’s been smoking disgusting cigars here? (Sits down)
Gaev. They’ve built the railroad, and it’s become convenient. (Sits down) Rode into town and had lunch… yellow into the side! I’d like to go home first and play one game…
Lubov Andreevna. There’s no rush.
Lopakhin. Just one word! Give me an answer!
Gaev. (Yawning) Whoso!
Lubov Andreevna (Looking into her purse) Yesterday there was a lot of money, and today there’s so little. My poor Varya saves money feeding everybody milk soup, in the kitchen the old folks get nothing but peas, and I waste money somehow senselessly… (She drops her purse, gold coins spill out) Go on, scatter… (She is annoyed) [1].
In this episode Lubov Andreevna obviously avoids giving a straight answer to Lopakhin’s question, because it seems impossible for her to sell the orchard.
There are also such replicas or actions which the characters keep repeating in different dialogues and which function like communicative irritants. These include for example, Gaev’s replicas about billiard which are always out of place (the «Cherry Orchard») or Masha’s habit of smelling tobacco during a conversation (the «Seagull») [4].
The examples could be multiplied. There are many, many other ways in which Chekhov depicts not only mechanical, but also emotional, inner obstacles for communication between characters. This specifics of dialogue explicates the idea, that the only interlocutor that Chekhov’s character has constant emotional interest to is — his own self. A hero is happy when the interlocutor «returns» him his own thoughts and gives him a feeling of his own rightness. While replicas of characters which have nothing to do with the major line of the dialogue mostly represent autocommunication. These words, meaningless for other heroes, verbalize the thoughts of the character to his own self [4].
Everyone’s life seems to be doubled . When communicating with others a hero lives only one part of his life, while things which are internally perceived as the most important and precious for him turn our to be superfluous, of no use to anyone [3].
Chekhov’s heroes usually face a sad choice: they can either make contact and lose themselves or refuse to communicate [4].
In this way Chekhov explicates the idea of the insufficiency of different sign systems which exist in our lives, of their clash and collapse. He shows us the world in which people do not want to understand each other, the world in which communication is subject to a fatal compulsion.
This is the function of the techniques I described earlier.
Genre
When you read Chekhov there might one more problem occur — the genre of his plays. The «Cherry Orchard» and the «Seagull» were defined by the author as comedies. This definition may seem absolutely crazy for the reader, because in both plays very unhappy things happen and some heroes even die. What is so funny about this, one may ask.
First, there are characters in Chekhov’s plays that act comically. For example, in the «Cherry Orchard» those are Charlotta and Simeonov-Pishchik. They are not clowns although, because each of them has his own inner tragedy. But still in some episodes they act comically (for example, Charlotta eating a cucumber in the second act).
Second, comicality can be understood differently. As we have just discovered, in Chekhov’s plays heroes fail to build a normal communication and this itself may seem funny in some episodes. Although it is more about combination of laughter and tears than about pure comicality, of course.
So what I am supposed to do with all this?!
Now the most interesting part: how all these features of Chekhov’s texts are supposed to turn into something that makes sense?
The thing is, Chekhov’s dramas are about the time which passes by. About unfulfilled hopes which are being killed by this time. His dramas show people who have no perspectives, who wasted the best years of their lives and who now feel only the naked horror in front of the trap in which they ended up and from which there is no way out.
Chekhov sees the ongoing drama of life not in special fatal events, but in the ordinary everyday course of life [1].
The bitterness and the tragedy of people’s lives is not in a particular sad event, but in the long ordinary monochromatic day-to-day state. They are constantly unhappy. All of them. It happens, because there is a huge gap between what they dream about and what they actually have. And the origin of the conflict is not an evil, hostile desire of some other people (as it used to be in drama before Chekhov). The origin of the conflict and people’s unhappiness is in the set of circumstances. In the way of life, if you wish [1].
The mass of everyday things envelops man, he flops in them and cannot fight them off. The characters of Chekhov’s dramas are yearning for happiness, they wish to live some other life, not the one they are living (so familiar for us even 100 years later, isn’t it?..). They do not quite know what kind of happiness they want, but they feels an emotional desire which can not be brought to life. These lofty desires are countered by everyday life in its present state which appears in Chekhov’s texts as something poor, boring and dull [1].
Everybody is unhappy, but there is no one to blame for this, everybody wants to escape the stuffy boring life they live, but they can’t.
That is why by the way I consider Chekhov’s texts to be more frightening than Dostoevsky’s.
I hope, these tips will make Chekhov’s dramas clearer for you! Now when you know the main techniques he used and the way they work in the play, you can read his dramas differently, paying attention to these features and reflexing on how they influence the meaning of each episode and the text in the whole.
P.
Literature:
- Chekhov A. The Cherry Orchard. New York, 2015. 287 p.
- Chekhov A. Three Sisters. London, 2014. 100 p.
- Skaftymov A. P. Moral Quests of Russian Writers. Moscow, 1972. 274 p.
- Stepanov A. D. Communications Issues in Chekhov’s texts. Moscow, 2005. 400 p.
