February 1887
Creativity—that state when ideas seem to organize themselves into a swift, tightly woven flow, with a feeling of gorgeous clarity and meaning emerging—seems to me physiologically distinctive, and I think if we had the ability to make fine enough brain images, these would show an unusual and widespread activity with innumerable connections and synchronizations occurring. At such times, when I am writing, thoughts seem to organize themselves in spontaneous succession and to clothe themselves instantly in appropriate words. I feel I can bypass or transcend much of my own personality, my neuroses. It is at once not me and the innermost part of me, certainly the best part of me.
—Dr. Oliver Sacks, “The Creative Self”1
Chekhov’s money problems were not disappearing. At the beginning of February Anton was scolding Alexander about a missing ruble or two in the last dispatch.2
On February 2nd, both Alexander and Leykin wrote Chekhov to let him know he had been officially elected to the Literary Fund.
“Polinka” (“Polin’ka,” February 2) is one of Chekhov’s few love stories of 1887. It is a model of simple design. Polinka is a dressmaker who has recently left behind her admirer, the fabric shopman Nikolay Timofeich, for a student of medicine or law. She has come to the store to order materials she and her mother need for their clients’ dresses and to wonder about the cessation of Nikolay’s friendly visits. Because he is working, they must discuss their relationship while she shops:
“The black’s from eighty kopecks and the colored from two and a half rubles. I shall never come and see you again,” Nikolay Timofeich adds in an undertone.
“Why?”
“Why? It’s very simple. You must understand that yourself. Why should I distress myself? It’s a queer business! Do you suppose it’s a pleasure to me to see that student carrying on with you? I see it all and I understand. Ever since autumn he’s been hanging about you and you go for a walk with him almost every day; and when he is with you, you gaze at him as though he were an angel. You are in love with him; there’s no one to beat him in your eyes. Well, all right, then, it’s no good talking.”
Polinka remains dumb and moves her finger on the counter in embarrassment.
“I see it all,” the shopman goes on. “What inducement have I to come and see you? I’ve got some pride. It’s not everyone likes to play gooseberry. What was it you asked for?”
“Mamma told me to get a lot of things, but I’ve forgotten. I want some feather trimming, too.”
“What kind would you like?”3
Chekhov describes a situation that cannot be happily resolved. What Nikolay wants, he cannot have. What Polinka wants, Nikolay’s former regard and friendship, she cannot have. Neither wants to be miserable and both are, and we understand it perfectly and sympathize with both:
“I want… I want… size forty-eight centimetres. Only she wanted one, lined… with real whalebone… I must talk to you, Nikolay Timofeich. Come today!”
“Talk? What about? There’s nothing to talk about.”
“You are the only person who… cares about me, and I’ve no one to talk to but you.”
“These are not reed or steel, but real whalebone…. What is there for us to talk about? It’s no use talking…. You are going for a walk with him today, I suppose?”
“Yes; I… I am.”
“Then what’s the use of talking? Talk won’t help…. You are in love, aren’t you?”
“Yes…” Polinka whispers hesitatingly, and big tears gush from her eyes.
Though in tears during this painful interaction, Polinka will no doubt be happy when she takes her afternoon walk with the student.
There are no happy love stories in Chekhov’s fiction, but there are plenty of comic ones, and of them this is one of his most touching.
Pushkin, on the other hand, did write at least one happy love story (“The Amateur Peasant-Girl”), and the biggest publishing sensation of 1887 was Suvorin’s publishing company’s edition of Pushkin’s collected works. Even today, Pushkin’s works unapologetically include his unfinished works, marvelous drafts of what would have or could have been marvelous complete pieces. Pushkin really was lazy. More brilliant, an even greater writer of short fiction than Chekhov, but a hundred times lazier! The publication of this edition marked the fiftieth anniversary of his death from injuries that he sustained in a duel over his wife’s honor.
On the 3rd or 4th of February Anton wrote to ask Alexander to get him twenty copies of the Pushkin edition, as they had all been sold out in Moscow. But the publication was so popular that Alexander discovered Petersburg’s booksellers were also sold out. Chekhov would soon learn that not even Suvorin himself could get Chekhov any copies for now.
Having written a Fragments story, “Inadvertence,” Chekhov was proud of himself when he wrote Leykin on the 8th: “The whole day I was interrupted writing it, but all the same I wrote it…. I’m beginning to get back to normal and I’m working more regularly than in January.” It was the middle of winter, but, wrote Chekhov, “It smells of spring. You’ll soon leave for Tosna, but where I’ll be in summer is unknown to me.”
Why he didn’t want to return to Babkino and the Kiselevs’ estate is not clear, but when alternatives did not pan out, the family ended up there in May anyway.
*
How many drunks are there in Chekhov? No one, as far as I know, has counted, but they are not rare. In “Drunk” (“P’yanie,” February 9), a rich, self-loathing man and his lawyer are dining at a restaurant after a ball. The rich man asks rhetorically: “Why is it […] that people don’t invent some other pleasure besides drunkenness and debauchery?” He drunkenly insults the waitstaff, the musicians, and his companion. He wretchedly declares that he hates his wife:
“What for?”
“I don’t know myself! I’ve only been married two years. I married as you know for love, and now I hate her like a mortal enemy, like this parasite here, saving your presence. And there is no cause, no sort of cause! When she sits by me, eats, or says anything, my whole soul boils, I can scarcely restrain myself from being rude to her. It’s something one can’t describe. To leave her or tell her the truth is utterly impossible because it would be a scandal, and living with her is worse than hell for me. I can’t stay at home! I spend my days at business and in the restaurants and spend my nights in dissipation. Come, how is one to explain this hatred? She is not an ordinary woman, but handsome, clever, quiet.”4
That he hates his wife is not the cause of his wretchedness, seemingly, just a byproduct of it.
Nothing satisfies him. He goes on to admit that once he got the idea into his head that his wife married him for his money, he could not shake it: “I keep fancying I am being flattered for my money. I trust no one! I am a difficult man, my boy, very difficult!” He is proud of his obnoxiousness, and his pride is that he knows it and announces it. The most important thing about “Drunk” is that the director Josef Heifitz included two events from it in his superb 1960 film version of Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Dog.”
Despite his unhappiness with Maria Kiseleva’s criticism of “Mire,” Chekhov followed through, as he said he would, in submitting her story “Larka-Gerkules” to Suvorin on February 10 for New Times. He was still humble, careful, and polite with Suvorin, which means they weren’t quite friends yet. He explained in apology about his own work that “All January I was sick, lazy and wrote nonsense.”5 He told him he was planning to go south at the end of March. “There, I think, the work will go with more liveliness.” He added that his friends and acquaintances were seeking out the Pushkin edition and so he had been asked by them to ask Suvorin about it. By the end of 1887, Chekhov would be writing Suvorin more directly and comfortably and amusingly.