Chekhov : scenes from a life

This is exactly what Chekhov did. Over the course of his career, he deftly tailored each piece according to the publication in which he placed it, continuing to write in a wide range of styles for a vaj lety of different audiences.³³

With the publication of 'The Steppe' in The Northern Messenger m February 1888, Chekhov became a star in Russia's Mterary world. The seal of approval from a fat journal meant a great deal to b^;m, despite his professions of nonchalance: witness the unusually long period of writer's block he suffered before sitting down to write the story. And his star began to burn even more brightly when he was awarded the Imperial Academy of Sconce's Pushkin Prize for Literature that year. Writing to his brother Alexander who had been talking to Suvorin, Chekhov was incredulous to hear the news as early as the previous October that he might be awarded the рз ize, thinking that his colleague Korolenko was more deserving; he also reckoned his association with New Times was sufficient to rule him out of the contest.³⁴ But Suvorin had a hand in the affair and was rightly confident about the outcome. The price of all the fame, of course, was criticism. After his first forays to the capital, Chekhov began making regular visits to Petersburg during the w nter months, and the adulation he now received was both bemusing and intoxicating. His collection, Motley Tales, had made him famous. He was the most fashionable writer in Petersburg, he boasted to his uncle in January 1887 following his most recent visit; his stories were read out at soirees, people pointed him out to each other wherever he went, everyone wanted to make his acquaintance, and critics were writing about his work.³⁵

The first few reviews of his stories were a major event, not only for Chekhov but his whole family, particularly when they praised him to the skies. Wth the publication of Motley Tales in May 1886, however, began a rising tide of critical opinion in the capital's press which was less favourable. Chekhov had to learn to deal with a particular phalanx of Petersburg critics who were confounded by the absence of any kind of ideological freight in his work, and were offended by the unorthodox trajectory of his ¹iterary career. In a country where the word 'writer' had often been synonymous with the word 'martyr , there was something almost indecent to the older generation about the rise of a young Turk via the pages of cheap coro'c journals, particularly when he was clearly not prepared to pay obeisance to the usual shibboleths and :>ut his terary talent to the service of fighting moral causes. Motley Tales was the first collection by Chekhov to receive serious attention in the national press. It was also reviewed in the serious literary journals, and the anonymous critic for The Northern Messenger spared no punches. A'exander Skabichevsky (for it was he, a former associate of National Annals) characterized Chekhov as a clown, who would wither away Ы complete oblivion under a fence like a squeezed lemon. His book, meanwhile, represented the 'tragic spectacle of a young talent committing suicide'.³⁶ Chekhov was so wounded by this review that he could never quite forget it, but the Populist critics like Skabichevsky became so predictable in their attacks on his work for ts apparent lack of ideals, that the only sane response was to laugh.

Critics were also disconcerted by Chekhov's reluctance to align himself w^;th any particular group. The formation of factions and opposing spnnter groups, and the ensuing passionate debate over differing principles, has always been a characteristic phenomenon in Russian soc ety - not only in the literary sphere, but across the board. You could almost say it was an inbuilt part of national cultural identity. Engagement was expected a prior. But Chekhov refused to play the game; in fact he confounded everybody, as he did in almost every area of his life. The compassionate, liberal-minded young writer aLgned himself (if he aligned himself with anyone at all) not with a group, but with one person - a right-wing newspaper tycoon twice his age. He loathed partiinost, the idea of being a member of a group or a partv ('partiinost', which also means 'party spirit', later became a byword in Communist vocabulary), as he made abundantly clear, and perhaps just a touch tactlessly, to the literary editor of The Northern Messenger in January 1888-

Our fat journals are all dominated by dull groups and cliques. It's suffocating! I don't like the fat journals because of that, and it does not make me want to write for them. Being a member of a group, especially if t's arid and lacking in talent, is incompatible with freedom and the grand scale.³⁷

This was the nomadic, southern Chekhov speaking, the Chekhov who had spent the previous summer roam'ng the steppe. He did not want to be pinned down.

Notwithstanding the occasional friction caused by inhospitable reviews, Chekhov loved going to St Petersburg. His visits to the capital meant leaving his duties and responsibilities behind ^;n Moscow, and travelling to a sophist. :ated and cosmopolitan city where he was wined and dined and could devote his time completely to literary business. It was like going on holiday. 'Piter is magnificent,' he wrote to his family from the capital in December 1887; 'I feel like I'm in seventh heaven. The streets, the cabbies, the food - every th'ng is excellent, and there are so many clever and decent people, you can just take your pick.'³⁸ Sometimes there were outings to the Maj.lnsky to hear the occa^onal opera or concert, and there were also visits to the latest exhibitions and to artists' studios, and frequent trips to the theatre. In March 1891 Chekhov and Suvorin went to see the great Italian actress Eleonora Duse perform in Antony and Cleopatra at the Maly Theatre on the Fontanka during her Russian tour. This was the new independent theatre which Suvorin would take over in 1895 ('Maly' - small - was a misnomer; it had over a thousand seats). The fact that Chekhov wrote so few letters during his Petersburg visits says a lot about the frenetic social life he led there; it also means we actually know comparatively little about what he actually got up to.

While Chekhov looked forward particularly to spending time with Suvorin during his visits to Petersburg, he also enjoyed his meetings with the numerous friends he made in the city. He initiated annual dinners for writers at the Maly Yaroslavets on Bolshaya Morskaya Street (another restaurant which specialized in Russian cuisine), but after the rowdy nightlife of Moscow dining establishments, the more sedate socializing that Petersburg writers generally engaged in at home in their drawing rooms provided an agreeable change. And from the end of 1886, he e^en had family in the city: his elder brother Alexander had moved to the capital with his family and taken up employment with Suvorin as a journalist on New Times. Alexander was able to write and tell Anton what was going on the city, part cularly with regard to his brother's affairs (as ) i June 188/, when he let him know that his story 'Fortune' was still bemg read in cafes along Nevsky Prospekt a week after publication).³⁹ He was also able to carry out useful errands for his brother from time to time. In return, Chekhov provided occasional medical care, on one occasion umping on the first train to Petersburg when there was a typhoid scare.⁴⁰

Suvorin assumed that Chekhov himself would soon move to Petersburg, where most writers indeed naturally gravitated. During hL first meeting with Alexander in January 1887, he baldly declared that Moscow was no place for a 'thinking person'.⁴¹ Chekhov also toyed for a long time with the tnought of moving to Petersburg,⁴² but it was more an escapist fantasy than anything else. As someone with incipient tuberculosis, the city's notoriously damp climate meant he could never ser ously contemplate moving north. Also, he was a dutiful son, and felt an obligation to look after his impoverished parents, so he had to content himself with short trips of a few weeks' duration. Although his longest visit, in 1893, lasted a month, Petersburg never occupied the place n his affections that Moscow did. His ambivalent feelings about the city, which stemmed partially from becoming the subiect of ncessant gossip, became more pronounced after the disastrous production of his play The Seagull in 1896. St Petersburg may have been the centre of Russian intellectual life, but there was a coldness to it which Chekhov did not like.