Reading Chekhov

Although the tone of the Jacksonian critics could not be quieter or more gentlemanly (or ladylike, as the case may be), Chekhov might well have found their readings intimidating. He would surely marvel at Julie de Sherbinin's reading of "The Teacher of Literature"-a story about a young man's idealization of and subsequent disillusionment with his wife-as a symbolic evocation of the two Marys of Russian Orthodoxy: the virgin mother of God and the harlot Mary of Egypt. And at Alexandar Mihailovic's reading of "Ionich"-a story about the decline of a conscientious, progressive-minded young district doctor with a tendency toward plumpness, into a corpulent monster of avarice and misanthropy-as a fable of self-burial. But he would have to concede that these interpretations are not made of air-'? the religious allusions from which they take their cue are in the text. Sherbinin points out in her book Chekhov and Russian Religious Culture that "Chekhov was the Russian writer most conversant with the rites and texts of Orthodoxy, as jarring as such a claim might seem, given the centrality of Christian thought to the giants of nineteenth-century letters." It is to the gloomy childhood lived under the rule of the harsh, fanatical father that Chekhov owed this preeminence. While Tolstoy was playing tennis, Chekhov was poring over Scripture or singing akathistoi. When he reached adulthood, Chekhov was, perforce, an authority on religion. His writer and artist friends would consult him on fine points of the Bible and the liturgy. The painter I. E. Repin, for example, while working on a painting of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, enlisted Chekhov's help in determining whether there had been a moon on the night of the vigil. The mystery of how the grandson of a serf, growing up in semipoverty in an uncouth small town, became one of the world's great writers becomes less mysterious when we take into account the extent to which his religious education prepared him for a literary career. When he began to write his powerful, elliptical stories, he had models ready to hand- the powerful, elliptical stories of the Bible. Chekhov is said to be the father of the modern short story. It might be more accurate (and helpful to contemporary writers wishing to learn from him) to think of him as the genius who was able to cut to the quick of biblical narrative. The brevity, density, and waywardness of Chekhov's stories are qualities characteristic of Bible stories.

In a story written in 1886 called "Panic Fears," the unidentified narrator relates three incidents of uncanniness. The second and third of them turn out to have natural explanations: a railway car with no engine speeding along a railroad track turns out to be a car that got unyoked from a train going up a hill, and a big black dog with a sinister, mythic aura wandering in the forest turns out to be just a dog who has strayed from its master. But the first mystery- a strange light glimmering in the window of a church belfry, which neither comes from within nor is a reflection of anything without-is never solved. The story's position on the supernatural is unclear. Chekhov could be saying that since two of the three mysteries had natural explanations, the remaining one probably does, too-we just don't know what it is. Or he could be saying that there are more things in heaven and earth than rationalism can account for. Chekhov's allusions to religion are like the strange light. Since he was secretive about his work, what he "meant" by his repeated references to the rituals and texts of the religion he had abjured remains anyone's guess. The Jacksonian critics are careful never to claim that they have found their way to Chekhov's intentions. They frankly acknowledge the doubt that is the matrix of their work. But perhaps it is precisely because the whole thing is so mystifying-Does Chekhov actually believe? Are the religious allusions conscious and purposeful?-that it stimulates such audacious critical thought. Every work of genius is attended by mystery, of course; criticism can no more account for art's radiance than the narrator of "Panic Fears" can account for the sourceless light. But the steady gaze of the Jacksonian critics gives their conjectures a special authority: they do not stray from the text; they keep their eye on the light. Six

A