ANTON TCHEKHOFF.
plUSHKIN, Dostoevsky, and Tehekhoff, these three writers, if they are not the greatest in Russian literature, are at all events the most Russian. It is to them rather than to others better known among us—such as Torgenieff, and even Tolstoy—that we Western Europeans must turn if we hope to learn something of the way in which the Russian mind works. The first of the three, Pushkin, is never likely to become familiar among us, owing to the impossibility of translating him; Dostoevsky, on the other hand, is already on the high road to general recognition in England. But of Tchekhoff, who can be translated without any particular duff. may, scarcely anything is known over here. This reproach, however, will soon be removed, and already, though there is no complete English translation of his writings—Germany has shown a quicker appreciation than we have in this respect of the " Eastern Barbarians "—enough of his work has appeared in English for us to begin to form an estimate of it.
Already the Russia of Tehekhoff (he was born in 1860 and died in 1904) has slipped into the past. In the lowest classes the change is perhaps scarcely risible, and Tebekhoirs peasant is closely akin to Tolstoy's ; bat in the middle classes the movement is obvious. During the period which Tehekhoff
interprets, the last few years before the "revolution," the Russian intelligentsia had fallen into a condition of complete apathy and ineffectuality. This was followed by the excite. meats of the revolution, and by the subsequent black pessimism of the reaction—a period which has received expression in the gloomy and repelling works of each writers as Andreyeff and Artsibfu;heff. There has been an even later development than this, a reaction from the materialistic, realism of the last decade towards a more spiritual, and especially a more national, outlook, and we may expect that the present war will hasten the tendency in this direction. But Tehekhoff lived to see none of these changes, and all his work is infected by the stagnation of the pre. revolutionary time. It displays none of the hectic violence and none of the profound despair of more recent work; it seems, on the contrary, to be essentially quiet and passive, tinged with melancholy and a kindly cynicism, and never giving way to the exaggeration of thought end action which has made Ramie known to us as the "land of extremes." Tchekhoff expressed himself in two very different mediums, the short story and the drama ; and he made himeelf a master of both. It was as a writer of the former that he first made his name in literature, and his collected works contain nearly three hundred of them. Three selections from these have hitherto appeared in English, and although they unfortunately overlap (a few of the stories appearing twice over), some fifty of them have thus been translated. In the first place, there are two volumes translated by Mr. R. E. C. Long, namely The Kin, and other Stories (Duckworth and Co., out of print), and The Black Monk, and other Stories (same publishers, 2e. 6d. net). Quite recently a third collection has appeared, translated in this case by Miss Marian Fell, under the title of Stories from Bunion Life (same publishers, 68.). None of the translating is satisfactory, but perhaps the last of the three, though American in origin, is the least stiff. The English reader, anxious to form beforehand some idea as to the character of Tehekhoff's stories, may possibly be assisted by a few words of comparison between him and that other great master of the same medium, Guy de Maupsssant. The two writers might well be described as the exact converse of one another. A Maupassant story is almost invariably the narrative of some intensely dramatic and clear-cut episode; it always has a tangible " point " upon which a finger can be laid. Tchekhoff's stories might, on the contrary, with justice be described as essentially pointless. They are never dramatic, and depict not an episode, but an atmosphere. They resemble Maupassant'e only in their technical perfection, their great compression, and the fact that they are never dull. Iu a sketch only two or three pages long Tchekhoff can not only reveal to us an individual's character and situation, but can even make us grasp the spirit of a whole community, of a whole stratum of society. The longer tales produce the same effect even more magically. Nothing could teach one more, for instance, about the outer and inner lives of the Russian peasant than the wonderful story " Alotrzhiks" (translated in The Kiss), or of the slightly higher shopkeeper-class than "In the Ravine" (given in Miss Fell's collection). Yet these stories are not mere generalizations, for specific characters abound in them. Tchekhoff possesses, rather, that highest gift of lending to the lives of individuals an apparently universal significance. Tcbekhoff'e plays are better known among us than his stories. Two of them have even been acted, unsatisfactorily enough, by the Stage Society ; and two sets• of them have been published in-English—namely, Plays by Anton Tehelthor, translated by Miss Fell (Duckworth and Co., 6s.), and Two Plays by Teliekhoff, translated by Mr. George Calderon (Grant Richards, 3e. 6d. net). Both volumes are tolerable renderings, Mr. Calderon's being in most respects an admirable piece of work ; but the same overlapping mistake occurs as with the stories, since The Sea-gull appears in both collections, and The Three Sisters, one of the greatest of the plays, appears in neither•. Tchekhoff as a dramatist is indissolubly linked with the Moscow Art Theatre. His first mature play, The Sea-gull, was acted in Petrograd, where it was received with derision and was a complete failure. In his discouragement he had deter mined to abandon the theatre entirely, when the situation was saved by M. Nem irovitch-Datitchenko,one of the directors of the Moscow Theatre, who alone seems to have grasped the mean- ing.of Tohekleon work. With enormous trouble, and in spite
of tremendous difficulties (even the very intelligent actors of the Art Theatre could make nothing of the play at first), he revived The Sea-gull in Moscow. It was an instantaneous success, and completely made the reputation both of the author and of the theatre, where to this day an embroidered sea-gullmay be seen hovering upon the curtain to commemorate the event. There followed a series of productions in whioh there was possible that close co-operation between creator and interpreters which has so often occurred at the greatest periods in the history of the stage. The result at Moscow was successful beyond criticism, and a Tchekhoff play at the Art Theatre is the moat moving theatrical experience that modern Europe has to offer. But although we must go to Moscow for a complete revelation of Tchekhoff, there is no reason why we should not read him, and even see him acted, with pleasure in England. Much that has been said above of the short stories is equally true of the plays. They deal less with individuals than with social groups ; they represent a state of affairs rather than a sequence of events. Two points, however, may be mentioned which are likely to prove stumbling-blocks to English readers—both of them really points in dramatic technique, in which Tchekhoff departed widely from the familiar methods. In the first place, although a perfect representation of one of his plays would seem to the spectator absolutely natural and true to life, to the tentative reader or at a poor performance it tends to appear as a meaningless jumble of crude, and even fantastic, detail. This is because Tchekhoff, like one of the old Impressionist painters, produces his realistic effect by a process of splitting up. The countless vivid and startling touches, which are overpowering at a close inspection, fall into a harmonious and quiet whole the moment we take a step or two back from the picture. This leads us to the second point, which is that Tchekhoff has abandoned more than any other modern dramatist the Aristotelian recipe for a well-made play. Ibsen, a great revolutionary in many respects, always clung to the tradi- tional form, and as regards structure his plays show no important contrast to those of Scribe. Tchekhoff, however, has abandoned the aoademio structure as much as Ibsen abandoned the academic subject-matter. By no possibility could The Cherry Garden be forced to submit to Aristotle's laws. We may be a little disconcerted by this till we are honest enough to remember that the same thing is true of Hamlet, and that so long as a play forma an aesthetic whole it is of no consequence how that whole is put together.
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