Ward No. 6 and Other Stories Read online

  WARD NO. 6 AND OTHER STORIES

  ANTON PAVLOVICH CHEKHOV, the son of a former serf, was born in 1860 in Taganrog, a port on the Sea of Azov. He received a classical education at the Taganrog Gymnasium, then in 1879 he went to Moscow, where he entered the medical faculty of the university, graduating in 1884. During his university years he supported his family by contributing humorous stories and sketches to magazines. He published his first volume of stories, Motley Tales, in 1886 and a year later his second volume, In the Twilight, for which he was awarded the Pushkin Prize. His most famous stories were written after his return from the convict island of Sakhalin, which he visited in 1890. For five years he lived on his small country estate near Moscow, but when his health began to fail he moved to the Crimea. After 1900, the rest of his life was spent at Yalta, where he met Tolstoy and Gorky. He wrote very few stories during the last years of his life, devoting most of his time to a thorough revision of his stories, of which the first comprehensive edition was published in 1899–1901, and to the writing of his great plays. In 1901 Chekhov married Olga Knipper, an actress of the Moscow Art Theatre. He died of consumption in 1904.

  RONALD WILKS studied Russian language and literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, after training as a Naval interpreter, and later Russian literature at London University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1972. Among his translations for Penguin Classics are My Childhood, My Apprenticeship and My Universities by Gorky, Diary of a Madman by Gogol, filmed for Irish Television, The Golovlyov Family by Saltykov-Shchedrin, How Much Land Does a Man Need? by Tolstoy, Tales of Belkin and Other Prose Writings by Pushkin, and five other volumes of stories by Chekhov: The Party and Other Stories, The Kiss and Other Stories, The Fiancée and Other Stories, The Duel and Other Stories and The Steppe and Other Stories. He has also translated The Little Demon by Sologub for Penguin.

  J. DOUGLAS CLAYTON studied modern languages at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and then completed a Ph.D. in Russian at the University of Illinois. He is Professor of Russian at the University of Ottawa, where he has been since 1971. Professor Clayton’s publications on Russian literature include a study of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, a volume on Russian modernist theatre and collections of essays on Pushkin and Chekhov. His current research focuses on the cultural dialogue between Russia and France.

  ANTON CHEKHOV

  Ward No. 6

  and Other Stories,

  1892–1895

  Translated with Notes by RONALD WILKS

  With an Introduction by J. DOUGLAS CLAYTON

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  On the World Wide Web at: www.penguin.com

  First published 2002

  1

  Translation, Chronology and Publishing History and Notes © Ronald Wilks, 2002

  Introduction and Further Reading © J. Douglas Clayton, 2002

  ‘The Grasshopper’, ‘Ward No. 6’ and ‘Ariadna’ newly translated 2002.

  ‘The Black Monk’ first published 1984, pre-existing translation © Ronald Wilks, 1984.

  ‘Murder’ first published 1984, pre-existing translation © Ronald Wilks, 1984.

  ‘A Woman’s Kingdom’ first published 1985, pre-existing translation © Ronald Wilks, 1985.

  ‘The Two Volodyas’ first published 1984, pre-existing translation © Ronald Wilks, 1984.

  ‘Three Years’ first published 1986, pre-existing translation © Ronald Wilks, 1986.

  ‘The Student’ first published 1986, pre-existing translation © Ronald Wilks, 1986.

  All rights reserved

  The moral rights of the editors have been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject

  to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,

  re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s

  prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in

  which it is published and without a similar condition including this

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  EISBN: 978–0–141–90687–4

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  FURTHER READING

  CHRONOLOGY

  NOTE ON TEXT

  PATRONYMICS

  The Grasshopper

  Ward No. 6

  Ariadna

  The Black Monk

  Murder

  A Woman’s Kingdom

  The Two Volodyas

  Three Years

  The Student

  PUBLISHING HISTORY AND NOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  The period 1892–5 was one of relative calm and considerable success in Chekhov’s life; the journey to Sakhalin was now receding into the past, although it served as the inspiration for several stories, as well as his account of the journey, published in Russian Thought in 1893–5. It was in 1892 that Chekhov purchased a modest but charming country estate at Melikhovo, outside Moscow. There he settled into the life of a country doctor and writer, with his parents Pavel Yegorovich and Yevgeniya Yakovlevna and his sister Masha. The role of doctor proved to be a demanding one, as the country was ravaged by the scourges of famine and cholera, and Chekhov was called upon to help in the struggle with these social disasters. His personal life was marked by numerous flirtations and affairs, especially fed by his acquaintance with the world of Muscovite actresses, but it was his sister Masha who was to prove the most stable female element in his life. Finally, Chekhov the doctor could not help but be aware of the signs of his intensifying tubercular infection; the disease had already carried away his brother Nikolay in 1889, and its continually more insistent presence lent urgency to all Chekhov’s plans, both literary and personal, however much he was to deny its importance in conversation. In Chekhov’s literary activity the years 1892–5 represent a period of transition. It was during this time that he spread his wings and, in response to readers’ demands, became sought after by different publishers. He ceased to publish in Suvorin’s New Times, although his personal relationship with that right-wing publisher was to continue, especially in the correspondence. In addition to his activity as a short story writer, Chekhov began to look to the world of the theatre for new heights to conquer, and also, perhaps not insignificantly given his new commitments, an additional source of revenue.

  ‘The Grasshopper’ (1892) was the source of considerable scandal at the time of its publication, since numerous readers of Chekhov’s acquaintance perceived in it a fictionalized account of the affair between S. P. Kuvshinnikova, a minor artist and doctor’s wife, and the writer’s friend, the painter Isaak Levitan. Chekhov himself was indignant that his readers should so trivialize the story, and, indeed, the point of it lies elsewhere. On the philosophical level the story is about the dichotomy between the aesthetic movement of fin de siècle culture and scientific positivism, symbolized respectively by the impressionist painter Ryabovsky and Olga Ivanovna’s husband, the
doctor Dymov. Ryabovsky defends the notion that all is appearance and all that counts is the moment; it is typical of Chekhov’s ironic humour that Ryabovsky’s speechifying on the subject should simply be a device to get Olga into bed. Dymov, on the other hand, is wedded to scientific progress; his self-absorption is different from that of Ryabovsky, but no less complete. Ironically, Ryabovsky is always declaring that he is tired, when it is Dymov who is working late into the night; Ryabovsky declares to Olga that it would be good to die, while Dymov does precisely that.

  In the story Chekhov draws an understated but devastating portrait of the lack of communication between husband and wife; the tragedy receives additional emphasis through the missed opportunity for a renewal of the relationship when Dymov defends his dissertation successfully. If the title of the story – a reference to the Krylov fable of the grasshopper who sings all summer and makes no provision for the winter – would seem to point the finger of indictment at Olga, the carelessness to the point of suicide with which Dymov carries out postmortems suggests that he is just as responsible as she is for the breakdown of the marriage and the tragic outcome. Both Dymov and Olga suffer from an infantile inadequacy in dealing with life. This is subtly suggested by his calling her ‘Mother’ (something that is totally bizarre in her case), while she transfers to him her dependence on her deceased father. Typically for many of Chekhov’s works, on the deepest level the story is about perception – the ironical gap between appearance and reality, the way we see things as we would like them to be, not as they are. This is expressed in the text by the frequent use of the verb ‘to seem’ and its synonyms, by the obsession with appearances common to Dymov, Ryabovsky and Olga Ivanovna, and by Olga Ivanovna’s talentless and inappropriate comparisons of her husband to different artistic subjects – she paints him as a Bedouin, for example. Typically also, the self-deception is followed by a moment of recognition, an epiphany, when the hero (in this case Olga) sees him or herself as others do.

  As a writer Chekhov was acutely aware that he was following in the footsteps of the ‘greats’ of the previous generation – Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. In ‘Ward No. 6’ he is generally seen as overcoming Tolstoy’s credo of non-resistance to evil; however, as Andrew Durkin has shown, the tale can also be read as an ironic pastiche of Dostoyevsky. This accounts for the abandonment of his usual style, with its understatement and oblique use of detail, in favour of an overtly satirical stance, and adoption of Dostoyevsky’s practice of an intrusive narrator who addresses the reader directly. The depressing details of life in the mental ward of a provincial hospital – the guard Nikita and the grey fence topped with nails – can hardly be interpreted as anything other than a metaphor of the Russian state, to be read allegorically in the best ‘Aesopian’ tradition of Russian literature. Evidently, Chekhov’s observation of the prisons and prison hospitals on Sakhalin had also left a deep impression, as well as his reading of a report on Russian mental hospitals. The carefully sketched inmates of the ward – the Jew who has lost his business, the totally insensate peasant, the minor functionary of the postal service who is obsessed with receiving a medal for good service – all serve as devastating, sarcastic indictments of the system, which is maintained by the indiscriminate beatings meted out by Nikita.

  However, the principal target of Chekhov’s satire is the Russian educated class, represented by the doctor Ragin and the paranoid inmate of noble origin, Ivan Dmitrich. A typical and telling detail in both their portraits is the passion for indiscriminate reading and their ability to indulge in endless and meaningless discussions about life. Ragin’s vapid chatter ultimately serves one purpose – to justify inaction and complacency. His readings of Marcus Aurelius reflect the pessimism and indifferentism that was fashionable at the end of the nineteenth century (and which greatly interested Chekhov himself), and continue on a different plane Ryabovsky’s self-serving arguments about the meaninglessness of reality. In Ivan Dmitrich’s tauntings of the doctor who denies the reality of pain it is difficult not to hear Chekhov’s exasperation with the inertia and complacency of many of his profession. The terrifying irony of the doctor’s fate – to become himself an inmate of the ward that it was his function to supervise – serves as an unspoken expression of Chekhov’s conclusion that if, despite everything, one does not do one’s best to improve the lot of one’s countrymen, one deserves to share their fate. It conveys too his anger and frustration at the self-serving attitudes of the Russian intellectual class.

  Chekhov was acutely aware of the most fashionable preoccupations of the 1890s, for example, the notion of ‘degeneration’ or the excessive, morbid refinement of the nervous system, propagated by the appearance of Max Nordau’s book on the subject, Degeneration; the Nietzschean idea of the genius who would advance humanity ‘ten thousand years’; and the general interest in psychology, mysticism and subconscious states. All these are reflected in ‘The Black Monk’, written in Melikhovo in 1893. In it Kovrin wavers between two poles: extreme refinement and preoccupation with the mysteries of aesthetic pleasure – the path that defines him as a genius – or capitulation to the banality and meaninglessness of the ‘herd’ – the state to which he is reduced when he is being treated for his illness. The fantastic hallucinations that cause him to see the black monk may have one source in the stimulants – wine and tobacco – that Kovrin indulges in, and in the repeated motif of the violin music, but much more substantial is the fact, gradually conveyed to the reader, that he has tuberculosis. That is to say, the moments of intense bliss that he experiences are the result of the heightened nervous state caused by the disease, and may be seen as the precursors of death. Indeed it is in death that Kovrin attains the ultimate happiness, as suggested by the last words of the text – the ‘smile’ that appears on his face as he dies.

  There is evidence from Chekhov’s contemporaries that he himself experienced hallucinations (because of his illness), so that this aspect of Kovrin has certain roots in his own biography, but at the same time in the image of the old man Pesotsky we see another aspect of Chekhov’s life at Melikhovo, namely his preoccupation with horticulture – planting trees and cultivating the garden. The descriptions of the orchards and garden have a carefully detailed poetry to them that affirms Chekhov’s attachment to and interest in the scientifically perceived realia of the world, and his desire to improve that world. While evoking echoes of the myth of Eden, these descriptions also correspond to Chekhov’s socially reformist vision of a regenerated landscape, to be expressed more fully in the image of Astrov in Uncle Vanya. Related to the descriptions of the estate is the issue of inheritance and preservation of a family enterprise. Pesotsky’s only child is Tanya, who, despite her interest, will scarcely be able to maintain things after the death of the old man. Pesotsky’s desire to see Kovrin as his son-in-law is therefore ironical, since it is motivated by respect for the ‘magister’ Kovrin and his scholarly career, and not by any common interest in horticulture. (Kovrin, despite his learning, has to have explained to him why the smoke protects the orchard from frost.) It is an unspoken element of the end of the story that the earthly Eden, on which Pesotsky has lavished so much care, is destined to be destroyed.

  Chekhov had begun his career in the 1880s by writing short pieces, mostly humorous, for popular magazines and newspapers. ‘The Two Volodyas’ is a minor story that harks back to this earlier phase. As in ‘The Grasshopper’, the central figure is a young woman who has married foolishly and has a brief affair with another man. Here, too, the point of the story is the moment of recognition, when the young woman realizes her error and is left to face the truth – that she is empty-headed and mediocre, and now must face alone the truth of her own worthlessness. To intensify the effect, Chekhov introduces the figure of the young nun Olga. Olga too has undergone a change – a spiritual one that is signalled by the change in her appearance. Ironically, if in ‘The Grasshopper’ Olga is the name of the foolish heroine, here the latter is called ‘Sophia’ (meaning ‘wisdom’)
. Another common motif of Chekhov’s stories to be found here is the sound of the church bells, a reminder of the deep presence of at least the formal aspects of religion in Chekhov’s life.

  Chekhov was born in 1860, on the eve of the reforms that liberated the Russian serfs, and his life covered a period of intense social and economic transition in the country. These included the construction of the railways, a frequent motif in his stories, industrialization, with all the social ills and factory accidents that accompanied it, and the urbanization of the peasant population, which had begun to drift to the towns and cities in search of employment. Overcrowded tenements, prostitution and disease were among the undesirable byproducts of this process. The process of industrialization had created another new phenomenon – people from humble backgrounds who had become rich and moved up the social hierarchy. Himself from a family of liberated serfs, Chekhov had gone through the agonizing process of learning to be at ease socially, and knew at first hand the difficulties caused by social displacement. Such is the plight of the heroine in the tale ‘A Woman’s Kingdom’.

  In the figure of Anna Akimovna in ‘A Woman’s Kingdom’ Chekhov explores one of the undeveloped topics of ‘The Black Monk’, namely the situation of an only daughter who inherits the family enterprise. The father–daughter relationship, and the fate of the daughter of a deceased father, are key, related themes in Chekhov’s oeuvre. Anna, unlike Tanya, is in a more complex situation in that she has to deal with the additional problem of social displacement, on top of the questions of financial management and social responsibility that being the owner of a factory or other enterprise entails. It would be wrong to see Chekhov’s treatment of Anna’s inadequacy as an indictment of women, even though the last word of the original story is dury – ‘silly geese’ – for the word comes from her lips, and expresses her own realization that women are foolish to seek happiness in men. In any case many of Chekhov’s male characters are in their own way as inadequate and feckless. Chekhov’s concern is simply to uncover the psychological quandary that lies at the root of her actions or lack of them. Anna has had the ownership of the factory thrust upon her by fate, and finds herself living in a strange double world. On the one hand there is the traditional Russian world of the merchant class, with its traditional food and beverages – the ‘downstairs’ world of her aunts and maids and cooks and hangers-on; and then there is the westernized world of the lawyer Lysevich, with his reading of western literature (Maupassant!), and his partiality to wine and French food.