Chekhov and Naturalism: From Affinity to Divergence

Chekhov and Naturalism: From Affinity to Divergence Nicholas Moravcevich Once in the spring of 1901, while taking a carriage drive with Ivan Bunin along the Crimean shore in Yalta, Chekhov unexpectedly announced: “Do you know how many more years they will read me? Seven.” “ Why seven?” Bunin asked. “ Well, seven and a half.” “ No,” Bunin replied. “ Poetry lives long, and the longer it lives the more powerful it becomes.” “ My dear Sir,” Chekhov chuckled, “ You regard as poets only those who use such words as ‘silvered distance,’ ‘accord,’ or ‘To battle, to battle in the struggle with darkness!’ ” . . . And then turning serious again, he continued: “ Even though they may read me only seven more years, I have less than that to live: six.” l Chekhov was doubly wrong: he vastly underestimated both the peril of his illness and the extent of his future fame. Slightly over three years after this conversation he died, and almost seventy years since, his popularity and artistic stature still more than justify Bunin’s prophecy. As Chekhov’s literary reputation in the West continued to grow over the past seven decades, the diversity of viewpoints in the realm of Chekhovian criticism engendered a wide range of unrelated, con­ tradictory, and even mutually exclusive interpretations of the essence of the Chekhovian style. In one of the earlier studies, for example, W. H. Bruford defined the Chekhovian method as “psychological naturalism.” 2 Francis Fergusson, however, came to a different con­ clusion; analyzing The Cherry Orchard he said that “Chekhov’s poetry . . . is behind the naturalist surfaces; but the form of the play as a whole is ‘nothing but’ poetry in the widest sense. . . .” 3 Kenneth Tynan, in turn, challenged both of these views by maintaining that the perfection of art in the theatre depends neither on naturalism nor on poetry. Drama has in its time borrowed tricks from both, but what it has built is a new and separate structure, whose foun219 220 Comparative Drama dation stones— the last acts of The Master Builder and The Three Sisters— are architectural triumphs of prose over naturalism.4 Maurice Valency diverged even further. He saw The Three Sisters as “ Chekhov’s masterpiece, the flower of impressionism in the drama.” 5 Even earlier a synthesis of sorts that lumped together symbolism, realism and naturalism was attempted by John Gassner; yet his statement that “if Maeterlinck’s plays are mood pieces, so are the plays of Chekhov, who is considered a supreme realist or naturalist,” 6 was also readily disputed by N. Efros who categorically proclaimed that “Chekhov is an artistic realist; no other definition can be applied to him.” 7 Finally, the stubborn complexity of the Ars Chekhoviana prompted F. L. Lucas to conclude that “like so many of the best writers since Homer, he merges in one the truth of the realist, the self-control of the classic, and the imaginativeness of the romantic,” 8 which only added to the already bulging Gordian knot of “isms” attributed to the Chekhovian style. I In quest of the sword to cut it, let us return to the beginning. Chekhov’s early writings and personal pronouncements indicate that in his formative years he often showed a distinct affinity for an essen­ tially naturalist world-view. In an article published in 1916 in the St. Petersburg monthly Vestnik Yevropi (which in the 1880’s had first published Zola’s naturalist manifestoes), Leonid Grossman stated that the background influence on this dimension of Chekhov’s style were his medical training and practice, his acquaintance with Dar­ winian theory and Claude Bernard’s principles of scientific inquiry, his familiarity with Zola’s efforts to follow these principles in fiction, and his knowledge and appreciation of the writing techniques of Flaubert and Maupassant.9 Not all of these points are easily verifiable. On the influence of Chekhov’s medical training, for example, there are two conflicting accounts. In October of 1899, Chekhov wrote to his school friend, Dr. Rossolimo: My work in the medical sciences has undoubtedly had a serious influence on my literary development; it significantly extended the area of my observations, enriched my knowledge, and only one who is himself a physician could understand...