A Boring Story: Chekhov and Germany

Abstract

ABoring Story: Chekhov and Germany^ Galina S. Rylkova U N I V E R S I T Y O F F L O R I D A “Whensomeonehasbeensickforalongtime,everybodyinhishousehold, deepinside,wisheshimtobedead,”AntonChekhovrecordedinoneofhis last notebooks {Polnoe, Sochineniia 17.38). Chekhov’s short life span (1860-1904) coincided with what PhilippeAries describes as atransition from one cultural view of death to another.^ Chekhov died at atime when deathwasbecomingincreasingly“medicalized”bybeingrelocatedfr°®P”‘ vatehomestohospitalsandvarioushospices,thusbeingtreatedas ble”and“denied.”Thisconceptofdeath(assomethingthat“turns[onesj stomach[...]likethebiologicalactsofman”)hasbeenprevalent sincetheendofthenineteenthcenturyanddefinesourrelationshipwith deathnowadays(Aries563and569).Aries’sanalysismightthrowlighton theallegedlyruthlessscenefromChekhov’slastplay.TheCh^yOrecer (1903).Inthisplay,theownersheartheirbelovedorchardbeingdestroye andaremadeawareofitsend.Whydidn’tthenewowner,Lopakhin,have enough tact to wait until they were all gone? Because being tactM was not anissue:theresolutionoftheplaywasnotascruelasmanycriticsseemto imply today. The orchard, like atypical nineteenth-century man, was -afamiliarsetting,surroundedbyfnendsandfemily.Thatisalsowy attemptstosendtheoldservantFirstothehospitalfail:heislefttodieinhis masters’house,infiillviewofthesympathetictheatregoerswhohavecome to know and love him in the course of atliree-hour-long performance. Aceremony reminiscent of final farewells in The Cherry Orcar was organizedforChekhovonJanuary17,1904,attheMoscowArtTheatreto celebrate his forty-fourth birthday and, more important, the twenty-hM anniversaryofhiswritingcareer.DespiteChekhov’sprotestanons(e repeatedlypointedoutthattheanniversaryofhisliterarycareerwasnotue untilMarch1905),theorganizersoftheeventdraggedhimonstageduMg the intermission between acts 3and 4of the very first production oe CherryOrchard. AsmuchastheywantedtoshowerChekhovwithloveand affection,theywereequallyworriedthathewasnotgoingtoliveanother year.Thesightofa“hunched,paleandemaciated”writer,whowasnotice¬ ablyhavingdifficultystandingduringthelongspeechesinhishonor,made sometheatregoersbeghimtositdown,fortheyfearedthathewasgoingto collapseonstagebeforetheceremonywasover(Rayfield587). Given the effect that these celebrations had on Chekhov and even the impartial onlookers, it is now generally believed that Chekhov chose to spare his siblings and his mother the sight of his passing away when he agreed to be taken abroad to seek the advice of German specialists in June 1904, one IntertextSyVcA. 11, No. 12007 ©TexasTech University Press e v e r i n I N T E R T E X T S 6 8 month prior to his death. Chekhov was adoctor and his understandable consideration for his relatives fits Aries’s theories beautifully. Isuggest, how¬ ever, going one step beyond this satisfying explanation and taking alook at Chekhov’s trip to Germany not only in the context of his last months, but in the broader context of his life and literary career. In his semiautobiographical “A Boring Story” (“Skuchnaia istoriia,” 1889), Chekhov sends his dying character on amission to the town of Kharkov. Nikolai Stepanovich has been expecting to die for the last six months and fears that he might die “alone in astrange town [and] on astrange bed” (“A Boring Story” 103). This does not happen, however: after what turns out to be an unexpectedly peaceful night, Nikolai Stepanovich is summoned back to Moscow by the news of his daughter’s secret wedding. “Like in life, there is nothing accidental in art,” Chekhov advised abudding poet, Boris Sadovskoi, shortly before his depar¬ ture for Germany (Polnoe, Pis’ma 12.108). But what about death.> Is there anything accidental in death? Isubmit that Chekhov’s ultimate trip to Badenweiler was, in fact, not very different from his many other trips under¬ taken in order to change the scenery and to fight mundane boredom to which he was particularly susceptible. It was in 1890, after his brother’s sudden death from tuberculosis, that Chekhov had seriously faced up to his own mortality for the first time and embarked on his longest journey to the island of Sakhalin. In 1904, he went to another extreme, in the opposite direction—first crossing asizable por¬ tion of Russia and then the whole of Germany to reach his final destina¬ tion in all senses of the term—Badenweiler, near the Swiss border. Once Chekhov arrived there in the second half of June 1904, the little-known Badenweiler was instantly put on the map of Europe thanks to the journal¬ ists who provided regular reports on Chekhov’s deteriorating health to their compatriots back home. Consequently, the attention of the Russian intellec¬ tuals was divided between Manchuria and the German-Swiss border. While theRussianfleetwasfightingtheJapaneseintheFarEast,Chekhovwasbat¬ tling his terminal illness in the Schwarzwald. Both campaigns ended in fiasco. The centennial of Chekhov’s death in 2004 prompted Russian critics to contextualize and conceptualize his death within the already known wider context of Russian history. According to some critics, Chekhov, in away, willed his own death because he knew that he was not going to survive the major social and...