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By Root 588 0

flog the girl and the girl flog the boy. The story is not in the least sadistic. Chekhov is amused, and only a little horrified, for the young lovers can do no harm to each other, and the landlord is a grotesque vaudeville character blundering among the windfalls. “St. Peter’s Day,” written in the following year, is an excursion into the wilder shores of lunacy, with the author bubbling with good humor as he describes a perfectly ridiculous shooting party, where nothing happens as the hunters expect it to happen, and everyone is at odds with everyone else. “Green Scythe,” written in 1882, is a more serious matter, for though it deals with the lighthearted escapades of a group of young people staying on the estate of a Georgian princess of impeccable ancestry, Chekhov for the first time created characters in three dimensions: the bullying matriarchal princess, the young and beautiful Olya, and Lieutenant Yegorov are all completely credible, and these characters, or characters very similar to them, will appear again and again in his stories. There is a sense in which “Green Scythe” is the first of his stories of character, and in its background and development it is oddly similar to “The Bride,” the story Chekhov was writing in the last year of his life. Once more we see the bullying matriarch and the beautiful daughter and the young suitors vying for her hand, but now the chill of winter has set in, the gardens are fading, and there is very little laughter.

Chekhov put himself into “Green Scythe,” and indeed he put himself into most of his stories. He is present in a surprisingly large number of them, perhaps all the more present because he was so determined to be absent. He is the boy in the shop, the keeper of goldfinches, the peasant wandering across the plain, the family doctor, the dying bishop. We see him in his various disguises, and more often than not the disguise is transparent. Very few of the current translations of Chekhov give the stories in their proper order. Once they are printed in the order of development, we become aware of the autobiographical thread running through them. Far from being the neutral observer, Chekhov was a man who portrayed himself endlessly.

But while Chekhov is abundantly present in the stories, so that we can nearly always detect one person who wanders through the story like a representative of the author, taking the author’s part, he never insists upon himself. Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy continually portrayed themselves and gave themselves the more important roles. Chekhov gives himself comparatively unimportant roles. Very often he is content to watch, delighting in the people of his invention, his wit blending with his profound sympathy for his fellow men, without rancor and without remorse, hating only obsequiousness and human indignity. Early in 1879 his brother Mikhail wrote a letter which he signed: “Your worthless and insignificant little brother.” In cold fury Chekhov replied: “Do you know where you should be conscious of your worthlessness? Before God, if you please, before the human intellect, beauty, and nature, but not before people. Among people one must be conscious of one’s human dignity. You are not a swindler, but an honest fellow! Then respect the honest fellow in yourself and remember that no honest man is ever insignificant.” So he wrote when he was nineteen, and nine years later he announced his credo to his friend the poet Alexey Pleshchev: “My Holy of Holies are the human body, health, intelligence, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom from violence and lying in whatever forms they may manifest themselves.” Against human indignity, and against those who would build walls around human freedom, he waged implacable war.

Mostly he waged war with weapons of laughter and mockery, with lighthearted rapier thrusts against the pomposity and silliness of officials. In 1883 he wrote over a hundred short descriptive pieces, most of them satirical, and nearly all of them directed against officialdom. Chekhov was inclined to regard uniforms as badges of servility.