Pathway to Japanese Literature

*Title: An Essay on Chekhov*

1

Regarding Chekhov’s character, there exist testimonies from Korolenko, Kuprin, Bunin, and Gorky’s recollections; younger brother Mikhail; wife Olga; members of the Moscow Art Theatre such as Stanislavski; and countless other acquaintances both near and far.
At first glance, their content appeared strikingly similar, projecting a harmonious image of Chekhov that lacked the divided opinions seen with other Russian writers.
Korolenko described the appearance of twenty-seven-year-old Chekhov as that of a slightly tall man with a sharply defined slender face that was intellectual yet bore the simplicity of a country youth; and according to accounts from Stanislavski and friend Menshikov, who interacted with him from middle age to his final years, his demeanor in public was reserved—almost timidly so—marked by candor, an absence of pretense, and a complete avoidance of ornate language.
Furthermore, according to Menshikov, he was a man rich in pioneering spirit and humor, a fastidious realist who regarded all things romantic, metaphysical, or sentimental as enemies—an exceedingly English-style gentleman. In short, synthesizing these testimonies allowed one to envision what Bunin called “a rare, beautifully harmonious, and robust character.”
And there one sensed a sharp severance from what was Russian.

In truth, Chekhov was a man of such nerves that he could not help but turn his face away from exaggeratedly solemn frowns, rustic coarseness, or vulgar laughter that bared the gums.

Now, the praise for Chekhov’s character and artistry continued unabated. To some, he was a humanist in the broadest sense; to others, his letters revealed a quintessentially artistic soul brimming with love for humanity; or perhaps through the severity of objectivity enveloping his works shone a light of love.
Or perhaps his works drifted with an indefinable expectation toward "that which forms moment by moment"; or perhaps he was both a pure and innocent aesthete and an apostle of pity—one who wept on humanity’s behalf, a nursemaid soothing us like children.
“Or perhaps he was the warmth of the earth itself, a spring drizzle moistening the soil…”—in this vein, the ornate praises Chekhov found most unbearable continued ceaselessly.

2

However, upon closer inspection, testimonies that stripped the halo from this saintly image of Chekhov were by no means few.

According to accounts from his middle school and university classmates, the young Chekhov remained indifferent to the issues and events that enthralled his fellow students at the time. In other words, there was absolutely no tendency to conform. He was modest, but this modesty ultimately stemmed from an excess of self-criticism and was a trait common among children of merchant families. Even after entering university, he remained fond of solitude and formed close friendships with almost no one. When his brother Alexander wrote to him about being moved to tears upon reading *Uncle Tom’s Cabin*, the sixteen-year-old Chekhov responded in a somewhat sarcastic tone: "...When I reread it the other day, I felt this unpleasant sensation—like I’d eaten too many dried grapes." This stands as one powerful piece of evidence attesting to the early emergence of Chekhov’s non-sentimentality.

The novelist Sergeyenko—the sole classmate who maintained contact with Chekhov until his death—ultimately concluded in his recollections that while Chekhov possessed a well-harmonized personality with balanced and consistent words and actions, a detailed examination revealed he entirely lacked any particular approachability, likability, friendship, or passion, elaborating at length on this point.
He had many friends, but none were close friends.
He was a man trained by will, acting as if in precise time with a metronome.
The humanity that seeped into his works was by no means something he himself possessed.
Moreover, Menshikov—who effusively praised Chekhov—acknowledged that while Chekhov was sociable, he maintained a self-imposed cold restraint when it came to opening his heart. Even the impassioned Korolenko, who was utterly enamored with Chekhov, recounted in a somewhat chilly tone that in lieu of Chekhov ever fully opening the window of his heart, he treated everyone with uniform gentleness and familiarity while likely observing them with an unconscious, profound interest.

The same could be said of Bunin, who worshipped Chekhov. Even Bunin’s tenderly affectionate memoir—filled with fond remembrance—contained observations that Chekhov’s amiable responses always maintained a certain distance; no matter how lively the conversation became, he never lost a particular restraint nor ever revealed a glimpse into his inner heart, concluding that Chekhov likely never experienced passionate love in his lifetime. This final speculation also appeared accurate. According to Menshikov’s recollections, Chekhov had once remarked that for a novelist, knowledge of women’s hearts was akin to a sculptor’s knowledge of the human body… Menshikov then added that ultimately, like Turgenev, Chekhov too had likely been a man who found love difficult. This comparison proved intriguing. It was a comparison that held up admirably even in more essential aspects. Though they were two people who could be considered polar opposites in nearly every respect—in birth, temperament, era, lifestyle, and literary style—they shared a profound commonality in both being “Western Europeans of Russia.”

Let us gather some of Chekhov’s words on love and marriage.

“I regret not being married—if only I at least had a child,” he wrote in a letter at twenty-eight. “I wish I could fall in love; it’s lonely without passionate affection,” lamented another letter four years later.
Of course, all of this was delivered in his usual joking tone, yet it was not mere simple irony—the expression of longing that emerged there held considerable complexity.
It felt less like a direct yearning for love itself and more like something strangely indirect—a longing for longing, so to speak.
Several years later, he noted in his notebook: “Love is either the vestige of an organ that was once large and has since degenerated, or the cells of something that will develop into a large organ in the future—it must be one or the other.”
Here one discerns a frowning, irritated expression.
Around the same time, he scribbled in his notebook: “If you fear loneliness, don’t get married.”
Several years later—“Love is seeing what isn’t there,” he told Menshikov.
Menshikov recorded that this remark had been abruptly uttered one late night while jostling along the Crimean coastal road in a carriage—after which Chekhov fell sullenly silent.

The five soliloquy-like remarks above were spread over roughly ten years, but behind them in truth lay two or three women.
For example, one was a neighbor's daughter from Melikhovo whose real name was Lidia Mizinova but who went by Lika in correspondence.
Their relationship lasted about ten years from Chekhov's thirtieth year until the year before his marriage; yet as early as 1894 at its beginning, Lidia had left to study vocal music in Paris.
That autumn, Chekhov too went to Nice in southern France on his doctor's recommendation for a restorative change of climate.
One might imagine he harbored some intention to follow her, but no evidence shows he traveled to Paris.
Only correspondence existed between Paris and Nice.
Within these letters Lidia reproached Chekhov for being cold.
Chekhov responded by acknowledging there was no need for her to point this out explicitly.
Examining other letters reveals nothing disrupting this tone.
In other words, across ten years there was no change in warmth—or rather, in coldness.
The distance between love and Chekhov remained unaltered throughout—neither expanding nor contracting.
Two eternal parallel lines merely formed a dreadfully monotonous perspective.
If this was love, it proved a peculiar variety—and with other women too, matters differed little.
And if anything imparted variation to this monotony, it was the color of Chekhov's eyes.
Yet even this meant merely laughing or growing angry depending on his momentary humor—by no means a sustained change traceable as any curve.
According to acquaintances, daily-life Chekhov alternated rapidly between cheerfulness and melancholy.
This same trait manifested itself here as well.
To be deceived by it meant courting disaster.

Chekhov married Olga Knipper, an actress with the Moscow Art Theatre, at forty-one.
Neither his mother nor sister had known until after they’d held the ceremony at church.
That even his brother Ivan—who saw him that very morning—noticed nothing might sound faintly romantic, but the truth was likely far colder.
Some measure of consideration for Lidia may have been at work.
Olga was thirty-one.
Given that her stage roles—Masha in *Three Sisters*, Madame Ranevskaya in *The Cherry Orchard*, Natasha in *The Lower Depths*—all carried an air of subdued allure, one could roughly gauge her character.
She seemed a woman suited to autumnal love.
Yet even this Olga found herself compelled to reproach Chekhov’s heartlessness in a letter: “You have such a tender, kind heart—why go out of your way to harden it?”
With this, even autumn love could not endure.
In the end, for him—as evidenced by those countless epistolary addresses—Olga was an “astonishingly dear person,” “Mama,” “my good girl,” “exploiter of my soul,” “beloved actress,” “sweet pup,” “my businesslike proactive wife”… all at once, which is to say she was none of them.
One might say he sought nothing more than a cheerful companion for his twilight years.

In short, for Chekhov, love was nothing more than an empty abstract concept like the afterlife or immortality, and the fact that his heart remained entirely incombustible in response to it is by no means a baseless notion.
Not only that, but even longing could not stir toward such hollow concepts; what existed was at best nothing more than a cold attempt to treat it as longing.
The futility of this attempt should have been clear to him from the very beginning.

Regarding his coldness, one could still list countless more disheartening pieces of evidence.
There was a young man who shot himself after seeing that production of *Ivanov*.
The parents sent a letter to Suvorin.
Upon hearing this, Chekhov asked Suvorin to send him the letter so he could keep it with the others he had received about the play.
Of course, it was his usual joking tone, but a chill seeped through its cracks.
There is another such episode.
An acquaintance's young swallow—or something of the sort—had died.
Since Chekhov held some goodwill toward the man, he considered sending a condolence letter to the woman; but upon reflection—"We'll all die anyway someday, and no hundredfold condolences will bring back the dead"—he instead asked a third party to convey his regards.
This excuse was naturally his trademark way of masking embarrassment; trying to detect traces of scientific detachment or Schopenhauerian pessimism within it would prove futile.
This was simply a joke.
What matters is Chekhov's own bewilderment at having had to make such a joke.
When one feels no emotional response to death yet cannot master social niceties, what remains for an honest person but to fall silent or crack jokes?

In fact, Chekhov would often fall into sullen silence.
Among these, the first impression recorded by a priest named Shchukin was particularly striking.
It was as if Chekhov himself were absent, and someone else had taken his place to engage with me, he said.
The man sitting across had cold eyes, and his words came out sporadically, as parched as if they were crumbling.
To such a man—one who wrote those beautiful stories filled with human warmth and resembling mournful songs that he himself had long cherished reading—
There’s no way such a man could have written those beautiful stories—the priest couldn’t help but scream inwardly.
But what betrayed this silence of Chekhov’s was the massive collection of over two thousand letters.
Dostoevsky was also a master of letters.
The letters of this master, permeated with feverish tension and frenzied emotion, possessed a strange authenticity and credibility: even in moments when he was driven by a passion to distort facts and tell lies, the sheer intensity of that passion undeniably projected his entire personality.

However, Chekhov’s case was entirely different.
He was likely never once seized by such refined passions as the desire to tell lies—a man who could not tell lies even by mistake.
Nevertheless, this unpretentiously sincere man writes letters in a completely open tone as if engaged in everyday banter, generously laced with his distinctive humor and maintaining a consistently light allegro tempo throughout—yet capturing the man’s true nature within them proves unexpectedly difficult.
Therefore, he does not avoid speaking about himself.
Rather, he spoke frankly about the concepts and progress of his works and did not hesitate to express his candid opinions even on matters of faith.
Complaints and whining are far from few.
As for his daily activities, his reports reach an astonishing level of meticulousness.

However, here a comma comes in.
If one adopts a slightly spiteful eye and carefully examines key points in his letters, one should discover him deftly dodging the conversation whenever it nears his vulnerable spot.
Such topic shifts abound throughout; to take one instance, when Suvorin—having read *Ward No. 6*—came complaining of a certain lack, Chekhov delivered the exquisitely apt remark “That’s due to insufficient alcohol content,” then swiftly pivoted away.
“Well, let’s shelve *Ward No. 6* and myself for now—how about we debate some general issue?”
“That would prove far more interesting…” Such was his rhetorical maneuver.
Thereupon unfolded endless allegro-paced eloquence about modernity being both idealism’s twilight and an age of hollowness.
Yet in truth, was this not once more garrulity standing in for silence?

That said, this did not mean Chekhov was lying.
For him, this remained undeniably sound reasoning—indeed, it may well have been conviction.
The problem therefore lay not in any deficiency of his sincerity but rather in its excess.
What he wanted or needed to say would finish in the first few words, leaving only an unfriendly silence afterward.
Yet Chekhov feared appearing cold.
He feared boring others, and naturally feared his own boredom too.
Cornered by this predicament, Chekhov skillfully avoided the subject of himself—a topic both perilously difficult and ripe for potential falsehoods—plunging instead into earnest, safe generalities.
"To confess my own bankruptcy is no easy task."
"Being completely honest is painful."
"Terribly painful."
"That’s why I remained silent."
"I pray you may be spared from tasting the suffering I’ve endured…" says the protagonist of The Story of an Unknown Man.
This statement would also serve as a vital self-commentary on Chekhov’s letters.

With this, the significance of his talkative letters as a form of silence had become sufficiently clear.
It was precisely as Nietzsche said—a vessel to conceal oneself.
Therefore, it was also a particularly fitting place to seek Chekhov’s true nature.
In fact, Chekhov’s life brimmed and overflowed with none other than this very idle chatter itself.

3

Now that we had tentatively completed compiling evidence regarding Chekhov's heartlessness, there was no longer any need to inquire into the history of its emergence. For his heartlessness possessed a robustness and severity that utterly rejected any facile interference from theories of acquired traits or environmental influences.

Of course, from a literary historical perspective, it would be correct to regard him as a child of the 1880s.
But this was primarily nothing more than a matter of analogy between a certain mood produced by the totality of his art and the era—there existed no basis whatsoever to consider that his heartlessness had originated and taken shape precisely within that era’s framework.
Indeed, the 1880s—during which Chekhov lived through his most crucial creative period—were an interstitial void when two revolutionary ideologies equally detached from Russian reality—Narodnichestvo and Plekhanovite Marxism—saw one gradually recede while the other had just begun to emerge yet remained invisible.
Viewed conversely, this was an era when—with Alexander II’s assassination as its pivot—the reins of Russia’s reactionary politics slipped from Pobedonostsev’s iron grip into the hands of Loris-Melikov, that archetypal cunning politician; an era truly enveloped in disillusionment, languor, stagnation, aimlessness, retreat, suffocation… a grey age.
There was no exit.
To merit being called this heartless age’s representative writer likely required being an exceptionally heartless man.

Under such a grey sky, it was only natural that Schopenhauer’s philosophy of release would appear before the Russian intelligentsia as a great salvation. Tolstoy called him “the greatest among humankind.” Chekhov’s *The Lights* also shows the marked influence of this pessimism. If we are to speak of the emotional aftermath of this influence, it could be said to linger in nearly every corner of almost all his works. It was thought that this philosophy, together with Darwin and Spencer’s theory of evolution, was one of only two philosophies that exerted some decisive influence on the formation of his sensibilities.

If there was another "philosophy" that exerted influence upon Chekhov, it was Tolstoyism. According to Chekhov’s own words, it had entered his mind not so much as an ideology but rather as a kind of hypnotic spell, holding him captive for some six or seven years—but by the spring of 1894, this intoxication had completely worn off. In reality, the period during which that dominated Chekhov as a moral concept—even to some extent—appears to have been exceedingly brief. In letters from around the time he completed *The Duel* in 1891, Chekhov already pointed out the excesses of denouncing money and meat-eating as falsehoods; by *Ward No. 6* the following year, even the very theme of Dr. Ragin’s ruin carried a harsh satire on the doctrine of non-resistance, resonating with an almost self-mocking tone. In *A House with a Mezzanine* (1895) and *My Life* (1896), completely cooled Tolstoyan views merely made episodic appearances. The work that exhibited the culminating explosion of rebellion against Tolstoyism was *Gooseberries* ('98). Tolstoy’s folktale *How Much Land Does a Man Need?* ultimately ended with the punchline that three arshins (about seven shaku) suffice. Chekhov seized upon this point and had the veterinarian in his work shout that three arshins were for corpses, not humans—what a human needed was the entire earth, all of nature, where one could freely exercise their unfettered spirit! So, does this mean he had severed ties with Tolstoy?

However, in Chekhov’s attitude toward Tolstoy, there seemed to remain a certain subtle element that could not be fully explained by mere ideological rejection.
According to the recollections of Gorky, who had grown close to Chekhov relatively late in his life, whenever conversation turned to Tolstoy, he would flash a smile blending affection and bewilderment in equal measure, then lower his voice as if to say this matter was too unfathomable for careless remarks.
It might indeed be called avoidance, but this revealed it to be avoidance requiring extraordinary effort.

Two years after writing *Gooseberries*, Tolstoy fell ill.
At that time Chekhov wrote to Menshikov—not only expressing constant concern about Tolstoy’s condition but confessing candidly that should Tolstoy die, a great void would open in his life; though no believer himself, he felt closer to Tolstoy’s faith than to any other.
There may have been a thread of sentimentality there born of his own physical decline with death looming four years hence.
But what remains undeniable is how acutely Chekhov felt something unattainable and unlearnable in this old man’s resolute manner of persistently driving forward his convictions.
The contemporary who inspired in him a somewhat similar reverence was Korolenko.
In this realist writer seven years his senior, Chekhov saw a well-balanced individual leading a purposeful life—toward this man who seemed his polar opposite, he felt intense envy.
If heartlessness were some sort of wall, one ought to break through it and emerge.
One ought resolutely to become a man of action.

There exist two incidents that serve as evidence attesting to Chekhov’s proactivity and activism.

The first was his grand expedition to Sakhalin in 1890, and the second was his activities during the great famine from the autumn of the following year through to the year after that.
Despite having already suffered two bouts of hemoptysis, Chekhov—battling snowmelt floods and mud across pre-railway Siberia alone in a jolting horse-drawn carriage, successfully reaching his destination to methodically gather scientific data, then on his return voyage leaping from the deck of an Indian Ocean steamship at full speed to enjoy seawater baths while clinging to a stern-hung rope—was driven to this seemingly reckless grand expedition by motives that regrettably remain unclear.

According to the recollections of his youngest brother Mikhail, Chekhov happened to glance at Mikhail’s notes on criminal law, judicial law, and prison law—which he had been preparing for an exam—and suddenly conceived the idea of inspecting Sakhalin “like a bird taking flight from underfoot,” so that initially it was unclear whether he was joking or serious.
At first glance, this seems utterly preposterous, but it may in fact be the explanation that most accurately strikes at the heart of the matter.
Chekhov was immediately possessed by “Sakhalin Mania” and immersed himself in scouring through literature concerning this penal colony.
If we gather his own testimonies from letters written before departure regarding the intent of this expedition—he did not think this journey would contribute much to literature or science.
For that, he lacked the knowledge, time, and self-conceit.
“Well, if I can write about a hundred pages or so and manage to give some small repayment to the medicine I went to the trouble of learning, that would be good enough,” he reflected.
“In any case, I think this journey will be an uninterrupted labor of both mind and body spanning about half a year.”
“I am a typical Little Russian, and since I’m beginning to develop lazy habits, this is the perfect time to reform my spirit.”
“At worst, I would still gain some unforgettable memory from this journey—whether tragic or joyous.”
The reality of Sakhalin’s penal exile being an intolerable social evil went without saying; in Western civilized nations, the guilt would have long been recognized as our own, but in our country, we shamelessly attributed the blame to some “red-nosed jailer.”
“However, regrettably, I am not well-suited as an inspector.”
“In short, it amounts to this: I am merely going due to trivial personal motives.”
The emphasis marks were provisionally added by this author to draw attention to the locus of his characteristic humor; however, even when factoring in Chekhov’s bashfulness, one could not extract from these words a motive substantial enough to justify such an ambitious undertaking.

In short, Chekhov suddenly wanted to dash out. He was so restless he couldn’t speak properly. The suddenness and baselessness of this grand expedition became increasingly clear when observing him after the fact. He witnessed the flogging and said he couldn’t sleep for several nights. But in the end, he was neither shaken nor overwhelmed by Sakhalin. Perhaps the feeling of having unburdened some weight from his conscience contributed as well, for instead he regained vigor, even becoming carefree.—I am sated to the brim, filled with bliss. I want nothing more. Whether I die of a stroke or dysentery, I’d have no regrets. I have seen the hell that is Sakhalin, and I have seen the paradise that is Ceylon.... This was the tone of the letters he sent to friends shortly after returning to Moscow. Within this carefree jest, was there not an audacious element that could not be dismissed as mere heartlessness? For self-revolution, Sakhalin ultimately proved too weak a medicine.

About two and a half years after the journey, the voluminous report *Sakhalin Island* was completed.
It was what might be called investigative material as cold and severe as the trial records of a felony court.
Fifteen years had passed since the penal system was established in Sakhalin, yet regarding its actual conditions, not a single report had appeared apart from government documents, and society’s interest was practically nonexistent.
Chekhov’s work was, in effect, the first book to throw open the gates of this hell.
It prompted a portion of intellectuals to initiate a movement for improving the treatment of convicts and ultimately exerted no small influence on the authorities' policies.
Chekhov must of course have been satisfied.
By his own account, his "degree thesis that had been pending since graduating from medical school" contributed not only to science but directly to society.
The divergence between *Notes from the House of the Dead* and *Sakhalin Island* can be said to clearly demonstrate the divergence between Dostoevsky and Chekhov.
This was because this grand expedition left not a single trace within Chekhov.

The great famine that engulfed several provinces in European Russia from 1891 into the following year was so severe it reportedly marked a turning point that completely transformed the social landscape.
As both physician and citizen, Chekhov naturally sprang into action.
Yet when tallying his collective efforts, they formed something peculiarly disjointed and lacking focus.
Interior Minister Durnovo, for political reasons, initially suppressed private relief initiatives and entrusted everything to the Red Cross and church.
But a man of Tolstoy's reckless resolve would not be deterred by such measures.
Though this elder had until a year prior denounced charity as mere expediency, once committed, he pushed forward refugee feeding programs with vigorous disregard for ministerial preferences.
Tolstoy's "courage and authority" deeply unsettled Chekhov.
He extolled the old man as being "god-like," yet Chekhov himself lacked the uncomplicated passion needed to directly translate goodwill into deeds.
What then did he actually accomplish?
Learning refugees had resorted to eating goosefoot, he canvassed experts about its nutritional value.
He strained to collect donations among acquaintances.
Though hampered by six weeks' influenza convalescence, ultimately little substantial funding materialized.
When Russkoye Obozreniye organized a relief anthology, he contributed one story—*The Fugitive of Sakhalin*—to the collection.
With the new year, he journeyed to hardest-hit Nizhny Novgorod Province, collaborating with an old friend serving as county chairman to purchase horses for farmers forced to sell their livestock, maintaining them through winter at public expense before establishing an institution to distribute them at farming season.
Yet even this proved surprisingly ineffective.
He later undertook an inspection tour of Voronezh Province with Suvorin of Novoye Vremya, but provincial authorities reduced it to endless banquets—compelling his retreat with profoundly self-mocking grimaces.... In the end, matters could only unfold as they did.

The medium-length novel *The Wife* was a work directly drawn from this famine.
What must be noted here is that this novel had in fact been completed over two months before the famine revealed its full-scale horrors and before he himself went to inspect the site.
In other words, it was a work written preemptively.
While writing it, he thought—even half a month would suffice—that he must escape his home; that if he were a doctor he needed patients and a hospital; if a writer he must live among the people.
"I need just a fragment of social or political life," he repeatedly lamented in letters to Suvorin.
He kept complaining of boredom.
In short, he had now become possessed not by Sakhalin mania but by famine mania, growing restless.
Yet when completed, *The Wife* ultimately turned into a comedic novel where the specter of goodwill floundered, grew disillusioned, and raged before the reality of famine.
After its publication, Chekhov deliberately visited the site to verify the accuracy of this prewritten self-portrait.
At least that became the outcome.

Tolstoy wrote famous essays such as *On Famine* and *The Terrible Question* to appeal to public opinion, and Korolenko wrote the field report *In the Year of Crop Failure*.
However, despite being urged repeatedly by Suvorin, Chekhov ultimately did not write a single line of reportage.
According to his own explanation—he had started writing some twenty times, but each time it felt hollow and he discarded it.
"In the end, it seems I merely traveled aimlessly with you and casually ate pirogi."
"But I suppose it all comes down to this: those pirogi were delicious, weren’t they?"
What are we to discern beneath this jest?

4

Chekhov had what might well be called “A Declaration on the Freedom of Artists.” According to this declaration，he was neither liberal nor conservative，neither gradualist nor priest nor member of any indifferent faction．He desired nothing but free art．That hypocrisy，ignorance，and tyranny ran rampant was by no means limited to merchant houses and prisons；they existed equally in science，in literature，and among youth．Therefore he showed no particular favoritism toward gendarmes or butchers，scholars or writers or young people－he considered uniforms and labels mere prejudice．For him，what constituted sacred holiness－physical health，intellect，talent，inspiration，love，absolute freedom，liberation from all violence and falsehood…－amounted ultimately to an inventory of voids．Yet crucially，this ostensibly simple declaration leaves us questioning how deeply it reflects Chekhov’s genuine convictions．Such catalogs of absence could be endlessly extended－for every significant utterance from Chekhov consisted fundamentally of negations．

――Those whom we call immortal writers each had goals befitting their station, but we (this being Chekhov's characteristic generalization—using his typical plural "we" while essentially meaning himself) had none. At the proximate level, there were writers who aimed at the abolition of serfdom, the liberation of their homeland, politics, beauty, or simply alcohol; at the lofty level, there were those who aimed at God, the afterlife, or the happiness of humanity—but we possessed no aims whatsoever, neither near nor far. The soul stood as a hollow cavern. He maintained no politics, believed in no revolution, feared neither gods nor ghosts, and dreaded neither death nor blindness. Yet he could not get drunk on muddy water like others might. Like Garshin, he found himself unable to hurl himself down stairwells. Nor was he so ingenuous as to cloak his emptiness with others' tattered rags and affect composure like those men of the 1860s.

――To say that life's purpose lies in life itself is caramel candy—not a philosophy of life.

―Solidarity makes sense when dealing with stock exchanges, politics, or religious enterprises—but solidarity among young writers? Both impossible and unnecessary.

Negation upon negation, severance upon severance—that was his reality.
What ultimately developed at the terminus had to be the figure of a man terrifyingly alone.

This solitary figure—precisely because severed from all ecstasy and madness—was fated to remain perpetually in a state of wakefulness.
Moreover, being severed from all objectives meant neither struggle nor action existed—consequently no essential change could possibly occur.
This had been clearly observed in circumstances surrounding his Sakhalin expedition.
Furthermore, a human perpetually kept awake would likely find themselves stripped even of despair's prerogative.
Severance from despair—this might indeed constitute humanity's most dreadful terror.

What were we then left with?
Of all human faculties remaining to Chekhov—what endured?
Was it not perhaps solely a pair of eyes?
Was it not merely that gaze of absolute wakefulness within absolute transparency—a point-blank stare?
And was there not one final faculty—the mechanical act of “writing according to age-old conventions”?
To be sure, through this act he did revolutionize rhetoric itself.
He may well have surpassed even Maupassant.
Yet was this not an excruciatingly tedious endeavor?
If only what he observed—and thus recorded—contained some shard of beauty!
But his unflinching gaze revealed only the mire of 1880s Russian life that he himself termed “tundra and Eskimo.”
A world choked with “gray debris.”
As *Gooseberries*’ protagonist declares—this world teems overwhelmingly with contented souls!
The strong wallowed in arrogance and sloth; the weak endured ignorance and brutishness; everywhere festered appalling poverty and constraint; depravity and drunkenness; hypocrisy and lies!
Yet over every home and street hung thick tranquility—among fifty thousand citizens rose no protesting voice!
All stood peaceful; only “silent statistics” bore witness!

So, was Chekhov attempting to assume this role of "silent statistics" himself?
The work of silently recording in ledgers—how many went mad, how many barrels of alcohol consumed, how many children starved—since it constituted "silent statistics," could not even constitute a "protest" expecting any substantive reaction.
It was a realism severed from all support that walked autonomously—one that persisted as an absolutely "impartial and disinterested witness," meaning nothing less than human beings being reduced to self-recording barometers.
There could be no more inhuman condition in this world than this.
Of course, ever since ideals began crumbling before science’s assault, writers classified under realism—starting with France’s Naturalists—had been far from few.
In Russia separately, there was Gogol’s emergence—as abrupt as an unforeseen accident.
But it had long been an open secret that what was called Gogol’s realism could never have taken form without an underlying terror of the cross, just as it was already clear that Chekhov remained utterly insensible to such dread.
Similarly, Zola must have relied on his audacious ambition to dissect humanity scientifically; Flaubert on his faith in art; Maupassant on vengeful delight toward the human beast; our country’s I-novelists on their convenient religion of worshiping trivialities—each must have maintained these as their vital supports.

While terms like "realism" may sound formidably robust, one realizes that its ability to stand on its own proves unexpectedly difficult.
If pure realism were to exist, it must be founded upon a terrifyingly inhuman condition—that is to say, upon absolute heartlessness.
Chekhov was eminently qualified for this.
Not only that, but in actuality, he likely became the world’s first practitioner of absolute realism.
It’s not that he particularly wanted to become that.
There must have been other songs he wanted to sing.
But due to unavoidable circumstances, he ended up that way naturally.
For a human who remains utterly awake alone in the transparent world, is there any way to deal with boredom other than polishing lenses?

Even so, however much we might call Chekhov a man of heartlessness, he was after all human and no mechanical doll—surely there must have been something like a belief or something like a dream within him that constantly served as respite.
……Now that you mention it, Chekhov did possess at least one immediate, concrete belief.
It was the philosophy of finding salvation within the individual.
According to him, outstanding individuals were scattered here and there, currently playing nothing more than minor roles in society; yet their efforts could not be overlooked.
Indeed, science progressed day by day and month by month, social consciousness expanded, and moral issues were beginning to surge.
This proceeded utterly unrelated to the intelligentsia as a whole.
—Chekhov wrote in a letter addressed to Orlov.
This dream also became one of Lieutenant Colonel Vershinin’s lines in *Three Sisters*: —Even if there are only three people like you now, they may eventually become six.
That would multiply into twelve, then twenty-four, and after two hundred or three hundred years, life on earth would become something unimaginably beautiful...
In other words, seeking salvation within the individual ultimately ended up being grounded once again in that very theory of evolutionary ethics.
However, two or three hundred years might become three or four hundred years, or perhaps even a thousand years.
In short, "time was not an issue."
Evolutionary theory was, by its very nature, nothing more than a philosophy of heartlessness.
If that were the case—if one must believe in something—then even in his countenance, driven to such an utterly desperate situation of having no choice but to believe in that very thing, there must still have lingered an inexplicable heartlessness.

“When you shout ‘Forward!’, you must always specify the direction.”
What would happen if one were to incite both monks and revolutionaries simultaneously merely by shouting “Forward!”?
……Such words appear in the Notebook.
It’s not that Chekhov himself was unaware of such things.
Moreover, he would say: “You all are living bad lives.”
While habitually declaring, “You must work,” he never attempted to indicate a direction.
If forced to point somewhere, he would have undoubtedly pointed toward the infinite beyond of evolution.

5

People say the characters I write are gloomy, but that’s not my fault.
Melancholic men alone write cheerfully, while cheerful people conversely pursue sorrow.
By the way, I am a cheerful man.
A man who had led at least thirty years of his life in an amusing manner—Chekhov wrote these words in a letter.

This might lean a bit too much into obstinate perseverance.
At the very least, it undoubtedly belongs to that species of characteristically jocular remarks.
Yet we should have seen ample evidence that such banter often ironically reveals truth through inversion.
Moreover, we have encountered testimonies from friends describing how Chekhov’s disposition swung between extraordinary vivacity and extraordinary gloominess from one moment to the next.
To overlook this “cheerfulness” would render any analysis of Chekhov fundamentally lopsided.

Chekhov’s Laughter, or Humor.
——There are likely few comparable examples to such a thoroughly examined subject.
However, it can be said that there are equally few comparable examples where Chekhov’s laughter has been treated so unjustly by the world’s biographers.
In my view, Chekhov’s laughter possesses no less importance than his heartlessness.
It could even be said that laughter and heartlessness together formed the twin wheels supporting his very existence.
Indeed, had he lacked laughter, one cannot begin to imagine what form his art—born from a heartlessness utterly severed even from hatred, that final refuge remaining for us weak humans—might have taken.
The depth of influence that Chekhov’s laughter exerted upon his life and art cannot possibly be fully addressed in this brief essay; what follows merely points out a few key aspects of the issue to bring this piece to its conclusion.

According to conventional wisdom, Chekhov's literary life was divided into two distinct periods by his 1887 work *Ivanov*. The earlier period constituted an era when he used the pen name Antosha Chekhonte—that is to say, his active period as an early humor writer.

The later period was what might be called Chekhov’s full-fledged literary life, clearly distinct from this earlier phase, with the defining characteristics of this era being the strains of despair and sorrow.
But is it indeed possible to draw such a clear line?
I have considerable doubts.

Earlier, I considered the genesis of his heartlessness and believe I had nearly ascertained that it did not necessarily arise from what was called the cultural climate of the 1880s, but rather stemmed almost entirely from his innate disposition.
When it comes to the matter of laughter, this should be attributable with even greater probability to his own innate disposition.
Chekhov’s laughter is often compared to Gogol’s.
Gogol was Ukrainian, but Chekhov too hailed from the south.
That said, whether Ukrainian blood was indeed mixed in his veins remains unverified.
His grandfather had been a serf in Voronezh Province and eventually purchased his freedom to migrate to Ukraine.
By his father’s generation, they settled in Taganrog near Rostov and married a merchant’s daughter.
Chekhov was their third-born child.
Chekhov referred to himself as a Little Russian in his letters.
Of course, this was his usual joke, but it at least serves as evidence that he held some degree of interest in his southern origins.
At the same time, from these facts above, we can infer that he was not entirely unrelated to a certain impulsive, naive laughter characteristic of the south.

He entered Moscow University at nineteen and inhaled the northern air for the first time.
In the spring of the following year—beginning with his first short story appearing in a humor publication—he wrote over four hundred humorous short stories, sketches, essays, and correspondence pieces across seven years for comic newspapers and entertainment magazines under countless pseudonyms like “Chekhonte” and “The Doctor Without Patients.”
While supporting his family and earning tuition constituted the original purposes, there can be no doubt that inertia and journalistic demands substantially drove this prolific output.
This outlines the Chekhonte period.
Conventional wisdom claims this was an era of unconscious birdsong-like joy; yet this conjecture’s absurdity becomes self-evident without consulting his letters.
This was humor’s forced labor.
Though Gogol’s innate laughter too had been transformed by northern exposure in youth, Chekhov’s case likely surpassed comparison.
While his congenital impulse to laugh naturally persisted, we may reasonably conclude its character had warped nearly beyond recognition from its original form.

Moreover, it was by no means a difficult task to demonstrate that “Chekhov’s pathos” had already begun in the early Chekhonte period.
For example,*The Late-Blowing Flowers* was a rather large-scale work created in the spring when he was twenty-two.
A certain young lady fell in love with a country doctor.
After much hesitation, she finally confessed her feelings,but by that time,the tuberculosis had progressed considerably.
The doctor，reflecting on his own spiritual decline，was greatly perplexed by this confession but ultimately departed on a convalescent trip to southern France with her.
She died within three days at the convalescent destination.
This story readily called to mind *Ionych*,a work from his later years.
Of course,*Ionych* possesses a condensation and depth absent in the former work,but given that these two works share not only identical character situations but also the same dark mood governing them,*Ionych* could ultimately be considered a reworking of *The Late-Blowing Flowers*.
Thus,the twenty-two-year-old Chekhonte had already written the work of the thirty-eight-year-old Chekhov.

Did Chekhov truly lose Chekhonte’s laughter with *Ivanov* as the turning point?

*The Notebooks*, a collection of his notes from 1892 until the year of his death, contained ideas for vaudevilles and comical invented names for their characters that appeared nearly every other page.
In these notebooks as well, just as in his daily words and actions, there was a ceaseless alternation between cheerfulness and melancholy.
Examining his works revealed a picture that remained largely unchanged.
The farce *The Bear* was written in 1888; likewise, *The Marriage Proposal* was also written that year, and *The Reluctant Tragic Hero* was written the following year.
There were two farces that extended well into his later years—*The Wedding Celebration* and *The Jubilee*—both considerably meticulous revisions of earlier works (the former written in 1889, the latter in 1891).
Moreover, when one realized that these three farces—including *The Bear*—were all adaptations of his early short stories, the meaninglessness of drawing a distinction between Chekhonte and Chekhov became ever clearer.
In fact, when viewed through the essence of laughter, his post-youth laughter—liberated from youthful compulsion—could even be said to have regained laughter's original countenance.

Now then, what was the fundamental nature of Chekhov's laughter?
An anecdote that offers a direct glimpse into this can be found in Gorky’s recollections.
Chekhov had moments when he was in extremely high spirits, and during such times, he would invariably speak of some humorous subject matter while smiling.
One day he told a story like this.
The protagonist was a female teacher.
She was an atheist, a devotee of Darwin, and firmly believed that superstitions should be eradicated.
However, when midnight struck, she would bring a black cat into the bathroom and boil it.
That was to obtain the clavicle.
“Now, you see, the clavicle is said to be the bone that stirs love in men,” Chekhov added with apparent amusement.
This was, for him, the plot of a “cheerful play.”
Even Gorky appeared to have been utterly astonished by this.
“He seemed to genuinely believe he’s writing a cheerful play with this,” [Gorky] deliberately repeated.

As one grew accustomed to Chekhov’s laughter in this manner, the meaning behind works like *Three Sisters* and *The Cherry Orchard* being comedies should have gradually become clear.
In Chekhov’s intention, *Three Sisters* had been a comedy.
No—far from it, according to Stanislavski’s recollections, nothing had surprised Chekhov more than the notion that *Three Sisters* was a dark tragedy of Russian life, and he could never agree to this interpretation until his dying day.
He was convinced it had been a cheerful comedy—almost a farce.
Stanislavski remarked that there had never been a time when he had so fervently insisted on his own views.
Needless to say, the Moscow Art Theatre’s production of *Three Sisters* ended up becoming a complete tragedy.

Perhaps having learned his lesson from this experience, *The Cherry Orchard* was deliberately branded a "comedy." According to Chekhov himself, it was “nearly a farce,” yet the staged production ultimately met the same fate as *Three Sisters*. In essence, it appears even figures of Stanislavski’s and Dančenko’s caliber could never fully apprehend the comedy Chekhov had envisioned. Here too lay a profound “severance.”

What was particularly interesting among these was the treatment of the character Lopakhin.
He rose from being the son of a serf in *The Cherry Orchard* to finally assume the position of the estate's new master, but in Chekhov's conception, this character had been intended as the central figure of this "comedy."
Chekhov had attempted to assign this role to Stanislavski.

Stanislavski was an actor well-suited to intellectual roles requiring delicate nuance and was never meant for upstart characters.
However, strangely enough, Lopakhin himself is written as “a man with painter-like supple hands and a delicate, gentle disposition.”
Moreover, in letters addressed to Dančenko and Stanislavski, Chekhov provided unusually detailed instructions: “Lopakhin wears a white waistcoat and yellow ankle boots, walks with long strides while swinging his arms, thinks as he walks; his hair is not short, so he frequently lifts his head; when deep in thought, he strokes his beard from back to front with his fingers”—and further—“Though a merchant, he is a splendid man in every respect; he should behave as a completely polite and thoughtful person, neither fidgeting nor resorting to petty tricks.”
In other words, he believed that such a Lopakhin was precisely the key to this "comedy’s" success.

But once again, Stanislavski simply could not grasp these instructions.
He was assigned the role of Gaev, while that of Lopakhin went to a young actor named Leonidov who specialized in roughhouse roles.
Thus were Chekhov’s intentions thoroughly subverted—yet paradoxically, the play triumphed as a “tragedy.”

Of course, I have no intention of being conceited enough to claim full comprehension of what Chekhov meant by comedy.
But if one gazes upon Lopakhin—performed precisely according to Chekhov’s specifications—projected onto that imagined stage of Act Three, I believe one can faintly discern a certain suggestive implication.
To put it plainly, Lopakhin’s ascension as master of *The Cherry Orchard* resulted not from any violent or sudden action.
It stemmed chiefly from the natural decline of the aristocratic class embodied by Madame Ranevskaya or Gaev—merely one episode in the generational shifts Earth has witnessed ad nauseam over millennia.
Confronted with this antithetical reality—a routine endlessly repeated past and future—some weep in despair, others stand dumbfounded; some hurl keyrings to the floor, others question if dreaming; the orchestra falters while the eternal undergraduate celebrates “the outset of new life.”
Why should this not qualify as “comedy”?
For Chekhov, this must have been utterly incomprehensible.
True enough, Lopakhin is an upstart.
His acquisitions appear orderly on surface, yet clash grotesquely in overall harmony.
Yet he possesses diligence, effort, sincerity, and capability.
Why does no one feel moved to welcome this endearingly absurd character with applause?
Did not the Ranevskaya clan too once debut on history’s stage in similarly mismatched guise?
Why is this not comedy?
For Chekhov, this remained an insoluble riddle.
But surely the day approaches when Lopakhin’s lineage too must exit *The Cherry Orchard*.
Again will appear earnest laborers in discordant attire; generations hence, a Madame Lopakhina will dishevel her lovely locks and weep.
Therefore now is precisely when we should celebrate Lopakhin.
Why is this not joyous festivity?
Through the silence of the emptied stage where all had departed echoed the axe-strokes felling cherry trees.
Why do people hear this as funeral bells?

Is that not a benedictory hymn heralding evolution?
Why must they go out of their way to fashion it into a tragedy?—This must have been utterly incomprehensible to Chekhov.

Chekhov had intended to write at least one more "comedy" at the end, but this play was ultimately never written.
Instead, on his deathbed, he uttered his final "cheerful" line.
He died peacefully on July 15, 1904, at a guesthouse in Badenweiler, a spa town in southern Germany.
The widow reported that his last words were “Ich sterbe” (German for “I am dying”).
Will people once again see tragedy here?
Or will they admire the scientist’s calmness?
Both are wrong.
Even though he was a doctor, he was remarkably poor at German.
He deliberately demonstrated that poor German of his in front of his wife.
Try to picture his expression.
Chekhonte remained intact until the very end.

(October 1954 [Showa 29], *Bungei*)