Donald Rayfield
Understanding Chekhov: A Critical Study of Chekhov's Prose and Drama
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999. Pp xvii+295. $22.95
Reviewed by Victor Terras

Rarely does one find so much useful and well-organized information packed so tightly as in Donald Rayfield's study, "a synthesis of structuralist, intertextual and biographical approaches" (ix). Therefore, the reader is well served by the ten-page introduction in which an outline of the issues, insights, and findings of the study is presented. Chekhov's oeuvre is understood in terms of the interaction of the writer's personal life, Russia's cultural and intellectual background, specific literary influences, and his philosophy. These elements are seen in constant flux and a certain ambivalence is observed in most of them. There is a pessimistic, even decadent strain in the man and his work, but also a desire to create positive values. Chekhov, a master of irony and satire, is also capable of genuine lyricism. A lifelong agnostic, he is the author of stories like "The Student" (1894) and "The Bishop" (1902) that radiate a mystic sense of the hidden meaning and beauty of the cosmos. Rayfield registers Chekhov's "deference to strength" in real life and in art, yet also his capacity for pity and compassion. The one point where no such ambivalence is noted is Chekhov's "Europeanism," which is not countered by a belief in Russia's mission, as is the case with Dostoevsky.

The sixteen chapters of the study follow Chekhov from his inauspicious beginnings to recognized greatness. The first three cover the writer's family, his education, his medical studies, the Moscow "Grub Street" through which Chekhov entered literature, and his relationship with A. S. Suvorin, a Russian William Randolph Hearst. Chekhov's prodigious output of pulp fiction is described and traits that point to the mature Chekhov, such as his hatred for the cliché, are identified. The fourth chapter, "The Free Writer," concentrates on Chekhov's first masterpiece, "The Steppe" (1888), the result of the writer's trip to his hometown of Taganrog in 1887. Rayfield agrees with D. S. Merezhkovsky, who found that in "The Steppe" Chekhov "combines a broad mystical feeling for nature with sober, healthy realism" (40).

Chapters 5 and 6, "Disease and Self-Destruction" and "The Early Plays," reflect death in the family, Chekhov's many painful infirmities, his interest in stoicism and Schopenhauer, and his realization that the faith of his Russian contemporaries in the social effectiveness of literature was misplaced: the best art can do is to reveal the truth about social ills, such as prostitution (Chekhov's "An Attack of Nerves," 1888). The hero of "A Dreary Story" (1889), an aging professor of medicine, serves as a catalyst of Chekhov's pessimism. The professor, a good man and a good scientist, must admit at the end of his life that he has not been happy or helped anyone to live a happier life. Rayfield suggests that "A Dreary Story" seeks to lay bare existential absurdity, "rather than attack, defend or repent" (70), pioneering a modernist confession genre to be cultivated by Gide, Duhamel, and Camus.

Rayfield shows that Chekhov's early plays are born of an identical sensibility. They are "comedies written out of tragic material" (72). What all of Chekhov's plays have in common is a contempt for stage conventions: sound effects and stage properties are as important as characters. There is no plot in the conventional sense; it is replaced by the contiguity of ordinary life. Motivation is exceedingly complex-for the stage, that is. No wonder that Chekhov's early plays were failures. Rayfield suggests that their critical reception may have been one factor why Chekhov undertook the expedition to the penal colony of Sakhalin.

Chapter 7 is entitled "The Consequences of Sakhalin," which is somewhat misleading, since Chekhov's journey across Siberia, while it had a deleterious effect on his health and demonstrated his concern with injustice and suffering, showed little or no effect on his writing. Rayfield believes that after Sakhalin "Chekhov gradually argues Tolstoyan morality out of his system," yet he also draws attention to Chekhov's continued indebtedness to Tolstoy even in post-1890 stories, such as "The Grasshopper" and "Peasant Women." Two major stories of that period, "The Duel" and "Ward Six" (1892), do show some innovations that point toward Chekhovian drama: a philosophy is expounded with great energy and some exaggeration, with the consequence that it drifts into comedy.

Chapter 8, "Melikhovo," bears the name of the country estate where Chekhov lived for six years, combining the activities of a landowner with those of doctor and writer. Accordingly, the fiction of this period is objective and concrete, the mystic strain dormant. Rayfield detects the influence of Turgenev, Guy de Maupassant, and Zola, and observes that during the Melikhovo period Chekhov tried for "strong plotting that leads to firm endings" (117) and chose a particular sphere to explore in each story. I disagree, though, with Rayfield when he observes that "Rothschild's Violin" has a Jewish setting, "as Jewish as its tone is Yiddish" (117). Rayfield also notes that the Melikhovo period is remarkable for the misogyny of several stories, such as "The Spouse," "Ariadna," and "Anna Round the Neck."

Four of the following chapters are devoted to Chekhov's great plays, presenting their background, genesis, staging and reception, as well as an analysis of their structure, thematics, and significant dramatic devices. Rayfield demonstrates the far-reaching continuity from The Seagull to The Cherry Orchard, but also notes the distinctive traits of each play. Rayfield suggests that Chekhov the dramatist retained many traits of the storywriter, which accounts for the novelty of his dramatic technique. The plays are polyphonic compositions whose changing moods may be likened to those of a sonata. The dramatic action develops against a background of daily routine. There is a great emphasis on visual and sound effects, and the active role given to stage properties is a Chekhovian innovation, as is the use of simultaneous dialogue. While only The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard where conceived as comedies, all four plays have tragic as well as comic traits. Rayfield approvingly quotes. A.F. Kugel's view of Uncle Vania, to the effect that it "is not a comedy, even less a drama, undoubtedly it is not a vaudeville-it is in fact 'a mood in four acts'" (180). Furthermore, Rayfield observes that Chekhov's realist plays were immediately claimed by symbolists and even by the futurist Maiakovsky as belonging to their domains. Rayfield produces a multitude of literary connections that are relevant to the genesis of the plays, have a role in their text, and echo their reception in Russia and abroad. The Brontë sisters are brought up as one source of Three Sisters. It may be mentioned that Russia, too, had her three sisters, Nadezhda, Sofia, and Praskovia Khvoshchinskaia, writers prominent enough to be known to Chekhov.

Chekhov's late stories are discussed in four theme-oriented chapters. "Confession" signals Rayfield's interpretation of "The House with the Mezzanine" and "My Life" (both 1896) as projections of the writer's personal experience and deep inner conflicts, specifically the dilemma of an artist whose sympathy is with the common people, but who must address an audience of bourgeois intellectuals. "Peasants" deals with the story of that title (1897) and "In the Ravine" (1899), with stories in which the economic and moral condition of the Russian peasantry is presented in the darkest colors. Rayfield believes that Chekhov saw the misery of life in a Russian village (or in a provincial company town as in "In the Ravine") as a Russian phenomenon, something quite unimaginable in Western Europe, and an evil for which he saw no solution. It may be added that a low opinion of the Russian peasant appears also in Maxim Gorky and Marxist writers, with the difference that Chekhov will allow an occasional ray of Tolstoyan light to break the darkness.

"Love" is a mixed bag of comments on some late stories, some of which reflect what Rayfield calls "a radical change in Chekhov's attitude to women and sexuality" (198), which he explains by the consumptive writer's passion for life. In "Darling" (1898), Chekhov created, to Tolstoy's hearty approval, a female who is totally absorbed in the men she loves. In "The Lady with a Little Dog" (1899), he provoked Tolstoy's ire by presenting an adulterous relationship as his hero's better self. "Valediction" discusses Chekhov's last two stories, "The Bishop" (1902) and "The Bride" (1903), as personal statements, the first "a farewell to a mother," the second "a valedictory message to a wife."

Rayfield's study provides us with a wealth of information for a better understanding of Chekhov's oeuvre. But his multidimensional approach entails certain difficulties. When the analysis of a work extends in time to its biographic, literary, and interliterary roots, as well as beyond its genesis to its reception and varied interpretations, generic and structural definitions become vague, ethical and aesthetic evaluation labile. By the same token, analysis based solely on the canonic text of a work may miss important aspects of its meaning and beauty. Rayfield has minimized the disadvantages of both alternatives-at the expense of making very high demands on his reader's memory and attention.