Chekhov
I've started a new course at the Kenmare Adult Education Center on Digital Media. So again I'm practicing my Blogging. Computer time isn't something I do willingly so doing the course is a way of forcing my hand. When I think about it I'm a bit old fashioned with my paintbrushes and books, so this should be good for me. I can't pretend I have a particularly exciting life to blog about my day to day routine involves going to the shops, doing the school run and squeezing as much painting as I can in between. It all sounds a bit dull but then there's Chekhov. I found this book on my trip to Hay-An-Wye in October. Having heard only good things about Chekhov and being a fan of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky I was optimistic about it.
I was not to be disappointed and had moments when I wanted to get out a pencil and underline to preserve in memory the nuggets of life wisdom contained in these stories. I love the Russians for their darkness and realism, a particular outlook and wisdom that's condensed from living in a harsh climate. From the Short Story Ward 6 'You'd better go an teach that philosophy in Greece where its warm and the air is full of the perfume of orange blossoms. Diogenese was not in need of a study and warm rooms.' Maybe this explains in part why it is I like to read the Russians.
Similar to Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Illyich this book has several stories that explore the theme of existential dread, meaningless and the mental effect of a foreknowledge of imminent death. Here are some of the best Quotes: From Ward 6 'To stifle his petty feelings he made haste to reflect that Khobotov, the postmaster, and he himself would sooner or later perish without leaving so much as a trace of their existence behind them. If one were to imagine some spirit flying through space past the earth a million years hence, he would see nothing but clay and bare rocks...But such reflections were no longer of any help to him.'
Dr Ragin is a character in the story who struggles to find meaning in a transitory existence to the point of giving up treating his patients, for what matter if people suffer and die or live when death is the ultimate end? Dr Ragin: 'Life is a snare and a delusion. When a thinking man reaches maturity and becomes capable of forming his own ideas, he cannot but face the fact that he is caught in a trap from which there is no escape. And indeed he is summoned here against his will from non-existence to life as a result of some accidental circumstances. Why? If he tries to find out the meaning and aim of his existence, he receives no answer, or is told some absurd nonsense. He knocks, but no one opens to him; then death comes to him, also against his will'...Why eyesight, speech, self-awareness, genius, if they are all doomed to pass into the earth and at last go cold with the earths' crust, and then whirl around the sun together with the earth for millions of years without rhyme or reason?' Like the characters in Camus the Plague, when Dr Ragin calls to God, nobody answers.
Virgina Woolf explores the idea of life as a trap in Mrs Dalloway who feels painfully the passage of time and the inevitability of death. “As we are a doomed race, chained to a sinking ship, as the whole thing is a bad joke, let us, at any rate, do our part; mitigate the suffering of our fellow-prisoners; decorate the dungeon with flowers and air-cushions; be as decent as we possibly can.” Virgina Woolf poses an answer to the question at least. But there seems to be no such consolation for Dr Ragin 'Only a coward whose fear of death was greater than his self-respect could console himself with the thought that his body would go living in a blade of grass, in a stone, in a toad.'
The clue to Chekhov's mind in the story Ward 6 may come from the mouth of the mental patient Gromov, 'All I know is that God created me of warm blood and nerves. Yes, sir. And organic tissue, if it's live tissue, must react to every kind of irritation. And I do react! I respond to pain with tears and cries, to baseness with indignation, to abomination with disgust. To my mind that is really what's called life. The lower the organism, the less it responds to irritation; the higher the more sensitively and energetically it reacts to reality. ' Gromov considers Dr Ragins coping mechanism of mental detachment as a kind of death in life. He equates the thinking man who uses his rational faculty to attempt to save himself from his own sensitivity to life and suffering to the character of the lunatic who contentedly rocks himself and is at peace but mentally and emotionally anaesthetised. As the unfortunate Dr. Ragin discovers, there's no escape there!
So the purpose of life is to live fully, embrace it, feel and experience everything while helping our fellow sufferers along. Chekhov places the most intelligent character in the story in the lunatic asylum. Here Chekhov is acknowledging that to think is to recognise the trap that is existence, most of the slow witted and corrupt characters in Ward 6 are living on the outside, part of and contentedly ignorant of their predicament. Who is really insane? Those in society who decide this question hold a terrible power. Existentialism is a dangerous thing, once you dip your toe in you are in the labyrinth and might not escape like poor Dr. Ragin. Thank you Chekhov, I love you for your skill in weaving these high philosophical ideas in a hugely entertaining and engrossing short story. Nietzsche famously said 'God is Dead' and even suggested that this recognition might threaten our very civilisation. This is why writers like Chekhov, Camus, and Virginia Woolf are important to me. They fill the void and help us to live in this brave new world in the absence of the certainties of the old religions.
Henry Alexander Bowler 1855 'The Doubt: 'Can these dry bones live?'
