pocket

“russian critics have noted that chekhov’s style, his choice of words and so on, did not reveal any of those special artistic preoccupations that obsessed, for instance, gogol or flaubert or henry james. his dictionary is poor, his combination of words almost trivial – the purple patch, the juicy verb, the hothouse adjective, the crème-de-menthe epithet, brought in on a silver tray, these were foreign to him. he was not a verbal inventor in the sense that gogol was; his literary style goes to parties clad in its everyday suit. thus chekhov is a good example to give when one tries to explain that a writer may be a perfect artist without being exceptionally vivid in his verbal technique or exceptionally preoccupied with the way his sentences curve. when turgenev sits down to discuss a landscape, you notice that he is concerned with the trouser-crease of his phrase; he crosses his legs with an eye upon the color of his socks. chekhov does not mind, not because these matters are not important–for some writers they are naturally and very beautifully important when the right temperament is there–but chekhov does not mind because his temperament is quite foreign to verbal inventiveness. even a bit of bad grammar or a slack newspaperish sentence left him unconcerned. the magical part of it is that in spite of his tolerating flaws which a bright beginner would have avoided, in spite of his being quite satisfied with the man-in-the-street among words, the word-in-the-street, so to say, chekhov managed to convey an impression of artistic beauty far surpassing that of many writers who thought they knew what rich beautiful prose was. he did it by keeping all his words in the same dim light and of the same exact tint of gray, a tint between the color of an old fence and that of a low cloud.”

-vladimir nabokov on anton chekhov in his lectures on russian literature

i really love the contrast in this little essay; nabokov, in describing the simplicity of chekhov’s language, can not suspend his own lilac language even for a moment! with chekhov’s stories, there are no hidden algorithms or acrostics, no spatial discontinuity, only the same dusty arch of a muddled man with a sigh and chuckle. i took a class on chekhov this semester and it was really very wonderful. although, i am still aching for poor iona and his silent mare in “heartache.” or is it “misery?” the title changes depending upon which volume you read it in. which title tells of his loneliness and displacement with more exactness? personally, i prefer heartache for the snow-covered sleigh driver. and then podtikin in “on mortality: a carnival tale” who hiccups with pleasure but was struck by an apoplectic fit before he could eat his perfect bliny (pancake)!

“chekhov’s books are sad books for humorous people; that is, only a reader with a sense of humor can really appreciate their sadness.”
(also, v. nabokov)