Thoughts on Chekov’s “The Fiancée”
I’m supposed to be grading wretched summer papers right now (yes, summer papers), but tomorrow I have off, and I will undoubtedly get scads, just scads, of work done then, so for now I play. I also have a short Tolkien essay I’m working on, but again, for now I put it off, primarily because I think it might end up being somewhat publishable, and would like to actually do a good job on it. So instead I will write on an author I hardly know, having read few of his stories, and none in their original language.
Nadya is the protagonist, and Anton Chekov’s “The Fiancée” begins with her engaged to be married. She is possessed of an ennui or misery that seems so typically literary to one of our day, but which was probably so shocking in Chekov’s, and the boil of her misery is prodded by her friend and distant cousin Sasha (short, in some mysteriously Russian way, for Alexander Timofeyevich). The story takes on Communism and the idle rich, spiritualism and the Orthodox Church, tubercular Romantics, self-satisfied young bourgeois, crotchety old women, and old romantic novels. None of these targets seem to escape unscathed, as is seen in this quotation, by the tubercular Sasha:
The fascinating thing about this passage is that it’s not spoken by a Marxist; it seems almost to be spoken by an evangelical, though one that places his faith in learning that is not exclusively religious. Sasha believes at the least that some approximation of heaven can be built upon earth, but disavows any worship of the mob as it is. Only when the mob is educated can this heaven be built. The line about living off the masses seems to have a doubled edge, aimed at both Nadya’s fiancé Andrey – a churchman’s son – and a demanding, grasping proletariat. The latter are dismissed in the line itself: the “evil” that is the mob will be no more, as all will have “something to believe in,” a “purpose,” and will cease to try to live off “the masses.” The former eagerly, almost comically, cops to Sasha’s criticism of his laziness, saying, “he’s absolutely right! I never do a thing, I just can’t!” (26).
What is unclear to me is what the story advocates. Is it worship of the self, or of the artist? Is it intellectualism? Sasha, we are told, was, at one point previous to the beginning of the story, a student at the Komissarov School, later went to the Fine Arts Institute, and stayed there for fifteen years, “just managing in the end to qualify in architecture” (18). Afterwards he works “for a firm of lithographers in Moscow” (18). Is he an artist or no? Architects straddle the line between useful and decorative, and lithographers … well, I’m not sure I remember what lithographers are (I’ve not fired up the Internet yet, as the wireless is finicky and the Internet distracting), but I’ve got an image of Sasha working for a company churning out magazine illustrations and Currier and Ives greeting cards. There’s nothing wrong with either, but neither really says artiste.
In the end, it seems that Sasha, at least, advocates solid middle-class usefulness, what with his inveighing against both the mob and the idle. But there are a few inconvenient details: his dilatory course of schooling was paid for by Nadya’s grandmother, a woman he criticizes for the conditions in which her servants live: “early this morning I popped into the kitchen and four of the servants were asleep on the bare floor. They don’t have beds; instead of bedding all they have is rags, stench, bugs, cockroaches” (18). He is apparently free to spend months on end away from his job, saying in June, while visiting Nadya’s home, “‘I may well stay until September’” (18). What’s more, Sasha’s lifestyle is positively bohemian. He wears “a buttoned-up frock coat and shabby canvas trousers that were ragged at the bottoms. His shirt had not been ironed and on the whole he looked somewhat grubby” (18). His living quarters in Moscow are worse. His room is described as:
Finally, he dies in the end of tuberculosis, the classic disease of the impractical Romantic – surely by 1903 this was settled symbolism? Sasha seems not to epitomize middle class respectability, bohemian revolution, nihilism, monasticism, or even, we shall see, intellectualism.
Nadya, only one of Sasha’s protégés, it seems, goes away to study. It never becomes clear what she studies, so it is hard to say whether one should regard her as an artist or something else. Her studies seem only to ironically confirm Sasha’s prediction: “Drastically alter your way of life and then everything else will change too. The most important thing is to make a completely fresh start, the rest doesn’t matter” (29-30). The primary change seems to be that Sasha is diminished in her eyes. As the tuberculosis weakens him, her experience in St. Petersburg diminishes him. “She wept,” we are told, “because Sasha did not seem as abreast of things, as intellectual, as interesting as last year” (32). This assessment of Sasha is unsurprising, given how emptily optimistic his advice to Nadya was.
Beyond this, Nadya seems as empty as Sasha. She comes back to a quiet home. No one has died, but the family, since Nadya’s repulse of Andrey, has lost their “position in society, reputation, the right to entertain guests” (33). The town is as meaningless to her as it had become before she left. “She saw,” we are told, “how her whole past had been torn away, had vanished as if burnt and the ashes scattered in the wind” (35). So she looks to the future, in words that, fifteen years after the story was published, would begin to take on an eerie, inexact prescience:
Boy would it ever be. Is it possible that Nadya will, fifteen years after the story ends, find herself a professorial den mother to a pack of murdering Bolsheviks, that Sasha will turn out to have been some John the Baptist crying out in the wilderness of Moscow the advent of a salvific bureaucracy of intellectuals?
The back of the Penguin edition I own speaks of the story’s “high note of optimism.” I have no doubt that the back cover blurb writer either knows what he’s talking about or is getting directions from one who does, but even if we reject the notion that Chekov was some sort of ironical prophet in that passage, there is still the last paragraph of the story: “She went upstairs to pack and next morning said goodbye to her family. In a lively, cheerful mood she left that town – for ever, so she thought” (35).
“So she thought.” There seems to be some menace there. There is at the very least the possibility that she is wrong, that her “vague and mysterious” future will not turn out so “new, full and rich” in the end (35).
Chekov, Anton. “The Fiancée.” “The Fiance” and Other Stories. Trans.
Ronald Wilks. New York: Viking Penguin, 1986.
Nadya is the protagonist, and Anton Chekov’s “The Fiancée” begins with her engaged to be married. She is possessed of an ennui or misery that seems so typically literary to one of our day, but which was probably so shocking in Chekov’s, and the boil of her misery is prodded by her friend and distant cousin Sasha (short, in some mysteriously Russian way, for Alexander Timofeyevich). The story takes on Communism and the idle rich, spiritualism and the Orthodox Church, tubercular Romantics, self-satisfied young bourgeois, crotchety old women, and old romantic novels. None of these targets seem to escape unscathed, as is seen in this quotation, by the tubercular Sasha:
The only interesting people are the educated and
idealistic, they’re the ones we need. The more there are of
these people, the quicker God’s kingdom will come on
earth – agreed? Very gradually, not one stone of your
town will be left on another, everything will be turned
upside down, everything will change as if by magic. And
then there will be magnificent, huge houses, wonderful
gardens, splendid fountains, remarkable people. But
that’s not the most important part of it. The main thing
is, the mob, as we know it, as it exists now – that evil
will be no more, since every man will have something to
believe in, everyone will know what the purpose of his
life is and no one will seek support from the masses.
My dear, darling girl, get away from here! Show
everyone that you’re sick of this vegetating, dull,
shameless existence! At least show yourself! (23)
The fascinating thing about this passage is that it’s not spoken by a Marxist; it seems almost to be spoken by an evangelical, though one that places his faith in learning that is not exclusively religious. Sasha believes at the least that some approximation of heaven can be built upon earth, but disavows any worship of the mob as it is. Only when the mob is educated can this heaven be built. The line about living off the masses seems to have a doubled edge, aimed at both Nadya’s fiancé Andrey – a churchman’s son – and a demanding, grasping proletariat. The latter are dismissed in the line itself: the “evil” that is the mob will be no more, as all will have “something to believe in,” a “purpose,” and will cease to try to live off “the masses.” The former eagerly, almost comically, cops to Sasha’s criticism of his laziness, saying, “he’s absolutely right! I never do a thing, I just can’t!” (26).
What is unclear to me is what the story advocates. Is it worship of the self, or of the artist? Is it intellectualism? Sasha, we are told, was, at one point previous to the beginning of the story, a student at the Komissarov School, later went to the Fine Arts Institute, and stayed there for fifteen years, “just managing in the end to qualify in architecture” (18). Afterwards he works “for a firm of lithographers in Moscow” (18). Is he an artist or no? Architects straddle the line between useful and decorative, and lithographers … well, I’m not sure I remember what lithographers are (I’ve not fired up the Internet yet, as the wireless is finicky and the Internet distracting), but I’ve got an image of Sasha working for a company churning out magazine illustrations and Currier and Ives greeting cards. There’s nothing wrong with either, but neither really says artiste.
In the end, it seems that Sasha, at least, advocates solid middle-class usefulness, what with his inveighing against both the mob and the idle. But there are a few inconvenient details: his dilatory course of schooling was paid for by Nadya’s grandmother, a woman he criticizes for the conditions in which her servants live: “early this morning I popped into the kitchen and four of the servants were asleep on the bare floor. They don’t have beds; instead of bedding all they have is rags, stench, bugs, cockroaches” (18). He is apparently free to spend months on end away from his job, saying in June, while visiting Nadya’s home, “‘I may well stay until September’” (18). What’s more, Sasha’s lifestyle is positively bohemian. He wears “a buttoned-up frock coat and shabby canvas trousers that were ragged at the bottoms. His shirt had not been ironed and on the whole he looked somewhat grubby” (18). His living quarters in Moscow are worse. His room is described as:
full of the smell of stale tobacco, and with saliva stains.
On the table, next to a cold samovar, lay a broken plate
and a piece of dark paper. Both table and floor were
covered with dead flies. Everything showed what a
slipshod existence Sasha led – he was living any old
how, with a profound contempt for creature comforts (31).
Finally, he dies in the end of tuberculosis, the classic disease of the impractical Romantic – surely by 1903 this was settled symbolism? Sasha seems not to epitomize middle class respectability, bohemian revolution, nihilism, monasticism, or even, we shall see, intellectualism.
Nadya, only one of Sasha’s protégés, it seems, goes away to study. It never becomes clear what she studies, so it is hard to say whether one should regard her as an artist or something else. Her studies seem only to ironically confirm Sasha’s prediction: “Drastically alter your way of life and then everything else will change too. The most important thing is to make a completely fresh start, the rest doesn’t matter” (29-30). The primary change seems to be that Sasha is diminished in her eyes. As the tuberculosis weakens him, her experience in St. Petersburg diminishes him. “She wept,” we are told, “because Sasha did not seem as abreast of things, as intellectual, as interesting as last year” (32). This assessment of Sasha is unsurprising, given how emptily optimistic his advice to Nadya was.
Beyond this, Nadya seems as empty as Sasha. She comes back to a quiet home. No one has died, but the family, since Nadya’s repulse of Andrey, has lost their “position in society, reputation, the right to entertain guests” (33). The town is as meaningless to her as it had become before she left. “She saw,” we are told, “how her whole past had been torn away, had vanished as if burnt and the ashes scattered in the wind” (35). So she looks to the future, in words that, fifteen years after the story was published, would begin to take on an eerie, inexact prescience:
Oh, if only that bright new life would come quickly, then
one could face one’s destiny boldly, cheerful and free in
the knowledge that one was right! That life would come,
sooner or later. Surely the time would come when not a
trace would remain of Grandmother’s house, where four
servants were forced to live in one filthy basement room
– it would be forgotten, erased from the memory” (34).
Boy would it ever be. Is it possible that Nadya will, fifteen years after the story ends, find herself a professorial den mother to a pack of murdering Bolsheviks, that Sasha will turn out to have been some John the Baptist crying out in the wilderness of Moscow the advent of a salvific bureaucracy of intellectuals?
The back of the Penguin edition I own speaks of the story’s “high note of optimism.” I have no doubt that the back cover blurb writer either knows what he’s talking about or is getting directions from one who does, but even if we reject the notion that Chekov was some sort of ironical prophet in that passage, there is still the last paragraph of the story: “She went upstairs to pack and next morning said goodbye to her family. In a lively, cheerful mood she left that town – for ever, so she thought” (35).
“So she thought.” There seems to be some menace there. There is at the very least the possibility that she is wrong, that her “vague and mysterious” future will not turn out so “new, full and rich” in the end (35).
Works Cited
Chekov, Anton. “The Fiancée.” “The Fiance” and Other Stories. Trans.
Ronald Wilks. New York: Viking Penguin, 1986.
Labels: Anton Chekov
posted by J. R. R. Hawking | 11:52 PM
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