Chekhov’s “The Horse-Stealers” and some strange imagery

When people talk about Chekhov, they usually talk about him as a subtle writer, depicting with sensitivity and compassion ordinary people’s loneliness, regrets, and sorrows. People focus on his range of characters, his ability to convey the subtlest shades of emotions, and his scepticism of ideas and meaning.

As though there’s nothing interesting about his imagery.

But I have just read “The Horse-Stealers”, in Volume 10 of Constance Garnett’s 13 volumes of Chekhov, and look! 

“The wind howled in the stove; something growled and squeaked as though a big dog had strangled a rat.

“Ugh! the unclean spirits are abroad!” said Lyubka.”

This one is simple—someone like Flaubert or Flannery O’Connor might come up with a more unusual simile—but it does vividly set up the dark tone of the story, and “The Horse-Stealers” is rather dark.

““What a flame of a girl!” thought Yergunov, sitting on the chest, and from there watching the dance. “What fire! Give up everything for her, and it would be too little . . . .”

[…] The sharp tapping, shouts, and whoops set the crockery ringing in the cupboard and the flame of the candle dancing.

The thread broke and the beads were scattered all over the floor, the green kerchief slipped off, and Lyubka was transformed into a red cloud flitting by and flashing black eyes, and it seemed as though in another second Merik’s arms and legs would drop off.”

Yergunov yearns for Lyubka but she’s only drawn to Merik, one of the horse stealers, who treats her abominably. Then he finds that in the snowstorm, his horse has been stolen. 

“The snowstorm still persisted. White clouds were floating about the yard, their long tails clinging to the rough grass and the bushes, while on the other side of the fence in the open country huge giants in white robes with wide sleeves were whirling round and falling to the ground, and getting up again to wave their arms and fight. And the wind, the wind! The bare birches and cherry-trees, unable to endure its rude caresses, bowed low down to the ground and wailed: “God, for what sin hast Thou bound us to the earth and will not let us go free?”” 

Now that is a strange image. Those are the sentient trees that Tom (Wuthering Expectations) has written about. Tom has trained me to notice the trees. And huge giants in white robes! 

“He strained his eyes to the utmost, and saw only the snow flying and the snowflakes distinctly forming into all sorts of shapes; at one moment the white, laughing face of a corpse would peep out of the darkness, at the next a white horse would gallop by with an Amazon in a muslin dress upon it, at the next a string of white swans would fly overhead. . .” 

That is even stranger.

I should perhaps write more about this aspect of Chekhov. Wonderful writer.