My personal library

1/ As I consider buying a Muriel Spark omnibus, I’m idly thinking about the books I own. We all know reading and book buying are two different hobbies. As I’m not able to buy books often, most of the books I read I do not own—they’re usually copies from the libraries or ebooks from Gutenberg. Most books aren’t read more than once. Great books written in other languages should be read in multiple translations. 

So what books do I own? Shakespeare, of course: all the plays in 7 volumes, plus an Oxford book containing the sonnets and narrative poems (I’m a fanatic, of course, but does any English-speaking household not own any Shakespeare?). Jane Austen: 7 novels in one volume (great for anyone who wants to combine reading with weight-lifting). Moby-Dick, my Bible. The King James Bible. The Oxford Book of English Verse (my attempt to get into poetry beyond Shakespeare and Keats). No Charlotte, no Anne, but I do have Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. No George Eliot, if we talk about the books in my place right now and ignore the ones stored at my mum’s house in Leeds. No Dickens except David Copperfield, a rescue, though I sometimes feel an urge to buy Bleak House (but when am I going to reread it? I’m also unlikely to occasionally pick it up and reread chapters as I do with Moby-Dick). No Henry Fielding. No Edith Wharton. No Henry James. The books I own, I suppose, indicate my obsessions, especially if they’re right here with me. I have three books by Nabokov (Lolita, Pnin, and Speak, Memory) for instance, but they’re stored away in Leeds. No Alice Munro (I gave away my copy), but I have Flannery O’Connor. 

Beyond English? Tolstoy, of course: I read Anna Karenina and War and Peace twice, each time in a different translation, but a Tolstoy fan must have their own copies to revisit chapters (Anna Karenina by Rosamund Bartlett, War and Peace by Aylmer and Louise Maude, revised by Amy Mandelker); sometimes I feel an urge to buy Hadji Murad and the short stories. Chekhov: 2 collections in Constance Garnett’s translation (how many times have I read “The Bishop” or “The Lady with the Little Dog”?). Homer: next time I reread the Iliad or the Odyssey from cover to cover, it’s going to be another translation, but I need my own copies (Robert Fitzgerald) so as to easily revisit Akhilleus or Odysseus.

Clearly a lot of this is about how often I pick up the books. Value for money and all that, which doesn’t sound very romantic. But one needs to be practical and I need to stop buying books. Next time I move house, Don Quixote (Tom Lathrop) and The Brothers Karamazov (Ignat Avsey) might have to go despite my enjoyment, but Metamorphoses (A. D. Melville) might stay despite my indifference, because it’s more useful to keep a collection of myths (especially when it influenced my boy Shakespeare). Practical, practical. 

Then why do I own copies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides? I’m contradicting myself. And I own Truyện Kiều mainly because I’m Vietnamese, the same way English speakers must all own some Shakespeare (I’d also love Nguyễn Du to improve my Vietnamese writings but isn’t it foolish, I don’t really pick it up). 

(I’m leaving non-fiction out of this blog post). 

2/ What do our favourite books say about us? 

Sometimes I try to find some pattern behind the writers who speak the most to me, but can’t find any. I like both sane writers (Jane Austen, Chekhov, Tolstoy…) and mad writers (Emily Bronte, Melville, Akutagawa…); both warm writers (Chekhov, Molière, Dickens…) and cold writers (Jane Austen, Flannery O’Connor, Muriel Spark…). I think I like writers preoccupied with the subject of death, but Jane Austen leaves it offstage. I think I like writers with a sense of humour, but does Tolstoy make anyone laugh? (Maybe twice in War and Peace). I think I like writers who see some goodness and nobility in humanity and don’t just depict us all as base and bestial, but why do I like Flannery O’Connor? 

3/ Russian literature ruined my life. 

In my younger and more vulnerable years, reading Tolstoy made me want to have compassion and seek to understand other human beings. In such foolishness, I put up with lots of things and lots of people I shouldn’t have tolerated. It’s Jane Austen who taught me to have more discernment, to look at things with detachment, to be more judgemental. 

I don’t read literature for self-improvement, but we love a book more than others not only because it’s masterfully crafted, not only because it’s enjoyable, but also because it speaks to us and stays with us over the years. Austen is a good guide because, whereas many 19th century writers tend to focus on compassion and empathy, Austen emphasises the importance of discernment, self-reflection, and balance or moderation (we know what happens when one has excessive empathy). 

Later on, during that difficult period of my life, I found solace in Chekhov and found myself moving away from Austen—she didn’t write about the subjects that were preoccupying me. But now looking back, I can’t help wondering if I was making a mess of things because I absorbed Chekhov’s pessimism and accepted that human relationships were messy and my life was over and there’s no happiness on earth. I was going through volumes and volumes of Chekhov—how many stories did I read?—Chekhov saved me but also ruined me. 

(Of course I exaggerate for dramatic effect: some of it is true, but I’m doing fine and more judgemental than ever). 

Interesting that now both my favourite male and female writers are English. 

Why do I care about Jane Austen’s ordinary people but not Barbara Pym’s?

I quit on Jane and Prudence after about 50 pages. 

Some of you will probably say I’m missing the point, but Barbara Pym writes about the trivial thoughts of trivial people, and I simply don’t care. 

The novel is about Jane, a vicar’s wife who has just moved with her husband to another parish in a village, and Prudence, her younger and single friend (at 29!), who lives in London and is in love with her married boss Arthur Grampian.  

When we see Prudence in the office, Barbara Pym gives us several pages of the women talking about wanting tea, making tea, telling each other they run out of tea, discussing what to do when they don’t have tea for Dr Grampian, deciding Prudence should borrow the tin of coffee from Mr Manifold, and so on and so forth. Later Prudence goes to lunch, Pym painstakingly describes all her thoughts and actions during the lunch, then: 

“She was just walking to the cash desk to pay her bill when she noticed a young man sitting at one of the tables. It was Mr Manifold. He was eating – perhaps ‘tucking into’ would describe it better – the steamed pudding which Prudence had avoided as being too fattening. She had never seen him eating before and now she averted her eyes quickly, for there was something indecent about it, as if a mantle had fallen and revealed more of him than she ought to see. Of course the women in the office had known that he lunched somewhere – indeed, they had even speculated on where he went; perhaps the vastness of the Corner House swallowed him up or the manly security of a public-house lapped him round. Prudence hurried out of the restaurant feeling disturbed and irritated. Had he ever been there before, she wondered? She hoped he wasn’t going to make a habit of frequenting the places she went to. It would be annoying if she had to change her own routine.” (ch.4)

These are such small, trivial thoughts. 

It’s the same when Pym switches to the vicar’s wife. Because Jane has such a small mind, we don’t see her thinking about the new church, or nature, or religion, or anything interesting; she just thinks about small, mundane stuff.   

“At last Mrs Crampton emerged from behind the velvet curtain carrying two plates on a tray. She put in front of Jane a plate containing an egg, a rasher of bacon and some fried potatoes cut in fancy shapes, and in front of Nicholas a plate with two eggs and rather more potatoes.

Nicholas exclaimed with pleasure.

‘Oh, a man needs eggs!’ said Mrs Crampton, also looking pleased.

This insistence on a man’s needs amused. Jane. Men needed meat and eggs – well, yes, that might be allowed; but surely not more than women did? Perhaps Mrs Crampton’s widowhood had something to do with it; possibly she made up for having no man to feed at home by ministering to the needs of those who frequented her cafe.

[…] ‘Poor Mr Oliver,’ said Jane, scenting pathos. He certainly looked very pale reading the Lessons on Sunday evenings, but perhaps that was just a trick of the lighting. She hurried to finish her egg and bacon in case he should come in and see them at it without being able to have it himself.

[…] Mrs Crampton now returned and set down before Mr Oliver a plate laden with roast chicken and all the proper accompaniments. He accepted it with quite as much complacency as Nicholas had accepted his eggs and bacon and began to eat.

Jane turned away, to save his embarrassment. Man needs bird, she thought. Just the very best, that is what man needs.” (ch.5) 

I give you a long excerpt so you can see what I’m talking about. All these characters are boring, banal: 

“Fabian Driver, doing his pre-lunch drinking in the bar of the Golden Lion, looked out and saw Nicholas and Jane walking home. He had a confused feeling of irritation and envy as he watched them. It must have been Jane’s smiling up at her husband and the awful old coat she was wearing, the kind of coat a woman could wear only in her husband’s presence, he thought.” (ibid.)  

That’s what most people are like, you may say, but I really don’t care for all these trivial thoughts of these trivial people. I had a similar complaint about Cecilia: Frances Burney undoubtedly has great talent for capturing the characters’ voices and it could be very funny, but do I want that many pages of frivolous people talking about frivolous stuff? I do not. 

But that raises some interesting questions. Chekhov also writes about ordinary people, Jane Austen also depicts a small world, Flaubert also portrays shallow and banal people—why is it that they make me care about their characters and what happens to them? What separates them from Barbara Pym? Why do I care about what happens to Emma Bovary, for instance, when she is so hollow? 

(I’ve been thinking about this subject for some time. When I first read Jane Austen, I thought her characters didn’t have the depth or complexity of Tolstoy’s characters. And yet to me they’re alive, and many of them have lived with me over the years, like Tolstoy’s characters. I have often said my favourite Austen novel is Mansfield Park, followed by Persuasion, but over the past year or so, I’ve found myself often thinking about Pride and Prejudice, especially Mr and Mrs Bennet). 

Of course, some of you might say you don’t like Jane Austen because it’s such a circumscribed world, or you don’t like Flaubert because Emma Bovary is so shallow compared to Anna Karenina—it’s personal taste and perhaps these questions are more for myself. But Jane Austen, Flaubert, and Chekhov—regardless of personal taste—are all canonical, influential authors, whereas Frances Burney and Barbara Pym don’t quite have the same status. 

And if we broaden the question, realist novelists address the everyday and write about ordinary people—not all of them depict the whole society and not all of them write about big questions (like life and death, God’s existence, or the meaning of life)—how do they do it? How do they get us to care about their characters? 

Let’s discuss.

My 20 favourite plays not by Shakespeare [updated]

There was a time when pretty much all I read was novels and short stories; the plays I knew were those assigned at school or university. Then I got into Shakespeare and my favourite plays a couple of years ago were all by Shakespeare. 

But now I have got a better grasp of drama, especially classical drama, so here’s a list of favourites that aren’t by Shakespeare (listed chronologically by the dramatist’s birth year, and grouped by country): 

• The Oresteia by Aeschylus, which is actually three plays: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, and Eumenides 
• Prometheus Bound, attributed to Aeschylus 
• Oedipus the King 
• Antigone 
• Electra by Sophocles 
• Hippolytus 
• Hecabe 
• The Bacchae by Euripides 
• Lysistrata 
• The Frogs by Aristophanes 
• Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe 
• The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster 
• The Changeling by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley 
• The Revenger’s Tragedy by Thomas Middleton or Cyril Tourneur 
• Life Is a Dream by Pedro Calderón de la Barca 
• Tartuffe 
• Don Juan 
• The Misanthrope by Molière 
• Phèdre by Jean Racine 
• The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen 

______________________________________

What can we see here? My tastes are predominantly Greek (and Shakespearean): 10 out of 20 plays are by the Athenian playwrights (or 12 out of 22 if you don’t count the Oresteia as one). Molière is another favourite. 

Only one play from the 19th century. No Goethe. No Chekhov—is that a surprise?—I struggled with his plays, having read only two, and much prefer him as a short story writer. No Oscar Wilde, simply because I haven’t read him—if “allowed” to include plays I’ve seen onscreen, I would name The Importance of Being Earnest (though it’s hard to say which play I would remove to make place for it). 

No Tennessee Williams, whom I liked at university. No one contemporary, but then the only one I know is Tom Stoppard—one day I’m going to read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which I would probably like. 

Now this list is a bit of a cheat—a list of favourite plays, by Shakespeare and other dramatists, would be much, much harder. 

Name your favourite plays. 

Update on 19/3/2026:

I would probably replace The Revenger’s Tragedy or The Changeling with Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen. Now this is a great, psychologically complex, haunting play. 

The appeal of Chekhov

Nabokov says in Strong Opinions: 

“The word “genius” is passed around rather generously, isn’t it? At least in English, because its Russian counterpart, geniy, is a term brimming with a sort of throaty awe and is used only in the case of a very small number of writers, Shakespeare, Milton, Pushkin, Tolstoy. To such deeply beloved authors as Turgenev and Chekhov Russians assign the thinner term, talánt, talent, not genius. […] Genius still means to me, in my Russian fastidiousness and pride of phrase, a unique, dazzling gift, the genius of James Joyce, not the talent of Henry James.” 

And yet: 

“Mr. Karlinsky has put his finger on a mysterious sensory cell. He is right, I do love Chekhov dearly. I fail, however, to rationalize my feeling for him: I can easily do so in regard to the greater artist, Tolstoy, with the flash of this or that unforgettable passage (“…  how sweetly she said: ‘and even very much’ ”—Vronsky recalling Kitty’s reply to some trivial question that we shall never know), but when I imagine Chekhov with the same detachment all I can make out is a medley of dreadful prosaisms, ready-made epithets, repetitions, doctors, unconvincing vamps, and so forth; yet it is his works which I would take on a trip to another planet.”

Nabokov makes a similar point in Lectures on Russian Literature: 

“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. […] 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. […] 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.”

Unlike Nabokov, I do think Chekhov has genius—like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Gogol—whereas Turgenev has talent. But I too find it difficult to talk about Chekhov’s greatness, to rationalise my love for his writings.

When I read Alice Munro for the first time last year—a darling of Book Twitter, until the recent explosion—I enjoyed the stories a lot, but I remember thinking she’s very good but not Chekhov good. Alice Munro is also a subtle writer, writing about the lives of ordinary people and the little moments that are full of meaning. In a way, she should perhaps appeal more to me, writing about women, and she’s contemporary—TSK on Twitter said “being closer to us in time, her stories are fresher and more alive”—and yet I have never felt a connection with Alice Munro the way I feel about Chekhov (and now I clearly won’t). 

But it’s not just Alice Munro. I just love Chekhov more than any other short story writers; and in literature in general, I feel closer to Chekhov than anyone else, even Shakespeare and Tolstoy. 

Why? 

Part of it must be the authorial persona. Some writers—like Chekhov, Cervantes—have a more lovable persona than others—like Tolstoy, George Eliot. Tolstoy the artist may be able to depict a wide range of perspectives and inhabit the mind of more or less any character* but you can tell—you can feel on the page—that Tolstoy the man is judgemental. Same with George Eliot. 

It’s not that Chekhov doesn’t judge or doesn’t condemn. That is something people like to repeat when they talk about Chekhov, but all you have to do is to read “Ward No.6” or “In the Ravine” and you can see that isn’t true—Chekhov’s moral sense is clear, as he writes about people’s egotism, callousness, and cruelty to each other. But he is compassionate and humane. He makes us feel understood. He provides solace in moments of despair. 

He conveys, better than anyone, those brief moments of sadness that we sometimes feel. Take, for example, this passage from “The Beauties”: 

“I felt this beauty rather strangely. It was not desire, nor ecstacy, nor enjoyment that Masha excited in me, but a painful though pleasant sadness. It was a sadness vague and undefined as a dream. For some reason I felt sorry for myself, for my grandfather and for the Armenian, even for the girl herself, and I had a feeling as though we all four had lost something important and essential to life which we should never find again. My grandfather, too, grew melancholy; he talked no more about manure or about oats, but sat silent, looking pensively at Masha.” 

Later, in the same story: 

“On the platform between our carriage and the next the guard was standing with his elbows on the railing, looking in the direction of the beautiful girl, and his battered, wrinkled, unpleasantly beefy face, exhausted by sleepless nights and the jolting of the train, wore a look of tenderness and of the deepest sadness, as though in that girl he saw happiness, his own youth, soberness, purity, wife, children; as though he were repenting and feeling in his whole being that that girl was not his, and that for him, with his premature old age, his uncouthness, and his beefy face, the ordinary happiness of a man and a passenger was as far away as heaven....” 

(translated by Constance Garnett) 

I’m not a guard with a “battered, wrinkled, unpleasantly beefy face”, but I recognise that melancholy feeling.

This is why, when I feel down, I turn to Chekhov. 

Chekhov appeals to me also because he’s a humanist, and humane. Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky constantly write about God and constantly wrestle with their faith; Chekhov doesn’t pretend to know the answers to any of those big questions, but he’s capable of depicting goodness without faith, and conveying—in life as well as in writings—a sense of purpose without religion. He also rejects ideology, and rejects extremes. 

If anyone asks who my literary heroes are, my immediate answer would be Chekhov. I might perhaps also mention Vasily Grossman or Primo Levi—it might be a bit too early to say—but my one literary hero would be Chekhov. 

What about you? Why do you like Chekhov? 

*: except Hélène. 

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. 

Light in Chekhov

As a little break from Cervantes’s Exemplary Novels, I’ve been reading Chekhov (who can be a better companion when one’s got the morbs?). 

One thing struck me: 

“The shades of evening were already lying on the station garden, on the platform, and on the fields; the station screened off the sunset, but on the topmost clouds of smoke from the engine, which were tinged with rosy light, one could see the sun had not yet quite vanished.”

This is from “The Beauties” in Volume 9 (Constance Garnett). Note the light. 

Now look at this passage in “Panic Fears”:

“The forest road was covered with pools from a recent shower of rain, and the earth squelched under one’s feet. The crimson glow of sunset flooded the whole forest, coloring the white stems of the birches and the young leaves.” 

I like that.

“There was a pale light from the afterglow of sunset; a streak of light cut its way through a narrow, uncouth-looking cloud, which seemed sometimes like a boat and sometimes like a man wrapped in a quilt....

I had driven a mile and a half, or two miles, when against the pale background of the evening glow there came into sight one after another some graceful tall poplars; a river glimmered beyond them, and a gorgeous picture suddenly, as though by magic, lay stretched before me.” 

Just a few strokes—Chekhov doesn’t spend pages describing nature as Proust does. 

“The moon and two white fluffy clouds beside it hung just over the station, motionless as though glued to the spot, and looked as though waiting for something. A faint transparent light came from them and touched the white earth softly, as though afraid of wounding her modesty, and lighted up everything—the snowdrifts, the embankment.... It was still.”

That comes from “Champagne”. Same story:

“A poplar covered with hoar frost looked in the bluish darkness like a giant wrapt in a shroud. It looked at me sullenly and dejectedly, as though like me it realized its loneliness. I stood a long while looking at it.”

Tom of Wuthering Expectations would talk about the sentient trees, a motif he has noticed recurring in many of Chekhov’s stories, but I want to draw your attention to “the bluish darkness”. 

These stories are all in Volume 9. Let me grab Volume 7 and look at “The Steppe”, perhaps Chekhov’s most famous description of the Ukrainian landscape: 

“On the right there were the dark hills which seemed to be screening something unseen and terrible; on the left the whole sky about the horizon was covered with a crimson glow, and it was hard to tell whether there was a fire somewhere, or whether it was the moon about to rise. As by day the distance could be seen, but its tender lilac tint had gone, quenched by the evening darkness, in which the whole steppe was hidden like Moisey Moisevitch’s children under the quilt.” 

Chekhov’s eyes are particularly sensitive to colours: “crimson glow”, “tender lilac tint”. 

These descriptions of the light—the tint of the light—struck me because you don’t find such descriptions in Cervantes. 

Nabokov writes in Lectures on Don Quixote: 

“If we follow the evolution of literary forms and devices from the remotest antiquity to our times we notice that the art of dialogue was developed and perfected much earlier than the art of describing, or better say expressing, nature. By 1600 the dialogue with great writers in all countries is excellent—natural, supple, colorful, alive. But the verbal rendering of landscapes will have to wait until, roughly speaking, the beginning of the nineteenth century to reach the same level as the dialogue had reached 200 years before; and it is only in the second part of the nineteenth century that descriptive passages referring to outside nature were integrated, were merged with the story, ceased to stick out in separate paragraphs, and became organic parts of the whole composition.” 

I wonder why that is—is it the transition from plays to novels? 

For various reasons, I have always objected to the idea that literature progressed over time, but Nabokov seems to be right when he makes a similar point about colours in Lectures on Russian Literature: 

“The difference between human vision and the image perceived by the faceted eye of an insect may be compared with the difference between a half-tone block made with the very finest screen and the corresponding picture as represented by the very coarse screening used in common newspaper pictorial reproduction. The same comparison holds good between the way Gogol saw things and the way average readers and average writers see things. Before his and Pushkin’s advent Russian literature was purblind. What form it perceived was an outline directed by reason: it did not see color for itself but merely used the hackneyed combinations of blind noun and dog-like adjective that Europe had inherited from the ancients. The sky was blue, the dawn red, the foliage green, the eyes of beauty black, the clouds grey, and so on. It was Gogol (and after him Lermontov and Tolstoy) who first saw yellow and violet at all. That the sky could be pale green at sunrise, or the snow a rich blue on a cloudless day, would have sounded like heretical nonsense to your so-called “classical” writer, accustomed as he was to the rigid conventional color-schemes of the Eighteenth Century French school of literature. Thus the development of the art of description throughout the centuries may be profitably treated in terms of vision, the faceted eye becoming a unified and prodigiously complex organ and the dead dim “accepted colors” (in the sense of “idees recues”) yielding gradually their subtle shades and allowing new wonders of application. I doubt whether any writer, and certainly not in Russia, had ever noticed before, to give the most striking instance, the moving pattern of light and shade on the ground under trees or the tricks of color played by sunlight with leaves.” 

Let’s see how this is going to affect my reading—and noticing—when I return to Cervantes. 

April is the cruellest month [updated]

April is to me full of sad associations. 

Last year, I was going through a difficult time. So I went through one Chekhov volume after another, in the translations by Ronald Wilks and Ann Dunnigan and Constance Garnett. Out of Constance Garnett’s 13 volumes, I read 8. At such a time, Chekhov brought me comfort and consolation. At such a time, I felt closer to Chekhov than any other prose writer, even more than Tolstoy and Jane Austen.

But now, somehow I’m not in the mood for Chekhov, for the pessimism and the unhappy people in his works. Perhaps it’s tiresome after a while to keep reading about people wasting their lives and losing their chances of happiness. Or perhaps it’s simply that Chekhov makes me more pessimistic, when Tolstoy or Shakespeare doesn’t have on me such an effect.

Is there something to Joseph Epstein’s idea about literature and faith in God? 

Anyway, I’ve been reading Isaac Bashevis Singer. I realised at the end of 2023 that I hadn’t read many books by Jewish writers—how Jewish is Kafka? how Jewish is Proust?—so I’ve been reading Isaac Babel and Isaac Bashevis Singer and Primo Levi and now, between the 2 parts of Don Quixote, am back to Singer’s Collected Stories. It’s odd—at the beginning of the book, 2-3 months ago, I thought he was very good but couldn’t help thinking “so what?”, intending to write a blog post examining the idea of relatability in literature—but now I’m thoroughly enjoying his stories.

Singer’s short stories, I guess, might be roughly divided into 2 groups: the Polish, folklore-like stories, full of devils and dybbuks (like “The Destruction of Kreshev”, “The Last Demon”, “Henne Fire”, “A Crown of Feathers”, etc.) and the American, more realistic stories, usually with a Yiddish writer as the narrator (like “A Friend of Kafka”, “A Day in Coney Island”, “The Cabalist of East Broadway”, “A Quotation from Klopstock”, “Old Love”, “The Yearning Heifer”, etc.). But the realistic New York-based stories can sometimes be filled with ghosts, like “The Cafeteria”, and sometimes a folkloric story may be built on a horrifying historical event, such as “The Last Demon” is, one gradually realises, about the Holocaust.  

But what do I like about Isaac Bashevis Singer? He’s a fantastic storyteller. I love his rich imagination, his prose, his striking metaphors and imagery. I love his warmth and humour. I love the compassion he has for all his characters. 

So I’m spending the cruellest month with Isaac Bashevis Singer. 

Update on 29/7/2024: I am now reading Chekhov’s Volume 10 (Constance Garnett), and thought of Joseph Epstein’s idea: what nonsense! Chekhov is a great writer, and he gives me great solace that I do not get from religious writers. My literary heroes, now that I’ve thought about it, are Chekhov, Primo Levi, and Vasily Grossman, and the other two are not religious either. 

Types of characters in Shakespeare

Aren’t you amazed at the range of characters in Shakespeare? I mean not just a range in backgrounds, identities, personalities, viewpoints, but also a range in types of characters? 

Shakespeare can create both larger-than-life characters (the Macbeths, Lear, Othello) and small, ordinary characters (Juliet’s nurse, Celia, Hero); both complex, multifaceted characters (Hamlet, Hal, Cleopatra) and caricatures (Pistol, Dogberry, Perdita’s adoptive father). He can create utterly charming characters (Rosalind, Beatrice). He can depict, convincingly, wholly good characters (Desdemona, Kent, Imogen) and wholly evil characters (Goneril, Regan, Iago). He can delineate characters who are charismatic and lovable despite their bad traits (Falstaff) or sympathetic despite their villainy (Shylock), as well as characters who are repulsive despite their intelligence (Portia) or deeply unpleasant despite their virtue (Isabella). He can get you to dislike a character then feel ashamed for having laughed at their humiliation (Malvolio). He can create a two-dimensional comic relief character then, with a single line, give him depth (Sir Andrew Aguecheek). He can depict an utterly ordinary character then transfigure her in the last act (Emilia), or elevate her into a quasi-mythological being (Cleopatra). He can create characters who continue to puzzle, who continue to be analysed and discussed centuries later (Hamlet, Iago). 

It’s astonishing. (Most) other writers don’t have such range.

At the risk of being accused of denigrating other writers in order to praise Shakespeare, let me explain what I mean. I think, for example, that Chekhov can’t create larger-than-life characters and Tolstoy can’t really write caricatures (except for Napoleon), not for lack of talent but because of their sensibilities. Dostoyevsky probably can’t write small, ordinary characters. George Eliot and Edith Wharton can’t portray a charming character, especially if they themselves disapprove of them, as Jane Austen (Henry and Mary Crawford) and Thackeray (Becky Sharp) can. Jane Austen, like Shakespeare, can depict a two-dimensional foolish character and then make us feel ashamed when we realise they have feelings (Miss Bates), but she doesn’t create a character whose name becomes a byword for something, the way Shakespeare (Othello, Shylock) and some other writers can (Melville: Bartleby, Ahab; Nabokov: Lolita; Dickens: Scrooge). Dickens, like Shakespeare, can give us a caricature and then in last few chapters give them complexity and depth (Sir Leicester Dedlock), but readers tend to complain about his wholly good characters, something very few writers can convincingly pull off. 

Shakespeare’s genius is miraculous. 

2023 in reading and film-watching

1/ The greatest novel I’ve read this year is easily The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky. Sometimes I look at the suffering around the world, and around me, and think about the “I’ll return the ticket” chapter. 

Not hard to see why some people think The Brothers Karamazov is the greatest novel ever written. 

2/ The greatest non-fiction book I’ve read this year is Gary Saul Morson’s Wonder Confronts Certainty.

The book was a birthday present from Tom of Wuthering Expectations and it was just my thing, exploring Russian literature and history of ideas—from the period leading up to the Revolution, to the Stalinist years—and the big questions.

Gary Saul Morson also wrote about intellectuals’ bloodlust and love of violence and embrace of revolution for the sake of revolution, which I didn’t expect to see playing out across the West just a few months later.  

3/ 2023 has been a strange year. Things fell apart. My life took a new turn.

Looking back at my reading and viewing in 2023, I realise that I didn’t read many novels, nor watched many films. Busy with work. Unable to concentrate. And all that. So I mostly binged on The Mentalist and watched Inside No.9 and read short stories.

The writer who has meant the most to me this year, on a personal level, is Chekhov. Tolstoy continues to be the prose writer I admire the most—Anna Karenina and War and Peace are part of my mental furniture—but Chekhov is the writer to whom I feel the closest. 

And yet here’s a paradox: Chekhov brings comfort in difficult times but might also make me pessimistic. Tolstoy and Shakespeare don’t have that effect. 

4/ I read Hamlet for the third time this year and finally something clicked, finally I grasped something that had previously eluded me. I love the play, and love the Kevin Kline production. 

5/ In 2023, I discovered Mishima Yukio, Alice Munro, Flannery O’Connor, and Isaac Babel.

Flannery O’Connor is one of the few short story writers about whom I do not think “not quite Chekhov but…”. I think that when reading Alice Munro or Isaac Babel or Balzac, but not when reading O’Connor. She’s her own thing. And she is a great writer. 

6/ For a long time, my idea of Russia was either Tolstoy’s Russia or Soviet Russia. Isaac Babel’s Russia, now Ukraine, is very different as he wrote about Jews, Jewish gangsters, and pogroms. 

I was reading Odessa Stories on my Prague work trip: it was strange, and horrible, to read Isaac Babel’s depiction of the 1905 pogrom, then see the memorial to Holocaust victims in Bohemia and Moravia, and then look at the internet and see the antisemitism taking hold of many people and institutions in the West today. 

Now reading Red Cavalry. 

I’d like to read more Jewish literature. 

Anyway, thanks for reading my blog, and thanks for all the interesting conversations here. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!

Chekhov and shame

I prefer Chekhov’s later and longer stories, naturally. But many of his earlier stories, though just sketches, are very good.

In Volume 8 of Constance Garnett’s Chekhov, shame is the theme in most of the stories: Chekhov depicts an encounter, a confrontation, or a confession, and pinpoints a moment of shame, of the realisation in some character that they have wasted their lives or been unkind to others. And it’s very moving. 

For example, in “The Chorus Girl”, a chorus girl named Pasha is with a man when his wife suddenly appears and asks about him: 

“Pasha felt that on this lady in black with the angry eyes and white slender fingers she produced the impression of something horrid and unseemly, and she felt ashamed of her chubby red cheeks, the pock-mark on her nose, and the fringe on her forehead, which never could be combed back. And it seemed to her that if she had been thin, and had had no powder on her face and no fringe on her forehead, then she could have disguised the fact that she was not “respectable,” and she would not have felt so frightened and ashamed to stand facing this unknown, mysterious lady.”

It is similar to a moment in “A Gentleman Friend”: 

“The staircase impressed her as luxurious, and magnificent, but of all its splendours what caught her eye most was an immense looking-glass, in which she saw a ragged figure without a fashionable jacket, without a big hat, and without bronze shoes. And it seemed strange to Vanda that, now that she was humbly dressed and looked like a laundress or sewing girl, she felt ashamed, and no trace of her usual boldness and sauciness remained, and in her own mind she no longer thought of herself as Vanda, but as the Nastasya Kanavkin she used to be in the old days. . . .” 

To go back to “The Chorus Girl”, the wife screams at her, curses her, begs her whilst the husband is hiding and hearing everything.  

“Pasha shrieked with horror and waved her hands. She felt that this pale, beautiful lady who expressed herself so grandly, as though she were on the stage, really might go down on her knees to her, simply from pride, from grandeur, to exalt herself and humiliate the chorus girl.” 

A large part of the story is about the chorus girl’s shame and humiliation—because of it, she does an impulsive act that she later regrets—but then the wife leaves and the man appears, and now what we see is his shame. 

“At a Country House” is also a sketch, but different from “The Chorus Girl”, shame is not a feeling that runs through the entire story but a moment of sudden realisation: 

“Rashevitch was fearfully confused. Dumbfoundered, as though he had been caught in the act of a crime, he gazed helplessly at Meier, and did not know what to say. Genya and Iraida flushed crimson, and bent over their music; they were ashamed of their tactless father. A minute passed in silence, and there was a feeling of unbearable discomfort…” 

That moment changes the colour, the tone of the rest of the story. 

“When he reached his own room, Rashevitch sat down on his bed and began to undress. He felt oppressed, and he was still haunted by the same feeling as though he had eaten soap. He was ashamed. As he undressed he looked at his long, sinewy, elderly legs, and remembered that in the district they called him the “toad,” and after every long conversation he always felt ashamed.” 

It also changes the way we perceive the character. Rashevitch is the kind of man Chekhov might not have liked in real life, for he speaks of blue blood and disparages the working class, but Chekhov humanises him—through shame—and makes us feel sorry for him. 

The subject of shame is even more developed, and better handled, in “Rothschild’s Fiddle”. Look at the moment when Yakov notices the look of joy on his dying wife’s face: 

“Looking at the old woman, Yakov for some reason reflected that he had not once in his life been affectionate to her, had had no feeling for her, had never once thought to buy her a kerchief, or to bring her home some dainty from a wedding, but had done nothing but shout at her, scold her for his losses, shake his fists at her; it is true he had never actually beaten her, but he had frightened her, and at such times she had always been numb with terror. Why, he had forbidden her to drink tea because they spent too much without that, and she drank only hot water. And he understood why she had such a strange, joyful face now, and he was overcome with dread.” 

Chekhov doesn’t use the word, but it’s a moment of immense shame. The feeling becomes stronger after the funeral: 

“He wondered how it had happened that for the last forty or fifty years of his life he had never once been to the river, or if he had been by it he had not paid attention to it. […] But nothing of this had happened, even in his dreams; life had passed uselessly without any pleasure, had been wasted for nothing, not even a pinch of snuff; there was nothing left in front, and if one looked back—there was nothing there but losses, and such terrible ones, it made one cold all over. […] Why do people always do what isn’t needful? Why had Yakov all his life scolded, bellowed, shaken his fists, ill-treated his wife, and, one might ask, what necessity was there for him to frighten and insult the Jew that day? Why did people in general hinder each other from living? What losses were due to it! what terrible losses! If it were not for hatred and malice people would get immense benefit from one another.”

Now connected with shame is the subject of waste—something that occupies Chekhov throughout his career, in both short stories and plays—the idea that we waste our lives and hinder each other from living. 

I shall end my blog post with a quote from Edmund White, as quoted on Anecdotal Evidence blog: 

“But surely the stories of Chekhov or the paintings of de Chirico move us not only because they are so well done, but because in each case the artist has arranged exactly the right things in the right order. The choice of subject matter has been at least half of the achievement. Of course, if the rendering were less accomplished, its inaccuracies would distract us or stand between us and what was going on; but the aptness of the rendering alone could never explain the mysterious hold those words in the dark have over us.”

Chekhov’s “The Letter” and “A Nightmare”

Not enough is said about the great value of Constance Garnett’s 13 volumes of Chekhov. I like her prose, I also like the way she organises the stories—for example, Volume 7 has “The Bishop”, “The Letter”, “Easter Eve”, “A Nightmare”, “The Murder”, “Uprooted”, and “The Steppe”—she groups together several stories which have a religious theme or setting and which can be read together, and adds some different stories so it’s never boring. 

Volume 7 begins with “The Bishop”, one of his finest stories, and possibly Vasily Grossman’s favourite, as he mentions it in both Life and Fate and Everything Flows. The story is Chekhov’s answer to The Death of Ivan Ilyich: oppressed by illness and overwhelmed with work, the bishop has no time to think about death or God, and when he thinks about his life, he doesn’t ask himself if he has lived a good and worthwhile life, but thinks about his mother and his childhood. 

Bishops and priests in Chekhov’s world are perfectly human—there are no saints—that’s what I love about Chekhov. 

“The Bishop” is followed with “The Letter”. 

“Not everyone knows when to be silent and when to go. It not infrequently happens that even diplomatic persons of good worldly breeding fail to observe that their presence is arousing a feeling akin to hatred in their exhausted or busy host, and that this feeling is being concealed with an effort and disguised with a lie. But Father Anastasy perceived it clearly, and realized that his presence was burdensome and inappropriate, that his Reverence, who had taken an early morning service in the night and a long mass at midday, was exhausted and longing for repose; every minute he was meaning to get up and go, but he did not get up, he sat on as though he were waiting for something.”

In the story, Chekhov moves between different perspectives, depicting both the “feeling akin to hatred” in the exhausted host, and the mind of the unwelcome guest who knows he has to leave but somehow doesn’t go. 

“His Reverence believed in people’s reforming, but now when a feeling of pity had been kindled in him it seemed to him that this disgraced, worn-out old man, entangled in a network of sins and weaknesses, was hopelessly wrecked, that there was no power on earth that could straighten out his spine, give brightness to his eyes and restrain the unpleasant timid laugh which he laughed on purpose to smoothe over to some slight extent the repulsive impression he made on people.

The old man seemed now to Father Fyodor not guilty and not vicious, but humiliated, insulted, unfortunate; his Reverence thought of his wife, his nine children, the dirty beggarly shelter at Zyavkin’s; he thought for some reason of the people who are glad to see priests drunk and persons in authority detected in crimes; and thought that the very best thing Father Anastasy could do now would be to die as soon as possible and to depart from this world for ever.”

Who else but Chekhov would write a passage like that about a priest? It is so good. In “The Letter”, he writes about two priests and a deacon, and depicts them with such keen insight, such compassion and humanity. His characters are all human. 

In “A Nightmare”, there’s a priest named Father Yakov, and he’s seen through the eyes of Kunin, a member of the Rural Board. 

“With his short figure, his narrow chest, his red and perspiring face, he made from the first moment a most unpleasant impression on Kunin. The latter could never have imagined that there were such undignified and pitiful-looking priests in Russia; and in Father Yakov’s attitude, in the way he held his hands on his knees and sat on the very edge of his chair, he saw a lack of dignity and even a shade of servility.”

Writing from the perspective of Kunin, Chekhov doesn’t hold back: 

“Father Yakov was so absorbed in drinking tea that he did not answer this question at once. He lifted his grey-blue eyes to Kunin, thought a moment, and as though recalling his question, he shook his head in the negative. An expression of pleasure and of the most ordinary prosaic appetite overspread his face from ear to ear. He drank and smacked his lips over every gulp. When he had drunk it to the very last drop, he put his glass on the table, then took his glass back again, looked at the bottom of it, then put it back again. The expression of pleasure faded from his face. . . .”

As it is Chekhov, there would be a turn in the story, but I won’t go into detail—all I’ll say is that I love the way he writes about the indignity of poverty, and the pride of a poor person who desperately tries to hide his poverty—it is so moving. 

__________________________________________

I have finished reading Gary Saul Morson’s Wonder Confronts Certainty. If you’re interested in Russian literature and history, ideology, and big questions, this is the book for you. 

I love that Morson ends the book with Chekhov. He too is my hero. 

Musings on Jane Austen—a personal blog post

1/ It’s strange how these things work. There are writers with whom it was love at first sight (Tolstoy, Melville). There are writers I came to like over time (Jane Austen). There are writers I had to rediscover (Shakespeare, Chekhov). And sometimes a writer comes to mean a lot more to me at a particular stage of my life, like Chekhov at the moment, whilst I’m having a difficult time. As I move closer to Chekhov, it so happens that I move further away from Jane Austen. It’s not because I think less highly of her, but the themes of balance, misperception, and appearance vs reality now mean less to me; whereas the subjects that now occupy me didn’t seem to interest Austen: death, grief, loneliness, longing, sex, sexual desire, unhappiness, fleetingness of love, search for meaning, and so on. 

2/ I’ve never got out of my head Nabokov’s remark in his lecture about Mansfield Park: 

“Nobody in Mansfield Park dies in the arms of the author and reader, as people do in Dickens, Flaubert, Tolstoy. The deaths in Mansfield Park happen somewhere behind the scenes and excite little emotion. These dull deaths have, however, a curiously strong influence on the development of plot.”

This is true for all of Jane Austen’s novels: deaths happen off-stage, and they’re often, if not always, functional (in Nabokov’s words: “affect the development of the novel and are introduced for structural purposes, purposes of development”). 

3/ I reread Pride and Prejudice several months ago. I have always had a complicated relationship with it: I like it a lot, but it’s too light, bright, and sparkling, too much like a woman’s fantasy. Mr Darcy might exist, but you’re not going to meet him. 

(I myself prefer Mr Knightley). 

4/ It probably says something about me that my favourite Austen novel is Mansfield Park, her darkest, most sombre novel.

Like her other novels, it has a happy ending, but she gives us a vision, a glimpse of something else that might have happened: Fanny Price back in Portsmouth, poor, alienated, unhappy, forever unable to get out; or married to Henry Crawford, betrayed, humiliated, and miserable.

These visions are gloomier than what her other heroines might have experienced if they hadn’t got a happy ending.

Update on 17/10/2026: see this blog post about my return to Jane Austen. 

Musings on Flannery O’Connor and vision

There is often something violent in the works of Flannery O’Connor. In A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories, the weakest stories are those in which nothing happens—like “A Stroke of Good Fortune” or “A Late Encounter with the Enemy”—stories of nothing happening, the domain of Chekhov, are not her thing. In her best stories, there’s usually something shocking, something violent or brutal or destructive. And she doesn’t hold back. 

Flannery O’Connor is a strange, fascinating writer. Strange, because she has a weird way of seeing and depicting things, and I often find her elusive. Fascinating, as she has an imposing personality and an uncompromising, pitiless quality. 

Above all, it is strange that I don’t know what draws me to her short stories. Not long ago, I tweeted that I didn’t find the great works of Russian literature depressing even though they depicted war, disease, death, cruelty, humiliation, suffering… whereas the works of Tanizaki (specifically Naomi), Joyce Carol Oates, or Elfriede Jelinek filled me with disgust and left a bad taste in my mouth. The difference, I’ve concluded, is in vision: Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoyevsky…, in spite of everything, still demonstrate a love of life and humanity, and a belief in freedom and human dignity; Vasily Grossman, even when he writes about the worst horrors of the 20th century, believes in dignity and kindness and offers a glimpse of hope; whereas the works of Tanizaki, Elfriede Jelinek, or Joyce Carol Oates are devoid of light, depicting human beings as just base and depraved. 

I don’t share such a vision of life. Even my current job, in which I regularly speak to refugees, victims of religious persecution, and victims of human trafficking, doesn’t make me cynical, for I still see people stand up for the truth and for justice, I still see people try to help others, I still see people try to make changes. 

Why then do I like Flannery O’Connor? She has a dark, dark view of humanity. In one story, a group of fugitives kills an entire family. In two stories, some men deceive and take advantage of disabled women. In another story, a group of adolescents causes havoc for no reason but their own meanness, and sets the woods on fire. And there’s a story in which a grandfather, the moment he’s needed the most, rejects his own grandson and debases himself out of fear and cowardice. It is a cold, brutal world she depicts and there is no glimpse of hope, no glimpse of human kindness. 

And yet, her stories don’t leave a bad taste in my mouth. Why? What does she have that Elfriede Jelinek, Joyce Carol Oates, and Tanizaki lack? 

Chekhov’s “The Huntsman”

In Lectures on Russian Literature, Nabokov writes: 

“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. […] 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. […] 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. The variety of his moods, the flicker of his charming wit, the deeply artistic economy of characterization, the vivid detail, and the fade-out of human life—all the peculiar Chekhovian features—are enhanced by being suffused and surrounded by a faintly iridescent verbal haziness.”

I have just finished Volume 6 of Constance Garnett’s Chekhov, and indeed there’s something magical about his stories.  

For example, “The Huntsman” is a very simple short story—basically a sketch of a meeting between a huntsman and a woman—on the surface, there doesn’t seem to be anything special or remarkable about it. But it is wonderful, and I’m trying to figure out why. 

“There was stillness all round, not a sound... everything living was hiding away from the heat.

“Yegor Vlassitch!” the huntsman suddenly heard a soft voice.

He started and, looking round, scowled. Beside him, as though she had sprung out of the earth, stood a pale-faced woman of thirty with a sickle in her hand. She was trying to look into his face, and was smiling diffidently.

“Oh, it is you, Pelagea!” said the huntsman, stopping and deliberately uncocking the gun. “H’m!... How have you come here?”

“The women from our village are working here, so I have come with them.... As a labourer, Yegor Vlassitch.”

“Oh...” growled Yegor Vlassitch, and slowly walked on.

Pelagea followed him. They walked in silence for twenty paces.

“I have not seen you for a long time, Yegor Vlassitch...” said Pelagea looking tenderly at the huntsman’s moving shoulders.” 

(translated by Constance Garnett) 

I suppose the story works so well because Chekhov withholds information and sets up some expectations, getting us to make assumptions about the two characters and form our thoughts about them, then slowly reveals the nature of their relationship and forces us to go back and see everything in a different light. And it is poignant. Chekhov presents the characters as they are, withholding judgement, and writes with compassion for both the huntsman and Pelagea. 

I also love Chekhov’s subtlety. 

“A silence followed. Three wild ducks flew over the clearing. Yegor followed them with his eyes till, transformed into three scarcely visible dots, they sank down far beyond the forest.

“How do you live?” he asked, moving his eyes from the ducks to Pelagea.”

That’s a nice touch. One thing I love about Chekhov and also Tolstoy is such subtle details—they capture the way a character’s thoughts wander, the way someone gets distracted by something then gets pulled back into the moment—that’s what we do, and that’s why the stories of Chekhov and Tolstoy feel so natural and seem so artless.

It is no wonder that Dmitry Grigorovich was so impressed with “The Huntsman” that he told Chekhov to move away from comic sketches and focus on more serious writings. It was, from what I understand, a turning point for Chekhov. 

Some idle thoughts on writers and range

Tolstoy, as you know, is the novelist I love and admire the most. One of the reasons is the vast range of characters, vast range of human experiences in his works: from childbirth scenes to death scenes; from battle scenes to intimate domestic scenes; from hunting to dancing; from farming to dressing; from children to old people to animals; from princes to serfs; from generals to mothers; from saints to madmen; from Russians to Cossacks to Chechens… Anna Karenina and War and Peace are about everything. Other novelists seem more narrow in comparison. 

But sometimes when I compare Tolstoy to Dostoyevsky or Chekhov, both of whom are generally more narrow in range and scope, I can think of things Dostoyevsky can do but Tolstoy can’t do (spite, humiliation, perversity, sadism, masochism), and I can think of things Chekhov can do but Tolstoy can’t do (female sexuality/ desire, goodness without religion). 

But then I think about Shakespeare, and all the things that these supreme writers seem unable to do can be found in Shakespeare. Female desire: Venus and Adonis and many plays. Spite: Iago in Othello, Thersites in Troilus and Cressida, Timon in Timon of Athens, Don John in Much Ado About Nothing, Edmund in King Lear… Humiliation: Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Malvolio in Twelfth Night… Masochism: Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Viola in Twelfth Night… Perversity and sadism: Goneril and Regan in King Lear, Iago in Othello, a few characters in Titus Andronicus… The range of characters in Shakespeare is unmatched: there are characters of different classes, different backgrounds, different races, different sexualities... Everything can be found in Shakespeare. There’s a Harvey Weinstein (Angelo in Measure for Measure). There’s even a Marxist (Gonzalo in The Tempest). 

Shakespeare really is the “biggest” of writers. All-knowing, to use my friend Tom’s word. But how? How does Shakespeare seem to contain us all?  

Chekhov’s “The Witch” and “Peasant Wives”

Lately, I have been reading and enjoying Gary Saul Morson’s Wonder Confronts Certainty (about Russian literature and history). But I’ve put it aside for now, and returned to Chekhov.

I find it hard to write about Chekhov, probably because it’s difficult to pinpoint the moments of greatness in his works—or to steal Woolf’s words about Jane Austen, he is “the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness”. With Proust, I can write about details, metaphors, or methods of characterisation. With Dickens, I can write about imagery, motifs, or the different types of characters in his novels and the way a two-dimensional character becomes three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood. With Chekhov, his stories have the deceptive appearance of simplicity—his greatness lies in his ability to capture the subtlest emotional shades, his ability to have compassion for everyone and to present characters as they are, without judgement—his techniques are subtle and elusive, almost like there are no techniques. 

For example, “The Witch” in Volume 6 is a very simple story, almost like a sketch: there is a snowstorm and, as a postman knocks on the door, the sexton, Savely Gykin, accuses his wife Raissa Nilovna of being a witch, of causing snowstorms and luring young men into the house and seducing them. The story is simple, but I love the way the characters unfold. 

“Savely angrily puffed all the air out of his chest and turned abruptly to the wall. Three minutes later he turned over restlessly again, knelt up on the bed, and with his hands on the pillow looked askance at his wife. She was still sitting motionless, staring at the visitor. Her cheeks were pale and her eyes were glowing with a strange fire.”

(translated by Constance Garnett) 

Jealous, Savely places a handkerchief over the postman’s face. 

“And settling herself more comfortably, she stared at the postman again.

It did not matter to her that his face was covered. She was not so much interested in his face as in his whole appearance, in the novelty of this man. His chest was broad and powerful, his hands were slender and well formed, and his graceful, muscular legs were much comelier than Savely’s stumps. There could be no comparison, in fact.”

Chekhov is very good at writing about female desire, and he depicts it without judgement. Throughout the story, he gets us to empathise with Raissa’s loneliness, her having a fool for a husband—it’s reminiscent of “The Chemist’s Wife” and “The Husband”—but the story takes a slight turn near the end, as Chekhov’s stories always do. 

““Witch!” he muttered indignantly. “Tfoo, horrid creature!”

Yet, waiting till she was quiet and began breathing evenly, he touched her head with his finger... held her thick plait in his hand for a minute. She did not feel it. Then he grew bolder and stroked her neck.

“Leave off!” she shouted, and prodded him on the nose with her elbow with such violence that he saw stars before his eyes.

The pain in his nose was soon over, but the torture in his heart remained.”

Thus the story ends—not much happens in it—but the husband, who so far has appeared foolish and rather cruel (for forcing the postman to leave in the middle of the snowstorm), is now pitiful. A little stroke, and Chekhov gets us to see the husband and wife differently. 

Straight after “The Witch”, Constance Garnett aptly places “Peasant Wives”, a longer, more complex story with similar themes. A man named Matvey Savitch stops for the night at the house of a landowner named Dyudya, and tells the family about how he has come to adopt the boy Kuzka: he had an affair with Kuzka’s mother when the husband was in the army.

A large part of the story is Matvey Savitch telling the story, his sanctimonious remarks echoed by Dyudya—Chekhov lets us see that Matvey Savitch is a selfish hypocrite, speaking of sin and Christian charity but having an affair with a married woman, wanting to drop her when he himself wants to get married, and betraying her—then, as Matvey Savitch finishes the story and goes to sleep, Chekhov moves away from them and gives us a glimpse of the unhappy lives of Dyudya’s daughters-in-law, Sofya and Varvara. It’s almost like he begins a new story within the same story. Sofya and Varvara are unhappy married, like Kuzka’s mother Mashenka, like the sexton’s wife in “The Witch”. 

Like Mashenka, Varvara has an affair (or affairs). 

“And she began telling in a whisper of her midnight walks with the priest’s son, and of the stories he had told her, and of his comrades, and of the fun she had with the travellers who stayed in the house. The mournful song stirred a longing for life and freedom. Sofya began to laugh; she thought it sinful and terrible and sweet to hear about, and she felt envious and sorry that she, too, had not been a sinner when she was young and pretty.” 

That last line is what I mean when I say Chekhov captures the subtlest shades of emotions. 

He gives us a glimpse into the women’s unhappy lives and their suffering, then drops a hint of something that might or might not happen, leaving it open. Then the two women fall asleep, and a new day begins, and Chekhov returns to Matvey Savitch and the boy Kuzka. And just before the story ends, there’s a little stroke, a little turn that reveals something about the characters or makes us see them differently: except for a little moment when Kuzka wakes up to find some wrinkled women looking at him and cries out in fright, so far he has been only in the background and we know next to nothing about him, but at the end, in just a few sentences, Chekhov perfectly conveys the relationship between him and Matvey Savitch, and the boy’s torment. 

It is masterful. 

Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov

1/ This is the first Chekhov play I’ve read, and it’s harder to read than Shakespeare or Ibsen—there are too many characters to keep track of, and too many things going on at the same time.

Here are my first impressions of Chekhov’s drama: 

- Chekhov’s characters frequently talk past each other, so there are always multiple threads in the same conversation. 

- As in his short stories, Chekhov writes about people suffering and feeling that they have wasted their lives, wasted their potential. However, in his short stories and novellas, he focuses on one thing (very often it’s a man and a woman and a reason for them to be unhappy) whereas in the play, there are many stories going on at the same time. 

- As in his short stories, he avoids overt drama. He and Ibsen are perhaps opposite—Ibsen is intense and depicts everything in a cold, brutal, uncompromising way, Chekhov leaves conflict and incident off-stage and depicts what appears to be ordinary life, suggesting a lot more underneath. 

In a way, Chekhov seems to write about “the moments between life”, or perhaps it’s better to say that life happens between the scenes that he depicts—for example, between Act 1 and Act 2, Andrey and Natasha have got married and had a baby, Andrey has got more debts and now works for the Council, Natasha has changed and slowly taken over the house, something has developed between Masha and Vershinin, Tuzenbakh has fallen for Irina—Chekhov throws us into a middle of a scene, then withholds all the changes and developments, and throws us into the middle of another scene some time later, forcing us to piece together the story. 

Later on, he doesn’t depict the two affairs, doesn’t depict the fire, doesn’t depict the quarrel, and doesn’t depict the duel. He leaves all the dramatic incidents off-stage. 

2/ I’ve noticed that many people, when praising Chekhov, talk about the range of his characters. It is true that he writes about different groups, different classes of people, but there are certain types that keep popping up in his works—such as the weak, ineffectual, spineless type, unable to stand up for himself or for anything, and Andrey in Three Sisters is that type. 

The scene of Andrey talking to Ferapont is so moving: 

“ANDREY: […] To be a member of the local District Council, when every night I dream that I am a professor of Moscow University, a famous scholar who is Russia’s pride! 

FERAPONT: I don’t really know… I don’t hear very well. 

ANDREY: If your hearing was all right, then perhaps I wouldn’t be talking to you. I need to talk to someone but my wife doesn’t understand me, and for some reason I’m afraid of my sisters, I’m afraid they’ll laugh at me or make me feel ashamed…” 

(Act 2) 

(translated by Peter Carson) 

Andrey and his sisters are all unhappy, all having wasted their potential, and they suffer in different ways. 

3/ I have said that people in Chekhov’s play talk past each other and don’t really listen, but it’s curious that in Act 2, Vershinin says several times that he hasn’t eaten since morning, but nobody cares. Even Masha doesn’t seem to notice. 

I read Three Sisters, then after a quick break with Chekhov’s letters, read the play again. Between the two readings, I talked to Himadri and he said this about Vershinin:  

“It would appear his wife (whom we never see) has some kind of mental condition. But the question remains unanswered: is his neglect of his family due to his wife making the home life so difficult? Or has she come to this state *because* he has neglected her?

He says he feels sorry for his daughters. So why isn’t he with them?” 

Masha gets bored with her simple, ridiculous husband and falls for a more intelligent man, but the one she’s in love with is probably a selfish, terrible man who neglects his own family. 

As I reread the play, I noticed Kulygin walking around looking for Masha and realising what’s going on, and it’s heartbreaking. Kulygin makes me think of Charles Bovary: both are boring, mediocre men, not particularly clever; both are betrayed, and suffer; and both don’t deserve to suffer that way.  

“KULYGIN […] Today the Army is leaving and everything will go back to what it was. Whatever they say there, Masha is a fine, honest woman, I love her very much, and I thank my destiny…” 

(Act 4) 

That is terribly sad. Kulygin is dim-witted, but he’s depicted with compassion and one can’t help feeling sorry for him. I especially love the scene where Masha breaks down, when saying farewell to Vershinin, and Kulygin, the kind Kulygin tries to distract the moment by putting on the moustache and beard he has confiscated from a boy at the school. 

4/ Instead of writing about Natasha, the villain of the play who slowly takes revenge on the family and ousts the sisters from their own house, I want to draw attention to a little moment when she shouts at Anfisa, the nyanya, and Olga does nothing. This kind of thing is depicted a few times in Chekhov—in “At Home”, for example—a good-natured but unhappy person is so wrapped up in her own problems that she does nothing when an injustice, a cruel act takes place before her eyes. 

In Three Sisters, a more cruel passivity is in the final Act, when Irina knows that there’s going to be a duel, that Tuzenbakh wants her to say something to him in the last moment, but she doesn’t—it’s heartbreaking. 

But it’s not just her or Masha: in the final Act, we see that Chebutykin, the army doctor, has also become cynical and indifferent. 

“MASHA: Everything has become muddled in my head… Anyway, I say they shouldn’t allow them. He could wound the Baron or even kill him. 

CHEBUTYKIN: The Baron is a good man, but one baron more or one baron less—what can it matter? Let it be! What can it matter!” 

(ibid.) 

Chekhov shows what suffering and failure do to a person. 

This is a great play, but a depressing play.  

On feeling close to Chekhov; 30 favourite stories

When I first read Chekhov, I was too young—I hadn’t lived. My rediscovery of Chekhov was two years ago, and now that I have loved and lost, now that I’m going through something never expected to happen, now that I must begin all over again and feel something akin to shame for doing so, I feel closer and closer to Chekhov. He is so good at discerning the subtlest emotional shades, at conveying the uncertainty and absurdity of life, at depicting the way people change and love doesn’t last. He writes about wasted lives, missed opportunities, and regrets, without descending into lachrymose wallowing or cynicism. 

I perhaps even feel closer to Chekhov now than to Jane Austen, because he writes about love and disappointment, sex, sexual desire, death, and the futility of life—which she doesn’t. On this blog, I have avoided identifying with characters and tried to write about literature with detachment, but reading is still a subjective thing, especially during a difficult time. 

It’s also interesting that at this time I’m turning to Chekhov rather than Tolstoy, my favourite writer of all time—why? 

___________________________________________

I have just finished Volume 4 of Constance Garnett’s Chekhov but find it hard to write about him, so here’s a list of my 30 favourite Chekhov stories so far: 

• “Three Years”
• “The Party” or “The Name-Day Party” 
• “The Lady with the Dog” 
• “About Love” 
• “An Anonymous Story” 
• “Terror” 
• “My Life” 
• “In the Ravine” 
• “Peasants” 
• “Ionitch” or “Ionych” 
• “A Woman’s Kingdom” 
• “A Dreary Story” 
• “The Bishop” 
• “The Betrothed” or “The Bride” 
• “Neighbours” 
• “The Murder” 
• “Ward No. 6” 
• “The Steppe” 
• “The Kiss” 
• “Verochka” 
• “Man in a Case” 
• “The Teacher of Literature” 
• “An Artist’s Story” or “The House with the Mezzanine” 
• “Volodya” 
• “Ariadne”
• “Mire” 
• “The Chemist’s Wife” 
• “The Duel” 
• “The New Villa” 
• “The Darling” 

The list is not in order of merit or importance; some of the stories are grouped thematically.  

Heartbreak and Chekhov

I’m going through one of the worst times—perhaps the hardest—of my life. Heartbreak.

So I turned to Chekhov.

At a time of heartache and dejection, Chekhov seems like a perfect companion, making one feel less lonely—there are others who also feel unhappy, who also struggle, who also find life hard and unfair—but his stories aren’t just bleak or cynical. I love the warmth, the compassion in Chekhov. And even though he doesn’t aim for moral instruction—as Tolstoy does—he still gets me to think about my life as he depicts, over and over again though in different ways, people wasting their lives and/or being unkind to others. 

I’ve just finished Volumes 1 and 2 of Constance Garnett’s 13 volumes. Volume 1 is good, especially “Three Years”, which I have read in the NYRB Peasants and Other Stories, but most of the stories feel relatively early, more like sketches. In Volume 2, most of the stories feel more substantial, and they are wonderful.

In “Mire”, a lieutenant comes to a Jewish woman named Susanna telling her to repay a debt to his cousin, as he (the lieutenant) needs the money in order to get married. The cousin and his wife wait all day only for him to return the next day, not only without money but also without the IOU, having been seduced by Susanna. Angry, the cousin himself goes to Susanna to get back his money, and also returns the following day. 

“Kryukov flopped on the sofa, thrust his head in the pillow, and shook with suppressed laughter. A minute later he got up, and looking at the surprised lieutenant, with his eyes full of tears from laughing, said:

“Close the door. Well . . . she is a fe-e-male, I beg to inform you!”

“Did you get the IOUs?”

Kryukov waved his hand and went off into a peal of laughter again.

“Well! she is a female!” he went on. “Merci for the acquaintance, my boy! She’s a devil in petticoats…”” 

It’s an excellent scene. 

“Of Susanna Moiseyevna and the IOUs they said nothing. Both of them felt, somehow, ashamed to speak of the incident aloud. Yet they remembered it and thought of it with pleasure, as of a curious farce, which life had unexpectedly and casually played upon them, and which it would be pleasant to recall in old age.” 

But it doesn’t end there. The lieutenant decides to leave, and the married cousin one day cannot resist the temptation to go to Susanna again. The final scene—the shock, the shame, the anger—is magnificent. 

In both “Excellent People” and “Neighbours”, Chekhov writes about strained brother-sister relationships. 

In “Excellent People”: 

“His sister had become a stranger to him. And he was a stranger to her.”

In “Neighbours”, the relationship between the brother and sister changes because she comes to live with a married man, despite the family’s disapproval. 

“It seemed to Pyotr Mihalitch that she had not changed in the least during the last week, except that she was a little paler. She looked calm and just as usual, as though she had come with her brother to visit Vlassitch. But Pyotr Mihalitch felt that some change had taken place in himself. Before, when she was living at home, he could have spoken to her about anything, and now he did not feel equal to asking her the simple question, “How do you like being here?” The question seemed awkward and unnecessary. Probably the same change had taken place in her. She was in no haste to turn the conversation to her mother, to her home, to her relations with Vlassitch; she did not defend herself, she did not say that free unions are better than marriages in the church; she was not agitated, and calmly brooded over the story of Olivier. . . . And why had they suddenly begun talking of Olivier?”

I love the subtlety in Chekhov. Pyotr Mihalitch sets off in anger to have a talk with his sister Zina and Vlassitch, but the meeting doesn’t happen as he has imagined in his head: 

“And Pyotr Mihalitch felt all the bitterness and horror of his position. He thought of his deserted home, the closed piano, and Zina’s bright little room into which no one went now; he thought there were no prints of little feet on the garden-paths, and that before tea no one went off, laughing gaily, to bathe. What he had clung to more and more from his childhood upwards, what he had loved thinking about when he used to sit in the stuffy class-room or the lecture theatre—brightness, purity, and joy, everything that filled the house with life and light, had gone never to return, had vanished, and was mixed up with a coarse, clumsy story of some battalion officer, a chivalrous lieutenant, a depraved woman and a grandfather who had shot himself. . . . And to begin to talk about his mother or to think that the past could ever return would mean not understanding what was clear.”

Chekhov’s writing about a brother and sister, but that could be true for everything: life changes, people change, and the past could never return.

Another story I love in Volume 2 is “At Home”, in which a young woman named Vera returns to an estate she has inherited: 

“The space, the lovely peace of the steppe, told her that happiness was near at hand, and perhaps was here already; thousands of people, in fact, would have said: “What happiness to be young, healthy, well-educated, to be living on one’s own estate!” And at the same time the endless plain, all alike, without one living soul, frightened her, and at moments it was clear to her that its peaceful green vastness would swallow up her life and reduce it to nothingness. She was very young, elegant, fond of life; she had finished her studies at an aristocratic boarding-school, had learnt three languages, had read a great deal, had travelled with her father—and could all this have been meant to lead to nothing but settling down in a remote country-house in the steppe, and wandering day after day from the garden into the fields and from the fields into the garden to while away the time, and then sitting at home listening to her grandfather’s breathing? But what could she do? Where could she go? She could find no answer, and as she was returning home she doubted whether she would be happy here, and thought that driving from the station was far more interesting than living here.” 

Chekhov writes with compassion, and gets one to sympathise with Vera’s loneliness and restlessness. But somehow, in a subtle way, he changes one’s perspective of Vera towards the end of the story, as she becomes so wrapped up in her own problems and in her passivity that she does nothing when her servants are treated badly. 

“At Home” pairs well with “The Princess”, the story about a princess who feels unhappy about her life but finds consolation in philanthropy, only to be told the painful truth that her charities help nobody but her own self-satisfaction: “There was nothing but the desire to amuse yourself with living puppets, nothing else. . . . A person who does not feel the difference between a human being and a lap-dog ought not to go in for philanthropy.” But Chekhov has no illusion about human nature—the honesty shocks her, but doesn’t transform her. 

In Volume 2, I also love “Expensive Lessons”, about a man who hires a Frenchwoman to teach him French and gets nothing out of his lessons, but who continues taking lessons and falls in love with her; and “The Chemist’s Wife”, a little sketch about an unhappy wife. 

Chekhov is such a wonderful writer.