FVEL - "Chekhov"

ANTON CHEKHOV

1) Physics (“Owner”)
2) Will (“Nobleman”)
3) Emotion (“Cracker”)
4) Logic (“Schoolboy”)

A short but almost exhaustive description of the entire order of Chekhov’s functions was given by the artist Ilya Repin. He wrote: “An enemy of sentiment and pompous hobbies, he seemed to hold himself in the mouthpiece of cold irony and with pleasure felt the chain mail of courage on himself. He seemed to me an indestructible strongman in body and soul."

To us, who did not know Chekhov personally, and imagine him from his late photographs and plays, Repin’s characterization will seem strange, to say the least. In today's ideas, Chekhov is a sickly, prematurely aged, refined intellectual, a sweet man, but weak in both body and spirit.

However, in fact, Repin’s description is much closer to the original than our modern stereotypes. Firstly, Chekhov was handsome, handsome with rich, masculine beauty. Women who knew him well and were not deprived of the attention of handsome young men spoke about this. But of the photographs of Chekhov, perhaps only one - Chekhov at the age of nineteen (1879), still without a beard and pince-nez, gives an idea of ​​his unusually attractive appearance, the relief and richness of the sculpting of his face.

Chekhov, contrary to intellectual tradition, was by no means indifferent to money, things, and comfort. However, his inherent possessive instinct did not make Chekhov either a miser or an egoist; it was not for nothing that Gorky called Chekhov’s love for things “noble.”

Perhaps the only area in which the writer’s 1st Physics was quite clearly reflected was the sexual sphere. Previously, thanks to censorship, Chekhov looked like a libidinous singer of twilight, suffering from sexual indifference. However, recent publications of excerpts from his letters have given a completely different picture. Before us appeared a very cheerful gentleman, sharing in letters with friends his impressions of visiting prostitutes, complaining about the lack of brothels in Sumy, etc.

Great Russian literature of the second half of the 19th century (Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Kuprin, etc.) loved to choose prostitutes and kept women as heroines, devoting many pages to them, and sometimes entire works. One great writer, who perhaps knew such a piquant subject better than others, remained silent on this topic - Chekhov. Perhaps, only once did he somehow speak out on this topic in a story he wrote to order, “The Seizure,” but he spoke out in a unique way. From beginning to end of the story, there is a poorly hidden irony in it regarding thematically similar writings, beautiful-hearted, full of civic pathos and secret lust. The heroes of the story are three students: a doctor, an artist and a lawyer. If we remember that Chekhov himself was a doctor, and his two brothers were an artist and a lawyer, then the autobiographical basis of the story becomes clear. So, three students go on a tour of brothels. For a doctor and an artist (elder brothers), such visits are commonplace; for a lawyer (Mikhail is the youngest lawyer in the Chekhov family) they are new. The student's trip to the seedy places ends with the chaste lawyer bursting out in an angry philippic against his dissolute companions. And in response, the artist says something completely indecent for Russian literature: “I knew it would end like this. You shouldn't mess with this fool and blockhead! Do you think that now you have great thoughts and ideas in your head? No, God knows what, not ideas! You are now looking at me with hatred and disgust, but in my opinion, it would be better if you built twenty more houses like this than to look at me like that. There is more vice in this look of yours than in the entire alley!” It is not clear from the story which side the author is on, but judging by Chekhov’s letters, in which he expressed sympathy for visitors to brothels and displeasure at the lack of such institutions, the artist’s rebuke in “In a fit” is a reflection of the author’s position.

In itself, the conversation about Chekhov's sexual preferences would not make any sense if this particular did not reflect the whole - the 1st Physics of the writer. You need to have excess, effective, monologue, thick-skinned and absolutely fearless flesh in order to make do with the services of prostitutes for almost the entire mature period of your life. From the 1st Physics, supplemented by the 3rd Emotion, comes the slowness with which Chekhov resolved the issue of marriage. When the writer finally decided to tie himself with the knot of Hymen, a full-fledged family life turned out to be impossible for him, and a similar situation is generally characteristic of the “Chekhovian” order of functions.

The 1st Physics could have made Chekhov an egoist, a miser, a consumer, a person indifferent to the needs and suffering of people, if it had not been constantly supported by the outwardly deployed 2nd Will. Kuprin found this combination mysterious; he wrote that Chekhov “could be kind and generous without loving, affectionate and sympathetic - without affection, a benefactor - without counting on gratitude. And in these traits, which always remained unclear to those around him, lies, perhaps , the main clue to his personality." Another writer (Potapenko) stood even closer to understanding the nature of Chekhov’s altruism, according to whom “it cannot be doubted that A.P. did not have a sincere attraction to medical activity. The misconceptions of observers are explained by the fact that they took an exclusively developed attraction for an attraction.” he has a sense of duty that forced him, with a smile on his lips, to do what was unpleasant and even disgusting to him..."

Indeed, a heightened sense of duty, a derivative of the 2nd Will, pushed Chekhov’s selfish 1st Physics towards people. Not with his gut, not with his skin, he sympathized with the needy and suffering, but with the strong, flexible spirit of his self. It was the 2nd Will that forced Chekhov to receive free treatment, build a village school, help his family financially, and collect a library for his hometown of Taganrog. The best aspects of Chekhov’s nature go back to the same 2nd Will: decency, delicacy, democracy, modesty, etc. But Chekhov owes his immortality to the 3rd Emotion.

* * *

There is no doubt that he had the 3rd Emotion. People who knew Chekhov well reported about it, only in other terms: “His constant calm, evenness, external coldness surrounded his personality with a kind of seemingly impenetrable armor. It seemed that this man carefully protected his soul from prying eyes.

But this is not the kind of secrecy when a person deliberately hides something that is inconvenient for him to show and is more profitable to keep under cover.”

“Rusks” rarely choose the artistic field as their main occupation. Usually literature, music, art are a hobby for them, not a profession. Chekhov himself, as if hinting at the frivolity of his literary pursuits, liked to say that medicine was his wife, and literature was his mistress. However, the beginning of his writing career really looked frivolous in content and form and pursued one goal - to earn extra money. The fact that at first Chekhov chose a humorous genre for himself is very clear: the 1st Physics painted his worldview in bright, cheerful, cheerful tones, the fig leaf of the 3rd Emotion - irony - found a reason for ridicule in everything around him, but the good nature of the 2nd Will made this mockery harmless. Thus, from the entire sum of the order of functions, the first humorous period of Chekhov’s work took shape, or rather, not yet Chekhov, but Antoshi Chekhonte.

However, with the passage of time, acquaintance with serious literature and serious writers, the accumulation of sad life experiences, tuberculosis and general exhaustion of strength, much changed, and Chekhov gradually turned into the Chekhov we are used to imagining: a classic singer of twilight, a writer of quiet, bright sadness. 1st Physics has become thinner both in Chekhov himself and in his work. The goodness, honesty and modesty of the 2nd Will, indifference to the speculative problems of the 4th Logic remained, and the gentle, barely audible pipe of the 3rd Emotion became the dominant of his work.

It was the 3rd Emotion that set the themes and tone of the second and last period of Chekhov’s writing, while simultaneously making Chekhov the greatest reformer of theatrical art. The essence of the reform was that with his dramaturgy the “theater of moods” began, to use a precise expression. This is theater - without plot, pathos, edification, it is only radiation and interaction of emotions muted almost to the point of ultrasound, a watercolor of experiences. And here it is needless to say how difficult Chekhov’s theater turned out to be for perception and performance. Tolstoy, albeit in his ear, but directly spoke to Chekhov about his rejection of his dramas. Chekhov was often not accepted by great actors either. However, it’s mutual. One writer who knew the theatrical world of those times well believed that Chekhov “did not like anything pretentious and chastely protected his experiences and his characters from beautiful expressions, pathos and artistic poses. In this he may even have gone to the extreme, this forced him not perceive tragedies: by the way, he never felt for M.N. Ermolov, just as Chekhov was not close to her as a writer. There were two poles: life realism and romantic realism."

Not everyone was delighted with Chekhov's prose either. Akhmatova, from the height of her exemplary 2nd Emotion, judged Chekhov this way: “... his universe is monotonous and boring, the sun never shines in it, swords do not sparkle, everything is covered with a terrifying gray fog; Chekhov's world is a sea of ​​mud in which unfortunate human beings flounder..." Akhmatova's assessment, of course, is not indisputable, but there is something in it. Chekhov's prose can indeed be completely discolored, completely dusty. Although to be too harsh on he, as a writer, remembering the sick 3rd Emotion, somehow doesn’t really want to.

* * *

Chekhov's 4th Logic is also beyond doubt. Of all that can be called a worldview, only ethics, coming not from the mind, but from the 2nd Will, and aesthetics, from the 3rd Emotion, differed in certainty. Chekhov himself admitted that he changes his views every day. From the outside he looked like a man of uncertain views. In Chekhov's diary there is the following entry: “Between “there is a God” and “there is no God” there lies a whole huge field, which a true sage has difficulty passing through. A Russian person knows any one of two extremes, but the middle between them does not interest him, and therefore he usually knows nothing or very little." Commenting on this passage, one acquaintance of Chekhov remarked: "For some reason it seems to me that Chekhov himself , especially in recent years, never stopped moving across this field with difficulty, and no one knows at what point his death found him.”

* * *

The very combination of 1st Physics and 3rd Emotion suggests that their owner is in no hurry in marriage and reproduction. Chekhov's life story is a clear confirmation of this. Therefore, "Chekhovs" are rare in this world. However, oddly enough, there is a whole country where this type has taken a dominant position and shaped the national character.

We are talking, as you might guess, about England. Complete seriousness in matters of health, appearance, money and life (“my home is my fortress”) - all this, as well as many other smaller features, clearly indicate the 1st Physics of the British. Britain - the birthplace of democracy, the current sense of justice and free-thinking - of course, could not become such without the predominance of the 2nd Will among its inhabitants. Only the lazy did not write about the composure, dryness and restraint of the British...

Is it necessary to explain after this: why is Chekhov loved so much in England, loved even more than in his homeland, in Russia?

* * *

I would like to describe “Chekhov” from his outer side as follows: a tall, athletically built man with a richly sculpted face. The look is good-natured, absent-minded, with some kind of inner smile. Speech is restrained, ironic, monotonous. Gesture and facial expressions are without scope, almost imperceptible. In society he is easily silent, most of all he loves fun and jokes, but the laughter is almost silent. He is dressed well, but discreetly, with a short haircut. Women are restrained in their makeup and avoid bright colors in their clothes.