It is in the following manner that one of his characters expresses his ideas on the subject of this moral crisis:
"I was then not more than twenty-six years of age; nevertheless I was conscious not only that life was senseless, but that it was without any visible goal; that all was illusion and dupery; that, in its consequences and even in its very essence, the life of the exiled on the island of Sakhaline was very much the same as the life that was led at Nice; that the difference between the brain of Kant and the brain of a fly was very small; finally, that no one in this world was either right or wrong."
This idea of the nothingness of life, with its extremes, monstrous and profitless, is often found in the work of Tchekoff. His story "The Kiss" is but a variation of this theme, – the absurdity of life. Lieutenant Riabovich, under the influence of a chance kiss, a kiss that was not meant for him, dreams of love for an entire summer; he waits impatiently for the return of the pretty stranger; but alas, his lovely dream cannot be realized, for the simple and cruel reason that no one is waiting for him, no one is interested in him. One day, on the banks of a stream, the young officer gives himself up to his reflections:
"The water flows off; one knows not where nor why; it flowed in exactly the same way last May; from the stream it flows into the river, and then into the sea; then it evaporates, turns into rain, and perhaps the very same water again flows by before my eyes… To what good? Why?" And all life appears to Riabovich an absurd mystification and seems thoroughly senseless.
The hero of "The Bet" absolutely scorns humanity, with its petty and its great deeds, its little and its great ideas, because he feels that after all everything must disappear, be annihilated, and the earth itself will turn into a mass of ice.
Tchekoff has given us innumerable rough sketches typical of people belonging to the most diverse social classes. He seems to take his readers by the hand and to lead them wherever he can show them characteristic scenes of modern Russian society, – be it in the country, in the factory, in princely dwellings, at the post-office, or on the highway. He barely takes the time absolutely necessary to depict in a few, appropriate words a state of mind or the secret of a gesture. One would say that he hastens to express the totality of life with the variety of his detached manifestations of it. That is why his stories are short; often mere allusions stand in place of actual development. And whatever domains or corners of Russian life the reader, under the guiding hand of this perspicacious cicerone, may visit, he will almost always go away with one predominating impression: the lamentable isolation of Russia.
"The Windswept Grain" shows the reader a religious establishment, where a young Jew, recently converted, has taken refuge. Here is a young man, very impressionable and eager to learn, who has fled from his home and his family, whose prejudices offended him. His family tries every means to bring him back and to punish his apostasy.
In order to employ his energies effectively, the young proselyte, who has embraced the new religion only that he may follow progress, tries to get a position as a school-teacher. But the apostleship of learning cannot satisfy his versatile mind: he continues to flit from one thing to another, like a gypsophilia, driven by the wind across the entire stretch of the steppes of southern Russia.
Then Tchekoff takes us to a postal station to show us another type of the "Windswept Grain." This man, like the young convert, is a dreamer, who puts heart and soul into any new idea that comes along. He also has spent his life in searching for an activity corresponding to his ideal. At present, being a widower, he is obliged to support both himself and his daughter, who, while loving him devotedly, never ceases to reproach him for the many inconveniences of their uncertain existence. In the evening, a young widow from a neighboring province gets off at the place where he and his daughter are living. When she sees the young girl pouting, she consoles her by caressing her with the tact peculiar to women. Then, at tea time, she starts talking to the father. The idealist tells of his life, and reveals to the young woman the plans that he has made. The true sympathy with which she listens, and the respectful and tender feeling that he has for her, inevitably makes the reader think that fate has not brought these two people together in vain, and that their lives will be united. This impression persists when on the next day we find the young woman entering her carriage assisted by her companion of the evening before. We wait for the word that will unite this couple. But neither of them pronounces the all-important phrase. The carriage leaves; the man remains for a long time motionless as a statue, watching with a mingled feeling of joy and suffering the distant road and his disappearing happiness, which, but a moment ago, he seemed to hold in his hand.
After those who insist on always realizing their temporary ideals, let us take up characters of a new type, those whom destiny has irredeemably conquered, and who have finally resigned themselves to their fate.
An example of this type is Sofia Lvovna in "Volodia the Great and Volodia the Small." Married to a rich colonel, she has no other end in life. The days pass, tiresome, monotonous, filled only with visits and driving; the nights are interminable and sad near this husband whom she does not love, and whom she married out of spite and for money. Love for a comrade of her youth, Volodia by name, fills her heart. But this young man, who has recently finished his studies, is just as commonplace and just as debauched as her husband and the society which surrounds her. Sofia Lvovna is not yet resigned to her fate. She speaks of her aspirations to her childhood friend, who, after getting from her what he desires, leaves her at the end of a week. And Sofia Lvovna becomes frightened at the thought that for the young girls and women of her station there is no other alternative than to go on riding in carriages, or to enter a convent and gain salvation.
"The Attack" gives us an example of the terrible feeling of terror that suddenly enters the proud soul of a young man at his first contact with certain realities.
The student Vassiliev, a young man of excessively nervous temperament, has visited a house of ill-fame, and since then, he cannot rid himself of his painful impressions. Sombre thoughts beset his mind: "Women, living women!" he repeats, his head between his hands. "If I broke this lamp you would say that it was too bad; but down there it is not lamps that they break, it is the existence of human creatures! Living women!.."
He dreams of several ways of saving these unfortunates, and he decides childishly to stand on a street-corner, and say to each passer-by:
"Where are you going? and why? Fear God."
But this desire soon gives place to a general state of anguish and hatred of himself. The evil seems too great for him, and its vastness crushes him. In the meantime, the people about him do not suffer; they are indifferent or incredulous. The student feels that he is losing his mind. They confine him. Later on, when, cured, he leaves the alienist, "he blushes at his anxiety."… The general indifference has broken down his aspirations, smothered his vague dream.
In "Peter the Bishop," we see a man, good and simple, the son of peasants. This man, thanks to his intelligence, has raised himself to the rank of bishop. During all his life he has suffocated in this high ecclesiastical position, the pompous tinsel of which troubles him to such an extent that the cordial and sincere relationship existing between him and his old mother, who is so full of respect for her son, is broken off. After his death he is quickly forgotten. The old mother, now childless, when she walks in the fields with the women of the village, still speaks of her children, of her grandchildren, and of her son, the bishop. But she speaks timidly of him, as if she feared that they would not believe her. And, in truth, no one puts any faith in what she says.
It is among the people and the working classes that man is most completely rid of all traces of an artificial and untruthful exterior; the struggle against misery does not leave much room for other preoccupations; life is merciless, it crushes unrelentingly man's dreams of happiness, and often does not leave any one to share the burden of sorrows or even its simple cares. The short and very touching story of "The Coachman"