"Both bow deeply to him, and he looks at them with tears in his eyes. Lipa offers him a piece of oatmeal cake, and the two women go on their way, crossing themselves several times…"
The virtuous Varvara is an extremely characteristic type, with a subtle psychology, carefully worked out; her honesty and goodness form an indispensable contrast to the ambient horrors.
The author himself explains the rôle of Varvara and her action in this system of evil. "Her alms seem to be something strange, joyous and free, like the red flowers and the lights that glow before the saintly images." On holidays, and on jubilees, which last three days, when coarse and rotten meat is sold to the peasants who come to pawn their scythes and hats, or their wives' shawls; when the workingmen lie in the gutter under the influence of bad brandy, then "one feels a bit relieved at the thought that down there, in that house, there is a good and quiet woman, always ready to help unfortunates."
Lipa and her mother are good and timid souls who suffer in silence, and give to the poor the little that they possess:
"It seemed to them that some one up on high, further up than the azure, there among the stars, saw what was going on in their village, and watched. Big as the evil is, in spite of it, the night is beautiful and calm; justice is and will be calm and beautiful on God's earth also; the universe awaits the moment when it can melt into this justice, as the light of the moon melts into the night."
These, then, are Tchekoff's favorite themes, on which he has traced numerous variations, always breathing forth a profound melancholy.
"The life of our industrial classes," he says, "is dark, and drags itself along in sort of a twilight; as to the life of our common people, workingmen and peasants, it is a black night, made up of ignorance, poverty, and all sorts of prejudices."
But from this ocean of ignorance, of barbarity, of misery which makes up the life of a peasant, Tchekoff has taken out the things of most importance, things that always happen in the most solemn moments of their existence.
"All," he says, in describing a religious procession in the country, "the old man, his wife and the others, all stretch forth their hands to the ikon of the holy Virgin, regard her ardently, and say through their tears: 'Protectress! Virgin protectress!' And all seem to have understood that the space between Heaven and Earth is not empty; that the rich and the mighty have not swallowed up everything; that there is protection against all wrongs, slavery, misery, the fatal brandy…"
Besides, in a story entitled "My Life," Poloznev, speaking of the peasants, expresses himself in the following manner:
"They were, for the most part, nervous and irritable people, ignorant, and improvident, who could think of nothing but the grey earth and black bread; a people who were crafty, but were stupid about it, like the birds, who, when they want to hide themselves, only hide their heads. They would not do the mowing for you for twenty rubles, but they would do it for six liters of brandy, notwithstanding the fact that with twenty rubles they can buy eight times as much. What vice and foolishness! Nevertheless, one feels that the life of the peasant has a great deal of depth. It makes no difference that he, behind his plough, resembles an awkward beast, or that he gets intoxicated. In spite of all, when you look at him closely, you feel that he possesses the essential thing, the sentiment of justice."
This love of justice Tchekoff has had occasion to observe even among convicts. "The convict," he says, in his book on the prison of Sakhaline, of which he made a profound study during his stay on the island, "the prisoner, completely corrupted and unjust as he himself is, loves justice more than any one else does, and if he does not find it in his superiors, he becomes angry, and grows baser and more distrustful from year to year."
In the last works of Tchekoff the pessimistic tendency grows greater and greater. It seems as if the writer had gone through a sort of moral crisis, brought on by the conflict of his old despair and his new hopes. At this time, Russian society itself began to shake off its apathy, and this awakening, sweeping like a vivifying wave into the soul of the sad artist, opened for him, at the same time, perspectives of new ideas.
This second aspect of Tchekoff's talent is perceptible in the story called "The Student." A seminarist, Velikopolsky by name, tells the gardener Vassilissa and her daughter Lukeria about St. Peter's denial of Christ. As a result of the impression which this story makes on her Vassilissa suddenly breaks into tears; she weeps a long time and hides her face as if she were ashamed of crying. Lukeria, who has been watching the student fixedly, blushes and her face takes on the tender and sad expression which is characteristic of those whose life is made up of deep suffering. After taking leave of them, the student thinks that Vassilissa's tears and the emotion of her daughter come from sorrows connected with the things he has just told them.
"If the old woman wept, it was not because he knew how to tell the story in a touching manner, but because Peter was near to her, and because she was interested, heart and soul, in what was going on in the mind of the apostle…"
Joy suddenly fills his heart, and he stops a moment to take a long breath. "The past," he muses, "is bound to the present by an uninterrupted chain of events." "And it seems to him that he has just seen the two ends of this chain: he has touched one, and the other has vibrated…"
In an ironical manner and by using very personal material, Tchekoff paints more than anything else, life in its passive or negative manifestations. Nevertheless, it is not satire, at least not in its general trend, for in his work we find too much human tenderness for satire. He does not laugh at his characters, and does not nail them to the pillory in an outburst of indignation. In his writing, the fundamental idea is fused with the form; his talent is calm, thoughtful, observing; but it seems, at times, that this calmness, this seeming indifference, is only a mask. A critic, speaking of Tchekoff, has said: "He is a tender crayon." It would be hard to find a more suitable expression. The delicacy of tone, the softness of touch in the outlines, the polish of some of the details, the capricious incompleteness of others are, in fact, the mark of his talent.
Tchekoff was such a voluminous author that it would require a veritable effort to remember the throng of characters which exists in his books; and it is more than difficult not to confuse their individual doings and achievements. This abundance is connected with a peculiarity in the author's talent. He does not exhaust his subject; the psychology of his characters is emphasized by two or three expressive traits only, and this epitome is enough to make the theme of a story, the simplicity and naturalness of which demand, nevertheless, a high degree of art. The author is not interested in outlining the details, but the picture that he has sparingly conjured up stands out lifelike; he is always in a hurry to observe and to tell. Therefore the brevity and quantity of his stories. His stories seldom exceed ten pages in length, while some do not exceed four. They constitute a series of sketches, of miniatures of rare value, among which can be found some real gems. One cannot say as much for his longer works, where certain parts are exaggerated, as in "The Valet de Chambre," "Ward No. 6," "The Steppe," and "The Duel."
The characters of the latter novel are especially weak and bad. There is but one exception, the zoologist von Koren, a man of determination, who believes that the suppression of useless people and degenerates would be a meritorious piece of work. This idea is suggested to him by the sight of a functionary called Layevsky, an insignificant and lazy person, who has taken the wife of one of his friends and fled with her to the Caucasus.
"The Valet de Chambre" is an equally unsatisfactory story.