Category: Russian Literature

Leo Tolstoy – The Sevastopol Sketches

Tolstoy’s Sevastopol Sketches are an early work of the great Russian, taking us behind the Russian lines at the Siege of Sevastopol (October 1854 – September 1855) in the Crimean War. It is interesting because although that war has been much mythologised in my own country – one need only speak the name “Florence Nightingale” and a floating lamp will appear, while Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” is one of the few poems whose lines probably remain burned into the British poetic public consciousness – in Russia one often has the sensation that there was no Crimean War at all. A defeat when the ruling elites were still convinced their country was undefeatable led to a series of reforms culminating in the emancipation of the Russian serfs in 1861.

The picture of Russia that it presents to the world and its people these days has no space for sore defeats such as this one. The only thing we need to know about Crimea is that it is Russian and always has been. Well and good.

Still, this losing war produced a piece of remarkable Russian fiction, one that has much in common with Isaac Babel’s Red Army Cavalry, written as the Soviet Union suffered a disastrous defeat against a newly independent Poland in the early 20th century. Both works attempt to engage with war – a theme so great that it bursts the hinges of anything that aims to contain it (War and Peace, of course, was really too short) – through fragmentation and novel narrative techniques. These techniques – chronological, ironic – Tolstoy would later develop further in works like Hadji Murat – but they found their beginning here. And for this, the work is interesting now, above and beyond its perspective on a war we may think we know.

Overview

“The real hero of my story, who I love with all the powers of my soul, who I have tried to bring out in all his beauty and who has always been, and will always be, sublime – is truth itself.”

In the Sevastopol Sketches Tolstoy, who was writing only a few months after serving in Crimea as an officer – in fact, the first two stories were written while the siege was ongoing – was already formulating many of the basic ideas about war which would later mark his monumental book on the topic. What are these ideas? To begin with, we learn that war is hell. We have always known this, but Tolstoy’s particular goal is to deglamourize heroism – that one thing that has nevertheless made war glorious and somehow justified for the individual soldiers without whom there could be no war. Everything in the Sevastopol Sketches serves towards the argument that war is not a place of heroism and glory, but of sadness, disappointment, and pointless violence.

Leo Tolstoy at the time of the Siege of Sevastopol

The Sketches are three in number, and each is set at a different moment in the siege. As with Babel’s treatment of the Polish war in Red Army Cavalry, this allows us to see the war effort as it goes well, stagnates, and finally is lost – but without having to fill in the gaps in between and thereby enlarge the book without necessarily making it any more compelling. Although the city of Sevastopol remains central throughout, each story gives us different characters. The first and shortest tale, “Sevastopol in December”, uses an unusual second-perspective narration. Tolstoy here plays the part of a gallant tour guide. The sounds of war are in the background, but somehow sufficiently distant. We see a city that seems carefree, relaxed:

“There you will see the defenders of Sevastopol alongside terrible and sad, great and entertaining, but always amazing, soul-raising sights.”

“Sights” is perhaps the key word here – we are a visitor, staring at exhibits in the zoo. Even after a visit to the hospital and conversations with the wounded, still, we are prey to the feelings of awe in the face of “danger, that game of life and death”. Without allowing us to follow a character or linger over a particular wounded, Tolstoy temporarily allows us to see the war in a depersonalised manner and focuses on the great patriotism of the Russians at its commencement. But in the other two stories, not only do we follow individuals, but we also see what the tour downplays or hides – death, ignorance, and hypocrisy.

Communication Failures

In the second story, “Sevastopol in May”, we begin to experience fighting first-hand. We follow an officer, Mikhailov, as he goes about his duties, before finally heading to the fortifications themselves. But these duties are not what we might have expected. An awful lot of his time is given over to considering the complete and utter vanity of the officers:

“A thousand human self-images managed to be offended, a thousand managed to be awfully pleased, to puff themselves up, and a thousand – to find their rest within the arms of death.”

Tolstoy gives us pages on the narcissism of small differences among the officers – who is ranked slightly higher, who has the nicer carriage, who is consumed by this or that petty anxiety. All dialogue is constructed by its participants to give a particular impression – it is a lie, hypocrisy. And this is particularly ridiculous given the context of a war. If we cannot communicate truthfully, how can we possibly hope to fight well, to plan and strategize effectively? At the start of the story, we laugh at the ignorance of a woman from central Russia who has written Mikhailov a letter describing how the press reports the war – battles with hundreds of foreign casualties and only a single Russian one, for example – but then we learn that the soldiers themselves are no less badly informed. One even declares the Americans will save them.

Miscommunication continues once Mikhailov’s part in the war itself begins. In War and Peace, one of the major themes is the incompetence of the commanders in contrast with the intrinsic elan of the soldiers – during a battle, the officers do not matter, and certainly not the generals. Only the individual soul facing its opponent does. And the encounter is inevitably messy. Mikhailov only knows that he has killed a Frenchman because he makes a noise – “ah Dieu” – upon being stabbed. Earlier, we read that “Mikhailov, supposing that they were asking after the company commander, came out of his pit, and thinking that Praskukhin was the leader, holding his hat in his hand, went up to him”. The emphasis is mine – it indicates that assumptions and guesswork lie behind the interactions. It indicates, above all, instincts, which can be either good or bad but which in war are perhaps all we have.

“Sevastopol in May” concludes with Mikhailov getting a light head wound. As if to tie his themes together, Tolstoy shows that Mikhailov’s main concern is whether he will look silly with it, not whether he will die. Even war cannot change vanity, it seems.

Ways of Dying

In fiction, dying often reveals the truth of the life that death ends. A good life generally has a good end, while a bad one, such as Ivan Ilyich’s, tends to end slowly and painfully. There are three significant deaths in The Sevastopol Sketches. The first is in “Sevastopol in May”, while the other two are in “Sevastopol in August 1855”. Each of these deaths has a different purpose and is approached in a different way.

In “Sevastopol in May” the death is Praskukhin’s, an officer’s. He dies fighting alongside Mikhailov. I’ve heard his death mentioned in the secondary literature as one of the earliest examples of a kind of stream of consciousness, for what strikes one about Praskukhin’s death is how his consciousness expands to envelop the whole story, and then like a black hole suddenly collapses inwards. Praskukhin’s death is first of all sad – “he was scared, listening to himself”. He seems little aware that he is dying until it is far too late. War cannot change vanity, but we find that death can. Suddenly Praskukhin is very small, weighed down by what feels like blocks of stone. Just a moment earlier he had seen Mikhailov get injured, and his first thought had been that this was a relief because Mikhailov owed him money. The stream of consciousness narration allows us to see the transformation of Praskukhin’s world from its petty concerns about money into its tragic concern about onrushing death. By connecting the two, Tolstoy seems to suggest that what we think about in war is really far from what we should think about. And this connects ultimately with the idea that if only we understood what war really was – death and destruction – nobody would ever fight again.

Or as he puts it in my favourite quote of the book:

“A disagreement that has not been solved by diplomacy will still less be solved by powder and blood”.

“Sevastopol in August 1855” takes us to the end of the siege, and to the end of the two Kozeltsov brothers. Much of the story is taken up with the younger brother’s arrival in Sevastopol, which is a completely different city to the one it was in the prior stories. Where before it appeared to function normally, with civilians and women and shops, now it is nearly deserted. The younger Kozeltsov is less occupied by vanity than the other officers – instead, he is guilty of an exaggerated love of heroism. He dreams of heroic death, even though “so little of what he saw was anything like his brilliant, joyous, great-souled dreams.”

 When he eventually meets his fellow officers, they do not tell him what to do, even though he knows next to nothing about running an artillery unit. Instead, they want to play cards and gossip. An opportunity to go to the battlements arises and Kozeltsov puts himself forward, only to be rejected by the others. Instead, they draw lots, and Kozeltsov is again chosen – a significant moment, given what comes later. It seems to suggest again that war is less about planning and more about sheer random chance. Kozeltsov gets to the battlements, and the fighting begins, but here the narrative takes us away from him suddenly.

In chapter 24, a brilliant short chapter, we see Sevastopol through the eyes of two spotters far off. They see the beginnings of a hostile assault upon the city, and then later –

“Oh God, a flag! Look, look!” Said the other, getting his breath and moving from the telescope. “A French flag is on Malakhov Redoubt!”

In Hadji Murat the hero’s death is announced before we experience it first hand when his head is brought to the Russians. In “Sevastopol in August 1855” too, death is announced before we experience it directly. The effect of this is to devalue it – we know what will ultimately happen, so any heroism or defiance is suddenly rendered pointless. It would have been better not to die at all.

Both Kozeltsov brothers die in the French attack. The elder is injured first and later succumbs from his wounds. In the confusion of the fighting, he believes he has successfully repelled his enemy. He feels “an inexpressible delight in the knowledge that he had managed a heroic act”. Yet what is this heroism really, if not a lie? He is indeed deceived by the priest in the hospital, who tells him that the enemy are in retreat. Kozeltsov elder may be able to die gladly, but the reader cannot share in his delight. There is something utterly sickening in seeing falsity so close to the grave. Perhaps I am wrong to care so much about truth, but Tolstoy does name truth the hero of his story, so I think I am right here. War cannot be even remotely good if it engenders the need for such deceit, even comforting deceit.

Heroism allows Kozeltsov elder to die gladly, assuring himself that he has protected his fatherland successfully. But Tolstoy devalues that heroism by showing it is based on a lie. Volodya, Kozeltsov younger, who is even more prone to idealise heroism than his older brother, is given an even more brutal send-off. We do not even see his death. Instead, through one of his soldiers’ eyes, we see how “something in an overcoat lay face down in the place where Volodya had just been” as the French begin their attack. There is no last stand, there is no coming to terms with the war. There is simply death. Whereas even the elder’s battle allows us to find redemption in his valour and heroic qualities, Tolstoy does not even allow Volodya a page to make his departure from the world meaningful. Depriving him of description, he deprives him of meaning.

Try as we might, we cannot find any way of saying that his death was worthwhile.

Conclusion

I visited Sevastopol in 2020. In recent years the city has once again attracted international attention. Crossing over from the North to the South parts of the city by ferry – a route taken by many of the characters of The Sevastopol Sketches – I was left awestruck by the great grey mass of Russian Black Sea Fleet, moored inside the bay past the old city harbour walls. I was not particularly interested in the Crimean War and did not seek out any of the museums related to it. Sevastopol is probably more interesting to a tourist these days on account of its pleasant waterfront promenade and its Greek heritage – the ancient city of Khersones is quite well-preserved. All told, however, the promenade at Yalta is more lovely, and the beaches along Crimea’s southern coast, such as Alupka, are better for people who would like to swim and forget their troubles.  

The Crimean War has been forgotten, at least in Russia. For the British, it remains an important part of our national identity. The last time I visited my grandmother’s she produced a diary of one of her forebear’s from the Crimean War for me to flick through. It did not make for particularly entertaining reading – for the most part, it was a list of men lost and troop movements. But to hold history in one’s hand like that is nevertheless a wonderful feeling.

The diary. Note the “Russian attack” at the bottom of the page.

To read Tolstoy’s little book is also to encounter history, and it is to encounter it from a different perspective to the one we are used to. In fact, this perspective-shift buttresses the argument of The Sevastopol Sketches. Reading our “enemy” already leaves us biased against them, so that Tolstoy’s suggestion that war is pointless and desperately sad is easier to accept. The petty vanities of the officers, dislodged from the cultural frame of reference that might let us love them, appear just as petty as they really are.

Ultimately, Tolstoy’s fullest and best critique of war is found, unsurprisingly enough, in War and Peace (or possibly Hadji Murat). But The Sevastopol Sketches are still a fun book. For one, they have in embryo many of the techniques that Tolstoy will expand upon later in his great works. More importantly, however, while few of us will ever fight in a war, Tolstoy’s work acts as an antidote to an idealised notion of it which I think may still be relatively common. And wherever war is idealised, inevitably it will burst into reality.

Alexander Herzen, Moderate Revolutionary

Alexander Herzen was one of the towering figures of Russian culture in the 19th century. His epic memoirs, My Past and Thoughts, are considered the best example of that genre in that language. As a man he defies easy categorisation – he was a thinker, a revolutionary, the first Russian socialist and the person almost singlehandedly responsible for the creation of Russian public opinion through the establishment of Russia’s first uncensored news organ. For Isaiah Berlin, he was something of a hero. For Aileen Kelly, his former student and author of The Discovery of Chance: The Life and Thought of Alexander Herzen, which I have just finished reading, he is “one of the most talented and complex figures of his time”.

Kelly’s biography diverges from previous literature on Herzen to highlight his scientific education, which lead him to approach the practical matters of political agitation from an unideological and much more empirical standpoint. It also led him to distrust all goal-orientated ideologies, seeing the role of chance in evolution and human history as equally important. But the thinker that Kelly describes is less complex than she wishes him to be. Instead, Herzen’s own judgement of himself as the thinker of “two or three ideas” seems more accurate. But still, they are good ideas, and it’s worth knowing what they are. 

Alexander Herzen

Herzen’s Life

Alexander Herzen was born in 1812, the illegitimate son of a landowner and his German mistress. This was a difficult time to be alive. After the elation of Russia’s victory over Napoleon stagnation set in, and then after 1825, when a group of officers attempted to stage a coup in favour of Western reforms, stagnation turned into reaction. Herzen suffered not only from his alienation as an illegitimate child (though his father, a wealthy man, succeeded in arranging for Herzen to be admitted to the nobility), but from his own country’s backwardness. Similar to how the Germans had created Romanticism out of the national shame caused by French domination, Russians disappointed with the status quo after 1825 turned inwards. In this they borrowed from the Germans their thinkers and writers – Hegel, Schelling, Fichte, and so on. Kelly does a good job exploring the intellectual climate.

Herzen went to university and studied the natural sciences. He was then arrested on limited evidence and exiled to various unpleasant regions of Russia. Eventually he succeeded in fleeing Russia, ending up in London after some time. This is where he published The Bell, Russia’s first uncensored newspaper, which was smuggled into the country in great quantities. As he grew older, he witnessed the transition from his own generation into a new, more radical one. He made the acquaintance of such figures as Sergei Nechaev (the model for Verkhozensky in Dostoevsky’s Demons) and attempted to persuade them of his political views. In addition, he got to know such thinkers as Carlyle and revolutionaries as Garibaldi. His personal life, as we’ll see, was miserable, but it was certainly interesting.

One Life, One Chance: Herzen’s Thought

Herzen described himself as having only two or three ideas. By this he meant that his goal was not to present a system of his own, but rather to destroy what he saw as the pernicious systems and ideas of others – in this, we might think of him as similar to Bazarov in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. “I’m not a teacher but a fellow seeker,” Herzen wrote. “I won’t presume to say what must be done, but I think I can say with a fair degree of accuracy what must not be done.” How did he know what must not be done? For Kelly, this comes from his scientific education. He had an eccentric relative called “The Chemist” who exposed him early on to the excitement of science, and throughout his life he continued to keep abreast of scientific developments.

Science was useful because it taught Herzen the importance of method. It’s not enough to have a theory, because “There is no absurdity that cannot be inserted into the mould of an empty dialectic in order to endow it with a profound metaphysical significance”. Instead, we must be more empirical, going from our own experience. We must look at the world before we attempt to change it, otherwise we will not have the right approach. To be aware of difference is a key skill for Herzen. For the revolutionary, it allows him to understand the best approach for achieving a given goal – at times violence may be necessary, while at others it may not. But the only way to know is not through theory, but through using our eyes.

Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species was an important influence on Herzen, or rather a confirmation of his suspicions about the role of chance in our lives. Evolution, Darwin argued, is not goal orientated. We develop through chance – sometimes improving, sometimes getting worse – but without any goal in sight. We simply improve our adaptation to a given environment. Herzen believed that chance was equally important in human affairs. Progress is not a given, and it is not a goal that we should consider a justification for the present.

Herzen was obsessed by natural disasters. As they are random, they proved for him that development could as easily be destroyed as it was created. If we think that we know the future, we can justify any means to achieve it. This is the foundation of the dangerous ideologies of the 20th century, and it was Herzen’s insight to realise that all attempts to claim knowledge of the laws of a random process (history) would lead inevitably to a kind of despotism.

Everything is chance, at least in the future. There is only one place where we are given a certain responsibility – this is the present. If we make use of it well, we can help create a good future. But we must always be aware that chance will determine the future, not any laws. We can only do our best. Herzen was scathing of both optimistic and pessimistic visions of human development. He thought that optimists failed to see the potential for collapse and decay in humanity that stemmed through chance and potential bad decisions, while pessimists failed to see that things need not necessarily get worse, provided we are willing to act to make them better in the present. In the long run, as Keynes said, we are all dead. But we can make a better present. Herzen, ultimately, comes across as a realist. His stoicism involved controlling what he could, and accepting what he could not. But given a life of personal tragedy (dead wife, family members drowning, infidelities, betrayals) he found his acceptance of chance pushed to the limits.

He admits that chance is not something we easily accept, but he insists that we do. For Herzen makes chance the basis of human dignity – we can only see people as themselves when we have no theory of the future that lets us turn them into objects.

“All the individual side of human life is buried in a dark labyrinth of contingencies, intersecting and interweaving with each other: primitive physical forces, dark urges, chance encounters, each have their place. They can form a harmonious choir, but equally can result in dissonances that can tear the soul apart. Into this dark forge of the fates light never penetrates: the blind workmen beat their hammers aimlessly, not answering for the results.…

There is something about chance that is intolerably repellent to a free spirit: he finds it so offensive to recognize its irrational force, he strives so hard to overcome it, that, finding no escape, he prefers to invent a threatening fate and submit to it. He wants the misfortunes that overtake him to be predestined—that is, to exist in connection with a universal world order; he wants to accept disasters as persecutions and punishments: this allows him to console himself through submission or rebellion. Naked chance he finds intolerable, a humiliating burden: his pride cannot endure its indifferent power.”

Herzen wanted us to see that we believe lies for a reason, because the alternative – accepting chance – is a challenge. But we cannot believe in ideologies, we must not believe in them, because they destroy the very things that make life meaningful – people as distinct, valuable, individuals:

“If progress is the end, for whom are we working? Who is this Moloch who, as the toilers approach him, instead of rewarding them, only recedes, and as a consolation to the exhausted, doomed multitudes crying “morituri te salutant” can give back only the mocking answer that after their death all will be beautiful on earth. Do you truly wish to condemn all human beings alive today to the sad role of caryatids supporting a floor for others some day to dance on, or of wretched galley slaves, up to their knees in mud, dragging a barge filled with some mysterious treasure and with the humble words “progress in the future” inscribed on its bow.… An end that is infinitely remote is not an end, but … a trap. An end must be nearer … at the very least, the laborer’s wage, or pleasure in the work done. Each epoch, each generation, each life had, and has, its own fullness; and en route new demands grow, new experiences, new methods.… This generic growth is not an aim, as you suppose, but the hereditary characteristic of a succession of generations.…

The struggle, the reciprocal action of natural forces and the forces of will, the consequences of which one cannot know in advance, give an overwhelming interest to every historical epoch. If humanity marched straight toward some kind of result, there would be no history, only logic.… If there were a libretto, history would lose all interest, become unnecessary, boring, ludicrous.”

Herzen saw that as we destroy God, indeed as science forces our idea of God to retreat further and further from life, then ideologies will necessarily take God’s place. But he also saw that we can only live and make life good if we focus on the life to hand, and not some future abstract life. His words are fiery, passionate. In many ways, they remind me of Carlyle, but unlike Carlyle, there is no authoritarianism lurking under Herzen’s words. He despised nationalism, and he saw the Russian peasant commune note as a utopia, but as a good way for people to organise themselves, and one that should become more popular. He wanted a compromise between individual rights and collective feeling. Like almost every thinker from the end of the Enlightenment to the present day, Herzen wanted to restore the lost unities of Western Civilization, to bond together again the people. But this cannot be done by force, and it cannot be done under tyranny. The great challenge for any theory is “To comprehend… The full sanctity, the full breadth and reality of the individual’s rights and not to destroy society, not to shatter it into atoms, is the most difficult of tasks.”

To summarise these one or two ideas, all Herzen really wants to say is that an overreliance on future goals can mislead us at best and lead to terror at worst. My favourite quote of his on this is not in Kelly’s biography, but is still worth sharing:

“We think the purpose of a child is to grow up because it does grow up. But its purpose is to play, to enjoy itself, to be a child. If we merely look to the end of the process, the purpose of life is death”

The Political Actor

Beyond the need to concentrate on the present due to the unpredictable effects of chance, Herzen disliked all things whose foundations could not be proved and tested through experience, such as organised religion or Tsarist autocracy. Beyond these two thoughts, he simply had his own values. He wanted humans to have bonds without compromising their freedom. He saw the peasant commune, such as it then existed in Russia, as an ideal structure for achieving this. He did not idealise the peasants themselves, at least he was not as guilty of this as Tolstoy.

Still, he failed to see them for who they were. In 1863 there was an uprising in Russian-controlled Poland. Herzen had been in touch with the Polish revolutionaries for long before they actually revolted, and he had done his best to dissuade them from their chosen course. He had looked at the situation and decided that the timing was not right – they did not have a chance. But the Poles did not listen. Once they had risen up, Herzen did what he could for them, supporting them through The Bell, his newspaper. He condemned the Russian response, which was vindictive and brutal. But for all that, he found himself increasingly isolated. Russian society, which hitherto had been increasingly divided between different groups – Slavophiles and Westernisers, Radicals and Liberals and Conservatives – all united against the Poles and in support of the Tsar. The Bell’s circulation plummeted, and it lost the esteem it had held. Herzen had thought that socialism would be the idea capable of rebuilding the bonds between society’s many elements. He was incorrect – what actually was capable of drawing people together was nationalism.

After the Polish uprising Herzen’s influence was limited. The radicals who came to visit him in London or elsewhere were more interested in gaining access to his money than to his mind. To a new generation, determined to use more radical means to secure their goals, Herzen’s moderation was a problem. They preferred Herzen’s contemporary, the anarchist Bakunin, who is best-known for his declaration that “a destructive urge is also a creative one”. This generation had little time for the suggestion that violence may not be the only way of securing a successful revolution – indeed, it may not even be the best way. Herzen died, in some sense forgotten, in 1870.

Concluding Remarks

Jules Michelet, the French historian, wrote on Herzen’s death that with him had fallen silent “the voice of numerous millions of people.” Indeed, there had. But these were not, all told, Russian voices. In his refusal to acknowledge authorities based on trust, and his hatred of oppression, he was an anti-imperialist avant la lettre. His support for the Poles and for all oppressed peoples makes him an important figure in socialist history. His creation of The Bell, Russia’s first uncensored newspaper, and his own writings, give him a central place in Russian intellectual history, even if he failed to have a significant impact on its political history.

And, perhaps most importantly for us reading him or about him now, what he said, however simple it is, retains a definite power and wisdom. We are danger, especially in our own day, of a progress that looks always towards the future, and never at the present, and that sees people rather than individuals. When we start to acknowledge the role of chance in our lives, we successfully reorientate ourselves towards the one thing we can change – the present moment. We come to realise the “irreplaceable reality”, as Herzen termed it, that individuals themselves constitute. We are only alive once, and we must work to make a better world right now. This, whatever our politics, seems reasonable enough.

Negative Character Growth in Chekhov’s Ionych

I have been reading Chekhov again. Chekhov is one of those writers who brings me such joy, and this is because he knows how to write. He reminds one that it is possible to write well, something not all writers, and certainly not all Russians, do. I wanted to write about “The Lady with the Dog”, and had even started a plan to that end, but I was so struck by “Ionych” (the next story I reread) that I felt I had to begin with it. “Ionych” is fascinating because it is a story about negative growth. The country doctor, Dmitry Ionych Startsev, falls in love with a young lady, is teased and rejected by her, and then decides to become a thoroughly unlikeable person as a result, leading him eventually to reject her himself when she realises much later that she had made a mistake in turning him down.

Negative growth is interesting because we are generally used to characters growing in positive directions. Our villains turn good, our good get better. Where mistakes are made, they are the result of bad character – of cowardice, or anger. But stories rarely show how entire lives can become mistakes, and how good people can become bad. That’s why it’s worth looking at “Ionych” in more detail.

The Plot

Dmitry Ionych Startsev is a country doctor who has recently arrived in the vicinity of the town of S. An educated man, as doctors generally are, Ionych is welcome in what little society there is in S., though his countryside practice means he rarely has time to visit the town. The society in S. is very limited, as is always the case in Chekhov’s provincial towns. The highlight, however, is the Turkin family – husband and wife, and their daughter Ekaterina, who is also known as Kotik (Kitty). Mr Turkin speaks in a very mannered way and tells funny anecdotes, his wife writes novels and reads them aloud to guests, and Kotik plays the piano. All this means that they are able to put on entertaining evenings for the inhabitants of their town. 

Eventually, Ionych manages to find the time to visit them. He is particularly entranced by Kotik, with the “innocent child’s expression on her face and the smooth, thin waist”. Though there is some family tension, for Kotik wishes to go to a conservatory to improve her playing and her mother decidedly does not desire this, and some of the usual dreadful treatment of young girls that we are probably used to if this is not our first time reading 19th century Russian literature (Kotik is barely allowed out of the house, so that she is protected from any and all “bad influences”), still the evening is generally marked by peace and pleasantness for Ionych.

When Kotik’s mother develops migraines, Ionych is called into the town more often, spending plenty of time with the family. Perhaps the migraines are even a ploy to weld Kotik and Ionych together, because if she were married she would never be given the opportunity to leave her husband to study elsewhere. Whatever the case, Ionych is in love with dear Kotik. One day, however, Kotik decides to tease him, giving him a note requesting a moonlit meeting in a local graveyard. Ionych shows up; Kotik does not. But though he is annoyed, Ionych experiences a kind of Romantic revelation of the world’s beauty in the graveyard. When he next meets his love, Ionych proposes; Kotik rejects him. Indeed, she rejects him precisely because she wants the freedom that not being his wife would bring. The problem is not one of emotions. But either way, Ionych is defeated.

Four years pass. Ionych, who had begun his story walking around the countryside, now owns a practice both there and in the city; he has a large, expensive carriage too. At the same time, he has drawn away from people – he finds them stupid and boring. And they, in turn, have started calling him a “puffed-up Pole”, though he is not Polish. In short, where once he was poor and liked, now he is rich and disliked. Kotik, meanwhile, has aged into Ekaterina, and returns from the conservatory each summer, though Ionych avoids her. At home, she already feels a kind of stranger and ill at ease.

But eventually they meet, once more the handiwork of Kotik’s mother. This time is both a repetition and a rejection of what came before. “He remembered his love, his hopes and dreams, which had so worried him four years ago – and he was embarrassed at them”. Kotik’s mother reads again, Kotik’s father says the same idiotic phrases, and Kotik herself plays the piano – nothing has changed. But emotionally, everything is about to fall apart.

She looked at him and was obviously waiting for him to invite her into the garden, but he remained silent. “Oh how good that I didn’t marry her”, thought Startsev.

What a terrible thought to read. But it gets worse, for Kotik invites him into the garden herself. She admits that the conservatory had failed her, for all the young ladies she knew were able to play the piano, and she was nothing special. She tells him how she thought of him while she was in Moscow, how ideal he was. But he does not propose. He thinks of his money, back at home, and the flame she had rekindled in him is snuffed out. Everything annoys him. He goes home and never sees the family again, ignoring their messages to him.

Later still Ionych drives about town “like a Pagan God”, so rich is he. People call him Ionych, rather than his full name. He has become his name – and not the personal, familiar, Dmitry. Yet although he is lonely, bored, and finds everything distasteful and uninteresting, nothing changes. He does not realise that he has made a mistake. Meanwhile, over at the Turkins, nothing has changed either, except that everyone is a little older. Ekaterina has become Kotik again, and no doubt will stay like that, sad and unmarried, the rest of her life.

Negative Growth

This is the story of Ionych’s decline into caring only for his money. We might ask whether Ionych always showed signs of badness and a quickness to judge – one thing the narration (in Ionych’s voice), notes early on about Kotik is that she is “probably pure”. But this is I think insignificant, because everyone has a little bad in them, but few have that badness gain strength over the course of their life as Ionych does. To encounter an example of negative growth in Ionych is therefore a kind of surprise. Just as in real life, we rarely encounter negative growth in fiction. Characters, especially main characters, tend to become wiser, learning from their mistakes. However secular we are, we like to see redemption take place for the evil, and manifestations of grace.

But badness can get worse. We often talk about regrets as something bad, and certainly they are when they consume a life and distract it from the present. But regrets can also make possible the righting of past mistakes. Without the interiority that regrets imply, we cannot hope to grow. Ionych ends up shutting himself down once those four years have passed. Kotik briefly makes him think of the past, but his embarrassment leads him to destroy his interiority to protect himself. This also destroys her hopes of another proposal. At the end of the story it is the narrator who tells us that Ionych is lonely, because Ionych cannot do it himself. In fact, he is probably not even aware that it might be the case.

Experiences change us. Ionych’s walk in the graveyard shows that he had a developed sense of imagination, but his rejection means that he fully embraces a terrible, limited, materialism. As a story, “Ionych” tells us about the consequences of not paying attention to ourselves and the people we are becoming. Oftentimes experiences, especially those involving rejection, are difficult to bear. We always try to make the most of them, of course, but often this can lead to us distorting ourselves in ways that are unhealthy. With no love, we decide to focus on work, for example. We lose one “success” for another, but don’t realise that the relative values of each success are vastly different. Ultimately, “Ionych” is above all a warning of the consequences that befall anyone who does not remain watchful of who they are and who they are letting themselves become.

Ionych can be read in English here: http://www.online-literature.com/anton_chekhov/1292/