Why makes Anton Chekhov’s storytelling so good? Chris Power reviews a new translation of his less famous short stories in search of an answer:

Consider the last page of ‘Neighbours’, from 1892, in which Pyotr Mikhailych, a young man who ‘already had all the makings of an old bachelor landowner’, sits miserably beside a pond as the moon rises. He thinks he sees a man across the water, standing motionless. Remembering a story about a seminarian who was beaten to death nearby, he wonders if this is his ghost. But when he rides around the pond the figure turns out to be no more than a rotten post, the remnant of some old shed.

Pyotr’s uncertainty is quickly resolved. But for us, reading Chekhov’s often indeterminate, emotionally puzzling stories, the solution is not so simple. In the closing lines Pyotr reflects that he has never said or done what he really wanted to, ‘and therefore the whole of life now looked to him as dark as this water in which the night sky was reflected and waterweeds were entangled. And it seemed to him that it could not be set right.’

The extremity of Pyotr’s realisation is a shock, a surprise ending of sorts, yet while these are usually enlisted to tie things up, here very little feels settled. Earlier in the story Pyotr visits the estate of his neighbour Vlasich, the divorcé his younger sister Zina is now living with. ‘Neighbours’ might be relatively minor Chekhov (written just a couple of months after ‘Ward No 6’, one of his most famous stories), but Pyotr’s visit to Vlasich shows him at his most skilful, conjuring a full spectrum of emotion from a stream of conversation that’s now sludgy and mannered, now running fast with emotion and revelation, now drying up completely (“The two were silent for a time and pretended to be listening to the rain”).

The longer the characters talk, or don’t talk, the more can be interpreted and the less clear everything becomes. Pyotr cannot talk to Zina the way he used to, perhaps because her liaison with Vlasich has sexualised her in his eyes. But is he jealous of Zina for finding love, which has eluded him, or jealous of Vlasich and in love with his sister? ‘I don’t even know for certain what I actually think,’ he despairs beside the pond.

Chekhov works to sustain this uncertainty and plunges us into it too. Revising the story, he deleted a line that seemed too definitive: ‘I had gone to settle something, but not a single one of life’s questions can have a special solution; in each separate case you must say and do what you think – that is the solution to all questions.’ Lines like this survived the red pen in other stories he wrote, but they never appear as conclusions. ‘In my opinion,’ he told Ivan Bunin the first time the writers met, ‘after one finishes a story one should cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we writers lie most of all.’ The end of a Chekhov story is nearly always left ajar.

Power goes on to argue that “Meaning is provisional in even the most apparently self-explanatory of Chekhov’s stories.” It’s a good piece overall, but I don’t buy this. Chekhov is indirect to a fault, suggestive, but provisional? I don’t think the meaning of any story or work of art worth reading or viewing is provisional. Scientific theories are provisional. My daughter’s driver’s license is provisional. Chekhov may argue in some stories that meaning in general is provisional (certainly not in all of his stories, as Power seems to suggest), but that argument itself is distinctly un-provisional. It may be wrong, or it may be right; the meaning of a work may be obscure or impossible to summarize—felt only—but it ain’t provisional.

In other news: Three members of what the New York Times calls “an elite piracy network” have been charged with obtaining and distributing movies ahead of release dates: “The men, who have been charged with copyright infringement conspiracy, were accused of being members of the Sparks Group, a sophisticated piracy outfit spanning several continents. One of the men, George Bridi, 50, of the United Kingdom, was arrested in Cyprus on Sunday. An American, Jonatan Correa, 36, was arrested in Olathe, Kan., on Tuesday. The authorities were still searching for the third man, Umar Ahmad, 39, of Norway. ‘The group allegedly circumvented copyright protections on nearly every movie released by major production studios, as well as television shows, and distributed them by way of a worldwide network of servers,’ Audrey Strauss, the acting United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.”

Roger Rosenblatt remembers Time editor Ray Cave: “When Ray Cave called to ask if I’d come to Time to write for the Essay page, I was rusticating in Vermont, a requirement for all writers that usually proves fruitless. I drove down to New York, excited by the prospect of a real job, and of ending my year-long conversations with beavers, raccoons, and other woodland creatures. At the same time, I did not want to come off like a rube to Ray. I wanted to show him I was a sophisticated negotiator. So when I sat in his office discussing the assignment (fine), salary (fine—any salary would have been fine), I took a deep breath and said, ‘I’m used to four weeks’ vacation.’ This was both true and not true. At The Washington Post, where I’d worked before, I had three weeks’ vacation. But I also had taught in a university, where I got three months in the summers. I figured the whole thing averaged out. ‘I’m used to four weeks’ vacation,’ I said again—louder this time, with more self-assurance. I looked at Ray. Ray looked at me. I could tell he saw he was dealing with a sophisticated negotiator. Finally, after a long pause, he said quietly in his clear, profound voice, ‘All right, Roger. We ordinarily start with five weeks. But in your case we’ll make an exception.’”

Graeme Thomson on interviewing Van Morrison: “‘Q: How would you define transcendence? / A: Well, how would you define it?’ I interviewed Van Morrison last year. (I’m fine now, thanks.) While the exercise wasn’t quite the near-death experience of industry legend — he was polite and accommodating, if not always exactly forthcoming — it got sticky at times, as the above exchange illustrates. Let’s call it a solid 6.5 on the Lou Reed Scale.”

A portrait of an ordinary Nazi: “Daniel Lee’s new book about his surprise discovery of an SS officer’s hidden files gives us a rare look into the lives of the countless bureaucratic enablers who kept the Nazi machine running.”

The story of Bryant Park: “Avisitor to New York City’s Bryant Park, a 9.6-acre gem at Forty-second Street and Sixth Avenue behind the New York Public Library, might find it difficult to believe its dismal state forty years ago. Now it is a showplace: teeming with people, immaculately maintained, and packed with activities ranging from book talks to ice skating to juggling (or at least it was until the coronavirus hit). But in the 1970s, it was infested with drug dealers and avoided by most everyone else, one of the spaces notorious enough to earn the sobriquet “Needle Park.” The story of how that changed—and how other urban spaces can be similarly transformed—is the subject of Andrew M. Manshel’s Learning from Bryant Park.”

Christopher Howse praises the beauty of London’s coal plates: “‘Look up!’ said John Betjeman in a good piece of advice to lovers of architecture, but for the past few years I have also been looking down, particularly at coal plates. These are the cast-iron covers for coal holes that for 170 years or so have been set into the pavement above cellars. Like the ironwork of drain-gratings these are not rusty affairs.”

Photos: Amsterdam

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