Chekhov s general idea or a god of a living person

CHEKHOV'S “GENERAL IDEA” OR “A GOD OF A LIVING PERSON”

Budimir Rogovoy, Ph.D. (Russia)

One hundred years  after the death of the classic Russian writer Anton Chekhov a discussion has still been going on how one should understand what Chekhov called a “general idea” or “a god of a living person”. (Let us add in parentheses that Chekhov wrote the word “god” in this context with a small letter, probably in order to divide more markedly this notion from the notion of “God” with a capital letter in the traditional religion, avoiding thereby colliding with it.)
In the following text we will use the terms “a general idea” and “a god of a living person” as synonyms.
These compound terms were expressed first in the thoughts of Nikolai Stepanovich, a hero of the masterpiece artwork of Chekhov “A Boring Story” (1889).
Nikolai Stepanovich thinks:
“When one has nothing higher and stronger than all the external influences, then really it would be sufficient to catch a grave cold in order to lose balance and begin to see an owl in each bird and hear dog's barks in each sound”. _
Some critics suggested that these were only the thoughts of the personage, not of the author himself. Refutation of such views was given by a modern critic (Linkov,1995) and, in our opinion, quite convincingly.
Nevertheless, being no philosopher Chekhov has not left us any coherent theory of “a god of a living person”.
In the present essay we shall try, as the first approximation, to clarify more some features of “a god of a living person” on the basis of an objective analysis of the short stories of Chekhov.
Nikolai Stepanovich begins to feel the need of “a general idea” facing an imminent and unavoidable death while his adopted daughter Katia is also faced by the unavoidable tragedies of the death of her child and the absence of talent for the career of an actress, which she desires strongly.
We see ab ovo (from the beginning) the following features of a “general idea”: it gives a person psychological support; it helps in difficult moments of life spreading itself all over the life, and is in this sense general; it must help even when the circumstances of life do not help, and is in this sense transcendent, or “a god".
Further, Nikolai Stepanovich and Katia know certainly that the ideas of this kind are proposed by the traditional religion but on the grounds which are not mentioned in the story and which we shall not dwell on they cannot or do not want to apply to the traditional religion and are trying to find a solution on the basis of their personal life, and this “god” is therefore “a god of a living person ”.
Nikolai Stepanovich and Katia did not find their “gods of a living person”.
Let us turn now to other personages of Chekhov's stories who searched for and sometimes found them.
First Lipa, a personage of the story “In a Ravine” (1899).
Lipa, a young mother living in a family of a shop-keeper in a poor Russian pre-revolutionary village faces an awful crime. Her sister-in-law Aksinia, because of the property brawl, purposefully spills boiling water on to the baby of Lipa and kills him thereby.
Lipa produced “a scream, which has never been heard before in the village of Ukleevo, and it would be difficult to believe that such a small and weak being as Lipa could scream so strongly.”
During the funeral repast “the guests and the clergy” “ate much and with such greediness as if they had not eaten for a long time”. Lipa waited on table, and the priest having raised a fork with a salted mushroom said to her:
“Don't grieve for your baby. Theirs is the Kingdom of God”.
A critic of the Soviet times (Chukovski, p. 626) condemned this indifferent priest for eating in the house of the atrocious killer. The critic did not notice that the priest had not had any knowledge of the crime as Lipa had never accused Aksinia publicly. This is quite clear from her talks with the other relatives when she returned from the hospital with the dead baby in her hands.
This accusation of Chukovski may therefore be withdrawn, but another accusation remains: the priest did not find time to speak to Lipa privately and offer her more religious consolation in that
.way.
Lipa found consolation without any major help of the priest.
Even before these happenings she and her mother believed and felt that “somebody was looking at them from the height of the heaven” and “seeing everything taking place in Ukleevo’, and therefore “there was still the truth in the God's world”.
The differences here from the traditional religious consolation are not only in the insufficiency of the mediating and directing authority.
Lipa's religion seems to have no definitely formed dogmas and teachings except that it is a message of love and truth: cf. Lipa's thoughts and questions in her talks with the old man and Vavila.
This is a religion which ideals are on a quite different level of being than the earthly reality. This seems to be underlined by Chekhov's remaining silent about the saintly humility of Lipa after the crime: Lipa simply does not express any non-acceptance of her fate and any aggression against Aksinia. This incommensurability of the religious ideals and earthly reality leaves, in our opinion, the door open to various variants of behavior. Lipa did not fight against Aksinia because it could not have helped her child any more. No doubt if it had been otherwise she would have resisted.
It seems to us to be a case of the manifestation of “a god of a living person”, not in conflict with, but having a support from, God with a capital letter.
Let us pass now from the saintly personage of Lipa to the sinner Ananiev in the story “The Lights” (1888).
A young man seduces a married woman Kisochka. He deceives her by saying about his ardent love to her, with the readiness to go with her to the world's end and to give her happiness. In reality he has no love to Kisochka and no intention to remain with her.
After reaching intimate contacts with Kisochka he leaves her stealthily and goes from the town. Then conscience begins to trouble Ananiev and he understands that he has committed “an evil equivalent to killing”. He returns to Kisochka, implores forgiveness, weeps with her and finally goes away alone, this time with the calmed conscience.
There are many stories of sin and repentance beginning from the early Christian times. But here we find some peculiarities.
The repentance of Ananiev is not a simple return to what he called “the nurses' fairy tales and hackneyed morality”. This is an individual decision taken without applying to any external authority.
Therefore, in our opinion, it is a case of the manifestation of “a god of a living person” (the term itself was coined by Chekhov a year later in “A Boring Story”).
Some critics were nonplussed by the extreme laconism of Chekhov in describing the repentance of Ananiev. We see here a similarity with the silence on the humility of Lipa and therefore do not wonder.
Further, Ananiev's repentance is a refutation of the ideas of of the absurdity of life cherished by him. (By the way, the personages of Chekhov had discussed the idea of the absurdity of life much earlier than it was put forward by the later existentialist philosophers).
Ajianiev's misconduct was to a large extent a result of his pessimistic thoughts:
“One who knows that life has no aims and death is inevitable will be very indifferent in the fight with human nature and to the notion of sin: fighting or no fighting, one will die and rot all the same”.
Ananiev's repentance is a practical refutation of the thesis of the absurdity of life. In our opinion, this practical refutation of the wrong idea must be also supported by the correct idea of and belief in God, with a capital letter, which is absent in the story but seems to us to be logically indispensable.
On the contrary, the religious idea of God, with a capital letter, is present in a story of Chekhov “Volodia the Big and Volodia the Small” ( 1893 ), and here it shows itself not as a support in the life of the personage of the story Sofia Lvovna but as the lost paradise to be envied and an example to be followed with some alterations.
Sofia Lvovna is dissatisfied in her relations with her husband and the fleeting lover and generally in her “uninteresting, dull and sometimes even painful” life..
She goes to her old acquaintance, the nun Olia in the monastery almost every day to complain, and Olia answers “mechanically, with a tone of a memorized lesson, that all this does not matter, all will pass over, and God will pardon her.”
Sofia Lvovna says:
“No doubt I am not a believer and I would not enter a monastery, but cannot one do anything equivalent?”
Some analogous thoughts may be found in another short story of Chekhov “About Love (1898).
The hero of the story Alekhin and the married woman Anna Alexeevna love each other but do  not confess it.
Alekhin thinks about his love:
“I have understood that when one loves one should start in his considerations of this love  from something higher and more important than happiness or misfortune, sin or virtue in their usual sense, or avoid any considerations at all”.
This is, in our opinion, also a case of a transcendent ideal which may be subsumed under the notion of “a god of a living person”.
It is important to notice that Alekhin and Anna Alexeevna part without becoming lovers, and they are motivated in curbing their love just by the considerations discredited by Alekhin in the citation presented above.
Here is one more example of the discrepancy of the ideals and reality, which again opens the door to various practical variants to be chosen on the basis of the measured harmonization of the opposing polarities- a subject matter in which Chekhov has no equals in the world literature.
In his story “A Lady with a Small Dog” Chekhov gives quite a contrary variant of solving a similar problem.
A number of examples of “gods of a living person” from the artworks of Chekhov could be much enlarged, especially with respect to cases when the ideals searched for by the personages were not reached and assimilated by them. Chekhov was the first writer to show the estrangement of modern man from the transcendent ideals, with the yearning for them still unquenched: v. (Linkov, p.78).
Still our analysis permits to add to the features of “a general idea” of Chekhov enumerated above (v. p.l of the present paper) such features as the inclusion of the aims of non-egoistic self- realization into transcendent ideals, a possible discrepancy of the ideals and practical behavior (cf.: “the eternal... is only what has meaning without the necessity to exist”( W.Windelband, p.278), and a possibility to choose various variants of behavior without refusal from ideals.
It is worth noting that the “general idea” of Chekhov is also “general” in the sense of being “common” for many people (Linkov, p. 69), and being a unifying force leading to the “love to neighbors” in that broad sense of the term “neighbor” as was given by Christianity. This kind of love, if one may cite the saint Augustinus, is “love directed to man for the sake of God”.
The difference of “the love in God” and the usual emotional love is especially well shown by Chekhov with respect to the attitudes of Ananiev to Kisochka in the short story “The Lights”. Ananiev should not be blamed for the absence of emotional love to Kisochka but only for the absence of love to her “in God”.
(By the way, no seeing the essential difference between these two kinds of love has been a source of many misunderstandings incl. notably the fallacious attack of S. Freud on the Christian principle of “love to neighbors”.)
Leaving the significant question of the different kinds of love without sufficient clarity of presentation, which clarity could not regretfully have been reached in the format of the present paper, we should like to express our general opinion that the religious innovations of the personages of Chekhov do not contradict the Christian religious tradition if the latter be understood undogmatically, as a message of “truth and beauty directing the human life” and “always being the heart of human life” – these are citations from the brilliant short story of Chekhov “A student” (1894).
The belief in the transcendent God, with a capital letter, seems to us to be an indispensable ontological basis for “a god of a living person”.
Our considerations of Chekhov`s “god of a living person” in the format of the present paper should be looked upon as only preliminary ones. A more general question of the attitude of Chekhov to religion is only insufficiently treated here.
We should like to finish our paper with indicating some sociological implications, to be elaborated in more detail elsewhere.
A personage of the novel of the Russian dissident  writer V.Grossman “Life and Fate” says about Chekhov that he was a prophet of the unrealized Russian democracy.
In our days, when the perspectives of democracy are not serene altogether, and not only in Russia, the question of the relevance of the legacy of Chekhov for democracy should be newly brought forward, and this holds true also respective the problem of “a god of a living person”.
The French sociologist of the 19th century Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his book “Democracy in America” ( Tocqueville) that the main cause of the economic and political successes of the USA was in a splendid combination of the spirit of freedom and the religious spirit.
The American democracy encourages freedom of citizens while religious belief creates moral discipline indispensable for the correct exercise of this freedom.
We believe also that the spectacular achievements of Germany in overcoming the legacy of the Nazi totalitarianism and in creating a new humanitarian social order have been attained under the considerable combined influence of the re-introduced democratic and Christian values.
In modern times, when rationalistic doubts in the traditional religious teachings have been spreading continually, a new religious approach proposed  by Chekhov may turn out to become of value for a renewed synthesis of democracy and religion in Russia, America, Germany and the world at large.

REFERENCES
Chekhov A. (1974 – 1983) The Complete Collection of Works and Letters in 30 Vols Moscow (In Russian)
Chukovski K. (1985) Collection of Works in 6 Vols, vol.5. Moscow: The publishing House of Literature ( In Russian)
Linkov V. (1995) Skepticism and Belief of Chekhov. Moscow: The Publishing House of the Moscow State University ( In Russian)
Tocqueville A.de. Democracy in America.
Windelband W. (1995) Selected Works. Spirit and History. Yurisr (In Russian)