The Lady with the Dog

February 27^th, 2013

Love-Somewhere In Between

Mr. Garrioch / World Lit

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“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” -Lao Tzu

“Where there is love there is life.” -Mahatma Gandhi

“A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love.” -Max Muller

Love is conceived as something powerful and holy. It is commonly believed to enable one overcome all adversities and endure all it costs. (And I’m referring to ‘romantic’ love, not platonic, religious, or familial one.) On one hand, love is regarded as something absolute that should be the top priority over anything, and not being fully devoted to the lover is of a great blame. On the other hand, ‘wrong’ form of love is an absolute taboo never to be followed.

Love appeared in The Lady with the Dog is one of those ‘wrong’ forms of love-adultery. Dmitri Gurov and Anna Sergeyevna meet each other as it so happens. They feel strong affection, which they haven’t felt towards their own wife and husband, towards each other. Dmitri intentionally approaches Anna, after seeing her and her comely feature, and the two have intercourse (supposedly, or at least kiss several times, as directly stated in story). But does the sinful adultery between Dmitri and Anna feel so evil? Though people rationally judge this adultery as unacceptable, they probably do not feel the unacceptableness while reading through the story.

Adultery, for Dmitri Gurov, is one mechanism to desolateness. Dmitri is not very well belonged in the society he is involved. He lived in Moscow for his entire life; yet he isn’t so much deeply attached to the community. He always feels uncomfortable with other men, and regards women (whom he gets along with well) as “the lower race”. Women he encounter probably is 

The Lady with the Dog-Visual Depiction

February 24^th, 2013

The Lady with the Dog- Visual Depiction

Mr. Garrioch / World Lit.

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  The Lady with the Dog, by Anton Chekhov, contains a lot of detailed descriptions of the backgrounds of the novella. It delineates the world protagonist Dmitri Dmitritch sees with faithful portrayals rather than figurative expressions. I could explain some (apparent) ways this story qualifies as a Realism literature, but this time I’d like to give the image I picturized as reading the story, focusing on detailed depictions in it.

1.     Vivid Yalta

Yalta, where Anna and Dmitri met and spent their time together, is described as colorful and peaceful. They have some honest talk (or at least Anna thinks so) and kiss trying to avoid prying eyes. These rather blissful moments in Yalta can be seen in the way Yalta is described in the story. Yalta is depicted as a vibrant place with a lot of people, with its beautiful scene.

“Strange light on the sea: the water was of a soft warm lilac hue, and there was a golden streak from the moon upon it.”

2.     Colorless S----

The city Anna Sergeyevna lives is never revealed in the story-it is merely known as S----. This diffident woman’s hometown is the place where Anna is suppressed by her husband, where she is always anxious. S---- can also be seen as ‘reality’; whereas Yalta is a dreamy place where Anna and Dmitri coincidently meet each other and share love, closing eyes to the exhausting reality, as Anna returns to where her husband is, both undergo separation and return to their usuality. Gurov goes back to Moscow in its dreary winter and Sergeyevna to S---- to live with her husband instead of Gurov. So S----, whatever the place is actually like, is a romanceless place for both Gurov and Sergeyevna. This view would go along with the notable shift in the color described in story, as Sergeyevna’s hometown is portrayed as mainly grey, a murky color contrasting with the cheerful ‘lilac’ and ‘golden’ colors filling Yalta.

“The hotel, in which the floor was covered with grey army cloth, and on the table was an inkstand, grey with dust and adorned with a figure on horseback.”

“A long grey fence adorned with nails”

“Fog above the chandelier”

3.     Dreary Moscow

As mentioned above, Moscow to Dmitri Gurov is a monotonous place that he lived for his entire life. Thus Moscow is described as a dull, mono-colored place with no aberration.

“At home in Moscow everything as in its winter routine”

“The white earth, the white roofs”

“White with hoar-frost”

                   
I will later post a more journal-like journal that sticks more strictly to the story itself :)

Realism as Being Real

February 16^th, 2013

Realism in The Student

Mr. Garrioch / World Lit

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     By the late 1900s, the powerful Romanticism was being substituted with Realism. From the Age of Reason when humans regarded themselves as all-knowing with a potential of understanding the world, through Romanticism portraying ideal world with sensibility its prime aspect, the literary movement reached so-called “Realism”. Whereas the previous Romanticism took aesthetic and emotional approach to the ideal world, Realism novels largely devoted to conveying the very true and detailed nature.

     Realism is commonly thought to have appeared as a response to Romanticism. The two occurred in consecutive order, with some opposing features such as ideal and real. Generally, ideal is somewhat optimistic, and at times, quixotic (and that’s where this word is from-Don Quixote who was deluded by heroic chivalric novels). Poet Walt Whiteman and others willingly adopted optimistic perspective. But not all Romantic literature was optimistic or realistic. Some of the most renowned Romanticism writers like Edgar Allan Poe stood far from idealistic but instead was much more grotesque.

     Being ‘real’, unlike being ‘ideal’ in Romanticism’, is one essential element in Realism, as the term Realism self-explains. But ‘real’, when juxtaposed with ideal, appears much less hopeful. As Realism is often regarded as a reaction to unrealistically ideal Romanticism, it is often misinterpreted as being pessimistic. True, many Realism literatures cope with rather unpleasant nature of humans that was left unrevealed. They also reach end without having the best resolution. But by definition, Realism includes nothing pessimistic. Movements more or less contemporaneous to Realism- such as Naturalism- together with Realism itself, build up the prevailing image of pessimism. (And in fact, Naturalist authors like Jack London and Stephen Crane did focus on dark human nature.) But again, Realism doesn’t necessarily have to be pessimistic or cynical.

     Anton Chekhov’s The Student, after spending the better part conveying biblical anecdote (of Crucifixion), ends up with the protagonist Ivan all of a sudden realizing the revelation of hopeful future. Readers are often misled to conclude this story as non-Realism due to the out of blue optimistic end. But strictly speaking, the ending itself can never determine a story as Realism (nor exclude it from Realism). Tragic ending is a mere wrong preconception of Realism.

     Then we reach our second question: can Realism include Biblical elements? To answer this, one must first consider the primary grounds for this Biblical anecdote in The Student. Clearly, the Bible itself didn’t contribute to Ivan’s realization of the hopeful world. Disputes among the meaning of the older widow Vasalisa’s tears, whether they are of an aching empathy or her sense of guilt and responsibility for her widowed daughter (not to mention the parallelism between Peter and Vasilisa, and Jesus and Lukerya), seem meaningless in determining Realism. What is important is how Ivan interpreted them, and how this interpretation affected in his realization.

     For me, setting the protagonist as a clerical student and letting him speak of a Bible are mere devices for making the story more probable and likely. Along with detailed descriptions of cold Russian night, sacristan protagonist functions as accurately portraying the late nineteenth century Russia.

     Realism isn’t restrictive in thematic issues. The one and only criterion for Realism is the fidelity to actuality. As literary critic William Dean Howells defines, Realism is “nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material”. Realism literatures surely can refer to religious anecdotes or beliefs. They also can present optimistic views. The Student in this sense underscores hasty preconceptions of Realism.

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I was also curious how Mark Twain was one of the major realist writers, and figured out he wrote, other than Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, much more realistic pieces like Adam’s Diary and Eve’s Diary. And for his most sarcastic pieces like Huck Finn, Twain’s point of view in human nature pretty much satisfies the thematic criterion of realism literature (though I wonder then why realism literature is generally regarded as something not sarcastic.)

01. The Student

February 14^th, 2013

“The Student” by Anton Chekhov

Mr. Garrioch / World Lit

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It is almost too common to mention how having profound background knowledge of a literature is pivotal in comprehending it. And it was this regard that perplexed me in my first reading of “The Student” by Anton Chekhov- I literally knew nothing about Russian history or biblical tales. After all, how could I know anything about Ivan the Terrible or Peter the Great? Referring to the 16^th century historical figures and using rhetoric, the style of this piece of writing seemed prolix and grandiose.

The plot was not so earthly or realistic. A student of the clerical academy, the protagonist Ivan Velikopolsky suddenly reminds the parallelism of current circumstances to the history. Then, finding two widows (two who are Vasilisa, fat old woman in a man’s coat, and Lukerya, her daughter, a little pock-marked woman with a stupid-looking face as Chekhov puts it) burning a fire, Ivan approaches them and talks about one of Christ’s twelve disciples St. Peter. When his words are done, he leaves the weeping woman. Then, on his way home Ivan has a flash of brilliant insight of the whole world in his mind.

So what is Chekhov trying to convey via this short story? That present is determined by the past? That there exists an unknown cycle that circulates past events again and again? Or that the story of the night before Crucifixion is so penetratingly sad?

Looking into the more technical than contextual, The Student utilizes realistic devices. It very elaborately delineates everything Ivan sees. The story uses phrases like ‘a cold, penetrating wind’, ‘needles of ice’, ‘cheerless, remote, and lonely’ in the introduction to convey the gloominess of night. It describes the appearance of two widows acutely as well (as mentioned above). Detailed descriptions satisfy “verisimilitude”, almost as extremely to seem subjective.

Chekhov also takes third person point of view, which is another major characteristic of realism literature. Through a third person narrative, Chekhov states the thought process of Ivan Velikopolsky directly through narration and Ivan’s words. Stating how Ivan thinks about Vasilisa and the world from time to time, the narrative but leaves out all other perspectives. The story never mentions about the reason for Vasilisa’s tears or Lukerya’s stare.

The Student portrays the reality of the time. Back in late 19^th century, when The Student was written, Russia was reaching towards the end of the Tsar (or ‘Czar’). The superficially successful reform of the established bureaucracy couldn’t save the country from deep recession. Large proportion of the serfs with economic downturn left powerless commoners’ lives impecunious. Further, Roman Catholic was the second most prevalent religion in Russia (following its state religion the Russian Orthodox Christianity). Anton Chekhov depicts both aspects accurately, along with other backdrops of the time such as the status of women.

So far, I found that The Student does satisfy qualities of realism literature. Anton Chekhov does make use of verisimilitude and third person narrative. It is also a pictorial of Russian life in 1890s. But still there is something that makes me uncomfortable fully admitting this story as a realism literature.