Chekhov's Children: Context and Text in Late Imperial Russia 9780228007654

Table of contents :
Cover
CHEKHOV'S CHILDREN
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Figures
Acknowledgments
Note to the Reader
Introduction
PART ONE THE CHILD IN CHEKHOV’S TIME
1 The Child Imagined: The Literary Canon
2 The Humanization Project: Pro/Contra
3 The Child Examined: Pedagogical Psychology
PART TWO THE CHILD IN CHEKHOV
4 The Emergence of Language: The Writer and the Child
5 The Child’s Text
6 Kids at Play
7 Farewell to Childhood: The Steppe
8 The Afterchildhood
9 Conclusion: The Anxiety of Ignorance
Notes
Index

Citation preview

Acknowledgments

CHEKHOV ’ S CHILDR EN

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mcgill-queen’s refugee and forced migration studies Series editors: Megan Bradley and James Milner Forced migration is a local, national, regional, and global challenge with profound political and social implications. Understanding the causes and consequences of, and possible responses to, forced migration requires careful analysis from a range of disciplinary perspectives, as well as interdisciplinary dialogue. The purpose of the McGill-Queen’s Refugee and Forced Migration Studies series is to advance in-depth examination of diverse forms, dimensions, and experiences of displacement, including in the context of conflict and violence, repression and persecution, and disasters and environmental change. The series will explore responses to refugees, internal displacement, and other forms of forced migration to illuminate the dynamics surrounding forced migration in global, national, and local contexts, including Canada, the perspectives of displaced individuals and communities, and the connections to broader patterns of human mobility. Featuring research from fields including politics, international relations, law, anthropology, sociology, geography, and history, the series highlights new and critical areas of enquiry within the field, especially conversations across disciplines and from the perspective of researchers in the global South, where the majority of forced migration unfolds. The series benefits from an international advisory board made up of leading scholars in refugee and forced migration studies. 1 The Criminalization of Migration Context and Consequences Edited by Idil Atak and James C. Simeon

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Chekhov’s Children Context and Text in Late Imperial Russia

N ADYA L . PET ER SON

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago

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© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2021 isbn 978-0-2280-0625-1 (cloth) isbn 978-0-2280-0765-4 (epdf) isbn 978-0-2280-0766-1 (epub) Legal deposit third quarter 2021 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: Chekhov's children : context and text in late Imperial Russia / Nadya L. Peterson. Names: Peterson, Nadezhda L., 1951– author. Description: Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210187425 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210187492 | isbn 9780228006251 (hardcover) | isbn 9780228007654 (pdf) | isbn 9780228007661 (epub) Subjects: lcsh: Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860–1904—Characters. | lcsh: Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860–1904—Criticism and interpretation. | lcsh: Children in literature. | lcsh: Child psychology in literature. | lcsh: Children—Russia—Social conditions—19th century. Classification: lcc pg3458.z9 c427 2021 | ddc 891.73/3—dc23

This book was typeset by True to Type in 10.5/13 Sabon

Acknowledgments

To Jocelyn

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Acknowledgments

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Contents

Figures ix Acknowledgments xi Note to the Reader xiii Introduction 3 PART ONE THE CHILD IN CHEKHOV’S TIME 1 The Child Imagined: The Literary Canon

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2 The Humanization Project: Pro/Contra 53 3 The Child Examined: Pedagogical Psychology 79 PART TWO THE CHILD IN CHEKHOV 4 The Emergence of Language: The Writer and the Child 113 5 The Child’s Text

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6 Kids at Play 173 7 Farewell to Childhood: The Steppe 203 8 The Afterchildhood 230 9 Conclusion: The Anxiety of Ignorance 248 Notes 255 Index 319

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Figures

4.1 He was as bald as a bottle of vodka, A.P. Chekhov, “Soft-Boiled Boots” 125 4.2 But look at him from the back, children, A.P. Chekhov, “Soft-Boiled Boots” 126 4.3 Every morning when children woke up, A.P. Chekhov, “Soft-Boiled Boots” 127 4.4 Pavel Fedotov, The Demise of Fidel’ka. Reproduced by permission of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, Russia 128 4.5 In Class, from V mire smekha i shutok (St Petersburg, 1900), a selection of stories and illustrations from Dragonfly (Strekoza) 133

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François Crépeau

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Acknowledgments

First, I want to thank Andy Durkin for his brilliant seminar on Chekhov at Indiana University, Bloomington so many years ago. My profound gratitude also goes to my editor, anonymous readers, and to my students at Goucher College, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania, Hunter College, and the cuny Graduate Center for their encouragement and ideas. Huge thanks to Tatiana Saburova and Ben Eklof for their insights on the history of Russian pedagogy, Russian imperial history, and for their willingness to talk to me about Chekhov and his time anywhere and at any time. I am grateful to Vladimir Kataev for a stimulating discussion of Chekhov, which took place in the halls of my alma mater, the illustrious mgu. Special thanks to my research assistant Ekaterina Lalo for her work on P. Kapterev. Daria Zaitseva, the Hunter Fulbright Teaching Assistant, offered great practical assistance in the late stages of the project for which I cannot be grateful enough. Thanks to Anna Romanenko of the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts (rgali) for providing a copy of Chekhov’s handwritten story for children. I am deeply indebted to Liz Beaujour for reading first drafts of the article that started it all and to the late Alex Alexander for his friendship and guidance. Warm thanks also to Dr Veronika Albrecht Rodrigues for her invaluable insights, friendship, and support. Emma V. Eklof has been a part of this project from the start, and her editorial help and expertise have been priceless. I was supported in this research by grants from Fulbright, irex, neh, and psc-cuny. In addition, the Office of the Provost at Hunter College, Filia Holtzman’s Fund of the Hunter Russian and Slavic Studies, as well

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as the Pleskow Fund of the Classics program at Hunter provided generous support for the project. This book is dedicated to the memory of Jocelyn Baltzell who was and will forever remain an inspiration.

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Note to the Reader

All citations from Chekhov’s works, commentaries, and letters come from A.P. Chekhov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v tridtsati tomakh, N. Bel’chikov et al. (eds.) (Moscow, 1974–83) (referred to throughout as Complete Works 1–18, or Letters 1–12), also found at http://feb-web.ru/ feb/chekhov/. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the Russian are mine. Russian personal names and place names are anglicised. I have used the Library of Congress system of transliteration throughout. The reproduction of Chekhov’s handwritten story “Soft-Boiled Boots” was done at the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts (rgali) where the text is held.

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CHEKHOV ’ S CHILDR EN

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2

Sound and Noise

Introduction

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Introduction

All Chekhov’s stories are “children’s stories” … the dramatic conflict of fathers and sons, permeating Chekhov’s entire work, [is] one of the major formative threads of [his] “master” plot. Mikhail Gromov

This book explores Chekhov’s stories about children as a distinct body of work unified by its theme and purpose. The theme is maturation, and the purpose is the creation of a literary model of childhood. Chekhov’s texts speak in many voices, voices that echo and interrogate notions shared by the writer’s world. Consequently, I describe the evolution of Chekhov’s model in its connection with the prevalent views on children in Chekhov’s time.1 As in his writing overall, Chekhov’s portrayal of his young protagonists exhibits a complex diversity and a broad reach across the writer’s cultural and literary landscape. Yet Chekhov’s stories about children, written early and focusing on communication and the emergence of personhood, also illuminate the forging of Chekhov’s own language of expression and therefore occupy a uniquely important place in his work. I see Chekhov’s writing on children as a progression where experimentation with representational strategies and the writer’s engagement with various aspects of child development result in a consolidation of Chekhov’s literary model of childhood in The Steppe (1888), the last work centred on childhood. My approach explores the unparalleled rootedness of Chekhov’s work in the languages of his time.2 I also pay particular attention to individual expressions of meaning adopted by Chekhov’s child

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Chekhov’s Children

protagonists situated on the other side of the communicative divide from the adult world and at different stages of their maturation. Children are everywhere in Chekhov. Over the span of a relatively short writing career Chekhov produced 287 child characters of all ages, belonging to nearly all classes of Russian society, and living in very different family circumstances.3 Throughout roughly one third of his creative life Chekhov was engaged in writing about children directly. Twenty of Chekhov’s stories, written between 1880 and 1888, focus exclusively on children.4 The topic is challenging and important, yet like Chekhov’s early writing, which had until recently been mostly ignored as a topic worthy of critical scrutiny, Chekhov’s children have remained on the periphery of scholarly attention.5 This book attempts to accord the topic the significance it deserves by placing Chekhov’s model within the broad context of his time and reassessing established notions about the child’s place in Chekhov. The scope of the study is extensive and its goals ambitious. One cannot hope to give full justice to the interactions of various extant discourses on the child that led to the formation of Chekhov’s literary model in one monograph. Some omissions of fact and interpretation are inevitable yet hopefully not detrimental to the overall argument proposed here. THE WRITER AND THE CHILD

It is certain that by the time Chekhov focused on children in his writing he had read, in addition to the literary classics, Henry Thomas Buckle on women and knowledge, Herbert Spencer on education, and Charles Darwin on evolution. While in medical school, the writer studied pediatrics with N.A. Tol’skii, diagnostics with G.A. Zakhar’in, psychiatry with A.Ia. Kozhevnikov, and hygienics with F.F. Erisman.6 We also know that Chekhov worked in a children’s clinic, wrote at least one child’s case history, and contemplated pediatrics as his specialty.7 He was familiar with the work of leading Russian educators and psychologists (N.I. Pirogov, K.D. Ushinsky, I.A. Sikorsky, P.F. Lesgaft),8 knew and appreciated Vissarion Belinsky and the radical thinkers of the sixties (all wrote influential pieces on education), and was well versed in publications designed for children.9 G.I. Rossolimo, Chekhov’s fellow medical student and later a prominent psychologist, who worked on children’s intellectual development and created a system of psychological profiling of children similar to Binet’s, might have been a source for some of Chekhov’s insights, although their relationship while students was not

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particularly close and Rossolimo’s ground-breaking work appeared much later than Chekhov’s stories discussed here. Still, neither Chekhov’s reading list nor his medical knowledge and interests alone can explain fully the writer’s engagement with the topic. A quest to exorcise the ghost of his own “antichildhood” is not sufficient for understanding Chekhov’s preoccupation either.10 One must also consider the importance of the child in Chekhov’s world. By the time Chekhov was writing his stories about children, Russia’s views on childhood had undergone a tremendous change. As I show below, by the end of the 1880s, a score of conceptual and practical issues had already been posed, if not settled – issues directly linked to the emancipation-era resolve to transform the society of “masters and men” into one capable of raising children of either gender in the spirit of universal humanity and opportunity. The progressives’ goals of child rearing and schooling were now based on the idea of a harmonious development of the child’s physiological, mental, emotional, and moral abilities – a view that emerged as the result of an intense process of pedagogical self-education and of the reassessment of previously held pedagogical truths. The proliferation of educational and health manuals for schools and parents, mothers’ (and fathers’) diaries, and of psychologists’ own recorded observations of their children that began in the early postreform period was still, in the 1880s, a conspicuous feature of Russian life. The psychobiographical approach, as well as direct engagement with literature as a trusted source of psychological insights by educators, psychologists and writers of child manuals remained a notable feature of educational writings.11 The vital importance of studying the child’s physiological and psychological makeup comprehensively was established by K.D. Ushinsky in his highly influential Pedagogical Anthropology (1868). The emerging field of pedagogical psychology was in its nascent form of information gathering, the formulation of positions, and staking out areas of research. The aims of the new discipline were both investigative and transformative: the study of general developmental laws and individual differences among children were of primary interest, and the roles of heredity and environment in maturation were assessed from the point of view of their potential practical application to immediate and future educational concerns. Emphasis was placed on the study of temperament (inborn), character (acquired through social interactions), mental and physical adaptation, moral education, and discipline.12 Aspects of the developing psyche that interested educators, doctors, and psychologists

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Chekhov’s Children

most were: cognition, speech, imagination, and will. In the educational ethos of the postreform period, the notion of development was the guiding principle of the new discipline. Psychic and physiological development was seen as interdependent, occurring gradually and in a particular sequence unique to each individual child. Russian educators were becoming aware of the gains that experimental psychology had made in the West, with the psychologist Ivan Sikorsky conducting Russia’s first experimental study on learning-related fatigue. Educational psychologists, such as N.Kh. Vessel’, Lesgaft, Sikorsky, Maria Manasseina, and P.F. Kapterev, for example, also began to pay very close attention to early childhood, focusing, in their search for patterns of future physical, emotional, and intellectual development, on the interactions between the child’s growing body and mind. What was missing at this stage, aside from tentative descriptions of developmental stages and attempts at classification of children into psychological types, was a systematic, experimentally verified, view of the child’s development in speech, cognition, socialization, and sexuality.13 Similarly, the codification of shifts from one developmental stage to another as the key to understanding the child’s psyche had to wait until the twentieth century to be fully formulated and adopted in pedagogical psychology, with the work of Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, and Lev Vygotsky particularly influential in this regard. Extant literary projections of childhood – both in “high texts” of classical literature and in their parodic transformations by the “low” literature of the “small press” in which Chekhov actively participated – were equally influential in the ongoing debates on the importance of childhood and proper education for Russia’s changing society. Leo Tolstoy’s and Sergey Aksakov’s idyllic gentry childhoods; Fyodor Dostoevsky’s suffering children of poverty; Nikolai Nekrasov’s little peasants, self-sufficient and wise; Ivan Turgenev’s boarding school girls, peasant boys, and his youths tormented by the agony of unreciprocated first love had all become a part of Russia’s cultural stock that was absorbed and transformed in Chekhov’s early comic fiction as well as in his later work. No less important was the dialogical relationship Chekhov established with his contemporaries whose reception of Chekhov’s emerging model highlighted Russia’s changing views on childhood as well as her changing views on Chekhov. In the 1880s, Chekhov, a journalist, fiction writer, and a medical man, was at the very centre of cultural, literary, and scientific debates on the

Introduction

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child. A product of a coercive and traumatic patriarchal upbringing, straddling in his lived experience the authoritarian educational norms of his family and the modernizing tendencies of his time, Chekhov was thus both personally motivated and perfectly placed to create his own model of childhood in fiction. THE CHALLENGES OF CHEKHOV

The essential elements of Chekhov’s style, the newness of a creative approach that resulted in the perception of the writer’s opaqueness, have by now been clearly delineated by a score of discerning readers.14 As Andrew Durkin has shown, at the basis of Chekhov’s perceived difference as a writer is a new kind of engagement between the text and the consumer, an engagement that forces the latter to be actively involved in all areas of representation, makes the reader “work harder” and purposefully encourages diverse interpretations.15 Or, as Rufus W. Mathewson Jr points out, by “responding in the right way, the reader collaborates in the experience of the story, as an actor interprets the text of a play or a musician a score.” The success of the endeavour depends on the reader’s “ability to detect the pattern of the charged details, the emotional coloration or moral tonality in the bare description of places, things, people.”16 Chekhov’s laconicism likewise draws the reader into an active participation in narratives where events, deeds, and thoughts of his protagonists are shown rather than explained. Chekhov’s compression of form, an avoidance of the full exposition characteristic of much of the nineteenthcentury fiction makes the reader question the assignations of the essential and the peripheral or, as Nabokov puts it, “[in Chekhov] exact and rich characterization is attained by a careful selection and careful distribution of minute but striking features, with perfect contempt for the sustained description, repetition, and strong emphasis of ordinary authors.”17 The apparent randomness of description is accompanied by variations in tonality; one seemingly accidental detail is often chosen to illuminate the entire setting. Chekhov’s writing is also marked by a consistent interplay of poetic and prosaic, a blending of metaphoric and “real” or to quote Nabokov again, “[for Chekhov] the lofty and the base are not different, are essential points of the ‘beauty plus pity’ of the world.”18 Irony in Chekhov serves to question conventions and recognize the complexity of the world beyond the text.

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Chekhov’s Children

Chekhov’s openings dispense with introductory descriptions, elucidations, or explanations of any kind. And if, as (once again) Nabokov quipped, “Chekhov comes into the story without knocking,”19 then he leaves the story without locking the door either, since Chekhov’s narratives often conclude before all of the consequences of an act are presented, leaving the continuation of the causal change to the reader’s imagination, a feature first noted by A.G. Gornfeld in his “Chekhovian Finales.”20 Chekhov’s closures focus instead on insights that both his characters and his readers gain into the limitations of the prescribed truths shown not to be universally valid but relative and contextual. The open-endedness of Chekhov’s narratives, the writer’s refusal to offer a unifying explanatory message, has prompted his readers to search for a definitive articulation of Chekhov’s “method,” a key to the writer’s worldview and an essential and conclusive meaning of his work. The logical result of this effort has been the profusion of many very different Chekhovs in Chekhoviana. As I.N. Sukhikh observed, the game of labelling, of constantly “dressing Chekhov in new garb” (pereodevanie), began the moment Chekhov’s contemporaries read his work, and it has continued to this day. Indeed, over the course of the last hundred plus years Chekhov’s “garb” has changed from Chekhov the pantheist, to Chekhov the foe of vulgarity (poshlost); from the singer of sadness and the painter of sick souls to the “socialist realist with Gorky’s accent” (Sukhikh’s phrase), followed more recently by Chekhov, the absurdist; Chekhov, the indiscriminate stylizer; and, finally, to Chekhov the virtual post-modernist.21 The uncanny way Chekhov’s work manages “to resonate with nearly all of the aesthetic doctrines of the 20th [and twenty-first century] while invariably remaining larger than any of them” is clearly the result of the relationship between the text and the reader that insists upon the latter’s active participation and judgment.22 Because, as in a mirror, Chekhov’s work “reflects, distorts, turns things upside down, creates an illusion of depth, shows what is familiar from a new angle and still remains opaque,” readers can always see what they desire to see in Chekhov.23 THE CRITIC AND THE CHILD

The unique aspects of Chekhov’s writing – the prominence of an accidental detail, the absence of exhaustive motivation for his characters’ words and deeds, and the apparent incongruity between an event’s relative importance and its individualized perception – have been questioned

Introduction

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by some and applauded by others. The writer’s refusal to provide a unifying explanatory message for the puzzles found in his narratives has likewise exasperated or, conversely, awed Chekhov’s readers. The desire to pin Chekhov down in an explanatory matrix that would neutralize the perceived inconsistencies and faults of Chekhov’s approach to writing found its fulfillment, however, in most critical appraisals of Chekhov’s stories about children. The writer’s early critics in particular saw the seemingly problematic features of Chekhov’s style as necessitated by his literary subjects’ idiosyncrasies and limitations. According to this view, Chekhov’s writing on children, focusing as it does on the unformed minds of young characters, was justified in its narrative ambiguities. Therefore, the overall message of the stories could be presented as explicit. Chekhov’s children are saintly and pure, and the writer’s putative intention is to demonstrate the destruction of the child’s innocence and goodness by the adult world. This reductive assessment of Chekhov’s literary model of childhood has remained essentially unchanged since his stories about children first appeared in print. In part, this misreading of Chekhov is the result of an established tendency to see the development of the writer’s craft in clearly demarcated stages. The approach denies the continuity of Chekhov’s complex technique and purpose and privileges his post-1880s output. In this scheme, Chekhov’s stories about children (1880–88) could be relegated to the juvenilia, i.e. to his “apprenticeship” in the “small press,” generally (and particularly in early criticism) deemed unworthy of his talents. Another reason for viewing Chekhov’s child stories as straightforward and interpretatively unchallenging has been the critical tendency to conflate the biographical and the fictional in Chekhov’s work. In many critical assessments, Chekhov’s personal and public statements in defense of children have been indiscriminately used to articulate the writer’s literary model of childhood. Similarly, Chekhov’s medical training, rooted in what we now call “the scientific method,” has often been seen as directly responsible for his literary insights. Overall, in the case of Chekhov’s stories about children, the critics’ reliance on the reductive scheme of saintly children crushed by the outside world appeared to eliminate the need for an exhaustive analysis of Chekhov’s model of childhood. Consequently, the critical attention accorded to Chekhov’s stories on the topic has been sporadic and their analysis brief. The majority of early readers approved of Chekhov’s portrayal of children. The main purpose attributed to Chekhov in the construction of these narratives was the writer’s desire to elicit the reader’s sympathy for

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Chekhov’s Children

his characters. The most common qualities ascribed to Chekhov’s children by his first readers were the protagonists’ artlessness (prostota) and purity (chistota). In K.K. Arsen’ev’s brief analysis, for example, the essence of Chekhov’s child stories is reduced to the “psychology of simple people” portrayed “with a gentle humour that invites empathy on the part of the reader.”24 Iu. I. Aikhenvald emphasizes Chekhov’s “subtle portrayal of artless souls” and finds beauty and poignancy in the idea of Chekhov and the child together, a notion based on the contrast between someone who has lived his life (Chekhov) and those at the dawn of life (his child characters).25 The symbolist D.S. Merezhkovskii’s reading of Chekhov’s “At Home” highlights the writer’s ability to capture the “eternal [and] unadorned essence of love” and “the superior inner truth of the child’s words,” an ability that is indicative, in the critic’s opinion, of the writer’s general distinctiveness.26 Chekhov the psychologist has been a recurring explanatory trope in many critical discussions on the topic, consistently linked to the notion of artlessness in children, yet also to the concept of nondifferentiation, i.e. the absence of a clear hierarchical arrangement as to the importance of the events described.27 Chekhov’s contemporary’s P.P. Pertsov’s reading of Chekhov’s stories about children offers a succinct summary of this view: In order to grasp the child’s relatively uncomplicated psyche, to enter the child’s world as a trusted and sympathetic observer, as “one of their own,” and to form cogent and comprehensive impressions, it is enough to be a perceptive psychologist. It is unnecessary to understand the complex, noisy public life that occurs outside of the child’s room. There is no need to depict causation – the world of the child is self-sufficient and insular.28 The “trusted and sympathetic” psychologist of Pertsov’s description was perceived by others to be an emotionally detached and uncaring witness of children’s suffering. N.K. Mikhailovskii’s description of Chekhov’s portrayal of infanticide in “Sleepy” as “cold-blooded” is a good case in point.29 Aikhenvald, arguably one of the most attentive early readers of Chekhov’s stories about children, responded to the accusations of Chekhov’s indifference by pointing out the need to approach the subject of suffering children with equanimity: “Like a Guardian Angel, Chekhov leads a smiling child by the hand but he himself remains serious, very much aware of the fleeting nature of a human smile, even if on the lips of a child.”30 Chekhov’s deliberate rejection of sentimentality in his portrayal

Introduction

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of children, never “cloyingly sweet” (pritornye, podslashchennye), was in line, in Aikhenvald’s opinion, with Chekhov’s necessary objectivity on the issue. Nevertheless, the critic’s summation of Chekhov’s presumed message harks back to the myth of the happy childhood destroyed by civilization: “life is guilty before children; it taints their pure essence (chistye kristally), ultimately turning them into wretched and vulgar adults.”31 Another contemporary of Chekhov, E.A. Liatskii, concurs, arguing that Chekhov’s stories must be seen as a direct condemnation of the status quo where children are allowed to suffer. In Liatskii’s view, Chekhov’s “Van’ka” (1886) aims to generate a feeling of “keen concern” (zhivoe uchastie) toward the poor boy Van’ka and many other such boys who end their lives in city slums.32 While agreeing with the general perception of Chekhov as a subtle psychologist interested in the child’s “rudimentary consciousness,” Aikhenvald also notes the fluid complexity hidden under the outward simplicity of Chekhov’s child characters’ maturation, including their emerging sexuality. In addition, the critic pays attention to the narrative strategies aimed at creating the illusion of unmediated access to the child’s perceptions of reality.33 Further, Aikhenvald underscores Chekhov’s children’s essential difference from his adult characters and lauds the writer’s ability to convey a particular sense of reciprocity of perception between the child and the reader.34 Finally, in the critic’s assessment, The Steppe is the pinnacle, and a summation, of Chekhov’s exploration of childhood.35 Later criticism, including the work by today’s scholars, has generally offered variations on the themes found in early criticism. To be sure, a score of critics have provided illuminating insights into the formal aspects of several of Chekhov’s stories about children. These include, among others, Viktor Shklovskii’s interpretation of The Steppe, with its sharp and detailed focus on the texture of the work, as well as Bitsilli’s and Chudakov’s discussions of the same, Rufus W. Mathewson Jr’s brief insights on Chekhov and children, and Ben Wiegers’s detailed chapter on The Steppe.36 Much more typical, however, is G.A. Bialyi’s quick reading of “Grisha” and “At Home,” with its clear echoes of the Tolstoyan myth of childhood discussed in detail in chapter 1. The critic likens Grisha’s perception of the world to that of a “natural man” to whom everything appears in its primordial freshness and brilliancy. In Chekhov’s “At Home,” the observed opposition of the child’s artlessness to the behaviours dictated by conventions of everyday life and socially acceptable morality is viewed as an attempt on Chekhov’s part to emphasize the absurdity of such norms.37

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Chekhov’s Children

A relatively recent article by the Russian critic M.A. Kovaleva is representative of commonly expressed ideas on the topic of children in Chekhov. With the exception of Chekhov’s presumed distance from his child characters, dismissed by omission from the critic’s account (and from the majority of Soviet and post-Soviet interpretations of Chekhov), Kovaleva’s reading follows familiar paths. The critic notes humour, irony, and lyricism in Chekhov’s portrayal of children, points to the economy of description in the stories, and emphasizes Chekhov’s ability to evoke the child’s perceptions of the world. Kovaleva links Chekhov’s interest in childhood to the writer’s search for the “ideological-aesthetic” ideal of the humane, harmoniously developed individual. Chekhov’s putative dissatisfaction with the current pedagogical practices and the general heartless attitudes toward children, typical of his time, are viewed as central to his model. The hardships that Chekhov’s young characters endure are seen as the result of the innocent children’s dependence on nineteenth-century Russia’s corrupt society and its guilty adults. As in early assessments of Chekhov’s portrayal of childhood, Kovaleva also perceives Chekhov’s children to be morally pure, altruistic, artless, and spontaneous. In the scholar’s opinion, the child’s occasional vanity, greediness, envy, or deviousness stem solely from a harmful family environment. Even if unloved and neglected, however, children do not lose their trust in others or curiosity about the world because, for Chekhov, all children possess superior morality and humanity.38 Kovaleva’s discussion draws both on literary and nonliterary sources, including anecdotes about Chekhov’s “warmth and cheerful playfulness” in his interactions with children. L.V. Baskakova’s more recent piece on children in Chekhov, if based on the currently popular cognitive approach of “conceptosphere,” nevertheless, rehashes Kovaleva’s main points.39 The scholar’s focus is on “the linguistic picture of the world built around concepts, i.e. viewpoints (edinitsy mental’nosti) representing key beliefs of a culture as well as of its native speakers.”40 The concept “children” is predictably connected to those of “parents” and (somewhat unexpectedly) to “fear.” The conclusions of the inquiry, however, are all too familiar. According to the critic, in his work, Chekhov “appears to share the lives of his characters, rejoices at their joys and suffers deeply when they do.”41 In Baskakova’s summation, the writer abhors evil and other human vices that destroy children’s lives, banish them from human society, and thus make them profoundly unhappy. As before, Chekhov’s young characters

Introduction

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are seen as “artless souls,” or suffering outcasts, and Chekhov’s compassion toward them as his chief motive for writing about children.42 The lack of distinction between literary and nonliterary discourses in support of an interpretation, evinced by Kovaleva’s and Baskakova’s articles, has been a persistent feature of the majority of critical readings of Chekhov’s child stories. In Aikhenvald’s typical presentation, Chekhov the man and Chekhov the writer are collapsed into one: Chekhov’s private letters are used in support of the opinion that, like Dostoevsky before him, in his life and work, Chekhov saw “children [as] a cure for a man’s soul” (cherez detei dusha lechitsia).43 In a conflation of public, private, and literary discourses, several nonliterary texts have been interpreted as authentic expressions of Chekhov’s authorial position on childhood. Most often cited is, “In childhood I did not have a childhood,” the statement attributed to Chekhov by his brother Alexander in a memoir.44 Close second is Chekhov’s letter to A.S. Suvorin of 7 January 1889 with a description of childhood and maturation bearing a strong resemblance to the writer’s own: Why not write a story about a young man, the son of a serf, a former shop-keeper, a gymnasia graduate and a university student brought up on reverence for rank, the kissing of priests’ hands and the worship of the thoughts of others … [about] how he, drop by drop, squeezes the slave out of himself and wakes up one fine morning to feel that, instead of slave blood, real human blood is flowing through his veins.45 Chekhov’s private letter to his brother Alexander about the latter’s unfortunate domestic situation is another statement frequently used as a direct expression of the writer’s position on children: Children are saintly and pure (sviatye i chistye). Even robbers and alligators view them as angels. We ourselves can crawl into a hole in the ground, but they should be enveloped in an environment befitting their status. You cannot with impunity behave obscenely in their presence (pokhabnichat’), insult the servants, or speak in anger … You cannot make them the playthings of your mood: one moment kissing them tenderly and another stomping your feet madly. It is better not to love, than to love despotically … I ask you to remember that despotism and deceit ruined your mother’s youth. Despotism and deceit warped (iskoverkali) our childhood.46

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Finally, in their search for Chekhov’s stance on childhood, critics refer to a passage from Chekhov’s journalistic inquiry, The Island of Sakhalin (Ostrov Sakhalin, 1895): The most useful, needed, and most amiable people on Sakhalin are children; the convicts themselves understand this well and [therefore] value them deeply. They bring an element of tenderness, purity, humility and joy into the battered and morally wrecked Sakhalin family. Despite their own innocence, they love their depraved mother and their criminal father more than anyone else … Children often are the one thing that still connects men and women convicts to life, saving them from despair and final ruin.47 Even if one were to acknowledge specific, addressee-dependent accommodations of the above sentiments in anecdotal, epistolary, or journalistic genres, Chekhov’s statements appear to articulate directly his position on the issue and are, therefore, hard to ignore. The conversation with Alexander Chekhov alludes to the existence of a shared notion of what a childhood should be like. The letter to Alexander, if aimed at a particular recipient, referring to a specific situation, and constituting its own genre of exchange in Chekhov’s overall correspondence, emphasizes the child’s essential purity and difference and evokes the writer’s own difficult childhood. Finally, the journalistic account of convicts’ lives in Sakhalin centres unambiguously on children’s ability to rejuvenate lives and on the adults’ responsibility for the hardships that children have to bear. The temptation to view Chekhov’s literary creations about children as a physician’s case histories or see them as faithfully reproduced snippets of reality in need of society’s attention because the writer “did not have a childhood” is understandable. The primary challenge of interpreting Chekhov’s work stems from its direct and continuous engagement in a complex, multidimensional conversation with many participants. In stories about children, these participants include fellow writers, critics, psychologists, educators, visual artists who contributed to the dailies he wrote for, as well as illustrators of his work. When the reader is confronted with narratives that foreground the multiplicity of competing and equally powerful voices, some of which echo Chekhov’s personal statements on the issue or bring to mind his mythologized biography, the conflation of public, private, and literary discourses in interpretation seems unavoidable. Chekhov, however, points a way out of this predicament.

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The writer’s “slave” letter to Suvorin offers an example of Chekhov’s abridged pseudo-autobiography where the documentary (in this case, the outlines of the writer’s own biography) is accommodated in a fictional narrative. The plot of the imaginary story (designated by Chekhov as such) centres on “the awakening” of a character based on a historical figure (the writer himself) whose background has been modified for a greater narrative punch. Chekhov, as we know, was not a serf’s son; neither was he a shopkeeper. In a literary configuration that underscores the character’s transformation, Chekhov’s father’s life story as a shopkeeper and a serf’s son is superimposed upon Chekhov’s own. The letter articulates the singularity of literary discourse in relation to any other, offering a glimpse of the reimagining of lived experience in fiction. Like the writer’s other public or personal statements on children, Chekhov’s 1899 “Autobiography” has been used by scholars to connect Chekhov’s medical training with his approach to writing. Chekhov writes: Undoubtedly, medical studies have significantly influenced my literary work; they have greatly broadened my sphere of [scholarly] scrutiny and enriched me with the knowledge whose value for me as a writer could only be understood by another physician … Familiarity with natural sciences, with the scientific method, always made me vigilant; and I have tried, when possible, to correlate [my work] with scientific data, and, when I could not, [then] I did not write at all.48 Using Chekhov’s words in support of his interpretation, Eikhenbaum sees Chekhov’s training in medicine as a “scientific platform for artistic observation and exploration of his material,” the idea later elaborated on by V.B. Kataev in his discussion of the importance of the Moscow University medical professor G.A. Zakhar’in’s method of diagnostics to Chekhov’s writing.49 While Eikhenbaum’s insight on the connection between Chekhov’s approach to his material and his training as a physician is valid, equating the approach with the message is not. Eikhenbaum’s formula: “Medicine begins with diagnosis and ends with treatment; [in his writing], Chekhov also moved to treatment after beginning with the diagnosis” cannot be applied to a body of work where each character’s voice is given equal opportunity for expression and whose chief characteristic is the questioning of set assumptions and fixed conclusions.50 Furthermore, narratives that consistently offer the reader an array of possible interpretive paths cannot but interrogate the very notion of an undisputable “diagnosis.”

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Chekhov’s distinctive focus on language is one constant feature of his writing. In order to represent differences in his characters’ individual perceptions of events, Chekhov employs diverse speech registers embodying his characters’ socially determined and internalized notions of normative conduct. In addition, to augment his depiction of the characters’ spheres of knowledge and patterns of behaviour, Chekhov relies on imbedded (direct or paraphrased) literary and nonliterary quotations, depicted visual images, echoes of particular positions on philosophy, education, or science, as well as carefully calibrated portrayals of his protagonists’ gestures and actions.51 All serve to make each actor appear unique, as well as solitary, in his or her search for understanding and self-confirmation. In Chekhov’s early stories, these intricate linguistic arrangements appear within the framework of established comic genres and are inseparable from the writer’s comic intent and overall playfulness in representation. While still serving to highlight Chekhov’s characters’ quest for comprehension, the interweaving of the comic and the serious, finds a particular, amplified application in Chekhov’s later work – most visibly in his plays. The efficacy of Chekhov’s mode of representation is predicated on the coexistence of equally authoritative voices in his texts.52 “The Darling” (“Dushechka,” 1899), a story written in a seriocomic mode, is perhaps a perfect example of the coexistence of different voices in Chekhov’s work. Like a shape shifter, the female protagonist assumes radically different linguistic and behavioural incarnations in order to adapt to the identities of her father, husbands, and lover. For Darling, each assumed incarnation, manifest in her language and behaviour, adheres to an overarching idea that has the weight and authority of a universal truth. But such truths are as many in this story as there are men in the woman’s life, and not one is overtly privileged. Since the absorption of the men’s languages by the protagonist is linked to their death or disappearance, Darling’s appropriation of little boy Sasha’s language in her final incarnation as a doting adoptive mother, a transformation applauded by Tolstoy, is fraught with ambivalence.53 As is often acknowledged, Chekhov’s characters’ attempts at effective communication are generally unsuccessful. The persistent collapse of communication in Chekhov is the logical result of the presence of individual truths and “the multiplicity of dramatic paths” for Chekhov’s heroes, leading to the “thematic fissures and intonational breaks” in his writing.54 Chekhov’s protagonists are shown to dwell within insulated, self-sufficient, and solitary worlds that are virtually impossible to breach.

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In this arrangement, traditional assumptions about narrative construction, plot development, and the significance of speech in shaping characters’ actions are subverted. As Stepanov observes, “dialogue appears never to achieve its goal: disputes do not follow the logical scheme of argumentation; information may be discredited in one way or another; reactions to a character’s speech are often not the ones intended or desired; pleas and requests may end in refusal or misunderstanding; orders seem to be unfounded; a character is unable to adequately express his or her feelings; and even the most elementary contact is not guaranteed by the dialogue.”55 The critic concludes with the observation that in Chekhov’s writing, “we are shown the limits of human language and the very complexity of communication: each interpretation must operate within the medium of these dense linguistic structures and therefore remain incomplete.”56 If the indeterminacy of meaning in language is at the forefront of Chekhov’s attention, then any interpretation that does not account for this intent must be inadequate. When the focus of critical inquiry shifts to the examination of Chekhov’s characters’ language as an instrument of cognition and communication, then the writer’s overarching interest in the way his characters arrive at a truth becomes apparent.57 In Chekhov’s stories about children, the writer’s epistemological orientation is thematically warranted and overt. Moreover, as Mathewson pointed out most aptly, “children in collision with the adult world, passing or not passing the barriers of initiation,” are a natural point of concentration for Chekhov’s laconic mode that highlights “moments of transition in biological and cultural growth and decay.”58 Justly, the critic’s assessment draws attention to the core of Chekhov’s concerns as a writer and reinforces the notion of continuity in Chekhov’s approach to representation from the early 1880s to the “mature period” of his post-1888 writing.59 CONTEXT AND TEXT

As a journalist, physician, and writer, Chekhov was intimately familiar with literary representations of childhood, as well as with scholarly work on the issue. Chekhov’s interest in childhood is easily derived from his public and private statements, his recorded pediatric aspirations in the field of medicine, as well as from the multitude of child characters populating his stories. An exploration of Chekhov’s model of childhood cannot be substantiated, however, without a detailed account of Russia’s prevalent views on

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childhood. Thus, in the first part of the book, I demonstrate the unparalleled interest in Chekhov’s time in the construct of childhood and describe, if in a necessarily limited fashion, his contemporaries’ positions on the issue. In my holistic approach, the chapters on literary models, education, and psychology serve as a necessary background for an informed investigation of Chekhov’s literary portrayal of children in the second part of the book. One has to bear in mind, however, that Chekhov’s compression of form does not allow for an extensive elaboration. Allusions to context are often hidden and have to be deciphered in interpretations cognizant of Chekhov’s contemporaries’ knowledge and perceptions. A seemingly minor reference or a quote imbedded in Chekhov’s description of a character’s musings evokes a wealth of highly influential ideas on education.60 A mother’s admonitions to her children reflect shared understandings of normative behaviour. Chekhov’s depiction of his preverbal child’s attempts at communication gestures to Russian educators’ and psychologists’ views on early childhood. Chekhov’s portrayal of peasant children engages with Russia’s divergent ideas on educating the peasantry, with social mythology, and traditional peasant culture. Moreover, Chekhov’s creative appropriation of other writers’ language and thematics, a defining feature of his poetics, must be accounted for in any discussion of the interactions between Chekhov’s context and his text. The picture is further complicated by the fact that the “pedagogical hunger” of the time and the resulting process of self-education led to the arrogation of various discourses on childhood by all involved.61 The literary harbingers of Russia’s nineteenth-century sustained interest in the child, Leo Tolstoy and Sergey Aksakov, wrote their novels of maturation at about the same time that eminent educators, such as Pirogov and K.D. Ushinsky, wrote their scholarly works on childhood and pedagogy. Psychologists and educators routinely based their findings and conclusions on literary works. Visual images found in photographic records or in works of art were commonly used to substantiate particular scholarly positions. The to and fro between art and science was a persistent and conspicuous attribute of the writings by the educated classes.62 Chekhov appropriated current scholarly knowledge, often employing shared methods of discovery, analysis, and particular argumentative strategies to depict the state of childhood in his fiction. Other stable modes of representation were absorbed into Chekhov’s writing as well, which became notable, particularly early on, for its enduring “dislocation of the genre,” the

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process in which the borders between literary and nonliterary discourses were blurred.63 Chekhov’s “Two Romances” (“Dva romana,” 1883) is an excellent example of a deliberate generic dislocation where the structure and language of a medical case history and that of journalistic reportage become embedded and transformed in a literary work (“roman” in Russian can signify both a love affair and a novel). The first part of Chekhov’s story, describing a physician’s marriage, employs the devices of the medical genre, with its obligatory record of social/family history, clinical observation, diagnosis, treatment, (and a lavish use of Latin), as well as those of scholarly discourse (language, structure and references). Despite the firstperson narrator’s tone of objective distance, however, in this fragment, both the narrating doctor and his wife turn into patients – the subjects of Chekhov’s mock medical inquiry.64 “Two Romances” opens with the narrator’s/patient’s social history, appended by the normatively shared notion of the necessary “treatment” for his “condition”: “When you reach adulthood and finish your education, then the prescription for you is: a feminam unam and a quantum satis of the dowry.”65 The narrator’s current social/family history follows: “I acted accordingly: married a feminam unam (two are not allowed) and received her dowry. Already in antiquity, they censured those who did not accept dowry in marriage (Ichthyosaurus, XII, 3).” The self-medicating doctor prescribes “horses and a bel étage [apartment] for himself”; drinks “vinum gallicum rubrum,” buys an expensive fur coat, and begins his “lege artis” life.66 His wife’s psychiatric case history focuses first on physiology: Her habitus is acceptable. Height – average. Skin tone and mucous membranes – normal. Subcutaneous tissue development – satisfactory. Chest proportions are regular, wheezing is absent, and respiration is vesicular. Heart sounds are normal.67 The ensuing assessment of the woman’s psyche comingles with descriptions of the narrating doctor’s psychophysical reactions to his wife’s (inherited) and mother-in-law’s (present) typical behaviours: In the sphere of the psyche, only one deviation from the norm is observable: she is a loud chatterbox. Because of her tendency to chatter, I now suffer from the hypersensitivity of the auditory nerve. When I examine a patient’s tongue, I think of my wife and experience palpitations. I concur with the philosopher who stated: “Lingua est hostis

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hominum amicusque diaboli et feminarum.” My mater feminae – mother-in-law (genus mammalia) – suffers from the same condition. When they both shriek 23 hours a day without stopping, I experience psychopathological tendencies and suicidal ideation.68 Chekhov’s narrative then proceeds to describe a diagnosis based on the available data, as well as the attempted treatment and its possible outcomes: According to the testimony of my esteemed friends, nine out of ten women suffer from what Charcot terms the hyperactivity of the speech centre. Charcot’s suggested treatment for the condition is the amputation of the tongue. In his view, the approach can save humanity from this dreadful disease. Alas, Billroth, who performed the procedure numerous times, states in his classical memoir that, after having undergone the surgery, women learned sign language and therefore could produce an even more harmful effect on their husbands: by means of hypnosis (Memor. Acad. 1878). I suggest a different treatment (see my dissertation). Without rejecting the amputation of the tongue, advocated by Charcot, and with all due respect to such authority on the subject as Billroth, I propose to combine the amputation of the tongue with a recommendation to wear mittens. My observations have demonstrated that deaf and dumb patients who wear mittens cannot speak, even when they are hungry.69 The second part of the story is a rendition of a reporter’s failed marriage. The narrative, structured around emphatically highlighted bullet points, is peppered with allusions to the practicalities of publishing, such as editing (“A straight little nose, divine chest, marvellous hair, charming eyes – not even one typo! I did some editing and married her.”); censorship (“A wife is a bride half mutilated by censorship!”); and honoraria (paid to the parents of his unfaithful wife to insure her banishment from his life).70 The omniscient observer is the writer; Chekhov’s “physician” and his “reporter” are the objects of literary manipulation. Chekhov’s distinct understanding of the difference between literary and nonliterary discourses is articulated in his “Autobiography.” Chekhov states, “the conventions of creative writing do not always allow for a complete adherence to scientific data … However, [this] adherence … must be perceptible within the underlying [literary] conventions, i.e. the reader or the spectator must be aware of the conventions yet be convinced that the writer is well-informed (svedushchii).”71 In “Two Romances,” as in

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Chekhov’s early fiction overall, the manipulation of the difference served to produce laughter. A similar objective guided Chekhov’s reliance on cultural stereotypes: shrieky or slutty wives; dimwitted, nerdy, or cuckolded husbands; and “professionals” whose sole claim to their profession was based on the slavish adherence to the languages of their professions. To be sure, a comparably aimed generic dislocation, as well as the dependence on stereotypes, characterized the work of Chekhov’s fellow writers in humour magazines. As I describe in chapter 4, however, Chekhov’s “novelization” of the form, the expansion of established representational formulae of the small press, distinguished Chekhov’s early work from that of his brothers in writing. Chekhov’s model of childhood employs literary means to accommodate specific purposes as set for each individual story. The way sociocultural allusions – overt or implied – are used in Chekhov is inseparable from the laconic mode and the polysemy of his fiction. Hence, in my analysis of Chekhov’s texts, I follow the writer. I analyze each story in the canon with an eye to Chekhov’s dialog with various contemporaneous views on the child, as well as to the writer’s continuing experiments with representation. These original analyses are consistently and firmly anchored in Chekhov’s own words. In each instance, I present Chekhov’s depictions against the background of his society’s views on maturation but always in relation to what Chekhov focuses on in each story. Consequently, in my presentation, there is a deliberate interweaving of descriptions of Chekhov’s modes of expression and thematic foci vis-à-vis contextual referents. Each reading also engages with critical assessments of the stories, both by Chekhov’s contemporaries and later critics. The success of my critical endeavour depends on being able to read Chekhov right. In Cathy Popkin’s amplification of Robert Louis Jackson’s dictum to read Chekhov as poetry, this means: to consider every word, even the apparently random ones, to scrutinize the story for patterns and clues, to unearth subtle references, to delve beneath the deceptive simplicity of the surface for access to the complexity at play in the depths; or even to consider the effect of the language itself, to attend with care to the verbal surface for its sounds and cadences and etymological rhyme, reading the prose essentially as one might read a poem – for what it does, the effect it has and for what each component – every piece of dark blue fabric – contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.72

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Plumbing the writer’s “clues” and “references” for their connections to the languages of his culture helps pinpoint the constituent elements of Chekhov’s model of childhood, as well as to clarify the very process of its creation. Part one – The Child in Chekhov’s Time – consists of three chapters that identify prominent participants in Russia’s emancipation-era debates on the child and focuses on literary, pedagogical, medical, psychological, and private views on the topic. Chapter 1 – “The Child Imagined: The Literary Canon” – is a discussion of influential literary models of childhood in Chekhov’s time, with particular attention given to Sergey Aksakov’s and Leo Tolstoy’s novels of maturation. Chapter 2 – “The Humanization Project: Pro/Contra” – addresses the emancipation-era educational debates on the child. The primary focus of the chapter is on K.D. Ushinsky’s and Leo Tolstoy’s pedagogical writings. Chapter 3 – “The Child Examined: Pedagogical Psychology”– is a discussion of the work by prominent psychologists and educators of the emergent field of Russian child studies, including the writings by N.Kh. Vessel’, I. Sikorsky, P.F. Kapterev, Maria Manasseina, and E. Vodovozova. Part two – The Child in Chekhov – is a close reading of Chekhov’s stories organized around specific themes. Chapter 4 – “The Emergence of Language” – outlines the development of Chekhov’s own language on the topic. This discussion is accompanied by an interpretation of Chekhov’s first story about children, “Naden’ka N.,” followed by an analysis of “The Mean Boy,” “Paterfamilias,” “Oysters,” and “Grisha.” Chapter 5 – “The Child’s Text” – is a close examination of stories (“The Fugitive,” “The Cook Gets Married,” and “At Home”) that depict the child’s accommodation of sex, marriage, sickness, and death in the protagonists’ own verbal and nonverbal narratives. Chapter 6 – “Kids at Play” – focuses on socialization, based on my reading of “Kids,” “The Big Event,” and “The Boys.” Chapter 7 – “Farewell to Childhood: The Steppe” – is a discussion of Chekhov’s final work on children. Chapter 8 – “The Afterchildhood” – examines stories dealing with the aftereffects of the child’s separation from home (“Van’ka” and “Sleepy”).73 Chapter 9 – “The Anxiety of Ignorance” – is the book’s conclusion. In this study, I discuss the emergence of Chekhov’s literary model of childhood in the context of his time, offering the reader an approximation of an immersive experience in the world that shaped this part of Chekhov’s art. Yet, context, described in the first part, is but a necessary background for an informed exploration of Chekhov’s poetics. Therefore, in my discussion of Chekhov’s stories, I use Chekhov’s appropriations of

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context to look at the evolution of Chekhov’s representational strategies, identify the roots of Chekhov’s approach to writing in his early work, and highlight the writer’s overall epistemological intent. Inevitably, other links to context emerge in the process. Overall, what connects the context and the text most intimately is the focused attention Chekhov and his contemporaries in scholarly fields paid to the way children learn and, more specifically, to cognition, socialization with peers and adults, as well as to children’s sexuality and gender differences. For Chekhov’s child characters, the path to understanding is shown to be impeded by age, social position, gender, or family environment. Still, even if individual and unavoidably flawed, a knowledge is gained in the child’s complex interactions with the world around. The refracted voices of Chekhov’s contemporaries, as well as echoes of the writer’s own childhood, are transformed in these narratives in linguistic and generic arrangements where the construction of knowledge assumes central importance.

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Acknowledgments

PA RT ONE

The Child in Chekhov’s Time

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26

Sound and Noise

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1 The Child Imagined: The Literary Canon

Appropriations, “quotations,” “plagiarism,” do not necessarily point to a literary influence; they only suggest it. True influence reveals itself in the commonality of style, tone and perception of life. P.M. Bitsilli

Tolstoy’s enthusiastic response to Chekhov’s stories about children is well known; it clearly signals a perceived affinity with the younger writer.1 On his part, and by his own admission, Chekhov of the mid-1880s was still under the spell of the grand master, undoubtedly aware of Tolstoy’s pioneering exploration of the child’s inner life in Childhood (1852), the practical application of his educational ideas in a school for peasant children, and of the canonical status of Tolstoy’s depiction of a blissful childhood. As Mikhail Gromov has noted, however, Dostoevsky’s examination of maturation in The Adolescent is equally significant in understanding Chekhov’s writing on children.2 Further, as I show below, Dostoevsky’s depictions directly inform Chekhov’s portrayal of his characters in two stories on the subject. Scholars also remark on the links between Chekhov’s portrayal of childhood and M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s Old Times in Poshekhon’e (1881).3 In addition, Chekhov’s negative reaction to Oblomov in a letter to A.S. Suvorin includes an acknowledgement of his former appreciation of I.A. Goncharov, suggesting a close familiarity with the novel that contains the most significant literary image of gentry childhood prior to Tolstoy’s path breaking ode to its happy innocence.4 In his stories about children, Chekhov also references Ivan Turgenev’s work. Nikolai Gogol’s influence on Chekhov is similarly apparent, particularly in The Steppe. Niko-

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lai Nekrasov’s idealized portrayal of peasant children in “Peasant Children” (“Krestianskie deti,” 1861) has a bearing on Chekhov’s approach to the topic as well. Finally, a close reading of Sergey Aksakov’s The Childhood Years of Bagrov’s Grandson and Reminiscences reveals notable similarities between the way Aksakov and Chekhov represent the lives of their young characters. Chekhov’s appropriations and transformations of the language of other writers is a constant feature of his work. Hence, Chekhov’s model of childhood engages with a variety of literary representations on the topic by evoking the texture, structure, and thematic foci of his sources. One has to bear in mind, however, that Tolstoy’s, Aksakov’s, Goncharov’s, SaltykovShchedrin’s, and Dostoevsky’s descriptions of childhood became part of the general conversation on Russia’s class structure, social and spiritual responsibilities, as well as its past and future. Unavoidably, Chekhov’s model refracts both the original works of his precursors and their mythologized versions. The notion of the gentry’s “blissful childhood,” derived by the public from Tolstoy’s and Aksakov’s works, entered the Russian lexicon and helped shape the Russian intelligentsia’s worldview and its approach to Chekhov. Dostoevsky’s view of children as Christ-like healers of the soul informed the general discourse on childhood and likewise affected Chekhov’s contemporaries’ reading of Chekhov’s work on the topic.5 Saltykov-Shchedrin’s Poshekhon’e, “the most thoroughgoing refutation of the gentry myths of childhood,” and his The Golovlyov Family (1875–80), “a dark and sombre work that aims to invert and thus negate the idyllic tradition of pastoral prose generally and the family novel in particular” demythologized the myth of the happy gentry childhood in Russia and contributed to the way Chekhov’s critics saw his work as well.6 In their discussion of Chekhov’s representation of childhood, the majority of readers have evoked Tolstoy’s and Dostoevsky’s notion of children’s angelic innocence destroyed by the adult world. Yet Dostoevsky’s depiction of “accidental families” and of “the humiliated and the insulted” children of poverty living in urban slums prompted many critics to link Chekhov to Dostoevsky more directly than to Tolstoy. Similarly, Saltykov-Schedrin’s writings on childhood have been seen as closer in spirit to Chekhov’s than those of Tolstoy, Aksakov, or Goncharov. Chekhov’s idea of childhood is quite distant, however, from SaltykovShchedrin’s overt refutation of the myth of the gentry’s blissful childhood. Likewise, Dostoevsky’s children differ considerably from those of

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Chekhov. Dostoevsky’s young characters are prematurely adult in their thoughts and deeds.7 They can be both cruel and merciful, yet, according to the writer, their propensity for goodness is innate.8 Dostoevsky underscores the psychological complexity of his young characters but pays little attention to their psychological development.9 Further, Dostoevsky’s children appear to come into the world of his novels already formed. For the writer, the suffering of innocent children is the foundation of a religious philosophy of salvation where his imagined children’s perceptions and experiences become the measure of all moral values and where the child, in his Christ-like innocence, is open to the essential truths of the world. Out of the score of competing literary constructs of childhood available to the writer, it is Tolstoy’s and Aksakov’s writings, which, in my view, exhibit most tangibly Bitsilli’s “commonality of style, tone and perception of life” with those of Chekhov. Tolstoy’s and Aksakov’s attention to the process of maturation depicted over time and their keen interest in the psychology of their characters are the features shared by Chekhov with these precursors. Consequently, in this chapter, I frame my discussion of Tolstoy’s and Aksakov’s work around the issues I see as directly relevant to Chekhov’s exploration of childhood: cognition, socialization, sexuality, gender, and the acquisition of knowledge. REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST : TOLSTOY ON CHILDHOOD AND BEYOND

It has been argued that until the appearance of Tolstoy’s Childhood in 1852, Russian literature “lacked a coherent integral model for the expression and interpretation of this stage of life, a recognition and means of expressing the child’s point of view.”10 Of course, the uniqueness of childhood and its distinctiveness from adulthood had already been recognized by Karamzin half a century earlier and restated later by Belinsky, Ushinsky, and Pirogov – well before the publication of Tolstoy’s first novel. Moreover, Goncharov’s “Oblomov’s Dream,” an extract from Ivan Goncharov’s future novel Oblomov (1859), published in Sovremennik in 1849 and describing the protagonist’s early life, had appeared in print several years before Childhood. Dostoevsky’s depictions of innocent and suffering children had been a staple of his work, beginning with the publication of the writer’s first novel The Poor Folk (1846). Yet, the creation of a comprehensive literary model of childhood still had to wait until Tolstoy’s narrative of maturation.

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Tolstoy’s model, anchored in the opposition between childhood and adulthood, presents childhood as an exceptional period of life. This opposition serves to emphasize the inexorable loss of grace that the writer’s child protagonist, a nobleman, experiences – manifestly – because of his exposure to the moral corruption wrought by the imported values of the civilized world. The model is further augmented in Tolstoy’s subsequent novels of maturation, Boyhood (1854) and Youth (1857). The trilogy documents the gradual destruction of childhood purity in painstaking detail. The narrative impetus is an adult’s guilt and desire for spiritual renewal. The overall result is a tale of regret about the loss of innocence. The narrator of Childhood is yearning for the harmonious wholeness and insularity of a childhood filled with joy and love. It cannot return, however, destroyed by “the twin onslaught of sexuality and civilization.”11 The conflict between the younger and the older self, the view of childhood as a unique period of life, and the attribution of the status of a harmonious golden age to childhood found in Tolstoy was, as I mention above, not the first time that maturation was tackled in nineteenthcentury Russian literature in these terms. Goncharov’s “Oblomov’s Dream” is the work that forcefully ushered the Russian child of the gentry into fiction. The authorial imperative driving Goncharov’s novel is of a different order than that of Tolstoy’s trilogy, however. Tolstoy’s condemnation of the civilized world is absent from the depiction of Oblomov’s childhood. In Oblomov, the insularity of the child’s environment, the ignorance of his family about the wider world, and the overprotectiveness that characterize the young Oblomov’s upbringing are not idealized but shown to be responsible for the protagonist’s passivity, which reflects (as the radical critic Nikolai Dobroliubov famously observed) Russian society’s apathy and impotence.12 The portrayal of Oblomov’s childhood in a novel which “narrates the social formation and selffashioning of a Russian nobleman” is an attempt to identify the roots of Goncharov’s hero’s and his society’s descent into fateful indolence.13 The images of the golden past of Oblomovka, Oblomov’s ancestral estate, are those of the protagonist, while the narrator’s summations consistently point to the damaging of the young Ilya Oblomov by the archaic ways of this “nest of the gentlefolk,” ways of life explicitly linked in the novel to the unchanging world and circular time of Russian myths and fairy tales.14 It is in the depiction of Oblomov’s friend Shtolz’s early years that Goncharov offers the reader his notion of an ideal childhood, the type of upbringing that can produce Russia’s perfect men of the future.

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Both boys are shown to have qualities that can be developed to insure a productive and full life – inquisitiveness, keen powers of observation, the desire for independence, interest in nature, and a thirst for knowledge. In Goncharov’s presentation, Oblomov’s potential withers on the vine, stifled by the superstitions and fear of the unknown permeating his environment, while Shtolz’s flourishes through a combination of rigorous learning and physical activity. The son of a Russian mother who is shown to provide warmth and refinement and a German father who instructs his child in practical matters of business, Shtolz is poised to conquer the world when he leaves his home. Perfectly balanced in his values between the East and the West, Shtolz is depicted by Goncharov as fully prepared to engage in modern society, while Oblomov, with his “simple, artless and forever trusting heart” and “bright, childish soul,” never leaves Oblomovka and its ways.15 In describing the maturation of their characters, both Tolstoy and Goncharov place the insularity of the gentry’s life, its cyclical time and idyllic spaces, including nature, at the narrative centre. Tolstoy laments the loss of the patriarchal order, which he equates with the loss of purity. Conversely, in Goncharov’s novel, Oblomov’s inability to “grow up,” his lack of determination and agency are directly linked to the contagion of ignorance and passivity of the old Russia. It is the separation from this childhood that Goncharov advocates for, rather than mourning its passage. THE I LLUSION OF PARTICIPATION

Different in its overall premise from that of Goncharov’s, Tolstoy’s portrayal of childhood is also much more detailed, focused directly on the inner child, and highly original in its representational strategies. Tolstoy uses a variety of innovative techniques to depict the uniqueness of childhood and allow the reader to experience the state as it is being lived by the protagonist. A conventional plot is abolished in favour of the succession of short episodes/scenes, describing the participants and typical events in the child’s life and highlighting the young hero’s distinctive sensitivities. The spatial organization of the novel is dictated by the young protagonist’s immediate experience. The temporal structure adheres to the routines of childhood portrayed in minute detail. Tolstoy’s descriptions of the child’s life, however, are regularly punctuated by the adult narrator’s assessments of his younger self’s motivations and sensations, as

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well as by direct assertions about childhood’s distinctiveness and difference from adulthood. As Wachtel points out, the absence of a traditional plot enabled Tolstoy to focus entirely on the child’s perceptions of the world and on the adult’s analysis of his past self.16 Of similar import was Tolstoy’s generic innovation of melding Rousseau’s idealized conception of childhood and the insights of his Confession “with the more lyrical strains of the French pseudo-autobiography to describe a purely Russian situation.”17 Tolstoy’s representation of the child’s point of view is accomplished in a number of skilfully integrated ways. The writer deals with the “epistemic gap” by eliminating anything that is incongruous with what the child could have known at the time from descriptions of his immediate experiences. (When these departures in description occur, the perceptions are attributed to the adult narrator.) Fragments of the boy’s conversations with others are reproduced, and the child’s language is occasionally represented verbatim. In addition, the evocation of the child’s world without directly quoting the child’s thoughts or speech is achieved in what Wachtel terms “stop action descriptions.” The iterative markers, these “grammatic expressions of nostalgia,” such as, for example, “it would often happen that” (byvalo, sluchalos’) usher in depictions of typical occurrences in the child’s life. The effect attempted is that of the simultaneity of action and expression.18 Spatially and temporally, the perspective is largely that of the child protagonist, but the overall story is certainly orchestrated by the adult narrator. The sharply delineated details, ostensibly motivated by the child protagonist’s feelings and observations, are constantly augmented and evaluated by the adult narrator by means of narrative reconstructions. Further, it is the adult Nikolai Irten’ev who is responsible for the retrospective arrangement of the young Nikolen’ka’s daily life on a country estate. To be sure, the child’s language is used here on a much larger scale than previously seen. The child’s speech, however, is almost always embedded in the adult narrator’s discourse. Overall, in Tolstoy’s book, “words uttered at the moment of apprehension are introduced or concluded by words uttered at the moment of rendition.”19 THE INDIVIDUATION OF THE ESSENTIALS

The writer’s overarching design centres on his child character’s loss of purity. To describe the boy’s putative evolution from innocence to knowledge, Tolstoy draws the reader’s attention to such crucial aspects of his hero’s maturation as the establishment of selfhood, socialization, ethics,

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aesthetics, and the child’s emerging sexuality. Furthermore, Nikolen’ka Irten’ev is highly individualized. The tension between the intended moralistic message, the adopted markers of maturation, and Tolstoy’s hero’s individuality is present throughout. The young Nikolen’ka’s view of the world is egocentric. The boy privileges the familiar domestic area over the unknown world outside. He is shown to engage in metaphorical thinking but also exhibits a tendency to think concretely and in absolute terms.20 Tolstoy’s child, however, is also uncommonly sensitive and perceptive. Dreams and premonitions play an important role in the boy’s emotional life. Both Nikolen’ka and the holy fool Grisha possess greater intuitive awareness of the tragic family events that lie ahead than any other characters in the story.21 Tolstoy underscores the child’s sensitivity to music and interest in artistic self-expression. In the chapter entitled “In the Office and the Drawing Room” Tolstoy follows his character’s attempts to draw a recent hunt. Limited to the use of the colour blue, Nikolen’ka paints a blue boy on a blue horse followed by blue dogs chasing a blue hare, after his father absent-mindedly confirms that blue hares exist. The blue hare is turned into a bush, then a tree, followed by its transformation into a haystack, and, finally, into a cloud. The child is dissatisfied with the results of his efforts and destroys the sketch. The overarching theme of the episode is that of incessant transition and transformation. The passage articulates creative frustration, the result of the child’s inability to capture experienced reality in his art. Tolstoy uses Nikolen’ka’s ordinary pursuit to highlight the problematic relationship between conventions in representation and the reality portrayed.22 Tolstoy’s depiction of Nikolen’ka’s attempts at creative writing introduces the larger theme of the harmful effects of social and artistic conventionality on his character’s life. The writer emphasizes the derivative nature of the poem Nikolen’ka composes on the occasion of his grandmother’s birthday in Moscow. After studying the poetry of I.I. Dmitriev and G.A. Derzhavin and finding it intimidating, Nikolen’ka chooses a barely literate love poem by his German tutor as the basis for his own. The boy’s critical discernment is keen enough to realize that his efforts in this area are unequal to those of the classics. Brushing the issue aside, Nikolen’ka comforts himself with the thought that his composition is still better than his tutor’s. The ethical problem that the child’s composition poses, however, is much harder to resolve. The boy fully understands the insincerity of his poem’s closure: “We will please you like no other/And will love you like

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our mother.”23 The arrangement and choice of words in Nikolen’ka’s text are bound by poetic conventions – the child needs a concluding rhyme. The young protagonist’s unease and painful awareness of the betrayal of the memory of his mother with these lines demonstrate Nikolen’ka’s highly developed moral sense. The boy’s mother is of crucial importance to Tolstoy’s didactic intent. The character encapsulates all that is deemed by the adult narrator to be ideal in the disappearing world of the country estate – love of nature, kindness, purity, humility, generosity, refinement, and warmth. She is the central figure of the golden age of childhood and her death is equated with its loss. Consequently, Nikolen’ka’s mother’s idealized and static image stands apart from the rest of the people in the child’s immediate environment whose relationship with the boy is fluid and evolving. Linking socialization to his hero’s development, Tolstoy devotes considerable attention to group activities, examining, for instance, the differences in the child’s behaviour while with other children and when with adults, when playing with boys or girls, and in different settings. It is by comparing the boy’s demeanour and actions at games in the country (companionable, engaged, in nature) with those in the city (cruel, unfeeling, and confined in the mansion) that Tolstoy signals the harmful effects of civilized life on his young hero. Pointedly, the creative writing episode is set in Moscow. In Tolstoy’s presentation, the boy’s moral sense and faithfulness to his true feelings are compromised in favour of poetic and social conventions, both losses directly linked to the child’s exposure to life in the city. While in the country, Nikolen’ka is shown to be universally empathetic, equally moved by his German teacher’s possible dismissal and the realization that he has to leave behind his mother, his nanny, the birch alley, their house servant Foka, the governess, and the family dog for a life in the city. He is inquisitive and often impatient. He is able to experience shame. Yet even in the country, the boy’s feelings of inadequacy stem from his particular understanding of social standards and propriety. During the hunt on the estate, Nikolen’ka is mortified when he feels that his actions do not conform to the expectations of the adults around him. The child is also keenly aware of the normative, class and age based, hierarchical arrangement of power in the household. When his nanny punishes him for spilling kvas at dinner, Nikolen’ka’s angry and tearful reaction is prompted by the boy’s indignation at the incident that, in his view, undermines his noble position and maturity: “Natalia Savishna, simply Natalia, addresses me familiarly, smacks me in the face with a wet tablecloth, as if I am a

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little serf boy. No, this is terrible!”24 After the nanny’s apology, however, Nikolen’ka weeps again, now out of “love and shame” rather than anger. LOVE AND SEX

Nikolen’ka’s efforts to impress others while riding home after the hunt point to the child’s competitiveness and disingenuity in social situations involving adults. Significantly, the boy’s futile attempts to cut an impressive figure in front of the hunting party directly follow a description of him kissing the governess’s daughter Katen’ka and is placed in the chapter entitled “Something like First Love.” With the exception of the boy’s feelings for his mother, the child’s experience of love is complicated very early on by a sense of entitlement, vanity, and pretence. Tolstoy strips the portrayal of Nikolen’ka’s first physical encounter with Katen’ka of any overt indications of sexual desire. The setting is bucolic and the children are engaged in observing nature. Tolstoy’s depiction of Nikolen’ka’s view of Katen’ka, however, is rife with diminutives of affection: “sweet little white neck” (belen’kaia sheika), “lovely little shoulder” (plechiko), or “fresh little face framed in blondish curls” (svezhen’koe belokuren’koe lichiko). If not openly sexual, the description is certainly sensual. The girl’s body is atomized, and the visual focus of the narrative is placed mostly on the parts associated, in the Russian culture of the time, with erotic desire. In addition, Katen’ka experiences the final point of the encounter – a kiss on the shoulder – as a shameful breach of propriety: “She did not turn around but I noticed that her sweet little neck (sheika) and ears became red.”25 Nikolen’ka’s next attempt at physical expression of affection toward Katen’ka is once again placed in the context of transgression, accompanied now by voyeurism and feelings of excitement and fear. In the chapter entitled “Grisha,” Nikolen’ka urges other children to hide in a dark closet to spy on the holy fool Grisha’s preparations for bed. Nikolen’ka’s wishes to see the chains customarily worn by Grisha under his clothes as an act of penance, i.e. literally to “uncover” Grisha’s secret. Nikolen’ka’s feelings while in the closet are initially described as those of childish wonder, pity, and reverence. The adult narrator steps in to sum up Grisha’s admirable qualities: “Oh, the great Christian Grisha! Your faith was so strong that you could see His closeness; your love for Him so great that words flowed from your mouth on their own, unchecked by the rational mind … And what high praise did you bring to His grandeur when, unable to find words to express it, you fell down to the ground in tears!”26

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The narrative then proceeds directly from the sacred to the profane. After the child’s curiosity has been satisfied and physical discomfort ensues, Nikolen’ka’s sense of tender emotion (umilenie), the word associated in Russian with religious sentiment, abates. It is at this moment that the boy – “absolutely without any conscious thought” – kisses Katen’ka’s hand.27 This time Nikolen’ka’s attentions are rebuffed more forcefully and the children escape from the closet. Rather than avoid the exploration of his young character’s sexuality altogether, the topic proscribed by the culture and unacknowledged by the medical science of the time, Tolstoy insists on his hero’s naiveté and purity – the act occurs “without any conscious thought.” Yet Grisha’s heartfelt prayers follow the description of the boy’s voyeurism and directly precede the account of Nikolen’ka’s physical attentions to a girl in a dark closet. The child’s discovery of sex occurs at the age of fourteen and is described in Boyhood. However, as with Nikolen’ka’s first love in Childhood, explicit sexual desire in Boyhood is similarly linked to transgression, voyeurism, and incursions into the physical space of another. Tolstoy’s depiction of Nikolen’ka’s infatuation with Seryozha Ivin, a young son of a prominent Moscow family, differs significantly from those of his first love or of the feelings he experiences when meeting Sonechka Valakhina at his grandmother’s birthday party in Moscow. Physical descriptions of Seryozha focus on the boy’s uncommonly handsome face and idiosyncratic mannerisms. Atomization of the body is absent, as is the use of affectionate diminutives. Rather, Tolstoy concentrates on the dynamics of power in the relationship between the two boys. Seryozha is somewhat opaque in these descriptions, and the child’s motives are not easily discerned. Nikolen’ka’s feelings, thoughts, and actions, on the other hand, are examined in full detail. Nikolen’ka is painfully dependent on Seryozha’s opinion of him. The “unconquerable attraction” he feels for Seryozha results in Nikolen’ka’s fear of upsetting the boy, in bouts of shyness, and in pretence. Physical contact is out of the question, even though Nikolen’ka yearns for it. Seryozha does not want to be considered “little,” insisting on being addressed by his full name (Sergei). He does not want to acknowledge being hurt while at play and rejects Nikolen’ka’s expression of concern. Nikolen’ka considers Seryozha’s attitude heroic. The merciless bullying of Ilen’ka Grap, a poor foreigner, is initiated by Seryozha when the Irten’ev and Ivin brothers try to better one another in a daring show of gymnastic display. Since Ilen’ka refuses to participate, Seryozha first accuses him of acting like a girl, then encourages the rest of

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the group to force the boy to stand on his head. Nikolen’ka’s ambivalence about the whole affair deepens when he observes Seryozha hitting Ilen’ka over the head with a dictionary. The compassion the boy feels for the weeping victim is quickly gone, however, when Seryozha refers to his stoic behaviour earlier in the day when, even if hurt, he did not complain about it. The episode articulates the privileging of perceived notions of appropriate masculine behaviour, with its emphasis on emotional and physical toughness, agility, competitiveness, and gender exclusivity. The key word in the adult Irtenev’s assessment of his actions as a child is “to appear” (kazat’sia): “Could it be true that this beautiful feeling [of compassion] was stifled by my love for Seryozha and by my desire to appear before him as heroic (molodtsom) as he was?”28 For the adult Irten’ev, true compassion does not exist in the world of pretence. The entire episode and the desire that motivated it are labelled as “the only dark marks on the pages of my childhood memories.”29 Yet the scene has many of the features of an initiation rite where adolescent boys try to prove their masculinity, and teasing and humiliation of the initiates are the ritual’s necessary components. Tolstoy complicates the matter, however, by choosing a poor foreigner’s son as the target for the bullying. The choice imbues the episode with an ethical dimension that fits the overall didactic opposition of natural vs the conventional/ artificial, maintained in the novel. Notably, Nikolen’ka is positioned as an observer rather than a direct participant in Ilen’ka’s victimization, leaving room for the reader’s perception of the child protagonist as confused rather than as essentially unfeeling. Contrary to Tolstoy’s depiction of Nikolen’ka’s infatuation with Seryozha, in the writer’s portrayal of the boy’s feelings for Sonechka the descriptive focus is once again placed on a girl’s atomized body depicted exclusively in affectionate diminutives. In addition to the little neck, little shoulder, face and head, Sonechka’s little feet, mouth, and lips are also noted. Nikolen’ka’s dreams of Sonechka include living together in a dark closet. As opposed to the boy’s interactions with Seryozha, the connection is presented as genuine, built on shared laughter and enjoyment of the moment. Sonechka’s artlessness liberates Nikolen’ka from his shyness. The new love also frees the boy from his dependence on Seryozha and “the worn feeling of customary devotion” replaced by the “fresh feeling of love filled with mystery and promise.”30 Nikolen’ka’s love for Seryozha is most apparent in the child’s attempts at imitating “true” masculine behaviour. The effort, however, is shown to

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be too strenuous to sustain, and, later in life, deemed by the protagonist as immoral – because of its conventionality and disingenuity. Nikolen’ka’s amorous encounters with girls, on the other hand, are less complicated or fraught. Unlike the child’s attitude toward other boys whom he sees either as rivals or victims, descriptions of Nikolen’ka’s interactions with the two girls emphasize his view of the girls as sensual objects to be explored and enjoyed. Tolstoy’s portrayal of his male child’s sense of gender differences underscores the essential “foreignness” of the female, the feature chiefly responsible for her desirability. DEATH AND DYING

In the last chapter of Childhood, Tolstoy places the end of childhood and the beginning of boyhood at the time of Nikolen’ka’s mother’s death. Even though the image of the mother is idealized, her death is not. Underscoring the finality of Nikolen’ka’s separation from his mother, Tolstoy subjects his child protagonist to the sights and smells of her decaying body. If other mourners at the viewing are prevented from fully displaying their emotions by convention, a little peasant child in her mother’s arms openly displays her revulsion and fear. The girl’s screams are echoed by Nikolen’ka who only then is able to identify the source of the powerful and oppressive smell filling the room.31 In anticipation of Tolstoy’s future examination of a woman’s death in “Three Deaths” (1859), Nikolen’ka’s mother, a woman of noble birth and refinement, dies in terrible suffering, without saying goodbye to her children. Like the female protagonist of Tolstoy’s story, Nikolen’ka’s mother, too, is unable to resign herself to her fate. In the last letter to her husband, Nikolen’ka’s mother betrays the awareness of her approaching demise, but this understanding alternates with expressions of regret and memories of past happiness. Conversely, Tolstoy’s description of the old nanny’s death at the end of the novel is removed from the child’s field of vision and rendered as a “good” one. The old woman has no fears or regrets and is fully prepared to leave this earth after settling her affairs and saying goodbye to those around her. Nanny’s existence is inextricably tied to that of the child’s mother and to the venerable ways of the gentry estate; her death marks the second closure in Nikolen’ka’s transition from childhood to adolescence. In Boyhood, Tolstoy offers yet another episode to mark the end of childhood for Irten’ev. After the mother’s funeral, the family is on its way back to Moscow. A terrifying storm makes Nikolen’ka realize that the world

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does not revolve around him and brings about the awareness of the impermanence of his own life. If the three episodes are viewed together, then for Tolstoy’s child hero, to leave childhood is to leave “home,” to separate himself from its physical and symbolic locus, the ancestral estate, as well as from the nurturing provided by his mother and nanny. Thus, leaving childhood is equated with abandonment, with facing the world alone – without the comforting insularity, predictability, and emotional sustenance of family life. THE AFTERCHILDHOOD

In Boyhood and Youth, Tolstoy continues his exploration of Nikolen’ka’s maturation. In Boyhood, Tolstoy examines Nikolen’ka’s capacity for altruism, introducing the story of the servant Vasilii’s love for the maid Masha. Reversing the fate of his nanny, who was forbidden to marry the man she loved, Nikolen’ka intercedes with his father on the couple’s behalf, and the marriage between Vasilii and Masha takes place. The boy’s emerging sexuality is now fully acknowledged. As in Childhood, the erotic is connected to the uncovering of secrets and involves transgression and voyeurism: the young boy eavesdrops on his brother’s attempts at seduction, regularly spies on the maids in their room, and, rifling through his father’s briefcase, finds what Tolstoy, ending the period with an ellipsis, signals to be sexually explicit material. Tolstoy’s description of Nikolen’ka’s failure in the classroom, the discovery of his father’s pornography, and betrayal in love by Sonechka in Boyhood allows the writer to examine the emotional intensity and turmoil of adolescence. The boy’s anguish is assuaged through daydreams that alternate between retribution for the humiliation he suffers and fantasies of future glory achieved through acts of selflessness and compassion for others. At the age of sixteen, however, Irten’ev acknowledges that dreaming about moral perfection is not the same as living a moral life. As with the transition of his protagonist into adolescence, the boy’s youth also begins with a powerful revelation. In its meticulous attention to various aspects of the young protagonist’s developing personality, Tolstoy’s Childhood is a truly pioneering work. Nikolen’ka’s perception of time and space; his moral sense, empathy, and compassion; his understanding of beauty; sensitivity to nature; sexuality; imagination and the workings of the child’s subconscious in dreams are all portrayed in their evolution. The forging of the child’s identity and the acquisition of knowledge is shown to occur through

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socialization within the family; in interactions with peers of both sexes, through games, and schooling; and, finally, through his experience of death. The rest of the trilogy follows a similar pattern of exploration, although the distinctiveness of the child’s perspective is blurred by the shrinking distance between the protagonist and the adult narrator. While in the trilogy Tolstoy investigates his protagonist’s maturation in universally applicable terms, it is Irten’ev’s individuality that emerges as the narrative’s unifying feature. What makes Tolstoy’s child unique is his precocious predilection for self-analysis and observation of others, his desire to be good and loved by all, as well as his feelings of inadequacy, his pride, and vanity. Overall, Nikolen’ka is not as pure as the adult narrator wants us to believe, nor is this boy’s childhood particularly idyllic but rather, in Robin Feuer Miller’s words, “drenched in death, blasphemy and betrayal.”32 The illusion of unmediated access to the child’s experiences, so skilfully maintained by the writer, is undermined by the constant and vigilant presence of the omniscient narrator. Stylistically different and often set in separate paragraphs, the reminiscing adult’s moralistic maxims and generalizations impose a rigid interpretative matrix on all of his younger self’s thoughts and actions. The adult narrator’s intrusions are designed to provide “a guarantee or seal of authenticity” to what is portrayed.33 In other words, Tolstoy’s narrative is “rigged” to be understood in a very particular way, the strategy responsible for a palpable, if perhaps unintended, disconnect between the teller and the tale. SPEAK MEMORY ! : AKSAKOV ’ S MODEL OF CHILDHOOD

Published shortly after the appearance of Tolstoy’s Childhood and Boyhood, Aksakov’s works on maturation cover similar ground and pose questions analogous to those examined by Tolstoy. Both writers portray a child of the nineteenth-century Russian gentry, albeit about two decades apart. Both trace the development of a young protagonist throughout the years, focusing in their descriptions on various aspects of the child’s transformation in time. Like Tolstoy, Aksakov represents childhood as a distinctive stage in a person’s life, viewed by the reminiscing adult narrator as blissful. There are substantial differences, however, between the two writers’ narrative strategies and overall approach to the issue. Years of Childhood of Young Bagrov (Detskie gody Bagrova-vnuka, 1857), the writer’s last major work, fills the chronological gap between the

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events described in Family Chronicle (Semeinaia khronika) and in Reminiscences (Vospominaniia), both published in 1856. The fictional Sergey Bagrov’s birth concludes Family Chronicle, his subsequent life up to the age of eight is described in Years; and the protagonist of Reminiscences, the work that focuses on the child’s schooling, is Sergey Aksakov himself. If Family Chronicle and Years have been seen as “pseudo-autobiographies” where personal material is expressed in a mediated literary form, Aksakov’s Reminiscences purports to offer a straightforward recollection of the writer’s schooling in Kazan from the age of eight to seventeen, essentially covering the periods of adolescence and youth in Tolstoy’s trilogy. Thus, between the first and last pseudo-autobiographies Aksakov published a work that is generically oriented toward historical authenticity. However, the shrewd arrangement of plot lines and motifs, the prominent focus on visuality in representation, and the incorporation of various speech registers characterize all of Aksakov’s writing on family and maturation. All employ the tension between fiction and personal history for maximum literary effect.34 In the “Foreword to the Readers,” the implied author of Years distances himself from the narration by presenting what follows as a faithful recording of the protagonist’s memories. The framing of the narrative and the concealment of the actual participants in the writer’s life behind fictional names – people whose true identities have already been revealed to the readers of Reminiscences – removes the narration from the sphere of the documentary into the realm of the typical associated with the novel, giving the writer more freedom to shape his narrative than an autobiography like his Reminiscences allowed. Aksakov tackles the issue of memory in the first sentence of his introduction to Years, opening it with the narrator’s disclaimer: “I myself do not know whether it is possible to believe all that my memory has retained.”35 Elsewhere in the introduction, the narrator acknowledges the fragmentary nature of memory and proclaims his intent to include only those memories that can be verified. As posited in the foreword to Years, even if “the author Aksakov” cannot guarantee the authenticity of his character’s perceptions, he can vouch for the veracity of the reminiscing adult’s words. The issue of the epistemic gap is thus addressed openly both in the foreword and the introduction, and the narration’s orientation toward verisimilitude is established head on. Yet, as in Tolstoy, Aksakov’s reminiscing self of Years is an adult, and, like Tolstoy, Aksakov often portrays the protagonist remembering his past while experiencing an event.

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In Tolstoy, Goncharov, and Aksakov, it is the reminiscing adult who nostalgically imbues the reimagined childhood with the aura of a lost paradise. Unlike Tolstoy’s trilogy and contrary to Goncharov’s depiction of Oblomov’s remembered childhood, however, Aksakov’s books on family and children avoid an overt value-charged interpretive frame. Aksakov’s narratives do not endorse the Rousseauistic idea of childhood as superior to adulthood nor do they push the reader toward any unambiguous position in terms of the child’s entrance into adulthood. Rather, in Years and Reminiscences, Aksakov documents his hero’s psychological and moral development from infancy to youth as firmly anchored in a specific time and place and shaped by the particular dynamic of a particular family. The narrator’s digressions on children’s competencies and limitations at various stages of maturation, however, point to a belief in the universality of Sergey’s overall path to change. NARRATING CHANGE

While first person narration in Tolstoy’s trilogy and in Aksakov’s Years brings the narrator closer to the narration, the doubling of the memory (and in Tolstoy’s case, the didactic design for the trilogy) pose challenges of differentiation. To efface the reminiscing self and achieve the illusion of authenticity and of the immediacy of the child’s experiences, Aksakov augments descriptions of the preconscious period of his protagonist by qualifiers, such as “I was told” or “according to the opinion of those around me.” In addition, the realm of the objects in the developing child’s environment is consistently limited to those within access, as, for example, in the description of his changing collection of toys. The sphere of the child’s interests as well is circumscribed by his age and setting at a particular point of narration (from bird nests and puppies to fishing and hunting). Indirect speech is not used, and there are very rare instances of Sergey’s direct speech in the book. Yet in Aksakov’s descriptions, the boy’s experiences are unfailingly curbed by his changing field of vision, and the child’s comprehension of events at any given moment is depicted as the result of an application of existing cognitive notions to the world as he experiences it. As in Tolstoy, the incremental accumulation of detail serves to document the protagonist’s maturation as a gradual process of change punctuated by more deeply transformative experiences. Tolstoy, as we have seen, equates the loss of childhood with the death of the child’s mother and with the protagonist’s separation from his ancestral home in the country. The graphic description of Nikolen’ka’s mother’s dead body in

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Childhood and the portrayal of the child’s journey to Moscow in Boyhood emphatically cleave Tolstoy’s account of Nikolen’ka’s maturation into “before and after.” Conversely, Aksakov’s child is shown to experience growth as a phased process with no complete break from his younger self. Although Years conclude with the assertion that Sergey Bagrov’s trip to Kazan constitutes the point of transition from childhood to adolescence, in the first chapter of Reminiscences Aksakov identifies the protagonist as an eight-year-old child. Accordingly, half of the memoir deals with the gradual and painful process of psychological and emotional separation from his still-living mother and from the comforts of family life – the boy’s protracted farewell to childhood. Both in Years and Reminiscences, the inadequacies and frustrations of childhood in general, and of his protagonist’s life in particular, are detailed and fully acknowledged. As Andrew Durkin has shown, Aksakov manages to represent the diversity of his character’s developmental changes and the interdependence of their various components by means of a narrative order where travel assumes great importance. The journey to self-awareness is also a physical journey with easily identifiable geographic points and carefully described seasonal changes. By linking the child’s movement through space and time to maturation, Aksakov’s books on childhood offer an emotional and psychological travelogue where each new and repeated journey to a specific place illuminates the evolution of the protagonist’s psyche. The depiction of the child’s progression from ignorance to knowledge, narratively structured by the road travelled, coalesces around images of death and rebirth: illness and recovery, darkness and illumination.36 HOW THE CHILD LEARNS

In Aksakov’s portrayal, changes in perception, the way the child understands the constants of human existence, or internalizes ethical norms of his society at certain points of his life are grounded in conceptualization based on observation. Aksakov’s Sergey, like Tolstoy’s Nikolen’ka, is a superior observer, and the child’s acute sensitivity to the world around is the essential lever for the psychological, emotional, and cognitive changes that are shown to occur as part of his maturation. The boy’s innate ability to observe his environment and his gradually acquired capacity to form conclusions based on his observations are the true engines of change, a notion universalized in the book in authorial digressions and narratively supported by Aksakov’s emphasis on the visual.

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The description of the emergence of Sergey’s consciousness, for example, focuses on the moment when the temporal, spatial, and psychological disorder of the child’s preconscious stage is being organized into a more coherent whole and links the dawn of consciousness to the child’s illness, travelling, and his recovery in nature. At first presented as a passive observer of a fragmented and diffuse reality, whose perception of self is merged with those of his mother and wet nurse, the child begins to acquire the ability to impose order on what is around him. The stasis of the nonreflective infant’s psyche gives way to the child’s evolving understanding of one’s place in the world and of his ability to distinguish himself from others. The child’s expansion of consciousness is also signalled by his gradual awareness of the sequential character of time, signification of objects, and of the possibility of mastering the natural world.37 The protagonist’s development, whether perceptual, social, or ethical, is not static but continuous and dynamic. Sergey’s emerging self-identification, his attitude toward the physical world, his ethics, or the boy’s understanding of beauty are inseparable from the process of socialization that actively, and often simultaneously, engages all of the child’s predispositions, developed traits and acquired notions about the world. The child’s socialization is a process that amplifies, augments, and shapes the development powered by observation and conceptualization. Socialization within Sergey’s family is crucial for moulding the child’s identity.38 Timid and aloof with outsiders, Sergey is generous, highly sensitive, compassionate, and loving at home. The adult narrator sees the roots of Sergey’s reserve toward strangers, painfully felt by the boy and acknowledged by others, in his physical frailty and in the relationship he has with his mother, rather than in Sergey’s innate qualities: This [timidity] could not have arisen from my nature, quite affable and, as I discovered [later] in my youth, too outspoken. It was probably the result of my long illness, [the condition] inextricable from solitude and alienation, which compel even a small child to focus on himself and enter the depths of [his] inner world, difficult to share with strangers. Even more affecting were the constant and often exclusive presence of my mother, as well as my constant reading. My head was older than my years, and the society of my peers did not satisfy me, while for older children I was too young myself.39 Consequently, the actual work of psychological, ethical, and physical development takes place within the confines of Sergey’s extended house-

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hold. The trust that is shown to exist between the boy and both of his parents allows Sergey the freedom to test his assumptions, verify his conclusions, and then adapt to or reject the obtained outcomes of his quest for knowledge. The dialog with the adults whose opinions he relies on enables Sergey to move from viewing social and ethical issues in absolute nonnegotiable terms to a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of human relations. In Tolstoy’s Childhood, the insincere poem composed by Nikolen’ka in honour of his grandmother is there to signal the incipient moral corruption brought about by the child’s exposure to the conventions of civilized society. The idea for the poem is Nikolen’ka own. The child clearly sees the poem’s final lines as a betrayal of his mother but decides not to change anything. In Aksakov’s Years, Sergey is ordered by his parents to profess his love for a wealthy great-aunt in the family’s joint letter to her. The boy understands the necessity of maintaining good relations with the aunt whose estate they hope to inherit. Yet the hypocrisy of the words he is asked to append to the letter is unacceptable to the child: “I could not love Praskovia Ivanovna, nor did I want to see her, because I did not know her. Realizing that I was writing a lie, [the act] always disparaged at home, I asked frankly: Why am I forced to tell a lie?”40 The parents assure Sergey that he will love the great-aunt in the future and should also love her now because she, on her part, loves them and wants only the best for the family. All of the child’s subsequent arguments and protestations are brushed aside. Unlike Tolstoy’s adult narrator, however, Sergey does not condemn anyone for the falsehood. The moral conflict is not resolved to the boy’s satisfaction but he is shown to have accepted the rules of familial engagement. The loosening of the tight bond between Sergey and his overprotective mother occurs gradually and is accompanied by the realization of the profound differences in the way his parents view the world. There is no overt judgement of his mother’s attitudes, but the child’s unease with her insistence on maintaining rigid class lines in the household, or of her indifference to the natural world, is implied. The conflict between Sergey’s passion for nature and the restrictions that his mother imposes on the boy’s freedom is not easily settled. When thwarted in his desire to explore nature, Sergey resorts to prevarication. The boy’s relationship with his father is equally significant in that, in contrast to the child’s mother, the older Bagrov, like the house serf Evseich, becomes Sergey’s guide to the physical world, stoking Sergey’s love for the outdoors, teaching him about the daily operation of the estate, and

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sharing in the boy’s fascination with fishing and hunting. Sergey’s connection to his sister is similarly important. Not only is she a constant (and most often the sole) partner in his games but, from very early on in the boy’s life, she is also Sergey’s student – the beneficiary of the knowledge he gathers from observations, conversations, and reading. Book learning and stories told by others constitute yet another significant impetus for growth.41 Narratives, whether heard or read, engage the child’s imagination, and, transformed in dreams, powerfully affect Sergey’s perception of self and others. Furthermore, Aksakov establishes a direct link between the emotional turmoil the child experiences in life and his reimagining of psychological trauma in reveries and night dreams. BEAUT Y : NATURE VS ARTIFICE

Categorization based on observation, the basic underlying mechanism of psychic development, is thus augmented and constantly modified in the child’s interactions with others. Just as the boy’s ethics evolve as the result of seeing, searching for answers in oral and written narratives, and then questioning those around him about what he has seen and heard, the development of the child’s aesthetic sense, too, is predicated on scrutiny, hypothesis, and resolution.42 The child’s love for the countryside and its natural splendour is continually highlighted in the text. Aksakov shows, however, that the privileging of the natural over the artificial characterizes all aspects of Sergey’s emerging aesthetics. The boy favours the simplicity of a village orchard over the artificiality of the formal gardens at his great-aunt’s estate or at the wealthy Durasov’s manor. The same value-charged opposition typifies Sergey’s approach to architecture, visual art, and music. Drawing according to a pattern, the way of teaching art advocated by Sergey’s uncle and others, does not produce good results. Native folk music and the seasonal rituals associated with Russian pagan culture are perceived as superior to the Westernized fare offered at Durasov’s; the point is underscored by references to the family’s ignorance of the language in which songs were performed, Sergey’s thoughts on the matter, and by one of the few instances of defamiliarization in the text. Like Natasha Rostova’s first experience of the opera in Tolstoy’s War and Peace written more than a decade later (1869), Sergey’s perception of the musical performance by Durasov’s house serfs is circumscribed by the arsenal of cognitive concepts available to the child. Unlike Tolstoy’s complete rejection of the artificiality of the

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form in the opera episode, Aksakov’s description, if estranged, is weighed more toward the child’s wonder and enjoyment rather than censure: In front of me opened an elevated platform where a lot of people were sitting and holding instruments unknown to me. [Up until then] I have not heard anything except the violin that my uncle played occasionally, the servant’s balalaika, and the Mordva bagpipes. I was overwhelmed, destroyed. Holding a spoon in my hand, I turned into a statue and, with an open mouth and bulging eyes, watched the crowd of people, i.e. the orchestra, where everybody was quickly moving their arms back and forth, blew air through their mouths, and from where miraculous, enchanting, magical sounds emerged.43 Sergey is shown to have an appreciation of physical beauty, particularly his mother’s, but can also be fooled by appearances when, for example, he assumes that the dressed up serf girls at Durasov’s performance are beautiful young ladies. BODY AND SOUL

Sensuality is absent in descriptions of Sergey’s understanding of physical beauty. Sexual activity, implied in references to loose behaviour by the household serfs at Sergey’s aunt’s estate, is not described in any detail. The mother’s refusal to explain her servants’ actions, as well as her prohibition of further contact between the servants and the children, however, signal the taboo nature of the behaviour. The culturally imposed exclusion of any allusions to sexual matters in children’s presence is also evident in the mother’s unwillingness to allow Sergey to take part in the rituals of the peasantry, igrishcha, centred on fertility and regeneration. Similarly, the boy’s limited understanding of marriage is the result of his mother’s edited version of the union between a man and a woman: “The words, such as groom, bride, matchmaking, [and] wedding were familiar to me and explained long ago by my mother in, so to speak, superficial terms which I was able and allowed to comprehend.”44 Consequently, the boy’s puzzlement about the matchmaking between one of his aunts and her obese suitor is based solely on physical incongruity. Sergey is worried that the slim aunt would not be able to assist the prospective groom if he suddenly falls, something that he once observed happening with his own parents. The amusement that the comment generates among the rest of the aunts is due both to the

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child’s naiveté about sexual matters and to the subversion of customary gender roles in his parents’ behaviour. Aksakov pays close attention to physical changes that accompany Sergey’s growth. With maturation comes increased agility, coordination, and strength. The body and the psyche are shown to be interdependent; a physical ailment and an emotional trauma can manifest themselves in the paleness of face, trembling, fever, or inability to sleep. And, for Sergey, emotional upheavals are invariably accompanied by ailment. Physical timidity, the result of the child’s prolonged illnesses, and of the attendant restrictions that his overprotective mother imposes on the boy’s activities, is often overcome in the routines of the countryside. Yet Sergey’s stay in Ufa contributes significantly to the child’s psychological and physical growth as well. Contrary to Tolstoy’s insistence on the overall harmful effects of life in Moscow on his child protagonist, Aksakov instead emphasizes the complexity of the effect that exposure to city life brings about: When I found myself transported to very different people, saw different faces, heard different voices, and when I experienced the love of my uncles and family friends and saw the kindness and cordiality from all of our acquaintances, I felt inexplicable happiness and then a calm confidence. This affected me so that all of a sudden I, as they say, opened up, became braver, firmer and livelier. Everybody said that I changed, grew up and became smarter. I have to confess though that all that talk [also] made me more proud and arrogant.45 Aksakov also demonstrates that enduring psychological growth can come from confrontation, negotiation, and acceptance of one’s imperfections. The harassment of Sergey by his uncles and their friend Volkov is effective because it is directed at the boy’s weaknesses and sensitivities: his physical timidity, concern for his sister’s well-being, the newly acquired pride in property ownership, and his ignorance. When the uncles concoct a fake marriage license stating that Sergey’s estate was to be given to his sister upon her marriage to Volkov, the hostilities escalate to the point of physical violence. Sergey’s reaction to the harassment is amplified by his innate volatility, a feature regularly underscored in the text. Even when reassured by his parents that the license is fake, the child is still furious at the possibility of losing his sister, and his estate, and equally incensed about being deceived; his feelings expressed in swearing at his tormentors, thoughts of hunting Volkov down and shooting him, and finally, in the actual physical attack on Volkov with a hammer.

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As in Tolstoy’s Boyhood, the child’s emotional outburst, and the violence directed at an adult that follows, are linked to the behaviour of authority figures. Admittedly, the fourteen-year-old Nikolen’ka’s physical confrontation with his tutor is largely the result of the child’s own misguided actions, most of which are connected to his emerging sexuality. The threat of corporal punishment, however, deepens the boy’s sense of powerlessness, provoking an act of violence on his part. Nikolen’ka refuses to apologize to the tutor and finds deliverance from the conflict in illness. In Years, Aksakov’s Sergey is not yet eight, and his assault on Volkov is shown to stem from the boy’s insecurities, temper, and a profound sense of injustice done to him. The impropriety of Volkov’s putative marriage to his four-year-old baby sister is keenly felt by Sergey, however, and leads to his overly intense response. As in Boyhood, the child is punished by being removed from the family and left alone. Like Tolstoy’s protagonist, Sergey finds solace in imaginary tales. Yet if Nikolen’ka’s focus on revenge, Sergey’s centre on forgiveness. Like Tolstoy’s protagonist, Sergey refuses to apologize for his actions and escapes into illness. Unlike Nikolen’ka, however, Aksakov’s child is eventually able to forgive his tormentors who fully repent for their actions and seek his own forgiveness for what happened. Furthermore, Sergey is able to identify one of the reasons for the deception’s success – his inability to write – and sets out to correct the problem. THE CHILD ’ S TEXT

Nikolen’ka’s reveries in Boyhood conclude with the images of his own death and of a reunion with his dead mother. The death of self is absent from Aksakov’s initial description of Sergey’s imaginings. Of course, Sergey, the naturalist, has witnessed death in nature, but the concept of self-annihilation has not yet been formed. In Years, Aksakov charts his character’s gradual discovery of the limits of human time as it pertains to his own life and to that of his family. The point of departure is the child’s ignorance about the realities of death where the difference between alive and not alive is not yet established. The terror of encountering his maternal grandfather’s ghost early on in the book, for example, gives way to a distanced, if visually elaborate, representation of the enormous body of Catherine the Great on her death bed. What shortly follows is a description of the child’s direct experience of death. As Durkin points out, for Sergey, witnessing grandfather Bagrov’s dying “divests the concept of death of any potential as a facile and essentially infantile metaphor for

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vague apprehensions: instead, the horrifying reality of death is revealed, and metaphoric possibilities based on ignorance are eliminated.”46 Grandfather’s death is emotionally neutralized by rituals of parting, and the birth of a new child that follows completes Sergey’s initiation into the human condition. Like Aksakov’s Years, Reminiscences, the volume that focuses on the protagonist’s schooling, is structured around the cyclical journey. The book is divided into four chapters, the first two documenting the failure of Sergey’s adaptation to school, while the last two portray the character’s successful assimilation into student society – the final stage in his preparation for the life of an educated Russian gentry in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Sergey’s initial failure to adapt to his separation from home life has a lot to do with the sense of powerlessness that the child experiences. As before, the emotional upheaval manifests itself in illness and in the “restorying” of his traumas.47 The gradual abandonment of mythological perceptions, Sergey’s realization that the past is irretrievable, and the eventual emotional separation from his mother advance the boy’s maturation, assure Sergey’s successful return to school and his acculturation, constituting together the true end of childhood for Aksakov’s hero. Aksakov’s imaginary child is subtly individualized, yet his emotional and physical growth follows a generally applicable pattern. The writer is interested in the crucial stages of his character’s development, from the emergence of consciousness to the protagonist’s self-identification as an independent and fully conscious individual. In this process, Aksakov attaches primary importance to his child’s evolving perception of the outside world. Perceptions are verified in socialization with others and new concepts are formed. For Aksakov’s character, traumatic experiences are as important for growth as is the steady accumulation of positive impressions. Aksakov also demonstrates how the child’s imagination, fed by stories read and heard, serves to assist the child in overcoming emotional traumas. Retelling of narratives in performance is yet another psychological outlet for a boy whose emotional and physical timidity is identified as one of his permanent traits. Aksakov’s child anchors his transient sense of self and tames his insecurities by reciting the words and adopting the identities of others. In their works on childhood, both Tolstoy and Aksakov project a palpable sense of loss over the passing of an ancient way of life.48 The primary function of these writers’ imagined childhoods is a construction of a particular (and vanishing) class. As Wachtel points out, Tolstoy’s model became

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“embedded in the Russian cultural mind,” embraced by the Russians as a literary and a sociocultural theme in the second half of the nineteenth century, and then used as the yardstick with which contemporaries (and subsequent generations of readers) measured literary depictions of children.49 The loss of childhood innocence, caused by the protagonist’s exposure to urban life; the early death of a saintly mother, the importance of the child’s old nanny; and life on the country estate became prominent “travelling” plots and themes of the literature influenced by Tolstoy’s novel. Aksakov’s portrayal of childhood has often been considered together with that of Tolstoy’s, with both writers seen as the singers of the lost paradise of the gentry childhood. Such idyllic renderings of the past were imported wholesale by other writers into their own descriptions of childhood, as N.G. Pomialovskii has done, for example, in his “School Sketches” (“Ocherki Bursy,” 1862–63).50 Others, such as Saltykov-Shchedrin, acknowledged the myth by refutation, describing gentry childhood as nightmarish. What has been accepted as a universal truth, however, is Tolstoy’s insistence on his child’s (and, by extension, all children’s, whether those of the gentry, the raznochintsy, or peasants) essential purity and innocence, inevitably corrupted by the adult world. Yet, when seen in separation from the reminiscing adult’s judgement, Tolstoy’s child, like that of Aksakov, appears as a multifaceted individual, many of whose future predilections and behaviours (positive or negative) are there from the start. The boy’s presumed “innocence” and “purity” are constantly undermined by his innate tendencies, such as arrogance, sexual drive, vanity, and incessant self-analysis. Ultimately, as drawn by Tolstoy, Nikolen’ka is not innocent or pure but rather complicated and naïve – unknowing – if eager to learn. The notion of bliss underlying the writer’s depiction his character’s experiences of childhood is undercut by descriptions of the hardships Nikolen’ka has to face. Aksakov and Tolstoy share in their view of childhood as a distinctive and formative period of human life. Further, in their work on maturation, the two writers highlight both general and individual aspects of their protagonists’ development. In addition, Tolstoy and Aksakov stress the complexity of the process of growth that engages all of the child’s faculties and is dependent on his interactions with others. As in Tolstoy, Aksakov’s childhood is imagined by the reminiscing adult. Aksakov’s primary interest, however, is directed toward mirroring the child’s actual experiences rather than to a construction of a moralistic directive. Thus, contrary to Tolstoy’s, Aksakov’s writing problematizes the notion of a blissful childhood from the start and places the hardships of maturation in the foreground.

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As I show below, the attention that Tolstoy and Aksakov accord to their young characters’ psychic interiors characterizes Chekhov’s work on children as well. Like his literary fathers, Chekhov highlights the development of various aspects of his child’s personality in socialization and is interested in tracing his protagonists’ evolution in perception, ethics, and aesthetics. Aksakov’s insights into the emergence of consciousness and the writer’s attention to cognitive development find their echo in Chekhov as well. Similarly important for Chekhov are Tolstoy’s and Aksakov’s emphasis on their protagonists’ creative reimagining of traumatic experiences. Chekhov’s depiction of his characters’ “physiology of feeling,” the psychophysical manifestations of his children’s response to the outside world is also indebted to the work of his literary precursors. Like those of Tolstoy and Aksakov, Chekhov’s descriptions of his characters’ interior perceptions are anchored in “a poetics of voyeurism,” with the writer (and reader) observing the child in the process of observing.51 If Tolstoy’s first novel aims to celebrate the innocence and happiness of childhood, Chekhov’s stories, like Aksakov’s writing, privilege its experienced difficulty.52 Goncharov’s description of Oblomov’s childhood condemns the insularity of life on the country estate, while Tolstoy and Aksakov designate it as their child’s ideal locus. All three emphasize the crucial importance of the symbolic construct of “home” for their child characters. If for Goncharov, Tolstoy, and Aksakov, however, home is in the manor, for Chekhov, it is in the family, regardless of the home’s physical location, condition, or attributed status. In his fiction, Chekhov concurs with his precursors’ view of the child as a unique and evolving individual, shaped to a degree by external circumstances but always there from the beginning. Yet Chekhov’s descriptive reach on the theme is significantly broader than that of Tolstoy, Goncharov, or Aksakov. Nor is Chekhov interested in descriptions of childhood as an aid in a self-construction of a particular class. Chekhov’s stories trace the development of individual children of different classes and ages against the background of a society undergoing an enormous change.53 To be sure, Chekhov’s belief in the distinctiveness of childhood, rooted in the “home” and lost in the “world,” can be partially linked to Goncharov’s “Oblomov’s Dream,” Aksakov’s Years and Reminiscences, as well as to Tolstoy’s Childhood and Boyhood. Yet this belief is articulated in the vernacular of the new postemancipation era where Chekhov’s “home” as well as his “world” are quite different from those idealized, or rejected, by the Russian classics.54

Introduction

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2 The Humanization Project: Pro/Contra

Oh men, be humane! It is your highest duty; be humane to all conditions of men, to every age, to everything not alien to mankind. What higher wisdom is there for you than humanity? Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile

Its essence is: Fraternity, Equality and Freedom.

Be happier! Don’t carelessly pour The noble might of youth Into an ancient vessel. Impart Unbounded life’s impressions To your unbounded soul And liberate humanity within. You’re born with it. Preserve and nurture it!

Your lofty purpose and Most radiant feat Will be to worship them Forever! A marvel in your land, You will abandon then The cowed obedience Of slaves.

Nikolai Nekrasov, “A Song for Eremushka” (1859)

Chekhov’s time, the mid-nineteenth-century era of the Great Reforms and its aftermath, was a period of turmoil, self-questioning, and reaching for solutions to problems which had accumulated in recent decades, leading to the epochal emancipation of the serfs as well as reforms of local government, the armed forces, and education. The frenetic development

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of Russian pedagogical thought in the 1860s to 1880s (“still in diapers” in the first part of the nineteenth century)1 was the result of the great need to educate newly liberated peasants, of ongoing modernization, and of the rapid rise of a middle class: all making child rearing and schooling the key societal issues of the era.2 In this chapter, I look at the pedagogical ethos of the period, paying particular attention to the opposing views of two prominent educators of the time – Leo Tolstoy and K.D. Ushinsky – on how to teach, whom to teach, and what to teach.3 The discussion provides a window into the heart of Russia’s emancipation-era debates on learning and helps clarify Chekhov’s engagement with the topic in his stories about children. HUMANIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

The educational thought that emerged in response to the “pedagogical hunger” of the time was the result of the cross-pollination of various literary, cultural, and scientific projections of childhood. Seen as a distinct period of human life characterized by unique qualities, childhood was perceived as the key to understanding the adult and the foundation of the society to come. As in Western Europe and the United States, in Russia of the 1860s to 1880s “literary, cultural and scientific projections of childhood [became] mutually constitutive fields drawing upon each other in various ways in constructing their developmental models of childhood.”4 In a collective effort, doctors, pedagogues, writers, and the family were viewed as equal participants in all matters related to education, focused on the practical application of pedagogical discoveries to the business of teaching and parenting. The transformation of Nekrasov’s serf child from a cowed slave into a sovereign human being, a “marvel in his land,” constituted a particular and immense challenge to all involved.5 The progressives presented their primary educational mission as “humanization” – “the development of humanness” (razvitie chelovechnosti) or the acquisition of human/humane (chelovecheskie) qualities.6 The privileging of the word “humanization” over “enlightening” or “civilizing” in the public discourse of the time signalled the fundamentally transformative nature of the reformers’ proposals. In this view, only the right kind of education was capable of turning the child into an autonomous – true – human being whose soul, in Nekrasov’s words, was “unbounded” and whose humanity was based on “fraternity, equality, and freedom.” Commonly translated as “man,” the Russian word chelovek can refer to persons of either gender. Aimed at nurturing and developing any child’s

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innate potential, individuality, and autonomy, the reformers’ pedagogical position stood in sharp contrast to the ideas of the eighteenth and early nineteenth-century educators who excluded the peasant child from their educational aspirations for the country and saw the rest as potential compliant servants of the state, a view that denied the child the inborn humanity recognized by the progressives as crucial.7 If aimed at the entirety of Russian society, the humanization project most directly concerned the Russian peasantry, its cultural practices and way of life. Whether labelled superstitious, irrational, and credulous or viewed as the harmonious embodiment of the Russian soul undefiled by Western rationalism, the peasants were seen by the educated elite as markedly “different” – either in need of transformation or of emulation.8 In the eyes of the progressive reformers, “humanizing” the peasant meant “civilizing” him, and education was called upon to transform the peasant’s centuriesold patterns of child rearing and family life. In the largely self-sufficient world of the Russian peasant, however, the goals that underlined the practice of rearing were quite removed from those embraced by most in the reforming culture of the period. In peasant culture of the time, the transition to adulthood was attendant upon the child’s socialization through rituals that bridged the biological and the social;9 it depended to a degree on the individual’s physical condition and readiness to undertake gender- and age-dependent responsibilities in the household, and served the perpetuation of the patriarchal family and its norms.10 After successful completion of the initiation rites (usually around the age of seven for boys, sometimes earlier) the child was perceived as an adult, even if “little” and lacking in civil rights.11 The locus of all educational efforts was the household, “a known system of custom and ritual, unchanging, complex, stable and secure, a massive living exposure” in which the chief attention of pedagogy was turned to the moral side, to the rules of life rather than to abstract learning, viewed as a specialized field of instruction reserved for a particular class.12 Upbringing in such a household was limited to the inculcation of authority and edification. The relationship between parents and children in this educational scheme, based on the ubiquitous faith “in the miracle-working power of the pedagogical rod” applied by the father, the household’s chief master,13 was thus characterized by the progressive educator P.F. Kapterev as “a complete and consistent parental egoism” where harsh subjugation of the child’s will to that of the parents led to the child’s loss of personhood and abnegation of all rights.14

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THE PIONEERS : VISSARION BELINSKY AND N . I . PIROGOV

In their efforts to humanize the nation’s children, the reformers relied a great deal on the literary critic Vissarion Belinsky’s 1830s to 1840s episodic writings on education. In the ultimate conundrum of Russian education – the choice between raising a truly autonomous human being or just a dutiful citizen – Belinsky chooses the former: “He who has not become a man (chelovek), is a bad citizen and a bad servant to the tsar.”15 The key to achieving this goal is moral education since, in order “to become a man,” one has to internalize, regardless of one’s nationality, estate, fortune, or age, the high spiritual and moral qualities necessary to negotiate the world outside. Such true morality is expressed in deeds rather than words. The father’s (and the educator’s) attitude to the child must be based on mutual trust and mindful love for this child as a future adult. Like Rousseau before him, Belinsky, does not view the child’s soul as a tabula rasa but as the seed of a tree, a man in potential; in Belinsky’s vision, the educator is a gardener tending “a tender young plant.”16 Belinsky connects cognition with the emergence of language17 and sees maturation as a continuous process of change: “The moment [the child] transitions gradually from indifferent interjections to articulate sounds and begins to babble his first words, the animal in him is replaced by the human being whose entire life until maturity is nothing but a process of uninterrupted formation, the building of, becoming (das Werden) a complete man – for the full enjoyment and possession of the powers of his spirit [and] as a path to mindful happiness.”18 In his attention to the notion of people and nationality as well as to the unique history of the people that resides in the native language, Belinsky anticipates K.D. Ushinsky’s national model of education by which the knowledge of the Russian culture and its people – Russian identity – is grounded in knowledge of the Russian language.19 Moreover, the importance accorded by Belinsky to educating women, to the equality in relations between men and women based on mutual respect (espoused by the critic after 1843), together with his rejection of social stratification in education, were truly revolutionary for his time and enormously influential in postemancipation Russia. There, recognition of the child’s unique position as the “Father of the Man” was becoming universally accepted, albeit not in its Wordsworthian formulation as in Victorian England, but, rather, in the renowned surgeon turned peda-

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gogue N.I. Pirogov’s imagined (and Rousseau’s inspired) admonition by a father to his son: “Be a man” (1856).20 The remarkable shift, from the view of the child as a nonhuman outsider whose entry into the social order is contingent on rigidly maintained rituals, or as malleable material for fashioning dutiful citizens, to an image of the child who, from the very beginning of his or her life, is fully participant in and alive to the world and his or her society, signalled an equally radical change in the perception of the educator and of the educational environment. If in Belinsky’s widely embraced horticultural metaphor the child was equated with the seed of a future tree, then the educator had to be a nurturing and informed gardener, tending his charges in a milieu far removed from the isolating hothouse atmosphere of a boarding school, inadequacies of home schooling or the harshly limiting world of the Russian village, and with full and equal participation of society and family. The nurturing from birth to adulthood of autonomy, agency, retrospection, and self-respect in any Russian child, regardless of class, gender, or social position, was understood by Pirogov as the key to education and the prerequisite for raising a future citizen right. For Pirogov, the most sacred desire of a true human being is finding an answer to the essential question of the meaning of life. Only an individual with a highly developed moral sense based on Christian (i.e. Russian Orthodox) beliefs is capable of this endeavour. In order to become such an individual – “to be a man,” one has to rely on self-knowledge and self-reflection achievable only by means of education, the only path to humanization. In order to educate the child right, the educator has to prepare the child’s mind for the reception and retaining of knowledge. He, therefore, must study the psychic life of the child, very different from that of an adult, by means of systematic observation and from a very early age. The educator and the child must be equally engaged in the process of learning, a process that relies on the acuity of attention trained by visual and verbal exposure, as well as on the development of the powers of retrospection necessary for reflection and further self-education. All serve to elevate the child’s innate goodness to a conscious awareness of what is true and good in the world.21 USHINSKY ON EDUCATION

Pirogov’s restatement of Belinsky’s ideas, expressed principally in the educator’s articles “The Questions of Life” (“Voprosy zhizni”) and “To Be and

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to Appear to Be” (“Byt’ i kazat’sia”), was internalized by the reforming culture of the time.22 Ushinsky and Tolstoy responded to Pirogov’s educational imperative by offering radically opposing views on the theory and practice of humanization through education. Ushinsky’s writings answered the educator’s own call for independent pedagogical literature that would guide public opinion on pedagogical matters and facilitate the creation of a national educational model.23 Ushinsky’s theoretical work posited and his texts for practical teaching illustrated the notion that a comprehensive scientific study of the child is the essential precondition for any successful instruction: “If pedagogy wants to educate (vospityvat’) the individual comprehensively, then it should first get to know him (uznat’) comprehensively.”24 A brilliant synthesizer of current pedagogical knowledge, Ushinsky adapted the Western version of universal humanistic education to the needs of Russian postreform society, creating in this process a humanistic model “with a Russian accent.” Described by Kapterev, in a quote from Alexander Bain’s Education as a Science, as “the harmonious and equable evolution of the human powers” by a “method based on the nature of the mind, with every power of the soul to be unfolded, every crude principle of life stirred up and nourished, all one-sided culture avoided, and the impulses on which the strength and worth of men rest, carefully attended to,” this Western educational ideal characterized most of the Russian pedagogical inquiry in the reform movement.25 Ushinsky’s model sought to reflect the Russian national character, be harmonious with the spirit of the Russian people and their educational traditions, and to have Russian Orthodox beliefs as its moral foundation.26 The primary vehicle for making education truly national was, for Ushinsky, instruction in the native language. Ushinsky’s theories on the psychology of education, presented in the voluminous Man as the Subject of Education: An Essay in Pedagogical Anthropology (1868–69) and published in excerpts in the Pedagogical Miscellany (1864–69), directly informed his practical work – both in the classroom and in the crafting of his widely used readers, Children’s World (Detskii mir, 1861) and The Native Word (Rodnoe slovo, 1864).27 The aim of Ushinsky’s Pedagogical Anthropology was to prepare teachers for pedagogical work by providing them with a compendium of the most current knowledge on human physiology and psychology. The art of education (“the broadest, complex and most necessary of all arts”) had to be anchored in science and, more narrowly, in physiology, psychology, and logic.28 The first such attempt in the history of pedagogy, Ushinsky’s ency-

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clopedic work changed the standard perception of what constitutes pedagogical knowledge, linking it directly to the study of man.29 The introduction to volume I of Pedagogical Anthropology focuses on the aims, goals, and challenges of pedagogy, followed by a section devoted to physiology in its connection to the nervous system as well as to the discussion of habits, skills, attention, emotion, and will. The subsequent section on psychology in the same volume addresses perception, memory, imagination, and reason, the formulation of concepts, opinions, conclusions, the inductive method of thinking, and the mind. The second volume deals primarily with the emotional sphere and that of the will. The discussion of the fundamentals of the human sciences in both volumes serves to support Ushinsky’s view of child rearing and education as cultivation of character, a complex combination of emotion, will, and intellect.30 In Pedagogical Anthropology, designed to ground teaching in up-to-date information on human development, science is the foundation upon which Ushinsky builds his ideas on the role of the educator, the child in education, and on the instructional practice. The way “into the child” is through introspection, an inborn ability to sense and remember one’s psychic states, viewed by Ushinsky as the basis for self-knowledge as well as for the knowledge of the educational subject. The child that emerges, from this psychologically based guide to child development in an instructional setting, is a being in whom the psychic and the physical are intimately connected. All of the child’s senses – vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch – are engaged in psychic activity based on associations. The child’s psyche begins its development already in the womb where its basic elements, “those powers and essential devices he will use in relation to people and nature,” are prepared for his future psychic life. The child’s acquired traits can be inherited and passed on to the next generation, making the educator’s attention to the process of the traits’ acquisition all the more important.31 For Ushinsky, cognition realizes itself in activity: in attention, memory, imagination, and rational thinking; the most essential act of cognition is categorization, based on similarity and difference.32 Learning is a process that is rooted in active cognition, but children of different ages exhibit clear differences in their ability to focus and learn. The level of the child’s mental development cannot be equated with the sum of factual knowledge he possesses. It is the character of the child’s mental activity and the degree to which active cognition is engaged that is indicative of developmental progression – the ability to accumulate knowledge on one’s own and to employ cognitive tools creatively in different life situations. For

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Ushinsky, a mind that is truly developed is characterized by the breadth and depth of systematic knowledge, is governed by the desire to learn more, and can use what is learned creatively.33 The above view of the child necessitates significant modifications both in the traditional perceptions of the educator’s role and in the overall practice of child rearing. Educators (including parents and caregivers) must be, in Ushinsky’s opinion, well informed, tactful (empathetic), and somewhat experienced. They also must fully acknowledge the importance of the preverbal period in the infant’s life (for “the psychic life of the child is already active at a stage when adults do not yet consider him [fully] human”) and address the child’s physical and psychic needs in maturation as equally essential.34 Since the child’s cognitive and physical development depend on activity, education and rearing should not be viewed as dry instruction but as a process that fosters the child’s powers of observation, memory, imagination, fantasy, and rational thinking.35 This is the only approach that can engender the desire and facilitate the ability to acquire new knowledge independently: in effect, teaching the child how to learn. The accumulation of facts in the educational process is secondary, yet closely linked with mental and moral development and requiring a sensible selection and accumulation of useful content, gradually organized into a comprehensive system by the learner. As a result of the acknowledgment of the distinct stages in the child’s overall development, Ushinsky considers psychological preparation for learning to be crucial for success in education. In this connection, the educator stresses the importance of matching the content of instruction with the child’s cognitive level; insists on the harmfulness of beginning instruction too early or too late; and designs the content of his own readers to fit the child’s developmental stage, excite interest in further knowledge, and make learning a habit. For Ushinsky, the determination of the correct developmental stage is based on the evaluation of the child’s aptitude for focused attention, active listening and cogent expression. One can safely assume that Ushinsky began laying the groundwork for Pedagogical Anthropology, as early as the mid-1850s when teaching at the Gatchina Institute for Orphans (1854–59). Ushinsky’s articles, written in this period and published in The Education Journal in 1857, already point to the educator’s major areas of interest: the creation of a truly vibrant culture of pedagogical exchange in the first article, giving priority in education to the figure of the educator in the second, and making the new school into an institution reflective of Russian cultural traditions in the last.36

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A succinct précis of Ushinsky’s ideas demonstrating connections between his evolving theory and its application to the practice of teaching can be found in his “On Elementary Instruction in the Russian Language” published in the first two issues of Pedagogical Miscellany in its first year of publication (1864).37 To achieve proficiency in the three R’s of elementary education, the teacher must in Ushinsky’s view encourage the child’s innate aptitude for the “gift of the word,” develop in the child a conscious competency of the language, and assist the child in internalizing the logic (i.e. grammar) of the native language.38 When discussing his first goal, Ushinsky emphasizes the importance of independent learning, initially with guidance, then increasingly on one’s own. The visual aspect of instruction – hands on visual teaching (nagliadnost’) – is all important for developing the “gift of the word” because of the child’s acuity of the senses. Only appropriate nagliadnost’ and age-appropriate material can insure the child’s conscious participation in a writing project, since they establish an instant connection between the topic for writing and the child’s experience.39 All classroom exercises (Ushinsky did not believe in homework in early childhood education) have to be cumulative both in factual knowledge and the degree of difficulty, systematic, and logical. The desired progression in learning is from the concrete to the abstract, from observation to generalization, best accomplished, in Ushinsky’s view, in discussions of natural phenomena. Learning, however, cannot be restricted to formal instruction. For Ushinsky, games are a powerful educational tool, equalling in their importance any “serious” activities by the adults.40 In Pedagogical Anthropology, Ushinsky amplifies his understanding of play thus: Play is the child’s free activity, and, if we were to compare the overall impact of play on the soul of the child with the impact made by the first four or five years of formal study, then, of course, the advantage is on the side of play. This is where all aspects of human psyche are formed – the mind, the heart and the will – and if, as the saying goes, play is the predictor of the child’s character and his future, then it is doubly true: not only are the child’s predispositions are reflected in play, but play itself has a great influence on the development of the child’s abilities and, therefore, on his future … At the same time, there exists an obvious borderline between play and study, the borderline between “can” and “must.” The inculcation of the sense of duty [Ushinsky’s emphasis] in formal instruction is so precious in education that if pedagogy were able … to turn early

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education into entertaining games, then that would be a great misfortune for education.41 Ushinsky’s textbooks for children reflect fully the educator’s understanding of the aims and practices of pedagogy – in the classroom and in play. USHINSKY ’ S PRIMERS

Ushinsky wrote his first primer, Children’s World, for students who had mastered the basics, while his second, The Native Word, was intended for beginners. The dearth of educational material for children (the list of sources for Children’s World contains twelve books, none of which is by a Russian author) presented a difficult challenge. In designing the primers, Ushinsky had to rely on adapted examples from native folklore and literature as well as create his own content. Ushinsky’s Foreword to The Native Word, addressed to parents and educators, is a practical guide to teaching beginning Russian according to the principles found in his “On Elementary Instruction.” Admitting his debt to German pedagogy in general and to the Swiss educator Ignaz Thomas Scherr in particular, Ushinsky acknowledges the inevitable lapses inherent in adjusting foreign models to the specifics of one’s own culture.42 The foreword, labelled by Kapterev as “a brief elementary pedagogical catechism,”43 addresses the timing of the child’s schooling (not too early); the subjects covered (reading and writing, gymnastics, drawing, music, math, and the Bible); organization of the instructional process (age- and temperament- appropriate in length, different programs for children of different ages within the family separated from play time); discipline in the classroom (interested pupils do not require disciplining); the importance of the study of Russian; first lessons in Russian (based on the three goals of primary education: “the gift of the word,” conscious mastery, and grammar); the crucial importance of visually oriented instruction; the phonic method of learning reading (deemed superior to the old method of combining letters); the teaching of the alphabet (six months); and first books for reading (his own). Grammar for Ushinsky is a “humanizing” science, since the mastery of grammar is based on self-observation and self-awareness.44 In The Native Word, the material on the alphabet is followed by illustrated selections that include information about the physical world of the

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child: nature (organic and nonorganic objects) plants, animals; the human body and the senses; seasons, time (day, week, and month); as well as the objects found in the child’s household and school. Ushinsky intersperses data on life sciences with Russian proverbs and sayings, riddles, and folk tales (“Russian folk pedagogy’s first and brilliant efforts”).45 Proverbs and folk tales are presented in their amended, simplified, and sanitized form – to fit into the instructional theme, accommodate the child’s intellectual level, and strip them of anything coarse so as not to offend “our timid morality.”46 Ushinsky similarly modifies Russian folk songs, because of their general focus on love and misery.47 Excerpts from Russian classics and Bible stories appear in an abridged form. Ushinsky’s original writing includes short stories and poems. Ushinsky found the balancing act of making reading and learning age appropriate, instructive, but also fun, quite difficult.48 Another challenge acknowledged by the educator was finding the right tone for the abridged versions of existing texts and of Ushinsky’s own sketches used in the books.49 “Four Wishes,” a story for first-year learners, found in The Native Word, is typical of the sentimental didacticism that informs Ushinsky’s selections for the primers: Mitya rode his little sled down an ice hill, skated his fill on the frozen river, ran to his house rosy cheeked and happy and said to his father: “Winter is so much fun! I wish it were always winter!” “Write your wish down in your little notebook,” said Father, and Mitya wrote it down. Spring came. Mitya had his fill chasing butterflies in a green field, picked flowers, then ran to his father and said: “Spring is so delightful (prelestna) I wish it were always spring!” The father again pulled out a notebook and told Mitya to write his words down. Summer came. Mitya and his father went haying. All day long the boy had fun: he fished, picked berries, jumped around in fragrant hay and in the evening said to his father: “I had such fun today! I don’t want summer to end.” This wish as well was recorded in the little notebook. Autumn came. Rosy apples and yellow pears were being harvested in the orchard. Mitya was very excited and said to his father: “Autumn is better than any other season!” The father then took out the little notebook and showed the boy that he said the same about spring, winter and summer.50

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The above sketch, aimed at a seven-year-old child, represents the relationship between the father and the boy as that of a benevolent teacher and a student. The emphasis is on allowing the child to enjoy the seasons but at the same time alert him to the importance of observing the world around and his reactions to it. The factual knowledge about the seasons obtained is cumulative and scrupulously recorded in a special little book. The story’s protagonist, in a text designed for urban children, but used widely in rural schools as well, is idealized, universalized, stripped of any individual quirks, always obedient, and emotionally static. A placid observer of beautiful nature, Mitya is far removed from the rigours of village life, a tourist in a land where it would be inconceivable for a child his age not to participate fully in haying or the harvest. Ushinsky’s first reader, Children’s World, designed for older children (nine to twelve), bears strong similarity to The Native Word in its structure, emphasis on natural sciences, and language. In their comments on Children’s World, some contemporary critics pointed to the deficiencies of Ushinsky’s encyclopedic approach to teaching, based on life sciences. Others objected to the dryness, linguistic awkwardness, and moralistic flavour of Ushinsky’s sketches. F. Toll’ noted the inconsistencies of combining visual teaching with preparatory discussions and criticized the stilted language of some of Ushinsky’s narratives.51 None of the above, however, approached the level of indignation expressed by Tolstoy in his evaluation of Children’s World. TOLSTOY ON USHINSKY

Tolstoy’s review of Ushinsky’s Children’s World appeared in September of 1862, at the peak of the writer’s involvement in education. The writer’s thinking on pedagogy was shaped considerably by the experience of teaching peasant children on his estate. Tolstoy documented the daily life of the school in his pedagogical journal Yasnaya Polyana. The journal also offered Tolstoy’s opinions on various aspects of the educational process and its goals.52 The analytical pieces on pedagogy and Tolstoy’s descriptions of his interactions with students, published in the journal, revealed the writer’s changing perceptions of what ideal education should be. Tolstoy’s primary concern at the time was with educating the peasantry. Some of Tolstoy’s ideas, already sketched in letters and diary entries well before the publication of the journal and influenced, as is commonly noted, by Rousseau, Berthold Auerbach, and Wilhelm Riehl, were modified and refined in the classroom.53 In Tolstoy’s “pedagogical laboratory,”

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set time tables began to be ignored, grades were eventually abandoned, and discreet subjects lost their customary boundaries, overlapped, or disappeared altogether. Tolstoy became convinced that the essential tools for educating the peasantry could be gained only through direct classroom experience. Teaching peasant children also led Tolstoy to believe that (true) “pedagogical science [did] not exist”54 and what was there was plain wrong in its assumptions and proposed solutions.55 In Tolstoy’s opinion, the lack of adequate education for the common folk constituted Russia’s greatest challenge in the period of the Great Reforms. In his essays, Tolstoy questioned, however, the Enlightenment-inspired belief in progress as a guarantee of universal wellbeing and prosperity and found the elite’s presumed right to civilize the peasantry unlawful and unwarranted.56 At the core of Tolstoy’s disdain for the progressive educators’ ideas on education was an apparent view of the peasant as a savage in need of humanization.57 Tolstoy’s idealization of the child, already evident in Childhood, was extended in his Yasnaya Polyana essays to the Russian peasant whose calloused hands, firm body, and time-honoured beliefs stood, in the writer’s opinion, for his physical and spiritual strength.58 The privileged classes, on the other hand, were weak, corrupt, and had no right to teach the peasant what to think or how to live. The government’s educational efforts were wanting in their essentials and, therefore, universally resisted by the peasants.59 Therefore, beyond supporting the common people’s own efforts at schooling, the state had no right to interfere in the matter either. The reformers’ insistence on the inseparability of guided/effective rearing (vospitanie) from education (obrazovanie) and instruction (obuchenie) raised Tolstoy’s ire precisely because it sanctioned a deliberate and total inculcation of knowledge, morals, and behaviours he saw as alien to the majority of the Russian people. For Tolstoy, peasant schools could not be left in the hands of the privileged few armed with pseudoscientific theories on how to transform human nature.60 This was so, in Tolstoy’s opinion, because what was good for the corrupt elite was not good for the hard working peasant and because “we number in thousands while there are millions of them.”61 Moreover, people of Tolstoy’s generation did not know what the future would bring and did not have the right to instruct the youth in anything anyway.62 Despite the Yasnaya Polyana essays’ highly polemical tone, however, Tolstoy’s thinking on educational practice had quite a lot in common with the ideas championed by progressive educators of the Great Reforms era. Like Ushinsky, Tolstoy was dismayed by the lack of good books for reading

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and used Russian folklore and the Bible as his students’ reading material. “Transitional literature,” a bridge of sorts between folklore and the works of high culture, envisioned by Tolstoy as a possible solution to the problem of introducing peasants to literary language, had already been created by Ushinsky for Children’s World.63 Like Ushinsky, Tolstoy insisted on adjusting instruction to his students’ individual needs, eschewing therefore a rigid adherence to universally sanctioned instructional methods in the classroom.64 Both recognized the necessity of studying the child comprehensively before embarking on any educational endeavours. Neither believed in assigning homework in early childhood education. Both deplored corporal punishment and based their success in controlling the classroom on students’ engagement with learning. Further, Tolstoy’s insistence on what he called “unconscious learning” or “learning from life” echoes Ushinsky’s belief in the importance for children to observe their surroundings, nature in particular, and learn from these observations.65 Tolstoy even uses the progressives’ catchword “development” (razvitie), albeit to indicate natural maturation rather than a particular type of development based on effective rearing. The word “progress” also makes an appearance in the essays, if in its pedestrian sense of moving forward. Tolstoy’s program differed crucially from that of the reformers’, however, in proposing that true education for the people had to emerge from below. Only the family, the church, and the state, in its limited need to fashion society’s future servants, were justified to some degree, in Tolstoy’s view, in their efforts to transmit values and affect behaviour.66 The education envisioned by Tolstoy had to be “free,” i.e. stemming from the educational needs of the peasantry.67 To be sure, like Ushinsky’s, Tolstoy’s pedagogical ideal of the time emphasized the child’s individuality and respect for the child’s independence and agency in schooling.68 Yet, for Tolstoy, education in the classroom was to be limited solely to the communication of information relevant to the instructional subject and the learner. The rest, in his opinion, peasant children were going to obtain from life. The relevance of the subject matter and the understanding what learning from life actually meant were determined in this program by Tolstoy himself.69 The progressives’ response came quickly. N.G. Chernyshevsky’s scathing review of Yasnaya Polyana’s inaugural issue, unwisely solicited by Tolstoy himself, accused the writer of pedagogical ignorance, arrogance, and an estranged view of the Russian peasant. While applauding Tolstoy’s insistence on avoidance of any compulsion in teaching, Chernyshevsky pointed to contradictions in Tolstoy’s arguments about the peasants’

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unwillingness to learn, zeroing in on Tolstoy’s view of the peasant as uniquely different, as someone who has “special qualities not found in a man, any [other] man, no matter the rank or position.”70 Moreover, Chernyshevsky saw Tolstoy’s argument that the educated class did not know what the common folk needed as disingenuous, self-serving, and conceited. As he framed it, by telling us what not to do Tolstoy conveyed his “correct” knowledge of the issue. Chernyshevsky saw Tolstoy as rejecting all methods, but his own practice of teaching, which offered clear evidence of an overarching method. Chernyshevsky’s conclusion was succinct, direct, and brutal: Before you begin to impose your pedagogical wisdom on Russia, study, think, try to acquire a more precise and coherent view on the matter of educating the people. Your feelings are noble, and your aspirations beautiful; it could be that this is enough for your own practical activity. In your school you do not fight, do not swear, just the opposite, you are kind to children, and this is good. But in order to establish the general principles of a science, something else is needed besides beautiful feelings; you have to raise yourself to the level of this science and not be satisfied with occasional personal observations or haphazard reading of a few articles … The task of publishing a pedagogical journal was undertaken by people who consider themselves very smart, while seeing others (such as Rousseau and Pestalozzi, for example) as stupid; [these are] people who have some degree of personal experience, but are lacking distinct general convictions or any scholarly preparation.71 Tolstoy’s choice of Ushinsky as an opponent in the battle for the hearts and minds of the educational community was thus far from coincidental. Ushinsky was Chernyshevsky’s ideal pedagogue: someone who had done his research, been trained to think logically, and possessed firm convictions on the subject of progressive pedagogy. Furthermore, this was an educator not guided solely by “random impressions or beautiful feelings” (as Tolstoy was, in Chernyshevsky’s unkind view) but by specialized preparation and practical experience, far more extensive than Tolstoy’s.72 Therefore, Tolstoy’s response to Ushinsky’s book is larger than a simple review; it is a précis of the writer’s objections to the pedagogical ideas championed by the progressives. Consequently, Tolstoy’s reading of Children’s World questions the reformers’ central pedagogical principles. Tolstoy’s fundamental disagree-

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ment is with the notion of guided development and effective rearing, seen by Tolstoy as coercion. Tolstoy’s Yasnaya Polyana essay “Who Should Teach Whom How to Write: Should We Teach Peasant Children or Should They Teach Us” offers clues to the writer’s understanding of the concept of development. For Tolstoy, development is inevitable, since “[t]he child lives, [and] each aspect of his being is striving for development, jostling for dominance in its course.”73 Yet the inexorable process of change must not be assumed to stand for betterment. In fact, each stage in maturation is a step away from the perfection found in a newborn (here Tolstoy approvingly quotes Rousseau’s “A human being is born perfect”).74 Furthermore, the notions of truth, beauty, and good, the inculcation of which are held by all (including Tolstoy) to be the goals of successful rearing and education, are in fact relative and contextual. (What is seen as lies or reprehensible behaviour in one situation or cultural context might not be perceived as such in others, for example.75) Consequently, there is no such thing as absolute truth and no universal laws of development can be derived from the multitude of contextually (culturally) grounded behaviours; neither can artificially constructed laws therefore be applicable to rearing. Rather than trying to further an aspect of the child’s development in accordance with a particular understanding of what constitutes truth, beauty, and good, an educator must try to achieve a harmonious balance of the child’s already present innate (perfect) qualities. The mistake of all pedagogical theories, according to Tolstoy, is that we confuse development with progress, seeing “our ideal before us, whereas it lies behind us”76 (Tolstoy’s emphasis). Accordingly, as Tolstoy explains elsewhere, development in learning cannot be imposed but only nurtured – harmonized – since “life unintentionally imparts concepts, and the school consciously organizes them into a harmonious system.” Therefore, Tolstoy’s ideal educational dynamic is “a sensible acquisition of knowledge from life, [followed by] its classification in school.”77 The very direction of informational flow is reversed in this arrangement – “from life to school” rather than from “school to life,” the result of Tolstoy’s Rousseauistic privileging of the purity and innate knowledge of life in all children, and peasant children in particular. When examining Ushinsky’s stated goals (mastery of language and practical grammar, mental gymnastics, and useful knowledge), Tolstoy claims not to understand the notion of mental gymnastics and focuses his analysis on useful knowledge, with quite a lot of attention given to Ushinsky’s presentation of the mastery of language. It is in his discussion of selections for reading that Tolstoy offers the most stinging criticism of a

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book that is supposed to aid in developing the gift of the (Russian) word, intimately connected to the life of the Russian people and representative of its history and culture. Content and form are linked in Tolstoy’s evaluation. He objects to the abundant use of affectionate diminutives (zhuchok, zaichik) which creates “the fake manner of language and declamation that unfortunately reigns in our educational institutions” and therefore, by implication, posits the child as unequal to the condescending adult in the instructional process.78 He declares the moral offered by one of Ushinsky’s sketches to be senseless, i.e. not derived easily and naturally, but rather stamped on the story to lead the child in the direction viewed by Ushinsky as the right one. The flaw of presentation is linked to the flaws of guided development. Similarly, visual teaching as practiced by Ushinsky and other of Pestalozzi’s followers is completely useless, in Tolstoy’s opinion, because it is once again founded on the imposition of adult knowledge on the child, without any regard for the child’s already present competencies. Furthermore, he objects to the story’s lack of engaging amusement (zanimatel’nost’) – another flaw of presentation linked to the privileging of a cerebral (adult) approach to gaining knowledge rather than a participatory, and equal, exploration of meaning. The child’s agency in learning, clearly of great importance in Tolstoy’s vision, has to be engaged by the kinds of selections that amuse by both their topics and language, thereby awakening and maintaining the child’s interest in study. As we have seen, Ushinsky, a strong believer in life-long learning, did not consider, in fact cautioned against viewing, learning as a game. Instead, Ushinsky encouraged his students to see learning as work, an idea that guides his textual choices (“useful and accessible”) as well as their arrangement in his textbooks. For Tolstoy, however, the deliberate absence of engaging amusement – a stylistic flaw resulting from what he saw as a misguided, static view of the child (there is no personality [in the sketch] and no movement, “the features demanded by the child’s nature”) – makes Ushinsky’s selections unappealing and, therefore, useless. In Tolstoy’s opinion, there is no worthwhile information in a “tale which is not a tale, in truth which is not a truth” written in a “fake language that would grate on any child’s ear.”79 “A fancy phrase” composed “of vague literary words” is meaningless; “pomposity” hides the emptiness of content.80 Ushinsky’s story “A Trip from the Capital to the Countryside” (“Poezdka iz stolitsy v derevniu”) infuriates Tolstoy because of Ushinsky’s distanced portrayal of the village, couched “in the worst, i.e. smooth, lit-

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erary language of the sketches and novellas found in bad magazines.” Tolstoy writes: in a book designed for the majority of children, he chooses [to portray] those miserable, mutilated, wretched individuals who have seen nothing beyond the capital and [then] describes the sky, the earth, and man, i.e. clouds, sunset, forest, fields, and peasants for them. No other [meaningful] content is present unless you consider the explanation that state officials are necessary for peasants as content. According to Children’s World, without officials and educated people, peasants would perish. Here is how the virtuous father explains this: “But the bread that comes to the capital is gathered from the most remote places, travelling on rivers, canals and roads, from all these tiny poor villages. The taxes that peasants pay go for maintaining splendid armies and for building ships and fortresses; they also pay the officials’ salaries. The peasants’ quitrent is used to build magnificent houses and buy brilliant carriages. Thus, small, obscure little roots in the dirt feed the luscious fragrant rose proudly swaying on a thin stem … If you harm the roots, the whole bush will die and the lush rose will no longer sway on its thin branch.”81 Tolstoy denies any meaning to the father’s explication; even though the sentiment expressed is the one he most certainly shares: the wealth and brilliance of life enjoyed by the upper classes is built on the backs of the Russian peasants. For Tolstoy, however, the true message of the tale is in the telling. The child is a passive recipient of the father’s/teacher’s wisdom; the metaphorical arrangement of social classes into high (lofty, striking, beautiful, fragrant) and low (unassuming, hardworking, dirty but indispensable) signals a detached, paternalistic, and seemingly accommodational view of the rigid stratification of life in Ushinsky’s and Tolstoy’s society.82 Ushinsky’s imaginary father’s discourse on the value of education is similarly offensive to Tolstoy in its condescension to the peasants’ knowledge and way of life. When addressing a peasant woman, the father opines, “You, kind people, work for us, and we must study in order to build your life in the best possible way [stroit’ vashu zhizn’ kak mozhno luchshe].”83 When talking to his children, the father clarifies his idea as follows: Without books and studying life is bad … if we were to have more smart, learned and educated people, then perhaps in this village also life would become better, more comfortable and pleasant. Educated

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people have invented good roads, highways, steam engines, canals, agricultural tools and factories. With the help of those, this village, too, will see education, the peasant’s hard work will be eased, a school will be built and the conveniences and pleasures of life that we now do not have even an inkling about will appear.84 For Tolstoy, the arrangement, of course, is all wrong – upside down – because it is the peasants’ traditions, as well as their “gift of the word” (which Ushinsky, in Tolstoy’s opinion, is incapable of evoking in any satisfactory fashion) rather than those of “smart, learned and educated people” that must, according to Tolstoy, be respected and preserved. Furthermore, as Tolstoy avers in his last Yasnaya Polyana article, Russian peasants have no real use for such accoutrements of civilization as steam engines, railroads, electricity, or publishing houses anyway, since everything they need for a good life is right around them.85 Ushinsky removed the father’s conversation with a peasant woman from later editions of Children’s World.86 Ushinsky’s civilizing mission underlying the passages was nevertheless part and parcel of his educational outlook, starkly evident in his article “On Peasant Schools” (“Voprosy o narodnykh shkolakh,” 1861): The spiritual development and education of an individual or a people are accomplished not by schooling alone, but by several magnificent teachers: nature, life, science and religion. [Ushinsky’s emphasis] It is clear, however, that these educators’ lessons can affect the man’s soul in a transformative way only when this soul is prepared for it. Nature that speaks so eloquently to the educated mind and to the developed heart remains mute [in its interactions] with a semi-savage (poludikogo cheloveka) who, like an animal, is subjected to nature’s influence, deriving from this influence neither new thoughts nor feelings … Life, of course, instructs even the coarsest of people in many things, but if a man who is prepared by his education [can] derive a productive thought from his first experiences of life and, grasping the matter quickly, [can] master his situation, the experience of centuries pass by uselessly for coarse undeveloped people87 … The peasant school must be the basis of all stable improvements in peasant life, the basis of all forward movement in civilizing the rural population. [This is] the school that, by bringing into our village sensible primary education, would open the eyes, ears and souls of the peasants to the lessons of humanity’s greatest teachers: nature, life, science and Christianity.88

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The above reflects Ushinsky’s determination to bring about societal change through education. The connection of this civilizing mission to the future of Russia is clearly stated as well: “only when peasants, too, move forward, can we say that the whole of Russia embarked on the path to civilization.”89 In his 1862 sketch for an unfinished article, “On the Language of Books for Peasants” (“O iazyke narodnykh knizhek”), Tolstoy hones his objections (without naming the author) to the style and aims of Ushinsky’s narratives, evoking in his discussion some of the same words he used in his review of Children’s World. The main point of Tolstoy’s argument is that in textbooks for peasants the language of selections has to be “good” (accessible, understandable, and not overloaded with localisms), that content should not be abstract, and that the moral of a story needs to be presented only implicitly, by the vividness of form. Tolstoy proceeds to offer a brilliant juxtaposition of various stylistic versions of the same content – the workings of a steam engine. An explanation offered by an educated man to his equal is deemed inappropriate for peasants because of the technical language employed. A presentation by a “teacher who is condescending to common folk” is wrong because of the condescension. Another teacher, who tries to make his language as folksy as possible, pretends to share in the culture he does not know. A pedantic instructor’s explanations are boring. A woman teacher who peppers her explanations with “dear children” is patronizing, annoying, and, therefore, cannot be successful with the children. A peasant’s description, on the other hand, is presented as ideal: A smart peasant, returning home after travelling on a steam ship, describes what he has learned as follows: a boiler sits on top of a furnace; the steam is not allowed to escape, going instead into a machine; the machine is hooked to the wheels and moves them. All sorts of vehicles can be attached to the wheels. Every peasant will understand what he needs from the above because it is expressed in good Russian.90 The wording of the description employs a limited number of signifiers; the selection is ostensibly based on what the imaginary peasant teacher has, in Tolstoy’s opinion, “learned from life” and on what is relevant to the lives of his peasant charges. The explanation is succinct, uncluttered by concepts or language presumably unfamiliar to the peasantry. Crucially, Tolstoy does not choose to see his peasant’s language as a living, con-

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stantly changing entity. As Catherine Evtuhov has shown, the peasantry’s contacts with the outside world in the nineteenth century were often extensive, depending upon the region and type of work, thus offering some exposure to different customs, mores, and styles of expression.91 Yet, in Tolstoy’s prescriptive view, the smart peasant’s speech is fixed in its supposed unchangeability and asserted perfection. As has been pointed out, the issue for Tolstoy is not whether one should educate the peasants – he is all for it – but how: in “the clash of a peasant culture with a culture of Reform, the larger political issue throughout … is which culture takes priority, which will propel which along the path of reform.”92 Clearly, Tolstoy’s ideal at the time, his “socially colored ‘pedagogical Christianity,’” envisioned the ascendance of the peasant culture over that of the corrupt educated elite.93 In this context, the civilizing mission of Ushinsky’s educational approach, unmistakably underlining “A Trip from the Capital to the Countryside,” must have appeared to Tolstoy as truly incendiary, ensuring the continuation of the writer’s full-scale engagement in the battle of educational positions with those of the late Ushinsky’s disciples. THE SOUND AND THE FURY : TOLSTOY ’ S PRIMERS

Tolstoy did not discuss the rudiments of teaching literacy in his 1862 review of Children’s World, since, unlike The Native Word, Ushinsky’s first book was designed for students who had already mastered the basics. The issue became central ten years later in Tolstoy’s heated quarrel with one of the late Ushinsky’s disciples, the populist N.F. Bunakov. The confrontation occurred on the heels of the failure of Tolstoy’s own attempt at a reader for beginners, his 1872 primer Azbuka accompanied by four books for reading. Both the reviewers and the public were overwhelmingly negative in their opinion of the book.94 The public did not buy Azbuka. The Ministry of Education was reluctant to approve the primer for use in schools. The reviewers, no doubt emboldened by Tolstoy’s routing of Ushinsky’s Children’s World and other such books a decade before, gave as good as they got, criticizing Tolstoy’s selections (the classics of Russian literature were conspicuously absent), the book’s organization, language, and its moralizing tone.95 Critics also rejected Tolstoy’s method of teaching reading (the aural [slukhovoi] method) in favour of the sound or phonic (zvukovoi) approach advanced by the progressives.96

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After asserting, in his 1873 “Letter to Publishers,” that the phonic method was contrary to the spirit of the people, Tolstoy appealed to the Moscow Committee on Literacy to consider the advantages of his pedagogical views in general and the aural method in particular.97 Tolstoy then participated in a public meeting on the issue, followed by a seven-weeklong phonic vs aural competition, and then by yet another public meeting in which the writer mocked Bunakov’s views on child development and visual teaching, berated him for using the phonic method, and in general for adhering to Ushinsky’s pedagogical program.98 Tolstoy’s article in Otechestvennye zapiski that came next reiterated his condemnation of Bunakov and others in the pedagogical community for employing Ushinsky’s methods and was a strategically placed attempt to “set the record straight” while simultaneously reaching as many people as possible.99 Nevertheless, the revised (and ministry approved) 1875 version of the primer, Novaia Azbuka, bears witness to Tolstoy’s acceptance of a substantial portion of the critical suggestions for improvement.100 In its new incarnation the primer was a relative success and by 1910 had appeared in twenty-eight editions. How different are Tolstoy’s Novaia Azbuka and his books for reading from Ushinsky’s? Eikhenbaum sees Tolstoy’s engagement with teaching literacy, as exemplified by his primers, as being directed “against the basic methods and principles of the new pedagogy where [the latter’s] system based on reason is juxtaposed to one based on faith; where the [latter’s] scientific system conflicts with that of instinct and imagination; and [the new pedagogy’s] system of convictions and ideas is contrasted with the one founded on moral rules.”101 Yet, the primers share in their structure of presentation (from easy to more complex), in their reliance on Russian folklore, in offering original texts for reading, and in adapting the material to the child’s cognitive level. Moreover, in the revised version of his primer, Tolstoy opens his book to any method of teaching the alphabet (even though an apologia for the “aural” method is appended in the end). Tolstoy’s book is stripped of illustrations, while Ushinsky’s primers are richly illustrated. Tolstoy’s vociferous rejection of visual teaching, however, had little to do with the final product in this case but was rather the result of the reviewers’ observation that illustrations in the first version of the primer distracted from the information presented. What Tolstoy preserved in the updated version was the avoidance of the classics of Russian literature in his selections for reading, since, as Eikhenbaum pointed out, the primers were written not only against the adher-

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ents of the phonic method and their system of teaching, but also in opposition to “exemplary writers,” to “literary traditions” [in general].”102 Tolstoy also maintained a deliberately controlled approach to the presentation of material on natural sciences, an approach described by one reviewer of Azbuka as “khoziaiskii,” (managerial/directive). The primary difference between Tolstoy’s and Ushinsky’s primers is in the child as a character in the books and as the intended audience of the narratives. Ushinsky’s student is a template, a cypher, a universal child that fits comfortably into the teacher’s pedagogical scheme of guided development. Ushinsky’s language therefore is denuded of harshness; it does not stand in the way of the information that is presented or the moral it conveys. It is a gentle, anodyne way of seeing the child and a protective way of exposing him to social environments. The overall aim is levelling, the elimination of difference, an eventual social homogeneity based on broadly understood humanistic goals. Tolstoy was convinced that “two generations of all Russian children – from the peasant’s to the czar’s – [would] learn from this primer and [would] get their first poetic impressions from it.”103 Tolstoy’s target audience, however, is the peasant child of the Tula region who speaks the dialect, remembers his proverbs, knows what a plough is for and what it looks like. Tolstoy draws on this child’s immediate experiences and uses those (lice, flees, farm accidents, raging bulls, drinking, sickness, and death) to teach his students how to read. This is Tolstoy’s program and the result has to be judged a success if the idea is to preserve the putative purity and wholesomeness of the Russian peasantry (of that region). Unlike Ushinsky’s, Tolstoy’s aim appears to be the safeguarding of a specifically understood, carefully maintained “Tolstoyan” balance between the worldview of an edified landowner and that of his worthy peasant. Bunakov, labelled “the teachers’ teacher” by his contemporaries, became in the 1860s and mid-1870s, by way of extensive lecturing on educational issues throughout Russia and by publishing his works on education, a highly influential figure in Russian pedagogy. His lectures on teaching Russian in peasant schools, given in 1872 and appearing later in multiple editions in a separate volume, open (in its fifteenth edition of 1908) with a powerful statement that does not name but certainly points to Tolstoy and to what Bunakov sees as the essential flaw of Tolstoy’s pedagogy – its deliberate exclusion of peasants from the humanization project as understood by the progressives:

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The peasant school, no matter how short its course of study might be, cannot and must not limit itself to the narrow goal of teaching common folk literacy plus a few practical skills. Thus limited, it would not be capable of fulfilling the task of imparting humanity (chelovecheskikh nachal) to the life of the masses, nor would it be able to gradually broaden the circle of people who live rational, conscious, and truly human lives. Even if peasant students come out of an environment of ignorance and poverty, one of coarse manual labour, and even if they stay and work in this same environment upon graduation, the essential task of the school cannot change: it deals with people (Bunakov’s emphasis) and must work in the interest of authentically human life. The school must cultivate human dignity in peasant children, no matter where they might work afterwards, or what social position they might occupy; it must prepare them for authentically human life without tearing them away from their fathers’ labour or from their native milieu, but by bringing into this labour and social relations the light of consciousness, the power of developed thought and the high principles of humanity. The artificial, commonly shared notion of separating schooling into one for the “gentry, the lord,” which is ennobling and developing, and one for “the people, the peasants” for which a simple abc is enough … this separation, no matter what pretty, but essentially hypocritical, phrases about respect for the people are used to dress it up, is a wretched remnant of obsolete notions of serfdom, [the time] when one wanted to see in the peasant only an uncouth worker, perhaps a skilled labourer, a lackey, a cook, but not a human being.104 Bunakov’s own primer is fully cognizant of its intended audience – the peasant child. The primer’s narratives and illustrations are geared to this child’s immediate environment.105 Yet, like Ushinsky’s and unlike Tolstoy’s, Bunakov’s view, as manifested in his primer, does not deny his students the universality of developmental potential.106 This is a potential that must be nurtured and guided by an enlightened teacher with the help of thoughtfully structured texts – in order to bring into the peasants’ life that which it lacks: “the light of consciousness, the power of developed thought, and the high principles of humanity.” For Ushinsky and his disciples, becoming “human” was the process inseparable from breaking the rigid boundaries of class and position by means of education. The symbolic opposition of light vs darkness was consistently used by the reformers in their articulation of the push to

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transform the peasantry, mired, in their view, in ignorance, i.e. “darkness.” Tolstoy’s answer to Ushinsky-inspired reformers deliberately upended the progressive paradigm, identifying the civilized (corrupt) man rather than the (innocent) peasant child as the one in need of humanization. Whether the desired approach to societal transformation in this instance was to instruct and transform the peasant or to learn from the peasant, on the issue of humanization, both Ushinsky and Tolstoy positioned themselves as benevolent outsiders. Ultimately, and perhaps unavoidably, in their theoretical and practical work, both viewed the child as the object rather than the subject of education. The reformers’ efforts were guided by the desire to educate all children in the spirit of humanism; for them, the equality of access to knowledge was of central importance. Tolstoy’s nativist outlook imparted superiority to the old ways of the Russian village, which, in his view, required no change and brooked no interference. Yet, as Tolstoy discovered, his method was as dependent on the educator’s focused shaping of his students as that of his opponents. Chekhov’s understanding of the importance of schooling for peasant children and his practical efforts to build peasant schools are well documented. The kind of education that Chekhov envisioned in such schools can be gleaned from Chekhov’s letter to Suvorin, quoted earlier. In the letter, the description of a slave’s path to humanity articulates the writer’s endorsement of the reformers’ ideal of humanization through education in straightforward and unambiguous terms. As in Nekrasov’s poem, the shedding of the serf mentality is equated with the process of becoming truly human. Freedom from the internalized acceptance of subjugation is gained through education. Five years later, in another letter to Suvorin, Chekhov addressed Tolstoy’s view of the peasantry directly: Perhaps because I quit smoking, Tolstoy’s moral stance does not move me any longer. In my heart, I do not empathize with his position, which, of course, is unfair. Peasant blood flows in my veins, and I am not about to be impressed by peasant wholesomeness. From childhood I believed in progress, and could not do otherwise, because the difference between the time they [used to] whip me and the time they stopped was enormous. I was fond of smart people. I loved sensitivity, civility and wit. The fact that some people like to pick at their corns, or that their home-made socks stink, was as insignificant to me as the fact that young ladies have their hair in curlers in the morning. Yet Tolstoy’s philosophy affected me strongly and had me in its power for

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about six or seven years. It was not its basic premises as such, with which I had been familiar before, but, rather, Tolstoy’s way of expressing them, his judiciousness, and, possibly, some kind of hypnotic power of it [that affected me]. Now, however, something in me rises up against it. Prudence and fairness tell me that there is more love for mankind in electricity and steam than in abstinence and vegetarianism. War is evil, and judgement is evil. This, however, does not mean that I must wear shoes made of bark and sleep on a big Russian stove together with a farm hand and his wife, etc.107 The main focus of Chekhov’s reflections is on what he sees as Tolstoy’s distanced and largely aesthetic veneration of the peasantry. Tolstoy’s view from the outside is at odds with Chekhov’s personal and intimate experience of peasant life marked by violence and coarseness, as well as by the absence of civility, sensitivity, and wit. To Chekhov, Tolstoy’s insistence on preserving the peasant way of being “as is” appears to be essentially inhumane. Predictably, Chekhov’s views on the matter are not as easily derived from his fiction. What is certain, however, is that in Chekhov’s stories, the industrious, self-sufficient, and wholesome Russian peasant of Tolstoy’s Yasnaya Polyana essays on education does not exist.108 Nor do Chekhov’s children resemble Tolstoy’s preternaturally gifted peasant students or Ushinsky’s insipid creations. As I show below, for Chekhov’s child characters, including his peasant children, agency gained through knowledge is of paramount importance. Like Tolstoy’s and Aksakov’s fictional protagonists, Chekhov’s children learn through close observation, emotionally charged interactions with others, and creative work. As in the writings by his literary fathers, the child in Chekhov is always the primary subject of learning, guided by what is essential for him to learn at any given moment and resisting all the while any impediments placed by others on his path to understanding.

Introduction

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3 The Child Examined: Pedagogical Psychology

The child is a tourist in a foreign land, lost among people who do not understand him and are unable to show him the way. I.A. Sikorsky

The call for humanization through education gave rise to the Russian field of child studies aimed at uniting, and educating, all parties engaged in pedagogical matters. Recording the child’s developmental progression within the family became a widespread practice in which the experts participated as much as ordinary parents. Mothers’ diaries focused on the early stages of development of children of either gender and for the subsequent education of girls. In this literature, fathers were often viewed as a living example for the sons after the age of infancy.1 Medicine, pedagogy, and psychology worked together to create the independent discipline of “pedagogical psychology” whose investigation of the child’s physiological and psychological makeup was based on observation, recording of data, and experiment.2 The full-scale introduction of experiment as an essential tool for the study of children and the “medicalization” of education do not occur until the 1890s, yet the underlying idea of the enormous impact that education could have on improving the human capital of the nation was already part and parcel of the postreform educational outlook.3 As in previous chapters, I look at the field with a focus on the ideas of immediate relevance to Chekhov’s depiction of childhood. These include various positions on children’s emotions and the workings of their senses: on the emergence of speech and the development of cognition; imagination, esthetics, ethics, creativity, and sexuality in children; socialization in

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the family and at play; as well as children’s gender differences and agerelated development. As in my discussion of the literary canon and of the debates on education, the temporal parameters of my investigation are limited to the period that begins shortly before the Great Reforms and ends in 1888, prior to the publication of The Steppe, Chekhov’s final narrative on childhood. TEACHER TEACH THYSELF : THE MOVEMENT

It has been argued that child-centred educational theory is but a series of footnotes to Rousseau.4 The enormous impact of Ushinsky’s theoretical and practical work on Russian education can be described in similar terms. Pirogov’s charge to teachers was to raise the child as a true human being (chelovek). Ushinsky’s instruction was to study the child comprehensively first. As we have seen, Ushinsky’s Pedagogical Anthropology offered its readers an exhaustive digest of the current knowledge on child psychology, physiology, and development, the endeavour based on Ushinsky’s belief that true education had to be based on science. Ushinsky’s primer, The Native Word, included a detailed guide to the goals and practices of early childhood education for teachers and parents. In his writings, Ushinsky urged for a more wide-ranging and thorough teacher training and insisted on involving the family in the educational process. Further, he called for the creation of a vibrant and collaborative environment where the exchange of ideas on educational matters across various disciplines would be possible. The first steps in the implementation of Ushinsky’s program on educating the public about education were taken by Ushinsky himself. The Journal of the Ministry of Education, Russia’s sole state periodical on education of the mid-1850s, changed its mission under the editorship of K.D. Ushinsky (1860–61) to a purely pedagogical one of disseminating “a variety of pedagogical information in order to facilitate positive social awareness of public education,” the effort in which privately funded periodicals eagerly participated as well.5 The latter concentrated in the two capitals and included a number of publications that offered a variety of pedagogical information to parents, teachers, publishers, and administrators. The Education Journal edited by A.A. Chumikov was designed both for parents and teachers.6 The contributors included such important educators as I.I. Paulson, P.G. Redkin, Redkin’s former student Ushinsky, G.M.

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Veselovskii, R.V. Orbinskii, as well as the radical critic N.A. Dobroliubov and the writer N.G. Pomialovskii. A prominent educator and active proponent of education for women, N.A. Vyshnegradskii edited the Russian Pedagogical Herald whose primary focus was on women’s education.7 The Navy Miscellany published a variety of important articles on education, including Pirogov’s seminal article on humanization.8 N.Kh. Vessel’, together with Paulson, established and edited The Educator intended “for teachers, parents, and all those who want to be involved in education.”9 The Governess offered articles on early childhood rearing and pedagogy.10 Pedagogical Miscellany, the official periodical of the army ministry’s Department of Education, was created in response to the reforms in the military.11 Under the editorship of the ubiquitous Vessel’, and later (1883) A.N. Ostrogorskii, the journal printed articles on the most pertinent issues of pedagogy, including Ushinsky’s path-breaking work. The journal’s editorial board included a score of progressive educators and psychologists of education, such as N.F. Bunakov, V.I. Vodovozov, Ia.G. Gurevich, M.I. Demkov, P.F. Kapterev, P.F. Lesgaft, L.N. Modzalevskii, and D.D. Semenov. The Kindergarten, under the editorship of A.S. Simonovich and her husband, physician Ia. M. Simonovich, published articles on preschool education and newly formed kindergartens.12 The Peasant School ostensibly aimed at the zemstvo teachers, was in fact quite broad in its thematic reach, particularly in its various supplements.13 The supplements featured original articles on practical pedagogical issues and educational theory, as well as book reviews.14 Bunakov, Vodovozov, Kapterev, Modzalevskii, Semenov, D.I. Tikhomirov, and E.N. Vodovozova all served on the editorial board. “Thick” journals, such as, for example, The Contemporary and Notes of the Fatherland participated in the discussion of educational matters as well. Tolstoy’s Yasnaya Polyana was the sole provincial journal on education at the time. The profusion of periodicals on education immediately preceding and following the Great Reforms insured a virtually instant and regular transmission of a broad variety of pedagogical knowledge both to the professionals and the general public. Equally extensive in their reach and wide-ranging in their emphasis were the pedagogical periodicals that began their life in the 1870s. These included Family and School founded by the writers E.A. Apreleva and Iu. Simashko and addressed to parents and children.15 The editorial board of The Pedagogical Bulletin included such renowned pedagogues as A.N. Ostrogorskii, V.P. Ostrogorskii, V.P. Borodin, D.I. Tikhomirov, and E.N. Tikhomirova.16 The primary interest of the publication was in provid-

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ing educational materials for children, including fiction. The journal also regularly published articles on rearing in the family and bibliographies of literature for children. School Life, edited by the progressive educator N.P. Stolpianskii, offered an assortment of articles on educational practices, including memoirs by village teachers, pieces on the history of pedagogy, and discussions of various school subjects.17 Women’s Education, edited by V.D. Sipovskii, devoted its pages to women’s education but also included a wide variety of articles on teaching methodology and educational psychology.18 This was the publication where Kapterev published a great number of his early articles on educational psychology. Other prominent educators, such as Sipovskii, Semenov, A.N. Ostrogorksii, A.Ia. Ostrogorskii, V.P. Ostrogorskii, E.P. Sveshnikova, L. Chernova, and M.K. Tsebrikova, wrote for the journal as well. Education and Instruction, formerly known as The Kindergarten and edited by E.A. Sysoeva-Al’medingen, was notable for its innovative combination of articles on pedagogical theory and its anthologies of texts for children.19 In 1882, the magazine’s content was separated. Reading material for children began to be published in The Fount,20 while articles on pedagogy remained the primary focus of Education and Instruction with Kapterev as one of its most frequent contributors. The 1870s also saw the publication of the first periodical that included bibliographical material on educational theory, The Pedagogical Museum,21 as well as the first pedagogical newspaper, The Pedagogical Record, a supplement to the journal Family and School.22 The theories debated in pedagogical periodicals informed discussions on parenting and schooling, as well as the choice of material for reading, in publications specifically designed for children. These included The Snowdrop where such writers as Turgenev, Goncharov, A.N. Maikov, D.V. Grigorovich, and M. Rostovskaia published their work for children.23 The Dawn was a magazine for adolescent girls that also published articles on women’s education.24 Rostovskaia’s own Family Nights was designed for preschoolers and school-age children and included a section for family reading.25 Children’s Literature, founded by A.N. Ostrogorskii and V.P. Ostrogorskii, was well illustrated and notable for its attention to literature, history, and ethnography, biographical accounts of famous people, travel, music, and games (charades, math problems, and riddles).26 Chekhov’s story “Belolobyi” was first published in Children’s Literature. Similarly diverse in its content was M.O. Wolf’s lavishly illustrated Heart to Heart whose contributors included such writers as L. Charskaia, K. Lukashevich, Sofia Soboleva, and Chekhov’s friend T. Shchepkina-Kupernik.27

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T.P. Passek’s Little Toy for preschool children published contemporary Russian authors and featured fairy tales, stories, poetry, biography, short sketches about nature, and games.28 The section “For Little Ones” (“Dlia maliutok”) was printed in large script. One of the period’s best publications for children, P. Berg’s Children’s Leisure, appeared in 1881. Chekhov’s brother Mikhail and his friend M.V. Kiseleva both contributed to the periodical.29 Sysoeva’s The Fount was notable for the quality of its material for reading.30 Most educators, physicians, writers, journalists, and publishers engaged in an effort to shape their young readers’ hearts and minds, regularly contributed to the publications that dealt with educational theory and practice as well. Frequently, the “purely” pedagogical magazines and the periodicals ostensibly designed for children were in fact hybrid entities whose pages incorporated both content designed for children and articles on pedagogy. An important feature of some child-oriented periodicals was the inclusion of correspondence among editors, writers, and their young and adult readers. Like the journals’ editors and contributors, children and their parents could see themselves as rightful participants in the ongoing conversation about the future of Russian education.31 V.I. Mezhov’s bibliography of writings on education offers direct testimony to the depth and scope of the sociopedagogical endeavour in the reform period. The bibliography of publications for 1859–64 is 428 pages long and contains 4,688 citations;32 the volume for 1866–72 numbers 629 pages and contains 7,615 citations.33 Significantly, the second book is dedicated to “those fifteen members of the St Petersburg Pedagogical Society, who, upon F.N. Mednikov’s request, agreed to compile a full bibliography of Russian pedagogical literature.” The ideas advanced in journals were often vetted in informal and formal meetings of a variety of volunteer groups and associations active in the movement. Mezhov’s acknowledgment in the dedication testifies to the crucial importance of such groups for the development of child studies in Russia. Built on a similar pattern, the associations shared in their goal of spreading the word on education to the general public. The core group of activists who published in the journals and participated in these associations were linked by their interests and convictions, friendships, and often by familial ties. The St Petersburg Pedagogical Society of Mezhov’s dedication began its life in the late 1850s as an informal gathering of educators and publishers.34 The society was formally constituted in January of 1860 under the name of The Pedagogical Assembly with Redkin as the chair.35 The issues debated in the meetings of the assembly included such topics as the

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content and organization of the instructional process, the pros and cons of classical and vocational education, and new developments in pedagogical theory. The group was also concerned with women’s education and child rearing in the family, as well as with textbooks and instructional materials for teaching. In 1869, the assembly was renamed the St Petersburg Pedagogical Society. At the height of its involvement in education, the society numbered 500 active members and, in addition to regular meetings, was actively engaged in publishing, courses for teachers, pedagogical conferences, and exhibits. Besides Redkin, Vessel’, and Ushinsky, important contributors to the work of the society included such prominent educators as V.I. Vodovozov, N.A. Vyshnegradskii, V.Ia. Stoiunin, Paulson, and Kapterev. In 1889, P.G. Vinogradov established the Moscow branch of the society, which operated on the same pattern as its St Petersburg cousin and drew attention to similar issues. Other branches of the society appeared later throughout the country. The St Petersburg Pedagogical Society published its proceedings in the Pedagogical Chronicle.36 Many of the St Petersburg Pedagogical Society’s members were also involved in the work of the St Petersburg’s Froebel Society and of the St Petersburg Parents Circle.37 Founded in St Petersburg in 1871, the Froebel Society distinguished itself by focusing exclusively on public and private preschool education. At the centre of the society’s attention were family education, organization, and promotion of kindergartens and kindergarten teacher training. Redkin served as the first chair of the society; its founding members included Paulson and K.K. Grot, as well as a renowned pediatrician K.A. Rauchfus. Kapterev was one of the society’s active participants. A voluntary association of parents, doctors, educators, and psychologists, the St Petersburg Parents Circle was founded by Kapterev and began its informal sessions in 1884. According to an article published a year later, the decision to form the circle and meet regularly was prompted by the parents’ desire to educate themselves about pedagogical issues. As presented by the article’s anonymous author (most likely Kapterev), in their search for knowledge the parents wanted to be guided by experts (doctors and pedagogues). The experts were called upon to evaluate the parents’ observations of their own preschool children and offer their opinions and suggestions for improvement “based on scientific principles.”38 In 1888, the group organized itself more formally as a subsection of the St Petersburg Pedagogical Museum that operated under the auspices of the Ministry of War’s Department of Education. In the 1880s to 1900s, the Pedagogical Museum (with Vessel’ as one of its founders)

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became an important centre of pedagogical innovation in Russia, devoted to propagandizing educational practices based on scientific advances in pedagogy. The circle’s initial focus was on early childhood education, child development, and child rearing in the family. Like other such organizations, in addition to presentations and discussions by medical doctors, educators, philosophers, publishers, and parents, the group also promoted courses for teachers, exhibitions, and charitable work. The proceedings of the circle appeared in a number of publications, such as Education and Instruction, Women’s Education, and The Russian School.39 From 1898 to 1910, the proceedings were published in Kapterev’s Encyclopedia of Family Education and Instruction.40 The variety of periodicals, working groups, and actors involved in child studies of the period attests to the heterogeneity and interdisciplinary breadth of the movement. Child psychology was just one, albeit important, component in a collective effort to raise children right. THE EXPERTS : CHILD PSYCHOLOGY IN THE AGE OF HUMANIZATION

In his 1910 remarks on the state of child psychology in Russia, a wellregarded educational psychologist N.F. Rumiantsev, known primarily for his work on sex education, acknowledged that the field was still in the process of evolving.41 In Rumiantsev’s opinion, up until the middle of the nineteenth century, Russian psychology had been the “handmaiden of philosophy,” focusing on the origins and workings of the human psyche in abstract and treating the child as a little adult. The important lessons learned since included the acknowledgment of the distinctiveness of childhood, the recognition of the importance of education in raising a worthy human being, the significance of parental knowledge about the child’s progression into adulthood, and of the child’s individuality. Educators came to the conclusion that the primary task of pedagogy was the development and strengthening of the child’s already present abilities rather than the transmission of academic knowledge. This task could only be accomplished with the help of psychology – by means of careful observation and properly designed study of the child. In Rumiantsev’s description, child psychology of his time is educational psychology. Rumiantsev observes that Russian educators had previously lacked sufficient knowledge about the intimate connection between psychic phenomena and physiology. Nor did they have the necessary apparatus to

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systematize their observations of children. The situation changed in the second half of the century, primarily because of the advances made in the areas of brain study, neurophysiology, embryology, and evolutionary theory. Significant gains were also made in crafting the methodology for the study of child behaviour. Russian psychology and pedagogy of the period owed a great deal, in Rumiantsev’s opinion, to Charles Darwin’s work on evolution and to Ernst Haeckel’s writings on the interdependence of psychology and physiology. Rumiantsev draws particular attention to the impact of Haeckel’s recapitulation theory (“ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”) on Russian educators; in their understanding of Haeckel’s theory, a child’s individual development mirrored a society’s progression from the primitive to the civilized. Further, Rumiantsev points to Berthold Sigismund’s study The Child and the World, published in the Russian translation in 1866;42 Adolf Kussmaul’s The Study of the Inner Life of Newly Born Children (1859);43 and particularly to William Preyer’s The Soul of a Child (1881) as equally important for the developing field of child psychology in Russia.44 Finally, Rumiantsev considers the contributions by the psychiatrist Sikorsky on early childhood, Kapterev’s on child psychology, and Lesgaft’s work on family education and personality types as representative of the breakthrough that occurs in Russia’s child study in the 1870s and 1880s.45 Today’s scholars concur with Rumiantsev’s observation of a qualitative shift in the field in the mid-nineteenth century. In pedagogical writings of the time, the focus of attention moved decisively from surface descriptions of instructional interactions to the processes underlying learning. Russian educators began to pay much more attention to children’s developmental stages, individuality, and their emotional and mental predispositions.46 Ushinsky’s contribution, unacknowledged in Ruminatsev’s survey and only briefly mentioned in his Survey of Literature on Childhood Psychology (1910), must be recognized as crucial to this transformation.47 Informed by Ushinsky’s insights, child psychology of the reform period was no longer a “handmaiden of philosophy,” but a part of the interdisciplinary field united by its focus on the child’s psychophysical organization, developmental progression, heredity, as well as on the child’s environment and its impact. Further, self-education by the theoreticians and practitioners of pedagogy, encouraged by Ushinsky, had been well under way in the late 1850s and early 1860s. The chief orientation of child psychology toward rearing and schooling was also a part of Ushinsky’s legacy. While not labelled as such until after the appearance of Kapterev’s eponymous work in 1876, the field was pedagogical psychology already in Ushinsky’s time.

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In order to teach, educators had a lot to learn. If, in Sikorsky’s words, the child was a tourist in a foreign land, lost among people who did not understand him, then the pedagogue’s primary goal was to master the child’s “language” and become his helpful interpreter. For this purpose, psychologists of the period focused first on early childhood development, particularly on the emergence of speech and cognition. In this area, the scholars’ attention was drawn to the areas of emotion, imagination, and will, as well as to the formation of the child’s character. After the appearance of Ushinsky’s Pedagogical Anthropology, the view of childhood as a biosocial condition subject to continuous change was established and accepted by the majority of educators, including educational psychologists. Within this general understanding of maturation, various specific aspects of child development found their focused articulation in the works of N.Kh. Vessel’, Sikorsky, Lesgaft, Maria Manasseina, and Kapterev. Ushinsky’s view that proper education had to be founded on science was shared by the scholars. The emergent science’s methodology was based on retrospection and careful observation of children. The legitimacy of pedagogical psychology as a branch of natural sciences hinged on its knowledge and appropriation of the discoveries made by physiology. Consequently, scholars acquainted themselves with writings by prominent natural scientists cited in Ushinsky’s Pedagogical Anthropology, such as, for example, those by Alfred Brehm, Karl Friedrich Burdach, Rudolph Virchow, Karl Hasse, Ludimar Hermann, Hermann Helmholtz, Carl Ludwig, Johannes Müller, Gustav Fechner, and Ivan Sechenov. In their investigation of the child’s cognitive architecture, and in addition to contributions by Haeckel and Darwin mentioned in Rumiantsev’s survey, Russian psychologists of the period relied a great deal on the associationist theories of learning, thinking, and mental structures advanced by John Locke, Rousseau, David Hartley, J.F. Herbart, Herbert Spencer, Alexander Bain, John Stuart Mill, F.E. Beneke, and Wilhelm Wundt – all cited first in Ushinsky’s Pedagogical Anthropology as well.48 In their search for a definitive approach to education, Russian psychologists were eager to learn from the best. LEARNING FROM THE BEST : VESSEL’ ON EDUCATION

Ushinsky’s contemporary and an ardent proponent of child studies, Vessel’ was also a frequent contributor to the body of literature on pedagog-

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ical psychology. Applied Psychology of Education and Instruction (1865), regularly attributed to Vessel’, is in fact an amplified rendering of J.G. Dressler’s Beneke oder die Seelenlehre als Naturwissenschaft (1840), Dressler’s edited compilation of Beneke’s ideas.49 The Handbook on Teaching in General Education (1871–72), also frequently attributed to Vessel’, is a straightforward translation of Beneke’s two volumes: Lehrbuch der Psychologic als Naturwissenschaft (1845) and Pragmatische Psychologie: oder Seelenlehre in der Anwendung auf das Leben (1850).50 Applied Psychology focuses primarily on the principles underlying the child’s physical and psychic development. A newborn is a man in potential, a being whose development is continuous and never complete.51 The child’s innate abilities to perceive and his physical environment are the two essential preconditions for growth. As for Ushinsky and those who followed him, early childhood education was regarded by Vessel’ as crucial.52 While acknowledging variations in psychic development based on the child’s individual characteristics, Vessel’ establishes, in accordance with Beneke’s and Dressler’s ideas, certain general commonalities of the developmental process. In his description, psychology and physiology are interdependent. Psychic development is not a passive accommodation of stimuli but an active process of engagement with the outside world.53 The first stage of mental development is characterized by the gradual perfection of the faculties of perception, an incremental accumulation of concepts, as well as the child’s increasing ability to operate with these concepts. A qualitative jump in the child’s mental development occurs with the formation of concepts, symbolic thinking, and the emergence of speech. For Vessel’, development is predicated on the interaction of subjective (inborn) qualities and objective (external) phenomena. Natural inclinations and upbringing, working together, determine an individual’s psychological profile. Even if an infant is only a man in potential, akin in his mental deficiencies to primitive societies, Vessel’s observations of the shape of a Caucasian infant’s skull lead him to claim the exceptionality of that child’s race. For Vessel’, it was the race “most capable of development and education, the one whose mission is to rule the world.”54 Notably, a similarly value-charged distinction is made about gender differences. In the opinion of Vessel’, the development of males proceeds much further than that of females. Men have been a part of all of the greatest events in human history. The discoveries of new truths and new laws were all made by men and will most likely continue to be made by men. Women’s highest calling, on the other hand, is “to preserve and nurture her child’s spirit, [for]

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she is the one responsible for the direction of the child’s development in the future.”55 Vessel’ then applies his understanding of the child’s psychic life to teaching. For the psychologist, the pedagogical impact is dependent on the differences between formal schooling and rearing. If schooling is directed at the child’s intellect, rearing deals with emotions and desires. The parameters of the pedagogical impact are different as well. Schooling has limits imposed by the material studied, while rearing is limitless and continuous. Both serve to insure the harmonious development of the child’s abilities and inclinations.56 Like Belinsky, Pirogov and Ushinsky, Vessel’ insists on the child’s active participation in the learning process. The educator’s objective is to teach the child how to learn. The success of the endeavour depends on the educator’s awareness of the child’s emotional readiness, gauged through observation. The ultimate goal of rearing and formal education is to promote character building, willpower, and self-knowledge.57 DR SIKORSKY ON THE HYGIENE OF PSYCHIC LIFE

A similar understanding of the developmental process and of the educator’s goals informs the work of Sikorsky, primarily known in the field at the time for his writings on early childhood. After reading Preyer’s The Soul of the Child (1882), Sikorsky embarked on his own influential investigation of early childhood, published as Early Childhood Education (1884).58 Sikorsky’s overarching intention was to identify basic laws of child development and to establish the developmental norm that would allow for a scientifically based assessment of rearing and schooling. For this purpose, Sikorsky relied on observations of his own children, the children in the St Petersburg Orphanage, and those he saw at the Nadezhdin Maternity Home. According to Sikorsky’s findings, the child’s development occurs in clearly demarcated stages. The period of first childhood lasts from birth to the age of seven. Like Vessel’, Sikorsky considered the first year of life to be crucial for later development and offered detailed descriptions of the changes that occur in the child’s body and psyche from month to month.59 As stated by the scholar, in first childhood, the child masters the use of his faculties of perception, learns how to walk and talk. The development of speech has an enormous significance for psychic development, for

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“[t]he word is a material shell of thought, and with words, the child quickly moves from subject-oriented thinking to symbolic thinking.”60 Interactions with others – communication and socialization – are made considerably easier with the emergence of speech, all facilitating the child’s further development. At this time, toddlers become aware of their own psychic processes, the ability to separate themselves from external objects, and control their actions. The child’s emotional development is particularly pronounced in the second year of life. There are observable differences in the way individual children experience and exhibit emotions. Crying as an indicator of a negative emotion is universal. Children can also exhibit anger, sadness, and fear that could be the result of illness, neglect, conditions at birth, or heredity.61 Like Preyer before him, Sikorsky sees the child’s psychic activity manifesting itself in emotions. Since emotion serves as the conduit and stimulator of psychic development, the first task of the “hygiene of upbringing” is to work on the child’s emotional sphere.62 The family’s involvement in this effort is all-important, but the mother’s role in shaping the child’s emotional sphere is crucial. Sikorsky regarded women as having a natural predisposition for connecting with the child on the emotional level, since “a woman’s neuropsychic structure is more fully developed in the area of emotions than that of a man.” Therefore, a child’s mother is his “emotional mentor” par excellence.63 This distinction, according to Sikorsky, manifests itself most strongly in motherhood.64 Sikorsky is in full agreement with Pirogov’s belief that “when she tends to her child’s in his crib, oversees his first games, teaches him his first words, a woman becomes the primary architect of her society.”65 By taking care of the child’s needs and breastfeeding him in infancy, the mother is engaged in a matter of enormous pedagogical significance. Therefore, one of Russia’s crucial educational tasks is the education of a future mother.66 Sikorsky considers the function of the will as one of the key components of personhood and the basis of the child’s future character.67 Children’s need for freedom and independence must be recognized. Yet, the education of the faculty of the will is vital, and positive results can be achieved by firm guidance, gentle persuasion, explanation, and example. Previously acknowledged by Ushinsky as crucially important for the child’s psychophysical development,68 for Sikorsky games serve as a perfect setting for the development of the will because they require disciplined thinking (attention), accommodation of the needs of others, and restraint. Yet in Sikorsky’s opinion, games in early childhood pri-

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marily constitute intellectual growth and are, therefore, devoid of any emotional foundation.69 Based on the assumption that play involves purely intellectual tasks, Sikorsky divides children’s games in early childhood into three different groups. The first group consists of games that involve the examination of objects for similarities and differences. The second unites games that serve to develop self-awareness and the notion of separateness of self from others. This group also includes games that help bring about the child’s understanding of causality; i.e. by manipulating objects, the child can observe the results of his actions. The last group comprises games that refine the child’s ability to reproduce their impressions and acquired notions, such as playing with dolls, the game of hide and seek, immersing objects in water. In these games, the result is anticipated and the enjoyment of the game has to do with the verification of the already present understanding.70 When describing children’s games in the third group, Sikorsky addresses the issue of gender differences. In the psychologist’s opinion, early on, boys exhibit a certain independence of spirit and much more advanced imagination and creativity than girls. Girls do not have the same aptitude for the reproduction of impressions and notions as boys, and in order to strengthen this ability, girls have to work harder. In addition, the presence of what he identifies as a relatively higher level of imagination and creativity in boys’ games, leads Sikorsky to believe that boys are more predisposed to abstract thinking than girls, the fact that, in his view, can be already observed in the second year of life. Like Preyer, Sikorsky notes that girls acquire speech earlier than boys and “surpass boys in the subtlety of their emotions,” yet most exhibit a lesser capacity for abstract thinking and logic.71 Sikorsky’s other important contribution to the field was his 1879 experimental study of mental fatigue, the first of its kind in Russia. Sikorsky’s subsequent experiments confirmed his initial findings of a negative psychophysical impact of mental fatigue on students.72 Regarded as a specific biological state, fatigue was deemed by Sikorsky to be the result of an extreme concentration of attention leading to harmful expenditures of psychophysical energy. The condition’s direct psychic manifestation was regression (the predominance of mechanical associations over the recently acquired ones). In terms of physiology, Sikorsky observed the weakening of coordination, laboured respiration, increased pulse rate, heightened temperature, as well as palpitations in his subjects.73

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For Sikorsky, the child’s future character and personality depend more on inborn qualities rather than on his milieu.74 When discussing pedagogically “difficult” students, Sikorsky finds the source of such children’s psychopathology in their parents’ health and habits. The scholar attributes the offspring’s psychophysical degeneration to several possible causes, such as the parents’ advanced age or their reproductive immaturity at conception, psychological trauma, mercury treatments, starvation or the struggle for survival, alcoholism, and a mother’s emotional distress in pregnancy. In accordance with Morel’s ideas, whose work Sikorsky quotes extensively, the degeneration triggered by the above conditions can be passed on to the next generation.75 In order to remedy the state of affairs where entire families die out because of heredity, and the attendant degeneration, educators must focus on perfecting human nature, the work that constitutes their greatest anthropological challenge.76 This task, according to Sikorsky, can be accomplished only with the help of proper rearing/education and the “hygiene of psychic life.” Sikorsky’s phrase in this context gestures to the scholarly status of pedagogical psychology (hygiene as a medical science) but also evokes the idea of hygiene as a means of preventing disease and maintaining the nation’s health (hygiene as a social practice). Both understandings are applied to educational psychology in order to formulate the aims of the science in biomedical and social terms. The expression articulates Sikorsky’s view of educational psychologists as social healers whose focused efforts must be directed toward shaping and improving the young generation and, thereby, cleansing and curing Sikorsky’s society of its ills.77 Sikorsky’s thoughts on degeneration and on the superiority of the white race were more fully developed in his later work.78 THE JOYS AND PERILS OF CHILDHOOD : KAPTEREV

Kapterev’s writings on various aspects of child development, published in the 1870s and 1880s, elaborate on the ideas of his predecessors and contemporaries in the movement. Kapterev’s insights, described in his numerous early articles, inform his Pedagogical Psychology (1876), as well as his later work. Like others in the field, in his investigation of the child’s body and mind, Kapterev is guided by educational concerns, since, in his words, “pedagogy without physiology and psychology is unthinkable.”79 For Kapterev, education in the family and in school is a “deliberate and systematic guidance/shaping (vozdeistvie) of children by the adults.”80 The

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goal of education is to assist the child in developing a sound character, a combination of mental and ethical traits whose manifestations include persistence, self-restraint, and consistency in actions. Kapterev’s educational ideal is a fully developed individual, i.e. socially aware, compassionate, and respectful of himself and others. This individual is also culturally proactive, independent, responsible, and fair.81 In order to succeed in the overarching educational goal of producing fully developed individuals, the educator must first acquaint himself with the child’s psychic life, for “without this knowledge, education is impossible.”82 Accordingly, Kapterev’s work addresses a variety of developmental markers he considered to be typical for different stages of maturation. Kapterev wrote about the preverbal child, the acquisition of speech, children’s imagination, creativity, their intellectual abilities and moral sense.83 He also drew attention to the emotions and behaviours that ostensibly deviated from the perceived norm, writing about children’s fears,84 lying,85 laziness,86 stubbornness,87 and sorrows.88 Like the writings by Sikorsky and Vessel’, Kapterev’s work aimed to address practical pedagogical concerns while simultaneously emphasizing the scholarly foundations of an expert’s position on the child, the educator, and the educational process. As others before him, Kapterev saw maturation as a continuous and gradual psychophysical progression. He observed that development can occur at a steady pace, speed up, slow down or halt altogether, the latter signalling pathology that had to be addressed by the educational psychologist.89 Attention to early childhood was vital because the foundations of an individual’s psyche were established in that period. Consequently, like Sikorsky, Kapterev insisted on studying the child in the first days, weeks, and years of his life.90 Early development of mental agency (samodeiatel’nost’), i.e. the inculcation of skills for and interest in independent intellectual work, was, for him, as for Ushinsky, instrumental in developing the child’s character. External impressions offer stimuli for the child’s own activity whose impact on the world is readily observable by the child. Thus, the essential work of education is in fact accomplished by the child himself, and it is the education of the self that should constitute the educator’s primary area of concern and active attention.91 The educator must encourage the child’s search for answers, as well as his efforts to make generalizations and arrive at conclusions. The educator must also pay attention to the improvement of the child’s memory, the workings of his imagination, his aesthetic abilities, as well as to his emotions and character.92 Overall, those

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engaged in teaching must recognize the immeasurable value of childhood for the future adult, as well as the crucial significance and uniqueness of each period of growth. In Kapterev’s view, language acquisition represents the key stage in the child’s developmental progression. Language ability is innate, yet both the organs of articulation and the child’s psychic arsenal need to be sufficiently developed for the production of speech.93 Children work on their linguistic competency initially on their own, then study the speech of others.94 The impulse for the development of language comes from the child’s social interactions, his desire to be understood by others.95 The child is born with a predilection for generalization and is able to form notions very early on, yet thinking conceptually, the ability to differentiate and integrate notions, could only be accomplished in speech. Gestures and facial expressions are a part of the child’s communicative system and are never absent. However, in order to produce speech, the child has to attain the ability to identify distinctive features and qualities of objects and then associate those with words. In this process, children pay attention to what is important to them, what is seen often, and what is readily perceived by the senses. Initially, emotions and desires predominate over cognitive activity. An individual is at first a desiring and feeling being, and only then a cognitive one (poznaiushchee).96 The construction of language is based on associative contiguity: the child sees an object and hears a word, observes similarity in objects associated with the word, then proceeds to identify the particularities of similar objects. Thus, it is “impossible to see language as something separate from thought.”97 Moreover, like thought, language is not something fixed and unchanging but always evolving. Initially, the “child struggles against the existing forms of language, changes, reworks them and uses them in his own way.”98 Only later does he move into the sphere of normative speech, and his linguistic creativity wanes until he reaches adulthood. The educator’s task is to insure that language development is harmonious and gradual, focusing on the child’s communication with others, particularly in play. Play in childhood is the primary locus for the development of human psyche. Games enhance and perfect children’s innate traits, help them assess their experiences, satisfy social needs, and refine their ability to function in social situations. Thus, play, both solitary and with peers, is a “vital school for the development of cognition, as well as a prerequisite for a comprehensive development of an individual.”99 The child’s active participation in games develops the faculty of attention, fosters self-reliance and cooperation with others, curbs wilful behaviour, and builds character.100

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Kapterev rejects Sikorsky’s view of games as an exclusively intellectual activity. For Kapterev, any activity, be it that of an adult or a child, is inseparable from emotion. In his view, children’s games answer all of the child’s psychobiological needs – physical, mental, and emotional. At different ages, and in children of different dispositions, certain needs might predominate. Kapterev faults both Perez and Sikorsky for their inattention to the changes that occur in children’s games as they mature.101 Games also provide an opportunity for the development of imagination and creativity in children. In Kapterev’s opinion, in children, the faculties of memory, imagination, and creativity are closely connected.102 Early childhood is a period of active and enjoyable replication of actions and impressions, as well as of their retention in memory.103 The child’s memory, however, is recreative rather than creative. Only adults are able to assimilate and master (usvoit’) the impressions retained in memory. A preverbal child does not yet know how to generalize, operating with notions (particulars) rather than concepts (essentials) and, therefore, is incapable of categorization. The authentically creative process demands distilling of the remembered images and representation of those in a new form. In early childhood, children are yet unable to accomplish this work because their psychic apparatus is still underdeveloped. Creative imagination is likewise absent in young children and for the same basic reason. In order to engage creative imagination, an individual has to understand the difference between what is real and what is not, as well as between what is possible or impossible. Yet for a young child, dreams and reality are indistinguishable; what is heard or read are likewise believed to be true. For Kapterev, the games of early childhood are devoid of true creative imagination as well, characterized as they are largely by replication and imitation of notions and actions.104 The child is a “person of the fact” (chelovek fakta). Thus, “it is not a welldeveloped imagination but the dearth of knowledge, the weakness of the intellect, [and] the inability to differentiate what is possible from what is not that account for the child’s fascination with fairy tales.”105 Other reasons for children’s love of fairy tales, in Kapterev’s view, are the rudimentary plots and reductive motivations for the protagonists’ actions in such narratives. Like primitive people, the child responds to the tales’ simple emotions and their animism. The impetus to animate inanimate objects stems from the child’s ignorance of the distinction. To proceed to the next stage of cognitive development, the child has to be able to separate himself from the external

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world, as well as become aware of the difference between what is live and not alive. Kapterev acknowledges the presence of a certain creative element in the child’s daydreams, sleep, and in his improvisations. In early childhood, however, children are engaged in a mechanical combining of acquired notions rather than in true creative activity characterized by conscious manipulation of images. For Kapterev, the child’s makeup is complex and childhood far from idyllic.106 In his discussion of the essential nature of children, Kapterev rejects John Locke’s idea of the child as tabula rasa, questions Rousseau’s and Tolstoy’s notion of children’s innate perfection, and dismisses the distressing (tiagostnoe) view that all men are born in sin and are, therefore, essentially corrupt. Children possess qualities that are intrinsic to their biological essence. The child’s nature is also reliant on his ancestors’ culturally acquired traits passed on to the next generation. Further, children are shaped by their own culture whose influence, as Kapterev asserts, can manifest itself in heightened impressionability, physical afflictions, and “unnatural” behaviours that could lead to degeneration. In addition, the child’s nature is dependent on inherited predilections for physical maladies and psychic deficits. Finally, it is also subject to continuous change and is uniquely distinctive in each developmental period. In Kapterev’s opinion, children are as far from harmony as are the adults. Like an adult, a child can passionately give in to anger, envy, revenge, unrestrained joy or sadness. It is only the intensity of the child’s emotions that distinguishes the child from the adult. The notion of a blissful childhood is based on the premise that dark sides of life are unknown to children and that, unlike adults, they can enjoy their environment unimpeded by emotional disturbances. Yet the child’s physical fragility, the psychic demands associated with growth, and the child’s environment can generate strong negative emotions, as well as physical ailments.107 For example, the experience of fear, based on a perception of danger and combined with a sense of helplessness, is common in childhood. In adults, fear is accompanied by an anticipation of future suffering. Young children cannot project into the future but still experience fear. Situations that occasion fear in children are quite diverse and often do not represent any real danger. Auditory stimuli cause fear more frequently than visual experiences. Fears in children can also be artificially amplified by exposing them to stories about cemeteries, dead people, ghosts, and devils. A powerful unexpected impression can likewise frighten the child. Thus, heredity, environment, and experience combined are responsible for gen-

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erating fear and other negative emotions in young children. In order to mitigate fear, educators must gradually desensitize children to the emotion. Developing and strengthening the child’s intellectual, physical, and emotional powers is another way of combatting fear and other such strong feelings in children. T YPICAL CHILDREN : KAPTEREV VS LESGAFT ON PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILING

Kapterev’s suggestions for educators were based on generally applicable characteristics, but the child’s individuality was fully acknowledged in his writings as well. Nevertheless, like other psychologists of his time, Kapterev attempted to systematize his subjects’ individual traits by grouping those around particular mental and psychological dominants, searching, as it were, for commonalities in manifestations of individuality. Kapterev’s categorization of intellectual abilities was based on his belief that, in contrast to the adult mind, the child’s mind lacked developed abstract thought, higher forms of creativity, and many of the practical mental skills that adults derive from experience. In Kapterev’s view, the child’s mental activity was much closer to the source of all psychic activity – the sensory apparatus – than that of the adult. Therefore, the development of the child’s mind and the differences between intellectual abilities among individual children were predicated on the predominance of a particular organ of perception at certain specific stages.108 Kapterev was equally interested in psychic typology of individual children.109 In his discussion of the issue, Kapterev engages in an illuminating dialogue with another pioneer in the field, the Russian physician and educational psychologist P.F. Lesgaft, the author of an influential work on child psychology, Family Education.110 Lesgaft defined the genre of his 1884 “School Types,” the first part of Family Education, as “an anthropological etude” since, as he acknowledges, the work’s primary purpose was to generate discussion and further thought, rather than provide definitive answers.111 In his introduction to Family Education, Lesgaft summarizes his psychopedagogical approach to child development, reiterating in the process a number of positions adopted by his contemporaries in the field. Thus, Lesgaft affirms the significance of understanding child psychology for educators, spends some time on sketching the neurophysical underpinnings of sensations, and discusses the child’s intellect and emotions. Lesgaft also draws attention to the impact of upbringing and formal instruction on school age children.112

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Lesgaft’s division of children into psychological types is based on his observations of children’s interactions with peers and adults. Lesgaft directly connects the child’s dominant psychological traits with upbringing in the family, anticipates the child’s future development, and suggests possible corrective measures. In studying the child’s intellectual and moral development, Lesgaft is concerned with the child’s learning behaviour, ability to observe, and think independently, as well as with the child’s moral sense and volition.113 Lesgaft’s descriptions of psychological types of children, six in all, are essentially condensed value judgements – short stories that highlight his fictional child’s internalization of his family’s behavioural standards. The hypocritical child (litsemernyi) pretends to be studious but is in fact lazy and manipulative. Such children are raised in families where lying and hypocrisy are the order of the day, where the adults engage in drinking and gambling and are only interested in material gain.114 The conceited child (chestoliubivyi) wants to impress everybody. Interested in accolades rather than in learning, he is highly competitive and prone to exacting revenge on others. His primary goal is superficial brilliance, prestige, and the attainment of power. Such children grow up in families where it is customary to admire them, to consider them to be geniuses and where the idea of being first in everything is nurtured and cultivated. Commonly, parents in such families also encourage unhealthy competitiveness among the siblings.115 The good-natured (dobrodushnyi) child is calm, observant, and interested in learning. Superficial attractiveness does not interest him – he is emotionally open, artless, direct, and honest, if sometimes awkward in his interactions with others. This type of a child cannot tolerate lying and violence. He is compassionate to others, particularly to those who are disadvantaged. He questions the teacher’s intellectual authority and is eager to think about what he learns. Because of their kindheartedness, such children do not actively oppose the wrongs they observe, often retreating into the fantasy world and later on in life becoming “superfluous people.” The good-natured child is raised in families from the peasant class. These are families whose life is tranquil and filled with love and firm kindness toward children.116 The submissive child (miagko-zabityi) is shy, self-conscious, and prone to crying. Such children are quickly bullied by conceited types and defended by kindhearted children. He is always a part of the “herd,” incapable of independent action. Unlike the kindhearted child, the submissive child is uneasy when on his own. He is indifferent to learning and will never do

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more than is asked of him. This child is cold, indifferent, and cowardly. Such children come from family environments where they are habitually coddled (zalaskannyi) and indulged.117 The troubled child, literally “irate and intimidated” (zlostno-zabityi), is reticent, angry, and easily embarrassed. He is also awkward in his movements, suspicious, and intolerant of visible manifestations of affection. He is indifferent to praise or reproaches. When in anger, this child is capable of acting out, destroying objects, and acting in defiance of rules. He steals, engages in wild games, tortures animals, and can become verbally abusive and even physical with teachers. Such children are raised in families where they are prohibited from offering their opinions and where physical violence and verbal abuse are used as disciplinary tools.118 The oppressed child (ugnetennyi) is modest, unassuming, and hard working. He does not like to participate in games and cries easily. Praise or affection are difficult for him to acknowledge and appreciate. He is self-critical and blames himself for everything that goes wrong. His determination and steadfastness are enormous. He is a good and reliable friend, always ready to defend others. He is self-reliant and studious. He is calmly observant and altruistic. The oppressed child is a product of poor working families whose lack of material comforts does not prevent them from creating an atmosphere of affection and support.119 The above typology, according to Lesgaft’s own admission, is highly generalized, yet could potentially help in indicating further areas of research and approaches to child development.120 In considering Lesgaft’s study, Kapterev acknowledges that, in the course of instruction, educators routinely categorize children into different psychological types and that proper classification of psychic inclinations can serve as a vital educational tool.121 Nevertheless, while praising some of Lesgaft’s observations, Kapterev rejects the study’s premise, execution, and conclusions. Kapterev identifies the main focus of Lesgaft’s classification as that of moral development, the approach that prioritizes conscientiousness and truthfulness. In Kapterev’s view, Lesgaft’s typology is arbitrary and, therefore, unconvincing since one cannot define a psychological type based on one aspect of a child’s conduct. For Kapterev, a psychological profile should take into account the entirety of an individual’s psychophysical structure, as well as the tenor of this individual’s interactions with others.122 Yet, the list of his children’s predilections and behaviours, noted in Lesgaft’s analysis, is far from exhaustive, and his inquiry is limited to what Kapterev thinks of as inessentials.123 Finally, Kapterev takes issue with Lesgaft’s attempts to venture into the meta-

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physical areas of falsehood, truth, oppression, and the sublime rather than sticking to the scholarly task of identifying psychological types based on factual evidence.124 For Kapterev, a psychological type must take into account the view of the child’s psychic life as a complex amalgamation of the predominant mental and emotional drives (energiia).125 He divides established approaches to the issue into qualitative and quantitative. Seen from the qualitative point of view, psychological types can manifest themselves as emotional, volitional, or intellectual (chuvstvitel’nye, volevye, umstvennye), the description that emphasizes both the predominant source and the character of psychic expression. The quantitative approach to psychological typology is based on the individual’s reserves of psychic energy and its distribution, the definition that highlights the tempo with which an individual’s psyche operates. From this angle, psychological types can be categorized as apathetic, slow, or fast.126 Kapterev finds it important to particularize the above categories further by considering the individual’s physiological characteristics, the degree of complexity and richness of a person’s psychic life, and his inherited traits. He observes that the psychic life of some is predetermined and difficult to affect (samobytnye), while that of others can be shaped by the subjects’ environment (sdelannye). The latter category is further subdivided into individuals whose shaping is done by others and those who consistently shape themselves.127 Kapterev concludes his remarks on psychological types by acknowledging that any such categorization is reductive by definition and therefore imprecise. Every established type necessarily combines features of other types in its source and expression. For pedagogy, both in broad terms, and in relation to a particular child, the ideal psychological type – and Kapterev’s educational ideal – is a multidimensional individual in whom the body and the mind are harmoniously and beneficially combined.128 Yet the attainment of this goal is challenging for all involved because of the intricacy of the child’s psychophysical nature and of the impact that the child’s environment can exert on maturation. As we have seen, the educators’ writings on the child and for the child engaged with the interdependent issues of the child’s essential nature and potential, his psychic and physical life, and that of the educator’s role in guiding the child’s development at home and in school. For all those involved in child studies, the main actor in children’s early education was the mother, “the principal architect of her society.”

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MOTHER ’ S DUT Y : WOMEN ON UPBRINGING AND EDUCATION

The age that prioritized science in its approach to humanization through education had an ambivalent relationship with a woman as an academic in higher education and particularly in hard sciences.129 The prevalent view of the mother as the cornerstone of a new society generated a call for women’s education. Yet the commonly shared perception of the woman’s innate (heightened) emotionality and of her lesser aptitude for abstract thinking in comparison to men, limited her credentials as an educator, relegating her sphere of influence to the nursery and the home environment. The 1864 editorial in The Journal for Parents and Teachers, revealingly entitled “The Mother’s Mistakes and Essential Qualities,” articulates both the need for mothers’ education and the limits of her pedagogical role. According to the piece, “the vital duty of a mother is to dedicate herself completely to her children, to sacrifice some of her pleasures and diversions for their sake, share their small joys and sorrows, to observe the manifestations of their developing emotions, and vigilantly monitor the slightest expressions of their psychic life.”130 As Andy Byford explains, parents from the educated classes were perceived as “a vital stakeholder” in the child study movement, especially in discussions on infant care and preschool upbringing in the family.131 Nevertheless, because the parent most actively involved in early child rearing was predominantly a woman whose opportunities for education were limited at the time, the legitimacy of a mother’s full participation in the scholarly discourse on the issue was questioned. As a mother, a woman could offer, and was invited to share, raw information on her children’s behaviour. The data could then be checked and adjusted for the mother’s subjectivity, as well as for the faults of her presumed unsophistication and biologically determined lapses in systematic thinking. A small body of male experts and professionals in infant hygiene, preschool pedagogy, and child psychology assumed the role of the guiding authority on the matter.132 In discussions on pedagogy, the main concern appeared to be the enlightenment of mothers by knowledgeable men. Thus, women who engaged in pedagogical psychology were doubly marginalized – because of the general uncertainty about pedagogical psychology’s scholarly status and a shared belief about women’s unsuitability for hard sciences. In the period under study, contributions to pedagogy by women of the educated professional class were, in fact, substantial and reaching far

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beyond the nursery. Women taught, translated important works on education, and engaged in charitable work that promoted educational opportunities for the disadvantaged.133 They eagerly participated in societies and working groups devoted to educational matters. Further, as we have seen, they wrote for and edited periodicals designed for children and also published their work in pedagogical journals. Women’s literary and scholarly output on education was wide-ranging and diverse, both generically and thematically. Writings for children included fiction (short stories, novellas, and full-length novels), poetry, as well as nonfiction sketches on various topics ranging from history to geography. Women who had attended boarding schools (institutki) published memoirs about their experience.134 Fictionalized mother’s diaries appeared, such as, for example, E.I. Konradi’s widely read A Mother’s Confession.135 The Kindergarten’s coeditor A.S. Simonovich kept detailed accounts of her young children’s development and authored articles and a monograph based on her observations.136 Finally, some women also published works on child rearing and education that, like those of male experts, attempted to combine recorded observations of children with conclusions and recommendations based on science. Maria Manasseina, one of the first licensed female physicians in Russia and a pioneer in the field of somnology and biochemistry, was also the first, in her On Children’s Upbringing in the First Years of Life (1870), to cross the boundary of women’s scholarly legitimacy in pedagogical psychology.137 Manasseina’s training as a medical doctor and a natural scientist, her excellent knowledge of several European languages, as well as her work at the Vienna Polytechnic Institute, served to establish a firm scholarly foundation for a body of literature on rearing and schooling.138 Well before the appearance of V.N. Zhuk’s Mother and Child, several years prior to the publication of Sikorsky’s work, and a decade before Kapterev’s forays into the area of pedagogical psychology, Manasseina’s On Children’s Upbringing articulates the essentials of early child development and care, her study grounded in contemporary physiology and psychology.139 The primary impetus for the work, according to Manasseina’s introduction, was to insure that the health of the nation was improved by proper upbringing and education of Russia’s children, for “the lower the level of education in a country, the higher are the levels of disease and mortality there and the sharper is that nation’s decline toward degeneration.”140 In this connection, Manasseina describes inadequacies of infant care, physical abuse of children, and infanticide in Russian villages and city slums.141 A similarly critical situation obtains, in Manasseina’s opinion, in child

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rearing by the upper classes. Manasseina is particularly concerned with the established custom of wet-nursing, lamenting the ensuing lack of maternal attention to the child’s physical and emotional needs, and the sad fate of the wet nurse’s own abandoned children. A survey of writings on early childhood development by leading Western scholars convinces Manasseina that most of these scholars’ conclusions lack empirical evidence. Nor, in her view, do they attempt to articulate general laws of child development.142 Yet, in order for pedagogy to become a truly scientific endeavour, the results of properly designed observations of children must be, in her opinion, approached in light of a cogent system of interpretation.143 Writing in 1870, Manasseina observes that early childhood development and infant care have been generally neglected in critical literature, considered to be a woman’s business (bab’e delo) and, therefore, insignificant.144 Consequently, neither educators nor mothers have been properly trained for the vital role of attending to the physical, moral, and intellectual needs of their charges. In the book’s chapters, Manasseina focuses on proper prenatal care that can, in her view, counteract the unborn child’s genetic predispositions. She offers guidelines for the expectant mother’s dress, hygiene, nutrition, and proper exercise. She follows up with the discussion of birth and its impact on the child. She points to the importance of proper clothing for the infant and rejects the custom of swaddling. She insists on cleanliness of the child’s body and his environment and advises on the proper arrangement and equipment of the nursery. She advocates for mothers to nurse their children and promotes smallpox vaccinations. Manasseina also draws attention to the development of the child’s senses and suggests guidelines for their perfection. She offers her opinion on proper dental care and skin care, exercise, teaching the child how to walk, and the toddler’s appropriate clothing. Masturbation in early childhood is acknowledged and discussed. The primary tenor of the discussion on masturbation is that of protecting the child from an inappropriate arousal because “nothing undermines the child’s intellectual and mental development as such excitation of the genitalia.”145 Remaining in one position for too long or sitting with legs crossed is harmful because of the increased blood flow to the child’s sexual organs, prompting masturbation. The mother should not point out that certain parts of the body cannot be exposed in public while others can since by doing so she would draw the child’s attention to sexual issues. Hence, the mother should dress the child so that the genitalia and buttocks could not be exposed. If this happens, the mother should not shame the child but correct the situation

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without any explanations. In addition, the mother must make sure that no lewd conversations or jokes are told in the child’s presence because his mind is free from anything indecent unless such notions are imparted by others.146 A similarly protective impulse characterizes Manasseina’s advice on the child’s emotional life. In her opinion, the mother should not allow neurotic individuals (s boleznenno nastroennym voobrazheniem) or hypersensitive people to interact with young children.147 Manasseina’s understanding of speech development, imagination, and cognition presages the positions articulated by pedagogical psychologists in subsequent years.148 Like Kapterev and others, she acknowledges distinctions between various developmental stages. And, like them, she consistently applies her view of child development to educational practice. For example, Manasseina considers the impact of fairy tales and questions their suitability for the child’s emotional life.149 She stresses the need for a careful approach to lying, since in early childhood the child does not understand the difference between real and unreal and has not yet formed the concept of falsehood. She considers mental and physical fatigue as a frequent cause of idleness and cautions parents about treating idleness as a behavioural breach. Disciplining the child can never be physical but should, rather, consistently underscore the consequences of the child’s actions. The best reward for the child’s behaviour is parental approval. The child’s toys must satisfy his need for activity and serve as teaching tools. Finally, Manasseina highlights the importance of observations of nature and of unstructured games (i.e. the kind of games that allow for choices) for the development of the child’s imagination and volition.150 Manasseina’s On Children’s Upbringing is a detailed, contemporary science-based manual for young mothers. The internalized notion of a mother’s “sacred duty” is in full display in the book’s pages, yet the expert advising on the issue is a woman scholar, fully confident in her ability to do so.151 Her five-part Foundations of Upbringing from the First Years of Life to University Graduation, written in 1888 but published considerably later, is a much more ambitious effort not only in its extension of the study of maturation to adulthood but also in its scholarly depth and range.152 In one of the book’s chapters, Manasseina addresses the child’s various states of mind. Manasseina’s discussion of thought, emotion, volition, sensory perceptions, and imagination is anchored in physiology, brain study, and psychology.153 The five-page bibliography of primary sources for the chapter testifies to the author’s comprehensive knowledge of the field, as well as to a pointed disregard of her compatriots’ work in this area. The bibli-

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ography contains close to 200 items. Only six of those are by Russian authors, including two citations of Manasseina’s own work.154 Manasseina’s pioneering work on dreams and fatigue is significant on its own.155 It might also shed some light on Chekhov’s depictions of extreme fatigue and sleep deprivation in his stories about children.156 After her return to St Petersburg in the early 1870s, Manasseina worked (and shared her life for a while) with the renowned physiologist I.R. Tarkhanov, the chair of the Department of Physiology at the St Petersburg Academy of Military Medicine. Tarkhanov’s contributions to physiology included the discovery of the impact of X-rays on the central nervous system, animal behaviour, circulation, and embryonic development. Tarkhanov, who was acquainted with Chekhov, was also the first Russian scientist to conduct experiments on sleep.157 It was in Tarkhanov’s laboratory where Manasseina performed her research on sleep deprivation in the 1870s, later summarized and amplified in her monograph on the topic.158 Like Sikorsky before her, in her investigation of fatigue Manasseina stresses the interdependence of the mental and the physical.159 Manasseina’s study is much more detailed, however, than that of Sikorsky, is supported by a wealth of scholarly data, and is based on experiment. In Manasseina’s view, fatigue distorts the subject’s consciousness, weakens the will, and could potentially lead to sudden volatile acts, such as suicide or criminal actions.160 It is the weakening (and in extreme cases a total annihilation) of the notion of selfhood that is the primary result of the condition.161 Consequently, fatigue can lead to serious psychic disorders (such as split personality) or manifest itself in hyperactivity and monomania.162 Manasseina observes similar negative psychophysical effects in her research on sleep deprivation in animals and humans. Puppies deprived of sleep died. Manasseina’s human subjects experienced hallucinations, visual disturbances, loss of concentration, and problems with recall.163 Further, Manasseina argues that resistance to sleep could lead to a score of additional problems: If somnolence is resisted, there occurs a feeling of heaviness or constriction in the head, sometimes headache, and the eyelids feel weighted down. If the patient continues to struggle with sleep, a state of excitement may emerge. Usually, somnolence gains mastery, the will becomes paralyzed, and the patient falls into a state of hysterical somnolence. Then the subject may exhibit manifestations of a second personality.164

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Manasseina’s first book, published in two editions and reviewed by N.P. Suslova-Erisman, another woman pioneer in the field of medicine, was not widely acknowledged by the field of child studies.165 The second work was generally ignored as well, perhaps because of its lack of scholarly decorum vis-à-vis the Russian experts or because of its assertion that religiosity, “those lofty ideals of religion and ethics which are the guiding lights in the history of mankind,” must be the basis of true education.166 In his 1915 assessment of the postreform pedagogical psychology, Kapterev cites the work of Sikorsky, Lesgaft (much more positively than in his earlier review), Konradi, and Vodovozova. Manasseina’s contributions are not mentioned. Kapterev applauds Konradi for her sincerity, yet notes the absence of a systematic approach to the data offered in the book, and regrets the author’s subjectivity as well as the heightened emotionality of A Mother’s Confession.167 Vodovozova’s Mental and Moral Development of Children is regarded in a somewhat different light.168 Kapterev’s assessment is based on the 1891 edition of the volume, considerably different from the first three, the difference readily apparent in the editions’ subtitles. The pre1891 editions offer in their subtitles a detailed list of practical pursuits aimed at the “moral and mental development of children,” such as “tasks, games, physical exercises outside and at home, stories, folk tales, riddles, proverbs, math problems, and nature observations.” The fourth edition dispenses with the subtitle altogether. The new version places Vodovozova’s practical ideas on child rearing in the context of Russia’s pedagogical thought. Thus, the 1891 volume consists of three equal parts: the history of Russian education, a section on current pedagogical theory and practice, and, finally, a description of tasks, exercises, and games based on the Froebel system and imported wholesale from the previous editions of the book.169 As for her fellow educational psychologists, for Vodovozova as well, the primary goal of education is to raise a true human being (chelovek) in whom moral and intellectual abilities would be harmoniously combined. In early childhood education, the principal educator is a woman who, however, is in dire need of proper education herself. The 1891 edition includes Vodovozova’s impassioned call for furthering mothers’ education beyond the confines of the nursery: “What is this strange notion that we have about the mother’s obligations? [True], the mother’s sacred duty is to participate in the child’s education with all her being, but this should not mean that she must dispense with the human, social, or aesthetic yearnings of her heart and mind. A woman, who suppresses or ignores her

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desire for self-development and self-education, will extinguish her interest in reading and will become indifferent to social and pedagogical issues. This woman cannot be a real mother, a true mentor to her children.”170 Yet, in her discussion of educational practices, Vodovozova does not directly address gender differences, nor does she discuss sexuality in children.171 Like Manasseina’s, the overarching approach to the latter issue emphasizes the need to protect children from the dangers of premature sexual knowledge and masturbation. Like others in the field, Vodovozova objects to physical punishment of any kind. The “natural consequences” disciplining, as advocated by Rousseau and Spencer, does not meet with her approval either. Like Manasseina, Vodovozova considers the development of volition and parental approval or disapproval to be the most effective means of disciplining the child. Vodovozova’s take on folk tales is somewhat different from Manasseina’s. Instead of cautioning parents about the pernicious affect that tales (and fairy tales in particular) can have on the child’s emotional and mental life, Vodovozova (like Ushinsky before her) suggests a selective use of tales in their abridged form, finding them useful for teaching the child about nature and life. She also emphasizes the importance of play in child development and offers suggestions for various games that can exercise and develop the child’s physical and mental abilities. Vodovozova’s writings of the period include published accounts of her experiences in a boarding school for girls, articles on women’s emancipation and education, and various texts for children.172 Consistent with the overall tenor of Vodovozova’s work, her approach to pedagogy in Mental and Moral Development of Children is that of an activist, populariser, and an applied scientist, rather than a theoretician. She is a diligent student of the new science, relying in her recommendations for teaching and raising children on the authoritative opinions of others. Educational psychologists of Chekhov’s time viewed maturation as a continuous and gradual process in which the psychic and the physical were equally engaged and mutually dependent. The mental and emotional spheres of psychic development were seen as closely linked and similarly inseparable from the changes naturally occurring in the child’s body. Each stage of age-related development was determined to have its own unique features and a timetable that could not be artificially changed or forced, and each child was considered unique in his individuality. Upbringing and schooling (vospitanie i obuchenie) stood for a focused shaping of the child’s body and mind by parents, educators, physicians,

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and psychologists. Therefore, the essential task of scholarly inquiry was to determine how the child develops and learns. The adage Mens sana in corpore sano, embraced by the pedagogical thought of the period, resulted in the educators’ increased attention to children’s hygiene, physical exercise, nutrition, and environment, particularly in early childhood. The desire to improve the child’s intellect and regulate his emotions necessitated the investigation of cognition, including such states of mind as imagination, symbolic thinking, volition, and ethics. Educators emphasized the importance of play in socialization, as well as in mental and physical development. The theory of recapitulation was frequently employed to highlight the children’s immature way of reasoning and behaviour. In addition, fiction, as well as writers’ biographies and autobiographies, were consistently used by child psychologists as authoritative case histories in support of their ideas on child development and education.173 The emergent science did not fully explore the issue of gender differences in rearing and schooling. Girls’ education was generally seen as a preparation for the traditional roles of a wife and mother. The notion of the importance of mothers for the nation’s future and of women’s innate emotionality and diminished aptitude for logical thinking underlined the limitation.174 Neither did the experts consider sexual development of children of either gender until adolescence. In relation to the latter, the attention of educators, physicians, psychologists, and mothers was drawn exclusively to masturbation, “the hidden vice” (tainyi porok) of boys which, in the opinion of most, could lead to physical depletion and, eventually, madness.175 The view of prepubescence as an innocent period devoid of sexuality made mothers into vigilant protectors of their children from sexual knowledge. Manasseina’s recommends curbing an infant’s exploration of the genitalia and sheltering him from any exposure to sexual innuendo. Vodovozova’s ideal mother-educator resorts to diversions or silence in response to her young children’s “embryological questions.”176 Writing in 1926, Lev Vygotsky argues that, even if formerly unacknowledged, manifestations of child sexuality, including masturbation, could occur in the earliest years of life and even at the nursing stage.177 Yet, the family and the school considered sexuality in children either as nonexistent or as an aberration in need of correction. Consequently, the child waged a continuous battle against his natural sexual drive, regarded sexuality as “sordid and obscene” (griaznoi i skvernoi), and his sex education was placed in the hands of “depraved servants and acquaintances.”178

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In order to understand the etiology of individual behaviours, including what was thought of as premature sexuality, the experts turned their attention to the child’s family and environment. The notion of genetically acquired traits was one of the explanatory narratives consistently employed by educational psychologists. Another was the related narrative of individual and social degeneration brought on by the excesses of postreform society and culture, the “fin de siècle in a biomedical sense.”179 Guided by its trust in the power of science, the sociopedagogical movement of the period contributed greatly to the articulation of strategies for transforming the nation by educating its children. The definitive break from the psychologists’ sole reliance on introspection and observation occurs in the 1890s with the introduction of experiment as the essential instrument of child research. Pedagogical psychology could then claim its status as a science based on rigorous methodology. Yet the groundwork had been laid and the parameters and objectives of pedagogical psychology well established by the time Chekhov was writing his stories about children. Of primary interest for this study is Chekhov’s accommodation of his contemporaries’ views on childhood and the child in his fiction.

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Acknowledgments

PA RT T WO

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Sound and Noise

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4 The Emergence of Language: The Writer and the Child

It seems that everything I see and hear now has been long familiar to me from old stories and tales. A.P. Chekhov (1888)

Chekhov famously characterized his early work as “playing at literature (“igra v literaturu”).1 The remark can be interpreted as derogatory. In Russian, however, the expression can also signify a simple engagement in a game or a participation in an activity whose set rules are playfully subverted. It is the latter meaning that captures perfectly Chekhov’s early relationship with his craft, and it this understanding that informs the writer’s descriptions of his own modus operandi throughout Chekhov’s life – a lively engagement with literature rather than a law-sanctioned obligation; a playful love affair rather than a sombre marriage.2 The focus of this chapter is on the forging of Chekhov’s own literary language in its connection with the writer’s emerging literary model of childhood – the process that is inseparable from Chekhov’s games with the literary canon. The playfulness Chekhov claimed for himself as a writer was learned from reading, and later from writing for, the subsection of mass literature commonly referred to as the “small press” (malaia pressa), a specific group of daily or weekly periodicals, such as newspapers and satirical “thin” magazines.3 Early familiarity with the classical satirists of Russian literature (Gogol and Saltykov-Shchedrin in particular) certainly had a role in the writer’s predilection for the playful and the humorous as well. By the time the seventeen-year-old Chekhov submitted his first comic pieces for publication in 1877, he was, according to his biographers, already the

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author of vaudevilles, “sketches from life,” essays, anecdotes, comic poems, and parodies; a publisher of a school magazine, Leisure (Dosug); and the editor of a handwritten journal The Stutterer (Zaika) of which at least two issues are known to have been produced. Moreover, while still in school, Chekhov authored a play, The Fatherless (Bezottsovshchina, 1878), now frequently staged as Platonov, a play that contained kernels of plots and themes of his future dramas. It was this play that the young author sent to M.N. Ermolova, one of the most prominent Russian actresses of Chekhov’s time, shortly upon his arrival in Moscow.4 The decision could not have been made without the seventeen-year-old’s conviction that a significant part of his literary apprenticeship had now been completed. Indeed, although very few of his early writings survive, certain stable features of Chekhov’s later work, both structural and thematic, are already evident there. We know, for instance, that pieces produced for Leisure and The Stutterer were complemented by Chekhov’s own illustrations, signalling the connection between writing and visuality that was to become an important feature of his later work. Certainly, the relationship between fathers and their children is already at the centre of Chekhov’s attention in The Fatherless. Similarly observable in the play are the awareness of the literary norm and its playful subversion in parody; the comic distancing between the implied author and his characters; the dependence on the stereotypes of his culture; as well as the characters’ modes of behaviour embodied in different speech registers and patterns, and the resulting failure of communication.5 Yet the true forging of Chekhov’s language of expression, concomitant with his emerging interest in literary models of childhood, occurs in sustained writing for cheap publications of mass literature (1880–87). As the value charged designations indicate, the small press in general, and “thin” magazines in particular, established themselves in opposition to the “thick journals” of the educated elite that published works of “major” literature. The periodicals in which Chekhov initially participated were physically smaller than thick journals, had relatively modest print runs, and were designed to appeal to the low- and middle-class reader.6 Unlike high literature, the small press set as its goal the creation of accessible and concise texts intended for easy consumption. Stereotypes became the building blocks for literary creations that relied on and reinforced the shared notions of behavioural patterns ascribed to different sexes, professions, family status, social position, and age. In order to appeal to its readership, this literature became a “wax museum” or a “refrigerator” of all types of literary or nonliterary forms, such as contracts, letters,

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telegrams, announcements, and the like. It was particularly voracious in its appropriation of different genres, plots, motifs, and characters of high literature, both native and foreign.7 One of Chekhov’s first published narratives, “Found Most Often in Novels, Etc.” (1880) offers a parodic compendium of some of this literature’s appropriations, the stock of thematic and structural clichés to be reworked and reimagined in Chekhov’s own future work: A count, a countess showing traces of former beauty, a neighbouring baron, a liberal man of letters, an impoverished nobleman, a foreign musician, slow-witted lackeys, nannies, and governesses; a German steward, esquire, and an heir from America. Homely faces, yet likeable and pleasant. The hero who saves the heroine from a mad horse, strong in spirit and capable in any given situation to show the power of his fists. The heavens – impenetrable, infinite and mysterious expanse. In a word, nature!!! Blond friends and red-haired enemies. A rich uncle, liberal or conservative depending on the circumstances. His death would be more advantageous for the hero than his admonitions. An aunt in Tambov. An anxious doctor hoping for a fever to break; often has a cane with a knob and a bald pate. And where there is a doctor, there is also rheumatism resulting from righteous labour; migraines; inflammation of the brain; caring for the wounded after a duel, and the inevitable advice to go to the spa for treatment. A domestic who had served the old masters, ready and willing to go anywhere for his new masters, even into the fire. A great wit. A dog who could do anything except talk; a parrot and a nightingale. A dacha outside of Moscow and a mortgaged estate in the south. Electricity mentioned mostly for no reason whatsoever. A briefcase made of Russian calfskin, Chinese porcelain, English saddle, a revolver that does not misfire; a medal on a lapel, pineapples, champagne, truffles and oysters. Inadvertent eavesdropping leading to great discoveries. Innumerable interjections and attempts to weave in technical terms just in case. Delicate hints at rather heavy circumstances.

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A very frequent absence of an ending. Seven deadly sins in the beginning and a wedding in the end. The end.8 Like “Found Most Often,” the small press’s product overall was marked by a tendency for recombination and invention.9 An acute awareness of the power of the cliché and of building, in a creative endeavour, on what is already there is, a decade later, still apparent in Chekhov’s private description of his life, a part of which is quoted in the epigraph to this chapter: Nature and life [here] are built on the stale clichés rejected nowadays by the press: … nightingales that sing day and night, the distant barking of dogs, old neglected orchards, romantic, sorrowful, boarded up estates in which the souls of beautiful women dwell; not to mention old house serfs at death’s door and young girls dreaming of the most commonplace love. It seems that everything I see and hear now has been long familiar to me from old stories and tales.10 As in “Found Most Often,” the narrative gestures to characters and plots of Chekhov’s own future work; in this case, most visibly, to The Cherry Orchard. THE ECONOMY OF LITERARY RECYCLING

The recycling of literary and cultural formulae, to which Chekhov alludes in the above list of settings, characters, and plots “from old stories and tales,” was a stable feature of the small press, the result of the commodification of its literary output. In order to satisfy its audience and sell its product, the published material of the small press had to be familiar but also stylistically and generically diverse, current, and topical. Regular calendar activities, such as Christmas, the New Year’s celebration, Shrovetide, Easter, or dacha life, as well as the theatre season provided the humorous weeklies with an annual cycle of locales and activities in which typical episodes, rather than real events, occurred. The newspapers of the small press, on the other hand, included descriptions of current events, features, reports, and essays not found in its magazines. In contrast to the satirical journals, which depended on readers recognizing the familiar, the newspaper became an instrument of discovery and investigation for its audience.11

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The proposed list of items for the 1882 issues of Fragments, for example, included: “fifty-two original sketches based on episodes in works of Russian literature; 104 reproductions of foreign illustrations; twenty-eight original caricatures on topics from ‘Russian life’ (i.e. current events) and twelve on other topics; twelve romances, with lyrics from the works of famous Russian poets (notes included); fifty-two feuilletons from Russian life, covering topics drawn from literary and social life, art, music, theater, and everyday life in Petersburg, Moscow, and the provinces; … ‘Miscellany’ (smes’); rebuses, jokes and more.”12 Even if one of the stated purposes of the small press was to inform the reader about current affairs, the recombination of familiar modes of representation and the dependence on stereotypes aimed to amuse and entertain. The comic portrayal of characters and events, both narrative and visual, was part and parcel of this entertaining mission, yet another feature that placed the small press apart from thick journals and the high literature they championed. One of the most prominent genres employed by the small press (and the genre of Chekhov’s “Found Most Often”) was “trifles” (melochishka) – an umbrella term referring to all sorts of brief comic texts written to a pattern.13 The 1887 issues of Dragonfly, for example, contain such items as “Thought and Aphorisms”; “A Little Bit of Everything”; “Crumbs and Specks”; “This and That”; “Anecdotes, Jokes, Qs and As”; “Mosquitoes and Flies”; “From the Archival Dust”; and, finally, “Puns, Anecdotes, Jokes.” Alarm Clock’s offerings in this vein from 1877–84 are: “Cliché, Sketches, Negatives, Corrections”; “Incrustations, Aphorisms”; “Paradoxes”; “Trifles”; “Anecdotes”; “Monologues, Paradoxes and Quotations”; “The Motley, Dew Drops”; “Trifles, Strokes, Drafts”; “Trivialities”; “Aphorisms, Jokes, Puns”; “Snowflakes and Crystals”; and “By the Way.”14 The numerous subgenres found under the trifles’ umbrella incorporated highly popular comic calendars and prophecies (Chekhov wrote for the Alarm Clock’s “Prophecies” in 1882). Similarly trendy were aphorisms, sayings, and “thoughts” of historical and pseudohistorical figures, such as, for example, Chekhov’s “My Witticisms and Sayings,” “Philosophical Definitions of Life,” and “The Fruit of a Protracted Reflection.”15 Plays on the names of periodicals (as in Chekhov’s “My Jubilee” and “Thoughts of the Periodicals’ Reader”) were common for the trifles, as were parodic grammars, school compositions, math problems, and comic legal codes. Games with the reader continued in the use of numerous pseudonyms employed by the small press’s contributors. The trifles’ rubrics ostensibly signalled generic and stylistic heterogeneity, as well as an orientation toward the poetics of the absurd. Yet, as

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Durkin observes, “the surface diversity created by the proliferation of pseudonyms and subgenres concealed the underlying uniformity of the satirical journal” where fixed parts of the whole were regularly rearranged to create a semblance of originality.16 The use of stray (brodiachie) comic miniplots, original and borrowed from foreign sources, as well as recycling of themes, motifs, and images, were the order of the day, particularly in aphorisms and anecdotes. The characters’ metaphorical names were also reused, as, for example Chekhov’s: Fon-Tramb in “She is Gone” and Baron Tramb in “Once a Year,” Kuldarov in “Joy” and Count Kuldarov in “How I Entered My Legal Marriage” all written in 1883.17 Direct citations from the classics travelled from one narrative to another, as, most memorably, Krylov’s line “He could barely say ‘Oh’ when the bear got him” (“On akhnut‘ ne uspel kak na nego medved’ nasel”) quoted by Chekhov first in “Naden’ka N.” (1880); “Fragments of Moscow Life” (1885), in a letter to M.V. Kiseleva of 11 March 1891; “At Friends’ House” (1898); and in his play Three Sisters (1900).18 Images from various sources were readily recycled, as were the structure, plots, and characters of the dramatic sketches, another staple of the small press. Chekhov’s sketch (stsenka), based on the popular version developed by N.A. Leikin, became the chief mode of the writer’s overall literary output in the 1880s. With the exception of the first (“Naden’ka N.”) and the last (The Steppe), the sketch was the preferred genre of Chekhov’s work about children as well.19 Most of Chekhov’s childcentred stories appeared in the small press. THE NOVELISTIC EXTENSION : AMPLIFYING THE DRAMATIC SKETCH

The dramatic sketch made its first appearance in Russian literature in the 1860s in the writings of N. Uspenskii, A. Levitov, and I. Gorbunov. By the 1880s, under the pen of Leikin and his imitators (I. Miasnitskii, A. and D. Dmitriev, A. Pazukhin, and many others), the generic attributes of the form solidified and became formulaic. As in the sketch of the 1860s, in the work of Leikin and his followers, the characters were shown as being inextricably linked to their social milieu, the connection that constituted the organizing principle of their depiction.20 And, as in the trifles, representation in the sketch, with recognition rather than discovery as its primary artistic purpose, was oriented toward a particular reader from a particular class – male, low to middle class, and living in the two capitals or provincial towns.21

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The standard “Leikin” sketch was characterized by brevity, seasonal thematics (e.g. Easter, Christmas, dachniki), idiosyncratic speech patterns of the protagonists, minimal expositions and descriptions of the environment, surprising dénouements, metaphorical (“talking”) names, and metonymy. Narration in the present tense and in medias res openings ensured the apparent immediacy of representation. The comic effect was achieved by the reversal of the readers’ expectations in the dénouements and the clear distance established between the narrating observer and the characters. Both in the standard sketch and in Chekhov’s adaptation, the narrator is positioned as an impartial observer of human folly. The importance allotted in the standard sketch to the phenomena of the external world is there in Chekhov’s sketch as well. Inner workings of the characters’ psyche are not elaborated on but presented externally – in descriptions of gestures, facial expressions, and body language. This approach to psychological portrayal, what Chudakov terms “the psychology of countenance,” remained essentially unaltered in Chekhov’s work from the first to the last.22 Equally constructive for Chekhov’s later work was his reliance on inner speech and the economy of portrayal characterized by the transference of the emotion experienced by the character onto an object in the character’s environment, thereby colouring the narration with a particular mood.23 The constituent elements of the Leikin sketch – the limited scope of the writer’s inquiry, the overall tone of comic disengagement, the reversal of the reader’s expectations as to the significance of the events described, as well as the centrality of language (and the inevitable breakdown of communication) – were consistently used in Chekhov’s stories, if in a modified form.24 Chekhov tightened the standard sketch by pivoting the narration around a disruption in the status quo (e.g. a sneeze in “The Death of an Official” [1883], a dog bite in “The Chameleon,” [1884]), allowing for the examination of the participants’ reactions to the disruptive event. The comic effect in Chekhov’s sketch emerged “out of the superposition and sequencing of phenomena which belong to different, incompatible series,” a clash between “individual and collective perceptions articulated in words, gestures, actions, fixed in a social hierarchy, reflected in systems of notions, rules, opinions, and evaluations,” and expressed in literary and rhetorical genres.25 At the centre of Chekhov’s dramatic sketch is the clash of various languages of his culture. Unlike his peers in the small press, however, Chekhov does not offer a punch line with a “correct” answer to the con-

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structed problem in his closures. In Chekhov’s sketches, conflicts remain suspended in an eternal irresolution. Yet another departure from the prescriptions of the standard sketch was Chekhov’s early recognition of the calendar-dependent thematic orientation as stale. Sometimes these were directly parodied in Chekhov’s sketches. Often they became narratively amplified.26 For example, Chekhov’s 1885 “The Dacha Dwellers” (“Dachniki”), while engaging two basic stereotypes of the small press (the calendar dacha season and the honeymooners), expands the customary arrangement by hinting at possible plot extensions and interpretations beyond the expected. The comic in the sketch is anchored in the incongruity between the characters’ speech patterns. Yet, in a move away from the norms of the small press, the registers employed also serve as instant indicators of the characters’ dominant traits, and of a future conflict. The young wife speaks in the elevated language of a girl brought up on reading romantic novels, while the young husband’s prosaic preoccupation is with food, the sole semantic register of his speech. Chekhov departs even more decidedly from the Leikin standard of a one-dimensional joke and the expected punch line in the end, (as, for example, in Leikin’s “The Dacha Dwellers Who Came Late”) in the newlyweds’ reaction to the disruption of their stereotypical idyll.27 The two protagonists are united in their mutual hatred of unexpected guests but differ in placing the blame for the disruption. By trivializing the conflict, Chekhov highlights his characters’ inability to connect, thereby shifting the narrative focus from the anticipated inanity of the two stereotypical figures to the essential collapse of communication common to all. Moreover, by sketching the couple’s unenviable immediate future, Chekhov expands the narrative confines of the story, opening it up to other readings, including an expectation of the couple’s long-term relationship being rooted in recrimination and contempt. The sketch can also be (playfully) read as Chekhov’s ironic response to the “accursed” questions of Russian history – “who is to blame” and “what is to be done.” The social conflicts captured by the questions and elevated by high literature to a sociophilosophical status are reduced here to a common squabble between mismatched people whose first impulse is to assign blame. In this reading, Chekhov’s answers would appear to be: all are to blame, and nothing can be done.28 Similarly, in Chekhov’s 1886 Christmas story “Van’ka,” discussed in detail in chapter 8, a familiar calendar-themed plot is problematized and a number of interpretative possibilities are offered to the reader. In this short narrative, Chekhov interrogates the anticipation, sanctioned by the

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classics of Russian literature, of a Christmas story based on Christian love for the poor and the helpless, of angelic innocence of children, or the putative purity of the Russian peasant and his life. Another deviation from the standard in Chekhov’s sketch was a pronounced orientation toward the visual, the orientation clearly rooted in the intimate connection between comic stories and the images in the satirical journals where these stories appeared. Illustrations in the small press were created or borrowed unattributed from other sources. Pictures were used either for a specific text or positioned as a focal point of the page for which a short text was produced and appended (Chekhov is known to have been the author of some of these captions). Since the images were there to aid the reader in the task of a stereotype’s recognition, in both instances, a faithful representation of the most minor details of the characters’ environment was their de rigueur feature.29 In Chekhov’s modification of the sketch, the focus on the visual was further combined with a cinematographic attention to motion and changes in perspective. “Soft-Boiled Boots” (“Sapogi vsmiatku,” 1886), a handwritten story for the children of Chekhov’s friends, illustrated with caricatures cut out from satirical journals by Chekhov himself, is a perfect example of the writer’s focus on the link between the visual and the comic, as well as of the visually dynamic aspect of his writing.30 Moreover, the collage-like quality of “Soft-Boiled Boots” is significant in its direct, and graphic, manifestation of Chekhov’s pointed intertextuality, or “writing about what has been written by others,” as well as of the use of the images produced by others for his own aims.31 The story (in four very short chapters) is a parodic take on moralistic narratives found in the majority of children’s magazines and primers, discussed in chapters 2 and 3, the intention confirmed by Chekhov in a private letter to M.V. Kiseleva where the genre of the parodied text is defined as “something edifying and illustrated” (nazidatel’no-illiustrirovannoe).32 The common plot of such narratives, usually in several chapters, establishes a conflict based on the child’s unacceptable conduct, followed by an elaboration of the infraction’s impact on others. A typical closure emphasizes the child’s newly gained awareness of the norm and the modifications in behaviour that follow the incident. Direct appeals to the young readers, as in “now you see, children” was a regular feature of this literature, aiming at establishing a relationship of kindness and trust between the narrator and the children, the former guiding the latter to the appropriate perception and solution of the problem.

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In contrast to Chekhov’s published work, “Soft-Boiled Boots” had specific addressees – Chekhov’s friends the Kiselevs and their children to whose habits and idiosyncrasies it often alludes. Moreover, as in the writer’s correspondence with his brother Alexander, the architect Fyodor Shekhtel, or the publisher Suvorin the story is written as a private communication where the subversion of the norms of personal and literary behaviour is allowed and even expected. Intended both for children and adults, Chekhov’s story of family life is violent, scatological, and merciless in its portrayal of the protagonists. The familiar techniques of the small press employed in “Soft-Boiled Boots” serve to broadcast the narrative’s comic intent. The crossing of the boundaries of the permissible allowed in a private communication is restricted, however, by the limits Chekhov establishes for himself when crafting a private text for children. The violation of the norm in the story occurs primarily in the comic reversal of the household roles and in the story’s focus on bodily functions. Any mention or allusions (even veiled) to sexual matters, a frequent topic of conversation in Chekhov’s letters to his adult male friends and brothers, are absent. “Soft-Boiled Boots” of the title recalls the “poetics of the absurd” associated with the trifles. As in the narratives of the small press, the metaphorical names of the adult characters provide a quick access to the character’s stereotypical essence: Mr Turkey (the author), Mr Belly (censor), or Mr Pants (father). The grandfather’s patronymic is based on the word “cockroach,” and the teacher’s full name can be loosely translated as Dozy Diphtheritovich Pit. The play on the titles of current periodicals, a staple of the small press, is evident in the invented journal Children’s Fatigue (Detskoe Utomlenie), a comic reference to Children’s Leisure (Detskii Otdykh), a popular publication for children in which such “edifying and illustrated” stories often appeared and where Chekhov’s brother Mikhail and Kiseleva published their work.33 The narrative builds on a common subgenre of the trifles – a parody of children’s story with a moral in the end. Yet the piece also includes seeds of possible plots, some developed by Chekhov in his published sketches. The miniplot about the “good boy” Grisha who is obedient, likes to study, and pinches pennies and apples from his parents to give to the poor, is borrowed by Chekhov from his own “The Cook Gets Married” (1885). Chekhov will use the little glutton Terentisha’s propensity for stealing his father’s tobacco to structure his children’s story “At Home” (1887). “SoftBoiled Boots” also features Chekhov’s attempts to approximate the child’s language, with its limitations in self-expression caused by the child’s

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insufficient ability to conceptualize, the particular focus of Chekhov’s “Naden’ka N.” (1880) and of “Grisha” (1886). The idea of edification of children by the adults, the “guided development” informing the progressives’ ideas on rearing and discussed in chapters 2 and 3, is at the story’s narrative centre. The perceived norms of children’s behaviour (polite, obliging, quiet, and industrious) are contrasted to the way children can be (lazy, mischievous, thieving, and gluttonous), habitually flouting the oft repeated admonitions to conform to the norm. The adults, supposed to model and enforce normative behaviour, are shown to defy any such expectations. The mother of the family considers herself very smart and sees everybody else as fools because she knows two expressions in French. The father is preoccupied with eating, defecating, and beating his children. The grandfather, who likes to kill bedbugs by smearing them on the wall and fleas by squashing them with his fingers, smells of vinegar, tobacco, and gas. The teacher is a drunk who beats the children, eats with his hands, uses the tablecloth as a napkin, and steals his neighbour’s bread at dinner. The author, whose portrait is appended after the conclusion, is unable to complete the last chapter of the story because his wife threatens to take his lamp away. The lack of the proper closure is thus explained by Mr Turkey’s subservient position to his authority figure – the domineering wife. In its interdependence of the visual and verbal, the work evokes the typical features of the Russian lubok and anticipates the modern comic strip and graphic novel. Appearing in Russia in the late seventeenth century, the lubok, a popular print similar to chapbooks, was characterized by simple graphics and narratives derived from literature, religious stories, and popular tales. What connects Chekhov’s story to the Russian lubok is its playful artistry, theatricality, and its insistence on Kiselev’s children’s full participation in the experience. The lubok’s expressive specificity is rooted in its assumption of the audience’s engagement with this art form. The anticipation of involvement by the consumers of lubok art is different from the readers’ passive relationship with the text (whether verbal or visual) that obtains in written cultures. As Iurii Lotman points out, in the lubok art, as in folklore, the audience “plays with the text and plays the text” (igraet s tekstom i v tekst), the activity reminiscent of the way children experience visual art.34 The scatological frivolities and the overall buffoonery of “Soft-Boiled Boots” can also be viewed as the legacy of an art form that invites the playful carnivalesque reversal of the status quo and the crossing of the boundaries of the permissible. Chekhov’s focus on the changing “frames,” on the

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cinematic unfolding of images in time in the illustrated narrative can be linked to the traditions of the lubok art as well. The father’s bald pate, for example, is first described and then pictured in profile;35 its comparison to a bottle of vodka is furnished with a relevant picture.36 The author advises the children (“you, children”) to observe the father’s head from the back, and the relevant picture is added.37 The subversive function of the images is particularly evident in a group scene described in the text as a quiet morning in the household. The appended picture, however, depicts one child being beaten, another one complaining about his sibling, yet another one prostrate on the floor, a sobbing child, a wailing baby, and a little boy playing his trumpet. The mother is busy administering the rod, the stern-looking father is negotiating with one of the children about the other child’s fit, while the nurse is trying to calm the baby. The caption under the original drawing borrowed by Chekhov for his story reads: “A Happy Paterfamilias.”38 The appropriated image is dynamic, evoking movement, sound, various perspectives of the figures drawn, and the resulting chaos, with the adults portrayed in an adversarial position vis-à-vis the children. Significantly, this image, as well as several others chosen by Chekhov for the story, is in colour, highlighting its narrative importance and enhancing its appeal for his intended audience. Furthermore, the illustration offers an example of the widespread, and most often unacknowledged, borrowing of others’ work by the authors and artists of the small press. The positioning of the figures, the focus on movement and implied noise, the various subplots of the visual narrative gesturing to a family in crisis, as well as the comic edge of the image can all be found in Pavel Fedotov’s sketch for his 1844 genre painting The Demise of Fidel’ka (Konchina Fidel’ki) and his 1847 Baptism (Krestiny).39 Many of his contemporaries saw Chekhov’s rise from his humble beginnings in the small press as extraordinary. In L.E. Obolenskii’s summation, “He was born in a manger, so to speak. Or, to put it in less lofty terms, in humour magazines, on a pile of manure with which these wretched leaflets smear their pages.”40 Yet, when looking back at his apprenticeship in the small press in the late 1880s, Chekhov accorded his early literary output and its venues a more significant role and a higher value than “playing at literature” might suggest. The only advantage of publishing in a thick journal (undeservedly lauded as more worthy, in Chekhov’s opinion) appeared now to be the ability to publish a long piece whole. Indeed, while St Petersburg’s Fragments and Dragonfly relied mostly on concise texts, the Moscow magazines, such as Alarm Clock, Spec-

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Figure 4.1 He was as bald as a bottle of vodka, A.P. Chekhov, “Soft-Boiled Boots”

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Figure 4.2 But look at him from the back, children, A.P. Chekhov, “Soft-Boiled Boots”

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Figure 4.3 Every morning when children woke up, A.P. Chekhov, “Soft-Boiled Boots”

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Figure 4.4 Pavel Fedotov, The Demise of Fidel’ka

tator, Moscow, and Entertainment, preferred to complement their trifles and sketches with serialized novels and comic plays which, by necessity, had to appear in a fragmented form. Reflecting on his literary beginnings, Chekhov asserted that it was immaterial whether “a nightingale sings in a big tree or in a bush,” “partiality toward the thickness of a journal does not withstand criticism,” and “the difference between the thickest journal and a cheap newspaper is only quantitative.”41 In this self-assessment, the move from Antosha Chekhonte (the pseudonym most often used in his early work) to Chekhov is not viewed as a radical break from insignificant trifles penned by an immature youth but, rather, as an important stage in a writer’s literary evolution. Clearly, the continuous demand to write a lot and quickly, as well as the rigid rules for the production of narratives imposed by the small press, shaped Chekhov as a writer. The brevity of the majority of Chekhov’s narratives and their dynamic visuality remained a constant feature of his work. Similarly stable throughout his writing career was Chekhov’s use of the comic and the continued prominence of an accidental detail, the absence of exhaustive motivation for the characters’ words and deeds, and

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the lack of consistency in the characters’ thoughts and actions. The clash of various modes of being, embodied in his characters’ distinctive patterns of speech, is as apparent in Chekhov’s early stories as in his later work.42 Moreover, Chekhov’s ability to evoke, compare, and contrast the opinions, perceptions, and ideas that constituted his lived world is as evident both in his mature writing and in the stories he wrote while an apprentice in the small press of the 1880s. The generic makeup of Chekhov’s post-1880s writing is also indebted to Antosha Chekhonte’s work. The writer’s reliance on certain standard genres, plots, and characters of the small press was accompanied in his early output, however, by a gradual departure from the press’s limited scope and goals.43 A trifle could offer glimpses of emotionally powerful plots, while a “slice of life” dramatic sketch, ostensibly aimed at achieving the ultimate comic punch, was transformed into a story or a novella.44 The shape-shifting ability of familiar genres to transform themselves into generic hybrids of sorts, the “wondrous generic dislocation” of Chekhov’s mature work was, as I note in the introduction, certainly apparent in the writer’s early pieces as well.45

“ NADEN ’ KA N .’ S

THE FIRST CHILD : SUMMER HOLIDAY SCHOOLWORK ”

Naden’ka N. is Chekhov’s first female character, first child, and his first child author.46 A young girl from the upper classes, she is also an institutka, a student in a boarding school for the daughters of the nobility.47 The story is a rendition of Naden’ka’s school assignment – a composition bracketed by exercises in Russian language and math, a hybrid of standard trifle subgenres.48 By the time of the story’s publication in 1880, institutka was an easily recognizable stereotype explored both in high and low literature.49 The writers who employed the image of the institutka in their work embroidered on the speech patterns and modes of behaviour generated and normalized by the closed linguistic society of the boarding school institution.50 The educational environment of women’s institutes encouraged the development of a specific set of traits, described in numerous memoirs by the institutki themselves. Some of these traits, such as unbridled enthusiasm, naiveté, and immaturity, became inseparable from the stereotype.51 The codification of behaviour that characterized the girls’ daily lives contributed to the ease and durability of the image’s literary appropriation. In common usage, the designation came

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to be applied to any person – male or female – who exhibited the traits associated with the description. Depending on the general perception of a woman’s role in the Russian society of the time, the literary model of the institutka, while retaining its essential constituent elements of innocence, awkwardness, and naiveté, could be marked as positive or negative. As A.F. Belousov explains, writers reacted to the childish aspects of the institutka persona in accordance with their own position on the “women’s question,” the issue of particular importance in the 1860s.52 For writers of the classical period in the eighteenth century, the image of the institutka stood for refinement and seriousness of purpose in education. Sentimentalists applauded her spontaneity of feeling, while romantics of the nineteenth century saw in this figure the embodiment of purity and aloofness from the prosaic side of life.53 The fragile and anemic institutka fascinated the generation of the 1840s, while the raznochintsy of the 1860s were repelled, in N.G. Pomialovskii’s words, by these “little pale, scrawny, and sickly maidens” and by their affectations.54 The basic attributes of the institutka, perceived by the students as normative, affected both the physical and the psychic aspects of the child’s internalized standard for self-presentation. These included posture (submissive), skin tone (very pale, almost translucent), hair styles (severe), gait (deliberate but swift), body type (slender), and speech (expressive and emotional).55 The institutki exhibited a strong awareness of social differences, ignorance about the lives of other segments of society outside of their class, deep shame of the poverty that some had to experience, and were deliberately uninformed by their educators about sexual matters.56 The requirement of walking in pairs, rigidly enforced, affected the girls’ physical comportment as well as their sense of self. The demands of collective existence stunted individuality and independent thinking. In this sheltered environment, novels became “textbooks of life” and the general climate of anxiety was overcome in retold or invented narratives.57 In Turgenev’s negative appropriation of the stereotype, both the body and the soul of an institutka are shown to be adversely affected by her institutional background, and the limitations of her education are exposed as responsible for her personal limitations: Andrei married a poor neighbour’s daughter, very high-strung and sickly, a former institutka. She played the piano decently, spoke school French; was prone to exaltation, quick to fall into melancholy, or even cry … In short, a restless girl.58

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Dostoevsky’s Katerina Marmeladova of Crime and Punishment is perhaps the most memorable portrait of an institutka whose lofty schooling does not prepare her for the hardships of poverty and married life. In memoirs that described the daily lives of the institutki, the expressiveness and emotionality of the girls’ speech is apparent in the predominance of exclamatory sentences, of qualifiers, diminutives, interjections, superlatives, and epithets with strong emotional connotations. Quick transitions from rapture to anger were also characteristic of this mode of expression.59 In fiction, the institutka’s speech provided an instant and economical way for identification as to a type portrayed. In the small press of the 1880s, the image veers close to this literature’s depiction of a baryshnia – originally, a young girl of noble birth but, in Chekhov’s time, referring to any young girl from a family of substantial means above the peasant class. Both stereotypes accentuate the “female” aspect of the character, associating it with the culturally shared notion of the gender-concomitant inability to reason logically with naiveté and silliness, the innate qualities that were, according to the stereotype, exacerbated by women’s universally poor education.60 Chekhov’s rendering of a young girl’s letter to her friend (1881) about seeing Sarah Bernhardt’s performance, for example, highlights the character’s failure to organize her thoughts, her fascination with the attributes of wealth, faint understanding of the rules of Russian grammar and spelling, as well as her ignorance of French she was supposed to have learned in school.61 Comic magazines often enhanced their baryshnia-institutka trifles with illustrations that spoke to the stereotype and titillated their readers’ imagination. The image In Class that appeared in a compilation of illustrations from Dragonfly, for example, pictures a stand-off between the male teacher and his young female student. The student’s body is voluptuous, and her posture signals submission. The male teacher’s stance, on the other hand, indicates authority and control. The caption below the image engages two stereotypes: a naïve schoolgirl’s cognitive flaws and pub owners’ habit of cheating their customers: Teacher: Heterogeneous substances cannot be combined in calculation. If, for example, you add a bucket of water to a bucket of liquor, nothing will come out of it. Student: On the contrary, in my Daddy’s pub, you can get two buckets of vodka out of it.62

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The reversal of expectations set up by the eroticized image occurs in the punch line. The laughter cannot be achieved without a full appreciation of the stereotypes. In Chekhov, particularly in his early work, the use of a woman character’s first name in its affectionate diminutive form is a shortcut of sorts to the confluence of the institutka and baryshnia stereotypes.63 Chekhov’s Zinochka of the eponymous story (1887), for example, exhibits the enthusiasm of conviction worthy of an institutka in her discussions of Grotta del Cane near Naples, while betraying a total lack of understanding of the natural sciences behind the phenomenon. The newly married Lidochka of the “Pink Stocking” (“Rozovyi chulok,” 1886) is a graduate of a boarding school whose letter to a friend astounds her husband by its lack of thought, poor grammar, and appalling handwriting (“Total nonsense! Just words and phrases with no substance whatsoever! … Chewing the cud, dragging it out, repeating yourself! Little thoughts jump around like devils in a sieve: impossible to see where you start and where you end … How can this be?”64) The plot of the “Pink Stocking” is dependent on Lidochka’s stereotypical transformation from the baryshnia-institutka into the “pink stocking” of the title (dimwitted and sexy): the latter presented in contrast to yet another common stereotype of the time – the “blue stocking” (sinii chulok), a woman who sacrifices her femininity for education and professional life. In “Naden’ka N.,” the form of the protagonist’s first name fits with her designation as an institutka, while also signalling the authorial attitude toward the character. Institutki themselves were referred to by teachers and other students by their last name. The diminutive of the first name in communication was used to indicate a relationship of close friendship. In this story, the form of the protagonist’s name in the title immediately situates her in a subservient, if affectionately expressed, position vis-à-vis the implied author. In the title, “Naden’ka” is followed by the “N.” of the Roman alphabet rather than by the first letter of the girl’s actual last name. If the first name of the character is a shortcut to her identity as a baryshnia and an institutka, then the form of the last name points to the universality of the type. The communicative map of this one-and-a-half page narrative is multifunctional, with most markers serving to resonate simultaneously with different addressees, both inside and outside of the text. The primary audience for the overall story is the consumer of periodicals published by the small press, without whose understanding of the stereotype the narrative as presented would be incomprehensible. In this realm of communication, the predominant features of the description engage the shared

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Figure 4.5 In Class, from V mire smekha i shutok (St Petersburg, 1900), a selection of stories and illustrations from Dragonfly (Strekoza)

notions about the type and emphasize, in conformity with the baryshniainstitutka formula, the character’s cognitive limitations as well as her childishness. The latter is made evident by the abundance of diminutives in Naden’ka’s speech: “little she-lambs and little he-lambs” to describe the origins of certain foods; “cute little one” in relation to a small boy or “a little zero” used in her mathematical calculations. As befits an institutka, Naden’ka uses a register of the language full of emotionally charged qualifiers and expressions, such as “terribly,” “will be

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loved by everybody in the entire world,” and “I adore.” The intermingling of animate and inanimate in the sequence: “I was accompanied [on my vacation] by my mother, my furniture and my brother” is an indication of a problem with categorization and of the inability to differentiate between animate and inanimate objects, both incongruent with the character’s age. Naden’ka’s illustrations of complex sentences in the grammar part of her assignment are full of illogical combinations and spelling mistakes: “Recently Russia fought a Foreign country and therefore many Turks were killed” or “Priests and deacons do not want to wed the newlyweds during Lent.”65 The girl’s estranged view of Russian peasants and her difficulty with logic are visibly on display in a statement that implies the character’s internalization of rigid class distinctions. Perhaps in an ironic allusion to Ushinsky’s dirty peasants in Children’s World, castigated by Tolstoy (discussed in chapter 2), Chekhov makes Naden’ka opine that “peasants stay in their country houses all year long; they beat their horses, but are terribly dirty since they are covered in tar and do not hire maids or doormen.”66 Chekhov, the author of one extant school composition (on geography) and an anonymous author of his sister’s school composition (on history), was undoubtedly familiar both with Naden’ka’s putative curriculum and its requirements.67 He was certainly equally familiar with the ongoing, and significant, changes in Russia’s secondary education for women. The stereotypical denigration of Naden’ka’s schooling in the story is definitely at odds with reality, yet certainly fits the requirements of the small press and its genre. If Chekhov is speaking directly to the readers of the small press, then the implied first readers and evaluators of Naden’ka’s narrative are her teachers. The specific markers for this type of communication include the character’s rather lengthy reading list, which includes the novels of Alexandre Dumas and Turgenev, poetry by M.V. Lomonosov and A.N. Maikov, high society novels by Prince V.P. Meshcherskii, and stories about the life of the clergy by F.V. Livanov. Similarly directed to the fictional educators are the child’s quotations from Turgenev and I.A. Krylov, as well as the general form of the narrative built around particular instructional modules (syntax, creative writing, and math). The tone of innocent supplication (“I had a great vacation because I did my lessons and was a good girl”), Naden’ka’s description of her girlfriend as someone who is attentive in class and hardworking, and Naden’ka’s reference to exams (which

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she passed (!) before going on vacation) signal the girl’s mythological status as an institutka.68 A complicated third interaction between the authorial presence and the character emerges in the interstices of the text and its various addressees. Chekhov informs his description with the student–teacher dynamic, makes this dynamic recognizable to the small press consumer as fitting the stereotype portrayed, and then, unlike his fellow practitioners of the trifles, individualizes his protagonist, eliciting in the process the audience’s compassion for her person and situation. Judging by Naden’ka’s reading list, as well as her grammar and math assignments, she is about twelve years of age and has just completed her third or fourth year of study. The assignments aim to test this institutka’s various competencies. The first part of Naden’ka’s assignment is the construction of sentences, a task that assesses her knowledge of syntax and, therefore, her ability to understand causality. The second part, composition, judges her ability to summarize her own experience in a concise, uniform mode of a particular genre. The math problem (Naden’ka has to figure out the distribution of the 8,000.00 ruble profit among the three merchants who invested 35,000.00, 50,000.00, and 70,000.00 rubles each) tests logic and precise application of a formula to a set of numerical values. In all parts of her assignment, Naden’ka is the creator of her own multivoiced text which is marked, within the set of signifiers prescribed by the genre of the trifles, by deviations from the standard. These contain kernels of potential plots and gesture to the individuality of the character’s experience. Chekhov’s prioritization of information about Naden’ka, presented in her own words, is based on the relevancy this information has for this particular character as an institutka, baryshnia, daughter, teen, friend, and sister. Furthermore, Chekhov closely examines Naden’ka’s creative process and places literary appropriations at the core of his character’s creative efforts. Naden’ka’s sentences in the first part (syntax) are essentially miniplots that highlight, despite the accoutrements of the stereotype, this girl’s unique perceptions of reality at this time of her life. Naden’ka uneasiness with the machine is conveyed in an alliterated (and misspelled) approximation of the sounds of the train, where sounds, texture, and function are indiscriminately combined. Naden’ka’s separation of meat into “beef made of bulls and cows” and “lamb made of little she-lambs and little helambs” is an indication of a value-attached hierarchy of perception.

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In Naden’ka’s statement “parents marry girls to military men who have fortunes and their own houses,” marriage is seen as a contract, with the young girl appearing in a passive position as a commodity in a financial exchange. “Father was snubbed at the office when he was denied the Order of Distinction; he got mad and quit due to family circumstances,” a stylistically incongruous mélange of the informal/personal (“snubbed,” “got mad”) and the formal/overheard, establishes the conflict elaborated on in the composition part of the assignment.69 Similarly, Naden’ka’s (inexact) quotation from Krylov’s fable “The Peasant and the Farmhand” (“He could barely say ‘Oh’ when the bear got him”) implies a sudden calamity and evokes the notion of ingratitude, expounded on in a longer narrative that follows. In the original fable, the peasant who is saved from the bear by the farmhand berates the latter for ruining the bear’s skin. The primary intertext for this institutka’s composition is Ivan Turgenev’s novel The Quiet (Zatish’e), one in a cycle of the writer’s narratives about “superfluous men” and their inability to love. Like many of Turgenev’s novels of the 1850s, the work is notable for its own dependence on intertextuality in characterization and plot development. Pushkin’s poem “Anchar” (1828), describing a slave who dies after collecting poison from a tree on the orders of his murderous prince, becomes the interpretive key to Turgenev’s characters’ view of love. The two protagonists, Pyotr and Maria, reimagine Pushkin’s slave to be a slave to love capable of destroying them both. The premonition of a catastrophe comes to pass (with Maria’s suicide and Pyotr on his way to drinking himself to death) in a novel that also relies in its representation of the protagonists’ interactions on allusions to love in Dante and Goethe. One part of Naden’ka’s composition is, in her words, “stolen” from Turgenev directly (pokhishcheno), the rest is condensed, reworded, and reworked. Naden’ka’s choice of the passage from the novel, a prelude to a seduction scene between Pyotr and Maria, set in nature, is significant in its focus on Chekhov’s character’s fascination with love, her practical resolve to learn more about it, and the implied inaccessibility of the knowledge she desires to gain. Turgenev’s novel, filled with love, tears, confessions, betrayals, and the protagonists’ final ruin, is thus understandably and legitimately used by Chekhov’s character as a teenager’s “textbook of life” – an ironic twist on Turgenev’s aversion to the figure of the institutka with all of her presumed inexperience and affectations.70 A sense of an impending disaster conveyed by Turgenev’s seduction scene, Maria’s emotional instability, and her subsequent suicide are similarly important for Naden’ka’s own narrative, her interest psychologi-

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cally motivated by her family’s circumstances. Naden’ka introduces her theft of Turgenev’s language with the sentence “Nature was in its magnificence” (velikolepie), an incongruously archaic word.71 The passage continues in Turgenev’s elegant prose and then switches back to the character’s own summary. In her composition, Naden’ka chooses to borrow the following excerpt (marked in bold) verbatim from Turgenev’s lengthy description: Half way between his estate and Ipatovka, a small birch grove stood at the very top of an incline over a wide ravine. Its young trees grew densely. No axe has touched their slender trunks; small leaves cast a sparse yet continuous shadow onto the soft and thin grass littered with golden buttercup tops, white dots of forest bluebells and the raspberry crosses of wild carnations. The early sun flooded the entire grove with a powerful if subdued light; everywhere dew drops shined, large drops suddenly catching fire and glowing red in places; everything emanated freshness, life, and that naïve solemnity of the first moments of the morning when everything is already so light and still so silent. Only the scattered voices of the larks were heard over the distant fields, and in the grove a few birds leisurely sang their short songs, pausing at times, as if to see how well they did. A pungent and healthy smell wafted from the wet earth; pure light air moved in cool currents. All conveyed the feeling of a lovely summer morning, all appeared and smiled like morning, like the rosy, freshly washed face of a recently awakened child.72 Naden’ka’s choice of the direct quotation is notable for its focus on the vulnerability of the young trees and on their impending demise (an axe is yet to touch “their slender trunks”). What follows is the character’s attempt to rewrite Turgenev’s meticulously drawn scene in her own language, an attempt shaped by the girl’s personal perception of nature and her limited stock of signifiers: The sun went up and down. A flock of birds was flying in that place where the dawn is. Somewhere a shepherd tended to his herds, and some kinds of clouds were moving about a little bit lower than the sky. I adore nature.73 Clichéd representations of nature were frequently parodied in the small press. Chekhov’s reconstruction of Naden’ka’s language, however, high-

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lights the practical challenges of writing in a specific genre, as well as his naïve author’s lack of precision and detail, inconsistencies in temporal sequences, and her difficulty with spatial dimensions. Nevertheless, the young writer is shown to possess her own, if inadequately expressed, vision of nature. If Turgenev’s passage emphasizes light, soft intermittent sounds, the early morning freshness, and stillness, Naden’ka’s perception of nature is all about movement. The last sentence once again gestures to the naïve author’s status as an institutka. Naden’ka’s attempt at literary appropriation is directly followed by the description of the financial ruin and loss threatening the family: “All summer long Father was not himself. The nasty bank suddenly wanted to sell our house, and Mother kept following him around, afraid that he would do away with himself.”74 If the literary part of the composition is characterized by its incongruities and stylistic ineptitude, Naden’ka’s actual story, emerging between the lines and on the margins of the ready-made formulae of the small press, is succinct, specific, and dramatic. Naden’ka’s solution to the math problem that concludes Chekhov’s narrative utilizes yet another familiar subgenre of the trifles. Chekhov’s own “The Mad Mathematician’s Problems” (1882) employs illogical combinations of incongruous signifiers for a comic effect, as, for example, in the following entry: “I was chased by thirty dogs; seven of them were white, eight were grey and the rest black. Question: where was I bitten, on my left leg or on my right?”75 Naden’ka’s text, on the other hand, demonstrates an incongruity of a different kind, revealing the incompatibility of the child’s task with the cognitive skills needed for its successful completion. At the centre of Chekhov’s attention in this part of the story is his character’s process of reasoning, voiced for recognition as a type yet also serving in aid of Naden’ka’s individualization. While the parodic appropriation of various discourses was an established practice of the small press, Chekhov’s selections and their shaping shows a distinct broadening of the standard. Beginning with the form of the character’s name in the title and ending with Naden’ka’s solution to the math problem, where “a little bit more” is used as a numerical value, the connection between the authorial presence and the character is that of empathy rooted in the incongruity between the stereotypical and the “real.” The child’s rewrite of Turgenev is shown to be an attempt to understand her circumstances. Chekhov’s representation of Naden’ka’s creative effort humanizes and individualizes his character, offering thereby a much more insightful and powerful narrative than would a common trifle of the small press.

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DON ’ T TELL : LANGUAGE AS POWER

Unlike his first child story, Chekhov’s subsequent stories about children were consistently written in the genre of the amplified dramatic sketch. The switch allowed Chekhov to offer his readers a more complex and nuanced exploration of the “disparity between the adult and the juvenile perspective.”76 The reversal of the reader’s expectations common for the comic sketch was now used to emphasize the notion of difference. The comic effect was achieved by the demonstration of the incongruities between the child’s and the adult’s perceptions and reactions to the same events. The distance established between the observing consciousness and the character, a necessary ingredient in any comic mode of representation, highlighted the hierarchy between the contemplating subject (narrator) and the object of contemplation (child). The battle of discourses was now between the adult and the child; the resulting collapse of communication was an indication of the incompatibility of the child’s “insubordinate creative consciousness” with the world outside.77 The attainment of power based on knowledge is visibly on display in “The Mean Boy” (1883) (“Zloi mal’chik”). The child protagonist, Kolya, a schoolboy of about ten to eleven years of age, blackmails his sister and her admirer throughout the summer after he observes them kissing by the lake. Once the two are engaged, however, the power of the secret is lost, and the lovers exact their revenge on the little blackmailer. The original journal title, “The Bad Boy” (skvernyi), as in “badly done!” voiced by a figure of authority, gestures to the violation of behavioural norms occurring at a certain point in time. The switch from “bad” to “mean” (zloi) in the Marx edition of complete works foregrounds the child’s character as seen by his adversaries and points to an essential quality of “meanness” as the child’s dominant trait.78 In revising the story for the Marx edition, Chekhov removed all other infractions by the child (stealing jam and surreptitiously helping himself to wine at dinner), thereby underscoring the protagonist’s voyeurism and propensity for blackmail as the predominant aspects of his agency and as sole manifestations of his desire to gain control in the child/adult power dynamic. The “tripling of the gaze” in the story, i.e. the reader observing the narrator observing the voyeur, complicates the perspective and brings the issue of control to the forefront. The two lovers, “a young man of pleasant appearance” and “a young girl with a cute nose,” serve as generic antagonists of the child in his quest for

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power/knowledge, the antagonists whose frustration with and resentment of Kolya are plainly on display. The taboo aspect of the bartered knowledge is clearly understood by all parties involved, and the child’s voyeurism here is as subversive as is his pursuit of financial gain in exchange for the promise not to tell. The intricate interplay of control vs powerlessness is founded on the knowledge/word gained through observation, the knowledge that can be used to subvert customary roles. The child is individualized throughout – he is observant, smart, resourceful, greedy, aware of the impropriety of his sister’s relationship, yet also impulsive and naïve. In concordance with the prevalent notions about children’s sexuality in Chekhov’s time, discussed in chapter 3, the sexual element of the infraction, certainly grasped by the readers of the small press, is not emphasized in relation to little Kolya. The taboo aspect of his sister’s behaviour and of his own voyeurism, however, are clearly understood by the child. While Kolya’s character and motivations are depicted in detail, Chekhov’s description of the lovers’ mutual enjoyment of inflicting physical pain on Kolya is the sole instance of broadening the boundaries of the stereotypical for these two characters. The plot of the sketch, timed to coincide with the summer dacha season, features in its finale a familiar reversal of expectations. The young couple wins their battle for power because, after the marriage proposal is made and accepted, the knowledge the child possesses is no longer the one of an unsanctioned connection, and the child’s silence can no longer be traded for favours. In the end, however, the true reversal of expectations, and a hint of a possible novelistic amplification, are found not in the abrupt transference of power back to the adults but in the authorial remark stating that punishing Kolya remained the pinnacle of the couple’s love for each other.79 Chekhov offered a version of the same plot several years later in “Zinochka” (1887), describing an eight-year-old child blackmailing his governess and brother after observing them at their first rendezvous. Both stories focus on an illicit connection and on the child’s manipulation of his knowledge to gain advantage and control. In “Zinochka,” however, Chekhov explores the impact of the child’s behaviour on another powerless individual – the young governess pushed out of her position by the boy’s judgmental mother after the secret is revealed. Like Tolstoy’s trilogy on maturation, “Zinochka” is a first-person account by an adult remembering his childhood; the account suffused with regret about the actions of the protagonist’s younger self. Unlike Tolstoy, however, Chekhov does not find the reason for these actions in the

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child’s exposure to the civilized world but, rather, focuses on the child’s interior motivations, allowing his adult narrator to clarify what was implied but left unsaid in “The Mean Boy.” The narrator attributes the reason for his behaviour as a child to the desire for power and control, even if temporary and brief. The regret is based on the adult’s belated understanding of the purity of the connection between the governess and the boy’s brother – in contrast to the child’s remembered perception of the encounter as inappropriate and shameful. The boy’s emotional engagement with his victim hints at the emerging sexuality that cannot be recognized or acknowledged. The thrill of being able to induce such passionate and powerful hate lingers into adulthood.80 Chekhov’s “Paterfamilias” (1885), a sketch depicting the father as a capricious tyrant in his interactions with family members, explores intimately the child’s powerlessness vis-à-vis the adult world. The father’s abusive behaviour, the result of a bad hangover and a loss at cards the previous night, first directed at his wife, a former institutka, then at the governess and, finally, shifted to the seven-year-old Fedya, is shown to escalate in direct proportion to the child’s fear and distress. Fedya’s posture is as offensive to the father as is the way he is holding his spoon. The child’s tears lead to verbal abuse and physical punishment (Fedya has to stand in the corner and is denied dinner). The change in title from “Scapegoats” to “Paterfamilias,” the removal of the subtitle (“dedicated to young fathers”), and the appended new closure in Chekhov’s edited version of the story describes the morning after the father’s initial outburst and underscores the child’s intimate experience of despotism, the direct result of the father’s commodification of his household, including his son: Do you think I should be happy about this kid? Do you know how much he costs me? Do you know, you vile creature, how much you cost me? Or do you think I just print money? That I just get it for doing nothing? Stop whining! Silence! Do you hear me?! You scum, you want me to whip you?81 In contrast to the resourceful child depicted in “The Mean Boy,” Fedya is denied agency, making him a perfect victim of his father’s moods. In an ultimate gesture of oppression, the figure of authority takes away the child’s voice. The boy is silenced, made to resort solely to nonverbal expressions of distress, carefully recorded by the narrator: blanching, tearing up, crying, sobbing, yelping, and then, after the abrupt change in the father’s mood, becoming confused, sombre, but still remaining nonver-

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bal. The father’s unexpected shift from fury to benevolence the day after his outburst is shown to be as disturbing to Fedya as the outright abuse he is subjected to the night before. The story’s portrayal of the child/adult dynamic as that of victim/ victimizer is reminiscent of the sentiments expressed in Chekhov’s letter to his brother Alexander written four years after the publication of the story. In the letter, Chekhov connects Alexander’s inappropriate behaviour toward his own children to the experience of childhood in Pavel Chekhov’s household where despotism and deceit were responsible for “warp[ing] (iskoverkali) [their] childhood.”82 Yet, unlike the direct condemnation of a particular behaviour in a personal letter, the story gives ample room to the explication of the father’s position (his “truth”), including an examination of the profound guilt he feels about the exchange and of the inability to acknowledge the wrong he has done. The child/adult dynamic of unequal power that structures “The Mean Boy,” and “Paterfamilias,” is founded on the word/knowledge, briefly gained and then lost by Kolya the blackmailer and denied completely to little Fedya by his father’s unambiguous gestures of domination. In “Oysters” (1884), the attainment of the child’s desire is yet again dependent on a word. The unnamed protagonist of the story remembers how he, as an eightyear-old boy accompanied by his father, begged for food at a pub where the laughing patrons fed him oysters. The plot about a simpleton, who does not know how to eat oysters but is embarrassed to show his ignorance, appeared frequently in the trifles of the 1880s.83 The gluttons and their love for oysters were also a recurring motif of the small press.84 The simpleton of Chekhov’s story, however, is a starving child and the men who enjoy the child’s humiliation are the unfeeling gluttons. Chekhov amplifies the Dostoevskian plot of a hungry child faced with inaccessible cornucopia by introducing another Dostoevskian figure – the child’s father who is sick, poor, proud, and starving as well.85 Chekhov’s stated approach to the story he called “a serious etude” was that of a medical man, the approach that accounts for the meticulous description of the psychophysical symptoms of starvation and fatigue experienced by his child character.86 The designation of “serious” might refer to the overall sombre tone of the story but could also indicate Chekhov’s acknowledgment of his experiments with perspective. The use of the firstperson narration, a rare instance in Chekhov’s stories of the 1880s, establishes an intimate connection between the implied author and the protagonist. The protagonist’s perspective is presented both as experienced

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by the child and as reimagined by the narrator’s older self, and there is an attempt to weave the two perspectives together throughout the story. At times, the omniscient older narrator is observing himself as a starving child (as in, for example, “my head is stretched back a bit and also to the side; and I inadvertently look up at the pub’s lighted windows”). At other times, Chekhov describes the manifestations of hunger as they are being felt by the child who does not yet possess the language to articulate his sensations precisely. Two words are shown to be inaccessible to the boy – starvation, which is described as “a strange sickness,” and the word “oysters” on the pub’s sign. The symptoms of the “strange sickness” (the signifier attributed to the narrator as a child) or “Fames” (the term supplied by the narrator as his older self), scrupulously described, account for the boy’s disorientation, loss of fear, and the extraordinary sharpening of the senses: The strange sickness takes over. The noise of the carriages is like thunder; in the stink of the roads I discern thousands of smells; my eyes see brilliant flashes of lightning in pub lights and street lamps.87 In the child’s unbalanced mind, the word “oysters” appears as the key to the solution of a difficult cognitive puzzle, the solution that promises to satisfy an enormous physical need. As a result, the protagonist’s imagination creates radically different versions of this mysterious food: the wonderful fish ready to be cooked and enjoyed, or the horrifying froglike creature that bites while you eat it. The actual act of consuming oysters – “something slimy, salty, reeking of dampness and mould” (and crunchy, since the child eats them in their shells) – is accompanied by the physical fear of the food consumed and, simultaneously, by a total lack of inhibition.88 The aftereffects of the visit to the pub are both physical and emotional – the child experiences unquenchable thirst and nightmares. The knowledge is attained, the word is finally united with its meaning, but the cost of this language lesson is emotionally and physically traumatic and lasting. Seen by his contemporaries chiefly as an expression of Chekhov’s humanism, the sketch is an important example of Chekhov’s experimentation with representing a naïve consciousness.89 The movement into the child’s psyche is accomplished through the weaving of perspectives; a careful attention is also accorded to the interdependence of the psychic and the physical in descriptions of the child’s actions. The child’s reliance on imagination, on constructing stories in order to arrive at an under-

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standing of his predicament, found in “Oysters” and in “Naden’ka N.,” becomes one of the building blocks of Chekhov’s evolving literary model of the child. THE TODDLER AT LARGE

Grisha in Chekhov’s eponymous story (1886) is Chekhov’s youngest child character, a toddler.90 Grisha’s eventful first outing results in nightmares and a fever; his mother’s solution is to treat her son with castor oil. The story’s primary focus is on the emergence of language and the concomitant communication breakdown experienced by the protagonist. Chekhov tackles the challenge of representing an essentially nonverbal character by alternating narration from the adult viewpoint with one limited to the toddler’s sphere of knowledge and expression. This is achieved by the interjection of double indirect speech into the objective narration, a device Chekhov uses consistently in the mid-1880s.91 Additionally, the comingling of “childish” and adult significations of the same objects in this story regularly precedes a switch into a full “child mode” of expression, forcing the reader to “to learn the code” and assume the child’s perspective (“to translate the child’s descriptions into the language of the adults”).92 In his description of the child’s home environment, for example, Chekhov constantly moves from an adult consciousness and perspective (“a rectangular world,” “space,” “personality”) to the ones bound by Grisha’s cognitive and linguistic limitations (“Mother is like a doll, a cat is like Father’s fur coat, only the fur coat does not have eyes or tails”).93 The selection of an angle of vision (close to the ground) in descriptions of objects and events is also consistently that of the child. Time and space as described in the sketch adhere to the routines of Grisha’s daily life. Grisha is on the cusp of attaining the ability to communicate verbally. Language acquisition is shown to be achieved by repetition, association, and reinforcement through dialogue. There are only a handful of words at the child’s command, but he is already capable of using those in sentences: “Let’s go!”; “Give me, Nanny, give!” and “Mommy!” Grisha broadens his understanding of the world by using association and is already distinguishing, albeit with mixed results, between “like” (similar) and “same” (identical). Mommy looks like a doll, his father’s fur coat like a cat, but Grisha is fully aware that they are not the same. Arranging the world into categories according to function is another step in developing cognition for Chekhov’s child at this stage. All women and men of a certain age and appearance belong to the category

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of Nannies, Mommies, or Dads, and all animals of a certain size with tails are cats. Grisha’s perception of the world is utilitarian and egocentric.94 The clock is there to swing its pendulum and ring, presumably for Grisha’s amusement. Nanny and Mommy are there to dress, feed Grisha, and put him to bed. The mysterious Dad appears and then disappears (mel’kaet), making it impossible to formulate the purpose of his existence vis-à-vis Grisha’s own needs. Similarly, his aunt’s periodic presence and absence are confusing to Grisha who regularly searches for her under the bed, behind the trunk, and under the sofa.95 Chekhov hints at the connection between the pleasure felt by the toddler upon discovering what he had thought gone forever return from the void and the possibility of permanence and continuity. The pleasure is underscored by the toy drum given to Grisha by his aunt, confirming and celebrating her return. Grisha’s anticipation of the aunt’s reappearance is an indication of his awareness of time (then and now), as well as a recognition of a narrative’s sequential character.96 Grisha’s world contains a multitude of objects equal in their importance to his imagination and later used as benchmarks for figuring out the world outside. Besides the drum, Grisha’s treasures include a broken toy clown, spools, pieces of paper, a doll without an arm, and a lidless box. The items, clearly handled often, testify to the importance of play in the toddler’s life. Socialization at this stage is limited to interactions with adults who guide Grisha in acquiring the norms of appropriate behaviour. Grisha’s exposure to the larger world brings about heightened awareness, incites reaction to new stimulae and motivates socialization. The reaction to the sensory overload (the marked “brightness” of the outside world) is expressed both physically (Grisha squints) and in an emotional outburst of uncontrollable laughter.97 Similarly, colours, limited in this story to red, black, dark, and light, are used to indicate the character’s emotional reaction to sensory stimulation. The sensory and the emotional are collapsed in the “terrible noise” (strashnyi shum) made by the passing soldiers or in the “black hollow” (chernoe duplo) of an animated stove. The excess of sensory stimulation leads to a negative physical response; Grisha’s partaking of vodka and pie results in emotional disturbance.98 If “Grisha” were to be read as a case history in child psychology in line with the scholarly positions held by Chekhov’s contemporaries and discussed in chapter 3, then the developmental benchmarks depicted for this age would be the following: 1. language acquisition by repetition, associ-

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ation and reinforcement in dialogue; 2. cognitive development through associative thinking and categorization based on function; 3. socialization in games and interactions within the family and outside; 4. emergence of ethical norms – introduced and enforced by adults. Chekhov, however, also pays attention to the psychological aspects of his character’s developmental stage that his contemporaries did not systematically address in their descriptions: 1. egocentricity as an integral part of the stage; 2. causality viewed through the prism of egocentricity; 3. understanding of time continuum; 4. awareness of existence of absent people; and of presence and absence as a narrative sequence; 5. lack of altruism; 6. synesthesia; and 7. highly developed imagination.99 Further, the writer’s modelling of his toddler’s world, prescient and almost clinical in its attention to detail, serves yet another and larger purpose. Maturation is shown to be painful, the success in self-expression never guaranteed, and true communication impossible to achieve. The effect of Grisha’s pleas is opposite to the one intended: they go (but not where he wants to go); Nanny gives him a drink (of vodka); and Mommy does appear (yet misdiagnoses little Grisha). At home, after his outing, Grisha discovers that the life of the mind is too intense to be adequately expressed in words and resorts to gestures and is once again misunderstood by those around him. The placement of the castor oil “cure” for psychic distress at the conclusion of the sketch signals comic incongruity rooted in the failure of communication. Grisha’s narrative fails to reach his audience. In “Grisha,” the child protagonist has to struggle with loss (if only imagined), existential fear, humiliation, and lack of understanding. Lev Vygotsky will term these prerequisites of growth the “uneasiness” (neudobstvo) of childhood, the time of “the greatest tragedy” (velichaishego tragizma) characterized by disharmony and a divide between the body and its environment.100 The child’s life for the psychologist is a creative system of constant tension and overcoming, of the unremitting formation of new modes of behaviour.101 The transition to a new developmental stage is always a breakthrough, a jump forward in certain key places where quantity is transformed into quality.102 For Grisha and virtually all of Chekhov’s child protagonists, such narrative key place is the threshold between past and now, between the familiar inside and the emotionally charged outside. The communication breakdown in “Grisha” is shown to be the result of the character’s inability, caused by cognitive limitations, to convey his anxieties and concerns. For this character, the failure to tell his story

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and be understood locates the “uneasiness” of childhood and its “greatest tragedy” in the essential impotence of language to effectively convey meaning. Yet attempts at communication never stop, and the belief in the power of the word is as strong in Chekhov’s two-year-old Grisha as it is in his older characters. Chekhov’s children persist in purging their hurts and making sense of their lives by producing narratives.

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5 The Child’s Text

A writer observes, selects, hypothesizes and shapes. A.P. Chekhov The child creates as he borrows. Roman Jakobson

What motivates a writer to write? How do writers produce narratives? For Chekhov, posing questions, working solely within the sphere of one’s direct knowledge, and forming cogent strategies of representation are essential for any creative endeavour. Imagination must be curbed and inspiration tamed in a process that entails observation, selection, supposition, and construction.1 Creative strategies are crucial for the artistic process but not those based on an overarching explanatory idea. Consumers of art must be given the freedom to find their own solutions to the problems posed in a work. In a letter to Suvorin, Chekhov explains: I … have never refused asking questions in art. In my conversations with my brothers-in-writing, I have always insisted on a creative writer having nothing to do with solving narrowly professional problems. It is wrong for a writer to discourse on something he does not understand. For professional questions we have experts: it is their business to express opinions on the commune, the future of capital, the harmfulness of alcoholism, on boots, or on women’s diseases … An artist should address only what he understands; his area of expertise is as limited as of any other expert. I have reiterated this idea and always insisted on it. To say that in his sphere of activity there are no ques-

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tions but only answers is possible solely for someone who has never written and has had no involvement with images. An artist observes, selects, hypothesizes and shapes. Just these actions alone presuppose a question at the source. If there is no question, then there is no need to hypothesize or choose. To cut it short, I will conclude with psychiatry: if one rejects an [underlying] question and intent [in art], then one has to presume that a creative writer creates spontaneously, without design, in a fit of temporary insanity. Hence, if a writer boasted to me that he wrote a novella without prior intent, simply out of inspiration, I would consider him insane. You are right when you demand a conscious attitude to work from a creative writer, but you confuse two notions: solving the problem and posing the problem. Only the second is a must for a creative writer. In Anna Karenina and in Onegin not one problem is solved, but they both persuade [the reader] because all problems there are posed correctly. The court of law has to pose problems correctly, and the jury will decide – each according to his own discretion.2 Like Chekhov’s own, the texts produced by his children emerge in a process of observation, selection, and careful construction. The child’s exposure to the threshold experiences of sexuality, marriage, illness, and death prompts questions that demand solutions. Creative reimagining of internalized narratives provides Chekhov’s children with a strategy for overcoming the hermeneutical challenges of life. The child’s creative endeavours are driven by his search for knowledge. In Chekhov’s stories about seven-year-olds, creativity in its connection to liminality is explored in the genre of an amplified dramatic sketch. As in a typical sketch, the exposition is absent, the plot revolves around disruptive events and the resulting miscommunication, the dialogue between protagonists is prominent, and the narration is objective. In these stories, Chekhov abandons the customary present tense narration of the standard sketch in favour of a variety of iterations of the past tense – from continuous to perfective. Furthermore, in a continuation of the trend toward novelization, both realms of representation, that of the adult and the child, are amplified, and the comic reversal of expectations in the dénouements is muted to suggest the complexity and density of true life interactions.3 The writer’s choice of seven-year-old characters for these stories is not coincidental. In the Russian Orthodox tradition, seven, ten, and fourteen are seen as developmental milestones. Seven is the age of the first com-

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munion, a pivotal threshold point in maturation characterized by the emergence of personal identity and ethics. T H E RU L E S O F E N G AG E M E N T : “ THE COOK GETS MARRIED ”

Grisha, the seven-year-old protagonist of “The Cook Gets Married” (“Kukharka zhenitsia,” 1885), is an eager witness to the matchmaking that ultimately results in the family cook Pelageia’s marriage to a cabdriver.4 The use of the childish signification in the title signals Chekhov’s immediate focus on the child’s perception of events. In standard Russian, a woman who marries “goes around the husband” (vykhodit zamuzh), while a man is “wifed” (zhenitsia). In the title’s rendering of the protagonist’s direct speech, the male signification applied to a woman alerts the reader to Grisha’s general confusion about the concept of marriage. Chekhov rationalizes Grisha’s uncertainty, and the child’s perception of the unfolding events as extraordinary, by using the qualifier “small” and the designation “a little tyke” (karapuzik) in his initial description of the boy. Grisha’s age is established in the opening sentence, yet Chekhov’s descriptive tags, while signalling the narrator’s affection for the character, also imply immaturity inconsistent with Grisha’s actual age. Chekhov emphasizes the transgressive character of Grisha’s actions from the start. The boy positions himself on the threshold of the kitchen, eavesdropping on the conversation and peeking into the keyhole. As in his story “The Mean Boy,” Chekhov “triples the gaze” in the description of the boy’s transgression: the reader is observing the adult narrator who is observing the young voyeur. The device enlarges the distance between the reader and the object of depiction, a distance necessary for the realization of the comic intent. By making the reader complicit in the activity, Chekhov also points to the inherent voyeurism of any aesthetic experience. Grisha’s infraction violates the spatially demarcated boundaries of class and age. The cook’s primary territory is the kitchen and the dining room; the prospective groom is firmly planted in the kitchen. Grisha’s assigned space is the nursery (detskaia), literally “children’s room,” the place he is sent to upon the discovery of the infraction. The boy’s mother succinctly articulates children’s normative behaviour and the segregation of the household into age-dependent realms: “Go study. It’s not your business to stand here and listen!” The kitchen’s threshold is thus also a metaphori-

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cal threshold between the ignorance of childhood that defines Grisha and the adult knowledge he seeks to obtain. “The Cook” is written in the third person, with no double indirect speech to indicate a shift to the child’s perspective. When Chekhov wants to show what his protagonist sees, thinks or feels, he switches into direct speech or introduces the protagonist’s thoughts and impressions with “he saw” or “in his opinion.” Chekhov does not address the issue of the epistemic gap directly nor does he rely on what Wachtel, in his discussion of Tolstoy’s approach to representation, termed “stop action descriptions” evoking typical events in the child’s life. Instead, Chekhov provides the illusion of immediate access to the hard work of mastering the intricacies of adult interactions through the continuous interweaving of perspectives. For example, the modal expressions “as if” or “apparently” (slovno, ochevidno), commonly introduced to mitigate the limits of a narrator’s knowledge, in this story, can refer either to the child’s point of view or to that of the narrator.5 The child’s perspective in such instances is indicated by the use of cognitively appropriate concepts and means of expression. In describing the cook’s emotional turmoil, Chekhov uses “as if” to signal Grisha’s perception. The child’s focus on the cook’s face leads to the boy’s interpretation of physical changes in age-appropriate psychological terms: “as if frightened.” The following sentence, introduced by “apparently,” articulates an awareness well beyond Grisha’s level of maturity: “She appeared to be weighed down by her isolation; she wanted to talk to someone, share her impressions, to unburden herself.” The narrator’s summation of the psychological import of the moment as experienced by the child suggests an adult evaluation. The range of the events described in the story is circumscribed by the boy’s field of perception, while his reactions are limited by the boy’s mental development. Childish significations are used throughout the story and Grisha’s perception of time (e.g. supper time, when it became dark) highlights his cognitive limitations as well. Yet, unlike Chekhov’s preverbal child, the young protagonist of “The Cook” is someone whose general linguistic competencies, and particularly his ability to read, enable him to articulate his perceptions much more fully and coherently. The cook’s agitation in the story’s opening scene presents a cognitive puzzle for the naïve observer. The child’s view of the cook’s reaction to the matchmaking emphasizes colour, sound, and movement: her face “burnt and changed colors, from crimson to deathly pale,” and “with her

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shaking hands, she could not stop grabbing at knives, forks, logs, rags; she moved about, mumbled, made noise, but accomplished nothing.” Similarly puzzling to the child is the dialog between the cabdriver and the matchmaking Nanny. In an exchange reminiscent of Aksakov’s description of matchmaking in Years, Nanny tests the cabdriver’s sobriety and ability to support a family by offering him vodka and inquiring about his pay. The cabdriver passes both tests by refusing to drink and providing details about his income. The child’s attention is again drawn to the facial expressions of the two interlocutors, both described as “wily” (ekhidnyi). Banished from the kitchen by his mother, and in search of understanding, Grisha goes to the nursery, places Ushinsky’s The Native Word on his desk, but does not feel like reading (“emu ne chitalos”). As I show in chapter 2, Ushinsky’s readers were designed to inculcate compassion and moral sense in children. The excerpts from the classics, and Ushinsky’s own compositions used in The Native Word, were carefully edited and crafted to preserve the boundaries of the permissible. Ushinsky’s primer is certainly not the book Grisha needs in order to understand the rules and expectations of married life. Chekhov counters the adequacy and effectiveness of The Native Word, with its “edifying and illustrated” texts mocked in his “Soft-Boiled Boots,” by describing the puzzled intensity of Grisha’s reaction to the news of the impending event: The cook is getting married … he thought. Strange. I don’t understand. Why do you need to get married? Mother married Father, cousin Verochka married Pavel Andreich. Well, in the end, it’s probably all right to marry Father or Pavel Andreich: they’ve got gold chains, good suits, and their shoes are always polished; but to marry this scary red-nosed cab driver in felt boots … yuck! And why does Nanny want poor Pelageia to get married?6 Notably, Grisha’s initial take on the issue is pointedly aesthetic. Like Aksakov’s Sergey in Years, Chekhov’s child focuses on the surface incompatibility of the union. In Grisha’s view, the coarseness and physical repulsiveness of the potential groom is incongruous with Pelageia’s beauty. Pelageia is clear about her unwillingness to marry the cab driver. Grisha is empathetic toward the cook’s plight, the feelings evident in the epithet “poor” consistently applied to her by the child. The recognition of the sexual aspect of the marriage union is absent from Grisha’s cognitive arsenal. The awareness of the taboo nature of the occasion is induced, however, by the verbal prohibition for the child to participate in the matchmaking

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and by the child’s physical removal from the kitchen; it is reinforced by Pelageia’s refusal to discuss the issue of romantic attachments with Grisha’s mother. The cook’s reluctance to be married to a man she considers to be too old for her, Nanny’s insinuations about Pelageia’s attraction to the postman and to Grisha’s tutor, as well as her description of the cook as a “hussy” result in Grisha’s perception of marriage as something shameful (sovestno zhenit’sia). Grisha’s further refusal to accept Pelageia’s marriage to the cab driver is founded on the ethical dimension of the boy’s aesthetics, missing from Aksakov’s character’s perception of matchmaking. In this infantile construction, harking back to the binary oppositions of fairy-tale narratives, physical beauty is equated with inner goodness, while ugliness is associated with evil. Grisha’s evolving concept of marriage finds its articulation in a dream where the household drama is reimagined in a mininarrative based on Alexander Pushkin’s Ruslan and Liudmila (1820). GRISHA ’ S PUSHKIN

The masterpiece of his youth, Pushkin’s poem revolves around the hero Ruslan’s search for his bride Liudmila kidnapped on her wedding night from the newlyweds’ bed by a repulsive old wizard. The hero’s quest features fairy-tale helpers, enemies, and magical objects; it also includes Ruslan’s death and resurrection, the eventual defeat of his rivals, and, finally, his bride’s rescue. Pushkin’s engagement with other texts, such as Voltaire’s Maid of Orleans, Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, Bogdanovich’s Dushen’ka, and Zhukovsky’s Twelve Sleeping Maidens, is deliberately transparent. The poem gestures to Nikolai Karamzin’s History of Russia, as well as to Russian folklore and its mythical heroes. The resulting genre is, in Walter Arndt’s words, “so wildly polyphyletic (as geneticists would say), so elusive a literary hybrid, that determined attempt to classify it might result in a label as terse as ‘a mock-romantic fairy-tale ballad parody of pseudo-Kievan sham-Chivalry.’”7 Perceived as amoral by contemporaries, Ruslan and Liudmila is a poem that “specializes in the erotic travesty of epic motifs.”8 The evil magic in Ruslan and Liudmila belongs to a world of graybeards and hags, while it is the youthful hero and his bride who have nature and good magic on their side. Chernomor, whose long beard is his only claim to prowess, cannot win because his conniving and the evil magic he has mastered are counter to natural order and, therefore, merely grotesque. In Pushkin’s words, “against the laws of time his learn-

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ing is futile” (“no protiv vremeni zakona ego nauka ne sil’na”). In Leslie O’Bell’s description, the hero is the brave youth of Russian fairy tales brought up to date, coming into maturity against the background of old values falling to modern ones, rescued from melancholy, and revived after a passage through death.9 Positioned on the threshold of forbidden knowledge, Chekhov’s child character chooses Pushkin over Ushinsky, using Pushkin’s erotic poem as his textbook of life. Grisha’s appropriation of Pushkin features the cabdriver as the evil magician Chernomor, Nanny as the witch, and Pelageia as the maiden in distress. The boy’s choice is psychologically and narratively motivated. The adult world deliberately obfuscates marriage and sex. The knowledge Grisha seeks cannot be found in Ushinsky’s anodyne texts. Pushkin’s tale of a hero who rescues a young maiden from an evil and impotent magician (and features a bedroom scene) is a much better source of information and a much more helpful guide for action. The cabdriver’s transformation into an impotent Chernomor allows for the boy’s identification with the young hero of Pushkin’s tale. In Grisha’s world, however, the rescue of the maiden required by the genre cannot occur. Fairy-tale magic is shown to be powerless and the child’s agency tentative and ineffectual. Ruslan and Liudmila, the story’s primary intertext, serves to highlight the nature of Grisha’s inquiry in its relation to the child’s life. Pushkin’s own take on the workings of a child’s creative mind can be gleaned from the poet’s first dramatization of inspiration, his mock ode “Sleep” (“Son”) (1816). The seventeen-year-old Pushkin’s poem focuses on the intermingling of the personal and fictional in the production of narratives, as well as on the work of the subconscious in dreams. In “Sleep,” slumber and idleness, not fame or love, are praised as conducive to creativity. The lyrical digression in the end of the work identifies dreams as the source of a child’s poetic imagination. Pushkin’s hero’s inspiration comes alive in reveries fuelled by his Nanny’s bedtime stories: And I cannot forget my Nanny, The charm of those mysterious nights When in her ancient garb she, praying, Would expel the spirits, Then carefully cross me And tell me in a whisper the stories of the dead, of Bova’s epic deeds. And I would freeze with fear, Would barely breathe and hide under the blanket,

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No feeling in my legs or head. The simple light under the icon Caught her heavy wrinkles, And yet another, lavish item, Her ancient head cap, And the stretched-out mouth where her two remaining teeth would clink. All frightened me unwittingly And made me tremble. But, finally and quietly, Approaching sleep would touch my eyes And it was then when from the azure heights, On beds of roses, winged reveries, The sorcerers, and witches would descend And would enchant my sleep with fancy lies. I’d lose myself in the delights of tender thoughts. Deep in the Murom woods, Where Russian heroes dwell, In fancy was my youthful mind engaged. The “fancy lies” of the child’s imagination emerge out of terror prompted by the tales of yore. Pushkin’s hero’s nascent sexuality, “the delights of tender thoughts,” is sublimated in his creative imaginings.10 As we have seen, the connection that Pushkin establishes in his poem between terror, tales of yore, and the child’s creative imagination informs the work of Chekhov’s literary precursors as well. The games with the literary canon that characterize Pushkin’s “Sleep” and his Ruslan and Liudmila, however, are what distinguishes Chekhov’s work from that of his precursors.11 From this angle of vision, Arndt’s reading of Ruslan and Liudmila could, in its essentials, be applied to early Chekhov: The excitement in his story does not lie in any suspense about its outcome, hardly in even a momentary identification with hero or heroine, nor in any moral indignation at its human villains, who are pardonable or farcical – a sure sign of precocious realms. Instead, it lies in the teasing turns of the author’s impish mind, the stylized intimacy with it to which we are admitted, the sure expectation of the joltingly unexpected, the delightful scandal of an overblown genre deflated, and more than anything, the infectious gaiety and effortless brilliance of the verse, which somehow translate a gifted prank into the realm of aesthetic elation.12

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As in Pushkin’s early work, Chekhov’s games with the literary canon were prompted by the writer’s youthful irreverence for the sanctified formulae of high literature. Both Pushkin and Chekhov create new hybrid genres for the expression of their content. And both use the virtuosity of their writing to translate “gifted pranks” into “the realm of aesthetic elation.”13 If Pushkin’s focus in “Sleep” is on his child’s creative imagination, however, Chekhov’s is on the protagonist’s desire for understanding. Grisha’s quest for knowledge demands painstaking scrutiny of his world, the scrutiny inseparable from transgressive acts that breach conventional boundaries of rearing. The child’s exploration of troubling issues in imaginary narratives is, nevertheless, quite Pushkinian. After his initial thwarted attempts at snooping, Grisha surreptitiously observes the blessing of the bride and groom in the kitchen and overhears the cook sobbing on her way to church. The cook’s apparent distress elicits Grisha’s compassion (“Oh, poor, poor cook!”). The woman’s anguish makes the boy wonder about his parents’ unconcerned acceptance of Pelageia’s misery. His mother’s shifting enthusiasm about the affair adds to the boy’s confusion. Initially eager to participate in the wedding arrangements, the mother establishes impossible rules of conduct for the married couple. The new husband is not allowed to live in the house, or even stay in the kitchen, and Pelageia is forbidden to leave for the night. Grisha hypothesizes about the cook’s fate, embodying his projections in imaginary narratives. The selection of the material is based on the child’s most relevant areas of concern, while the shaping of the child’s text is circumscribed by his limited knowledge. In the postwedding plot, Grisha employs his personal vision of the worst possible treatment to describe Pelageia’s putative suffering: “Poor cook, sitting somewhere in the dark, crying! … And the cab driver yelling at her: shut up, shut up!” Prompted by the new husband’s request for Pelageia’s wages, Grisha’s final miniplot shifts the narrative focus to the loss of personal freedom. Pelageia had been free; she lived the way she wanted but, suddenly, a stranger appeared, someone who claimed the rights to her person and property. Now her life is one of humiliation, suffering, and subjugation to the will of another. Grisha is moved to tears by this “victim of human violence” (zhertvu chelovecheskogo nasillia) and tries to comfort Pelageia with a gift of the largest apple he can steal from the pantry. The key challenge for Chekhov’s character, a naïve witness to the cook’s rite of passage, is to capture the signified for the signifier “marriage.” What interests Chekhov is the child’s process of conceptualization based on observation, amplified and refined in socialization. The enforcement of

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the sexual taboo by the adults leads Grisha to believe that marriage is shameful. Moreover, in the young protagonist’s mind, marriage now is seen as unjust, as an institution where someone like the “defenseless” Pelageia can be treated as a commodity. The response of the adult world to the cook’s unhappiness upends Grisha’s notions of justice and love, as well as the expectation of a fairy-tale happy ending. The reinterpretation of traumatic events in a dream based on Pushkin’s text and in Grisha’s original narratives channels, and assuages, Grisha’s anguish. In Tolstoy’s Boyhood, the adolescent Nikolen’ka’s altruistic intercession on behalf of the maid Maria, a young woman he is attracted to, and Vasilii, the man she loves, succeeds, and the couple can marry. The sevenyear-old Grisha’s only attempt at agency is his altruistic, if transgressive, act of offering a stolen apple to his “poor” “Eve.” The act, however, does not change the status quo. The evocation of the archetypal tale of the loss of innocence and acquisition of knowledge is ironic, since it is Grisha who, in this story, is in search of the forbidden fruit. Chekhov does not directly acknowledge Grisha’s developing sexuality, yet the boy’s awareness of the erotic and the sublimation of the erotic in the child’s narrative are implied by Pushkin’s intertext. Overall, it is bringing together the word and its meaning that presents the greatest challenge for the character. In order to offset the perceived deficit of control and to work through the anxiety caused by incomprehension, the protagonist of “The Cook” manufactures stories. In the process, the child observes, selects, hypothesizes, shapes, and transgresses. He learns as he borrows and creates. CREATION FROM THE VOID : “ THE FUGITIVE ”

Unlike Chekhov’s other seven-year-olds, Pashka, the protagonist of “The Fugitive” (“Beglets,” 1887) is an illiterate peasant. The story describes the boy’s stay at the local clinic, followed by an escape attempt triggered by the death of another patient. Death and separation from home present two central and interconnected challenges of understanding faced by the child. Pashka’s response to his encounter with mortality is made problematic by the boy’s cognitive limitations. To cross the threshold of immaturity, Pashka must engage all of his powers of conceptualization and articulation but is constrained by his age and environment. The deficit of available cognitive and expressive means makes the resolution of the challenge

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of understanding particularly difficult. Without the resource of images and words found in books, Pashka must overcome the terror of the void, to use Lev Shestov’s famous description of Chekhov’s poetics, by “creating from the void” (see note 52 to the introduction). As in Aksakov’s Years, the child’s journey to awareness is also a physical journey. The title of Aksakov’s work points to the writer’s intent to depict his character’s evolution over time, Chekhov’s indicates evolution in motion. The genre of Aksakov’s work allows for a lengthy exploration of his protagonist’s encounter with death. In Chekhov’s condensed account, Pashka’s cognitive awakening is described as intense and precipitous. As in Aksakov’s books on maturation, in “The Fugitive,” the child’s progression from ignorance to knowledge coheres around images of death and rebirth, illness and recovery, darkness and illumination. In Chekhov, the images are tightly interwoven and interdependent. The story opens with a description of movement through darkness. The episode concludes with stillness and light. Throughout, Chekhov emphasizes the child’s physical discomfort: It was a lengthy procedure. At first, Pashka and his mother walked in the rain across empty fields and along forest paths where yellow leaves stuck to his boots; they walked until dawn. Then for about two hours he stood on the dark porch and waited for the door to open. It wasn’t as cold and wet as outside, but the wind sprayed drops of rain even here. As the porch got crowded, Pashka, squeezed tight, pressed his face into someone’s sheepskin reeking of salted fish and had a snooze. But then the door bolt clicked open, and Pashka and his mother were in the reception room. Here again they had to wait for a long time. All patients were sitting on benches, still and silent.14 The movement from darkness into the light of dawn, and the stasis that follows, are measured in time marked as excessive, and all occurring in silence. The contours of the dramatic sketch are perceptible in the story: the exposition is minimal, Pashka’s illness constitutes the narrative impetus, the dialog plays a prominent role, miscommunication is thematically important, and the conclusion is somewhat unexpected. As in “The Cook,” however, Chekhov breaches the formal limitations of the sketch to reorient and amplify his narrative. The protagonists are subtly individualized; the chief purpose of all interactions in the story is the delineation of the central figure. The narration is essentially objective, but Chekhov con-

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stantly shifts the perspective to accentuate Pashka’s restricted knowledge of the world and to explore his character’s adaptation to the unknown. As in his other stories about children, Chekhov does not directly address the epistemic gap between the adult narrator and the child. The approach to the issue of veracity in the representation of a naïve character found in “The Cook” is elaborated on, and the interweaving of perspectives becomes more nuanced and even more compact. The shifts from the narrator’s to Pashka’s point of view occur constantly, seemingly imperceptibly, often without any identifying markers, and sometimes within the same line. The opening sentence: “It was a lengthy procedure” (Eto byla dlinnaia protsedura), for instance, gestures both to Pashka’s perception of time and to the objective narrator’s ironic stance and superior knowledge. Tolstoy’s personal copy of “The Fugitive,” considered by the writer to be one of Chekhov’s best stories, has the line crossed out.15 The correction draws attention to the ambivalence in the attribution of perspective, apparently perceived as a fault. The second deletion in Tolstoy’s copy is Chekhov’s description of the smallpox patients observed by Pashka as “pagan Gods.” Once again the ambivalence of the attribution is questioned. The movement in and out of Pashka’s consciousness is not an oversight but an indication of Chekhov’s overdetermined approach to characterization. The comingling of perspectives is a highly effective, cinematic, and condensed way of conveying the complex shifts in the child’s self-orientation – as experienced by the child and as simultaneously observed from the outside by the adult narrator.16 The way time stretches on the walk to the clinic and in the waiting room or the “weird and funny” atmosphere at the clinic suggest the child’s point of perception. The notion that the doctor is very pleased to have him around and might not mind if his mother stays as well is expressed in the form of double indirect speech, the device used to signal the child’s perspective. Yet the rendering of the boy’s unmediated interpretation of the situation is interrupted by the narrator’s external view of Pashka in the final half of the passage’s last sentence: The doctor, a cheerful and amiable fellow, looked like he was happy to have company. Pashka decided to humour him, especially because he had never been to the fair and would be happy to take a look at a live fox. But what about his mother? After thinking a bit, he decided to ask the doctor to keep his mother in the clinic as well, but did not even have time to open his mouth when the head nurse was already leading him upstairs.17

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The representation of minor characters in stereotypical terms is in line with the child’s estranged view of his surroundings. The child’s attempts at categorization draw on his personal stock of knowledge. In his efforts to process what he observes, Pashka looks for the familiar in the unfamiliar. A limping youth is likened to a hopping sparrow while a male patient is compared to a peasant woman. Once established, these descriptive tags signal a switch to the child’s point of view, as, for example, with the description of the “cheerful and amiable” doctor. Pashka’s conduct after a crying fit in the exam room is shown externally and is interpreted by the narrator as the boy’s nonverbal plea to his mother not to divulge this display of his weakness at home. Pashka’s pride in the fresh pajamas and the robe given to him at the clinic (“wouldn’t be so bad to stroll around in the village in this outfit”) is represented in double indirect speech to indicate Pashka’s perspective. The description that follows, the child’s first imaginary miniplot, is not marked for his voice but suggests the peasant boy’s limited experience and knowledge: In his imagination, Pashka pictures Mother sending him to the riverside vegetable garden to pick cabbage leaves for the pig; boys and girls surround him on his walk and look at his [pretty] little robe with envy.18 Descriptions of Pashka’s experiences are interspersed with other characters’ “live speech,” a feature typical in a standard sketch. There are very few instances, however, when the child is allowed to express himself verbally. Pashka speaks only five times; none of the child’s utterances is longer than four words, and three of them are in the form of a question. Pashka’s first inquiry is about the patients suffering from smallpox (“why do they look like that?”), the second about the strange sound in a man’s chest (“what’s that whistling inside you?”), and the last about the live fox he expects to see (“Grandpa, where’s the fox? … Live fox”). Pashka’s final utterances in the story are two iterations of the word “Mom,” used to summon his mother in the midst of his escalating fear and distress. As in “Grisha,” the story featuring a preverbal child, most attempts at verbal communication by the protagonist fail: Pashka is shushed, met with silence, or misunderstood by the adults. The limitations that Chekhov imposes on his character’s verbalization are consistent with the child’s class and age. Additionally, the muting of Pashka’s voice points to the child’s position as a passive object of a clinical inquiry, a factor motivating both narratively and psychologically the protagonist’s need to escape.

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The silencing of the boy’s voice notwithstanding, Chekhov’s narrative strategies work together to create a detailed psychological profile of the protagonist. The narrator’s account of the boy’s psychophysical responses, thoughts, and limited verbalization points both to the child’s individuality and to age-specific traits. As in “Grisha” and “The Cook,” Chekhov notes the child’s heightened sensitivity to sensory stimulation. For Pashka, sounds can register as ominous or amusing, colours are associated with positive or negative feelings, and textures of objects can invoke an emotional response. Pashka is amused by the hissing sounds in a patient’s chest but is terrified by the noises coming from the doctor’s office. The coarseness of his blanket is pleasing to the child. He appreciates the “magnificent” yellow paint of the clinic’s walls and its “tasty” smell. White is generally the colour linked to the child’s positive emotions, while red is associated with fear and calamity. The emotion associated with a particular colour can change, however, in a specific context. For example, the yellow leaves on the ground in the first passage of the story indicate decay, while the yellow walls of the clinic are shown to produce a feeling of joy. Overall, Pashka is portrayed to be curious, observant, proud, a little vain, resourceful, confident, trusting, and playful. The child’s reaction to the initial exploration of his environment is depicted as one of amusement and pleasure. The boy wonders at the cleanliness, comfort, and abundance of good food at the clinic. The continuous pendulum-like motion of another patient’s head and arm is at first seen by the child as something humorous. After observing the man more closely, Pashka begins to recognize the gravity of the patient’s condition, an understanding that generates dread (emu stalo zhutko). Pashka’s initial uninhibited movement through the ward contrasts with the immobility of the two smallpox patients he sees there. When back at his ward, however, Pashka finds himself at the centre of continuous activity but does not move, waiting for the “cheerful and amiable doctor” to take him to the fair. The perception of stasis is reinforced in Pashka’s second mininarrative, occurring at night and on the border of consciousness and sleep. He pictures the candy promised by the doctor, his mother’s face and her voice, his cantankerous grandmother, and the darkness of his peasant hut. Recollections of home prompt nostalgia, but thoughts of his anticipated return to the familiar sooth the child, even if the image of the doctor lingers. The confrontation with death that directly follows Pashka’s memories of home is a formidable test of the child’s emotional endurance, propelling him from immobility into frenetic motion. Pashka’s initial per-

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ception of a patient in another ward as sleeping is reinforced in the description of the repeated attempts by the male nurse to wake the man up. The infantile equation of death with sleep, the application of the approach to the unfamiliar based solely on the child’s present knowledge, can no longer work, however. The child’s sudden awareness of death produces terror. For Pashka, the feeling transforms the ordinary into extraordinary and uncanny. The dishevelled patients sitting on their beds in darkness appear broader and taller than they are, mixing with shadows and growing still larger in the process. The darkest corner of the room is occupied by the nodding patient whose demeanour first amused and then terrified the child earlier. In panic, the boy flees the clinic, searching for home: The bright red spot glowing in the dark terrified him, but Pashka, wild with fear and unsure about where to run, moved to the light. Next to the window stood a raised porch, its front door inscribed in white. Pashka ran up the steps, looked in the window, and suddenly felt intense, overwhelming joy. In the window, he saw the cheerful and amiable doctor sitting at the table, reading a book. Laughing with happiness, Pashka reached out to the familiar face, was about to call for him, but a mysterious force took his breath away and kicked him in the legs; he staggered and fell on the steps in a faint.19 Pashka’s reaction to his experience is shown internally, in passages constructed to suggest the child’s point of view, and also externally, in the adult narrator’s description of the boy’s actions. The two interdependent perspectives serve to convey the profound shift in Pashka’s self-orientation both as experienced by the child and as observed by the narrator. Prompted by a glimpse of the patients in the women’s ward, the child’s interior perspective features longhaired monsters and hags. The narrative evokes the witches of the Russian folklore who, in possession of evil magic, can precipitate a young hero’s death. The theme of impending demise is reinforced by the description of the graves in the hospital cemetery. Presaged by the evocation of pagan Gods earlier in the story, Chekhov’s illiterate child’s conceptualization of his encounter with death draws on the images found on the most primitive level of folklore, in the tale of death and resurrection. The stasis of waiting is replaced by an intense, haphazard motion from the darkness of the ward toward the light of the doctor’s house. If the red faces of the smallpox patients earlier in the story were seen by Pashka as

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merely bizarre, now the red of the doctor’s lamp induces horror. The child’s fear of red is diffused when contrasted with the white sign on the door of the clinic. Like that of the colour red, the symbolism of white is fluid. The cheerful and amiable doctor, who in the end becomes Pashka’s rescuer, is associated with white throughout the narrative. The sight of the white gravestones at the cemetery, however, amplifies the child’s emotional turmoil. Ultimately, however, it is the white stones, the moon, and the doctor’s white sign that aid in Pashka’s successful escape from the darkness of the ward he now associates with death. The boy’s reaction to the upheaval, the shift from an overwhelming fear of personal annihilation to profound joy at finding a refuge, is psychophysical. Pashka is on the threshold of the doctor’s house when he loses consciousness. As in the “Cook,” the physical threshold suggests the metaphorical border between childhood and maturity. From the start, the weaving of exterior and interior perspectives serves to equalize the child’s inner voice with that of the narrator. But it is in the end, when the forced immobility of passive observation is replaced by the freedom of motion, that the child is shown to find the agency necessary for growth and to cross the threshold of immaturity. V.F. Stenina views Chekhov’s depictions of doctoring as comparable to shamanistic rituals.20 In this light, Pashka’s trip to the clinic is a journey to an unknown land positioned on the border of life and death where temporality is suspended.21 The child’s experience is equated with an initiation rite – an imitation of death and resurrection.22 The description of other patients, according to Stenina, links them to the chthonic creatures inhabiting the world beyond death. In this scheme, the doctor is a shaman who is able to negotiate Pashka’s transition to a new state. To be sure, Pashka’s flight, loss of consciousness, and awakening lead to a qualitative breakthrough in development. Yet the boy’s separation from home, and from his mother – a stand-in for Pashka’s concept of home – are equally vital for the transformation to occur. The problem of the choice of allegiance between the doctor and Pashka’s mother is established early. The child, impressed by the doctor’s invitations to capture birds, go to a fair, eat candy, and see a live fox, is nevertheless ambivalent about leaving his mother behind. The doctor’s inducements are based on the doctor’s understanding of Pashka’s interests, and they succeed. While Pashka’s first mininarrative focuses on his regular activities, modified in the boy’s imagination to impress other children, the second contrasts the two options for allegiance. The boy’s first images are that of the doctor and the candy he promised, then of Pashka’s mother, followed by those of

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his dark hut and his grandmother’s cranky behaviour. Judging from the child’s memories, Pashka’s life is one of deprivation and darkness, yet his memories of home are filled with nostalgia. Pashka’s desperate calls for his mother in the night are left unanswered. Chekhov demonstrates that, even if she were present, the mother would not be able to respond to the child’s pleas in any meaningful way. In Chekhov’s description, Pashka’s mother jeopardized his future and his prospects by waiting too long to bring the boy to the clinic. Her behaviour during Pashka’s exam is that of disingenuity, ignorance, and unquestioning acceptance of the doctor’s opinions. In contrast to the mother’s passivity and witlessness, the doctor projects the vigorous authority of his learning and position. In Chekhov’s appropriation of the resurrection myth, the child fleeing the darkness of death and ignorance of home experiences oblivion and a rebirth. In the story’s closure, darkness and ignorance, signified in Russian by the same word (temnota), are vanquished by the light of knowledge personified by the cheerful and amiable doctor. In all of Chekhov’s fiction, it is perhaps “The Fugitive” that offers the most direct and poignant literary answer to Tolstoy’s refusal to enlighten the peasantry. For Chekhov’s peasant child in this story, enlightenment is unambiguously equated with life. THE WRITER AND THE READER : “ AT HOME ”

If in “The Cook” and “The Fugitive,” Chekhov’s principal focus is on the creation of narratives by his children at the threshold junctures of life, in “At Home” (1887), the writer explores the reciprocity of participation in the production and reception of narratives. In the story of Seryozha, a seven-year-old caught smoking his father’s tobacco, the path to emotional growth and discovery for both principal characters – the child and the adult – is shown to be predicated on an aesthetic experience that begins in transgression. The immediate challenge facing the father, a prosecutor, is to determine the most effective way of dealing with his son’s infraction. The father’s solution – the creation of a narrative that could affect the addressee directly and lead to modification in the child’s behaviour – presents both an educational and literary challenge. The story’s central focus, therefore, is on a pedagogical project of creating the most effective narrative form

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(an oral tale) for a specific audience (the child). The father is in search of an art form that would instruct, motivate, and shape its consumer. Seryozha’s role is that of recipient and critic of his father’s attempts at authoring an effective text, an endeavour presented as strenuous for the father. The process involves the father’s assessment of various competing opinions on the matter and the intricate choice of a suitable mode of representation, since only one version of the narrative will be accepted by the child protagonist as valid.23 Chekhov demonstrates that, in order to succeed, the author has to understand his audience and recognize the essential differences between children and adults. Seryozha’s responses to his father’s various efforts to convey the notion of the harmful effects of smoking are influenced by multiple factors. The child’s perspective is determined by his age (seven), class (upper middle), highly developed artistic temperament, and the recent trauma of losing his mother and uncle. The reader’s access to the child’s inner world in the story is limited. Seryozha is consistently viewed from the outside: observations of the child’s body language, limited verbalization, and art is the only way to access his emotional state. Finding the key to the child’s psyche and reaching him through words is difficult for his father, since his understanding of his son is shown to be almost as limited as it is for the reader. Seryozha’s grief over his recent losses, for example, is portrayed externally, in its psychophysical manifestations: the stillness of the expression on his pale face, the fear and sadness in the child’s “large, unblinking eyes.”24 The description of Seryozha’s thoughts shift from childish to mature perceptions and are introduced by “probably,” problematizing the attribution of the passage: “Probably, he was now thinking about death, which takes away mothers and uncles, leaving their children and violins on earth. The departed live in heaven, somewhere near the stars, and look down on earth from up there. Are they able to tolerate the separation?”25 The marker opening the passage and the comingling of the childish view of death with that of the adult’s point to the mutuality of the loss and hint at a solution to the father’s narrative challenge. The prosecutor’s search for a perfect didactic text allows Chekhov to allude to received opinions and contemporary debates on education, child psychology, corporal punishment, and morality in children. Seryozha’s governess, one of Chekhov’s one-dimensional, “futliarnyi” characters, gives the following clichéd assessment of the situation: “at his age smoking is a harmful and bad habit, and bad habits should be uprooted

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straight away.”26 As Cathy Popkin points out, the Chekhovian cliché “exposes the inadequacy of any narrative that communicates nothing new, significant or ‘worth telling.’”27 Here the cliché also serves to establish the normative truth and gestures to the commonality of the governess’s view. The father’s subsequent reflection does not dismiss the essential validity of the cliché but rather implies an objection to its lack of specificity. It is not the harmfulness of the habit or the notion that it should be stopped but the mismatch between the crime of smoking and its punishment in the years past that is being questioned. The father’s view on the issue is prompted by his personal reminiscences of ruthless beatings and expulsions leading to ruined lives and is visibly influenced by the beliefs about the evils of corporal punishment espoused by the educational reformers of the 1860s. The father’s allusion to progressive ideas on the inculcation of morality in children “not by fear, ambition, or in anticipation of a reward, but meaningfully” appears to leave the question of what is meaningful as unanswered for the adult protagonist by the pedagogical thought of the time.28 The normative standard signalled by the cliché and the father’s thoughts on corporal punishment constitute a preamble to the articulation of a significant problem – the essential lack of legitimacy, direction, and effectiveness in the discursive systems available to a parent, educator, or writer. Since there is “very little cognizant truth and certainty even in such activities – important and terrifying in their consequences – as pedagogical, legal, and literary” the authoring father has to create “new forms” for the embodiment of the intended didactic message.29 The initial modes of representation offered by the father include the “rational,” textbook summary of Seryozha’s infraction, personal history, and a narrative based on the sad fate of someone the child knows. First attempts fail for two reasons: 1. the father’s ambivalence about punishment and 2. his ineptitude as an “author,” the result of insufficient knowledge of the intended audience. In describing interactions between the protagonists, Chekhov draws attention to two modes of communication – nonverbal (body language, art) and verbal (in dialogs and embedded mininarratives). There is a constant disconnect between the words used to convince Seryozha that his behaviour is bad and the father’s body language. The device of distancing himself from the “delinquent” by using his son’s full name and patronymic and by declaring the loss of love (and even paternity – ty mne ne syn), for example, is not effective because the father’s harsh words are undercut by his affectionate gestures. The disparities between the verbal and nonverbal expressions of the father’s position

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are constant and mirrored in their reception by the child. Seryozha invariably responds to the nonverbal emotional message of affection and acceptance but not initially to his father’s words. The son’s nonverbal expression of emotion is similarly more effective with the father than the child’s words. The failure to achieve the desired result by discoursing on property rights (the tobacco belongs to the father) is shown to be caused by the father’s ignorance of his son’s cognitive limitations (the notion of property is not yet fully understood by the child), as well as by the father’s unawareness of his son’s altruism (Seryozha is willing to give his father anything he wants). Appeals based on personal and family history are likewise ineffective because they are generalized and insincere (poddelyvaetsia).30 Seryozha responds to his father’s simplified, dumbed down speech by performing associative leaps based on personal relevance: from the way his late uncle played violin, to the child’s sadness about his mother’s death, the cook cutting her finger, back to music, and then to a little girl and a man with a hurdy-gurdy. The child’s selective attention to his father’s words and Seryozha’s rejection of the prosecutor’s initial attempts at effective verbal communication serve to highlight the essential disparity between the ways the two protagonists approach life. The prosecutor’s uncertainty about Seryozha’s actual age, as well as his distanced comic imagining of little Seryozha with a huge cigarette in his hand (an obvious allusion to caricatures commonly found in satirical journals), are further indications of the gap between the worlds of the son and the father.31 Seryozha’s fascination with the tactile, his affectionate physicality, synesthesia, and his own art are further proofs of the child’s otherness. Seryozha’s drawing is significant because it offers a visual demonstration of the fundamental difference between the way adults and children interpret reality. In the drawing, the roof of the house is crooked, the smoke coming from the chimney looks like lightning, and the soldier standing guard is taller than the house. For Vygotsky, who uses “At Home” as a case history in support of his ideas on creativity, art created by children is a manifestation of a general heightened sensitivity (strastnost’) in children, absent in adults and always distorting inessential aspects of an object in favour of ones crucial to the child.32 Vygotsky interprets the scale of Seryozha’s painting as fitting the child’s cognitive and emotional priorities. From this perspective, the child’s drawing depicted in the story offers its own emotionally charged narrative. If in Tolstoy’s Childhood, Nikolen’ka’s picture of the hunt is there to underline the protagonist’s frustration with his inability to capture reality

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in art, Seryozha’s visual text offers an expression of his psychological turmoil. The crooked roof of the house (the child’s private realm) and the lightning in the drawing are symbolic representations of a threat. The exaggerated stature of the guard points to the child’s need for security and protection. The attention that he attaches to the eyes of his principal figure signals the importance of emotion in Seryozha’s life. Focused observation of his son’s behaviour, an assessment of current opinion on the topic, and further reflection lead to a revelation: He has his own way of thinking (techenie myslei)! … He has in his head his own little world (mirok), and he knows, in his own way, what is important, and what is not. In order to hold his attention and [affect] his consciousness, it’s not necessary to imitate his language (podtasovyvat’sia) but to know how to think the way he does.33 The father’s thoughts on the matter paraphrase an influential statement on the distinctiveness of childhood by Pirogov, the proponent of humanism in education typical of the “men of the sixties,” discussed in chapter 2.34 A shortcut in the delineation of the adult protagonist’s formative background, the father’s interior monologue also serves to indicate the acknowledgement of his son’s essential difference, the confirmation of its legitimacy, and a way of bridging the gap between their two disparate worlds. As in Chekhov’s own favourite story “The Student” (“Student,” 1894), effective communication occurs as a result of an improvisation based on an archetypal narrative emotionally relevant to the participants.35 The mode of Chekhov’s narration is a modified sketch; the prosecutor’s successful story is a literary fairy tale. The prosecutor’s final literary attempt is firmly linked to Seryozha’s own experience, commanding the child’s attention from the start. The Tsar’s young son, a lot like Seryozha, perishes because of smoking. The account of the eventual death of the lonely father and of the destruction of his kingdom places the emotional trauma associated with the loss of a loved one at the tale’s centre. Seryozha’s external reaction to the plot mirrors the child’s earlier demeanour when thinking about death and is again shown through the eyes: “again his eyes became saddened and somehow fearful.” At the conclusion of the tale, the child vows never to smoke again. In the prosecutor’s critical assessment, the final narrative is poorly constructed, badly worded (razmazyval da zheval), and naïve – a reading that chooses to ignore the tale’s powerful content. The father’s refusal to acknowledge his own emotional investment in the story points to the

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repression of the grief he shares with the child. The prosecutor’s thoughts on the efficacy of telling tales in resolving conflicts (“the medicine needs to be sweet, the truth beautiful”) are likewise a misrepresentation of the successful narrative. The father’s tale reaches the child because in the process of narration and reception, the storyteller and his audience of one “work through” the trauma of mutual loss. As Chekhov ultimately demonstrates, in didactic art, the “medicine” does not need to be “sweet” or truth “beautiful” in order to be effective but, rather, emotionally disturbing and relevant. Thus, in “At Home,” the knowledge of the other is captured “through imaginative acts of identification with the other.”36 The reception of the story by readers from different historical periods, professions, and social milieu is revelatory as to the perceived importance of the child’s place in the postemancipation era and beyond. The breadth and intensity of the response to the work mirrors the multiplicity of views on the topic found inside. The story about the creation of an art form that can, when constructed properly, radically change behaviour, gestured both to the ideas espoused by the proponents of utilitarian art and to the hotly debated issue on how to write for children. Moreover, the focus of Chekhov’s densely packed text on the writer’s craft, its “technology” and aims, was both topical and new for its time. Some contemporaries saw “At Home” as an example of Chekhov’s prowess as a child psychologist.37 Others emphasized the primary significance of larger social issues, such as parenting, education, and the role of authority.38 The story was considered by Tolstoy to be one of Chekhov’s best. Tolstoy did not provide a recorded rationale for his favourable assessment of “At Home.” The attention accorded in the story to the creation of a child-oriented didactic text, however, points to a dialog on childhood and art between the two writers.39 The father’s expressed disillusionment in the ability of pedagogical, legal, and literary activities, “important and terrifying in their consequences,” to offer solutions for moral education is, as I show in chapter 2, clearly Tolstoyan. Moreover, Chekhov’s awareness of Tolstoy’s model of childhood is apparent in the story’s general outline.40 As in Tolstoy’s Childhood, the protagonist is of the gentry, imaginative, and motherless. Chekhov omits, however, such features of Tolstoy’s vision as the life on the ancestral estate and the child’s relationship with nature, as well as the contrast between the idyllic country and the corrupting city, all crucial to Tolstoy’s idea of maturation. Chekhov’s child is shown to be nurtured in his “home,” which in this story (“At Home”),

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as well in Chekhov’s other stories about children, is equated with family, security, and love. The location of the “home” is not specified because here the child’s home is an emotional, rather than physical, space founded on kinship. In Tolstoy, the mother’s loss is the loss of an emotional centre of gravity, signalling the beginning of the end of childhood for the protagonist, a process that concludes with the boy’s move to the city. In Chekhov, the mother’s death does not mean the end of childhood for Seryozha. Rather, the loss results in the transfer of the child’s emotional anchor from the mother to the father who is not stern and fair, or morally unstable, as in Tolstoy or in the existing versions of the Tolstoyan myth, but loving, hence vacillating and uncertain in his parenting. Unlike Tolstoy, Chekhov focuses completely on the absence rather than on the presence of the boy’s mother. The absence appears irreparable to the prosecutor since for him, as it was for Sikorsky and Pirogov, the mother is the “interpreter” of the child’s symbolic code into the language of the adults (“mothers who can feel, cry and laugh together with the children succeed where those who are ruled by logic and reason fail”). Chekhov shows, however, that the mother’s loss can be “overcome” in the child’s therapeutic engagement with the father. The fear of another significant loss bonds the father and the child, ensuring the preservation of the safe haven of “home” for both of them. Tolstoy’s depiction of his protagonist’s “dialectic of the soul” is achieved by means of a carefully managed to and fro between the child’s imagined perceptions of the world and the analysis of his past self by a mature narrator. Tolstoy’s hero, whether experiencing or remembering, is at the centre of the narrative powered by nostalgia. Conversely, Chekhov stresses the child’s uniqueness and probes into the psychology of parenting in the now. If Tolstoy’s aim is to reimagine the happiness of childhood from a distance of time, Chekhov’s is to observe and record the childhood’s complex otherness in its immediate relationship with the world of the adults. Based on his 1926 reading of Chekhov’s work and of Tolstoy’s “What Is Art” (1897), Vygotsky identifies yet another significant distinction between the two writers. For Vygotsky, effective art both instructs and heals. The child’s moral conduct is positively affected in his opinion, only when the child is emotionally engaged in the aesthetic experience, rather than directed to a desired goal through didactic teaching. The overcoming of traumatic conflicts through aesthetic experience, its therapeutic power, rather than Tolstoy’s “contagiousness,” is at the core of the psychologist’s view on effective art for and by children. Vygotsky’s position is

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a departure from the ideas advanced by the child psychologists of Chekhov’s time and is clearly influenced by Chekhov’s depiction.41 Chekhov’s aim in “At Home” is not to produce morally effective art but, rather, to demonstrate how to create such art for a child of a certain background and temperament at a specific time in this child’s life. Yet the depiction of the child’s own communicative strategies is crucial in this demonstration. And Seryozha’s art, a visual narrative of insecurity and loss – his attempt to communicate meaning – is understood, and answered, by the father in the construction of his own narrative. Effective art for both protagonists is shown to be based on the manipulation of a powerful, and shared, emotion. If maturation is understood broadly as change based on discovery, then both protagonists in the story “grow up” as a result of their engagement in an aesthetic experience shaped by an emotional trauma.42 In the end, the ordering of reality attempted by both protagonists in “At Home” is shown to be a continuous process of observation and reflection, followed by the selection of pertinent material from a variety of available discourses and by their subsequent arrangement in a specific verbal or visual environment, a process that occurs in a dialogical, emotionally relevant relationship with a specific addressee. Vygotsky’s notion of “therapeutic imperative” is clearly applicable to the protagonists’ aesthetic engagement in this story. Moreover, by pointing to the transformative character of this engagement, Chekhov’s narrative suggests a larger view on effective art, not limited to didactic texts for children. In narratives featuring his seven-year-old characters’ threshold experiences, the child’s drive for knowledge is rooted in the inadequacy between the character’s experience and its conceptualization and articulation. The overcoming of the deficit of knowledge is equated with maturation and linked in these stories to the child’s creativity. As in “Grisha,” the insufficiency of the characters’ ability to express meaning and the demonstrated dissonance between the characters’ psychic interiors and the outside are presented as painful obstacles in need of overcoming – as the “tragedy of childhood” essential for growth. Dramatization of imagination by Chekhov’s young protagonists is shown to be the essential therapeutic means for coping with trauma and the anxiety of ignorance. The three stories also bear witness to Chekhov’s continuous experimentation with representation. The contours of the dramatic sketch are expanded. There is a persistent reliance on intertextually, narratively justified. The limits of the child’s perception and expression based on cognitive abilities (space, time, verbalization, sensitivity to colour and sound)

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are carefully recorded throughout. Chekhov employs a psychophysical approach to describing changes in his characters’ behaviour. Notable as well are Chekhov’s experiments with perspective, resulting in imperceptible shifts of viewpoints and in the amplification of the psychological characterization of the protagonists. In “The Cook,” the child’s emerging sexuality is sublimated in his reimagining of literary tales of heroes and villains. In “The Fugitive,” the protagonist’s arrival at an understanding of impermanence of human life is based on the mythical plot of death and rebirth found in folklore. In “At Home,” both the adult and the child protagonist are involved in a creative undertaking of crafting a narrative that ultimately prompts agency. The reader’s attention is drawn to the mutual emotional engagement necessary for the conveyance of meaning, and the mechanics of the construction of meaning in art are explored.

Introduction

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6 Kids at Play

[In play], all aspects of human psyche are formed – the mind, the heart, and the will. K.D. Ushinsky The child enters an imaginary, illusory world in which the unrealizable desires can be realized, and this world is what we call play. Lev Vygotsky

As the title indicates, the focus of this chapter is on children’s games in Chekhov’s stories.1 If in his other narratives about young protagonists, Chekhov’s interest is drawn mainly to their interactions with adults, in “The Big Event” (November 1886), “Kids” (January 1886) and “The Boys” (December 1887), Chekhov focuses exclusively on children playing with their peers – from conventional games with rules, to role playing, to elaborate enactments of imaginary scripts. The children’s involvement in the “illusory world of realized desires” occurs in the absence of the adults. The adults, whether deliberately excluded or absent by chance, are, however, still present in the internalized norms informing the children’s “magic circle.”2 DEATH IN THE FAMILY : “ THE BIG EVENT ”

In February of 1903, following a public reading of Chekhov’s “The Big Event,” a story about two young siblings’ discovery of newly born kittens, the writer Aleksandr Kuprin wrote an apologetic letter to Chekhov in

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which he lamented his inability to elicit what he thought of as an appropriate response from his listeners.3 The audience reacted warmly to the descriptions of the children’s excitement but was dismayed by the story’s closure in which the kittens are devoured by a dog. In Kuprin’s words, “the tragic end of the kittens dampened the public’s ardour.”4 Like Kuprin’s audience at the reading, in their interpretation of “The Big Event,” Chekhov’s critics also wished to focus on the children’s happy discovery rather than on their heartbreaking and violent loss. In one such assessment, for example, the story’s point is seen in showing [the children’s] “joyous concern caused by the birth of the kittens [which is] portrayed with a kind humour that solicits the readers’ compassion.”5 Another brief response emphasizes Chekhov’s ability to adopt the child’s point of view in the story that features “an [important] event in children’s life – the delivery of a new generation of kittens by a ‘family’ cat. Surely, [the children] could not have described themselves and their small joys and concerns better.”6 Another sums up “The Big Event” as a narrative about the birth of kittens and the children’s subsequent excitement.7 Yet another uses the story in support of the opinion that Chekhov is interested in painting “lovely little pictures of children’s lives.”8 Kuprin’s experience of the narrative’s reception demonstrates, however, that “The Big Event” is much more ambivalent in its message and considerably more complex in its intended emotional impact than the above assessments suggest. The story, about three pages long, documents the children’s discovery of the newborn kittens and their elaborate game of “house,” featuring the mother cat and her babies. Since the tomcat is missing, the siblings choose their uncle’s dog Nero to fill in for the absent father. Soon after, Nero consumes the kittens. As in a standard comic sketch, Chekhov dispenses with lengthy introductory descriptions of the children’s environment, reducing it to two short sentences: “Morning. Bright sunlight pushes its way through the frosted windows of the children’s room.”9 The narration is in the present tense, conveyed mostly through dialog, and the closure reverses the reader’s expectations of a happy resolution. The children’s immediate perceptions and reactions are presented largely in approximations of live speech. Descriptive sections are given in the third person and the characters’ names and their iterations are of symbolic importance. The children’s point of view is suggested first by the title, but the meaning of the “big event” remains ambiguous until the end. Time sequences in the narrative are structured to reflect the children’s activities (morning,

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dinner time, evening). Spatially, as well, the narrative closely adheres to the children’s field of vision, as they discover the kittens and begin their role-play. In addition, Chekhov emphasizes the sounds and colours of importance to his young characters, e.g. the cat’s vocalization, her purring, or the kittens mewing, as well as the gray of the cat’s fur, her green eyes, the dark red of the hobbyhorse the children use in their play, and the dog Nero’s black colouring. Chekhov also notes the sounds that convey the children’s own excitement: squealing, whining, and yelping, descriptions that alert the reader to the similarities between the children and the kittens. The children’s interior perceptions are portrayed sparingly: the little boy, who wakes up in a bad mood, wants to find fault with something (pridrat’sia) in order to find an excuse to cry. The adult observer underscores the children’s intense dislike of Nero. At the end of the story, the narrator describes the children’s emotional reaction to their loss. Externally, the narrator highlights the siblings’ initial excitement and happiness about their discovery and later, the manifestations of the children’s distress when negotiating the kittens’ future with the adults. Childish significations, if used only twice, are essential in that, in addition to suggesting a child’s point of view, they also encapsulate the story’s hermeneutic ambivalence. The birth of the kittens is rendered by the children as “oshchenilas’” (“whelped”), the word that in Russian signifies the birth of puppies. The lack of distinction between different species as a feature of the child’s developmental stage was previously noted by Chekhov in “Grisha” (April 1886). In “The Big Event,” however, the children’s misconception signified by “whelped” also serves to foreshadow the “infanticide” in the closure. The second childish signification is attributed to the little girl who, upon examining the kittens, decides that they look like mice (“pokhozhi na myshov”). The ungrammatical form of the word for mice (myshov) signals the linguistic limitations congruent with the child’s age. As in “Grisha,” the word points to the child’s uncertainty about biological taxonomy but here again foreshadows the murder of the cat’s children by their adopted father, since Vanya and Nina later identify rodents as the kittens’ potential food. Chekhov notes the ages of his protagonists from the start. The little boy is six and the girl is four. In the boy’s description, Chekhov places the emphasis on the cuteness of the child’s cropped hair and a button-like nose. The girl’s portrait underscores both her loveliness and her small frame. Instead of drawing attention to gender differences, marked only by

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the writer’s identification of the two protagonists as “boy” and “girl” and by their different hairstyles, Chekhov accentuates their function as a unit. In descriptive passages, the names of the two child protagonists, Vanya and Nina, are invariably used together and in that order, with the exception of the closure where the order is reversed once to Nina and Vanya. When names are absent, the children are referred to as “they.” The pejorative diminutive “Ninka” (for Nina) used by the children’s father indicates his displeasure with the girl’s interest in the kittens. Uncle Petrusha (the familiar, affectionate but somewhat condescending rendering of “Peter”) is the absent-minded owner of the dog Nero whose name links the animal to the bloodthirsty emperor of antiquity. The house servant Stepan is the messenger of the kittens’ death. All other participants, with the exception of the imaginary German tutor Karl Karlovich in the narrator’s digression on pets, remain nameless. The children’s parents are referred to throughout as mother and father, signalling their generic, normative roles in the household. Chekhov stresses the importance of play and its connection to fun from the beginning. In the opening section, the early morning sunlight in the children’s room is described as “frolicking,” “as if inviting the children to play.” Rejecting the invitation to play, the children, who “woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” are preparing to throw tantrums when their mother is heard from the drawing room with the order to give milk to the new mother cat. The news broadcasts the unprecedented event, indicates the familial concern for the animal, and prompts the children’s excited involvement. Vanya and Nina begin their role-play, acting as a benevolent familial unit to the cat and her new kittens. The story’s structure is significant in its firm opposition between the world of play and the world outside. The narrative is divided into two equal parts. The first part features the children’s immersion in pretend family building and is centred on their discovery and creativity. Chekhov highlights the siblings’ wonder and delight throughout the section: they watch the kittens without moving or breathing; they are “surprised, astonished” and are not even aware of the adults’ displeasure with their behaviour. “True joy shines in the eyes of both.”10 Ordinary activities are abandoned, as are the children’s perceived notions of value: “If Vanya and Nina were offered pounds of candy or a thousand kopecks in exchange for just one kitten, they would reject the offer without any hesitation.”11 The children’s joyous absorption excludes all that is external to their game: “Vanya and Nina do not want to know any other world but the box with the kittens. Their happiness is boundless.”12

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The goal of Vanya and Nina’s play is to make the new family comfortable, safe, and complete. The children are concerned with the kittens’ wellbeing in the present, basing their behaviour on their understanding of the kittens’ essential needs and on their identification with the animals. They try to open the kittens’ eyes because babies have to see; they feed them milk and meat because babies need nourishment. Since the food offered by the children is rejected by the kittens and eaten instead by the cat, the children construct separate dwellings for the kittens out of cardboard, where the mother cat can visit them only on occasion. Vanya and Nina are also concerned about the kittens’ future and their potential roles in the children’s own family. One kitten is to take care of the house cat in her old age, another to kill the rats in their basement, and the last one will live in the summerhouse. The need to make the family unit complete is first voiced by the older sibling and then echoed by his younger sister. The children’s initial choice for the father is an old hobbyhorse they instruct to stand guard by the box and make sure that the kittens behave properly. The choice of the toy as the father is later abandoned because the hobbyhorse is not alive (“dokhlaia,” literally “dead”), the point made by the six-year-old boy and acknowledged as valid by his four-year-old sister. The children settle on the dog Nero as the cat’s designated father. Play is aborted, however, because, instead of fulfilling his presumed function of a benevolent if strict authority figure, the father devours his children. In the first part of the story, Vanya and Nina are engaged in role-play that involves imitative action as well as verbalization. The children employ a make-believe approach to an inanimate object (the hobbyhorse) by using it as a substitute for the missing father. They are persistent in a game that lasts throughout the day. The game involves two children, and the siblings communicate among themselves and with their imaginary participant (the hobbyhorse) verbally. The rules that guide the play are there to keep the game going and to negotiate the players’ contributions to it (who is going to be doing what and when). The children take on adult roles, imitating the adults’ actions and speech and incorporating them into their play. The activity is collaborative, allowing the children to interact socially in the sociodramatic activity that allows them, in the “as if” state, to practice what happens in real life and explore the feelings and actions of others. As in dramatization of imagination in verbal and visual narratives, in role-play as well, the purpose of the sociodramatic activity for Chekhov’s child characters is to process events by applying what they have already learned to what they

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experience and then to obtain a new understanding of life from the reaction of the external world to their actions. The ages of the children engaged in role-play are significant as well. In Piaget’s view, the period from four to seven is characterized by egocentrism, children’s comprehension of rules is limited, a strong sense of cooperation or competition is absent, and children at this stage participate in collective monologues rather than in true interactive communication. Chekhov’s protagonists in this story, however, exhibit both a strong sense of cooperation in their task of building a proper family structure for their cat and considerable communicative skills. Chekhov endows his protagonists with greater acumen for communication and creativity than their ages allow. The children’s perspicacity is narratively important, for Chekhov’s goal is to juxtapose the future of the cat’s family as created by Vanya and Nina together to its fate in real life. In the first part of the story, Chekhov prepares the reader for a clash between the desired and the real by contrasting Vanya and Nina’s position as passive objects of adult control and the active roles they assume in their play. When the children are “dragged into their room, dressed, made to say their prayers, [and] given tea, they are filled with the passionate desire to quit these prosaic duties as quickly as possible and run to the kitchen again.”13 Yet at this point, admonitions by the children’s mother, their nanny’s grumbling, and the cook’s displeasure are the sole instances of the adults’ attempts at curtailing the children’s play in the story. Described by the narrator as a time of anguish and pain (“tiazhelye muchitel’nye minuty”), the second part of “The Big Event” focuses on the direct intrusions of the external world into the magic circle of the game, detailing the adults’ persistent efforts to suppress it, as well as on their failure to protect the cat’s “children” in the end. When Vanya takes one of the kittens to his father’s study, the father, like a mythical character, emerges out of nowhere (“tochno iz zemli vyrosshi”), reacts to the infraction with fury, pulls Vanya by the ear, and instructs his servant Stepan to get rid of “this filthy thing.” When Nina brings another kitten to dinner, the father orders all of the kittens to be thrown away in the dump. Ordinarily, unwanted kittens would be drowned in a bucket of water or in a nearby pond. Chekhov’s choice of a dump as a disposal site is, therefore, not coincidental. The dump signifies decay, destruction, and death. At the dump, the transitory nature of existence – from life into death, from form into formlessness, from whole into elements – is displayed in full view. The dump’s special status as the visible display of the reverse side of life, its aura of prohibition and danger induces disgust and fear.14 Here,

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the evocation of the dump offers a direct visual manifestation of the existential challenge facing the children. Consequently, Chekhov’s protagonists do not perceive the father’s directive as a trivial deprivation of an amusement. For the siblings, this is a life-changing catastrophe. Chekhov emphasizes the intensity of the children’s reaction to the threat: Vanya and Nina are horrified. Its cruelty aside, death in a dump will deprive the cat and the hobbyhorse of their children, empty the box where they live, and destroy the plans for their future, the beautiful future in which one cat looks after his old mother, another lives in the summer house, and the last catches the rats in the cellar.15 The children beg their father to spare the kittens, and he agrees. Vanya and Nina are banned from the kitchen, however, and are not allowed to touch the animals. Unsettled and distraught, the children entreat Uncle Petrusha to help them get the parents’ permission to keep the kittens in the children’s room. When the uncle half-heartedly acquiesces, the children begin to wait for the evening, when the newly chosen father, Nero, can be introduced to the cat’s family. The obligatory reversal of expectations is crafted to bring about maximum emotional effect: A happy moment is about to occur. “Let’s go!” Vanya whispers to his sister. But at this moment, Stepan enters the room and announces, laughing: “Missus, Nera ate the kittens!” Nina and Vanya pale and look at Stepan with horror. “I swear …” laughs the lackey. Went up to the box and gobbled them all up.16 The only instance of the switch in the naming of the siblings from the customary “Vanya and Nina” to “Nina and Vanya” in the passage implies the enormous impact of the episode on the children as a unit. If the death of the kittens is the comic reversal typical for a sketch aimed at a lowbrow consumer, Chekhov’s appended coda examines the reversal of his children’s expectations and its psychological aftermath. Vanya and Nina expect the adults to become alarmed and attack the “evil Nero” because of his barbaric act. But people remain as before, surprised only by the large dog’s appetite. The parents laugh. The dog is licking his chops. Only the mother cat is troubled, roaming the rooms and mewing pitifully. The final sentence of the story focuses directly on the emotional and cognitive work necessary to process the event by the children: “Vanya and Nina go to bed, cry, and think long and hard about the mistreated cat

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and the cruel, insolent, unpunished Nero.”17 Chekhov leaves the narration at the grieving stage. No resolution to the destruction of the children’s imaginary family is offered. The description of Nero as “cruel, insolent, and unpunished” appears to align Vanya and Nina’s ethics with what Piaget termed “moral heteronomy” in which morality is seen in terms of rules that are fixed and unchangeable and guilt is determined by the extent of violation of rules rather than by intention. In their interactions with each other, however, Vanya and Nina already operate on Piaget’s developmentally advanced level of autonomous morality based on mutuality, reciprocity, and cooperation. Chekhov’s portrayal of his child characters’ moral advancement in play is a departure from the views espoused by his contemporaries, presaging Vygotsky’s understanding of the developmental process. For the psychologist, “[in] play a child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behaviour; in play it is as though he were a head taller than himself. As in the focus of a magnifying glass, play contains all developmental tendencies in a condensed form and is itself a major source of development.”18 In Chekhov, the loss of the imaginary family prompts the reevaluation of the children’s overall stance on moral issues. Chekhov amplifies the emotional impact of the closure by the relationship that he establishes between the narrator and the protagonists. From the beginning, the narrator’s affection for Vanya and Nina is apparent in the attention accorded to the routines of their daily lives, descriptions of their appearance and behaviour, in the delight the narrator appears to take in the children’s limited ability to express their discoveries in words, as well as in their love and concern for the mother cat and her kittens. The narrator’s digression on pets early in the story aligns him with the children in their shared personification of animals: In rearing, and in children’s lives [in general], pets play [perhaps] an inconspicuous, but certainly a positive role. Who among us does not remember powerful yet magnanimous dogs, free-loading lapdogs, birds dying in captivity, stupid but arrogant turkeys, [or] timid old cats who forgive us for stepping on their tails for our own amusement and for causing them unbearable pain? It sometimes seems to me that tolerance, faithfulness, the boundless ability to forgive and the sincerity of our pets effect the child’s mind much more strongly and positively than the dry and pale Karl Karlovich’s lengthy lectures or the vague discourses by the governess trying to prove to the children that water is made of oxygen and hydrogen.19

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The attribution of human traits to animals positions the narrator on the side of the children. The narrator’s thoughts on the importance of pets in child development, as well as his description of the humans’ mistreatment of animals, however, emphasize an educated adult’s stance on the issue. The narrator’s portrayal of the mother cat’s demeanour and behaviour after giving birth is similarly that of an adult, as is evident in the narrator’s reference to the sexual encounter that resulted in the birth of the kittens. For the children, the father’s role is limited to the enforcement of normative behaviour. The sexual reference introduced by the narrator is beyond the children’s realm of understanding and is directed toward adult readers, the fact underscored by its inclusion in a Romantic miniplot of abandonment and longing: Her little gray mug displays utter exhaustion, her green eyes, with their narrow black pupils, have a languid, sentimental expression … Clearly, for total happiness, only “he,” her children’s father, to whom she gave herself so selflessly, is missing!20 With the death of the kittens, the anticipation of a punch line set up by the comic sketch is met but in a manner that frustrates the audience’s desire for a happy resolution, the desire amplified by the narrator’s compassionate portrayal of Vanya and Nina’s plight. The meaning of the “big event” of the title, first understood to refer to the birth of the kittens, undergoes a dramatic change – from birth to death. The extended family’s reaction to this change is a matter-of-fact acknowledgement of the everyday reality where cats feed on mice, and dogs often eat smaller dogs or puppies. The adults’ laughter in the story is prompted by the clash between the imaginary world created by the children and actual life. Chekhov’s closure, however, aims to incite both laughter and intense discomfort. Kuprin’s audience’s general uneasiness about the story’s end was, in his account, also accompanied by sporadic laughter. If not seen as such by Chekhov’s contemporaries, the reaction of mirth mixed with discomfort is entirely appropriate for a work where a comic mode is chosen to describe the children’s intimate encounter with violent death. “The Big Event,” Chekhov’s version of black comedy, is centred on children, yet aimed at adults. The children attempt to learn about family life through role-play. Vanya and Nina’s goal is the creation of what both the children and the narrator perceive as an ideal household. The terror and sadness that Vanya and Nina endure stems from the children’s close identification with the cat’s family, their inability to comprehend the fam-

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ily’s tragic fate, and from the adults’ amused indifference to the “big event.” A father consumes his children, a family is annihilated, and nothing is done or can be done. Real life breaks into the magic circle of the game, upsetting the children’s notions about right and wrong and prompting moral reevaluation. The children’s subsequent accommodation of new knowledge is left unexplored. Chekhov’s answer to the issues posed in the story does not lie in the palliative accommodation of the children’s distress but, rather, in the writer’s representation of their pain and their search for answers as necessary for growth. THE REPUBLIC OF CHILDREN : “ KIDS ”

If “The Big Event” focuses on role-play, Chekhov’s “Kids” portrays several children as they engage in a conventional game of chance, the Russian version of bingo (loto). The story, three and a half pages long, opens with a description of the participants and their immediate environment. The children’s appearance, gender, and their individual behaviours are carefully noted. The rest of the narrative consists mostly of the children’s dialog. The closure depicts the game’s abrupt conclusion. Exhausted, the children fall asleep on the mother’s bed. The story adheres closely to the conventions of a dramatic sketch, with its reliance on dialog, unexpected resolution, and present tense narration in the third person. The adult observer’s language, however, is punctuated by sentences that suggest the children’s outlook on their environment and activity. If, for example, the title implies an adult’s perspective, the story’s opening suggests the young protagonists’ point of view: “Daddy, Mommy and Auntie Nadya are not at home. They went over to the old officer who rides a little grey horse, for a christening.”21 The same mélange of points of view is apparent in Chekhov’s explanation of why the children are up so late. Introduced first from an adult perspective, the narration switches to the children’s rationalization: “To be honest, they should all be in bed by now. But how can you sleep if you don’t learn from Mom about what the baby was like and what they served for dinner at the christening?”22 Lesgaft’s, Sikorsky’s, or Kapterev’s broad divisions of children into psychological types based on heredity and family circumstances are absent from Chekhov’s depictions. Six children participate in the game: four boys (Vasya, Grisha, Andrei, and Alyosha) and two girls (Anya and Sonya). All

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except one, the cook’s son Andrei, are siblings. As before, Chekhov focuses on what makes his children unique, paying close attention to their ageand gender-related interests as well as individual predispositions. The nine-year-old Grisha, who already attends preparatory school and is therefore considered the smartest, is described as a true gambler. “Fear that he might lose, envy, and financial considerations occupying his shaved head do not allow him to sit still and concentrate. He is on pins and needles. When he wins, he grabs his money with alacrity and immediately stuffs it in his pocket.”23 The youngest boy, Alyosha, is about four, since, as the narrator points out, the child does not yet know any numbers other than zero and one. Another indication of his immaturity, in comparison with other children, is Alyosha’s happiness at simply being allowed to participate in the game. Despite his young age, however, the boy delights in inciting confrontations. The cook’s son Andrei, whose age is not noted but whose behaviour suggests that he is around eight or nine years old, is a dreamer who loves to philosophize about numbers. Anya, who is eight, is not interested in money but is very competitive and hates to lose. The sixyear-old Sonya plays for fun. Vasya, whose age (about fifteen) is indicated repeatedly by the descriptive tag “Vasya, a fifth grade student,” is absent for most of the game but tries to join later out of boredom. With the exception of Vasya’s, the children’s appearance is described in detail. The nine-year-old Grisha’s portrait emphasizes his shaved head, small stature, plump cheeks, and very full lips. Anya has a sharp chin and intelligent bright eyes. Sonya’s curly hair and her very healthy complexion remind the narrator of an expensive doll or a picture on a box of chocolates. Alyosha is a plump tyke who looks like a ball. The cook’s son Andrei is swarthy, sickly, wears a cheap cotton shirt and, around his neck, a small cross made of copper. Chekhov’s description of the physical differences among the players emphasizes the heterogeneity of the group; the interactions in the story occur across the borders of age, class, and gender. The modifications of the standard rules for the game are settled by the players in advance. The stake for each round is one kopeck and anyone caught cheating must quit the game. Attentiveness is of utmost importance: if you miss placing your tile on the winning number, you lose. Alyosha’s unwillingness to leave the table to go to the bathroom, a naturalistic detail disapproved of by one of Chekhov’s critics, is indicative of the children’s absorption in the game, as well as of their general competitiveness.24 The absence of the adults is essential for an activity premised on the exclusion of the uninitiated from the group. The distinct nature of the

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endeavour is also apparent in the players’ transgression of established norms of time and space – the lateness of the hour and the place the children claim for playing. The locus of the game is the dining room table, the symbolic centre of the household. The activities associated with the table reflect the family’s structure and that of the larger society. Traditionally perceived as the household “altar,” in Chekhov’s time as well, the table’s symbolic position precluded objects extraneous to eating and proper socializing from being placed there. In this space, rigid norms of behaviour were to be maintained.25 Swearing or gambling, for example, were not permitted in this setting. The children’s use of the table for gambling underscores the transgressive and secretive nature of their activity. In his initial description of children at play, Chekhov emphasizes the physical limits of the players’ circle: The table, illuminated by a hanging lamp, is awash in numbers, nutshells, pieces of paper and tiles. In front of each player are two cards and a pile of tiles used to cover the numbers. In the middle of the table, stands a white saucer holding five one-kopeck coins. Next to the saucer are a half-eaten apple, scissors, and a plate the children have been ordered to use for nut shells.26 The light shining on the table from above singles out the objects essential to the game and confines the players in its glow. Chekhov’s description emphasizes the children’s cohesiveness as a group and their separateness from the rest of the world. The mention of a plate “ordered” to be used for nutshells is ambivalent, for it might imply the adults’ sanction for the use of the table in the activity, or, instead, indicate the children’s awareness of the norm in the middle of transgression. As Chekhov points out in the passage (and repeats in the end of the story), the prescribed norm is not observed anyway, and nutshells end up littering the table and the floor. The subsequent dialog focuses first on the children’s secret language and then on their interactions during the game. The narrator’s role in this part of the story is to amend the dialogue with descriptions of the characters’ thoughts, gestures, movements, and facial expressions. The children’s language (“many expressions and funny code names”) is invented for this group of players by the players themselves and used in word play that involves sound approximation and rhyming. The word for seven, for example, is “poker” and eleven is “sticks,” the signifiers selected because of the graphic similarity between the numbers and the objects. Seventy-

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seven is Semyon Semyonych; ninety (devianosto) is grandfather (dedushka), a choice based on the phonological closeness of the words. “Dvadtsat’ vosem’ – seno kosim,” which can be loosely translated as “twenty-eight – hay and weigh,” is an example of rhyming that emphasizes the sounds produced when the number is called. In addition to underscoring the exclusive nature of the activity, the children’s secret language also points to their shared synesthesia. The children’s dialog during the game reflects both the actual progress of the game and the players’ various reactions to what occurs: reactions that indicate the children’s individuality as well as their ability to function as a social unit. Anya notices that Andrei has missed a number. “At other times, she might have pointed it out to him, but now, when her pride is there on the saucer together with the kopeck, she is triumphant.”27 Grisha is in agony because Anya has already covered two rows. When Sonya claims to have won a round, Grisha looks at her with hatred and demands for the result to be verified. Yet when found legitimate, Grisha accepts Sonya’s victory. Sonya’s reaction to her success is described as “coquettish.” When Grisha wins, he jumps up from his chair and snatches the money from the saucer. The game’s progression is interrupted, and occasionally jeopardized, by external events. The first disruption is the sighting of a cockroach running across the table. Little Alyosha displays compassion that belies his age when he asks for the cockroach to be spared because “he might have children.” Sonya echoes the sentiment by imagining the cockroach’s family: “the baby cockroaches must be so little!”28 The children’s personification of the bug is akin to that of the siblings’ in “The Big Event” (published several months later), anticipating Chekhov’s description of a role play in which a pretend family can be created and protected. The averted death of the cockroach family’s father is followed by Anya’s story of discomfort and danger, reminiscent of a bylichka. Like its modern urban version, strashilka (“little horror story”), bylichka (“true tale”) employs plots and structures of traditional folklore to address the issues that trouble the child in real life. Yet, in contrast to strashilka, bylichka is an oral narrative about supernatural or extraordinary characters and events that purport to be based on the personal experience of the narrator.29 Anya’s short tale is about a family friend, Filipp Filippych, who recently frightened her by rolling up his eyelids in her presence. The man’s eyes looked “red and terrifying, like those of an evil spirit.”30 Instead of responding to the demonic aspect of Anya’s tale, Grisha makes an asso-

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ciative jump to facial games, by informing his playmates that a classmate can move his ears at will. Displaying his desire to belong, the cook’s son Andrei claims to be able to perform the trick as well but is not successful in his efforts. Andrei’s attempts generate laughter. It is Anya’s sister Sonya who elaborates on the theme of Filipp Filipych’s evil nature. Sonya’s description focuses on the man’s transgressive behaviour, and is, in addition to “little baby cockroaches,” one of the two instances of childish signification in the story. “‘Filipp Filippych is not a good person,’ she sighs. ‘Yesterday he walks into the children’s room. And I am just standing there in my nightie … I felt so indecent!’ (mne stalo tak neprilichno).”31 In Russian, the proper expression for this content would be either “it was indecent” or “he made me feel uncomfortable.” The impersonal construction (literally, “to me I was indecent“) suggests the girl’s linguistic limitations, her uncertainty about the agency in the episode, and her imperfect rendering of previously overhead statements by adults. Compared earlier to a doll and described as “coquettish” by the narrator, the six-year-old Sonya’s reaction to the episode is that of a young woman rather than a child. If Anya places the man’s actions in the context of a bylichka that focuses on the supernatural, Sonya fashions his unwelcome intrusion as a story of an aggressive admirer. Overall, the uncanny doubling of his name, the comparison of Filipp Filipych to an evil spirit, and the implied sexual nature of his behaviour with Sonya point to the girls’ shared perception of the man’s conduct as improper. When Andrei runs out of money, play is interrupted once again. Grisha, the group’s leader and self-appointed enforcer of the rules, insists on removing Andrei from the game. Sonya averts the disaster by lending the boy the money he needs. The telling of another bylichka interrupts play once again. The tale is prompted by Anya who draws everybody’s attention to the tolling of the bells she claims to have heard outside. The lateness of the hour, the absence of the adults, and the darkness serve as a background for a scary story about the guards who toll the bells at the church cemetery to ward off robbers. When asked by Sonya why the robbers would want to break into the church, the storyteller, Andrei, explains that they do it because they want to murder the guards. No one questions the illogical explanation. What makes an impact is the tale’s focus on danger, violence, and death, as well as the sense of personal vulnerability that the story generates in the players. The fear and tension created by the bylichka is diffused, however, when the children return to the game. Chekhov captures the dynamic of the scene in two laconic sentences: “There is a moment of silence. They all look around, shudder, and

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continue playing.” The next disruption is caused by Alyosha who claims that Andrei has cheated. The boys fight, then cry, and are joined in their distress by Sonya. The altercation is quickly forgotten, however, and another round of play begins. Alyosha is described as happy because, in his view, confrontations and misunderstandings are crucial for a game to be enjoyable. The social dynamics of the activity and the participants’ positions in the group’s hierarchy are fully established and detailed when Vasya, the “fifthyear student,” described by the narrator as “sleepy and disillusioned,” appears on the scene. Vasya’s inner thoughts focus on the impropriety of gambling by children and reflect the teen’s adoption of an educated adult’s point of view: “This is outrageous! … Why give children money? Why allow them to play games of chance? Here is pedagogy for you. Outrageous!” The game, however, is conducted in such an attractive, “scrumptious” manner (“vkusno”) that Vasya decides to try his luck. Unfortunately, Vasya’s inability to stake a kopeck, since the only cash he has is a ruble, is deemed by the players as disqualifying. Vasya’s explanations about differences in value between a ruble and a kopeck (with one ruble equalling one hundred kopecks) fall on deaf years. His suggestion to exchange the ruble for ten one-kopeck coins is rejected. Sonya once again diffuses the conflict by lending Vasya the necessary coin. Vasya’s position on the threshold of adulthood is evident in the distance he initially keeps from the players, as well as in his inner monologue on the anomaly of such games for children. The character’s threshold status renders participation in the activity problematic. Vasya is tolerated by other players but not fully accepted. Meaningful communication in this setting is impossible because of Vasya’s adherence to the norms of adult behaviour. In order to join the game, the adolescent has to breach the communicative gap by abandoning his adult persona and accepting the laws of this exclusive group as his own. The story’s closure is narratively unexpected but fully congruent with the young characters’ physical limitations. Sonya falls asleep at the table and is guided to her mother’s bedroom by her older sister. Subsequently, all of the young players join Sonya on her mother’s bed. As in play, in sleep distinctions based on the children’s gender, age, and social position are suspended. The game, predicated on carefully maintained rules and on the exclusion of the adults, is abandoned, yet the group’s cohesion is still evident in the shared transgressive act of occupying the mother’s bed. By finding refuge there, however, the children rejoin the world where the laws of their group are ineffective. The impermanence, the transitory

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nature of this republic of children finds its symbolic expression in Chekhov’s description of the coins strewn around on the bed. As the narrator observes, so potent before, they have lost their power until the next game. Viewed by Tolstoy as one of Chekhov’s best stories, “Kids” did not get the same ringing endorsement from some of Chekhov’s other contemporaries. The story was often seen as yet another example of Chekhov’s ability to convey the “psychology of the simple people,” the idea in line with the overall perception of Chekhov’s work on children as straightforward in structure and message.32 To be sure, Chekhov’s skill at individualizing his child characters was noted with approval.33 Yet for these critics, “Kids” was just one more “charming story of childhood” in the writer’s repertoire.34 One exception is Aikhenvald’s thoughtful reading that draws attention to the use of the comic elements in Chekhov’s story and reflects the critic’s progressive views on the child in Chekhov’s time. Aikhenvald stresses the relationship of interdependence between childhood and adulthood, while also underscoring the particular separateness of Chekhov’s children from the rest of the world: These little beings establish their own separate realm; and they occupy a unique part of the moral world. We are not like them anymore; there is a lot they don’t understand in us. By virtue of our experience and intellect, we have raised ourselves above them. Our attitude toward [children], therefore, is tinged with humour. It is impossible to portray them with utter seriousness, solemnity and objectivity. However, when inhabiting their specific realm and transforming the rest of the world into it, they are [also] us – our past and our future. We were them and they will become us. That is why the spectacle of children, of their republic … produces such an impression. [Children] are both close to us and far from us. Precisely this play on the near and far, on the similarity and difference is responsible for the amusing and charming effects of the children’s room.35 Like the educator Pirogov, Aikhenvald, too, sees the child as the “father of the man,” finding confirmation of this view in Chekhov. Aikhenvald also points to the significance of Chekhov’s portrayal of his children’s community as a cohesive group with its own laws, hierarchies, and democratic approach to social interactions. In Lev Vygotsky’s elaboration on the issue, conventional games represent “the greatest school of social experience”. He writes:

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In a game, the child’s effort is always limited and regulated by the aggregate of moves made by all the other players. Every game problem includes, as an indispensable condition, the ability to coordinate one’s behavior with the behavior of others, to enter into active relations with others, to attach and to defend oneself, to harm and to assist, and to determine in advance the result of one’s course of action relative to the complete group of all the players. Such a game is a vital social and collective experience of the child’s, and in this sense it constitutes an entirely irreplaceable tool for the inculcation of social skills and habits.36 Moreover, as Chekhov shows, it is in play where children’s individual characteristics, socially acquired traits, as well as age and gender related differences become particularly apparent. The distinctions in behaviour between Alyosha and his eldest brother Vasya, for example, are fully consistent with their respective levels of maturity and knowledge. The fouryear-old boy is eager to belong but is lacking the cognitive and social skills necessary to be fully successful. The fifteen-year-old teenager is bored, confrontational, and distant but has yet to divest himself of some childish qualities. Chekhov’s characters also exhibit traits that appear to be innate, such as, for example, Grisha’s excited and reckless greed, Anya’s competitiveness, or Alyosha’s love of conflict. Yet Sonya’s emphatic girlishness and Andrei’s general gawkiness suggest socially acquired qualities. If Andrei’s dreamy disposition, sensitivity, and his occasional forcefulness might be inborn, his awkwardness points to an acquired sense of his position in the household as inferior. The child’s perception of his inferior status is reflective of the social stratification in the household, visually manifested in Andrei’s humble attire. In Sonya’s case, the girl’s coy laughter and her interpretation of the family friend’s visit to the children’s room as offensive point to an internalized concept of female conduct that is premature for her age. Chekhov pays careful attention to the distinctions in behaviour based on gender. Different in age and predispositions, the two sisters are shown to be similar in their propensity for creativity and in their compassion toward others. Anya and Sonya are two of the three storytellers in “Kids” (the third one is the dreamer Andrei). Anya, whose intelligent eyes and competitive spirit are noted from the outset, displays the characteristics of an experienced raconteur. Trying to draw her audience in, she begins her supernatural tale of Filipp Filippych “as if speaking to herself.”37 The tolling of the bells that prompt Andrei’s story of robbers and murder is heard only by Anya and could be construed as the girl’s attempt to elicit

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a narrative of horror and dread from other players. Andrei responds to Anya’s invitation by offering his version of a bylichka. Sonya’s tale, on the other hand, although featuring the same protagonist as Anya’s, avoids the supernatural and reimagines the episode in terms of a relationship between a man and a young woman, a portrayal that signals her precocious femininity. Sonya’s primary interest is to ensure that the game continues. The child’s willingness to lend money to other players could be seen as an example of this overriding concern. Yet Sonya’s decision to loan a kopeck to Andrei is described as her reaction to Andrei’s distress, pointing to the little girl’s compassionate nature. Similarly, it is Anya who takes her drowsy sister to her mother’s bedroom and makes sure she is comfortable. Both girls manipulate the rules and alter their playing behaviour in order to accommodate other players, serving as the “arbiters of peace” in Chekhov’s community of children. The children’s pilgrimage to the mother’s bed signifies a retreat from the excitement and challenges of the game. The “return to the womb” in search of comfort and safety is only temporary, however. As Chekhov promises in the end of the story, another game awaits the players. In the meantime, the children sleep and the benevolent narrator sanctions their transient haven by bidding them all good night. In “Kids,” the parameters of play are flexible, allowing Chekhov’s protagonists to express their concerns and tame their fears in narratives extraneous to the game itself. By including Alyosha’s and Sonya’s discussion about a cockroach and his babies, Chekhov suggests a close connection between role-play and conventional games with rules. Both activities are based on specific underlying structures that are open to contextual modifications. In both stories, the children’s modifications of the rules are the result of the compromises achieved in order for play to continue. Chekhov depicts the “vital social and collective experience” of the game in its dynamic evolution. The process involves children of different personalities, ages, and gender. Vanya and Nina in “The Big Event” perform as a familial unit, “playing out” and refining their idea of what a family should be like. The children in “Kids” have to act as citizens, coordinating their various agendas and amending their personal ambitions for the benefit of their society and always “in the name of the game.” Within the circle of the game, communication among the players is unimpeded. Incomprehension arises when the circle is broken, and the children have to adjust their ideas and emotions to the rules of the outside world.

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In “The Big Event,” the adults initially condescend to the children’s plea to save the kittens. One form of communication (begging) is shown to be at least temporarily effective. Chekhov describes the complete collapse of communication in the closure. Vanya and Nina are unable to understand the adults’ indifference to the “big event.” The adults fail to acknowledge the profound impact of the kittens’ death on the children. In “Kids,” communication is hindered when Vasya intrudes into the game. Once again, joining the magic circle is predicated upon the acceptance of its rules and the abandonment of the laws of the adult world. Above all, children’s play in the story is equated with fun. Playing is, in Chekhov’s words, “scrumptious,” yet, in the context of his children’s lives, it is shown to be intermittent and brief. The impermanence of play is inherent in its requisite separation from ordinary, “serious” life. The obverse of seriousness, fun in play is predicated on the temporary subversion of standard norms of behaviour and their adjustment, or substitution, by the behavioural norms created by the children themselves. It is the “interplay” between the norm and transgression that allows the participants to gain fuller awareness of what constitutes successful social behaviour necessary for the game to go on. The perception of the exclusivity of the children’s society, manifested in the society’s secret language, fulfills the characters’ desire for power and control. Play in Chekhov is “scrumptious” precisely because it is sporadic and unique, based on a firm structure yet capable of infinite variations. The to and fro between the frivolity of the game and seriousness of life allows Chekhov’s children to experience the freedom to play with established norms and learn through playing. TE XT IN PLAY :

“ THE

BOYS ”

In “The Boys,” one of Chekhov’s most beloved and widely read stories, two preteens decide to run away to America. The boys’ plan is based on adventure novels by James Fennimore Cooper and Thomas Mayne Reid, highly popular in Chekhov’s Russia and still eagerly read by Russian children today.38 The boys’ adventure is cut short, however. The children are captured in a nearby town and returned home to face the consequences. The story, subtitled “a sketch” in the journal version, exhibits most of the accoutrements of the genre. The narrative begins in the middle of a dialog, the representational mode prominent throughout; the calendar thematics (Christmas) are present; the use of metaphorical names is pro-

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nounced; and the closure is somewhat unexpected. The condensed form of the narration and the comic distancing of the narrator/reader from the characters are similarly based on the tried and true conventions of the genre. Contrary to the standard, however, the narration is in the past tense, with perfective and imperfective forms of the verbs used in alternation. The narrator’s position is that of an invisible and impartial observer recording the characters’ actions and words. As before, the writer’s focus is on dramatization of imagination. Once again, Chekhov’s children attempt to gain knowledge and understanding of life by rewriting familiar narratives. Yet, as in “The Big Event,” in “The Boys” Chekhov wants to show what happens when play is put into action – when it is performed and realized on the “stage of life.” The characters’ desire to assume agency and affect change is at the forefront of Chekhov’s attention. The “as if” mode of role-play, narrowly based on the children’s perception of family life in “The Big Event” is expanded to include the exploration of a distant world. The children create a script, communicate in a secret language, and adopt masks/roles. For the performance to continue, the language of the play must be adhered to and the roles maintained. The two boys, Volodya Korolev (from the Russian word korol’ – “king”) and his schoolmate Chechevitsyn (the name derived from chechevitsa – “lentils”), arrive to spend Christmas holidays with the Korolevs. Volodya’s extended family includes the boy’s father, mother, aunt, his three sisters, and a female servant who acts like a family member. In contrast to Nero in “The Big Event,” the Korolevs’ dog, big and black like Nero, is a benign, if noisy, creature who is portrayed as an inseparable part of the household. Chekhov emphasizes the cohesion of the group by initially describing Chechevitsyn through the eyes of the family, e.g. “the entire Korolev family noticed,” or “the Korolevs observed.” The first sentence of the story is “‘Volodya is here!’ someone shouted in the yard” and the second is “‘Volodichka has come!’ Natalia screamed, dashing into the dining room, ‘Oh, my God!’”39 The two versions of the boy’s name point to the varying degrees of intimacy between the speakers and the child. If the nickname Volodya (from the formal Vladimir) suggests familial closeness, the use of the affectionate diminutive Volodichka, as well as the past perfective plural form of the verb “to come” (priekhali), indicate an intimate yet hierarchical relationship between a servant and her young master. In contrast, the family refers to Volodya’s friend only by his last name. When speaking about himself, the boy uses his adopted designation, “Montigomo Hawkclaw, the chief of the unde-

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feated” (Montigomo Iastrebinyi kogot’, vozhd’ nepobedimykh).40 When addressing Volodya, Chechevitsyn calls him “my pale-faced brother.” The differences suggested by the children’s last names and by the masks they adopt in their play point to the distinctions in the boys’ social position. In Korolev’s household, even the dog (Milord) is associated with nobility. Chechevitsyn, on the other hand, is a commoner’s name indicative of the child’s relatively low social status. Volodya’s sisters note the incongruity of the boy’s plain appearance with his status as a gymnasia student and think that Chechevitsyn looks like a cook’s son. Thus, Chechevitsyn’s assumed role as the noble leader of an Indian tribe is a proud confirmation of his otherness, gesturing as well to his heroic aspirations. The description of the arrival scene emphasizes motion, noise, and warmth, both physical and emotional. The boys’ initial reception is marked by joy, the word repeated in various derivations throughout the section (radostnyi, radosti, radostno). The father’s reaction to Volodya’s friend’s unexpected appearance at the house is likewise described as joyful, his overall behaviour projecting acceptance and ease. The father’s lack of ceremony is underscored by his informal dress (po-domashnemu). He eagerly participates in the activities ordinarily delegated to children, such as making decorations for the Christmas tree. His question, “Am I not the father?” in the arrival scene implies both his playfulness and the man’s ambivalence about his status as an adult. Like children, he is prone to taking things without asking for permission first. When questioned, he assumes an indignant pose, pretending to be offended. His young guest’s name is transformed by the jovial father from the original Mr Lentils (Chechevitsyn) to Mr Tiling (Cherepitsyn) and then to Mr Lapwing (Chibisov). As in the secret language created by children in “Kids,” the father’s wordplay is based on the similarities between the name (phonology and semantics) and the child’s appearance. Like a lapwing, Chechevitsyn is thin and has bristly hair reminiscent of the bird’s crest. Freckles, evocative of clay tiles, dot his swarthy complexion. The principle underlying the father’s games with words is bared when the youngest sister responds to the voicing of the boy’s name by making an associative jump from the signifier to the signified: “They cooked lentils at our house yesterday” and “Nanny says during Lent you have to eat peas and lentils.”41 Focused on Volodya, the family does not initially notice another “little person” standing there, “wrapped up in scarfs, kerchiefs, shawls, and a hooded coat, all sprinkled with hoar-frost.”42 Already in the opening scene, Chechevitsyn’s deliberate detachment from the group is apparent:

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first, in the boy’s stoic immobility in the midst of frenetic activity (stoial nepodvizhno) and then in the child’s position in a corner, concealed by a big fur coat. At tea, the father reminisces about his son’s departure from home the previous summer and about Volodya’s mother’s distress on the occasion. The father’s memories emphasize the orderly progression of life over time: “And now you are here … Time flies, my brother! Old age will arrive in a blink of an eye.”43 The father’s discussion, accompanied by his invitation for Chechevitsyn to continue eating, concludes the idyllic preamble. The boys’ plans to embark on an extraordinary adventure are discovered by Volodya’s sisters, Katya and Sonya. In his substantial edits of the journal version, Chekhov changed the ages of the boys and the eldest girl to bring them developmentally closer. In the final version, Volodya and his friend are in the second year of study, which makes them around eleven years of age. The eldest daughter Katya, twelve in the journal version, is now also eleven. The girls’ impression of Chechevitsyn as morose, taciturn, and unsmiling leads them to conclude that he is “a very smart, highly educated person.”44 The boy’s absorption in his thoughts and his distracted way of responding to questions add to his aura of mystery. In the sisters’ minds, Chechevitsyn’s seemingly unconnected statements heighten his enigmatic appeal. In the girls’ summary, the proposed adventure is described as follows: The boys were planning to run away to America to prospect for gold. Everything was ready for the trip: a pistol, two knives, [and] crackers, a magnifying glass for starting a fire, a compass and four rubles in cash … [T]he boys will have to walk several thousand miles, fight tigers and savages, and then prospect for ivory and gold; [they will have] to kill their enemies, become pirates, drink gin, and, finally, marry beautiful women and live and work on a plantation.45 The bits of the script that emerge in Chechevitsyn’s conversations with others highlight the intentional exclusion of the uninitiated from the adventure. Chechevitsyn’s first recorded statement draws attention to the exotic flavour of his knowledge: “In California, they drink gin instead of tea.” His next attempt to talk to the girls reveals the source of his special knowledge: “Have you read Mayne Reid?” Chechevitsyn’s description of mosquitos as little ants with wings, his insistence on using “moskity” rather than the Russian word komary point to the obfuscation of meaning necessary for the preservation of the game’s exclusivity.46 The boys’ plan is

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made inaccessible to those who have not mastered the clandestine language of the play. The girls’ chief position in the unfolding events is that of outside observers. Chekhov’s decision to make Katya eleven rather than twelve in the final version allows him to examine the interactions that occur in a mixed gender group among children of the same age (Katya and the boys), as well as of different ages (Sonya, Masha, and the boys). Katya’s response to the discovery of the plan is to conceal it from the adults because “Volodya will bring us gold and ivory from America, but if you [Sonya] tell Mom, they won’t let him go.”47 Katya and Sonya act as a unit, eavesdropping on final preparations. Little Masha does not understand anything, “decidedly nothing.” Sensing the emotional turmoil, the youngest child finds consolation in the familiar association of Chechevitsyn with lentils. When the girls observe Chechevitsyn trying to convince a reluctant Volodya to proceed with the plan, they see him as a hero: “And this thin, swarthy boy, with bristly hair and freckles, seemed extraordinary and wonderful to the girls. This was a hero, a resolute, fearless person.”48 For Katya, the excitement generated by the new knowledge is heightened by Chechevitsyn’s willingness to share some of his wisdom with her. A claim to his difference from others, the sharing of exotic details is also a subtle invitation for Katya to join in the game. Though thrilling, the adventure, and the separation from home that it implies, generate fear and distress in the girl. The boys’ plan betrays, however, a considerable lack of knowledge about the distant lands they want to explore. Chechevitsyn responds to Katya’s invitation to go skating by describing bison running around pampas together with the mustangs: “When a herd of bison runs through pampas, the earth trembles, while frightened mustangs kick and bray.”49 The boys’ knowledge about North American fauna is equally fuzzy and their mastery of geography rather questionable. In a private conversation with Volodya, Chechevitsyn asserts that, when they reach Alaska, California is within reach. The Russian idiom used is “ne za gorami,” literally, “is not beyond the mountains.”50 This, of course, is incorrect on both counts – the distance the boys will have to travel from Alaska and the mountains they will have to cross to reach California. Chechevitsyn’s “reveal” as an actor in a performance, added by Chekhov in his edits of the journal version, occurs at the end of his conversation with the girls. The child asks “Do you know who I am?” When Katya responds “Mr Chechevitsyn,” the boy introduces himself as “Montigomo

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Hawkclaw, the Chief of the Undefeated.”51 In a comic contrast to the grandiosity of the boy’s statement, the youngest girl Masha pipes in with her comment about lentils, taking the lofty down to the prosaic. The exalted style that characterizes the boys’ script is a feature of the narrative it imitates. Mayne Reid’s The Scalp-Hunters (1851), for example, opens with a grandiloquent invitation to an adventure: “Unroll the world’s map, and look upon the great northern continent of America. Away to the Wild West, away toward the setting sun, away beyond many a far meridian let your eyes wonder. Rest them where golden rivers rise among peaks that carry the eternal snow. Rest them there.”52 The narrator proceeds to describe the “‘grass prairie,’ the boundless pasture of the bison.” The mix of the ethnographic detail with the observer’s emotional reaction to the observed is typical for Reid’s writing, often labelled “ecocentric.” The inclusion of numerous illustrations unrelated to the plot offers tangible proofs of the existence of the alien world Reid is describing in his novels. The blend of science (observation and ordering) and fiction (the narrator’s emotional reaction to nature) is apparent in the following passage: As I move forward, new landscapes open up continuously: view sparklike and picturesque. “Gangs” of buffalo, “herds” of antelope, and “droves” of wild horses, mottle the far vistas. Turkeys run into the coppice, and pheasants whirr up from the path … Although with a cultivated aspect, this region is only trodden by the moccasined foot of the hunter and his enemy, the red Indian.53 Reid’s semifictional approach is clearly on display in the book’s table of contents. The chapter titles point to the writer’s constant shifts in focus, ranging from the descriptions of the physical world the narrator sees on his travels, to the new world’s cultures and mores he observes, and to the portrayal of his personal encounters with danger, sickness, death, betrayal, and love. Reid’s fifty-seven chapters include “The Wild West,” “The Prairie Merchants,” “The Prairie Fever,” “A Ride upon a Buffalo Bull,” “In a Bad ‘Fix,’” “Santa Fe,” “The Fandango,” “Seguin the Scalp Hunter,” “Left Behind,” “The Del Norte,” “The Journey of Death,” “Zoe,” “Seguin,” “Love,” etc. The Scalp-Hunters, 452 pages long in its 1899 edition, is just one of Reid’s numerous, and lengthy novels of adventure. As described by Chekhov, the boys’ rewrite of Reid is contained in several sentences marked by the emphasis on the exotic – gin, Indians, bison, mustangs,

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mosquitos, beautiful women – and on ceaseless action – run away, walk, fight, prospect, kill, become pirates, marry, work. Chekhov alluded to the themes explored in “The Boys” on three occasions: in the 1885 contribution to “The Fragments of Moscow Life” published in Oskolki; in his 1888 article on Nikolai Przhevalsky, a famous Russian explorer of Central and East Asia; and in The Island of Sakhalin (1893–94). All three statements focus on the tension between the “dreamer” and the “doer,” between the creators of stories and those who enact stories in real life. In “The Fragments,” the fascination with distant lands is placed in the context of literature’s changing influence on the hearts and minds of children: It used to be that after reading tales of chivalry, people escaped to become Don Quixotes. Not so long ago, little kids from Chukhloma and Syzran’ would run away from home, pretending to escape to America after gorging themselves on Cooper and Mayne Reid. “Sir, where is America?” they would ask passersby on their way out of town.54 Chekhov’s perception of his young contemporaries’ desire for exploration and heroism as a feature of his time was shared by others. The writer I.S. Shmelev’s memoir attests both to the fad and to Chekhov’s close familiarity with the phenomenon. In a 1891 personal letter to the critic V.A. Gol’tsev, the writer G.I. Uspenskii points to the differences between previous generations of children, as described by Tolstoy, Aksakov, Saltykov-Shchedrin, and the new generation of children who yearn for distant lands.55 In his short piece on Przhevalsky (1839–1888), Chekhov focuses on the crucial importance of adventurers and explorers for education, yet, contrary to “Fragments,” Chekhov’s primary attention here is drawn to the heroic deeds of real adventurers. He writes: In all times and all societies, people like Przhevalsky produce an enormous educational impact that goes beyond their scholarly and national achievements. One Przhevalsky or Stanley are worth a dozen of educational institutions or hundreds of good books. In the eyes of the people, [these men’s] dedication to an idea, their noble ambition founded on devotion to their homeland and science; their steadfast and unconquerable desire to move toward a set goal, untouched by any deprivations, dangers or temptations of personal happiness; the wealth of knowledge they possess and their propensity for hard work; their disre-

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gard for heat, hunger, home-sickness, and debilitating fevers; [and] their fanatical belief in the Christian civilization and in science all make them true heroes who exemplify extraordinary moral power. Where this power stops being an abstract notion, where it is personified by a dozen real people, there you have a mighty school. It is not coincidental that every schoolboy knows Przhevalsky … [When] a pampered ten-year-old schoolboy dreams of running away to America or Africa in his quest for heroic deeds he is playing a game of pretend (shalost’). But this is not a simple game … [Rather], this is a symptom of a benign contagion inexorably spreading across the land in the wake of heroism. If positive characters created by literature constitute precious educational material, people like Przhevalsky, created by life itself, are priceless. [They] are particularly valuable because the meaning of their lives, their heroism, their goals and ethics can be understood by a child. It has always been the case that the closer a man is to truth, the more understandable and genuine he is.56 In 1890, three years after the publication of “The Boys,” Chekhov embarked on his own extraordinary adventure – to the island of Sakhalin. Notably, Chekhov’s itinerary adhered, if partially, to the one dreamed up by Volodya and Chechevitsyn.57 The writer’s arduous Sakhalin trip in search of information about the life of convicts certainly aligned him with the doers. Yet, in The Island of Sakhalin, the “pampered schoolboy” of the Przhevalsky essay is evoked once again: “the morose, angry sea has spread itself boundlessly for thousands of miles. When a little boy has been reading Mayne Reid and his blanket falls off during the night, he starts shivering, and it is then that he dreams of such a sea.”58 The connection between heroic actions and childish dreams is suggested yet another time. In “The Boys,” Chekhov splits the dreamer and the doer, united in great explorers, into two separate characters. At first, the boys act as one. They share their secret language and a taste for adventure. The play occupies the boys completely. Neither Volodya nor Chechevitsyn exhibit any interest in regular holiday activities. They speak in whispers and spend their time studying the atlas. During the final preparations for the escape, however, Volodya’s behaviour changes. Chechevitsyn is busy mapping the route and thinking about transport and provisions to be obtained by “hunting and plunder.” Volodya, on the other hand, is in emotional turmoil. In the journal version, the story ends before the children have a chance to embark on their adventure. When the girls divulge the secret to their

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mother, the boys decide to postpone their trip until another time. The revised finale focuses on the enactment of play in real life, highlighting in the process the contrast between Volodya and his friend. Chechevitsyn never abandons his mask. When Volodya expresses misgivings about the plan, the boy addresses him as “my pale-faced brother” and implores him to proceed with the escape. When the boys are caught and returned home, Volodya’s reaction is that of profound relief, while Chechevitsyn’s is pride. When taking leave of the Korolevs, Chechevitsyn appears sombre and haughty. He does not utter a single word and signs Katya’s notebook as “Montigomo Hawkclaw,” remaining in the role and following the script. The definitive version changes the structure of the story from linear to circular. The “prodigal sons’” return mirrors the arrival scene, but the joy and playfulness that framed the arrival are now absent. Abandoning the child-like persona from his previous conversations with the boys, Volodya’s father articulates the normative truth by stressing the harmful effects of the children’s behaviour on their future. In the end the father places the blame for the whole affair on Chechevitsyn, the “ring leader.” We learn, however, that both the impetus and the script for the adventure came from Volodya. Chechevitsyn’s words, “You assured me that you were going to go, you thought it all up in the first place and now, when it’s time to do it, you chicken out,” establish Volodya as the playwright and one of the leads in his own play.59 The playwright, however, is on the verge of abandoning his project, while his friend wants to perform as a man of action in real life, pursuing, like the great explorer Przhevalsky, his ambition to the exclusion of everything. Chekhov’s piece on Przhevalsky belongs to the “serious” genre of the obituary, intolerant of irony and play. In his essay, Chekhov insists on making a clear distinction between literature and life. The explorer’s deeds are worth “hundreds of good books,” positive characters found in literature can serve as valuable educational tools, but only heroes created by life can make a real impact on the lives of children. In Chekhov’s description, however, Przhevalsky’s life is highly dramatic. Chekhov’s “Przhevalsky’s script” builds on the notion of ascetic heroism that precludes the accumulation of wealth, desire for prestige, or pleasure of any kind. For the writer of the obituary, Przhevalsky’s life is extraordinary precisely because the hero never deviates from his heroic role. In “The Boys,” a story written in the genre of a comic sketch, Chekhov depicts his children’s internalization of Przhevalsky’s ideal and of the exploits of Cooper’s and Reid’s characters in an ironic light. The heroism

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of the boys’ adventure is playfully questioned. Unlike Przhevalsky’s narrated life that emphasizes the explorer’s selfless dedication to science, Christian values, and the Russian nation, Volodya’s adventure narrative posits personal gain as the goal of the characters’ agency. The boys’ idea of exploration involves prospecting, killing enemies, hunting, and plunder. The gain is gold, ivory, and beautiful women. The boys’ script is thus quite far from the tale of heroism described in Chekhov’s piece on Przhevalsky. Chekhov underscores the tension between the imagined and the real in his description of Volodya’s anguished reaction to the idea of leaving home, the reaction apparent in the boy’s restlessness, crying, loss of appetite, and depression. On the eve of his escape, Volodya bursts into tears and hugs his family. In his prayer, added by Chekhov to the journal version, Volodya begs for forgiveness and asks God to spare his mother.60 The boy’s distress is mirrored in his sisters’ behaviour. The “femininity” of Volodya’s response to the violent disruption of the orderly progression of life is sharply contrasted with the stoic “masculinity” of Chechevitsyn’s reaction.61 The highly favourable reception of the story by Chekhov’s contemporaries was not accompanied, however, by anything approaching an exhaustive analysis. Tolstoy put “The Boys” on his list of Chekhov’s best stories. V. Gol’tsev recommended the story for family reading. Aikhenvald framed his brief consideration around “miniature people” who make “grandiose plans” but are thwarted in the process.62 A. Basargin’s review stressed the educational import of Chekhov’s stories about children, including “The Boys.” In the spirit of the contemporary debates on the issue, the critic interprets Chekhov’s position as a call for drastic changes in Russia’s pedagogical practices. In Basargin’s opinion, Chekhov “subtly captured and vividly represented the anomalies of our ‘education’: our endless oversights and mistakes, as well as the resulting widespread physical and moral disfigurement of our children – handed off to other people and placed in educational institutions, without any consideration of their abilities and strengths, as if [purposefully] condemned to torture.”63 If heartfelt and pertinent in its discussion of Russian education, Basargin’s analysis is, nevertheless, a misreading of Chekhov. In “The Boys,” Volodya is portrayed as a generally happy child whose experiences at school, bad or good, are never mentioned. Volodya is adored by his family and respected by his friend. The interpretive challenge for the readers of “The Boys,” as well as of Chekhov’s “Fragments,” his essay on Przhevalsky, and of the passage from The Island of Sakhalin, is to understand what

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would prompt a child to leave the comforts of home and set out for the unknown. Chekhov’s answer: a powerful narrative, a dream. The challenge that Chekhov sets for his child characters is the enactment of the dream in real life. In “The Boys,” only one child is shown to as able to cross the boundary between a made-up story and life. In Chekhov’s presentation here, successful agency is predicated on the exclusion of all that is extraneous to the dramatic construct. Chekhov shows that, as in theatre, a heroic performance in life demands the preservation of the mask and adherence to the script. Laughter is absent from Chechevitsyn’s performance. The story, however, generates laughter because of the incongruity between the actor and the role. The split between the dreamer and the doer characterizes Chekhov’s later work as well, most visibly in “The Duel” (1891). Volodya creates imaginary narratives but lacks the agency necessary for the enactment of his dreams. Laevsky, Volodya’s adult counterpart in “The Duel,” rationalizes the absence by creating narratives that justify his inefficacy. Volodya’s friend, on the other hand, is a doer who wants to live the play as a fearless and proud adventurer, the position akin to that of Von Koren in “The Duel.” Chekhov’s nonliterary reflections on the theme underscore the power of narratives to inspire action. Chekhov’s story fleshes out the interdependence of texts and acts. A doer will act, but not before a dreamer dreams up the play. Chekhov’s literary inquiry into play is innovative. To be sure, Ushinsky pointed out the crucial significance of the “child’s free activity” in the development of the child’s “psyche, the heart and the will.” Sikorsky, Kapterev, and Manasseina, among others, concurred. (See chapters 2 and 3.) Yet, neither the scholars nor the fiction writers of the period described the intricacies and the import of the process in Chekhov’s terms and in such detail. Like his contemporaries, Chekhov saw play is a distinctive learning experience. Yet the creative, emotional, and collaborative aspects of the activity are emphasized much more strongly in Chekhov’s stories than in the writings by the educational psychologists of his time. In addition, unlike his contemporaries, Chekhov underscores the uniqueness of play as a clandestine activity inaccessible to the uninitiated, its inaccessibility protected by particular codes of behaviour, shared understanding of negotiated procedures, and language.

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In their role-playing, conventional games with rules, or in enactments of imaginary scripts, Chekhov’s children discover the challenges of communication, both with peers and adults. They acquire the emotional and intellectual tools necessary for successful arbitration and learn the art of accommodation. Crucially, as in children’s creative reimagining of their experiences, in games, players can transform established discursive conventions for their individual purposes.

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7 Farewell to Childhood: The Steppe

I could do no better. A.P. Chekhov on The Steppe

The appearance of The Steppe (1888) was a turning point in Chekhov’s creative biography.1 The year marked Chekhov’s decisive departure from the small press.2 The Steppe was his first publication in a prestigious “thick journal.” Chekhov’s work was finally attracting the attention of prominent critics. The same year, Chekhov was awarded the Pushkin Prize for his collection of stories In the Twilight (V sumerkakh). Urged by the literary establishment to produce a novel, Chekhov obliged by embarking on a full-length narrative, abandoning in the process the structural predictability, laconic density and the comic flavour of his dramatic sketches. What Chekhov offered instead, however, defied his contemporaries’ expectations. Considerably longer than the majority of the pieces Chekhov wrote for the small press, The Steppe eschewed the overt playfulness that characterized most of his early work.3 In every other way, however, Chekhov’s short novel (povest’), comprised of loosely connected episodes punctuated by lyrical and philosophical digressions, subverted established standards of novelistic writing. Superficially constructed as a tale of a travelling hero’s adventures, The Steppe offers no suspenseful plot, no discernible unifying message, and is filled with seemingly irrelevant details. Subtitled “A Story of One Journey,” the novel describes a voyage taken by nine-year-old Egorushka, his merchant uncle, and a local priest to the house of a family friend before enrolling in school. The child, unhappy about leaving home, is an unwilling participant in his fellow travellers’

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business trip. Egorushka’s journey is described in eight chapters, each offering a particular facet of the child’s experience. Chapters one and two depict the first day of the journey. The third is an account of the travellers’ stay at a Jewish inn. In the fourth chapter, Egorushka’s companions leave the child with a group of men who transport wool to the provincial town where Egorushka is headed. The description of the boy’s time with the wool carters comprises the following three chapters. The child is reunited with his uncle and Father Christopher in the final chapter, only to be left behind again on the eve of his departure for school. CHEKHOV ’ S DILEMMA

In his numerous letters on The Steppe, Chekhov fully acknowledged the unorthodox quality of his work by calling its plot “negligent” and the entire novel “odd.”4 Narrative cohesion concerned him most. In a letter to the writer Korolenko, Chekhov wrote: My initial goal was to describe the steppe, its people and what I experienced there. The subject is good and the writing is fun. Sadly, however, since I am not used to writing at length and because I am afraid of writing something inessential, I fall into another extreme: each page comes out as compact as a short story, scenes pile up, crowding and jostling each other, and the general impression is ruined. As a result, what emerges is not a picture where all the particulars, such as stars in the sky, merge into a unified whole, but a synopsis, a dry list of impressions.5 In a letter to Grigorovich, Chekhov offered this solution to the problem: “Each separate chapter is an independent story; all chapters are closely connected, like five contredanses in a quadrille. I am trying to imbue them with the same general smell and tone, easy to accomplish since one character is present in all of the scenes.”6 In a letter to A.N. Pleshcheev, Chekhov further identified the primary component of his unifying approach as a “shared poetic mood, general tone, and inner melody.”7 The same point was made in another letter to Pleshcheev: “The plot is poetic and, if I don’t abandon the tone that I used in the beginning, then something extraordinary will come out of it.”8 Not only is the plot poetic, according to Chekhov but also the language of his work: “at times, I have poems in prose there.”9 Chekhov’s correspondence included two more important

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points on the writing of the novel. The open-endedness of the novel was deliberate. Depictions of the interactions between the worlds of nature and man are crucial.10 Chekhov considered The Steppe to be his masterpiece, for, in his words, “he could do no better.”11 Most of Chekhov’s first readers disagreed. The newness of Chekhov’s approach to writing was noted by all, yet its pronounced difference from that of his fellow writers was generally perceived as a fault. For most critics, the expectation of a “reformed” Chekhov, writing “seriously” in a serious genre, was not fulfilled. Many cast the blame for the putative failure on the small press where, as the critic A.M. Skabichevskii observed, Chekhov “had been ruining his talent by cooking up frothy fare for various newspapers, without paying much attention to the integrity of the places where he published.”12 According to Grazhdanin’s critic R-ii, Chekhov “ignored prevalent literary practices, as well the tastes of our reading public (perhaps unsophisticated, but predominant).”13 A. Vvedenskii echoed the view by stressing Chekhov’s “inability or unwillingness to write according to the literary establishment’s prescriptions.”14 V.L. Kign noted that Chekhov’s new work was still fragmented and focused too much on inessentials.15 In sum, the critics objected to Chekhov’s seeming indifference to what others saw as topics worthy of literary attention, as well as to the absence of a direct authorial guidance about the relative importance of his themes, scenes, and objects of depiction. R. Disterlo described Chekhov’s presumed arbitrariness in representation as follows: Mr Chekhov is not looking for anything specific in nature and life; he does not need to solve anything; and nothing absorbs his attention fully. [It’s as if] he just went out for a stroll where he occasionally met interesting people, [and observed] typical little scenes and pretty landscapes. Then he would stop for a moment, pull out his pencil, and sketch. When the drawing was done, he would walk on … When he sees something else, he sketches it as lightly, forgets it as easily, and searches for some new impressions.16 One critic suggested that a significant number of Chekhov’s “accidental” scenes detract rather than enhance his narratives and can, therefore, be edited out without damaging the whole.17 In a similar vein, Disterlo opined that for Chekhov, “nothing in the world is unworthy of literary representation … Nothing in life offers a particular advantage for description, anything can inspire him to write.”18 This perceived lack of differ-

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entiation was articulated most pointedly by N.K. Mikhailovskii two years after the publication of The Steppe: “It is all the same to Chekhov, whether it is a man or his shadow, a bell or a suicide … Whatever he happens to see, he will invariably describe, and in ‘cold blood.’”19 More detailed reactions to The Steppe echoed the commonly shared opinion of Chekhov’s work as unfocused. In his otherwise positive response, Pleshcheev pointed to the lack of broader external content in the novel.20 P.N. Ostrovskii lamented the absence of a plan, “the centre to which secondary characters and details would gravitate,” as well as Chekhov’s putative inability to maintain a general tone and blend his heterogeneous material together. For Ostrovskii, the life of the steppe and the story of the child did not intersect, and, therefore, for the critic, the novel came across as an assemblage of disparate scenes.21 The writer Korolenko, however, appreciated Chekhov’s narrative design: “Some critics stated that The Steppe is nothing but a collection of little pictures in a large frame. There is no doubt, however, that this large frame is imbued with the same mood.”22 Overall, the absence of a distinctive plot and the ambiguity of the point of view in the work presented major challenges of interpretation for Chekhov’s contemporaries. Later critics encountered similar hermeneutical problems. CHEKHOV ’ S DANCE : STRUCTURE AND PERSPECTIVE

The majority of Soviet interpreters of The Steppe assigned its principal perceiving consciousness to the child hero, while the adult narrator was considered to be “concealed.” A.P. Chudakov countered this interpretation by demonstrating that the adult narrator is present throughout the narration, and Egorushka’s point of view does not predominate.23 Chudakov saw the child’s position in the narrative as a compositional pivot (sterzhen’) around which nature scenes, descriptions of people, and the narrator’s thoughts revolve.24 To prove his point, Chudakov noted a relative paucity of double indirect speech in the novel; cited passages (under the rubrics people, interiors, and landscapes) that signalled, by their wording and syntax, an adult’s perception of what occurs; and identified the parts of the narrative that could only be attributed to Egorushka as an adult.25 All led the critic to believe that the novel did not belong with Chekhov’s writing on childhood. According to Chudakov, “the modelling of the child’s world was not Chekhov’s intention” and in The Steppe,

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“Chekhov’s goals were other than [to offer] a unified and complete portrayal of Egorushka’s character.”26 In his reading of the novel, Nils Ake Nilsson likewise separated the narrator’s point of view from that of the child, assigning to the former the appreciation of the steppe, while limiting the latter to Egorushka’s direct experience of the journey.27 For Nilsson, however, the subtitle (“a story of one journey”) hints at the possibility of a narrative concerned with character development. In the critic’s opinion, the title points to the unity, while the subtitle gestures to possible transitions and transformations, both in terms of the plot and the primary character. Nevertheless, in Nilsson’s summation, the blending of perspectives does not occur, and the child’s story and descriptions of the steppe each exhibit distinctly different narrative techniques.28 Chekhov’s comments on The Steppe help resolve the issues of plot and perspective that have puzzled critics since the novel’s publication. Chekhov’s letters testify to the crucial importance of the child’s continuous presence in The Steppe. The work is defined as a story of a journey. The journey described is that of nine-year-old Egorushka as he enters a distinctly different phase of life. Like Aksakov’s Sergey in Reminiscences and Years, Egorushka is changed by his experience. The inclusion of Egorushka’s retrospective view of events as an adult, as well as the subtitle of the work, point to the attention accorded to the child’s evolution in the novel.29 The novel places the physical journey and the transition between two different existential planes into the foreground, fusing them into a realized rite of passage for Chekhov’s child. The Steppe is thus a novel of maturation. Chekhov’s comparison of the work to a “quadrille with contredanses” is essential in understanding Chekhov’s approach to the portrayal of Egorushka’s place in the narrative – as well as of the character’s development. In The Steppe, the child’s psychological growth is shown to occur in his interactions with the steppe and with others. A quadrille is a social, collaborative dance where some couples assume the lead while others repeat the figures first performed by the leaders.30 Consequently, Chekhov’s comparison underscores the intended hierarchy in his characters’ narrative importance. As in a quadrille, Chekhov’s “leads” – Egorushka in the present, the adult narrator, the boy at a later, more mature stage, and the steppe itself – engage in interactions that peripheral characters join and help clarify by their behaviours and responses.

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Additionally, the trope suggests Chekhov’s wish to imbue his work with a particular kind of theatricality. Like a carefully structured performance, The Steppe is choreographed and orchestrated for a maximum visual and musical effect, the fact chiefly responsible for the work’s consistent “shared poetic mood, general tone, and inner melody.” The novel’s musicality, for example, is evident in the narrative’s carefully calibrated sounds, its cadences, and an occasional etymological rhyme, as well as in its dance-like structure. Further, Chekhov’s emphasis on the visual in the novel is, as I demonstrate below, quite pointed, and his overall approach to the visual aspects of the narration highly innovative.31 Chudakov’s identification of Egorushka as a structural “pivot” is a misnomer, for, in the critic’s elucidation, the notion implies the noninvolvement of the central figure in the plot of the novel. Chekhov’s “quadrille” is a much more apt description of a configuration in which lead protagonists engage in a continuous and changing association, the association augmented and amplified by Chekhov’s secondary characters. In this interpretation of Chekhov’s design, the child character’s position is characterized by continuous movement, engagement, and evolution. As in Chekhov’s stories about children, the narrative gaze here is refracted through multiple perceiving consciousnesses: the reader observes Egorushka observing his environment while being observed by the adult narrator, the steppe, and the reminiscing adult. In order to clarify the source of perception, Chekhov occasionally refers to retrospection directly, e.g. “Now Egorushka took everything at face value and believed every word, later on, however, it seemed strange to him.”32 Sometimes, Chekhov marks the transition to Egorushka’s point of view in a transparent fashion. A good example is the passage that points to an infantile equation of death with sleeping: “When Granny had died they put her in a long narrow coffin and placed two kopeks on her eyes which did not want to close. Until her death she had been alive, and would bring soft rolls sprinkled with poppy seeds from the market. Now she did nothing but sleep and sleep.”33 Occasionally, Egorushka’s reflections are prefaced by the words “he thought.” More often, however, the reader has to intuit the difference between various points of view, and sometimes it is left ambiguous. For example, when Egorushka wonders about a messy object in his pocket, the text reads, “How did this sticky stuff get into his pocket?” It is the child who is uncertain, but the impersonal construction (emu popala) points to the adult narrator’s perspective. The narrative continues, “Ah, it’s the Jewish honey-cake! How sodden the poor thing has become!” signalling an

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apparent shift to the child’s perspective. As Wiegers points out, however, the sentence can also be interpreted as the adult narrator’s ironic comment on Egorushka’s discovery.34 The virtually imperceptible switches in perspective are one of the novel’s most consistent features. In the line “Egorushka heard a quiet, very gentle gurgle and felt the velvety touch of a strange current on his face,” for example, the “gentle gurgle” can be attributed to the child’s articulation of the sound while “the velvety touch” points to the presence of a more sophisticated narrator who later evokes “velvety” again in his description of Countess Dranitskaia.35 In addition, Chekhov accomplishes the shifts in perspective by “marking” the text for the protagonists’ emotional and psychological attendance. For example, certain colours, smells, and perceptions are associated with the child from the beginning and are used again later to alert the reader to the boy’s presence. In the opening paragraph, Chekhov describes the carriage Egorushka is travelling in as follows: Early on a July morning, a shabby covered chaise, one of those antediluvian chaises without springs in which no one travels in Russia nowadays, except merchant clerks, dealers and poor priests, drove out of N., the main town of the province of Z., and rumbled noisily along the postal road. It rattled and creaked at every movement; the bucket, hanging from its back, chimed in gloomily, and from these sounds alone, and from the wretched rags of leather hanging loose about its flaking body, one could judge its decrepitude and readiness for the dump.36 The passage contains numerous manifestations of the child’s emotional and physical reaction to what occurs. The sense of misplacement introduced by the anonymity of the town N. of the province Z., the travellers’ point of departure, is amplified shortly after by a description of Egorushka’s perplexity about where he is going and why. The sound of the bucket hitting the back of the carriage’s dilapidated “flaking” body is described as “gloomy” (ugriumo). Since the merchant and the priest are portrayed to be in excellent spirits, the overall feeling of misery that colours the passage is Egorushka’s. In addition, the novel’s opening underscores Egorushka’s physical discomfort: the child, holding on to the driver’s elbow, jumps “up and down like a tea kettle on the stove.”37 The notion of Egorushka’s distress is further emphasized by the epithet “hateful” used to describe the carriage. Even if the scene is staged in the voice of the adult, the prevalent mood is that of the child.

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Chekhov’s first description of Egorushka’s appearance and demeanour focuses on his suntanned and tear-stained face, moves to the depiction of the child’s unsteadiness in the carriage, and then introduces the notion of incongruity with the mention of Egorushka’s ballooning red shirt and the boy’s new coachman-style hat crowned by a peacock feather. The unsuitability of the boy’s attire for a journey into the wilderness is underscored by another visual detail: Egorushka’s hat will not stay in place but keeps sliding down his head. The red colour of Egorushka’s shirt, the contrast between the red flowers of the cherry trees, the green of the foliage, and the white colour of the cemetery graves mentioned in the passage, as well as the “violet distance” Egorushka observes on several occasions, serve to signal Egorushka’s perspective and emotional participation in the narrative. All characters in the novel experience the steppe, but they do so differently. The child is portrayed at the moment of perception, and the work of deciphering the unknown is shown to be difficult for the boy. Egorushka’s older self comments on the nine-year-old’s understanding of what unfolds: what he knows now is different from what he imagined then. The adult narrator, on the other hand, is the interpreter of Egorushka’s immediate experiences and his guide: the narrator’s lengthy explications of Egorushka’s discoveries amplify and illuminate the mysteries of the steppe, not yet fully accessible to the child. The implied author’s arrangement of his characters’ impressions, thoughts, and deeds places the interactions between nature and man at the novel’s core. In Chekhov’s depiction of Egorushka’s experience of twilight and then of a moonlit night in chapter 4 of the novel, the child’s limited ability to express what he sees is amended by the adult narrator’s poetic disquisition on the steppe. Both renditions of the scene are prepared for by Chekhov’s allusion to “fairy-tale, fantastic images” in Egorushka’s mind. The boy sees the steppe as impenetrable and menacing: The dark hills standing on the right seemed to obscure something unknown and terrible. On the left, the entire sky above the horizon was flooded with a crimson glow, and it was hard to tell whether there was a fire somewhere or the moon was getting ready to rise. As in daylight, the distance was visible, but its tender violet tint, darkened by the evening haze, had already vanished, and now the steppe was hiding in the haze like Moisei Moiseich’s children under the quilt.38

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The shift to the child’s perspective is indicated by the relative simplicity of the passage’s syntax and word choice. The comparison of the steppe covered by mist to the Jewish innkeeper’s children hiding under their blanket and the evocation of the “violet distance” also point to the boy’s perception. The sense that the steppe is alive and threatening is palpably present in the description. The terror of the unknown is magnified by Egorushka’s inability to distinguish between what is real and what is imagined. The adult narrator steps in to allay the child’s fears. For him, the steppe (feminine in Russian) is beautiful and full of life, both in twilight and at night. When the sun sets and the mist covers the ground, daily worries are left behind, everything is forgiven, and the steppe can finally “breathe a sigh of relief.”39 The narrator notes sadness and sorrow in the cries of the birds. He acknowledges that at dusk, perceptions can be misleading and ordinary objects will appear mysterious and frightening. When the moon rises, the night becomes pale and languid, but shadows might seem darker and even more sinister. The wondrous images are eerie, and nature appears to be watchful and uneasy. But why is the air still? Why is the steppe on guard at this moment? The answer links the emotions of the child, the adult narrator, and nature together: like them, the steppe is also anxious, fearful, and sad. “As though” in the passage signals the switch from the narrator’s feelings to those of the steppe. In Chekhov’s description of the carters around the campfire in chapter 6, the shift to the steppe’s presence and perceptions is marked by “she seemed.” For Egorushka, fear of nature stems from ignorance. The narrator and the steppe, on the other hand, are apprehensive and fearful about missing “even one moment of life.” In Chekhov’s conclusion to this lyrical digression, the source of the seemingly incompatible emotions of happiness and dread, felt by nature and shared by the narrator, is found in the abandonment of the steppe by those who should be able to describe its magnificent power: And in the triumph of beauty, in the exuberance of happiness, you become conscious of yearning and grief, as though the steppe knows that she is lonely, knows that her wealth and her inspiration are wasted in a world where she is unsung and unwanted. Amidst the joyful hum, you can hear her anxious, hopeless call for singers, singers!40

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In contrast to the child hero, the adult narrator understands the complexity of the steppe and appreciates her mystery and beauty. The cry for “singers” belongs to the adult narrator; the implied author has, of course, been singing about the steppe all along. As A.D. Stepanov has pointed out, the steppe’s humanlike capacity to vocalize or be silent, move, engage in battle, and, finally, her ability to perceive and feel, all point to the presence of a distinctive consciousness. Moreover, other objects on Egorushka’s journey, such as the “lonely” poplar, the “witchy” windmill, or the “singing” grass are animated according to the same symbolizing principle as the one employed in the descriptions of the steppe. The protagonists’ spiritual and emotional reactions to nature, and of nature’s perception of itself, include loneliness, a longing to be understood, thirst for life, the eternal struggle with incursions from the outside, and the desire for forgiveness without guilt. Aptly, the critic compares Chekhov’s steppe to the ocean in Stanislaw Lem’s science fiction novel Solaris, the mysterious entity capable of absorbing and refracting human emotions.41 In Stepanov’s opinion, the involvement between the characters and the steppe is portrayed through a complex mélange of images; as in poetry, descriptions of the steppe become a collection point of associations that resonate with various parts of the text. Chekhov’s overdetermined approach to descriptions of nature can certainly be extended to the rest of the work. The narrative, defined by Chekhov himself as “poetic,” consistently endows certain aspects of objects with symbolic significance. The use of the epithet “antediluvian” in the opening passage of the novel, for example, implies an ironic view of the carriage’s overall shabbiness by the adult observer. The description, however, also anticipates Egorushka’s experience of the timeless and infinite spaces of the steppe. The sense of an entry into an extraordinary world of the unchanging past is echoed later in the travellers’ encounter with the Old Testament figures of the shepherds. Moreover, each such description is reflective of the particular emotional state of the character whose perception is implied. Egorushka is bewildered and unsettled. The adult narrator is sometimes ironic, always understanding, often exuberant or sad, while the steppe appears in a variety of moods that echo those of the protagonists and establish her presence as a life-changing force. The adult narrator’s bond with the steppe is interdependent, unquestioning, and complete. Egorushka is similarly sensitive to nature, and the impact of his journey into the unknown is powerful. Yet the naïve and sheltered child resists the steppe’s call.

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INTO THE WILD : THE RELUCTANT EXPLORER

The Steppe is Chekhov’s first and only narrative where his young protagonist’s experiences of nature are depicted in such detail. In Chekhov’s comic sketch “Naden’ka N.,” the girl’s brief exposition on nature serves to highlight Naden’ka’s cognitive limitations, as well as hint at the psychologically motivated reasons for the child’s narrative approach to the topic. In “The Fugitive,” Chekhov’s concise descriptions of nature work to evoke the boy’s emotional state: Pashka’s apprehension about the future on his walk to the clinic and the child’s overwhelming fear of death during his escape. In “The Boys,” the children’s attitude toward nature is shaped by internalized narratives of adventure. For them, nature is an imaginary exotic land of riches and exciting exploits. The boys’ plan of conquering this land has little regard for the superhuman effort that its realization would demand. In The Steppe, nature is one of the protagonists in an “ecocentric” narrative. And, unlike Volodya and Chechevitsyn in “The Boys,” rather than imagine the adventure, Egorushka has to live it to the last. As in Aksakov’s Reminiscences and Years, in Chekhov’s novel as well, the child’s psychological and emotional growth is tied to a journey into the unknown. The steppe, enchanting and threatening, timeless and constant in its repeated cycle of death and regeneration, is traversed by the hero in a linear fashion, implying Egorushka’s distance from the natural world. The estrangement is underscored visually by the protagonist’s bright red shirt and his initially predominant position above ground. Egorushka’s experience of the steppe and its people, however, forces the boy to move away from the familiar and get much closer to the world he fears, unprotected by familial ties. The child’s stay at a Jewish inn is a transition point from the known to the alien world of the steppe he will face on his own. Chekhov’s description of the inn and its inhabitants emphasizes incongruity, disjunction, and decay. Egorushka’s reaction to this environment is depicted as perplexed: the family’s dwelling, language, behaviour, and appearance mystify and unsettle the boy. On arrival, Egorushka immediately observes that, oddly, the inn, (literally, the “guest court,” postoialyi dvor in Russian) does not have a court and is positioned at a crossroads to nowhere. The inn’s filthy, dark, and smelly interior belies its ostensible purpose of providing comfort to travellers. A framed list of regulations capped by a two-headed eagle and the engraving “The Indifference of

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Men,” the inn’s only decorative items, are similarly incongruous, since both the regulations (“some type of” – kakie-to) and the engraving, dark with age and covered in flyspecks, are indecipherable. As Stepanov noted, the “shedding” (opustoshenie) of the signified from the sign is common in Chekhov. The loss of the sign’s referent occurs in the process of behavioural automatization – in the characters’ reiteration of particular utterances, in their obsessively repeated gestures, and in their estranged engagement with aesthetic objects, such as pictures and photographs. No longer noticed by Chekhov’s protagonists, “faded” signs, however, serve to amplify the reader’s understanding of the characters’ emotions, motivations, and position in life.42 In The Steppe, the engraving at the inn has lost its power to convey meaning and is incomprehensible to Chekhov’s child or anybody else around him. The reader, however, is made aware that the subject of the engraving is the sin of indifference, a common topic of religious instruction based on Scripture. At the inn, money is the adult characters’ central preoccupation. Chekhov’s description of the mounds of cash on the table and of the adults’ conversations about profits offers a direct contrast to the central message of the “sin of indifference” sermons where indifference is equated with selfishness, greed, and the abnegation of one’s religious obligations.43 The illustrated homily on the “indifference of men” is now a faded relic with no discernible connection to anything or anyone, suggesting, among other things, the ambiguity of Chekhov’s Jewish characters’ attitude toward faith. The undisguised contempt for Jewish beliefs and way of life, exhibited by the innkeeper’s brother Solomon who used to perform Jewish scenes at the town fair for entertainment, projects an awareness of the family’s nonbelonging and of Solomon’s profound insecurities and disaffection. Contrary to his brother, Egorushka’s uncle, or Father Christopher, Solomon is contemptuous about money and possessions. The notion of “Jewishness,” vehemently rejected by Solomon, evokes the internalized stereotypes of Russian culture, the awareness highly visible in Solomon’s comparison of himself to the landowner Varlamov: Though Varlamov is a Russian, he is a scabby Jew inside; money and profit are all he lives for. But I burnt my money in the stove! I don’t want money, or land, or sheep. And people don’t have to be afraid of me and take off their hats when I pass by. So I am wiser than your Varlamov and more like a man!44

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The innkeeper’s obsequiousness, lack of authenticity and slavish servility, manifest in the man’s conversations with Egorushka’s uncle and in his dealings with the boy, are derided by Solomon. Jokingly addressed by Father Christopher as “Solomon the Wise,” the character adheres to the Scripture’s dicta on indifference rather than, like his biblical namesake, worship possessions and fame over God. For Solomon, being a man means shedding his Jewishness. By others, however, Solomon’s revolt is seen as bizarre and impotent. Egorushka’s reaction to money is distinctly childish. The boy’s notion of value is not universal and fixed, but contextual: At any other time, this amount of money would have astounded Egorushka and would have made him think about the quantity of bagels, buns and poppy-seed cakes he could buy for it. Now he looked at the money with indifference, conscious only of the sickening smell of kerosene and rotten apples that came from the pile of bank notes.45 The adults’ preoccupation with money and profit reinforces Egorushka’s overall perception of his experience at the inn as an encounter with the demonic. The little windmill in the inn’s garden evokes the sinister windmill the child saw on his travels. As in the description of the windmill, the motion produced by the innkeeper’s arms and coattails is compared to flapping wings. The innkeeper’s brother is likened to an unclean spirit (nechistaia sila) and, in an allusion to standard depictions of Satan on Russian icons, portrayed in a three-quarter profile. Father Christopher describes Solomon as “possessed” (besnovatyi). The innkeeper’s children poking their heads from under the blanket are compared to Hydra, the mythical monstrous viper with numerous heads.46 For Egorushka, the appearance of the Countess Dranitskaia provides a momentary reprieve from the unsettling and stifling atmosphere of the inn. The woman’s face and body, her smell and touch offer comfort and pleasure, mitigating the child’s unease about the place and its inhabitants. “Beautiful” in its various iterations is the key descriptive feature of the countess’s appearance and her surroundings: “magnificent” for the woman’s smell, “handsome” for her male companion, and “luxurious” for her carriage. The woman’s conversation as well is filled with allusions to beauty, as, for example, “pretty,” “charming,” and “lovely” she uses to describe the boy. Yet, Dranitskaia’s entrance is portrayed as an intrusion marked by a jarring, screeching noise and the shaking of the

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floor. Further, Dranitskaia is likened to a big black bird flapping her wings in the boy’s face, an image that connects the woman to the innkeeper and to his brother who is described earlier as a “plucked bird.” The countess wears black and her carriage is driven by black horses. Egorushka’s recollections of the stories about the countess highlight her riches, the wonders of her estate, and her sumptuous dinner parties. In the boy’s imagination, the woman’s beauty is associated with excess and the pleasures of the senses. The vision of the beautiful “lonely” poplar that accompanies Egorushka’s initial perception of the countess suggests both the woman’s inaccessibility and the sublimation of the child’s nascent sexuality. Egorushka’s first experiences of poverty and wealth, ugliness and beauty, deprivation and excess are imbued with a feeling of unease and anxious longing. In the inn chapter, the child is still connected to the familiar, yet the transition to a new stage has begun. The child is poised – literally and metaphorically – on the threshold of an alien world. THE CHILD IN MOTION : TIME AND SPACE IN THE NOVEL

In order to underscore the centrality of his protagonist’s position, Chekhov limits descriptions of events, times, and places in the novel to those within the boy’s purview. The child’s experience of time and space is shown to be emotional; its primary tenor is frustration caused by powerlessness. Unlike Egorushka, his uncle and the landowner Varlamov project a sense of control over time, seeing it as predictable and easily gauged but also precious and, therefore, not to be squandered. The uncle’s refrain of “we’ve got no time for tea and sugar” (nekogda nam s chaiami da s sakharami) is one of Chekhov’s “faded signs” serving in this instance to signal the character’s lack of self-awareness, as well as to indicate the man’s view of time as a commodity. Father Christopher measures time by his prayers; the carters’ sense of time mirrors the cyclical rhythms of nature. The relationship of the adult characters with their environment is firmly established and unvarying. Varlamov, whose descriptive tag is “circling” (kruzhitsia), hovers over the steppe like a hawk, claiming the space as his own. Egorushka’s uncle, Father Christopher, and Varlamov interact with space in a utilitarian fashion. Egorushka’s companions see the steppe as the road they need to travel to get to their destination and

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accomplish their business. Father Christopher’s informal attire during a rest stop, however, makes Egorushka think of Daniel Defoe’s famous literary castaway, Robinson Crusoe. The comparison of the priest to Crusoe, repeated again in the novel’s concluding chapter, is multifunctional. The image points to Egorushka’s familiarity with a tale of lifethreatening adventure in which the hero’s resourcefulness, ingenuity, and Christian beliefs assure his survival and safe return home. Further, the allusion contrasts the ideal of agency with the child’s general reactive attitude to his experiences. Additionally, the reference gestures to the “Orientalism” of Egorushka’s companions’ mindset in relation to the steppe’s dwellers. Conversely, the carters’ relationship with the steppe is founded on respect and reciprocity. Vasya, for example, possesses an animal-like acuteness of sight, hearing, and smell and exhibits an almost worshipful regard for nature.47 Chekhov’s description of Vasya’s actions and feelings imply a degree of connection to the steppe that is unattainable by others. Like Vasya’s, the adult narrator’s relationship with the steppe is built on unwavering acceptance and adoration. Only Egorushka’s experience of time and space is unstable and fluid. Initially, the child combats his feelings of helplessness by trying to control and contain time – to “kill” it or speed it up when bored. The boy’s foray into the wilderness, however, profoundly affects his perception of temporality. The child discovers that the infinite space of the steppe can exist only in unmeasurable eternity: The time was dragging endlessly (beskonechno), as if it, too, had settled and stopped. It seemed that a hundred years had passed since the morning … Did God perhaps want Egorushka, the carriage and the horses to become completely still in this air, and, like the hills, turn ossified and remain forever in the same place?48 Egorushka’s abandonment of any attempt to control time occurs during a powerful thunderstorm in the penultimate chapter of the novel. Terrified, Egorushka is resolved to wait out the storm: “Egorushka decided to shut his eyes tight, ignore it all, and wait until everything ends.”49 Shortly after, the phrase is repeated again in a slightly different version, intensifying the sense of the child’s helplessness: “And he decided to do nothing but sit still and wait until everything ends.”50 Determined not to look at the frightening display, Egorushka cannot avoid it. The child calls for help

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but gets no answer. Chekhov shows that the shift from the notion of predictability of an experience to the understanding of unpredictability and impermanence of life is to be accomplished alone: Hearing no reply, he sat down and did not move again, no longer waiting for everything to end. He was sure that the thunder was about to kill him this very instant, that his eyes would open unwillingly, and he would see the terrifying giants. And he no longer crossed himself, called for the old man, or thought of his mother, but just sat there frozen, certain that the storm would never end.51 Unlike his companions, who have a clear understanding of the purpose of their journey, Egorushka is a hapless traveller going to the undefined “somewhere” (ekhal kuda-to). Chekhov’s portrayal of the child’s experience of space is structured around the alternation between motion and immobility. Initially, the narrative focuses on the child’s movement away from the past, which is associated with stasis. In the opening pages, the ceaseless progression of the “hateful” carriage (“ran,” “left behind,” “whizzed by” – bezhala, ostavliala, promel’knula) is contrasted with the stillness of the graves in the cemetery where his grandmother is “sleeping.” Later in the journey, the juxtaposition between motion and stasis serves to underscore the child’s detachment from the unchanging ways of the steppe, as, for example, in the description of the inert peasant woman observing Egorushka’s bright red shirt in a moving carriage. The magical windmill whose distance from the carriage is impossible to judge or the animated “lonely” poplar, provide other indicators of continuous movement; they also presage the fantastic enchantments of the steppe that Egorushka has yet to experience. The same contrast between stillness and motion is later used to highlight the animation of the steppe in the morning. Egorushka’s realization of personal mortality, the end of his time, occurs simultaneously with the cessation of motion and a return to stasis. For the duration of Egorushka’s journey, Chekhov continually refocuses the narrative – panning out to the vastness of the steppe, zeroing in on a distant object, or moving in for a close-up. Markers of seeing (the number of verbs of seeing and perceiving is exceptionally high in the novel) order the narrative in a montage-like configuration.52 The visuality of the modified sketch is amplified here to the degree where the text becomes a virtual “motion picture.” Even the colours of nature are shown in their “temporal transformation, not just the way they are seen at the moment, but the way we know [they will become],” a device that imparts

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mobility to a traditionally static area of representation.53 The alternation of immobility and motion mirrors the eternal natural cycle of death and regeneration. The child’s changing relationship with time and space, however, occurs as a linear progression from ignorance to relative knowledge. THE THREE MINDS OF MEN : CHEKHOV ’ S CHARACTERS ON LEARNING

A considerable portion of The Steppe is devoted to the representation of Chekhov’s characters’ views on education. Offered mostly in an approximation of live speech in dialogs and monologs, the statements capture the essentials of the educational debates of Chekhov’s time while also offering insights into the characters’ individuality. Like the child’s mother, whose decision to send her son to school is the result of her love for “educated people and refined society,” Father Christopher equates learning with the acquisition of bookish knowledge that results in social distinction. Father Christopher’s educational approach emphasizes “attention and application,” memorization, but also the learner’s ability to convey the gist of the memorized material in his own words. The character’s imaginary course of study for Egorushka is a version of classical Russian curriculum that includes Latin, French, German, geography, history, theology, philosophy, and mathematics. Father Christopher’s speeches on education, however, are filled with recurring clichés. “Learning is light and ignorance is darkness,” studying brings “glory to the Creator, [provides] comfort for our parents, benefit to the church and the fatherland,” and “knowledge acquired with faith produces fruit favoured by God” – are the “faded signs” that have lost their meaning and ability to affect change. Chekhov demonstrates the inconsistency of his character’s statements on the value of knowledge by including Father Christopher’s amused reaction to his learned son’s advice on the benefits of “compressed air” for diagnostics and the treatment of his father’s pulmonary problems. Father Christopher’s evocation of Vasilii Lomonosov, a peasant who, by virtue of his education, became eighteenth century Russia’s luminary in literature and sciences is similarly problematic. In the last chapter of the novel, Father Christopher addresses Egorushka as Lomonosov. The comparison is wrong not only because the child does not want to go to school while the young Lomonosov was a determined youth passionate about learning. The learning the priest is advocating is narrowly scholastic; for Father Christopher, Lomonosov’s and Egorushka’s life experiences do not count as true education.

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The child’s uncle counters the priest with a practical educational ideal. For him, bookish learning might offer a benefit to some, but for others it is of no use. In the uncle’s opinion, his sister, “who is set upon refinement,” wants to turn her child into a scholar. He, on the other hand, would much prefer to teach the child useful skills, such as trade. For “if everyone were to go in for being learned and refined … they would all die of hunger.”54 Like Father Christopher’s, the Jewish innkeeper’s position on the benefits of learning emphasizes social mobility and familial pride in the child’s potential future distinction. For the carter Pantelei, on the other hand, bookish learning is just a part of education. Like Rousseau before him, Pantelei believes that only when natural inclinations are tempered by formal learning and experience, then the “three minds of man” – inborn qualities, schooling, and life – can come together in cultured maturity.55 Pantelei’s understanding of what an educated person should be like also includes compassion and humility. Chekhov’s allusion to Robinson Crusoe, and, by implication, to Rousseau’s treatise on education, Emile, or On Education (where Defoe’s book is Emil’s only reading), suggests that Egorushka’s experience of the voyage into the wilderness is highly relevant to his education. Indeed, the journey exposes Chekhov’s young character to beauty, love, sex, marriage, the childhood of others, death, masculinity, violence, class, ethnicity, economy, morality, spirituality, and imagination. Chekhov shows, however, that in order to understand his experiences and learn from them, the child must engage with others. The importance of the child’s conflict with the “prankster” (ozornik) Dymov, a deeply flawed figure whose attractiveness and strength are only an illusion (kazalsia krasivym i sil’nym), is evident in the degree of agency Egorushka assumes in his interactions with the man. Dymov consistently provokes Egorushka by questioning his physical abilities and emotional toughness. Dymov’s sexual innuendos are aimed at the child, testing and punishing the boy for his naiveté and lack of experience. The source of Dymov’s aggressiveness and alienation is provided in Chekhov’s account of the man’s banishment from home; the character is cast as a peasant version of the “superfluous man,” unable to find application for his talents in the world around him. (“I am bored and anxious,” [skushno] is Dymov’s refrain.56) By subjecting Egorushka to a spectacle of the pleasure he exhibits when killing a harmless grass snake, by taunting Egorushka, attempting to drown him, insulting one of the carters for whom Egorushka feels compassion, mocking his naiveté, and, finally, by

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provoking Egorushka to violence Dymov tests the child’s spirit and level of maturity. If earlier in the story Egorushka is shown to be passive and essentially nonverbal, he now engages Dymov in a battle of words. Yet the boy is unable to fight his adversary physically, delegating the task to other men. Egorushka’s violent outburst results in Dymov’s acknowledgement of his opponent’s equal status: the “duel” is formalized when Dymov begins to address Egorushka by name. Dymov’s capitulation, however, underscores Egorushka’s weakness. By inviting Egorushka to hit him, Dymov proposes a challenge that the child is incapable of answering. Calling on others to avenge the insult and crying afterwards are actions Egorushka experiences as deeply shameful. Egorushka’s final test of endurance occurs during a thunderstorm. Before the storm, the notion of death had been extraneous to the child’s perception of his future: Egorushka thought of his grandmother who was sleeping now under the cherry-trees in the cemetery. He remembered how she lay in her coffin with coins on her eyes, how afterwards she was covered with the coffin lid and let down into the grave; he even recalled the hollow sound of the clumps of earth on the lid … He pictured his granny in the dark and narrow coffin, helpless and abandoned by everyone. His imagination pictured his granny suddenly awakening, not understanding where she was, knocking on the lid and calling for help, and in the end fainting with horror and dying again. He imagined his mother dead, Father Christopher, Countess Dranitskaia, Solomon. But however much he tried to imagine himself in the dark tomb, far from home, outcast, helpless and dead, he could not succeed; he could not admit the possibility of death for himself, and felt that he would never die.57 The child’s attempt to cope with the idea of personal extinction is all the more challenging because Egorushka’s spirituality is diffuse and amorphous. The official church at this stage is only a source of aesthetically and physically pleasing rituals offering tangible sensory rewards (his hot forehead on the cool floor of the church, the pleasures of the Easter feast, or his appreciation of communion wafers) rather than of spiritual support. The sustenance of belief offered by the blend of animism and Orthodoxy (dvoeverie) practiced by the peasants is similarly inaccessible to Egorushka. When the child is deluged by a fierce downpour and is fear-

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ful for his life there is no spiritual or emotional anchor the boy can rely on for help.58 The storm, Egorushka’s illness, delirium, and his eventual recovery mirror initiation rituals in which the simulated death of the initiate is followed by his symbolic resurrection. In this process, Egorushka’s understanding of death evolves from his acknowledgement of the possibility of death for those around him to the realization that his own life will eventually end as well. Like his notions about death, Egorushka’s ideas of love, sex, and marriage are shown to evolve. The eroticized body of a young girl on the cart, the object of the driver Deniska’s rapt interest early in the journey, is not perceived by Egorushka as a sexual object. Instead, the child’s attention shifts to the lonely, beautiful, asexual poplar. Virtually all sexual references overhead by the child are derogatory, aimed at disconcerting the boy, and come from Egorushka’s nemesis, the carter Dymov, or his sidekick Kiriukha. Dymov’s declaration that one of the carters gave birth to Egorushka in the night, his obscene language, or Kiriukha’s hints that Konstantin, a newly married man they meet in the steppe, has neglected his sexual obligations toward his bride are recognized as taboo by the sheltered child; they do nothing to dispel Egorushka’s notion that the union between a man and a woman is somehow impure.59 Konstantin’s happiness, however, makes the child ponder the need for marriage and fantasize about the countess. In his imagination, Egorushka focuses on the advantages of a connection to someone whose person and surroundings are beautiful and who appears to be kind, cheerful, and affectionate. The child’s musings are sensual, practical, but not sexual. Unlike the countess or Dymov, the newly married Konstantin is described as homely (nekrasivyi). In Konstantin’s account, neither the lack of physical beauty nor his age prevented his future wife from accepting his marriage proposal. Konstantin was able to win his bride’s love because of his ability to express his passion in words (za slova poliubila). CHEKHOV ’ S RACONTEURS

Narratives produced by Chekhov’s characters in the novel come in a variety of genres. Autobiographical accounts include Father Christopher’s memories of his education and family life, as well as Moisei Moiseich’s description of his family and of Solomon’s rejection of his inheritance.

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Pantelei’s story of the loss of his wife and children in a fire, Emelian’s account of his illness, and Konstantin’s tale of wooing his future wife similarly belong to the genre of autobiography. Dymov’s account of the slaughter of two merchants is a narrative of true crime, while Pantelei’s fanciful improvisations on the theme of an attempted murder and escape belong to the genre of the bylichka. Egorushka is a consumer of stories rather than an active storyteller himself. The child’s own narratives are interior, aimed at dealing with the challenges posed by the magic of the steppe through the internalized plots of fantasy and adventure. These come from fairy tales (the windmill as an evil magician), folklore (Russian legendary heroes Ilya Muromets and Solovei Razboinik), Scripture (the chariots, guardian angels, and Hell), and novels (Robinson Crusoe). The novel’s adult narrator is, on the other hand, a prominent, and voluble, raconteur. His poetic tale’s chief protagonist is the steppe; it is her emotions, thoughts, and actions that shape the narrator’s plot of the steppe’s abandonment by her putative “singers.” Like his fellow storytellers, the narrator appropriates and elaborates on established narrative models to achieve the desired emotional effect on his audience – in this case, the readers of Chekhov’s novel. Chekhov’s representation of storytelling sheds light on all of his characters’ views and concerns; it also probes the issue of a narrative’s relationship to truth. The authenticity of Father Christopher’s or of Konstantin’s recollections is not questioned in the novel. Pantelei’s account of the death of his family is likewise presented as a “true story”; the man’s bylichkas, however, are defined as fantastic. Yet the magic of the steppe is so powerful that no matter how implausible the tales might be they feel genuine because, in the adult narrator’s summation, everything around is so “wondrous and strange that the fantastic of the legend or fairy tale pale[s] in comparison to life, while [also] merging with it.”60 The magic of the steppe is capable of enhancing the power of the teller’s words. Moreover, according to the narrator, “life is [both] dreadful and wondrous, and, therefore, no matter how terrifying a tale you might tell in Russia … it will always resonate as true.”61 As in his story “At Home,” Chekhov’s description of storytelling in The Steppe suggests that the “truth” of any narrative, no matter how incredible, lies in the emotional reciprocity between the teller and his audience. Chekhov also shows that all of his tellers craft their stories based on established patterns, on what is already there.

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CHEKHOV ’ S LITERARY MODELS

In his first letter on the subject, Chekhov identified his work as a “steppe narrative” and expressed his apprehension about engaging in a potential competition with Gogol, the Russian “tsar of the steppe.”62 Yet the novel was not Chekhov’s first attempt to compete with Gogol on this score: the lyrical opening to “June 29” (1882) is one such instance. Chekhov’s “Happiness” (1887) is another work that echoes Gogol’s descriptions of the steppe.63 Like Gogol’s Taras Bul’ba, the narrative focus of “Happiness” and The Steppe is placed on the infinite vastness of the steppe and on her interactions with Chekhov’s characters. Similar to Gogol’s work, Chekhov’s descriptions emphasize sounds, colours, and smells of the steppe. In addition, for both writers, freedom is associated with the enormous spaciousness (prostor) of Russia’s southern grasslands. Like Gogol’s portrayal of the steppe, Chekhov’s as well emphasizes nature’s ability to embrace, accept, and support the chosen few who understand her. Yet, while Gogol’s painterly descriptions offer a distanced if passionate appreciation of the steppe’s beauty, Chekhov’s representation imbues the steppe with humanity and consciousness that can affect and change his characters. The depiction of the steppe is the central point of intersection between the two writers, but, as many have observed, there are other allusions to Gogol in Chekhov’s novel. The thunderstorm that brings Gogol’s protagonist in The Dead Souls to the house of a landowner Korobochka and its aftermath echo Egorushka’s experiences. The images of the brick factory and the windmill in The Steppe evoke Gogol’s epigraphs to Mirgorod (1835). The beginning of The Steppe is reminiscent of Gogol’s opening in The Dead Souls.64 The depiction of his protagonist’s travels in The Dead Souls allows Gogol to describe the grotesque Russia of his imagination. Conversely, Chekhov’s purpose in The Steppe is to portray his child hero’s journey as an initiation into adulthood.65 In this regard, Gogol’s Taras Bul’ba, with its prominent contrast between formal learning and the knowledge gained through life experiences, is more relevant to Chekhov’s portrayal of his child’s maturation in The Steppe than Gogol’s other writings. Notably, in both works, the southern steppe is the locus of the characters’ rites of passage, a territory where masculine bravery and endurance are tested and where the ability to fight for one’s honour is encouraged.66 The second label, the “encyclopedia of the steppe,” attached to the novel by Chekhov himself, is equally enlightening. First, as a compendium of available knowledge on a particular topic, the trope of “encyclopedia”

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points to Chekhov’s acknowledgment of the ethnographic bend of his narrative. Second, famously used by Belinsky to describe Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin as “the encyclopedia of Russian life,” the comparison suggests Chekhov’s view of his work as a wide-ranging and exhaustive endeavour, a digest of the available knowledge on the topic. In addition to Gogol’s descriptions, The Steppe evokes Aksakov’s portrayal of nature in his sketches and novels of maturation, the writings of Chekhov’s fellow practitioners of the “small form,” as well as Mayne Reid’s ecocentric novels of adventure, the subject of “The Boys” written the year before.67 One can also see similarities between the opening chapters of Tolstoy’s Boyhood and The Steppe. Furthermore, Chekhov’s descriptions of the steppe are visibly indebted to Turgenev’s painterly landscapes in Sportsman’s Sketches (1847) and novels. As Bitsilli pointed out, Chekhov does not imitate the work of others but, rather, creatively appropriates and transforms (tvorcheskoe usvoenie) it in his own writing.68 In his early trifle “Naden’ka N.,” Chekhov parodied a poetic description of nature from Turgenev’s novel The Quiet. In “June 29th,” “Happiness,” and The Steppe Chekhov rewrites his schoolgirl’s clumsy rendition of Turgenev’s lofty prose. Turgenev’s passage, borrowed by Naden’ka N. for her composition and cited more fully in chapter 4, reads: The early sun flooded the entire grove with a powerful if subdued light. Everywhere dewdrops shined, large drops suddenly catching fire and glowing red in places. Everything emanated freshness, life, and that naïve solemnity of the first moments of the morning when everything is already so light and still so silent. Only the scattered voices of the larks were heard over the distant fields, and in the grove a few birds leisurely sang their short songs, pausing at times, as if to see how well they did. A pungent and healthy smell wafted from the wet earth; pure light air moved in cool currents. All conveyed the feeling of a lovely summer morning, all appeared and smiled like morning, like the rosy, freshly washed face of a recently awakened child.69 Turgenev’s picture is built on the contrast between the pure light of the sun and the fiery red of the illuminated dew; the silence of the grove and the songs of the birds; between stillness and movement. The authorial gaze originates from below, close to the ground, then moves up into the sky, returning in the end of the passage to “the wet earth.” The depiction

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is stereoscopic, shifting the point of focus between the minutely detailed image of the dew on the grass, the distant expanse of the fields, and the observer’s level view of the grove. In its shifts of spatial focus, the contrast between movement and stasis, and in its imagery, Chekhov’s depiction of the steppe in “June 29th” is clearly evocative of Turgenev’s approach to painting a landscape in words: The steppe was basking in the gold of the first light and, covered in dew, sparkled, as if sprinkled with diamond dust. The morning wind pushed away the fog, and it halted behind the river like a leaden wall. Ears of rye, tops of burdock and dog rose stood quietly, obediently, nodding to each other from time to time and whispering. Above the grass and over our heads, hawks, falcons, and owls were flying about, smoothly beating their wings. They were hunting.70 The portrayal of the steppe in “Happiness” offers yet another echo of Turgenev in the image of the sparkling sun reflected in the “smile” of the flowers: An enormous crimson sun emerged, wrapped in a gentle haze. As if trying to display their lack of boredom, broad, cold bands of light began to cover the ground merrily, bathing in the dewy grass and stretching themselves. Silvery wormwood, blue blossoms of wild geranium, yellow rapeseed, and cornflowers began to sparkle happily in their multicoloured splendour, reflecting the radiance of the sun in their own smile.71 The description of morning light on the dewy grass in The Steppe once again harks back to Turgenev’s The Quiet.72 A minute later a similar stripe shone a little closer, crept to the right and embraced the hills. Something warm touched Egorushka’s back, the band of light, stealing up from behind, darted between the chaise and the horses, moved to meet the other band, and soon the whole wide steppe cast off the twilight of early morning, and was smiling and sparkling with dew.73 What distinguishes Chekhov’s version of this nature scene from that of Turgenev’s is Chekhov’s focus on the intimate, tactile relationship between the steppe and the child.

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Chekhov’s evocation of the ecocentric writings by Aksakov and Reid, Aksakov’s and Tolstoy’s works on childhood, Gogol’s description of his protagonist’s journey in The Dead Souls and of his characters’ rites of passage in Taras Bul’ba, as well as Turgenev’s landscapes underlines the dialogical relationship that The Steppe has with the work of these writers. As Chekhov explained in his letters, the novel is principally about the interactions between nature and man. Unlike the writers who inspired him, however, Chekhov makes nature one of his protagonists, actively and consciously participating in the novel’s events. In Chekhov’s adaptation and transformation of his models, the character who is tested by and learns from his encounters with nature is a naïve and vulnerable child. The Steppe, Chekhov’s definitive text on childhood, concludes the writer’s longstanding engagement with the topic. The Steppe’s indebtedness to the themes and devices developed in Chekhov’s stories about children is undeniable. The equation of the physical journey with the young character’s transition into adulthood, central for The Steppe, had already been suggested in “The Boys” and explored in “The Fugitive.” Like Chekhov’s dramatic sketches, The Steppe is also notable for its thematic focus on the liminality of the protagonists’ experiences, the tension between passivity and agency, and, more broadly, on childhood as an anguished state of “overcoming” and learning. Similarly to Chekhov’s sketches, the novel features transitions in perspective, the narrative tripling of the gaze, and the representation of the child’s unique perception of time and space. Like the child protagonists of “The Cook,” “At Home,” “The Big Event,” and “The Fugitive,” Egorushka copes with perplexing concepts he faces and traumatic events he witnesses by relying on internalized narratives based on literature and folklore. Both in the novel and in Chekhov’s stories, the notions of marriage and the ideal family, the experiences of sickness and death, and the anxiety of separation from home are worked through in the child’s interior retelling. Moreover, as in Chekhov’s sketches about children, the narration in the novel is tailored to the child protagonist’s particular experience and individuality. Further, as before, the development of cognition, emotional intelligence, and coping skills is connected in The Steppe with the exposure to new experiences and knowledge. And, finally, once again, parting from “home,” the symbolic space of love and protection, is shown to be the most significant, if painful, step in maturation. The Steppe offers an intricate, nuanced extension and elaboration on the themes and devices previously explored by Chekhov in the dramatic sketch. The uniqueness of the novel lies in its structure and genre.

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Chekhov’s “quadrille” accommodates a highly poetic and philosophical discourse on life and nature, a multitude of literary and oral genres of storytelling, as well as “live performances” by its characters. Like Chekhov’s “At Home,” The Steppe depicts the audience’s emotional engagement with the stories heard and the performances observed, if in a broader and more sustained fashion. The competing stories, and the recorded responses of the listeners, affect the child’s developing views on the meaning of existence. The continuous alternation of perspectives, the subject of numerous discussions as to Chekhov’s putative success or failure, is inextricable from the novel’s design; it is indispensable for the development of its maturation plot.74 As Chekhov suggests with his dance metaphor, as well as by his insistence on the importance of tone and mood in his novel, The Steppe is a “theatrical” piece. A testimony to Chekhov’s “syncretism,” The Steppe consistently infuses standard prose with elements from other art forms, such as poetry, drama, myth and folklore, musical and the visual arts.75 The Steppe’s heightened visuality and its focus on movement produce a cinematographic effect, anticipating, in a novelistic narrative, the innovations of modernist drama. Chekhov’s reliance on Slavic practices of initiation in The Steppe is clearly present, if not overt. The protagonist’s name links the events in the novel to the rituals of St George celebrations centring on the rites of passage. Other allusions to initiation rituals include the presence of shapeshifting magical objects and characters, such as the poplar, the windmill, and the “mysterious” little Tit of Egorushka’s dreams; the teasing and the testing the child undergoes in his interactions with the carters; the simulation of death and resurrection in the thunderstorm scene; and, finally, the locus of the boy’s journey.76 Forced to leave home, Egorushka is tried by the alien world of the steppe and its people yet fails the tests of initiation. The reasons for Egorushka’s failure are rooted in the child’s individuality. If the children in “The Boys” try to assert their independence by leaving home, Egorushka bitterly opposes his mother’s decision to send him away. The boys’ attempt at separation in the story is only a rehearsal for true initiation; the protagonists are returned to their families. Yet Chekhov shows that at least one child’s desire for adventure does not abate. Egorushka, however, is not daring or particularly imaginative but fearful, passive, and detached. An initiation must involve other initiates, but Egorushka is aloof with the children he meets – the little peasant boy Tit, the Jewish innkeeper’s children, or the daughter of a family friend, Katia.

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Egorushka’s play is mostly solitary. One exception is the game of catch with the childish carriage driver Deniska, yet even there Egorushka is a passive follower rather than a leader. Egorushka’s standoffishness is motivated by his lack of socialization. An only child, Egorushka does not have friends; the boy’s sole connection is to his immediate family, now only his mother. Unlike Pashka in “The Fugitive,” Egorushka is not curious about his new environment but is a reluctant observer, a grudging participant in his journey, a victim of his circumstances. Within the expectations imposed by the steppe, “the wild field” (dikoe pole) of the folk beliefs, the boy’s inability to battle his adversary Dymov physically is yet another indication of the child’s unpreparedness for manhood. Egorushka’s lack of a spiritual anchor makes the transition from childhood all the more difficult. A condensed compilation of the challenges of initiation, Egorushka’s dreams highlight his fears, while also suggesting the child’s subconscious admission that his childhood is ending. The steppe’s terrifying scale and magic are represented in a recurring image of Tit’s transformation into a menacing windmill whose power is vanquished by Father Christopher with holy water.77 A demonic, red-eyed Dymov tests Egorushka’s grit yet again by mocking, threatening the hero, and inciting him to violence. The elusive Varlamov and the happy lover Konstantin both appear in motion, on the point of leaving. Waving, as a gesture of agitation or parting, is a consistent motif in the novel.78 In the child’s delirium, little Tit, a standin for the boy’s younger self, is waving his farewell to Egorushka. On his journey through the primitive world of the steppe, the fatherless boy from the provinces is “in transit” – between the protective insularity of childhood and the overwhelming challenges of adulthood. As for Chekhov’s other child character, the hero’s maturation is fluid, constant, and painful. Childhood is left behind, but true initiation into adulthood has yet to occur.79 Unlike Chekhov’s sketches, the novel is devoid of laughter. The child’s melancholy is shared by the narrator. Egorushka’s farewell to childhood is also the narrator’s, and Chekhov’s, poignant farewell to its memories.

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8 The Afterchildhood

Chekhov’s “afterchildhood” is the time when his protagonists are no longer protected by familial ties, the foundation of the symbolic construct of “home,” but have not yet entered adulthood. Those who reach afterchildhood in Chekhov do not fare well. Van’ka, in the eponymous Christmas story of nostalgia and grief (1886), is living a life filled with abuse and deprivation. Var’ka of “Sleepy” (1888) kills the infant she is minding because she is exhausted and sleep deprived to the point of insanity. In the conclusion to The Steppe, Egorushka is poised on the threshold of afterchildhood, but, as Chekhov envisioned in a letter to Grigorovich, “will certainly end up badly.”1 In “Van’ka” and “Sleepy,” the protagonists have crossed the boundary of childhood and are now firmly entrenched in the frightening outside while dreaming of the familiar inside. In both stories, the children are shown to seek solutions to the problems they encounter in their bleak present. Both protagonists attempt agency, but the children’s knowledge is flawed and their actions are misguided; the desired return “home” is shown to be impossible. “Van’ka” is Chekhov’s version of the Russian Christmas tale, an established genre of classical literature and of the small press.2 As in Charles Dickens’s work on the topic, the master plot of such narratives revolves around the suffering of innocents and is designed to serve as an admonition to repent of one’s sins and help the needy.3 Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl” (“Den Lille Pige med Svovlstikkerne,” 1845), a short narrative about a poor young girl who freezes to death while trying to sell matches on New Year’s Eve, is another influential source for the mid-nineteenth century Russian version of the Christmas tale.4 Scholars

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also point to the importance of Friedrich Rückert’s poem “Des Fremden Kindes Heiliger Christ” (1816) for certain stable features of the genre in the Russian tradition.5 Rückert’s orphan roams the city on a freezing Christmas Eve, looking at decorated Christmas trees through a window of a house and feeling abandoned and broken hearted. The child (unmarked for gender in German) used to celebrate Christmas with his family but now is alone in a foreign land. The orphan knocks on doors and windows of nearby houses, but nobody lets him in. People only care about their own children. He prays to Christ and the Christ Child appears, offering the orphan Christmas in heaven. Angels come down from the tree and take the child up into the light. Whatever he experienced on earth will be forgotten in heaven. Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl,” opens with a description of the girl’s physical discomfort (she is cold and hungry) and of the surrounding darkness and gloom. The next scene offers a contrast between the girl’s suffering and the brilliant opulence of the celebratory feasts she sees in the windows around. The description that follows provides a glimpse of intolerable conditions at home: she fears her father who beats her, and it is as cold in the house as it is outside. The girl tries to warm herself by striking a match and is briefly comforted by the light and the warmth it provides, imagining a great iron stove with its wonderful hot fire. Suddenly the wall in front of the child becomes transparent and she is transposed into a magical world of light, warmth, and abundance. She sees a lovely Christmas tree, “much more beautiful than the one she had seen last Christmas through the glass door at the rich merchant’s home.”6 The lights on the tree turn into stars. When one of the stars falls down, the girl is reminded of her late grandmother’s belief that a shooting star is a sign of someone dying. She begs her beloved grandmother to take her away and the wish is granted. She is carried high above the earth where there is neither cold nor hunger nor fear. She is now with God. The story concludes with a description of people’s commonsensical reactions to the child’s death. The narrator intervenes to observe that “[n]o one imagined what beautiful things she had seen, and how happily she followed her old grandmother into the bright New Year.”7 Like its prototypes, the Russian Christmas story is built on symbolic binary oppositions of light/darkness, cold/warmth, inside/outside, abun-

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dance/scarcity, dream/reality, solace/fear, up/down, and life/death.8 The closure is sometimes separated into two parts. The first describes a miraculous change in the principal figures’ situation and centres on the fulfillment of their most cherished desires; the second portrays reactions of others to what occurred. The use of the image of a window as a pathway to another reality and of a stove as a symbolic representation of home/hearth is a shared feature of these narratives. Dostoevsky’s “The Beggar Boy at Christ’s Christmas Tree” (“Mal’chik u Khrista na elke,” 1876), first published in his Dairy of a Writer, appropriates the general plot outline and symbolic architecture of Rückert’s and Andersen’s versions but is amplified to anchor the narration in a specific time and place – St Petersburg in the 1870s. Unlike “The Little Match Girl” or Rückert’s poem, the story is prefaced by a short narrative, “A Boy With a Little Hand” (“Mal’chik s ruchkoi”), written in the genre of a “physiological sketch,” a particular type of an essay that aims to mirror the life and customs of different types of urban dwellers. The preface, detailing the harsh existence of the city’s beggar children, serves as Dostoevsky’s sociocultural material for the narrative that follows. In the writer’s stated opinion, the account may be deemed unbelievable by some but is, nevertheless, based on real facts. “The Beggar Boy,” on the other hand, opens and concludes with Dostoevsky’s acknowledgment of the fictional character of his tale. Yet, as in the preface, the writer continues to problematize the tension between what is real and what is made up: “I keep imagining (mne vsio mereshchitsia) that it did happen somewhere at some point” (in the opening). “Here is the thing: it seems to me and I keep imagining (mne vsio kazhetsia i mereshchitsia) that this could have happened in real life” (in the closure).9 Dostoevsky achieves the illusion of verisimilitude in “The Beggar Boy” by anchoring Rückert’s and Andersen’s models in the protagonist’s specific urban milieu, presented in some detail. Rückert and Andersen offer a rather generalized description of their children’s environment and plight in the city. Rückert’s child is a homeless orphan. Andersen’s character lives in a cold house and is abused by her father. Conversely, Dostoevsky’s child’s present home is one of the writer’s instantly recognizable St Petersburg “corners” – a patch of space in a dark, cold room shared with others – most famously described in his Crime and Punishment (1866) but already there in Dostoevsky’s first novel Poor Folk (1846).

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On Christmas Eve, the inhabitants of the room include a ragman, an old woman, and the boy’s mother. The characters’ circumstances and behaviour are presented in some detail. The ragman is a drunk who could not wait for the holiday to start drinking. The eighty-year-old woman used to work as a nanny but is now dying alone, lamenting her fate and scaring the boy with her moaning and grumbling. The child’s mother “most likely” arrived in the city from some distant town and became ill. After his mother’s death, equated in the boy’s estranged perception with cessation of movement and the coldness of her body, the child escapes the house to find himself on the street. As Fridlender notes, in the following passages, Dostoevsky continues to enhance his descriptions of the child’s experiences with the reality of 1870s St Petersburg.10 When outside, the boy marvels at the lights, the abundance of people, horses, and carriages, and the overwhelming noise of the city. In contrast, the child’s hometown got very dark and empty of people at night; still, he was warm there and had plenty to eat. The next scene depicts the marvels of Christmas celebrations observed by the suffering child through picture windows of wealthy homes and his attempts to gain entry into one of them. The visual and sensory accoutrements of the holiday – the Christmas tree, the lights, toys, games, food, and music – induce a sense of wonder and a desire to take part. The fulfillment of this desire in the present is impossible, however. The little boy is banished from the house, loses the money given to him by one of the guests, and ends up on the street again. The child is briefly diverted by a puppet show but, after an older boy hits him and steals his cap, flees to hide in darkness behind a stack of wood. The death scene that follows is highly evocative of Andersen’s rendition of his dying child’s visions in “The Little Match Girl.” Freezing to death is accompanied by a sudden experience of warmth. The boy compares the sensation to the warmth emanating from a stove. He hears his mother’s song and communicates with her. A quiet voice invites him to a Christmas celebration, which is incomparably more beautiful than anything he had ever seen, full of light and radiance (blestit, siiaet, svetlye). Other children fly around the boy; they carry him up while his mother laughs happily. In answer to the boy’s question, the children explain that this is Christ’s celebration for the dead children who were abandoned, abused, and neglected in life. Dostoevsky’s descriptions of the children’s deaths once again gesture to the wretched realities of his day. Some froze to death, abandoned on the steps of St Petersburg offi-

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cials’ homes. Others perished in orphanages or died during the Samara famine. Yet others suffocated on poorly ventilated trains. As in Andersen, in Dostoevsky’s story the child’s frozen body is discovered in the morning. Both Andersen and Dostoevsky emphasize the miraculous meeting between the child and his loved one in heaven. And, like his precursors, Dostoevsky also sentimentalizes his fictional child. The innocent beggar boy’s plight is portrayed with great affection and compassion: the tale abounds in affectionate diminutives. In the preface, however, Dostoevsky describes what happens to St Petersburg little beggar boys in “real life.” They turn into criminals – wild creatures who “do not understand anything, neither where they live, what nation they belong to, nor whether God or the tsar exist.”11 The preface, while echoing descriptions of juvenile criminals in Dickens’s Oliver Twist, for example, is, nevertheless, proclaimed to be based on “facts.” The facts Dostoevsky describes do not allow for happy resolutions and the children he portrays are far from naïve or saintly. In Dostoevsky’s tale, however, the miracle of Christmas does occur. The miracle described is not a Dickensian happy transformation of the principal character in life but a release of an innocent child from the burdens of his existence in death. As in Andersen and Rückert, the little beggar child finds his solace with Christ. Both Dostoevsky’s preface and his story draw attention to an existing social problem and express the writer’s open indignation about the situation. By circling back to the issue of veracity in the coda of “The Beggar Boy,” however, Dostoevsky poses the problem of the relationship between “truth” (a journalistic account) and “fiction” (literature) as central to this work. As Dushechkina points out, the plot and the symbolic structure of Dostoevsky’s story, as well as its central focus on the unjust suffering and premature death of innocent children, served to form a broadly imitated model of the genre. Dostoevsky’s preface, with its unsparing description of beggar boys’ unenviable future, was equally influential for the Russian version of the Christmas tale.12 In “Van’ka,” Chekhov employs the clichés of the Christmas tale in a familiar form of the amplified dramatic sketch. The opening is compact, there is some reliance on dialogue, and the ending is unexpected. Chekhov’s evocation of the standard is instantly apparent. The boy was recently apprenticed to a cobbler, i.e. is now a “child in a foreign land.” The time of the narrative is Christmas Eve (the time of miracles). The child is described as fearful. Chekhov’s mention of doors, windows, and the icon

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in the room, as well as the opposition of darkness and light in the setting, gesture to the genre’s essential prerequisites in the first two paragraphs of the story. Yet, Chekhov’s intended focus on a particular individual is instantly perceptible as well. Unlike Dostoevsky’s, Andersen’s, or Rückert’s nameless children, Chekhov’s nine-year-old boy is given a name – used for the title and then repeated in different iterations throughout the story. Further, in the opening, Chekhov alerts the reader to the child’s subversive behaviour (Van’ka pinches his master’s writing implements from the cobbler’s cupboard to write his letter home), as well as to his fear of the discovery of the “crime” and of the ensuing punishment – both by the cobbler and by God. The boy nervously glances at the cupboard and at the “dark” icon bracketed by shelves holding kolodki, a word that in Russian can signify “stocks,” as in corporal punishment, or shoemaking lasts. In the same opening paragraph, Chekhov points to the main reason for the child’s transgression – the creation of a text. In order to create his text, Van’ka arranges himself in a position of supplication – on his knees in front of a bench. The adopted posture, portrayed by the adult observer from the outside, fits with the child writer’s intention of creating a specific type of a narrative – a petition (proshenie) – addressed to a higher authority and aiming to produce a change in the petitioner’s circumstances. The genre, often parodied in the small press, requires for the document to provide information about the supplicant, describe the incident that prompted the communication, and include a request for an appropriate action.13 The standard document closes with the petitioner’s formal signature. Van’ka’s letter also evokes the individual laments of psalms and Russian prayers to St Michael, similar to a petition in its thematics (a devotee’s pleas for help in the midst of hardship) and structure. Like its models, Van’ka’s letter begins with a formal salutation, alludes to the petitioner’s status (an orphan), and then details the abuse he suffers at the hands of the cobbler and others who starve him, beat him, and deny him any rest. The supplicant then mentions his death as a possible outcome of the situation and proposes practical solutions for remedy. The petition, written in the first person and employing various forms of the past tense, is formally signed as “your grandson, Ivan Zhukov,” but is amended with “Dear Grandpa, please come.”14 Like Chekhov’s other child characters, the boy is shown to rely on established genres in his attempts at written self-expression. Similarly, as in other such instances, deviations from the standard point to the child’s

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individuality. In Van’ka’s case, Chekhov emphasizes the boy’s curiosity and liveliness in the midst of adversity, his sharp mind, specific interests (fishing, hunting, music), as well as his naiveté.15 Chekhov’s depiction of Van’ka in the process of writing is regularly punctuated by the portrayal of the boy’s gradually intensifying expressions of emotion – facial contortions, sighing, sniffling, and sobbing. In addition to alerting the reader to Van’ka’s psychophysical condition, these descriptions signal transitions from Van’ka’s written account of his present situation to the memories of life in the country manor with his watchman grandfather. Van’ka’s imaginings are depicted from the point of view of an adult observer. Unlike the narrator’s observations of the child in the process of writing or Chekhov’s reproduction of Van’ka’s text, a comic mélange of the formulaic and the substandard often found in the output of the small press, the memories are conveyed in the present tense. The present tense of the narration and the predominant reliance on a sophisticated narrator’s descriptive powers allow Chekhov to conjure up the immediacy of Van’ka’s past experience, as well as emphasize the boy’s idealization of home life. The poetic, Gogolian tone of the recollections, invariably introduced by a description of the child’s gaze through the window, clashes, however, with the reality as described.16 The boy’s grandfather is a drunk who amuses himself by pinching women and feeding tobacco to his dogs. One of the dogs, Viun, endures repeated beatings, hangings, and on several occasions is left for dead. Van’ka, who was taught out of boredom (ot nechego delat’) by the nobleman’s daughter to read, write, count, and dance, was kicked out of the manor after his mother’s death to live with his grandfather who promptly shipped him off to the cobbler. The consistent opposition of life and death on the lexical level of the story –“vividly” (zhivo), “the Zhivarevs,” “still alive” (zhiva) as opposed to “will die” (pomru), “death” (smert’), and “to die” (pomirat’) – establishes another link to the formulae of the Christmas tale. Yet, the profane comic lowering of the resurrection myth in the depiction of the dog Viun, who, even after the worst abuse, invariably comes back to life (ozhival), also serves to delineate the central figure. The description of the dog’s devious proclivities and of the harsh punishments he suffers suggests a parallel between the fates of the resourceful dog and the equally resourceful boy. Like Viun, Van’ka is a survivor. In order to escape his hellish environment, the boy does his research and acts in

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accordance with the information he receives. He learns about the workings of the postal service and buys a stamp and an envelope. He is not above helping himself to his master’s supplies. Van’ka’s putative future demise as described in his letter is offset by Chekhov’s evocation of the resurrection myth. The transformation of the protagonist’s life, anticipated by the rules of the genre, is manifest in the transformation of the child’s name. As scholars have observed, the pejorative “Van’ka,” used in the title and throughout the story, indicates the child’s low (social and age-related) status. The affectionate “Vaniushka” appears in the boy’s reminiscences of his time in the village.17 The act of writing changes the character, however. As Carol Apollonio notes, the boy’s letter can be viewed as an allegory of an artistic text, since the process of writing, as described in the story, mimics the process of creative writing in general.18 Thus, the formal signature appended to the letter is not simply a necessary attribute of a petition but an indication of the character’s changed perception of himself. Unlike the cobbler’s apprentice Van’ka, Ivan Zhukov is an author. Chekhov depicts the act of writing as emotionally painful and physically arduous. The letter’s underlying plot of suffering and deliverance from evil is, of course, bound to produce powerful feelings, both in the child writer and his intended audience. But Chekhov’s portrayal of the intensity of his character’s attempts to convey meaning and be understood underscores any writer’s challenge to reach his readership. The act of writing – “restorying” – and the determined action of posting the letter (at night, in freezing weather, wearing only an undershirt) provide an emotional release. The child can now be lulled by sweet dreams of his reimagined past and hopes for a brighter future. The reader’s expectation of a Dickensian miraculous deliverance from the horrors of afterchildhood is subverted, of course. As befits the form that privileges the comic and often centres on misinterpretation, Van’ka’s “precious” letter, sent to “my grandfather in the village,” will not find its addressee. The ostensible reason for the failure, in V.B. Kataev’s observation, is the insufficiency of the boy’s practical knowledge.19 Chekhov, however, also shows that the child’s view of his reader is romanticized, a projection of his desire rather than a sober assessment, thus making it highly unlikely for the communication to achieve the intended result, even if Van’ka’s letter were to arrive at the destination.

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Since the boy’s desperate plea to return to the golden past of his imagination is misdirected, both literally and figuratively, the story can be viewed as a tragicomic disquisition on the challenges of meaningful communication. Yet, like that of Dostoevsky’s beggar boy, Van’ka’s desire to be heard (here, read) is fulfilled in the closure. Christmastime is the time of prophetic dreams and miracles. As we have seen, in the work of Dostoevsky and his precursors, the suffering children are united with Christ and the dearly departed in their deathbed visions. For Van’ka, however, Christ’s image is dark and forbidding and the joys of Christmas he imagines are purely secular. Unlike Andersen’s or Dostoevsky’s protagonists, in his wish-fulfilling dream Van’ka is united with his ideal audience. The boy’s letter is received, read, and appreciated: “… He was dreaming of a stove. Grandpa is sitting on the stove ledge, with his bare feet dangling, reading the letter to the cooks … Viun is walking around the stove, his tail swishing …”20 The image of the stove in the coda evokes the story’s generic origins – the Russian version of the Christmas tale. The shift to the present tense after “he was dreaming” and the ellipses that bracket the dream’s content point to the process of the letter’s reception. The final ellipsis suggests the miraculous sustainability of the exchange between the writer and his readers. Chekhov’s depiction engages with the pressing issues of his day: the fate of the postemancipation peasantry, the decline of the nobility, and the education of Russia’s peasant children. The suffering child Chekhov describes in the story is one of the staples of nineteenth-century literature. The writer plays with the symbols and structure of the Russian Christmas tale. Further, Chekhov incorporates the genres of petition and prayer into his narrative. Finally, he shapes it all in accordance with the requirements of the dramatic sketch. As Apollonio argues convincingly, Chekhov’s “Van’ka” invites a holistic approach to interpretation, the approach that probes the polysemy of Chekhov’s writing and investigates various levels on which the story could be read: mimetic, metaliterary, as well as universal/religious.21 But this is just a preliminary step. The main challenge, of course, is to decide what the story is about. Some of today’s critics view “Van’ka” as an “anti-Christmas” story.22 Others see it as a “true” Christmas tale where descriptions of suffering children affirm hopes for a better future.23 Yet others find the miracle of Christmas in the boy’s imaginary reunification with his grandfather.24

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The multiplicity of divergent readings is logical because no solutions are offered to the problems described. Chekhov’s interest lies elsewhere. As before, the writer’s predominant focus is on how knowledge is gained in maturation. Chekhov shows that Van’ka’s emotional and physical survival “in a foreign land” is predicated on transgression of boundaries and on “restorying.” The child’s attempts at communication, his desire to learn and affect change are in the forefront of the writer’s attention. Chekhov’s “Sleepy” follows a similar path of inquiry. DO OR DIE :

“ SLEEPY ”

Composed at the same time as The Steppe, Chekhov’s “Sleepy” describes the aftereffects of sleep deprivation as experienced by an adolescent girl.25 The mode of the narration is an amplified dramatic sketch. The story is written in the present tense and in the third person. The story’s imagery is multivalent, simultaneously gesturing to different parts of the text’s symbolic architecture. The narrative is built on a regular recurrence of particular utterances and signifiers. “Sleepy” is rich in poetic devices, such as onomatopoeia, assonance, and alliteration. Chekhov’s musically “orchestrated” text is positioned on the border between poetry and prose.26 The opening is highly compressed. Chekhov establishes the time of the initial narration (night), the child’s name, her age, gender, and occupation (a thirteen-year-old nursemaid Var’ka) in two short sentences. The story abruptly switches to the reproduction of the girl’s lullaby, the narrative’s multifunctional refrain. Chekhov highlights the narrative importance of the lullaby from the start, setting it off as a poetic text and using a different font for the first performance of the song. Chekhov then describes the child’s sensory experiences – visual and olfactory in the first paragraph and auditory in the second. The focus on the girl’s sensory perceptions is maintained throughout. “Spat’ knochetsia” of the title (literally, “to sleep it is desired,” as opposed to “I want to sleep”) is an impersonal construction, quite common in the Russian language. In such constructions, many states and emotions can be expressed without an explicit subject. When viewed in separation from the rest of the narrative, the title may indicate a general condition applicable to one and all. In Carol Apollonio’s opinion, Chekhov ordinarily uses the form to cast doubt on the boundaries that divide people from one another.27 In “Sleepy,” however, the impersonal reflexive of the

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title functions to foreshadow the story’s overarching tension between passivity and agency. Chekhov quickly establishes his young character as the subject of the impersonal title, one whose overwhelming desire is impossible to fulfill (starved of sleep, the girl is not allowed to sleep). Chekhov articulates the persistent frustration of Var’ka’s desire by the continuing use of the verb “to sleep” in antithetic parallel constructions throughout the story.28 The tightly woven opening paragraphs simultaneously introduce Chekhov’s narrative strategy of alternation between movement (wakefulness/life) and stasis (dream/death), as well as draw attention to the opposition between light and darkness. They also point to the story’s predominant visual images and gesture to the infanticide (by suffocation) in the story’s closure. The light from the motionless icon lamp forms a green patch on the ceiling.29 The laundry on a clothesline casts long shadows on the stove, the cradle, and the girl. The depiction of stasis is followed by one of movement. The lamp begins to flicker, a green patch on the ceiling and the dark shadows come to life and are set in motion. The air in the room is close – dushno – literally “suffocating.” The description of the infant’s distress in the next passage is juxtaposed to Chekhov’s first portrayal of Var’ka’s experience of sleep deprivation, the result of the baby’s persistent crying. As in a physician’s case history, Chekhov details the girl’s physical response to the deprivation: Var’ka’s inability to keep her eyes open, neck pain, drooping head, and immobility. The writer also notes the psychic effects of the condition: the distorted sense of the girl’s own body and her distorted view of time. To convey Var’ka perception of night time as “frozen,” Chekhov begins “Sleepy” with a nominal sentence “Night” and uses continuous present tense of process verbs, as well as ellipses in his descriptions of static settings.30 The narrator’s careful recording of Var’ka’s psychophysical symptoms is sustained throughout. The lulling sounds of Var’ka’s own crooning, her master’s and his helper’s snoring, the rocking and squeaking of the cradle, accompanied by a hypnotic movement of the green patch, induce a threshold state between sleep and wakefulness. Var’ka’s transitions into a hallucinatory state are consistently signalled by a combined set of images: the blinking/“winking” green icon lamp, the green patch it casts on the ceiling, and the shadows. Descriptions of Var’ka’s fantastic vision alternate with those of the girl’s past, punctuated by intrusions from Var’ka’s present reality. Chekhov’s account, narrated in the present tense, blurs the border between now and then, between real-

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ity and illusion. The lullaby’s performance is a constant background presence, a periodic confirmation of the character’s position on the threshold of consciousness. In the first and full representation of the vision, Var’ka imagines “dark clouds, chasing each other across the sky and screaming like the baby.” She then sees a broad highway swimming in mud, people trudging along with knapsacks on their backs, and vague shadows moving about in the grim, cold mist. Suddenly, the people and the shadows collapse into the wet mud. “‘Why is that?’ asks Var’ka. ‘Going to sleep, going to sleep!’ they reply. And they fall into a sweet, deep slumber, while on the telegraph wires crows and magpies sit, screaming like the baby and trying to wake them.”31 Var’ka’s interior text – her vision – is built on the opposition between agitated motion and the longed for immobility. Further, the vision gestures to the traditional image of the road as a metaphor of life and to the demonic birds of popular imagination (crows and magpies), the harbingers of death. Both in the vision and the reminiscences of her father’s death, Var’ka is “restorying” the torment she is experiencing in her present. The long shadows in the room turn into the fast moving dark clouds of the vision. The infant’s crying, signified by plach (weeping/lament), plachet (weeps/laments), krichit (screams), is experienced by the girl as a persistent auditory assault. The verb “to scream” is repeated to describe the sounds made by a cricket (krichit) in the present, the imagined screams produced by dark clouds (krichat) and the shrieking (krichat) of the birds in the vision, as well as her mistress’s yelling (krichit) in the background. The cradlesong’s rhythmic structure and sound arrangement (baiu-baiu) are echoed in her dying father’s auditory expression of pain (bou-bou-boubou) in the girl’s reminiscences. When Var’ka’s father dies, she weeps (plachet) like the infant. As in the present, her home in the village is dark and the air there is suffocating (v temnoi, dushnoi izbe). The girl’s vocalization is limited to the formal genre of the lullaby. With the exception of the song and the question she asks in her vision, Var’ka is soundless and wordless. The girl is a silent and passive observer of her dying father, her mother’s concern, and of the doctor’s ministrations. When depicted in motion – as her mother’s fellow traveller in search of sustenance – the child is still passive. Unlike nighttime, Var’ka’s daytime is full of ceaseless activity, but it is coerced. She is ordered to fetch wood for the fire and light the stoves, prepare the samovar for tea, clean the cobbler’s galoshes, wash the stairs, tidy up the rooms of the house, peel potatoes, and serve at dinner. In the

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evening, she is sent to get beer and vodka and prepare pickled herring for her masters and their guests. As opposed to night sections where nouns and process verbs predominate, Chekhov’s depiction of Var’ka’s daytime activities abounds in verbs of motion; her masters’ demands are presented in imperatives. Movement and light distract the girl from her forbidden desire; stasis and darkness are Var’ka’s adversaries because they induce sleep. Chekhov represents his character’s psychophysical change in daytime as revivification – from the deathlike stiffness of her face (oderevenevshee) to its pliancy (raspravliaetsia). In daytime, the girl’s mental abilities become sharper as well – literally, “brighter” (proiasniaiutsia). In between the chores, however, the condition of stiffness returns (dereveneiushchie viski), together with her desire for sleep. At night, the recurring cluster of hypnotizing images (icon lamp, green patch, and shadows) signals Var’ka’s descent into her memories of the past or into hallucinations. The lullaby, always concluded by an ellipsis to mark the song’s extension in time, keeps her on the border between dreams and reality – up until the story’s closure. In V.V. Golovin’s definition, a lullaby is a song addressed to an infant in a threshold state and functionally directed toward the addressee’s successful transition from the state of liminality.32 In Russian peasant culture, the age of the addressee ranged from birth to the age of two, i.e. the cradle period, which also coincided with the period of breastfeeding. Like cradlesongs in other traditions, the Russian lullaby employs simple melodies. The rhythmical arrangement (usually, the four foot trochaic meter) mimics the cradle’s and the performer’s rocking motion. The lullaby’s phonetic organization privileges the use of (calming) sibilants (in Chekhov’s story, “baiushki,” “kashki”). The lullaby’s musical features, performative actions (rocking and singing), as well as its motifs, formulae, and images help realize the essential functions of the genre – to calm, pacify, protect, prognosticate the infant’s future, and teach.33 The infant’s first notions about space, time, kinship, fate, life, and death are acquired in the interactions between the performer and the addressee during the song’s performance.34 The universally shared subject of the Russian traditional lullaby is that of sleep and maturation; its basic structural unit is a semantically functional motif.35 Golovin identifies twenty-one such motifs in the traditional Russian lullaby.36 Of particular importance in the context of Chekhov’s story are the following: 1. neutralizing those who harm or

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might harm; 2. punishing; 3. feeding; 4. relationship with the addressee; 5. the cradle; 6. rocking; 7. the pacifiers’ hardships; 8. death. As noted in chapter 2, in the Russian peasant tradition, the newborn’s state is unfixed. The infant’s gender, physical characteristics, or its name are undetermined, and unmentioned, until the completion of specific rituals. Unformed, incomplete, and helpless, having arrived from nonexistence into existence, the infant is both a source of danger to those around and in need of protection from the evil forces which can harm it.37 In line with these notions, Var’ka’s charge is nameless and its gender is not established. The infant is consistently referred to as the “child” (“rebionok” or “ditio”), the masculine possessive “his” used as a marker of the grammatical gender of the word rebionok rather than of the child’s biological gender. Notably, Var’ka’s status in maturation is also liminal: she is on the threshold of maidenhood, the transition ritually affirmed when the subject is in her early teens.38 Thus, both the performer and her audience of one are positioned on the existential threshold, connecting with each other on the border of night and day, in a perilous state between dream/wakefulness and darkness/light. The traditional Russian view of death as eternal sleep and peace, as, for example, in “usopshii” (from spat’ – to sleep) and “pokoinik” (from pokoi – peace), is interrogated on the level of the plot and evoked throughout the story. Both the baby and the girl struggle with sleep. In its mother’s opinion, the infant cannot be pacified because it, “most likely,” was cursed by the evil eye (sglazili). Var’ka fights sleep because she is prohibited from sleeping. The lullaby’s powerful arsenal of somnological methods affects Var’ka much more profoundly than they do her charge. The lulling music (ubaiukivaiushchaia), the associated darkness, the performative actions of singing and rocking, the sounds, and the imagery of the Russian lullaby seep into, “infect” Chekhov’s descriptions of Var’ka’s experience.39 The mythological pacifiers Son (Dream/Sleeping) and Drema (Slumber) of Russian cradlesongs are evoked in “son,” “podremat’,” “dremota.” The sounds made by Var’ka’s dying father (bou-bou-bou-bou) in her reminiscences bring to mind infants’ mythological enemy Buka of the traditional Russian lullaby. Further, as in the genre, the cradle is personified. In Chekhov, the cradle is described as “plaintively squeaking” (“zhalobno”), signalling Var’ka’s perception of her situation as woeful. The girl’s marginalization in the household is evident in the pejorative form of her name, as well as in the modifiers parshivaia (mangy) and pod-

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laia (vile) used by her masters to describe her. Both attributes indicate nonbelonging.40 In Russian peasant families, nannies and nursemaids were considered to be kin (svoi). In the essential configuration of the archaic Russian worldview – svoi (one’s own) vs chuzhie (strangers) – Chekhov’s Var’ka is presented as “chuzhaia,” placed on the outside of the cobbler’s circle of kinship.41 The girl’s “alien” status is further underscored by the unremitting labour she is subjected to in daytime. Within the parameters of traditional cradlesongs, Var’ka’s position is similar to that of the mythological creatures who might harm infants. To neutralize such creatures, one has to make them work, the procedure described in lullabies in imperative constructions.42 After her daily chores are done, the girl is once again ordered to rock the baby to sleep. The description that follows offers a condensed roster of triggers that finally motivate Var’ka to act: “The cricket shrieks in the stove; the green patch on the ceiling and the shadows … crawl once more into Var’ka’s half-opened eyes, wink at her and muddle her brain.”43 Her own crooning is interrupted once more by the child’s cries. The vision of the dirty road returns, along with the images of her parents. The girl is trying to find “the power that binds her hand and foot, weighs her down and prevents her from living,” so that she can destroy it.44 The winking of the green patch and the sound of the infant’s cries prompt the answer to the puzzle – Var’ka’s real enemy is the child.45 The significance of the realization is underscored by the statement’s (etot vrag – rebionok) position in a separate paragraph. The new understanding brings about psychological release that manifests itself in laughter, the first indication of Var’ka’s transformation. The decision to act on the understanding is characterized by Chekhov as a “deluded notion” (lozhnoe predstavlenie). Chekhov then describes the psychophysical changes Var’ka undergoes right before the murder. Unlike the previously submissive girl, Var’ka gets up from her stool and, with unblinking eyes and a broad grin on her face, saunters (prokhazhivaetsia) around the room. She is pleased, “tickled” with the thought that she can now get rid of the force preventing her from living. “To kill the baby and then sleep, sleep, sleep …”46 The first version of the story ends with the description of the moment preceding the murder: “Laughing, winking at the green patch and wagging her finger at it, Var’ka creeps up to the cradle, and bends over the baby.”47 The definitive version concludes with an additional sentence depicting the moment following the infanticide. The metaphor of suffo-

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cation, introduced in the opening and repeated in the middle of the story, is realized: “After suffocating him, she quickly lies down on the floor, laughs from the happy notion that she can now sleep and in a minute is sleeping the sleep of the dead.”48 After the murder – Var’ka’s sole expression of agency – the incessant noise finally stops. Var’ka’s overwhelming desire for oblivion is within reach and she can now sleep “the sleep of the dead,” the trope bringing two victims of life together in literal and metaphorical death. While “Van’ka” approaches the horror of afterchildhood in terms of black humour, “Sleepy” shuns the comic gestures of “Van’ka,” offering instead, most visibly, an examination of psychopathology caused by physical torment, the topic previously examined in “Oysters.” Chekhov’s detailed description of Var’ka’s symptoms and actions betrays familiarity with his contemporaries’ work on psychopathology of sleep deprivation and fatigue.49 (See chapter 3.) The description also fits with the modern understanding of the condition, of its causes, and possible effects.50 Like “Van’ka,” however, “Sleepy” provides the reader with a score of other avenues for interpretation. For example, the story can be read as a tale of demonic possession.51 In this scheme, Var’ka is a “dushegubka,” the destroyer of an innocent soul (dusha). In such interpretations, the transformation of the icon light into the winking green patch which prompts infanticide is understood to indicate the loss of the icon’s divine essence, signalling the presence of “unclean powers” in the household and thus prefiguring the story’s tragic end.52 The lullaby provides another demonological explanation: Var’ka is the harmer of infants (vreditel’) who could not be stopped. Yet another may be found in Chekhov’s initial description of Var’ka’s father as dead: “Her dead (pokoinyi) father, Efim Stepanov is squirming on the floor,” suggesting the story’s connection to folklore narratives about the walking dead who come to induce sleep paralysis (by suffocation) in their victims.53 The infant’s ambiguous state of liminality and the danger it poses for the household invites yet another interpretation in which the baby is the true enemy who must be destroyed. Further, Var’ka’s position on the threshold of childhood and maidenhood, as well as descriptions of her body’s transitions from stiffness to pliancy bring to mind Russian wedding rituals which commonly include the symbolic enactment of the bride’s demise followed by her revivification.54 In this light, the character has been described as an initiate who failed her initiation.55 Critics have also reimagined Var’ka’s unhappy life

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at the cobbler’s in terms of the Russian martyrology. In this interpretation, Chekhov’s character (whose full name is Varvara) is linked to Great Martyr Barbara venerated in the Russian canon for protecting the devout from unrepented death.56 Moreover, the opposition of darkness and light which characterizes all of Chekhov’s stories about peasant children can be brought in to argue Chekhov’s allegiance to the ideas of the Russian educational reformers, discussed in chapter 2. Finally, the most persistent interpretation of the story focuses on the fates of the wretched, “exhausted” children whose lives are damaged by their society’s indifference and neglect. Like Dostoevsky’s preface to “The Beggar Boy,” Chekhov’s early journalistic account about children’s life in service (v liudiakh) offers an unequivocal condemnation of the exploitation and suffering such children endure.57 As I note in the introduction, Chekhov’s public position on the issue has allowed some of his critics to obscure the line between “truth” and “fiction” and combine Chekhov the journalist, the writer, and the man in their interpretations. Consequently, both “Van’ka” and “Sleepy” have often been read as tales of social oppression. In these children’s lives, according to Aikhenvald, “[g]randfather will not come, and the child’s heart will be filled with grief, unheeded by anyone, uneased by anyone, and the rest of his most likely brief life will be shadowed by a profound feeling of injury and pain.” This is a state where “children are being hounded to their deaths.”58 Chekhov does not, however, guide his reader to the “correct” interpretation of his stories. Neither does he offer his audience any prescriptions – social, medical, or spiritual – to remedy his children’s suffering in the afterchildhood. Instead, Chekhov describes how his young characters arrive at their decisions. As in Chekhov’s other stories about childhood, in “Van’ka” and “Sleepy,” the focus is placed on the protagonists’ search for knowledge and understanding. Both stories depict the characters’ attempts to change their circumstances. Van’ka’s action will not provide the practical outcome he seeks. The solution to the puzzle Var’ka faces is determined to be false. At the centre of the writer’s attention in “Sleepy” is his character’s path to a “deluded notion” that results in a catastrophic act. Chekhov’s stories of “afterchildhood” offer perfect examples of the writer’s manipulation of the socio-cultural context in the creation of a literary work. Both “Van’ka” and “Sleepy” function on different, yet inter-

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acting levels, each engaging the reader’s various competencies, interests, and knowledge. The discourses of Chekhov’s culture informing these levels of expression aid in the creation of powerful literary texts that resist one-dimensional interpretations. The primary purpose of Chekhov’s appropriations is to demonstrate that for his children, learning is the key to maturation and that this learning is inseparable from refashioning of narratives.

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9 Conclusion: The Anxiety of Ignorance

Sweet, beloved, unforgettable childhood! Why does that time, irretrievable and gone forever, why does it seem brighter, more festive and richer than it actually was? A.P. Chekhov, “The Bishop”

In Chekhov’s time, education and rearing of Russia’s children was viewed as a matter crucial for the country’s future.1 Overcoming the anxiety of ignorance about the issue led to an intense period of study by all involved. As the result of a collective effort to build a cohesive model of maturation, literary, cultural, and scientific projections of childhood became mutually constitutive fields, interacting with each other in various ways and blurring the borders between literary and nonliterary discourses. Chekhov’s depictions of childhood are rooted in his experiences as a journalist, physician, and a practitioner of the arts of the small press. Unlike the experts in scholarly fields, Chekhov and his collaborators fully appreciated the difference between various discourses of their culture, using the ambiguity of the generic attribution to produce laughter. Yet, as I show above, Chekhov’s early work, including his work on children, was broader in its intent and more narratively amplified than that of his brothers in writing in the small press. The general orientation of Chekhov’s stories about children differed substantially from the literary canon of high literature as well. Chekhov’s model does not articulate the self-construction of a particular class, as found in the novels by Aksakov or Tolstoy or in the autobiographical novels they inspired. Chekhov’s fictional childhood

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is equally distant from those of Dostoevsky’s or Saltykov-Schedrin’s whose representations aid in support of an overarching and unifying idea. Rather, the chief function of Chekhov’s model is the study of childhood.2 Chekhov’s informed appropriation of his contemporaries’ views on medicine, child psychology, and education, as well as his references to his children’s school curriculum, textbooks, or journals, serve to substantiate his descriptions, legitimize the implied author’s presentation, and make him appear knowledgeable (as Chekhov urged writers to do in his “Autobiography”). The overarching purpose of Chekhov’s appropriations, however, is the elucidation of his characters’ individual paths to individual “truths.” The same applies to Chekhov’s use of literary and cultural contexts. The themes of loving or absent mothers, caring or neglectful fathers, romantic love, of crimes and punishments, as well as Chekhov’s portraits of suffering children, evoke prominent representations of childhood of Chekhov’s time and form an instantly recognizable background for the writer’s own exploration of maturation, the exploration aimed at his contemporaries. The imagery and the ideology of the Russian traditional peasant culture, a significant part of the shared cultural background as well, is likewise appropriated by the writer. Again, all work to explore the ways children gain knowledge. Hence, like his contemporaries in education and psychology, Chekhov constructs his fictional childhood by focusing on how children develop and learn. In order to show how children learn, Chekhov demonstrates why his children seek knowledge, as well as what kind of knowledge they seek. Chekhov’s young characters face illness, violence, separation from home, and death. They have to figure out the notions of marriage, sexuality, and the rules of socialization. Chekhov’s children learn in order to make sense of their experiences, gain control over their immediate environment, and affect change. Chekhov’s young characters learn through close observation and transgression of established norms of behaviour. They learn by forming suppositions and arriving at notions that are verified in interactions with others. The protagonists’ chief strategy for dealing with the hermeneutical challenges of life is storytelling/reimagining. The weaving of narratives out of what has been previously heard and seen – the complex and multifunctional transformation of the “other’s word” – is as essential for Chekhov, whose own “word” visibly engages the discourses of his time, as it is for his child characters.

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In her composition, Chekhov’s schoolgirl rewrites a passage from Turgenev’s romantic novel. A seven-year-old reimagines a woman’s impending and unwanted marriage after Pushkin’s narrative poem. The art by a motherless child is yet another example of written, verbal, or visual texts by children that aims at making sense of the observed. The reshaping of what has been heard or seen before is therapeutic; children restore themselves by “restorying.” Overcoming the anxiety of ignorance through storytelling is prompted by the protagonists’ push for control, their desire to gain agency in the established hierarchy of subject (adult) vs object (child). The refashioning of narratives to make sense of new experiences is already a gesture of creative and personal agency and is, as we know, the primary motive for writing and reading literature. The voyeurism of Chekhov’s children is another indication of the protagonists’ desire to gain control over the events they find incomprehensible. Peeking over people’s shoulders is, of course, the process in which both writers and readers fully engage as well. Chekhov’s children learn in play, acting out the puzzles of the outside world inside their own magic circle. When interacting with the adults, the child discovers the power of prohibition; in games with peers, the child masters the power of accommodation. While in play, children negotiate gender and class differences, engage in creative pretending, hone the art of communication, and train for their future social and family roles. Chekhov’s children learn in stages. Transitions from one developmental stage to the next do not occur steadily or smoothly but, rather, in emotionally painful jumps. Chekhov looks at a preverbal child and pays attention to language acquisition in its intimate connection to cognition. He also considers the culmination of the first childhood at seven, a culturally crucial period of the transition to prepubescence. In Chekhov, the end of childhood occurs with the child’s departure from “home,” the symbolic construct built around the internalized perception of familiarity, acceptance, and belonging. Chekhov shows that his child’s sensory abilities are more powerful than those of the adults and that children often display synesthesia. All of Chekhov’s children exhibit heightened sensitivity to external stimuli. The preverbal child is egocentric (has not yet fully separated himself from the outside) rather than egoistic (selfish). Chekhov describes his essentially preverbal child as highly imaginative and capable of catego-

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rization but not yet fully aware of distinctions that can exist between similar objects. Chekhov’s children think in terms of associations based on contiguity (metonymy) and similarity (metaphor). The writer demonstrates that in his children, morality and aesthetic sense manifest themselves differently at different stages of development, absent in a preverbal child but already present as early as the age of four. It is also the age when Chekhov’s child is capable of distinguishing between the concepts of animate and inanimate. In Chekhov, a child before the age of seven is asexual. Older children sublimate their emerging sexuality in creative imagining. Both boys and girls are shown to be aware of the taboo nature of sexual knowledge. Chekhov shows that gender roles are internalized by his characters, but individual characteristics of individual girls and boys can override acquired notions about proper behaviour and social roles. Some girls in Chekhov are sensitive and imaginative, others have analytical minds, yet others are imaginative, sensitive, and analytical. Likewise, Chekhov’s boys can be intuitive and vacillating or determined and narrowly focused. What distinguishes girls from boys more decisively is the ability of girls to negotiate conflicts through mediation. Chekhov’s awareness of the work by his literary precursors is readily apparent. Like those of Aksakov and Tolstoy, Chekhov’s children display a particular sensitivity to external stimuli. Like his literary predecessors in their canonical works on maturaion, Chekhov gives considerably more importance to his characters’ individual traits than to normative gender roles, general developmental markers, or heredity. As in Tolstoy and Aksakov, broad psychological profiling is absent from Chekhov’s literary model of childhood. Like those of his literary fathers, Chekhov’s descriptions of children at play emphasizes age-related and gender-related distinctions apparent in the play’s organization, focus, and actualization. Finally, as in Tolstoy and Aksakov, separation from the symbolic notion of “family” and “home” is the most transformative and traumatic event in a child’s life. Chekhov’s literary depiction of maturation differs, however, from those offered by his literary precursors or the writer’s contemporaries in the field of education and psychology in a number of important areas. Chekhov’s preverbal child is more advanced in his cognitive abilities and his imagination is highly developed. Gender differences are portrayed in a more focused and nuanced way. A mother’s absence can be remedied by the child’s emotional connection to another. Play is given much more

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importance in Chekhov and is described in terms approaching modern understanding. The division into developmental stages and the rationale underlying transitions from one developmental stage to another are closer to modern views on the issue. In a decisive shift from standard perceptions, the writer represents maturation as an uneven, jagged process of overcoming the deficits of understanding. Chekhov’s depiction of his children’s sexuality as sublimated in their imaginary narratives is similarly prescient. Chekhov’s overarching and emphatic focus on his young characters’ inherent and essential drive for creativity distinguishes Chekhov’s work on childhood from that of his “literary fathers” or the experts. Chekhov’s child is not Kapterev’s “person of the fact” but a person of the imagination. Folklore, and fairy tales in particular (so strongly cautioned against by Chekhov’s contemporaries in the field of educational psychology), provides Chekhov’s children with the critical stock of imagery and plots for the interpretation and accommodation of emotionally unsettling experiences. Refashioning of literary and visual narratives is equally important in this therapeutic process. Overall, to paraphrase Roman Jakobson, Chekhov’s child learns as he borrows and creates. For Chekhov, the discovery of the power of language to convey meaning and affect change is the key precondition for his characters’ intellectual and emotional growth. This cognitive breakthrough, however, is invariably accompanied by the realization that expression is never adequate to the thought being expressed and that making oneself understood is a tremendous challenge. Most of Chekhov’s protagonists’ attempts at effective communication fail. Yet, in Chekhov’s stories about childhood such communication can occur. Chekhov shows, however, that the bridging of the divide between separate consciousnesses is possible only in emotionally charged, dialogical interactions that centre on topics that matter – vitally – to the communicators. Amidst persistent attempts by the adult world to mute the child’s voice, dramatization of imagination is the child’s primary weapon in his/her quest for meaning and agency. “Restorying” enables Chekhov’s children to relieve the anxiety of ignorance by constructing notions that lead to actions. These actions are commonly ineffectual, however. Chekhov demonstrates that in order for the characters to achieve real change, they need to know more. For Chekhov, childhood is a continuous process of learning by failing. His children question and subvert set norms and assumptions, arrive at conclusions, act in accordance with new understandings, fail, adapt, and question again.

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In Chekhov’s reproduction of his dying protagonist’s musings on childhood, quoted in the epigraph, the writer evokes both Aksakov and Tolstoy. Tolstoy’s image of a blissful childhood focuses on childhood as a cure for the narrator’s soul: “Happy, happy, irretrievable time of childhood! How can one not love, cherish is memories? Those memories revive and elevate my soul. They are a source of the greatest pleasure.”3 Aksakov’s description points to the difficulty of childhood and to its idealization from a distance: Oh, where are you, magical world, the Scheherazade of human life, which adults often treat so unkindly and crudely, destroying its enchantment with jokes and premature words. You, golden age of childish happiness, the memory of which so sweetly and so sadly excites the soul of an old man!4 In Chekhov, Bishop’s “sweet, beloved, unforgettable childhood” only seems “brighter, more festive and richer than it actually was.” What interests the writer is why. The question is posed but never answered. Is it because leaving childhood severs the bond with “home”? Is it because this bond is “irretrievable”? Rather than offer a definitive authorial position on the issue, Chekhov points to this particular character’s discovery that his view of childhood as “sweet” is an illusion, a constructed truth. For Chekhov’s young characters, childhood in the now is not innocent, blissful, or sweet but painfully ignorant. It is the ignorance of Chekhov’s children that makes their maturation so challenging and traumatic. Written early in his literary career, Chekhov’s stories about children constitute the writer’s creative laboratory. Depictions of a naïve consciousness at various stages of development necessitated Chekhov’s experimentation with representational strategies, the strategies that became an inseparable part of his mature style. Chekhov’s view of maturation as a painful overcoming of the deficit of knowledge, “the greatest tragedy of childhood,” anticipates Chekhov’s later focus on how meaning is conveyed in communication. For Chekhov’s children, making sense of the world is a process that relies on transgression of norms and refashioning of narratives. By depicting his young characters’ quest for knowledge and their strategies for dealing with challenges of life, the writer shows how children learn. Chekhov also shows how writers write and readers read.

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Introduction

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Notes

INTRODUCTION

1 In this monograph, I use the designation “Chekhov’s time” to refer to the period that begins with the great reforms of the late 1850s and 1860s and concludes in 1888, with the publication of The Steppe. When referring to “the child,” I generally use the masculine form of the possessive pronoun (“his”) throughout the book. 2 For notable research employing the approach, see, for example, V.N. Turbin’s seminal article on the issue, “K fenomenologii literaturnykh i ritoricheskikh zhanrov v tvorchestve A.P. Chekhova,” in Problemy poetiki i istorii literatury (Saransk: Mordovskii State University Press, 1973), 204–16; V.B. Kataev, Proza Chekhova: problemy interpretatsii (Moscow: Moscow State University Press [appears as mgu], 1979); A.V. Kubasov, Proza A.P. Chekhova: iskusstvo stilizatsii (Ekaterinburg: Ural State Pedagogical University Press, 1998); N.V. Kapustin, “Chuzhoe slovo” v proze A.P. Chekhova: zhanrovye transformatsii (Ivanovo: Ivanovo State University Press, 2003); A.D. Stepanov, Problemy kommunikatsii u Chekhova (Moscow: Iazyki slavianskikh kul’tur, 2005); N.V. Kapustin, A.P. Chekhov: dialog s traditsiei (Moscow: Vysshaia shkola, 2007); and Lyudmila Parts, The Chekhovian Intertext: Dialogue with a Classic (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2008). 3 M.P. Gromov, Kniga o Chekhove (Moscow: Sovremennik, 1989) at http://apchekhov.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000021/st000.shtml, 116 (online version). The epigraph to the book comes from the same edition, 113 (online version). Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the Russian are mine.

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4 In the order of publication: “Kanikuliarnye raboty institutki Naden’ki N.” (“Naden’ka N.’s Summer Holiday Schoolwork,” 1880), henceforth “Naden’ka N.”; “Zloi mal’chik” (“The Mean Boy,” 1883); “Ustritsy” (“Oysters,” 1884); “Otets semeistva” (“Paterfamilias,” August 1885), “Kukharka zhenitsia” (“The Cook Gets Married,” September 1885), henceforth “The Cook”; “Detvora” (“Kids,” January 1886); “Grisha” (April 1886); “Den’ za gorodom” (“A Day in the Country,” May 1886); “Zhiteiskaia meloch” (“A Trifle,” September 1886); “Sobytie” (“The Big Event,” November 1886); “Van’ka” (December 1886); “Doma” (“At Home,” 7 March 1887); “Na strastnoi nedele” (“The Holy Week,” 30 March 1887); “Volodya” (June 1887); “Zinochka” (10 August 1887); “Beglets” (“The Fugitive,” September 1887); “Mal’chiki” (“The Boys,” December 1887); “Spat’ khochetsia” (“Sleepy,” January 1888); Step’ (The Steppe, February 1888). I chose not to include, as some have done (see, for example, V.V. Golubkov, “Rasskazy A.P. Chekhova o detiakh,” in Tvorchestvo A.P. Chekhova: Sbornik statei, ed. I.T. Trofimov (Moscow: Uchpedgiz, 1956), 116) “Sluchai s klassikom” (“The Case with a Classic,” 1883); “O drame” (“On Drama,” 1884); “Ne v dukhe” (“Out of Sorts,” 1884); “Ivan Matveevich,” 1886; “Tainyi sovetnik” (“Privy Council,” May 1886); and “Posle teatra” (“After the Theater,” 1892) in the above list, due to the episodic portrayal of children in these stories. “After the Theater,” viewed by some as a child-centred story, features a (childish) young woman rather than a child. 5 Even The Steppe, by far the most frequently discussed of Chekhov’s works on children, has not yet been fully addressed as a narrative whose central focus is on the child and childhood. A.P. Chudakov’s dismay at those who read The Steppe as a child-centred narrative is typical. See A.P. Chudakov, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Moscow: Vremia, 2013), 61. A notable exception is a monograph by Ben Wiegers, The Child and the Childlike in Russian Narrative Literature (1850–1935) (Düren and Maastricht: Shaker Publishing, 2000) where Chekhov’s focus on the child in The Steppe is discussed in a separate chapter. See Wiegers, The Child, 109–47. 6 Chekhov’s medical school courses relevant to this study were taken in 1883–84 in his fourth and fifth year and included the following: A.Ia. Kozhevnikov’s course on psychic disorders (sistematicheskoe i klinicheskoe izlozhenie ucheniia o nervnykh i dushevnykh bolezniakh), G.A. Zakhar’in’s course on diagnostics (terapevticheskaia fakul’tetskaia klinika), N.A. Tol’skii’s course on pediatric diseases (detskie bolezni s klinikoiu), and practicum in a pediatric clinic. License examinations in the spring of 1884 included exams on psychopathology and pediatrics. See Ves’ A.P. Chekhov, http://www.allchekhov .ru/biography/. See also, E. Meve, Meditsina v tvorchestve i zhizni A.P.

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Chekhova (Kiev: Zdorov’ia, 1989), 5–23. More on the importance of “Zakhar’in’s school of diagnostics” in Vladimir Kataev, If We Could Only Know, ed. and trans. Harvey Pitcher (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), 91–8. For an insightful discussion of the connection between medicine and literature in Chekhov’s work, see Stephen Lawrence Herrigan, “The Case History of Chekhov, Freud, and Conan Doyle,” (PhD dissertation, Yale University, 1991). For a more recent discussion of the topic, see Matthew Mangold’s informative article “Chekhov’s Environmental Psychology: Medicine and the Early Stories,” Slavic Review 79, 4 (Winter 2020): 709–30. A facsimile of the case history’s title page is found in I.M. Geizer, Chekhov i meditsina (Moscow: Medgiz, 1954); the case history itself is missing. All referenced in Chekhov’s letters. See Rossolimo’s reminiscences of Chekhov in S.N. Golubov, et al, eds., A.P. Chekhov v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1960), 661–73. http://az.lib.ru/c/chehow_a_p/text_1050.shtml. On Spencer’s influence, see Jacqueline de Proyart, “Anton Čexov et Herbert Spencer : premières investigations,” Revue des Études Slaves 54, 1–2 (1982): 177–93 and de Proyart, “Anton Chekhov i Gerbert Spenser” in Chekhov i ego okruzhenie, eds. V.B. Kataev and A.M. Turkov (Moscow: Nauka, 1996), 213–30. Also N.E. Razumova, “K voprosu o mirovozzrenii Chekhova,” Vestnik tgpu 1, 26 (2011): 29–34; and Shoshana Knapp, Herbert Spencer in Cexov’s “Skucnaja istorija” and “Duel’: The Love of Science and the Science of Love,” seej 29, 3, 279–96. On Darwin’s influence see V.B. Kataev, “Evoliutsiia i chudo v mire Chekhova” at http://philology.ruslibrary.ru/default.asp?trID =110&artID=300. On Chekhov and positivism see P.N. Dolzhenkov, Chekhov i pozitivizm (Moscow: Skorpion, 2003). On Buckle see Elena Zaiats, “Osobennosti formirovaniia avtorskoi pozitsii Chekhova v 80-kh gg,” Molodye issledovateli Chekhova 3, ed. R.B. Akhmetshin (Moscow: mgu, 1998), 47–53. On Chekhov’s early interest in Belinsky and the men of the sixties, see V.D. Sedegov, “O taganrogskom okruzhenii A.P. Chekhova” in Chekhov i ego okruzhenie, 55–62. “V detsve u menia ne bylo detstva,” the statement attributed to Chekhov by his brother Aleksandr in a memoir “Iz detskikh let A.P. Chekhova” in S.N. Golubov, et al, eds., A.P. Chekhov v vospominaniiakh, 29–75. http://az.lib.ru/c /chehow_a_p/text_1050.shtml. For a biography-based interpretation of Chekhov’s work on children, see Marina Zherdeva, Petr Dolzhenkov, “O chekhovskikh rasskazakh o detiakh,” in Molodye issledovateli Chekhova 5, eds. V.B. Kataev and R.B. Akhmetshin (Moscow: mgu, 2005), 132–8. In Vodovozova’s 1891 edition of her manual on education, M.E. Saltykov-

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Shchedrin’s descriptions in Poshekhon’e (Poshekhonskaia starina, 1887–89) are used as evidence of the intolerable conditions of child rearing before the great reforms. See E.N. Vodovozova, Umstvennoe i nravstvennoe razvitie detei ot pervogo proiavleniia soznaniia do shkol’nogo vozrasta (St Petersburg: Tip. V.S. Balasheva, 1891), 79–80. See also P.F. Kapterev, “Detskie gody S.T. Aksakova: Psikhologicheskii etiud,” Pedagogicheskii sbornik 3 (1890): 225–50; “Detstvo I. I. Oblomova: Psikhologopedagogicheskii etiud o prichine proiskhozhdeniia i razvitiia leni,” Zhenskoe obrazovanie 3 (1891): 248–66; “Tipy detei v proizvedeniiakh Dostoevskogo,” Vospitanie i obuchenie 2 (1895): 41–54; 3: 73–87; 4: 105–14; 9: 309–32; 10: 349–59. The trend continued well into the twentieth century. In a popular manual for teachers, Lermontov’s and Tolstoy’s characters are used in psychological profiling. See A.I. Lebedev, Shkol’noe delo (Dlia uchitelei, roditelei i vospitatelei). Vypusk II. Deti. Teoriia i praktika vospitaniia, 2nd edition (Moscow: Tip. T-va I. D. Sytina, 1909–11). For an overview, see P.F. Kapterev, Istoriia russkoi pedagogii (St Petersburg: Aleteia, 2004), 515–56; V.V. Zen’kovskii, Psikhologiia detstva (Ekaterinburg: Delovaia kniga, 1995), 11–24; A.A. Nikol’skaia, Vozrastnaia i pedagogicheskaia psikhologiia v dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii (Dubna: Feniks, 1995), 11–94; and T. Martsinkovskaia, “Razvitie detskoi psikhologii v Rossii,” at http://www.gumer .info/bibliotek_Buks/Psihol/marc_ist/14.php. See Zen’kovskii, Psikhologiia, 11–24; 41–57; 123–79. Beginning with the first such assessment by the writer D.V. Grigorovich, the contemporary and “discoverer” of Dostoevsky, in a personal letter of 25 March 1886 to Chekhov. See Perepiska A.P. Chekhova and D.V. Grigorovicha at http://az.lib.ru/g/grigorowich_d_w/text_0150.shtml. On the clichéd nature of a private letter to the mentor by a literary apprentice in the context of this correspondence, see Ernest Orlov, “’Malaia pressa’ i ‘bol’shaia’ literatura 1880–1890-kh godov,” at http://chekhoved.ru/index.php/library/sborniki/15youth-5/51-2010-06-27-15-12-54, 3–4. Andrew R. Durkin, “Chekhov’s Narrative Technique,” in A. Chekhov Companion, ed. Toby W. Clyman (Westport, ct: Greenwood, 1985), 123–32. See also Dmitry Chizhevsky, “Chekhov in the Development of Russian literature,” in Chekhov: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Robert L. Jackson (Upper Saddle River, nj: Prentice Hall, 1967), 49–61. Rufus W. Mathewson Jr, “Chekhov’s Legacy: Icebergs and Epiphanies,” in Anton Chekhov, ed. Harold Bloom, (Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1999), 110. Vladimir Nabokov, “Chekhov’s Prose,” in Critical Essays on Anton Chekhov, ed. Thomas Eekman (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1989), 33.

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18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., 31. 20 A.G. Gornfeld, “Chekhovskie finaly,” in A.P. Chekhov: Pro et Contra: Lichnost’ i tvorchestvo A.P. Chekhova v russkoi mysli XX veka (1914–1960), ed. I.N. Sukhikh (St Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Russkoi khristianskoi gumanitarnoi akademii, 2010), 458–86. (Henceforth Pro/Contra II.) First published in Krasnaia nov’ 8-9 (1939), 286–300. 21 N.I. Sukhikh, “Skazavshie ‘E!’. Sovremenniki chitaiut Chekhova,” in A.P. Chekhov: Pro et Contra: Tvorchestvo A.P. Chekhova v russkoi mysli kontsa XIX— nachala XX v. (1887–1914), ed. I.N. Sukhikh (St Petersburg: Russkii Khristianskii gumanitarnyi institut, 2002), 29. (Henceforth Pro/Contra I). 22 Ibid. 23 A.D. Stepanov, “A.P. Chekhov kak zerkalo russkoi kritiki,” in Pro/Contra I, 976. 24 K.K. Arsen’ev, “Belletristy poslednego vremeni,” in Pro/Contra I, 52. First published in Vestnik Evropy 12 (1887): 766–76. 25 Iu.I. Aikhenvald, “Chekhov,” in Pro/Contra I, 753. 26 D.S. Merezhkovskii, “Staryi vopros po povodu novogo talanta,” in Pro/Contra I, 74. First published in Severnyi vestnik 11 (1888): 77–99. 27 A.D. Stepanov, “A.P. Chekhov kak zerkalo,” in Pro/Contra I, 988. 28 P.P. Pertsov, “Iz’iany tvorchestva,” in Pro/Contra I, 191. First published in Russkoe bogatstvo 1 (1893): 47–71. 29 In his first article on Chekhov, “Ob ottsakh i detiakh i o g-ne Chekhove,” Russkie vedomosti (1890): 104, Mikhailovskii’s disdain for what he saw as a lack of compassion and of a unifying idea in Chekhov is extended to include the entirety of the writer’s work prior to 1890: “Mr Chekhov dabbles a bit in cold-blooded writing and readers dabble a bit in coldblooded reading” (“s kholodnoi krov’iu popisyvaet, a chitatel’ s kholodnoi krov’iu pochityvaet”). Pro/Contra I, 86. The critic’s harsh disapproval of Chekhov’s reserve in “Sleepy” was echoed by others, such as, for example, I. Dzhonson who saw Chekhov’s authorial distance from the hardships of his child characters in “Van’ka” and “Sleepy” as akin to a “detached scholarly inquiry.” I. Dzhonson, “V poiskakh za pravdoi i smyslom zhizni (A.P. Chekhov),” in Pro/Contra I, 410. First published in Obrazovanie 12 (1903): 18–37. 30 Aikhenvald, “Chekhov,” 768. 31 Ibid., 761, 766. 32 E.A. Liatskii, “A.P. Chekhov i ego rasskazy,” in Pro/Contra I, 478. First published in Vestnik Evropy 1 (1904): 104–62. 33 Aikhenvald, “Chekhov,” 754.

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34 Ibid. According to Aikhenvald, Chekhov is able to convey “not only the way the child appears to us, but also the way we appear to the child.” 35 Ibid., 755. 36 See V.B. Shklovskii, “A.P. Chekhov,” in Pro/Contra II, 824–7. First published in V.B. Shklovskii, Zametki o proze russkikh klassikov (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1953); P.M. Bitsilli, “Tvorchestvo Chekhova. Opyt stilisticheskogo analiza,” in Pro/Contra II, 554, 566–7, 581, 599–608. First published in P.M. Bitsilli, Tvorchestvo Chekhova. Opyt stilisticheskogo analiza (Sophia: Sophia University Press, 1942); A.P. Chudakov, Poetika Chekhova (Moscow: Nauka, 1971). More recent and thought provoking discussions of Chekhov’s stories about children include Connor Doak’s inquiry into the notion of fatherhood in “What’s Papa For? Paternal Intimacy and Distance in Chekhov’s Early Stories,” seej 59, 1 (Winter 2015): 517–43; Nikita Nankov’s “Narrative Realms/Narrative Limits: Chekhov’s Story ‘At Home’ in the Context of Modernity,” seej 47, 3 (Autumn 2003): 441–69; and Elizabeth Ginzburg’s “Muzyka snov mezhdu vspyshkami lampady v rasskaze A.P. Chekhova ‘Spat’ khochetsia’: formy sinteza ili sinesteziia formy,” Russian Literature LII (2002): 379–418. 37 G.A. Bialyi, “K voprosu o russkom realizme kontsa XIX veka,” in Pro/Contra II: 730. First published in Trudy iubileinoi nauchnoi sessii LGU (Leningrad, 1946). 38 M.A. Kovaleva, “Tema detstva v tvorchestve A. Chekhova” in Trudy XI Vserossiiskoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii. Chast’ I. Khudozhestvennyi tekst: variant interpretatsii (Biisk, 2006), 261. D.A. Emets’s Proizvedeniia dlia detei i o detiakh v tvorchestve russkikh pisatelei vtoroi poloviny XIX veka (K.D. Ushinskii, L.N. Tolstoi, A.P. Chekhov, A.I. Kuprin) offers a useful if short bibliography of works in Russian prior to 2000, http://www.literatura1.narod.ru/texts2/posl _tr.html but does not include A.D. Stepanov’s brilliant discussion of The Steppe in his “K voprosu o Chekhovskom psikhologizme,” in Kul’turnoistoricheskii dialog: Traditsiia i tekst, eds. A.B. Muratova and S.B. Adon’eva (St Petersburg: St Petersburg University, 1993), 113–20. For a more recent and excellent entry, see L. Laponina, “Priem ostraneniia v rasskazakh A.P. Chekhova o detiakh,” in Molodye issledovateli Chekhova 5, eds. V.B. Kataev and R.B. Akhmetshin (Moscow: mgu, 2005), 126–32. A more traditional descriptive approach to the topic is found in A.K. Bazilevskaia, “Tema detstva v rasskazakh A.P. Chekhova,” Izvestiia Ural’skogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 4 (82): 2010, http://elar.urfu.ru/bitstream/10995/18651/1/iurg-2010-82-01.pdf. For a biography-based interpretation of Chekhov’s work on children, see Marina Zherdeva and Petr Dolzhenkov, “O chekhovskikh rasskazakh o detiakh,” in Molodye issledovateli Chekhova 5 (Moscow, 2005), 132–8.

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39 Formulated first by D.S. Likhachev in “Kontseptosfera russkogo iazyka,” Izvestiia ran 52, 1 (1993): 3–9. 40 L.V. Baskakova, “Kontsept ‘deti’,” in Kontseptosfera A.P. Chekhova, ed. N.V. Izotova (Rostov-na-Donu: Iufu, 2009), 346. 41 Ibid., 356. 42 Echoed by N. Kokluce in “Vzgliady A.P. Chekhova na vospitanie i rol’ khudozhestvennoi literatury v formirovanii kharaktera rebionka,” Vestnik Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo oblastnogo universiteta 2 (2018): 124–37. 43 Aikhenvald, “Chekhov,” 775. The quotation is from Dostoevsky’s The Idiot (1868–69). 44 “Iz detskikh let A. P. Chekhova,” in A.P. Chekhov v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov, 29–75. 45 7 January 1889. Letters, vol. 3, 131–3. 46 2 January 1889. Letters, vol. 3, 121–2. Chekhov’s views expressed in the letter echo Dostoevsky’s famous statement on children in his Diary of a Writer: “[W]e must not raise ourselves above children: we are worse than they are. And, if we teach them something to improve them, then they also improve us by means of their connection to us. Just by appearing among us, they humanize our souls. Thus we must treat them respectfully and respect their angelic image … and their innocence. [E]ven if they have faults, we still have to respect their impassiveness and their poignant defenselessness.” F.M. Dostoevsky, Sobranie sochinenii v 15-ti tomakh (Leningrad: Nauka, 1988–96), 13, 78. 47 A.P. Chekhov, “Ostrov Sakhalin,” Sobranie sochinenii v dvadtsati tomakh 10, 287, chapter 17 at http://www.my-chekhov.ru/public/002p.shtml. 48 An excerpt from A.P. Chekhov, “Avtobiografiia” (Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 16, 271–2), used by Rossolimo in his public lecture in a quote from Chekhov’s letter to him of 4 October 1899 and cited in Boris Eikhenabum, “O Chekhove,” in Pro/Contra II, 699. Published first in Vrachi, okonchivshie kurs v Mosovskom universitete v 1884—1899 gg. (Moscow, 1900), 12. 49 On G.A. Zakhar’in’s school of diagnostics, see Kataev, If We Could Only Know, ed. and trans. Harvey Pitcher (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), 91–8. 50 Eikhenbaum, “O Chekhove,” 699. For critical assessments that centre on Chekhov’s medical training, see, for example, Andrzej Dudek, “The Motif of Insanity in Chekhov’s Works: Literary Functions and Anthropological Connotations,” Chekhov 2004 Special issue, 1, Essays in Poetics: The Journal of the British Neo-Formalist Circle, vol. 30 (Autumn 2005): 60–74; D.A. Agapov, “Sotsial’naia psikhologiia marginal’nosti v izobrazhenii literatury (Na materiale rannego tvorchestva A.P. Chekhova)” (PhD dissertation, Samara State Peda-

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gogical University, 2004); M. Burno, “O psikhastenicheskom mirooshchushchenii A.P. Chekhova (v sviazi s rasskazom ‘Chernyi monakh,’” Moskovskii psikhologicheskii zhurnal 1, http://magazine.mospsy.ru/nomer1/burno1.shtml; Igor’ Sukhikh, “Agenty i patsienty doktora Chekhova,” Russkii zhurnal, http://magazines.russ.ru/zvezda/2004/7su9.html; Jefferson J.A. Gatrall, “The Paradox of Melancholy Insight: Reading the Medical Subtext in Chekhov’s ‘A Boring Story,’” Slavic Review 62, 2 (Summer 2003): 258–77; E.B. Meve, Meditsina v tvorchestve i zhizni A. P. Chekhova (Kiev: Zdorovia, 1989), 128–69; and A.P. Chudakov, “Chekhovskie obrazy i diagnostika,” Voprosy literatury 4 (1962): 211–15. Cathy Popkin provides an original and stimulating discussion of Chekhov and medicine in the context of Chekhov’s focus on epistemology in her “‘A Talent for Humanity’: Teaching Chekhov and the Medical Humanities,” in Approaches to Teaching the Works of Anton Chekhov, eds. Michael C. Finke and Michael Holquist (New York: mla, 2016), 151–62. As V.B. Kataev notes in his Proza Chekhova, 46. Lev Shestov’s infamous, if seemingly damning, characterization of Chekhov’s writing as the “creation from the void” (tvorhestvo iz nichego, literally “nothing” in Russian), ostensibly referring to Chekhov’s characters’ selfreinvention, equates Chekhov’s writing with creation ex nihilo and the writer with the creator. Lev Shestov’s article first appeared in Vestnik zhizni 3 (1905): 101–42. On the use of comic devices in Chekhov’s mature work see Nadya L. Peterson, “The Languages of Darling,” Canadian–American Slavic Studies 24, 2 (1990): 199–215. See also A.S. Melkova, “Tvorcheskaia sud’ba rasskaza ‘Dushechka,” in V tvorcheskoi laboratorii Chekhova (Moscow: Nauka, 1974), 78–97. The “collapse of communication” (proval kommunikatsii) is A.D. Stepanov’s key term. See Stepanov, Problemy kommunikatsii, 9–22. A.P. Skaftymov, “K voprosu o printsipakh postroeniia p’es A.P. Chekhova,” in Pro/Contra II, 810. First published in Uchenye zapiski Saratovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta vol. 20 (1948): 158–85. Stepanov, Problemy kommunikatsii, 396. The original is in English. The editing of the quote is mine. Ibid. As Kataev observed in If We Could Only Know, 56, 91–2. Andrey Shcherbenok offers an insightful reading of Chekhov based on this understanding in “‘Killing Realism’: Insight and Meaning in Anton Chekhov,” seej 54, 2 (2010): 297–316. Martha M.F. Kelly explores narrative modes and models of knowledge in Chekhov in her “The Art of Knowing: Music and Narrative in Two Chekhov Stories,” seej 56, 1 (Spring 2012): 38–55.

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58 Mathewson Jr, “Chekhov’s Legacy,” 106. 59 It is my belief that Chekhov’s reliance on the languages of his culture and the writer’s interest in epistemology are the essential features both of his early and mature work. Thus, in terms of Chekhov’s evolution as a writer, the view, described by Gary Saul Morson as “backshadowing” (in his Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time [New Haven and London: Yale U. Press, 1994], 118) or by Caryl Emerson as “foreshadowing after the fact” (in her “The Tolstoy Connection in Bakhtin,” in Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy’s Short Fiction, ed. Michael R. Katz [New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991], 338), is fully justified. For more on the continuity in Chekhov, see A.P. Chudakov, Mir Chekhova: Vozniknovenie i utverzhdenie (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel;, 1986), 7; I.N. Sukhikh, Problemy poetiki Chekhova (St Petersburg: St Petersburg University, 2007); T. Iu. Il’iukhina, Antosha Chekhonte, Makar Baldastov i drugie: uchebnoe posobie (Kemerovo: Kuzbassvuzizdat, 2002). 60 As Cynthia Marsh points out, quotations in Chekhov function “as a vehicle of both information and communication contributing to the richness of Chekhov’s subtext, the building of Chekhovian character and the establishment of the text’s relationship to the world at large.” See Cynthia Marsh, “The Implications of Quotation in Performance: Masha’s Lines from Pushkin in Chekhov’s ‘Three Sisters,’” seej 84, 3 (July 2006): 449. 61 P.F. Kapterev’s phrase. See Kapterev, Istoriia, 293. 62 As Riccardo Nicolosi demonstrates in Vyrozhdenie: Literatura i psikhiatriia v russkoi kul’ture kontsa XIX veka (Moscow: nlo, 2019). See also, Angela Brintlinger, “Writing about Madness: Russian Attitudes toward Psyche and Psychiatry, 1887–1907,” in Madness and the Mad in Russian Culture, eds Angela Brintlinger and Ilya Vinitsky, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 173–91; and K.A. Bogdanov, Vrachi, patsienty, chitateli: Patograficheskie teksty russkoi kul’tury XVIII–XIX vekov (Moscow: OGI, 2005). 63 As Turbin argues in “K fenomenologii.” A.D. Stepanov arrives at a similar conclusion in Problemy kommunikatsii. See also O.V. Ovcharskaia, “Ranniaia proza A.P. Chekhova v kontekste maloi pressy 1880-kh godov” (PhD dissertation, St Petersburg University, 2016), 57–8. 64 Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 1, 481–4. For an illuminating discussion of the genre of case histories in Russian psychiatry of the time, see Cathy Popkin, “Hysterical Episodes: Case Histories and Silent Subjects,” in Self and Story in Russian History, eds. Laura Engelstein and Stephanie Sandler (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 169–216. 65 Perhaps an ironic twist on Jane Austin’s opening in Pride and Prejudice: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

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Notes to pages 19–27

Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 1, 481. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Chekhov’s evocation of his characters’ psychoneuroses and of hypnosis as a part of diagnosis and therapy is clearly based on the writer’s familiarity with Charcot’s work, quite influential in Russia at the time. Theodor Billroth was a prominent Austrian surgeon who performed surgery on the poet Nekrasov. Ibid., 482. Ibid., 16, 272. Robert Louis Jackson, Reading Chekhov’s Text (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1993), 3. Cathy Popkin, “Introduction,” in Anton Chekhov’s Selected Stories, ed. Cathy Popkin (New York: W.W. Norton, 2014), 16–17. This is the approach attempted by Radislav Lapushin in his “Dew on the Grass”: The Poetics of Invetweenness in Chekhov (Bern: Peter Lang Publishing, 2010). For Lapushin, meaning in Chekhov’s texts emerges out of a fusion of multiple localized meanings continuously reconfigured on all levels. Parts of the introduction and chapters 4 and 5 appeared in a condensed and modified form in The Russian Review, October 2014. CHAPTER ONE

1 The epigraph to the chapter comes from P.M. Bitsilli, “Tvorchestvo Chekhova: Opyt stilisticheskogo analiza,” in A.P. Chekhov: Pro et Contra: Lichnost’ i tvorchestvo A.P. Chekhova v russkoi mysli XX veka (1914-1960), ed. I. N. Sukhikh (St Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Russkoi khristianskoi gumanitarnoi akademii, 2010), 458–86. (Henceforth Pro/Contra II.) 528. Chekhov’s letter to A.S. Suvorin of 27 March 1894, Letters, 283–4, refers to Tolstoy’s influence. On Tolstoy and Chekhov, see V. Lakshin, Tolstoi i Chekhov (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1963), still the definitive work on the subject. A two-volume expanded version of the study appeared as Tolstoi i Chekhov (Moscow: Moskovskie uchebniki, 2009). 2 M.P. Gromov, Kniga o Chekhove (Moscow: Sovremennik, 1989), at http://apchekhov.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000021/st000.shtml, 119–21 (online version). 3 See, for example, Viktoriia Koroleva, “‘Step’ Chekhova i ‘Poshekhonskaia starina’ M.E. Saltykova-Shchedrina” in Molodye issledovateli Chekhova 3 ed. R.B. Akhmetshin (Moscow: mgu, 1998), 192–6. 4 Chekhov’s letter to A.S. Suvorin of early May 1889 (Letters, vol. 3, 201–2). On Goncharov’s influence see also V.B. Kataev, ed., A.P. Chekhov: Entsiklopediia,

Notes to pages 28–30

5

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(Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 2011), 428–9. More on Chekhov and Goncharov in Mikhail Timonin, “Taina tain v povesti Chekhova ‘Step,’” in Molodye issledovateli 3, 188–92. For a definitive work on children in Dostoevsky in English, see William Rowe, Dostoevsky: Child and Man (New York: nyu Press, 1968). See also Elizabeth Cheresh Allen, “Dostoevsky’s Orphan Text: Netochka Nezvanova,” in Before They Were Titans, ed. Elizabeth Cheresh Allen (Brighton, MS: Academic Studies Press, 2015), 115–50; Anne Hruska, “The Sins of Children in The Brothers Karamazov: Serfdom, Hierarchy, and Transcendence,” Christianity and Literature 54, 4 (Summer 2005): 471–95; and Robin Feuer Miller, “Children,” in Dostoevsky in Context, eds. Deborah A. Martinsen and Olga Maiorova (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 139–47. Andrew Baruch Wachtel, The Battle for Childhood: Creation of a Russian Myth (Standford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 95. Ronald D. LeBlanc, “Food, Orality, and Nostalgia for Childhood: Gastronomic Slavophilism in Midnineteenth-Century Russian Fiction,” The Russian Review 58, 2 (April 1999): 246. Dostoevsky’s friend, the poet A.N. Maikov in a letter to his sons calls Dostoevsky’s children “little Fyodor Mikhailoviches.” See “Iz neizdannykh pisem A.N. Maikova o Dostoevskom (Publikatsiia I.G. Iampol’skogo),” Dostoevskii. Materialy i issledovaniia 4 (Leningrad, 1980): 280. As M. Epstein and E. Iukina point out, the child in Dostoevsky is “both a Christian symbol of sainthood and a demonic creature ready to defy all Christian values.” See “Obrazy detstva,” Novyi mir 12 (1979): 247. For a discussion of Dostoevsky’s suffering children, based on the cognitive approach of conceptosphere, see N.A. Azarenko, “Kontsept stradanie kak osnovnoi reprezentant temy detstva v tvorchestve F. M. Dostoevskogo,” Voprosy kognitivnoi lingvistiki 2 (2010): 48–53. On the myth of the golden age of childhood in Dostoevsky, see A.V. Babuk, “Transformatsiia mifa detstva v tvorchestve F.M. Dostoevskogo: fenomenologicheskii aspect,” Ural’skii filologicheskii vestnik 5 (2014): 35–43. V.S. Pushkareva makes the key observation that, in comparison with Tolstoy or Chekhov, “the child’s point of view is absolute [in Dostoevsky]; it is not specific, there is nothing to compare it with” in “Sochetanie detskoi i vzrosloi tochek zreniia v formirovanii khudozhestvennogo tselogo,” in Literaturnoe proizvedenie kak tseloe i problemy ego analiza, ed. N.D. Tamarchenko (Kemerovo: Kemerovo State University, 1979), 174. Wachtel, The Battle for Childhood, 2. Ibid., 46. Dobroliubov, “Chto takoe Oblomovshchina?,” Otechestvennye zapiski (1859):

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1–4. For an illuminating discussion of Dobroliubov’s work in sociocultural terms, see George Harjan, “Dobroliubov’s ‘What is Oblomovism?’: An Interpretation,” Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue Canadienne des Slavistes 18, 3 (1976): 284–92. Bella Grigoryan, Noble Subjects: The Russian Novel and the Gentry, 1762–1861 (DeKalb, il: Northern Illinois University Press, 2018), 100. One of the central points of Milton Ehre’s volume on Goncharov’s novel. See Milton Ehre, Oblomov and His Creator: The Life and Art of Ivan Goncharov (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973). As Galya Diment points out in Goncharov’s Oblomov: A Critical Companion, Galya Diment (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 30. Wachtel, The Battle, 46. Ibid., 43. For a detailed analysis of Tolstoy’s trilogy in terms of Rousseau’s ideas, see Carol Anschuetz, “The Young Tolstoi and Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality,” The Russian Review 39, 4 (1980): 401–25. Ibid., 27. Ben Wiegers, The Child and the Childlike in Russian Narrative Literature (1850–1935) (Düren and Maastricht: Shaker Publishing, 2000), 66. Ibid., 84. Discussed at some length in Robin Feuer Miller, “The Creative Impulse in Childhood: The Dangerous Beauty of Games, Lies, Betrayal, and Art,” 155–6. Feuer Miller centres her discussion of Tolstoy’s Childhood on his character’s creative imagination in ibid., 153–92. “Starat’sia budem uteshat’/I liubim, kak rodnuiu mat’,” L.N. Tolstoy, Sobranie sochinenii v dvadtsati tomakh, eds. N.N. Akopova et al (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1960), vol. 1, 66. Ibid., 57. As Leslie O’Bell points out, the child’s indignation betrays a clear understanding of the social hierarchy since only the nobility could be offended by such treatment, having been exempted from corporal punishment in the previous century. See Leslie O’Bell, “Tolstoy Revisits ‘Childhood,’” The Slavic and East European Journal 58, 4 (Winter 2014): 598–9. Full article 590–605. For more on the issue of class structure and emancipation in Tolstoy, see Anne Hruska, “Love and Slavery: Serfdom, Emancipation, and Family in Tolstoy’s Fiction,” The Russian Review 66, 4 (October 2007), 627–46. Hruska’s “Loneliness and Social Class in Tolstoy’s Trilogy Childhood, Boyhood, Youth,” The Slavic and East European Journal 44, 1 (Spring, 2000): 64–78, offers a convincing case for viewing Nikolen’ka’s actions as a result of insecurities related to the perception of his social position as ambiguous. Tolstoy, Sobranie, 45.

Notes to pages 35–46

26 27 28 29 30 31 32

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Ibid., 53. Ibid. Ibid., 84. Ibid. Ibid., 99. Robin Feuer Miller places the scene in the context of literary influences, in particular that of Dickens’s David Copperfield, “The Creative,” 173–8. Feuer Miller, “The Creative,” 155. Feuer Miller convincingly argues for a darker reading of the work “than either Wachtel [in Battle] or Orwin [Donna Tussing Orwin in The Consequences of Consciousness: Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007)] describe.” Feuer Miller, 180n4. I have to disagree with Carol Anschuetz’s assertion, in “The Young Tolstoi and Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality,” The Russian Review 39, 4 (1980): 412, that with his mother’s death Tolstoy’s child “mourns the loss of the state in which he once knew no grief.” Isabelle Naginski, “Tolstoy’s ‘Childhood’: Literary Apprenticeship and Autobiographical Obsession,” Ulbandus Review 2, 2 (Fall 1982): 194. On Aksakov’s essays on fishing and hunting as a laboratory for the creation of his literary style, see Aleksandr Churkin, “Memuarno-avtobiograficheskaia proza S.T. Aksakova: problemy poetiki” (Ph.D. dissertation, spgu, St Petersburg, 2013), 36–51. Sergey Aksakov, Semeinaia khronika, Detskie gody Bagrova-vnuka, Vospominaniia (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1973), 224. Andrew R. Durkin, Sergei Aksakov and Russian Pastoral (New Brunswick, nj: Rutgers University Press, 1983), 187–9, 191. Ibid., 190–3. For more on socialization within the family in Aksakov, see V.V. Sal’nikova, “Rol’ sem’i v vospitaniii lichnosti rebenka (na materiale proizvedeniia S.T. Aksakova ‘Detskie gody Bagrova-vnuka’),” Psycho-pedagogical Problems of a Personality and Social Interaction: Materials of the V International Scientific Conference (Prague, 2014): 111–14. Aksakov, Semeinaia, 318. Ibid., 350. For an illuminating discussion of Sergey’s passion for reading in the context of the child’s development of a social self, see Grigoryan, Noble Subjects, 130–3. In Durkin’s summation, in Years, the child’s relationship with the physical world progresses from the beginning of perception itself through awareness of nature, to a relation with nature based on a distinction of the natural and

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the human. According to the critic, in the process, the aesthetic element of the child’s perception becomes more and more localized in nature and nature alone retains aesthetic potential. Durkin, Sergei Aksakov, 200. Aksakov, Semeinaia, 449. Ibid., 405. Ibid., 286. Durkin, Sergei Aksakov, 206. “Restorying” is Cathy Popkin’s term in her “‘A Talent for Humanity’: Teaching Chekhov and the Medical Humanities,” in Approaches to Teaching the Works of Anton Chekhov, eds. Michael C. Finke and Michael Holquist (New York: mla, 2016), 151–62. As Durkin observes, the fairy-tale imagery of the first two chapters is indicative of infantile categories of perception that highlight Sergey’s view of himself as “the helpless and abandoned victim of overwhelmingly powerful hostile forces,” miraculously rescued from his sad fate. Durkin, Sergei Aksakov, 174. LeBlanc, “Food, Orality, and Nostalgia for Childhood,” 246. Wachtel, The Battle, 4. Also evident in other autobiographical writings by sons of priests (popovichi) like Pomialovskii, discussed at length in Laurie Manchester, Holy Fathers, Secular Sons: Clergy, Intelligentsia, and the Modern Self in Revolutionary Russia (DeKalb, il: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008). I.N. Sukhikh uses the expression the “physiology of feeling” (fiziologiia chuvstva) in his discussion of death in Chekhov’s work. See I.N. Sukhikh, “’Smert’ geroiia’ v mire Chekhova,” in Chekhoviana: stat’i, publikatsii, esse, ed. V. Ia. Lakshin (Moscow: Nauka, 1990), 65–76. On the “poetics of voyeurism” see Michael Finke, Seeing Chekhov: Life and Art (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 2005), 12. On the differences between Tolstoy and Chekhov in their approach to psychological portrayal see Lakshin, Tolstoi i Chekhov, 524–68; See also S.D. Abramovitch, “Chekhovskii psikhologizm i traditsii L.N. Tolstogo,” in Tolstovskii sbornik: Etika i estetika, ed. G.A. Nerushenko (Tula: Tula State Pedagogical University, 1992), 125–32; and V.B. Kataev, Literaturnye sviazi Chekhova: Napravlenie spora, http://apchekhov.ru/books/item/f00/s00 /z0000017/st007.shtml. On Chekhov’s range in characters see Gromov, Kniga, 119. On Chekhov’s social range as compared to Tolstoy see Lakshin, Tolstoi i Chekhov, 292–300. On the opposition of “dom” and “mir’ as one of the organizing thematic principles in Chekhov see A.S. Sobennikov, “Oppozitsiia Dom-Mir v khudozhestvennoi aksiologii A.P. Chekhova i traditsiia russkogo romana” in

Notes to page 54

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Chekhoviana: Chekhov i ego okruzhenie, 144–9 at http://chekhoved.ru/index .php/library/articles/172-2011-06-23-09-26-31. CHAPTER T WO

1 I.Ia. Grot, Zhurnal Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia, XCVIII, 7, 176. The educational reforms of the first half of the nineteenth century were initially inspired by the Enlightenment model of compulsory general education accessible to all (except the serfs). Yet in practice the model was characterized by a rigid social and gender stratification and a hierarchical approach to educational content (classical vs utilitarian). For a succinct summary of reforms in secondary education, see Larisa Zakharova, Iulia Orlova, “Klassicheskaia gimnaziia,” http/www.voskres.ru/school/gymnaz.htm. 2 The Russian word vospitanie (translated throughout as “[guided/affective] rearing”) encompasses both child rearing and schooling and refers to the overall process of upbringing as guided maturation. Obrazovanie is used for formal education and obuchenie is a narrower term signifying the instructional process, distinctions I try to accommodate wherever possible. On the goals of popular education in the postemancipation period see Ben Eklof, Russian Peasant Schools: Officialdom, Village Culture, and Popular Pedagogy, 1861–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 1–16. 3 Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet scholars have paid a lot of attention to Ushinsky’s pedagogy and continue to do so. There has been very little done in Western scholarship on Ushinsky, however. Nicholas Hans has a chapter on Ushinsky in his 1963 The Russian Tradition in Education (London: Routledge & Keagan Paul, Ltd.) and is also the author of an article on Ushinsky in the context of comparative education. Catriona Kelly briefly mentions Ushinsky’s revival in the Soviet Union of the 1940s in her Children’s World: Growing Up in Russia, 1890–1991 (London: Yale University Press, 2007). Tolstoy’s thoughts on education are the primary topics of Ruth Meyer Gufee’s 1980 Yale University doctoral dissertation “The Yasnaya Polyana School 1859-1862. Its Place in Leo Tolstoy’s Development as a Writer and Thinker” and of Daniel Murphy’s monograph, Tolstoy and Education (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1992). Some of Tolstoy’s Yasnaya Polyana articles were translated by Alan Pinch for Tolstoy on Education: Tolstoy’s educational writings 1861–62 (Vancouver: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1982), the volume that also contains Michael Armstrong’s thoughtful essay on the writer’s experiments with pedagogy (29–64). I am not aware of any substantial scholarship that examines Ushinsky’s and Tolstoy’s views on education in their dialogical relationship.

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4 Sally Shuttleworth, The Mind of the Child: Child Development in Literature, Science, and Medicine, 1840–1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 4. 5 The Russian word rabskaia (slavish) is formed from the word rab (slave) that commonly signified serf in the parlance of the time. Like Nekrasov’s poem in the epigraph, Chekhov’s letter to A.S. Suvorin of 7 January 1889 (http://feb-web.ru/feb/chekhov/texts/sp0/pi3/pi3-1313.htm) also invokes this particular meaning of the word. 6 See, for example, P.F. Kapterev’s use of “development of humanness” (razvitie chelovechnosti) to describe the period’s educational goals in Kapterev, Istoriia russkoi pedagogii (St Petersburg: Aleteia, 2004), 279. 7 Max J. Okenfuss and V.O. Kliuchevskii, “V.O. Kliuchevskii on Childhood and Education in Early Modern Russia,” History of Education Quarterly 17, 4 (1977): 423. For a succinct summary of Russian schooling before the Great Reforms, see Eklof, Russian Peasant Schools, 19–49. 8 The peasants’ essential backwardness or putative wholesomeness in their everyday lives or in their dealings with the reforming culture of the time have been the topic of some scholarly debate in recent years. See, for example, among others, Yanni Kotsonis, Making Peasant Backward: Agricultural Cooperatives and the Agrarian Question in Russia, 1861–1914 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999) or Ilya V. Gerasimov, “On the Limitations of a Discursive Analysis of ‘Experts and Peasants,’” Jahrbucher Fur Geschichte Osteuropas, Neue Folge, Bd. 52, H. 2 (2004): 261–73; and more recently, Igor Narskij, “Intellectuals as Missionaries: the Liberal Opposition in Russia and Their Notion of Culture,” Studies in East European Thought 62, No. ¾, Crossing Boundaries: Russian Discourses on Culture (November 2010): 331–52. 9 The customary division into three major periods of the life cycle (childhood, adulthood, and old age) rested upon popular attitudes about human biology and was imbedded within a broad range of cultural assumptions and social roles. The initiation of children into some kind of work that would prepare them for adult responsibilities was viewed as the central goal of child rearing. For more on this, see M.M. Gromyko, Mir russkoi derevni (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1991); T.A Bernshtam, Molodezh v obriadovoi zhizni russkoi obshchiny XIX-nachala XX veka (Leningrad: Nauka, 1988); A.Ia. Gurevich, Srednevekovyi mir: kul’tura bezmolstvuiushchego bol’shinstva (Moscow: Iskustvo, 1990); and also I.I. Shangina, Russkie deti i ikh igry (St Petersburg: Iskusstvo, 2000). 10 The rituals of socialization were preceded by a specifically understood practice of humanizing the child: literally making the newborn’s body appear human to the world outside. On the practice of humanizing the newborn (sculpting the infant’s body, pridaniia emu nuzhnoi formy), see A.K. Baiburin,

Notes to pages 55–6

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“Poliarnosti v rituale (tverdoe i miagkoe)” in Poliarnost’ v kul’ture, ed. V.E. Bagno and T.A. Novichkova (St Petersburg: ran, 1996), 158–9 and A.K. Baiburin, “Ritual: mezhdu biologicheskim i sotsial’nym,” in Fol’klor i etnograficheskaia deistvitel’nost’, ed. A.K. Baiburing (St Petersburg: Nauka, 1992), 18–28. For a concise and informative summary, see Aleksandr Panchenko, “Otnoshenie k detiam v russkoi traditsionnoi kul’ture,” Otechestvennye zapiski 3 (2004): 6 (pagination from the electronic source: http://www.strana -oz.ru/2004/3/otnoshenie-k-detyam-v-russkoy-tradicionnoy-kulture). Okenfuss and Kliuchevskii, “V.O. Kliuchevskii,” 426. Ibid., 425. Kapterev, Istoriia, 23. On corporal punishment in the Russian school and family, see, Ben Eklof, “Worlds in Conflict: Patriarchal Authority, Discipline and the Russian School, 1861–1914,” in School and Society in Tsarist and Soviet Russia, ed. Ben Eklof (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993), 95–120. On peasant mores, see David Ransel, Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). On peasant childhood, see, Shangina, Russkie deti i ikh igry. Belinsky, “Podarok na Novyi god. Dve skazki Gofmana, dlia bol’shikh i malen’kikh detei. Detskie skazki dedushki Irineiia.” First published in Otechestvennye zapiski 9, (1840): 1–36. (http://az.lib.ru/b/belinskij_w_g/text _1900.shtml, 8 [pagination from the electronic source]). The quote has entered the Russian language as a maxim and has been widely used as a theme of Soviet and post-Soviet school compositions, albeit without the part about the tsar and his servant. Ibid., 9 (pagination from the electronic source). I am referring to Rousseau’s maxim: “Plants are improved by cultivation and men by education.” Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile or Concerning Education, trans. Eleanor Worthington (Boston: D.C. Health and Co., 1889), 12. Belinsky, “Ocherki Borodinskogo srazheniia (Vospominaniia o 1812 gode), Otechestvennye zapiski 7, 12 (1839): 4, http://az.lib.ru/b/belinskij_w_g/text _2240.shtml (pagination from the electronic source). Belinsky, “Podarok,” 4 (pagination from the electronic source). Like Belinsky, the influential educators discussed here saw the language, culture, and religion of the Great Russians (velikorossy) as the “civilizing tool” in need of nurturing and preservation. For a brief summary of current research on the issue of imperial school politics among the ethnic minority, see Dorena Caroli, “Russian and Soviet schooling: educational legacies, institutional reforms and national identities,” History of Education and Children’s Literature 3, 1 (2008): 291–3.

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20 Pirogov, “Novosel’e litseiia” (1856), in Russkaia pedagogika. Opyt istorikopedagogicheskoi khrestomatii, ed. M.I. Demkov (Moscow: K.I. Tikhomirov, 1915), 141. 21 Kapterev, Istoriia, 309–12, 364–70; A.A. Nikol’skaia, “Rol’ N.I. Pirogova v russkoi pedgagogicheskoi psikhologii,” 4–10, http://www.voppsy.ru/issues /1982/821/821127.htm (pagination from the electronic source). 22 In N.A. Dobroliubov’s view, no other pedagogical article of the time had the success of Pirogov’s “Questions of Life,” “astonishing all with its illuminating perspective, noble direction of thought, with a fiery lively exploration and the creative exposition of the issue.” (Dobroliubov, “O znachenii avtoriteta v vospitanii,” Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v shesti tomakhi, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1934–41), 13. Chernyshevsky commented: “[the article is] a beautiful and decisive expression of such sensible convictions” (Chernyshevsky, “Zametki o zhurnalakh,” Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v 15 tomakh, vol. 3 (Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1939–53), 689. In Ushinsky’s view, “Pirogov’s ideas awakened the pedagogical thought of the time: the demand to see humanity as the basic principle of education, not only as a philosophical principle, but as the demand for sensible pedagogy based on psychology” (Ushinsky, “Pedagogicheskie sochineniia N.I. Pirogova,” Sobranie sochinenii v 11 tomakh, vol. 3 (Moscow– Leningrad: Akademiia pedagogicheskikh nauk rsfsr, 1948–52), 11. 23 For an exhaustive and valuable biography of Ushinsky, see V.Ia. Struminskii, Ocherki zhizni i deiatel’nosti K.D. Ushinskogo (Moscow: Uchpedgiz, 1960). 24 Ushinsky’s emphasis. Chelovek kak predmet vospitaniia. Opyt pedagogicheskoi antropologii, vol.1, Introduction. http://dugward.ru/library/pedagog/ushinskiy _chelovek1.html, 12 (pagination from the electronic source). 25 Kapterev, Istoriia, 313. 26 On Russian Orthodoxy as the basis for education, see Ushinsky, “O nravstvennom elemente v russkom vospitanii,” Sobranie sochinenii v 11 tomakh, vol. 2 (Moscow–Leningrad: Akademiia pedagogicheskikh nauk rsfsr, 1948–52, 1948–52), 468. 27 Kniga dlia uchashchikh: Sovety roditeliam i nastavnikam o prepodavanii rodnogo iazyka po uchebniku “Rodnoe slovo.” 28 Ushinsky, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 8 (Moscow–Leningrad: Akademiia pedagogicheskikh nauk rsfsr, 1948–52, 1950), 32. 29 Ushinsky himself pointed to the uniqueness of his book in the field of pedagogy (Chelovek, Introduction), 7 (electronic source). Many of Ushinsky’s contemporaries concurred. See Ushinsky, Sobranie sochinenii v 11 tomakh, vol. 9, (Moscow–Leningrad: Akademiia pedagogicheskikh nauk rsfsr, 1948–52, 1950), 593–620. See also on this point, E.D. Dneprov, Ushinskii i sovremen-

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nost’ (Moscow: guvshe, 2007), 62. http://old.gnpbu.ru/downloads/free _books/Ushinskiy_and_contemporaneity.pdf The third volume of Pedagogical Anthropology was meant to include pedagogical rules for practical teaching but was not completed. Ushinsky’s sources for the first two volumes include the work of the most influential physiologists, psychologists, and philosophers of education, such as, for example, Aristotle, Emmanuel Kant, John Locke, Claude Bernard, Johann Friedrich Herbart, Johannes Peter Müller (his Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen read by Ushinsky in French as Manuel de Physiologie), Friedrich Eduard Beneke, Theodor Schwann, Alexander Bain (The Intellect and the Senses), Charles Darwin, Wilhelm Wundt (Vorlesungen uber die Menschen und Thierseele), Carl Ludwig, Justus von Liebig, Jacob Friedrich Fries (Die Psychische Anthropologie), Thomas Reid, and others. Reading most of his sources in the original, Ushinsky was able to provide synopses of relatively recent works, such as Wilhelm Wundt’s Vorlesungen (1863–64). Labelled “eclectic” by most contemporary critics, Ushinsky’s Pedagogical Anthropology relies mostly on the ideas developed by evolutionary associationism. For the contemporaries’ views on the book, see Ushinsky, Sobranie sochinenii v 11 tomakh 9: 593–620. Ushinsky, Chelovek, (electronic source), vol. 1, chapter 13, 159–69. Ibid., chapter 32, 378–80. The German pedagogue Karl Schmidt’s “Letters to a Mother about Physical and Spiritual Rearing of her Children” (“Letters k materi o fizicheskom i dukhovnom vospitanii eio detei”), first appeared in 1858 and was published in Zhurnal Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia nos. 9–12 (1861) in Ushinsky’s translation. Schmidt was widely known as a “pedagogical anthropologist.” His ideas on the correct approach to education bear striking similarities to Ushinsky’s model. See Arkhiv Ushinskogo, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1961), 110–248. In the twentieth century, Ushinsky’s idea of active cognition (already prominent in Schmidt’s “Letters”) led to the emergence of the activity theory (deiatel’nostnyi podkhod) as well as to the theory (also presaged in Shmidt’s work) of developing education (razvivaiushchee vospitanie) exploring the psychologically grounded guidance of mental development in children. Ushinsky, Chelovek 1, (electronic source), 142. Ushinsky, “Problemy pedagogiki,” in Izbrannye trudy v 4 knigakh, vol. 1 (Moscow: Drofa, 2005), 498. Such as, for example, “O pol’ze pedagogicheskoi literatury,” Zhurnal dlia vospitaniia 1; “Tri elementa shkoly” in 3; and “On the “O narodnosti v

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obshchestvennom vospitanii” in 7–8 (1857). Ushinsky’s educational worldview and his approach to writing for children effectively was also aided by the regular practice of submitting reviews and synopses of foreign works on education for Sovremennik and Biblioteka dlia chteniia (1852–56). Ushinsky, “O pervonachal’nom prepodavanii russkogo iazyka,” Pedagogicheskii sbornik 1–2 (1864). In the foreword to Rodnoe slovo, Ushinsky outlines the following learning outcomes for the first year of study: sensible and logical presentation of thought in speaking; reading the age-appropriate material fluently and with understanding; ability to compute mentally and out loud; knowledge of the first four rules of arithmetic; ability to recite about twenty to thirty poems by heart and to summarize about the same number of stories; ability to record a short sentence in writing without major mistakes and with correct punctuation; knowledge of about twenty to thirty stories from the Bible; drawing of simple objects; and the ability to draw and read a map of his/her house, street, town, or village. The most important learning outcome for Ushinsky is the student’s ability to concentrate and evidence of his desire to learn. K.D. Ushinsky, Pedagogicheskie sochineniia v shesti tomakh, vol. 4, (Moscow: Pedagogika, 1989), 10. Elsewhere Ushinsky explains his rationale for visual teaching thus, “But the child, we might say, generally thinks in shapes, colours, sounds and perceptions, and it would be futile to force the child to think otherwise. Therefore, by focusing on shapes, colours and sounds in early childhood education, by making it most accessible to the child’s senses, we make our teaching accessible to the child and enter the world of the child’s thought at the same time.” Izbrannye trudy v 4 knigakh, vol 2 (Moscow: Drofa, 2005), 248. Ushinsky, Izbrannye Trudy, vol. 4, 217. Ibid., 482. Ibid., 216–17. Ushinsky, Pedagogicheskie sochineniia, vol. 4, 48. Kapterev, Istoriia, 434. My emphasis. The point is made in the manual that concludes Rodnoe slovo, “Rukovodstvo k prepodavaniiu po Rodnomu slovu,” Sobranie sochinenii v 11 tomakh 7 (Moscow–Leningrad, 1949): 243. Ushinsky, Pedagogicheskiie sochineniia, vol. 4, 64. Ibid., 65. Ibid., 62–3. Ibid., 56. Ushinsky makes his apologies in relation to his translations of German poetry for children in The Native Word. Pedagogicheskie Sochineniia, vol. 4, 67.

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50 Ibid., 147 51 S. Voronov, A.D. Galakhov, F. Toll’ in Ushinsky, Sobranie sochinenii v 11-ti tomakh (Moscow–Leningrad, 1948–50): 526–39 (“Retsenzii na ‘Detskii mir’”). 52 “Ob obshchestvennoi deiatel’nosti na poprishche narodnogo obrazovaniia,” Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 8. Pedagogicheskie stat’i 1860–63 gg. (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1936). Tolstoy’s critique of Ushinsky appears at 279–92. All of the references to Yasnaya Polyana essays come from the above edition. 53 Boris Eikhenbaum in particular points to the affinity of Tolstoy’s views on the ideal social dynamic for Russia with those of the German populist historian and writer Wilhelm Riehl who saw the landowning and peasant classes as the guardian elements in society. Eikhenbaum identifies Berthold Auerbach’s novel Neues Leben (1852) as the source of inspiration for Tolstoy’s practical pedagogical activity. See Eikhenbaum, Tolstoi in the Sixties (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1982), 33–5; 23–8. Ruth Meyer Gufee’s 1980 Yale University doctoral dissertation “The Yasnaya Polyana School 1859–1862. Its Place in Leo Tolstoy’s Development as a Writer and Thinker” devotes chapters 5 and 6 to the discussion of Rousseau’s influence on Tolstoy’s approach to education. Gufee, 104–274. 54 Tolstoy, “O narodnom,” 24. 55 Tolstoy, “Obrazovanie i vospitanie,” 213. 56 Tolstoy, “Vospitanie,”217. 57 Tolstoy, “Progress i opredelenie obrazovaniia,” 344. 58 Tolstoy, “Vospitanie,” 241. 59 Tolstoy, “O narodnom,” 5, 11, 13. 60 Tolstoy’s thinking on educational matters at the time is closely aligned with that of his fictional character, Levin. As Gary Saul Morson notes in his book on Anna Karenina, “[successful] reform requires knowing existing conditions intimately. It demands attentive ‘presentness’ to changing circumstances. Success depends on phronesis, practical reasoning, and metis, cleverness and resourcefulness, but not episteme, abstract theoretical reasoning. Practical wisdom is case-based, and its results are haphazard and messy … [Reform] demands intelligence that does not aim at total solutions, never undertakes change just to change, and refuses to favor one solution over another because it looks neater.” Morson, Anna Karenina in Our Time (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 160. 61 Tolstoy, “Iasno-polianskaia,” 112. 62 In his article on Tolstoy’s pedagogy, Elliott Mossman reduces the writer’s arguments to two principles: 1. authority and education are incompatible; 2.

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peasants know how to define knowledge. See Mossman, “Tolstoi and Peasant Learning in the Era of Great Reforms” in School and Society in Tsarist and Soviet Russia, ed. Ben Eklof, Stephen White and Morten Frederiksen (London, UK: Palgrave MacMillan, 1993), 44. Tolstoy, “Iasno-polianskaia shkola za noiabr’ i dekabr’ mesiatsy,” 62. Ibid., 58. Tolstoy, “O narodnom,” 13, 15. Tolstoy, “Vospitanie,” 219–20. Ibid., 23–4. Ibid., 14. On Tolstoy’s role as the sole arbiter of the educational process, see Ilya Vinitsky, “Tolstoy’s Lessons: Pedagogy as Salvation,” in Before They Were Titans: Essays on the Early Works of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, ed. Elizabeth Allen Cheresh (Boston and Brighton, ma: Academic Studies Press, 2015), 304–6. N.G. Chernyshevsky, “Iasnaia Poliana. Shkola: (Zhurnal pedagogicheskii, izdavaemyi gr. L. N. Tolstym. Moskva. 1862); Iasnaia Poliana. Knizhki dlia detei (Knizhka 1-ia i 2-ia),” Sovremennik 3 (1866). L N. Tolstoi v russkoi kritike, 2nd edition, ed. S.P. Bychkov (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1952), 119. http://feb-web.ru/feb/tolstoy/critics/trk/trk-112-.htm. Ibid., 128. Ibid. The polemic with Sovremennik continued on the pages of Yasnaya Polyana’s seventh issue. Sovremennik responded and other journals, such as Vremia, Russkii vestnik, and Severnaia pochta, became involved. See more on the debate in Eikhenbaum, Tolstoi in the Sixties, 55–66. Tolstoy, “Komu u kogo uchit’sia pisat’, krest’ianskim rebiatam u nas, ili nam u krest’ianskikh rebiat,” 321. Ibid., 322. Ibid., 316–17. Ibid., 321. Tolstoy, “Ob obshchestvennoi,” 268. Ibid., 281. Ibid. My emphasis. Ibid., 283. Ibid., 285. As Eikhenbaum notes in relation to Tolstoy’s pedagogy in the 1860s, “[in] his enthusiasm for teaching peasant children there was an entirely unique nuance, very personal and in many respects directly opposed to widespread views about the problems and methods of primary education in the countryside. For Tolstoy, this work was the solution not so much a social problem as the problem of his own life – the problem of his social ethics. It therefore

Notes to pages 70–3

83 84 85 86

87 88 89 90 91

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had a very special emotional and moral significance for him.” Eikhenbaum, Tolstoi in the Sixties, 23. Cited from Ushinsky, Sobranie sochinenii v 11 tomakh, vol. 5 (Moscow–Leningrad, 1848–50), 547. My emphasis. Ibid. Tolstoy, “Progress,” 337–42. In their analysis of various editions of Children’s World, V.G. Bezrogov and M.V. Tendriakova demonstrate the essential difference between the first (1861) and subsequent versions of the book, with the sixth edition (1865) determined by the scholars to be definitive. If the first edition of the textbook was designed as a pedagogical manual for teachers and parents whose role was to guide the child on his or her path to learning, subsequent editions were emphatically child centred, prompting the child to assume initiative and engage in active learning. See, V.G. Bezrogov, M.V. Tendriakova, “Iasnyi vzgliad na detskii mir: pervye gody ‘Detskogo mira’ Ushinskogo,” Vestnik pstgu iv: Pedagogika. Psikhologiia 2014, vyp. 2 (33): 83–101. First published in Syn otechestva 18, (1861). Ushinsky, Sobranie sochinenii v 11ti tomakh, vol. 2 (Moscow–Leningrad, 1948), 251. My emphasis. Ibid., 253. Ibid., 250. Tolstoy, Sobranie sochinenii v 22-kh tomakh, vol. 15 (Moscow, 1983): 330–4. Catherine Evtuhov, Portrait of a Russian Province: Economy, Society, and Civilization in Nineteenth-Century Nizhnii Novgorod (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011). Mossman, “Tolstoi and Peasant Learning,” 40. Vinitsky, “Tolstoy’s Lessons,” 308. The negative reception of the work must have been particularly wounding, since in his letter to F.A. Strakhov of 17 December 1872 Tolstoy declared his pride of authoring Azbuka in this fashion: “I erected a monument (Tolstoy’s emphasis) with this ‘Azbuka,’” an obvious allusion to Horace’s Exegi monumentum in Gavrila Derzhavin’s and Pushkin’s renditions. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v 90-kh tomakh, vol. 61, 349. See more on Tolstoy’s work on the primers in Boris Eikhenbaum, Lev Tolstoi: semidesiatye gody (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1960), 9–88. In his critique of Tolstoy’s Azbuka, P.N. Polevoi included the following list of negatives: the absence of a manual for teachers; terrible paper, graphics, and quality of print; the book’s excessive price (two rubles); the advantages of Tolstoy’s method for teaching reading not clearly articulated and the claimed results unbelievable; the poor selection and arrangement of the material on history; the incongruity of the material on life sciences with the

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presumed level of competency; and the limited exposition of Old Church Slavonic grammar. Peterburgskie vedomosti (1 December 1872): 330. Even harsher was an anonymous review that appeared in Vestnik Evropy 1 (1873). The reviewer noted the absence of a manual for educators, deemed the book too expensive, overly didactic, and characterized by “weepy sentimentality.” Moreover, Tolstoy’s aural method was judged to be wrong, the book’s illustrations of poor quality, the grammar presentation incoherent, and the significant number of punctuation mistakes noted. The reviewer concluded that the author bit off more than he could chew, adding that “the author eliminates virtually all of the material which would have given the common folk the knowledge necessary for practical life or have acquainted them with Russian history and nature with which they are organically connected.” Tolstoy’s aural method is a variation of the traditional (and cumbersome) letter combining (bukvoslagatel’nyi) method of teaching reading. Ushinsky and his followers employed the phonic approach. For a more detailed discussion of the differences, see Mossman, “Tolstoi and Peasant Learning,” 53. In his unsent initial response to critics, particularly on his preference of the aural method over the phonic one, and in defense of the excessive regional flavour of the Russian language noted by critics in his texts, Tolstoy argued from experience, both as a teacher and a prominent writer of fiction. “[Otvet kritikam, pisavshim ob ‘Azbuke’],”Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Novaia azbuka i russkie knigi dlia chteniia (1874–1875) 21 (Moscow, 1957): 409–11. Moskovskie vedomosti, 140 (June 1873). Tolstoy’s article initiated a dark period (pora nevzgod i ogorchenii) in Bunakov’s pedagogical career and personal life. See N.F. Bunakov, Zapiski N. F. Bunakova: Moia zhizn’, v sviazi s obshcherusskoi zhizn’iu, preimushchestvenno provintsial’noi, 1837–1905 (St Petersburg: Obshchestvennaia pol’za, 1909), 111–25. On Bunakov’s pedagogical views, see V.D. Solov’eva, Pedagogicheskie vzgliady i deiatel’nost’ N.F. Bunakova (Moscow: Akademiia pedagogicheskikh nauk rsfsr, 1960), http://www.booksite.ru/fulltext/solo /index.htm. Tolstoy, “O narodnom obrazovanii,” Otechestvennye zapiski 9 (1974): 147–204. For a detailed discussion of Tolstoy’s efforts to promote his program at this time, see V.S. Spiridonov, V.S. Mishin, Kommentarii. ‘Azbuka’ i ‘Novaia Azbuka’. Istoriia pisaniia i pechataniia. L.N. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 21. (Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1957), 547–9. All illustrations were removed. Tolstoy streamlined the printed script and added cursive script; he also included introductory remarks and a teacher’s manual. The price for the book was lowered; the reading material was orga-

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105

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nized in a progression from easy to more difficult, and users were encouraged to utilize any method of learning reading. Eikhenbaum, Lev Tolstoi: Semidesiatye gody, 36. Ibid., 66. In his January 1872 letter to A.A. Tolstaya. Quoted in Boris Eikhenbaum, Lev Tolstoi. Semidesiatye gody, 33. N.F. Bunakov, Rodnoi iazyk kak predmet obucheniia v nachal’noi shkole s trekhgodichnym kursom, 15th edition (St Petersburg: Parovaia skoropechatnia M.M. Gutzatsa, 1908), 3. The above clearly echoes the radical populist Petr Nechaev’s response to Tolstoy’s attacks on Bunakov in his “Narod uchit’ ili u naroda uchit’sia” (Delo 4, 1875): “the school can have a favourable impact on popular education only when it elevates itself above [the school’s] everyday, historically conditioned needs, [only] when it adheres to the ideals more rational and extensive than those that it [ordinarily] follows … [I]f the school begins to worry solely about opposing the wishes and strivings of undeveloped masses, if it rejects any imposition of authority … (prinuditel’nogo vliianiia) on the younger generation, then willy-nilly it will have to oppose any progressive movement and [therefore] form the children based on the example of their fathers, i.e. to imprint forever (uvekovechivat’) in the former the narrow-mindedness and ignorance of the latter.” Quoted in Eikhenbaum, Lev Tolstoi: Semidesiatye, 60. My emphasis unless noted otherwise. Bunakov, Azbuka i uroki chteniia i pis’ma v 3-kh knizhkakh (St Petersburg: V.I. Golovin, 1871). Judged by the prominent educator K.V. El’nitskii as “one of the best books on literacy” in his Russkie pedagogi II poloviny XIX stoletiia (St Petersburg: D.D. Poluboiarinov, 1904], 136. In his memoir, Bunakov offers a detailed account of his public (and devastating to him) quarrel with Tolstoy, including Bunakov’s sharp and immediate answer to Tolstoy’s accusations in Sem’ia i shkola 10 (1874). While acknowledging, upon reflection of more than a decade, that Tolstoy’s article had a positively sobering effect on what Bunakov calls “the new school,” he also asserts that in the years that followed, Tolstoy’s article “did not diminish the significance of the phonic method, the aptness of visual teaching, the importance of special preparation and broad general education for those who taught the peasants, the urge to impart developing character to education, or the faith in the possibility of such educational approach; [yet, the article] compelled [us] to look at the life of the people closely, reminding [us] that it is not the people who are there for schools, but schools that are there for the people; that [we must] be attentive to the daily life of the peasant school, its actual needs [and that we must] view the

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rights and needs of peasant life with proper respect, basing the teaching of peasants on those [rights and needs].” See F.N. Bunakov, Zapiski N.F. Bunakova: Moia zhizn’, 118 107 A.P. Chekhov, Letters, vol. 5 (27 March 1894), 283–4 108 On Chekhov’s engagement with the issue, see Donald Rayfield, Understanding Chekhov: A Critical Survey of Chekhov’s Prose and Drama (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), 183–97. CHAPTER THREE

1 See Andy Byford, “Parent Diaries and the Child Study Movement in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia,” The Russian Review 72 (April 2013): 212–41. 2 Psychology, taught as part of philosophy in the university humanities curriculum, was, in secondary schools, the required subject in practical preparation for teaching. Toward the end of the century, the interdependence of psychology, pedagogy, and literature is clearly articulated in the Ministry of Education programs that stress the need to “encourage future teachers to observe manifestations of the psychic life of children and use the best works of literature to illustrate psychological theories. See Sbornik pravil i program dlia postupleniia vo vse uchebnye zavedeniia, muzhskie i zhenskie (compiled by V. Mavritskii and unofficially published in Moscow, 1907), 61. See also E.V. Getmanskaia, “Psikhologo-pedagogicheskaia napravlennost’ uchebnikov slovesnosti XIX veka” at http://sibac.info/13385 and Andy Byford, “Psychology at High School in Late Imperial Russia (1881–1917),” History of Education Quarterly 48, no. 2 (May 2008), 270–1. For a discussion of the relationship between pedagogy and psychology see also Byford, “Turning Pedagogy into a Science: Teachers and Psychologists in Late Imperial Russia (1897–1917),” The Slavonic and East European Review 81, 4 (October 2003). 3 Andy Byford, “Professional Cross-Dressing: Doctors in Education in Late Imperial Russia (1881–1917),” The Russian Review 65 (October 2006), 586–616. 4 J. Darling, Child-Centred Education and its Critics (London: Paul Chapman, 1994), 17. The epigraph comes from I.A. Sikorsky, Khod umstvennogo i nravstvennogo razvitiia v pervye gody zhizni (Kiev: I.N. Kushnerev, 1901), 27. 5 Zhurnal narodnogo prosveshcheniia 3 (1860), 2. On pedagogical periodicals of the period under study, see M.A. Azarnaia, “Pedagogicheskaia pressa v Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XIX v.: genezis, predmetno-tematicheskie i strukturno-funktsional’nye osobennosti” (PhD dissertation, Stavropol’ State University, 2006).

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6 Zhurnal dlia vospitaniia, 1857–60, changed its name to Vospitanie (1860–63) and in 1864 to Zhurnal dlia roditelei I nastavnikov. 7 Russkii pedagogicheskii vestnik, 1857–61. 8 Morskoi sbornik, 1848–present. 9 Uchitel’, 1861–70. 10 Guvernantka, 1862. 11 Pedagogicheskii sbornik, 1864–1918. 12 Detskii sad, 1866–76. 13 Zemstvos refer to institutions of local government introduced as part of the Great Reforms. 14 Narodnaia shkola, 1869–89. Edited by F.N. Mednikov. 15 Sem’ia i shkola, 1871–1917. 16 Pedagogicheskii listok, 1871–1917, a supplement to Detskoe chtenie. 17 Shkol’naia zhizn’, 1872–74. Stolpianskii, a proponent of the phonic method of teaching reading, authored several popular primers for peasant schools, published in a large number of copies. See http://www.rulex.ru /01180517.htm. 18 Zhenskoe obrazovanie, 1875–92, subtitled Pedagogicheskii listok dlia roditelei, nastavnits, i nastavnikov. In 1872–75 the periodical appeared as Pedagogicheskii listok Sankt-Peterburgskikh zhenskikh gimnazii and from 1892 as Obrazovanie. 19 Vospitanie i obuchenie, 1877–1917. 20 Rodnik, 1882–1917. 21 Pedagogicheskii muzei, 1876–80. 22 Pedagogicheskaia khronika, 1878–85. 23 Podsnezhnik, 1858–62. 24 Rassvet, 1859–62. 25 Semeinye vechera, 1864–88. 26 Detskoe chtenie, 1869–1906. First published in St Petersburg, edited in the 1890s by D.I. Tikhomirov in Moscow, renamed Iunaia Rossiia in 1906, and stopped publication in 1917. For a detailed discussion of the journal, see Vera Kornilova, “Detskie illiustrirovannye zhurnaly Sankt-Peterburga XIX veka,” http://artmoskovia.ru/vera-kornilova-detskie-illjustrirovannyezhurnaly-sankt-peterburga-xix-veka.html. 27 Zadushevnoe slovo, 1876–1917. The name for the journal was thought up by the writer I. Goncharov. More on Zadushevnoe slovo in N.N. Rodigina’s unpublished article, “Detskie zhurnaly kak faktory obrazovatel’nogo prostranstva vtoroi poloviny XIX-nachala XX v. (na primere ‘Zadushevnogo slova’),” 2017. 28 Igrushechka, 1880–1912.

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29 Detskii otdykh (1881–1906). Chekhov’s brother, Mikhail Chekhov contributed under the pseudonym Bogemskii. 30 More on children’s periodicals, see E.V. Vologina, “Formirovanie detskogo periodiocheskogo izdaniia v russkoi informatsionnoi kul’ture” (chapter 1), in “Stanovlenie detskoi periodiki v Rossii: transformatsiia izdatel’skoi modeli” (Ph.D. dissertation, Kubanskii State University, Krasnodar, 2011). 31 Rodigina, “Detskie,” 19–24. 32 Literatura russkoi pedagogiki, didaktiki i metodiki za 1859–1864 (St Petersburg, 1865). 33 Materialy dlia istorii narodnogo prosveshcheniia v Rossii: literatura russkoi pedagogiki, didaktiki i metodiki s 1866–1872 vkliuchitel’no (St Petersburg, 1874). 34 The group met at Redkin’s apartment in St Petersburg. Formerly a law professor at the University of Moscow, Redkin also taught pedagogy there; his lectures on pedagogy were attended by Ushinsky. Redkin’s subsequent teaching career took him to the University of St Petersburg where he taught history and law, as well as philosophy and later served as the university’s rector. 35 Pedagogicheskoe sobranie. The original board included the director of the St Petersburg institute of philosophy and philology, I.V. Shteinman; the head of the scholarly committee of the Ministry of Education, A.S. Voronov; the editor of Zhurnal dlia vospitaniia A.A. Chumikov; Vessel’; and a gymnasia director V.Kh. Lemonius. 36 Pedagogicheskaia letopis’, 1876–77. 37 Frebelevskoe obshchestvo; Sankt Peterburgskii roditel’skii kruzhok. 38 Zhenskoe obrazovanie (January 1885): 318–23. 39 Russkaia shkola, 1890–1917. 40 Entsiklopediia semeinogo vospitaniia i obucheniia. For an informative discussion of the circle’s activities, see I.V. Usol’tseva, “Vklad Sankt-Peterburgskogo roditel’skogo kruzhka v stanovlenie mezhdistsiplinarnoi nauchnoi kartiny mira otechestvennoi pedagogicheskoi psikhologii,” Mir psikhologii 2 (2017): 53–66. 41 N.F. Rumiantsev, “Kak izuchalas’ i izuchaetsia dushevnaia zhizn’ detei?,” in Dushevnaia zhizn’ detei: Ocherki po pedagogicheskoi psikhologii, eds. A.F. Lazurskii and A.P. Nechaev (Moscow: Pol’za, 1910), 1–65. 42 Berthold Sigismund, Kind und Welt: Vatern, Muttern und Kinderfreunde (Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg und Sohn, 1856). 43 Adolf Kussmaul, Untersuchungen uber das Seelenleben des Neugeboren Menschen (Leipzig: C.F. Winter’sche Verlagshandlung, 1859). 44 William Preyer, Die Seele des Kindes. Beobachtungen uber die geistige Entwickelung des Menschen in den ersten Lebensjaren (Leipzig: T. Grieben, 1881).

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45 I.A. Sikorskii, Vospitanie v vozraste pervogo detstva (St Petersburg: A.E. Riabchenko, 1884); P.F. Lesgaft, Shkol’nye tipy (St Petersburg, 1885). 46 See A.A. Nikol’skaia, “Osnovnye etapy razvitiia pedagogicheskoi psikhologii v dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii,“ http://www.voppsy.ru/issues/1987/874 /874109.htm, 109–14. On changes in pedagogical terminology see, Nina V. Bordovskaia and Elena A. Koshkina, “The influence of psychology on Russian didactic terminology (early 18th century–first half of 20th century),” Psychology in Russia: State of the Art 10, 1 (2017): 18–33. 47 N.F. Ruminatsev, Obzor literatury po psikhologii detstva (St Petersburg: Tip. Imperatorskogo uchilishcha glukhonemykh, 1910). On Ushinsky’s impact, see A.A. Nikol’skaia, “Osnovnye etapy razvitiia pedagogicheskoi psikhologii v dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii,” Voprosy psikhologii 4 (1987): 109–18. 48 Kapterev’s acknowledgment of the impact of associationism on Russian pedagogy appears in “Zakony assotsiatsii psikhicheskikh iavlenii i ikh primenenie v dele obucheniia i vospitaniia,” Sem’ia i shkola 8–9 (1874). 49 N.Kh. Vessel’, Opytnaia psikhologiia v primenenii k vospitaniiu i obucheniiu po Beneke, Dressleru i dr. (St Petersburg: Tip. E. Veimara, 1862); J.G. Dressler, Beneke oder die Seelenlehre als Naturwissenschaft (1840). 50 N.Kh. Vessel’, Rukovodstvo k prepodavaniiu obshcheobrazovatel’nykh predmetov (St Petersburg: Tip. V.S. Balashova, 1873). 51 N.Kh. Vessel’, “Ob osnovnykh polozheniiakh pedagogiki,” in Ocherki ob obshchem obrazovanii v sisteme narodnogo obrazovaniia v Rossii. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe uchebnopedagogicheskoe izdatel‘stvo, 1959), 163–209. 52 N.Kh. Vessel’, “Opytnaia psikhologiia v primenenii k vospitaniiu i obucheniiu,” Uchitel’ 22, 875. 53 Vessel’, Rukovodstvo 1, 515. 54 Vessel’, Opytnaia psikhologiia, 11. 55 Ibid., 15–16. 56 A.A. Nikol’skaia, “Psikhologicheskie osnovy vospitaniia v trudakh N. Kh. Vesselia,” Voprosy psikhologii 6 (1980), 145 (http://www.voppsy.ru/issues /1980/806/806139.htm). 57 Ibid., 140–7. 58 I.A. Sikorsky, Vospitanie v vozraste pervogo detstva (St Petersburg: A.E. Riabchenko, 1884). Sikorsky translated the first part of Preyer’s book in 1891. His own Dusha rebenka was published first in Kapterev’s Entsiklopediia semeinogo vospitaniia i obucheniia, nos. 30–32 (St Petersburg: Pedagogicheskii muzei, 1901). 59 In Sikorsky’s view, mental development is primary in the first year of life and is accomplished by the sensory exploration of the external world and

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68

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the subsequent retention of acquired impressions in memory. The period of second childhood lasts from the age of seven until the age of fourteen and is followed by youth. A consistent feature of the study is Sikorsky’s insistence on the connection between brain development and psychic functions. As scholars have observed, Sikorsky’s approach to the brain was influenced by the theory of localization (Franz Joseph Gall) and the writings by Paul Emil Flechsig, German neuroanatomist, psychiatrist, and neuropathologist. See E.V. Chmeleva , “I. A. Sikorskii o razvitii intellekta detei rannego doshkol’nogo vozrasta,” http://portalus.ru (2007); also E.B. Murzina, “Psikhologicheskie vozzreniia v tvorcheskom nasledii I. A. Sikorskogo” (PhD. Dissertation, Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi sotsial’nyi universitet, Moscow, 2011). Sikorsky,Vospitanie, 19. Ibid., 37. Ibid., 29. Ibid., 48. Several authoritative voices are brought in to support this view, including that of Benedict Morel, the founder of the degeneration theory. Sikorsky quotes from the second edition of Morel’s Traité des maladies mentales (1860) where the term démence-precoce is used for the first time to indicate mental degeneration. Sikorsky, Vospitanie, 52. Ibid., 181. Volition was generally understood to signify a process that manifested itself differently at different stages of growth. A vague preference or inclination (vlechenie) found its object and became a conscious desire-seeking fulfillment. The process concluded with the formation of intention that initiated behaviour. See A.P. Batyrshina and V.A. Mazilov, “Istoricheskaia predstavlennost’ kategorii ‘volia’ i ‘volevaia reguliatsiia’ v otechestvennykh uchebnikakh psikhologii,” Iaroslavskii pedagogicheskii vestnik 2, 4 (2014). Sikorsky identifies several stages in the development of the will: the motor stage in the first year of life (the ability to hold up one’s head, to grasp, point, sit and stand), the stage where the faculty of attention is primary (in the second year), and the stage when the will becomes a controlling mechanism (from the age of five). Sikorsky, Vospitanie, 215. In Chmeleva’s view, Sikorsky was the first to draw attention to play as developmentally important. Yet, in his overall presentation of the issue, Sikorsky clearly follows in Ushinsky’s footsteps. Chmeleva, Istoriia pedagogiki doshkol’nogo detstva v Rossii kontsa IXX-nachala XX-ogo veka, 2nd edition (Moscow: Iurait, 2019), 35–6. Sikorsky, Vospitanie, 100. See more on games in Sikorsky in E.B. Murzina,

Notes to pages 91–2

70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

79

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“Sikorskii, I.A. o detskoi igre i ee roli v psikhicheskom razvitii rebenka,” Doshkol’noe vospitanie (2010): 4. https://docplayer.ru/41978215-Zhurnaldoshkolnoe-vospitanie-4-2010-sikorskiy-i-a-o-detskoy-igre-i-ee-roli-v-psihicheskom-razvitii-rebenka.html. Ibid., 103. Ibid., 119. E.V. Chmeleva, “I. A. Sikorskii o razvitii intellekta” (electronic source), 1. D.S. Timofeev, “Psikhologicheskie vozzreniia I.A. Sikorskogo,” (PhD dissertation, Moscow State Pedagogical University, 1995), 151–2. Ibid., 188, 192–3. Ibid., 195. See also, I.A, Sikorskii, O detiakh trudnykh v vospitatel’nom otnoshenii (St Petersburg, 1882). Sikorsky, Vospitanie, 195. Ibid. Sikorsky’s biological determinism was shared by the majority of Russian psychiatrists at the time. See, Irina Sirotkina, Diagnosing Literary Genius: A Cultural History of Psychiatry in Russia, 1880–1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). The underlying assumption of the theory was that there existed visible differences between races that were manifested in various biological features. As Henrietta Mondry shows, in the writings of Chekhov’s contemporaries, the Jewish physique was defined in racial terms. Jews were seen as a group that shared certain external features and characteristics as well as certain diseases. See Henrietta Mondry’s chapter “Stereotypes of Pathology: The Medicalization of the Jewish Body by Anton Chekhov, 1880s,” in her Exemplary Bodies: Constructing the Jew in Russian Culture, 1880s to 2008 (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2009), 43. Sikorsky’s notorious testimony as an expert witness for the prosecution at the Monahem Beilis 1913 trial in Kiev was based on these ideas. Beilis, a Jew, was accused of performing the ritual murder of a Christian child but was acquitted by an all-Slavic jury. Sikorsky’s progovernment expertise was roundly condemned by several professional associations both in Russia and in other countries. On Sikorsky’s controversial views, see A.S. Tager, Tsarskaia Rossiia i delo Beilisa (Terra, Knizhnaia lavka: rtr, 1996). See also Vadim Menzhulin, Drugoi Sikorskii: neudobnye stranitsy istorii psikhiatrii (Kiev: Sphera, 2004). Parts of Nicolosi’s and Beer’s books on degeneration are devoted to discussions of Sikorsky. See Daniel Beer, Renovating Russia: The Human Sciences and the Fate of Liberal Modernity, 1880–1930 (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 2008) and Riccardo Niccolosi, Vyrozhdenie. Literatura i psikhiatriia v russkoi kul’ture kontsa XIX veka, trans. Nina Stavrogina (Moscow: nlo, 2019). Narodnaia shkola 1 (1879), 4.

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80 81 82 83

84 85 86 87 88 89 90

91 92 93 94

95 96 97 98 99 100 101

102

Notes to pages 92–5

Vospitanie i obuchenie 3 (1898), 116. Pedagogicheskii protsess (St Petersburg: Tipo-lit. B.M. Vol’fa, 1905), 51. Narodnaia shkola 6 (1875), 8–9. “O nravstvennom chuvstve detei,” Zhenskoe obrazovanie 5 (1878): 283–315; “Glavneishie tipy umov,” Zhenskoe obrazovanie 2 (1883): 165–84; No. 3: 245–77; No. 4: 311–40. “O detskom strakhe,” Voprosy obucheniia 2 (1901): 65–84; No. 3: 136–46; No. 4: 161–72. “O detskoi lzhi,” Russkaia shkola 12 (1900): 63–95. “O leni,” Russkaia shkola 3 (1903): 107–20; No. 4, 92–114. “Upriamstvo detei i mery protiv nego,” Zhenskoe obrazovanie 9 (1882): 579–95. Vorposy obucheniia 9 (1898): 321–30. P.F. Kapterev, “Sovershenna ili nesovershenna priroda detei?,” Zhenskoe obrazovanie (March 1888): 139–48; (April 1888): 199–210. These were published in Vospitatnie i obuchenie (1893). “Sushchestvennye cherty psikhicheskogo razvitiia rebenka v pervom godu zhizni,” No. 6: 183–94; “Otlichitel’nye cherty psikhologicheskogo razvitiia ditiati na vtoroi god zhizni,” No. 7: 217–27; “Psikhicheskoe razvitie ditiati v tretii god zhizni,” No. 12: 383–92. “Ditia po chetvertomu godu zhizni” appeared in Vospitanie i obuchenie in 1894 (No. 12: 463–74). Kapterev’s condensed version of his findings appeared later in his Istoriia pedagogii. Obrazovanie 1 (1897). Kapterev, Pedagogicheskii protsess, 93. Kapterev, Pedagogicheskaia psikhologiia (St Petersburg: Zemlia, 1914), 419. Here Kapterev quotes from Hippolyte Adolphe Taine’s, The Acquisition of Language by Children (first published in Revue Philosophique in 1876, appearing in Russian in Znanie in 1876). Kapterev, Pedagogicheskaia psikhologiia, 422. Ibid., 443. Ibid. Ibid., 421. Entsiklopediia semeinogo vospitaniia i obucheniia 4 (1898): 55. Kapterev, Pedagogicheskaia psikhologiia, 302. In his “Nabliudeniia nad dushevnym razvitiem detei v 3-7 let,” Zhenskoe obrazovanie (January 1887): 12–22. Lesgaft’s work on games and physical education comes later (1909). Some ideas were expressed in the 1888s in Lesgaft, Otnoshenie anatomii k fizicheskomu obrazovaniiu. “Istoriia voobrazheniia,” Zhesnkoe obrazovanie (August–September 1888),

Notes to pages 95–7

103 104

105 106 107 108

109

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321–42. Kapterev restates his observations in the second edition of Pedagogicheskaia psikhologiia, 65–83. Kapterev, Pedagogicheskaia psikhologiia, 448–9. On guiding the child’s creativity, Kapterev refers to Perez’s L’Art et la poesie chez l’enfant (Paris: Ancienne Librairie Germer Baillière et Cie, 1888) and his L’enfant de trois a sept ans (Paris: Ancienne Librairie Germer Baillière et Cie, 1886). Kapterev, Pedagogicheskaia psikhologiia, 456. Kapterev, “Sovershenna ili nesovershenna?” Kapterev, “O chuvstve strakha u detei,” Zhenskoe obrazovanie (August–September 1882): 447–63. Kapterev identified four such periods: the tactile period, the visual, the auditory, and the conceptual. The tactile period occurs in the first year of life and is inseparable from the child’s initial impressions about the external world. The visual period in the second year of life, even if still accompanied by tactility, allows the child to become better and faster acquainted with objects than in the preceding period where tactile exploration predominates. The third period is characterized by the importance of auditory organs in reception and production of speech. The last period is notable for the child’s increasing ability to manipulate concepts and arrive at conclusions based on observations of similarities and differences. Like the mind of an adult, the mind of the child could be generally biased toward a particular organ of perception or particular mental processes. Thus, both in children and adults, various abilities of the mind could predominate as part of their distinctive individuality. Finally, Kapterev recognizes yet another capacity that could assume the primary role in children, that of mental precociousness. Kapterev, “Glavneishie tipy umov,” Zhenskoe obrazovanie 2 (1883): 165–88; No. 3: 245–77; No. 4: 311–40. A synopsis of Kapterev’s position on the issue, “Razvitie i raznovidnosti detskogo uma,” appeared in Russkaia shkola 1 (1894): 60–71; No. 2: 40–52. In his 1914 (3d) edition of Pedagogical Psychology, Kapterev amplifies his conclusions on psychic types (tipy dushi) by engaging with the work of T. Ribot, Paulin Malapert, Perez (Le Caractere de l’enfanta l’homme [1892]), and A.S. Virenius, all published in the 1890s and early 1900s. T. Ribot’s Psychology of Emotion appeared in Russian in 1898. Paulin Malapert’s Les éléments du caractère et les lois de leur recombinaison (1897) was translated into Russian in 1913. A.S. Virenius’s work cited by Kapterev is Kharakteristika uchashchikhsia. Teloslozhenie, temperament i kharakter v poru shkol’nogo vozrasta (St Petersburg, 1906) published in Kapterev’s Entsiklopedia semei-

288

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111 112

113

114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129

Notes to pages 97–101

nogo obucheniia No. 52. The rationale for the classification and the main arguments as to possible categories remain essentially the same as in his early work. P.F. Lesgaft, Semeinoe vospitanie rebenka i ego znachenie consists of three parts: “School Types,” “The Essentials of the Child’s Behavior,” and Life in the Family” School Types (Shkol’nye tipy) was first published in a separate monograph in 1884; The Essentials of the Child’s Behaviour (Osnovnye proiavleniia rebenka) in 1890; Life in the Family (Semeinyi period vospitaniia) appeared in 1912. First publication of the entire work in one volume took place in 1956. P.F. Lesgaft, Sobranie pedagogicheskikh sochinenii, vol. 3 (Moscow: Fizkul’tura i sport, 1956), 144. In his opening remarks to “School Types,” Lesgaft proposes the following stages of the developmental process: 1. the “chaotic” period of infancy; 2. the reflective experiential stage that occurs prior to the emergence of speech in the second year of life; 3. the preschool stage characterized by imitation of reality; 4. the imitative–conceptual stage of school years (up until the age of twenty); and 5. the analytical creative stage of adulthood. Lesgaft, Shkol’nye, 36–42. See more on Lesgaft’s system of classification in M.N. Slobodzinskaia, “Semeinoe vospitanie v pedagogicheskoi sisteme P.F. Lesgafta” (Ph.D diss., gdifk, St Petersburg, 1946). Lesgaft, Sobranie, 3: 44–54. Ibid., 55–73. Ibid., 73–92. Ibid., 92–109. Ibid., 109–28. Ibid., 129–42. Ibid., 144. Kapterev, Pedagogicheskaia psikhologiia, 363–4. Ibid., 367. Ibid., 369, 371. Ibid., 370 Ibid. Ibid., 385. Ibid., 386–7. Ibid., 387. On Russian women in natural sciences, see Barbara Alpern Engel, “Women Medical Students in Russia, 1872–1882: Reformers or Rebels?,” Journal of Social History 12, 3 (Spring 1979): 394–414. Also Olga Valkova, “The Con-

Notes to pages 101–2

130 131 132 133 134 135 136

137 138

139

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quest of Science: Women and Science in Russia, 1860–1940,” Osiris 23, 1 (2008): 136–65 and Ann Hibner Koblitz, “Science, Women, and the Russian Intelligentsia: the Generation of the 1860s,” Isis 79, 2 (June 1988): 208–26. On the “woman question” and the image of the emancipated woman in fiction, see Christine Johanson, “Turgenev’s Heroines: A Historical Assessment,” Canadican Slavonic Papers/Revue Canadienne des Slavistes 26, 1 (March 1984): 15–23. Zhurnal dlia roditelei i nastavnikov 3, 40. Andy Byford, “Parent Diaries and the Child Study Movement in Later Imperial and Early Soviet Russia,” The Russian Review 72 (April 2013): 220. Ibid., 213. Adele Lindenmeyr, “Public Life, Private Virtues: Women in Russian Charity, 1762–1914,” Signs 18, 3 (Spring 1993): 572–5. Such as, for example, E.N. Vodovozova’s Iz zametok staroi pansionerki (St Petersburg: Tip. A.A. Kraevskogo, 1866). Ispoved’ materi (St Petersburg: Tip. A.M. Kotomina, 1876). Simonovich’s articles appeared in her journal The Kindergarten. Her monograph, O detskom iazyke, was published in 1880 and reprinted in 1884 (St Petersburg). Manasseina, O vospitanii detei v pervye gody zhizni (St Petersburg: Tip. Ia. Treia, 1870). The book’s second edition appeared in 1874. Manasseina’s publications (signed also as Manaseina, Marie von Manassein, and Marie de Manaceine) include a score of articles and monographs on various aspects of physiology, hygiene, psychology, and pedagogy, more than a dozen critical bibliographical articles, and numerous translations of scholarly books from various foreign languages. Manasseina lectured on psychology and pedagogy at a number of educational institutions, gave public talks, and was an honorary member of several medical societies in Russia. Very little is known about Manasseina’s life beyond the basic facts of her biography and her publications. She was the daughter of a prominent Russian historian, M.A. Korkunov. She was briefly married to a radical student Poniatovskii who died in exile. Her second husband was V.A. Manassein, a professor at the Medical Military Academy and the editor of Russia’s first medical periodical Vrach. In the late 1870s, she left Manassein for his friend and I. Sechenov’s student, the physiologist I.R. Tarkhanov but never divorced Manassein. For a brief digest of Manasseina’s life, see Vladimir M. Kovalzon, “Some Notes on the Biography of Maria Manasseina,” Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 18 (2009): 312–19. V.N. Zhuk, Mat’ i ditia: Gigiena v obshchedostupnom izlozhenii, first edition (St Petersburg: Tip. Demianova, 1881).

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Notes to pages 102–4

140 Manasseina, O vospitanii, 1. 141 Ibid., 5. I. Sechenov’s statements (in Refleksy golovnogo mozga, [St Petersburg: Tip A. Golovacheva, 1866]) on the importance of rearing for psychic development are offered in support of the view. Manasseina, O vospitanii, 10–11. 142 Manasseina mentions the work of Jean Paul Richter, G.E. Lobisch’s Entwicklungsgeschichte der Seele des Kindes (1851), as well as the writings by Karl Schmidt, Sigismund, and Kussmaul. 143 Ibid., 19. 144 Ibid., 25. 145 Ibid., 188. 146 Ibid. 147 Ibid. 148 Ibid., 189–93. 149 “In addition to filling the child’s head with fantastic images and training him to engage in unsystematic play of imagination, fairy tales predispose the child to insanity.” Manasseina, O vospitanii, 193. 150 Ibid., 194–5 151 On the ambiguities of the nineteenth century educated women’s approach to motherhood and fertility, see N.A. Mitsiuk, “Tipy Rossiiskikh dvorianok nachala XX v. po otnosheniiu k sobstvennoi fertil’nosti i materinstvu,” in Zhenshchina v Rossiiskom obshchestve: Rossiiskii nauchnyi zhurnal 2, 71 (2014): 17–25. See also, L.A. Gritsai, “Problema materinstva i materinskogo vospitaniia detei v trudakh predstavitel’nits rossiiskogo zhenskogo dvizheniia kontsa XIX-nachala XX veka” in Vestnik Udmutrskogo universiteta: Filosofiia. Sotsiologiia. Pedagogika, 1 (2013): 66–71. 152 Manasseina, Osnovy vospitaniia s pervykh let zhizni i do polnogo okonchaniia universitetskogo obrazovaniia (parts 1–5) (1894–1902). For a recent discussion of Manasseina’s work, see L.N. Urbanovich, “M.M. Manaseina o tseli i naznachenii vospitaniia,” Vestnik pstgu iv: Pedgagogika. Psikhologiia, 4, 31 (2013): 89–101; T.A. Savchenko, “Vklad M.M. Manaseinoi v sozdanie teoreticheskikh osnov otechestvennogo semeinogo vospitaniia,” in Perspektivy razvitiia otechestvennogo obrazovaniia: prioritety i resheniia, eds. S.G. Vorovshchikov and O.A. Shkliarova (Moscow: mpgu, 2016), 43–6; E.V. Chemeleva, “Problema kachestva doshkol’nogo obrazovaniia v pedagogike Rossii kontsa XIX-nachala XX vv.,” E-journal Psychological Science and Education psyedu.ru, 4 (2013): 212–21; and E.V. Chmeleva, “M.M. Manaseina ob umstvennom vospitanii detei rannego i doshkol’nogo vozrasta,” Izvesiia Rossiiskoi akademii obrazovaniia 2 (2014): 36–49.

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153 Chapter 4 of the second part of Osnovy vospitaniia (St Petersburg: Tip E. Evdokimova, 1896). 154 These include the mathematician N.A. Liubimov’s study on optical illusions, E. Pokrovskii’s volume on children’s games, and the Simonoviches’ guide to early childhood education (A. Simonovich, Ya. Simonovich, Prakticheskie zametki ob individual’nom i obshchestvennom vospitanii maloletnikh detei: Stat’i iz “Detskogo sada” za 1866, 1867 i 1868 g., vols. 1–2 (St Petersburg: Tip. P.P. Merkul’eva, 1874). 155 Ivan N. Pigarev and Marina L. Pigareva “Historical view on the attempts to understand the function of sleep in the school of Ivan Pavlov and his Russian forerunners and followers,” Clinical & Translational Neuroscience (January– June, 2019): 1–6; Marina Bentigoglio and Gigliola Grassi-Zucconi, “The History of Sleep Advances: The Pioneering Experimental Studies on Sleep Deprivation,” Sleep 20, 7 (1997): 570–6; V.M. Kovalzon, “Maria Manaseina-a forgotten founder of sleep science,” J Sleep Res 3, 2 (1994): 128–34. 156 Ob ustalosti voobshche i ob usloviiakh eio razvitiia (St Petersburg: Tip. V. Demakova, 1893). 157 I.R. Tarkhanov, “Opyty nad estsestvennym snom zhivotnykh,” Zdorov’e (1879): 121, 371–2. Tarkhanov is not mentioned in Chekhov’s work or his correspondence, but, according to the Russian Encyclopedia of Medicine, they were friends. See http://www.historymed.ru/encyclopedia/doctors /index.php?ELEMENT_ID=4977 (Istoriia meditsiny: znamenitye vrachi). Chekhov’s acquaintance with Manassein, Maria’s husband, is well documented. 158 Under the name of Manasseina, Son kak tret’ zhizni cheloveka ili phiziologiia, patologiia, gigiena i psikhologiia sna (Moscow: Russkaia tipo-litografiia Tverskaia D. Gintsburga, 1892). The work was translated into English as Sleep: Its Physiology, Pathology, Hygiene, and Psychology by Marie de Manacéïne (London: Walter Scott, Ltd, 1897). A brief description of her findings also appeared in French: Manaseina md, “Quelques observations experimentales sur l’influence de l’insomnie absolute” Archiv Ital de Biologie 21 (1894): 322–5. 159 Ob ustalosti, 136 160 Ibid., 137. 161 Ibid: 154. 162 Ibid., 157. In the contemporary parlance, monomania referred to partial insanity conceived as single pathological preoccupation in an otherwise sound mind. 163 de Manacéïne, Sleep: Its Physiology, 68

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164 Ibid., 127. 165 N. Suslova-Erisman, “O vospitanii detei v pervye gody zhizni,” Arkhiv sudebnoi meditsiny i obshchestvennoi gigieny 6, 4 (December 1870): 21–31 (reprinted in Pedagogicheskii listok 2 (1871). Suslova was the sister of Appolinaria Suslova (Dostoevsky’s and Rosanov’s lover and muse) and the wife of F.F. Erisman, a prominent scholar in the field of hygiene and Chekhov’s professor in medical school. Contemporaneous responses also included reviews in Delo 8 (1870): 77–80; 11: 152–4; Detskii sad 10 (1870); Nedelia 20 (1870): 6–9; Uchitel’ 22 (1870): 712–16; several reviews in Sankt Peterburgskie vedomosti (1870, Nos. 318, 353, 358); and in Pedagogicheskii listok dlia roditelei i vospitatelei 1 (1871): 50–2. A brief review of the second edition of Manasseina’s book (1874) appeared in Vospitanie i obuchenie. Pedagogicheskii sbornik. Prilozhenie k zhurnalu Rodnik 2 (1884): 64. 166 Manasseina, Osnovy, part 1, 15. 167 Kapterev, Istoriia russkoi pedagogii, (St Petersburg: Aleteia, 2004), 521 (based on the 1915 edition). 168 E.N. Vodovozova, Umstvennoe i nravstvennoe razvitie detei ot pervogo proiavleniia soznaniia do shkol’nogo vozrasta, 4th edition (St Petersburg: Tip. Gappe, 1891). Between 1871 and 1913 the book was published in seven editions and under slightly different titles. The first edition of the book appeared in 1871 (St Petersburg: Tip. A.M. Kotomina) under the title Umstvennoe i nravstvennoe razvitie detei ot pervogo proiavleniia soznaniia do vos’miletnego vozrasta. 169 Kapterev, Istoriia, 522. 170 Vodovozova, Umstvennoe i nravstvennoe, 4th edition, 123. 171 A section on sexuality (polovoi vopros) was added to the 7th edition of the book published in 1913. 172 Such as the aforementioned Iz zametok; also Batrachka: rasskaz iz narodnogo byta (St Petersburg: Tip. N. Nekliudova, 1871 under the pseudonym I. Bel’skii); Iz russkoi zhizni i prirody: rasskazy dlia detei (St Petersburg: Tip. A.M. Kotomina, 1872) published in numerous editions; a similarly popular Zhizn’ evropeiskikh narodov: Geographicheskie rasskazy E. Vodovozovoi, vols. 1–3 (St Petersburg (self-published), 1875–83); and Odnogolosnye detskie pesni i podvizhnye igry (St Petersburg: Muz. A. I. Rubtsa, 1871). 173 Mezhov’s bibliographies include substantial sections entitled “Fiction of Pedagogical Import” (“Belletresticheskie proizvedeniia pedagogicheskogo kharaktera”). 174 For more on gender differences in education, see L.V. Beletskaia, “Genderno orientirovannyi podkhod k obucheniiu i vospitaniiu v Rossiiskoi pedagogike 60-kh godov XIX veka” (PhD dissertation, Piatogorsk State Linquistic University, 2005).

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175 Zhurnal dlia roditelei i nastavnikov 17 (1864): 70–1 176 Vodovozova, Umstvennoe, 2nd edition, 18. 177 Lev Vygotsky, Pedagogicheskaia psikhologiia (Moscow: Pedagogika, 1991), 107. First published as Pedagogicheskaia psikhologiia. Kratkii kurs (Moscow: Rabotnik prosveshcheniia, 1926). 178 Ibid. Here Vygotsky summarizes (without an attribution) N. Rumiantsev’s position expressed in his Problema polovogo vospitaniia s psikhologicheskoi tochki zreniia (St Petersburg, Warsaw: Zhurnal Obnovlenie shkoly, 1914). A substantial part of Rumiantsev’s introduction is devoted to Sigmund Freud’s views on sexuality in children. On approaches to sex education of the period, see also S.R. Mizheva, “Problemy polovogo vospitaniia v otechestvennoi shkole i pedagogike kontsa XIX veka-nachala XX vekov” (PhD. dissertation Piatigorsk State Linguistic University, 2011) and “Nravstvennye aspekty problem polovogo vospitaniia detei v sem’e v pedagogicheskom nasledii N. E. Rumiantseva i ego sovremennikov,” Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo unversiteta 347 (2013): 156–9. 179 Riccardo Nicolosi, Nina Stavrogina, “Nervnyi vek: Rossiiskaia psikhiatriia kontsa XIX veka i ‘vyrozhdenie’ obshchestvennogo organizma,” nlo (Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie) 1 (2018): 1 (pagination from the electronic source http://magazines.russ.ru/nlo/2018/1/nervnyj-vek.html.) For a monographlength discussion of the issue, see Beer, Renovating Russia and Nicolosi’s Vyrozhdenie. CHAPTER FOUR

1 The epigraph comes from Chekhov’s letter to Suvorin of 30 May 1888 (Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 12, 227). “Playing at literature” is from Chekhov’s letter to V.V. Bilibin of 14 February 1886 (Letters, vol. 1, 196). 2 “Besides a wife – medicine – I also have a lover – literature, but I don’t mention her since the lawless will die lawless,” letter to Al.P. Chekhov, 17 January 1887 (Letters, vol. 2:15). “I feel stronger and happier when I realize that I have two pursuits, not just one. Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my lover. When I am bored with one, I spend the night with the other. This [arrangement] although casual is not tedious, and, besides, neither is hurt by my cheating at all. If I didn’t have medicine I would most likely not give my free time and my spare thoughts to literature, for I do not have any discipline,” letter to A.S. Suvorin, 11 September 1888 (Letters, vol. 2: 326). “I am also a physician. Medicine is my lawful wife, while literature is my common wife.” Letter to P.F. Iordanov, 15 March 1896 (Letters, vol. 6: 132).

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3 On the significance of mass literature in Chekhov’s work see V.B. Kataev, Proza Chekhova: Problemy interpretatsii (Moscow: Moscow State University Press, 1979) and, more recently, Ernest Orlov, “‘Malaia pressa’ i ‘bol’shaia’ literatura 1880–90-kh godov” in Molodye issledovateli Chekhova 5 (Moscow: mgu, 2005) at http://chekhoved.ru/index.php/library/sborniki/15-youth-5/512010-06-27-15-12-54 and Ernest Orlov, “Literaturnyi byt 1880-kh godov. Tvorchestvo A.P. Chekhova I avtorov ‘maloi pressy.’” (Ph.D dissertation, Mosow State University, 2008). See also M.O. Goriacheva, “O lichnosti i literaturnoi reputatsii Chekhova v maloi presse kontsa 1880-kh—nachala 1890kh godov,” in Chekhov i ego okruzhenie, eds. V.B. Kataev and A.M. Turkov (Moscow: Nauka, 1996), 115–44. A significat recent contribution to the topic is O.V. Ovcharskaia’s “Ranniaia proza A.P. Chekhova v kontekste maloi pressy 1880-kh godov” (PhD dissertation, Moscow State University, 2016). 4 M.P. Gromov, Kniga o Chekhove (Moscow: Sovremennik, 1989), http://apchekhov.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000021/st009.shtml. 5 N.I. Gitovich, M.P. Gromov, L.M. Dolotova et al, “Commentaries,” Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 18, 201–18. 6 These included Sverchok (Cricket), Strekoza (Dragonfly), Budil’nik (Alarm Clock), Zritel’ (Spectator), Razvlechenie (Entertainment), Svet i teni (Light and Shadows), Mirskoi tolk (Popular Voice), Volna (Wave), Oskolki (Fragments), Peterburgskaia gazeta (The Petersburg Gazette), Novosti dnia (Daily News), and Moskovskii listok (Moscow News Bulletin). For more on the small press publications and writers, see Ernest Orlov, “Literaturnyi byt 1880-kh godov. Tvorchestvo A. P. Chekhova I avtorov ‘maloi pressy.’” See also A.I. Reitblat, Ot Bovy k Bal’montu i drugie raboty po istoricheskoi sotsiologii russkoi literatury (nlo: Moscow, 2009). 7 A.P. Chudakov, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Moscow: Vremia, 2014), 26–7; Gitovich et al., “Commentaries,” 201–2. More on the relationship between high literature and the small press, see Ovcharskaia, “Ranniaia,” 48–51. 8 “Chto chashche vsego vstrechaetsia v romanakh, povestiakh i t. p.” http://febweb.ru/feb/chekhov/texts/sp0/sp1/sp1-017-.htm. A slightly modified translation from pages 175–7 of The Undiscovered Chekhov, trans. Peter Constantine (New York, Toronto, London, Sidney: Seven Stories Press, 1998). 9 A.P. Chudakov, Anton Pavlovich, Chekhov, 43. 10 Letter to A.S. Suvorin, 30 May 1888. Letters, vol. 12, 227. 11 Andrew R. Durkin, “Chekhov and the Journals of his Time,” in Literary Journals in Imperial Russia, ed. Deborah A. Martinsen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 232–3. See more on this in Ovcharskaia, “Ranniaia.” 12 Durkin, “Chekhov and the Journals,” 231.

Notes to pages 117–20

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13 For a detailed discussion of various genres of the small press, see Ovcharskaia, “Ranniaia,” 128–61. 14 Gitovich et al, “Commentaries,” 201. 15 Ibid. 16 Durkin, “Chekhov and the Journals, 231. 17 Gitovich et al, “Commentaries,” 204–5. 18 Cynthia Marsh offers an illuminating discussion of the use of recognizable citations in Chekhov’s plays. See “The Implication of Quotation in Performance: Masha’s Lines from Pushkin in Chekhov’s ‘Three Sisters,’” The Slavonic and East European Review 84, 3 (July 2006): 446–59. 19 Leikin, a comic writer in his own right, was the editor of Fragments (Oskolki), the journal that launched Chekhov’s career. See, V.B. Kataev, “Chekhov i ego literaturnoe okruzhenie,” in Sputniki Chekhova, ed. V.B. Kataev (Moscow: mgu, 1982), 10–16. For examples of Leikin’s work, see V.B. Kataev, ed., Sputniki at: http://www.rulit.net/books/chehov-i-egoliteraturnoe-okruzhenie-read-230058-1.html. 20 A.P. Chudakov, Mir Chekhova: vozniknovenie i utverzhdenie (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1986), 243–4. As Chudakov notes elsewhere, “If a merchant’s house or his appearance are described, then anything that does not belong to this circumscribed world of the merchant is excluded.” Chudakov, A.P. Chekhov, 11. 21 I.N. Sukhikh, Problemy poetiki A.P. Chekhova (Leningrad: Leningrad University, 1987), 43. 22 Chudakov, Mir Chekhova, 62. 23 Ibid., 63–4. 24 For an insightful discussion of the reversal of expectations in stories about children as one of Chekhov’s strategies for story construction, see Cathy Popkin, The Pragmatics of Insignificance: Chekhov, Zoshchenko, Gogol (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1993), 38–40. 25 Kataev, Proza Chekhova: Problemy interpretatsii, 46. On Chekhov’s distortion of speech genres (smeshenie/smeshchenie zhanrov) for comic effect in the sketch, see A.D. Stepanov, Problemy kommunikatsii u Chekhova (Moscow: Iazyki slavianskoi kul’tury, 2005), 62–70. On Chekhov’s early work as a generic “experimentation site” where diverse rhetorical and literary genres clash to generate new meaning, see Turbin, “K fenomenologii literaturnykh i ritoricheskikh zhanrov v tvorchestve A.P. Chekhova,” in Problemy poetiki i istorii literatury (Saransk: Mordovskii State University Press, 1973). 26 A.V. Korotaev, “Chekhov i malaia pressa 80-kh gg.,” in Uchenye zapiski LGPU im. A.I. Gertsena, vol. 24 (Leningrad: Leningradskii Gosudarstvennyi Peda-

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32 33

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Notes to pages 120–4

gogicheskii Universitet, 1939). On Chekhov’s “novelization” of the sketch, see “Chekhov i ego literaturnoe okruzhenie,” in Kataev’s Sputniki, 10–16. See also A.V. Kubasov, “Dve variatsii odnoi temy: rasskazy A.P. Chekhova ‘Vint’ i V. Bilibina ‘Kak chinovniki igraiut v vint??,” in A.P. Chekhov i mirovaia kul’tura, ed. M. Ch. Larionova (Rostov-na-Donu: Logos, 2010), 95–101. N.A. Leikin, “Zapozdavshie dachniki,” Na lone prirody: iumoristicheskie ocherki podgorodnoi derevenskoi dachnoi zhizni, 2nd edition (St Petersburg: Tip. R. Golike, 1893), 439–45. Two “accursed” questions of Russian society debated in high literature of the time were “who is to blame” posed by Alexander Herzen in his eponymous novel (1846) and “what is to be done,” the overarching theme of Chernyshevsky’s highly influential book of the same title (1863). Both novels convey the urgency of a society in crisis. For a discussion of the dynamic between images and captions, see I.N. Sukhikh, Problemy poetiki Chekhova, 70. On the role of illustrations in the small press, see Ovcharskaia, “Ranniaia,” 37–40. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 18, 15–28. The title phrase signifies “nonsense” and was used in this meaning in Gogol’s Dead Souls. The images came principally from Sverchok, Oskolki, and Svet i teni. http://febweb.ru/feb/chekhov/texts/sp0/spj/chj-015-.htm. N. Berkovskii, Literatura i teatr (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1969), 13. The critic continues: “He [Chekhov] seems to be engaged in rewriting – over the original layer, over Tolstoy’s texts and many other texts.” Letter to M.V. Kiseleva, 29 October 1886. Letters, vol. 1, 271. For an insightful discussion of Chekhov’s comic pieces for children, see I.V. Alekhina, “Shutochnye proizvedeniia A.P. Chekhova dlia detei,” smi Oboznik (26 May 2011), http://www.oboznik.ru/?p=35569. Iurii Lotman, “Khudozhestvennaia priroda russkikh narodnykh kartinok,” Stat’i po semiotike kul’tury i iskusstva (St Petersburg: Akademicheskii proekt, 2002), 322. M.E. Malyshev’s illustrations for Oskolki 3 (27 September, 1886): 7. Unattributed, Svet i teni 40 (1 November 1882): 505. From Malyshev’s illustrations. See above, n35. (“Shchastlivyi otets semeistva”) From A.I. Lebedev’s series of colour illustrations “Muzykal’nyi dom (iz peterburgskoi zhizni)” (Musical Household: from Petersburg Life) Oskolki, 38 (20 September 1886): 8. A reproduction of Pavel Fedotov’s Baptism can be seen at https://arthive.com/pavelfedotov/works/551256~Christening#show. “Obo vsem. (Kriticheskoe obozrenie),” Russkoe bogatstvo 12 ( 1886): 166.

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41 Letter to Ia.P. Polonskii, 18 January 1888. Quoted in Durkin, “Chekhov and the Journals,” 237. 42 As Ovcharskaia points out, the persistent interest exhibited by the small press writers in high literature, in its impact on society, and, generally, in the conventions of literary discourse imparted “metaliterary” qualities to their product. Ovcharskaia, “Ranniaia,” 51. 43 For Chekhov’s innovative approach to the comic in his early work, see I.E. Gitovich, “Nepravdopodobnaia zrelost’ molodogo Chekhova: biografiia i iazyk,” in Taganrogskii vestnik. Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii: Molodoi Chekhov: problemy biografii, tvorchestva, retseptsii, izucheniia (Taganrog: Taganrogskii Gos. literaturnyi i istoriko-arkhitekturnyi muzei- zapovednik, 2004), 38. 44 V.B. Kataev, Literaturnye sviazi Chekhova (Moscow: mgu, 1989), 23, 25. 45 Turbin, “K fenomenologii,” 205–6, 213. 46 “Naden’ka N.” is Chekhov’s fourth published story after “Pis’mo uchenomu sosedu,” “Za dvumia zaitsami,” and “Chto chashche vsego vstrehaetsia.” The first one, “The Letter to a Learned Neighbour” (“Pis’mo”) features Chekhov’s first adult writer, Vasilii Semi-Bulatov. 47 Institut blagorodnykh devits. The first such institute came into existence by Catherine the Great’s Decree of 5 May 1764 as The Educational Society for the Daughters of Nobility (Vospitatel’noe obshchestvo blagorodnykh devits) in St Petersbrug. Since the school, later renamed The Institute for the Daughters of Nobility (Institut blagorodnykh devits), shared the grounds with the Smolny monastery, it was often referred to as The Smolny Institute and its students as smolianki or monastyrki. Other institutions of this type were created throughout Russia in subsequent years, and they continued to operate until the Bolshevik reforms in education in 1918. Initially, the course of study in such closed institutions of the boarding school type lasted twelve years (from age six to eighteen). Under the Empress Maria Fyodorovna (1759–1828) the course of study was reduced to six years (from nine–ten to sixteen years of age). Before the reforms of the 1860s students were not allowed to leave the school for home visits and spent all of their school years in the institute. For a selection of institutki memoirs, see V.M. Bokova and L.G. Sakharova, eds., Institutki: Vospominaniia vospitannits institutov blagorodnykh devits (Moscow: nlo, 2003). 48 The productive nature of the mode is signalled by later appropriations. See, for example, A. Pedro’s (A.P. Podurov) story “Zhenia Tuchkina’s Composition on the Usefulness of Vacations and What I Did on My Vacation” (Vakatsionnaia rabota Zheni Tuchkinoi na temu: ‘O pol’ze kanikul i kak ia provela

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50 51

52

53

54 55

56

57

Notes to pages 129–30

onye’”), Budil’nik 47 (1881): 719. See also Chekhov’s own “The Mad Mathematician’s Math Problems” (Zadachi sumasshedshego matematika) (1882). As late as the end of the 1880s. See for example, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s institutka character in Melochi zhizni (Sobranie sochinenii v 20 t. (Moscow, 1974) vol. 2, book 2, 7-327 http://az.lib.ru/s/saltykow_m_e/text_0400.shtml first published in 1887, and M. Krestovskaia “Vne zhizni” Russkii vestnik 8 (1887): 545–93. See, for example, L.A. Charskaia’s Zapiski institutki (1901). For various connotations of the word institutka, see Slovar’ russkogo iazyka v 4-kh tomakh, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1981), 670. On literary appropriations of the stereotype, see A.F. Belousov, “Institutki v russkoi literature,” in Tynianovskii sbornik: Chetvertye Tynianovskie chteniia (Riga, 1990), 77–99. On the women question and for the institutki’s path into Russian revolution, see Richard Stites, The Women’s Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860–1930 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). A.F. Belousov, “Introduction” to Institutki: Vospominaniia vospitannits institutov blagorodnykh devits, eds. V.M. Bokova and L.G. Sakharova (Moscow: nlo, 2003), 28. N.G. Pomialovskii, Sochineniia (Moscow: Pravda, 1949), 110. Quoted in A.F. Belousov, “Introduction,” 13. See, for example, S.D. Khvoroshchinskaia, “Vospominaniia institutskoi zhizni” in Russkii vestnik 10 (1861): 526–7, online version at http://az.lib.ru/h /hwoshinskaja_s_d/text_1861_vospominania_institutskoy_zhizni.shtml. Originally designed as schools for the members of the nobility only, the institution had already become more socially inclusive by the eighteenth century. Peasant children, however, were excluded from attending. On the sexual naiveté of the institutki, see Belousov, “Introduction,” 23–4. Belousov notes the appropriation of the stereotype in the nineteenth-century’s erotic literature. Before the reforms of the 1860s, women’s institutes did not have libraries. Students read summaries of literary works in anthologies or as presented by their teachers. K.D. Ushinsky’s tenure at the Smolny institute in St Petersburg (1859–62) was marked by a number of important changes in the teaching of literature. Instructional plans and programs were reorganized to conform to current pedagogical views. Russian language came to be the foundation for teaching literature, both Russian and foreign. Close reading of selected texts became the standard practice of instruction. Ushinsky’s innovations served as the basis for subsequently created instructional programs for women’s gimnaziia that were used by institutes as well. Thus,

Notes to pages 130–7

58 59 60

61 62

63 64 65 66 67

68 69 70

71 72

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Naden’ka is able to read a relatively contemporary novel, such as Turgenev’s, in full. On teaching of Russian literature in institutes see A.S. Safonova, “Chtenie v sisteme vospitaniia institutok,” Vestnik vgu. Seriia Filologiia. Zhurnalistika 1 (2001): 65–9. For a detailed discussion of instruction in literature in late Imperial Russia, see Andy Byford, “Between Literary Education and Academic Learning: The Study of Literature at Secondary School in Late Imperial Russia (1860s–1900s),” History of Education 33, 6 (November 2004): 637–60. I.S. Turgenev, “The Desperate One” (“Otchaiannyi”) in Sobranie Sochinenii v 12 tomakh, 8 (Moscow, 1978): 316. First published in 1882. Belousov, “Introduction,” 15–17. As evident, for example, in Charskaia, Zapiski. For a detailed discussion of the image of the baryshnia in Chekhov, see A.S. Strakhova, “Printsipy izobrazheniia cheloveka v proze A. P. Chekhova: sotsial’no-psikhologicheskii tip ‘baryshni.’” (PhD dissertation, Rossiiskii pedagogicheskii universitet im. Gertsena, St Petersburg, 2001). The stereotypical nature of the image is apparent in a comic dictionary “Slovotolkovatel’ dlia baryshen’’,” Oskolki 28 (1886): 5–6. In “Letters and Telegrams” under the rubric This and That (1881), http://www.lib.ru/LITRA/CHEHOW/tose1.txt_with-big-pictures.html V mire smekha i shutok (St Petersburg: Tipografiia Ministerstva Putei Soobshcheniia, 1900), 158. The volume is a selection of stories and illustrations from Dragonfly (Strekoza). See Strakhova, “Printsipy,” 17. http://feb-web.ru/feb/chekhov/texts/sp0/sp5/sp5-260-.htm Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 1, 24. Ibid. Chekhov’s personal familiarity with high school curriculum and compositions is evident in his sister Maria’s account of the composition Chekhov wrote for her literature class at the age of 15; the grade received was a C+. http://apchekhov.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000014/st013.shtml. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 1, 25. Ibid., 24. Chekhov’s reference to Grotta del Cane in “Zinochka” (1887) is another indication of the writer’s close familiarity with Turgenev’s novel where a visit to the site mentioned by a female protagonist (Pyotr’s sister, Nadezhda) is used to indicate her shallowness. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 1, 25. http://az.lib.ru/t/turgenew_i_s/text_0102.shtml Part IV. First published in Sovremennik (1854, 9). For a discussion of the cyclical nature of Turgenev’s

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81 82 83 84 85

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87 88 89 90

Notes to pages 137–44

novels of the 1850s see M.V. Kuzavova, Liubovno-philosophskie povesti I. S. Turgeneva i problema tsikloobrazovaniia v tvorchestve pisatelia 1850-kh godov (Moscow: mgpu, 2012). Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 1, 25. Ibid. A.P. Chekhov, “Zadachi sumasshedshego matematika,” first published in Budil’nik 8 (1882): 94. Cathy Popkin, The Pragmatics of Insignificance: Chekhov, Zoshchenko, Gogol (Standford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 39. The expression “insubordinate consciousness” is David Joravsky’s. See Joravsky, Russian Psychology: A Critical History (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), xii. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 2, 408–10. The sadistic enjoyment of inflicting punishment on a child was responsible for L.E. Obolenskii’s reading of “The Mean Boy” as one of the narratives that “condemn the ugliness and tyranny of our family life” in Odesskii listok 173 (1900). As PM. Bitsilli points out, the plot for both stories bears close resemblance to N. G. Pomialovskii’s novels Meshchanskoe schast’e and Molotov (both published in 1861). Bitsilli, Pro/Contra II, 532–3. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 4, 114. On Chekhov’s modifications of the journal version, see Ibid., 482. 2 January 1889 letter. See Letters, vol. 3, 121–2. As, for example, in M. Grek (V.V. Bilibin), Liubov’ i smekh. Veselyi sbornik (St Petersburg: Tip. R. Golike, 1882), 63. Oskolki 43, (22 October 1883). As Elizabeth Ginzburg points out, Chekhov’s description of his young character’s condition is close to that of Var’ka in “Sleepy” (1888). See Ginzburg, “Muzyka snov,” 380–1. The designation of a “serious etude” appears in Chekhov’s letter to M.V. Kiseleva of 29 October 1886. The “medical professional” representation of starvation as the goal of the story is mentioned by Chekhov in a letter to Bilibin of 18 January 1886 appended to the copy sent for publication in the collection Motley Stories (Pestrye rasskazy). Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 3, 131. Ibid., 134. As was done, for example, by V.A. Gol’tsev in Russkaia mysl’ 5 (1894): 43. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 5, 83–5. The topic for the story was given to Chekhov by the writer V.V. Bilibin who suggested “the psychology of a small child” for Chekhov’s consideration. N.A. Leikin’s adopted son Fedya served as the prototype for the hero. See Ibid., 623.

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91 See A.P. Chudakov, Chekhov’s Poetics (Ann Arbor: Ardis 1983), 33–9. 92 L. Laponina, “Priem ostraneniia v rasskazakh A.P. Chekhova o detiakh,” in Molodye issledovateli Chekhova 5: Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, eds. V.B. Kataev and R.B. Akhmetshin (Moscow: mgu, 2005), 128. 93 Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 5, 83. 94 Chekhov’s portrayal of the child here anticipates Jean Piaget’s formulations on early child development. See Piaget, La construction du réel chez l’enfant (Neuchâtel, Paris: Delachaux et Niestlé, 1937); La représentation du monde chez l’enfant (Paris: Librairie Féliz Alcan, 1938); also The Child and Reality (New York: Penguin Books, 1976). Ben Wiegers points to the commonalities found in Jean Piaget’s theories and in Chekhov’s characterization of his protagonist in The Steppe, particularly in the area of egocentrism, syncretism, animism, and causality. See Ben Wiegers, The Child and the Childlike in Russian Narrative Literature (1850–1935) (Düren and Maastricht: Shaker Publishing, 2000), 30, 109–43. 95 What Piaget terms “object permanence” in the late “sensorimotor” early “preoperational” stage. Piaget, The Child and Reality. 96 Also “accommodation” in Piaget’s sense of adapting one’s understanding on the basis of new information. Carol Garhart Mooney, Theories of Childhood (St Paul, mn and Beltsville, md: Redleaf Press, 2000), 70. 97 Chekhov’s views on the inseparability of the psychic and physiological are stated in his letter to Suvorin of 7 May 1889: ”Psychic phenomena are so astonishingly similar to physical ones that one cannot discern where one begins and the other ends. I think that in an autopsy even the most fervent spiritualist will necessarily inquire: where is the soul here? And if you know how great the resemblance between bodily and psychic maladies is, and when you know that both are treated with the same medications, you would be hard pressed to split the soul from the body,” Letters, vol. 3, 207. For an insightful discussion of the exchange see Katherine Tiernan O’Connor, “Cechov the Materialist Versus Suvorin the Anti-materialist or the Unboring Story of Chekhov, Suvorin and Paul Bourget” in Anton P. Cechov—Philosophische und Religiose Dimensionen im Leben und im Werk, eds. V.B. Kataev, Rolf-Dieter Kluge, and Regine Nohejl (Munich: O. Sagner, 1997), 379–83. 98 On the relationship between the character’s environment, consciousness, and illness in the story, see M. Mangold, “Chekhovskoe nabliudenie: sub’ektivnost’ i ob’ektivnost’ w rannikh proizvedeniiakh Chekhova,” in Chekhovskaia karta mira, ed. V.B. Kataev (Melikhovo: Ministerstvo Kul’tury Moskovskoi Oblasti, 2015), 496–503. 99 On imagination, see P.F. Kapterev, “Istoriia voobrazheniia,” Zhenskoe obrazo

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Notes to pages 146–55

vanie (August–September 1888), 321–42; on sensory limitations in young children, see Kapterev, “Obshchaia chuvstvitel’nost’ detei i vzroslykh,” Zhenskoe obrazovanie (May 1881): 271–8. 100 Lev Vygotsky, Pedagogicheskaia psikhologiia (Moscow: Pedagogika Press, 1999), 316. First published in 1926. 101 Ibid., 316–17. 102 Ibid., 202. For Chekhov, as later for Vygotsky, this next jump in development occurs at seven. On age classification and its evolution in Russian educational psychology, see V.V. Davydov, ed., Rossiiskaia pedagogicheskaia entsiklopediia v 2-kh tomakh, vol. 1 (Moscow: Bol’shaia rossiiskaia entsiklopediia, 1993) 157–9. On the evolution of the concept of childhood see Davydov, Rossiiskaia, vol. 1, 261–2. CHAPTER FIVE

1 The first epigraph comes from Chekhov’s letter to Suvorin of 27 October 1888 (“Khudozhnik nabliudaet, vybiraet, dogadyvaetsia, komponuet), Letters, vol. 3, 45. http://feb-web.ru/feb/chekhov/texts/sp0/pi3/pi3-045-.htm. The second is from Roman Jakobson, Child Language, Aphasia and Phonological Universals (The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1972), 14. 2 Letters, vol. 3, 45–6. 3 For more on Chekhov’s “novelization” of the sketch, see V.B. Kataev, “Chekhov i ego literaturnoe okruzhenie,” in Sputniki Chekhova, ed. V.B. Kataev (Moscow: mgu, 1982), 10–16. 4 http://feb-web.ru/feb/chekhov/texts/sp0/sp4/sp4-135-.htm?cmd=p. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 4, 135–9. 5 What Boris Uspensky refers to as “the words of estrangement.” See Uspensky, A Poetics of Composition. The Structure of the Artistic Text and Typology of a Compositional Form (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 85. 6 Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 4, 136. 7 Walter Arndt, “Introduction” in Alexander Pushkin: Collected Narrative and Lyrical Poetry, ed. and trans. Walter Arndt (Ann Arbor: Ardis 1984), 119. 8 Leslie O’Bell, “Young Pushkin: Ruslan and Liudmila in its Lyric Context,” The Russian Review 44 (1985): 141. 9 The major points of O’Bell’s reading of the poem. O’Bell, “Young Pushkin,” 144–5. 10 A.S. Pushkin, Sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh, 1 (Moscow: gikhl, 1959–62): 362–3. 11 Richard F. Gustafson’s reading of Pushkin’s Ruslan and Liudmila finds “a central thematic triangle of Pushkin’s poetry” – sexual attraction, struggle

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for the object of love, and art – in Pushkin’s very early narrative poem “The Monk” (1813). See Gustafson, “Ruslan and Liudmila: Pushkin’s Anxiety of Blackness,” in Under the Sky of My Africa: Alexander Pushkin and Blackness, eds. Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy, Nicole Svobodny, and Ludmila A. Trigos (Evanston, il: Northwestern University Press), 102. Arndt, “Introduction,” 122. See more on Pushkin’s importance for Chekhov in V.B. Kataev, ed., Chekhov in Chekhoviana. Chekhov i Pushkin (Nauka: Moscow, 1998). Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 6, 346. Ibid., 689. The second line edited out in Tolstoy’s copy is one comparing patients with heathen gods (pokhodili na iazycheskikh bozhkov), the edit consistent with Tolstoy’s possible unease about uniformity of perspective in the story. For Tolstoy’s editing of Chekhov’s “The Darling” (“Dushechka,” 1899) see Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 10, 412–13. For a detailed discussion of Chekhov’s similarly ambivalent use of perspective in The Steppe see Ben Wiegers, The Child and the Childlike in Russian Narrative Literature (1850–1935) (Düren and Maastricht: Shaker Publishing, 2000), 130–8. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 6, 349. Ibid. Ibid., 352. V.F. Stenina Mifologiia bolezni v proze A. P. Chekhova (Barnaul: Altgpa, 2013), 85, 94. Ibid., 156. The notion is supported by the fact that Pashka changes his clothes in the hospital and is offered a (sacrificial) meal. For a thought provoking and detailed discussion of the different “universes of discourse” of the child and the father, see Nikita Nankov, “Narrative Realms/Narrative Limits: Chekhov’s Story ‘At Home’ in the Context of Modernity,” seej 47, 3 (Autumn 2003): 441–69. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 6, 101. Ibid. Ibid., 97. On the ideology of “futliar” in Chekhov see M.P. Gromov, Kniga o Chekhove (Moscow: Sovremennik, 1989), 127. Cathy Popkin, The Pragmatics of Insignificance: Chekhov, Zoshchenko, Gogol (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1993), 27. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 6, 102, 104 Ibid., 98. For an overview of educational approaches to corporal punishment in Chekhov’s time, see P.F. Kapterev, Istoriia russkoi pedagogii (St Petersburg: Aleteia, 2004), 289–433 and Abby M. Schrader, Languages of the Lash: Corpo-

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ral Punishment and Identity in Imperial Russia (DeKalb, il: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002). On Chekhov’s father’s approach to parenting see Gromov, Kniga, 15–18. In his discussion of morality and art in child development, Vygotsky echoes Chekhov’s language: “The adult tries to adjust himself (poddelyvaetsia) to the psychology of the child, thinking that a serious emotional feeling is inaccessible to him, awkwardly and unskillfully sugarcoating situations and characters: the feeling is exchanged for sentimentality, the emotion for sentiment.” Lev Vygotsky, Pedagogicheskaia psikhologiia (Moscow: Pedagogika Press, 1999), 202. First published in 1926. Mroz sees the primary challenge facing the father in reconciling his son’s designation as a “child” with the “adult” action of smoking, which he likens to initiation. See T. Mroz, “Rebionok kak drugoi (Rasskaz A.P. Chekhova ‘Doma,’” in Chekhovskaia Karta Mira, ed V.B. Kataev (Melikhovo: Ministerstvo Kul’tury Moskovskoi Oblasti 2015), 533–40. Vygotsky, Pedagogicheskaia, 242. Ibid. “I do not doubt that the child has his own world, different from ours. Imagination created this world for the child and he lives and acts in it in his own way.” We should not “transport the child from his sphere into ours, but transport ourselves into his spiritual world.” N.I. Pirogov, “Byt’ i kazat’sia,” (1856) in Izbrannye pedagogicheskie sochineniia (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii pedagogicheskikh nauk rsfsr, 1953), 95. Aikhenvald picks up on the crucial passage in his reading of “At Home”: “The child is guided by the flow (techenie) of his own thoughts, his own little inner world and creates thereby a wonderful contrast with the admonishments by others, with the efforts of an educator.” Iu.I. Aikhenvald, in Pro/Contra I, 755. Pirogov’s statement is, of course, a restatement of Rousseau’s dictum: “Childhood has its own methods of seeing, thinking, and feeling.” Rousseau, Emile, or Concerning Education, trans. Eleanor Worthington (Boston: D.C. Health and Co., 1889), 52. What Martha M.F. Kelly terms (after Hans-Georg Gadamer) the “participatory model of narrative.” Martha M.F. Kelly, “The Art of Knowing: Music and Narrative in Two Chekhov’s Stories,” seej 56, 1 (Spring 2012): 41. Ibid., 42. M.V. Kiseleva, V.V. Bilibin, D.V. Grigorovich, K.K. Arsen’ev, and P. Pertsov. See Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 6, 642–4. Ibid. (I.I. Gorbunov-Posadov, V.A. Gol’tsev, F.I. Paktovskii). For Tolstoy’s views on literature for children, see L.N. Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii v 22 tomakh vol. 15 (Moscow: Khudozhestvenaia literature, 1983), 331–5.

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40 See Andrew Baruch Wachtel, The Battle for Childhood: Creation of a Russian Myth (Standford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 83–130 41 Vygotsky, Psikhologicheskaia, 236–8. 42 On the notion of discovery in Chekhov, see Vladimir Kataev, If We Could Only Know, ed. and trans. Harvey Pitcher (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), 20–7. I have to disagree with Nankov’s conclusion that the story ends “with the triumph of Bykovsky’s referential systematic function which uses the emotive and poetic functions to advantage” (Nankov, “Narrative Realms,” 450). The effective communication is achieved because both protagonists are emotionally engaged in the creative process. CHAPTER SIX

1 The first epigraph to the chapter is from K.D. Ushinsky, Izbrannye trudy v 4 knigakh, vol. 2 (Moscow: Drofa, 2005), 216–17. The second epigraph comes from Lev Vygotsky, Mind in Society, trans. M. Cole (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1978), 92. 2 The term was first introduced by Johan Huizinga in Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. According to Huizinga, “All play moves and has its being within a play-ground marked off beforehand either materially or ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course. Just as there is no formal difference between play and ritual, so the ‘consecrated spot’ cannot be formally distinguished from the playground. The arena, the card-table, the magic circle, the temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis court, the court of justice, etc, are all in form and function play-grounds, i.e. forbidden spots, isolated, hedged round, hallowed, within which special rules obtain. All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart.” Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (Mansfield Center, ct: Martino Publishing, 2014), 10. 3 Chekhov, “Commentaries,” in Complete Works, vol. 5, 668. 4 Ibid. 5 K.K. Arsen’ev, “Belletristy poslednego vremeni,” in Pro/Contra I, 52. 6 P.P. Pertsov, “Iz’iany tvorchestva,” in ibid., 191. First published in Russkoe bogatstvo 1 (1893): 47–71. 7 V.A. Gol’tsev, “A.P. Chekhov (Opyt literaturnoi kharakteristiki” in Pro/Contra I, 236. 8 E.A. Liatskii, “A.P. Chekhov i ego rasskazy,” in ibid., 477. First published in Vestnik Evropy 1 (1904): 104–62. 9 Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 5, 424. 10 Ibid., 425.

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Ibid., 426. Ibid., 427. Ibid., 426. M.V. Osorina, Sekretnyi mir detei v prostranstve mira vzroslykh (St Petersburg: Piter, 2008), chapter 6, http://www.koob.pro/osorina/secret_world_of_children. Ibid., 427. Ibid., 428. Ibid. Vygotsky, Mind, 102. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 5, 425. Ibid. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 4, 315 Ibid. Ibid. The “coarseness” of the story was mentioned by l.N. Krasno, “Osennie belletristy” in Pro/Contra I, 254 and E.A. Liatskii, “A.P. Chekhov i ego rasskazy” in ibid., 477. Osorina, Sekretnyi mir, chapter 2. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 4, 315. Ibid., 316. Ibid., 317. On strashilki, see O. N. Grechina, M.V. Osorina, “Sovremennaia fol’klornaia proza detei,” in Russkii fol’klor: Fol’klor i istoricheskaia deistvitel’nost’, ed. A.A. Gorelov (Leningrad: Nauka, 1981), 96–106. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 4, 317. Ibid. Arsen’ev, Pro/Contra I, 52. Gol’tsev, ibid., 237. Pertsov, ibid., 191. Iu.I. Aikhenvald, ibid., 755–6. Vygotsky, Mind, 90. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 4, 317. My emphasis. On the Russians’ reception of Thomas Mayne Reid, see Yulia Pushkarevskaya Naughton and Gerald David Naughton, “‘Westward Went I in Search of Romance’: the Transnational Reception of Thomas Mayne Reid’s Western Novels,” The cea Critic 75, 2 (July 2013): 143, 144–6. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 6, 424. Montigomo was the nickname of a Moscow theatre producer, Aleksandrov, in the 1880s. Chekhov mentions the arrival of Aleksandrov’s company in “Fragments of Moscow Life” of 22 May 1884 (Chekhov, Complete Works, vol.

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16, 94). The title of the production and details on its content were published in Moskovskii listok (12 June 1884). According to the article, the Hermitage garden theatre was offering a new play, Mon-ti-gommo, or Hawkeye, Chief of the Indian Tribe O’mano-Ahsanti. The performance, in three acts, featured “marches, military evolutions, the dances of the savages, etc.” See more on the history of Chekhov’s name for his character in Aleksandr Anichkin, “Sled kogtia,” Ogonek 5 (6 February 2012), https: www. Kommersant.ru /doc/1862703. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 6, 427–8. Ibid., 424. Ibid., 425. Ibid. Ibid., 427. Ibid., 425–6. Ibid., 427. Ibid., 428. Ibid., 427. Ibid., 426. Ibid., 427. Mayne Reid, The Scalp-Hunters: A Thrilling Tale of Danger and Romance in Northern Mexico (New York: The Federal Book Company Publishers, 1899 [first edition 1851]), chapter 1 (“The Wild West”), 5. Ibid., 7–8 Oskolki 3 (January 1885): 4. Shmelev recounts meeting Chekhov in the Moscow Neskuchnyi Garden in the 1880s, when he and his schoolmate were fishing and playing Indians. According to Shmelev, Chekhov was eager to join in the game and was quite aware of the rituals of play based on adventure novels. I.S. Shmelev, Povesti i rasskazy (Moscow, 1960). Cited in Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 6, 699. G.I. Uspenskii, Complete Works, vol. 14 (1954), 485. Quoted in Chekhov, Complete Works vol. 6, 699 Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 16, 236–7. First published in 1888 Novoe vremia 4548, 26 October. The boys wanted to reach California via Perm, Tiumen’, Tomsk, Kamchatka, and the Bering Strait, travelling in the middle of winter. Chekhov left Moscow in April, going to Yaroslavl by train, then by steamer on the Volga and the Kama to the city of Perm. He then took the train to Tiumen via Ekaterinburg where he switched to a horse-drawn carriage, travelling for thousands of miles to Lake Baikal via Tomsk, Achinsk, Krasnoyarsk, Kansk, and Irkutsk and crossing flooded rivers by boat. A steamer on Lake Baikal took

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him to Kliuevo, followed by a lengthy trip by carriage to Sretensk. He then travelled by boat on the Shilka and the Amur to Nikolaevsk, stopping in Blagoveshchensk and Khabarovsk. In July, Chekhov crossed the Strait of Tartary and arrived in Sakhalin after travelling close to 10,000 miles. A.P. Chekhov, Sobranie sochinenii v dvadtsati tomakh 10: 158. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 6, 428. The description of Volodya’s anguish on the eve of the escape evokes that of Maria in Pushkin’s story “Metel’” (“The Blizzard”) in the Tales of Belkin (1830). In the story, Maria is in love with Vladimir who conjures up a plan to elope, the plan thwarted by a blizzard. Chekhov’s portrayal of the real (Przhevalsky) and fictional heroic personality (Chechevitsyn) recalls the “seriousness” and complete dedication to the cause exhibited by the Russian noble revolutionaries, the Decembrists. See on this, Iu.M. Lotman, “Dekabrist v povsednevnoi zhizni,” in Iu. M Lotman, Besedy o russkoi kul’ture: Byt I traditsii russkogo dvorianstva (XVIII-nachalo –XIX veka) (St Petersburg: Iskusstvo-spb), 1994, 331–84. Pro/Contra I, 757. A. Basargin, “Bezobidnyi iumor,” Moskovskie vedomosti 36 (1900). Quoted in Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 6, 699. CHAPTER SEVEN

1 Severnyi vestnik (Northern Herald) 3 (1888): 75–167. 2 With the exception of Suvorin’s Peterburgskaia gazeta, Chekhov’s working relationship with newspapers came to an end as well. 3 Nenuzhnaia pobeda (The Unnecessary Victory, 1882) published serially in Budil’nik (The Alarm Clock) and Drama na okhote (Drama at the Hunt, 1884) appearing first in the Moscow newspaper Novosti dnia (News of the Day) were Chekhov’s early full-length pieces. The Unnecessary Victory, a literary mystification of sorts, is a parodic appropriation of romantic novels by the popular Hungarian writer Mór Jókai. Drama at the Hunt is Chekhov’s take on a mystery novel. One cannot doubt, therefore, Chekhov’s skill and familiarity with extant requirements for novelistic writing. Critics have referred to Chekhov’s The Steppe as a sketch, etude, a story, as well as an introduction to a large novel. (Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 627–54). Most, including Chekhov himself, however, describe the work as a povest’, the genre positioned between a long story and a novel but more substantial than a novella. I consider Chekhov’s work as a highly innovative short novel because of the centrality of the child’s figure, its “picaresque” plot of travel

Notes to pages 204–6

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and adventure, and the multitude of characters Chekhov describes in the piece. Letter to A.N. Pleshcheev, 3 February 1888.; Letter to Leont’ev (Shcheglov), 22 January 1888. (Cited in Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 630.) Letter to V.G. Korolenko 9 January 1888, cited in ibid. Chekhov elaborates on the issue in his letters to Grigorovich on 12 January1888, Ia.P. Polonskii on 18 January 1888, Pleshcheev on 23 January 1888, and to Lazarev-Gruzinskii on 4 February 1888. Cited in ibid. Ibid. Letter to Grigorovich, 12 January 1888. Ibid. Letter to Pleshcheev, 3 February 1888. Ibid. Letter to Pleshcheev, 19 January 1888. Ibid. Letter to Pleshcheev, 23 January 1988. While writing The Steppe, Chekhov reread Pushkin’s Captain’s Daughter and Lermontov’s “Taman’” from The Hero of Our Time and, in another letter on The Steppe, linked Russian poetry with Russian belles lettres. Ibid. Letter to Grigorovich, 5 February 1888. Ibid. In a letter to Lazarev Gruzinskii, 4 February 1888. Novosti i birzhevaia gazeta 206 (22 July 1888). Cited in Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 615. Grazhdanin 34 (February 1892). Cited ibid. Russkie vedomosti 333 (3 December 1888). Cited in ibid. Knizhki Nedeli 5 (1891): 200–1. Cited in Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 616. Nedelia 1 (3 January 1888). Cited in Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 619. Anonymous, Ezhenedel’noe obozrenie VIII/218 (27 March 1888): column 2840. Cited in ibid. Other critics, such as A.I. Vvedenskii, Mikhailovskii, L.E. Obolenskii, Skabichevskii, R. Disterlo, Iu. Nikolaev, and K. Golovin had similar objections. (Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 620.) Disterlo, “Novoe literaturnoe pokolenie” in Nedelia 15 (10 April 1888): column 484. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 619. Mikhailovskii, “Ob ottsakh I detiakh i o g. Chekhove” (1890). Cited ibid. Slovo 2, 238–9. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 634. Cited in Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 635. See more on the contemporaries’ assessment, Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 636–42. Ibid., 644. A.P. Chudakov, Poetika Chekhova (Moscow: Nauka, 1971), 107–22. Chudakov cites several Soviet critics in support of his assertion. See Chudakov, Poetika, 107–8, 110. Ibid.

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25 Ibid., 117. 26 Ibid., 116, 119. 27 Nils Ake Nilsson, Studies in Cechov’s Narrative Technique: “The Steppe” and “The Bishop” (Acta Univ. Stockholmiensis, Stockholm Slavic Studies, 2 (Stochkholm: Amqvist and Wiksell, 1968)), 47. 28 For insightful discussions of the issue of Chekhov’s perspective in the novel, see Ben Wiegers, The Child and the Childlike in Russian Narrative Literature (1850–1935) (Düren and Maastricht: Shaker Publishing, 2000), 121–7; and Jerome H. Katsell, “Cexov’s The Steppe Revisited,” seej 22, 3 (Autumn 1978): 313–17. 29 The point successfully argued by Katsell, “Cexov’s The Steppe Revisited,” 313–22. 30 Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrille. 31 For a detailed discussion of musicality in the novel, see T.A. Mamedova, “Ritmomelodicheskaia organizatsiia opisanii prirody v povesti A.P. Chekhova “Step,’” http://apchekhov.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000026/st017.shtml. 32 Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 72. 33 Ibid., 14–15. 34 Ibid., 91. Wiegers, The Child and the Childlike, 137. 35 Ibid., 20. 36 Ibid., 13. 37 Ibid., 14. 38 Ibid., 44–5. 39 Ibid., 45. 40 Ibid., 46. 41 A.D. Stepanov, “K voprosu o Chekhovskom psikhologizme,” in Kul’turnoistoricheskii dialog: Traditsiia i tekst, eds. A.B. Muratova and S.B. Adon’eva (St Petersburg: St Petersburg University, 1993), 115–19. 42 A.D. Stepanov, “Chekhovskaia “semiotika”: starenie/stiranie znaka,” Problemy kommunikatsii u Chekhova, http://my-chekhov.ru/kritika/problem /problem4-2.shtml. 43 In addition to the engraving, Moisei’s conversations with Father Christopher and Chekhov’s depiction of Solomon’s behaviour evoke biblical discourse on the theme of ingratitude, self-indulgence, and indifference to the misfortunes of others. See, for example, 2 Timothy 3:1–8: “But know this, that in the last days, perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power.

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And from such people turn away! For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 40. Ibid., 37. M.Ch. Larionova places Egorushka’s perceptions of his encounters at the inn in the context of Slavic cultural stereotypes based on ethnocentrism where another culture is perceived as “alien.” Larionova, “V nashei literature on stepnoi tsar …’: step’ Gogolia i Chekhova.” See http://domgogolya.ru /science/researches/1213/, 4 (online version). Henrietta Mondry links the descriptions of Jews in The Steppe to racial stereotypes common at the time. As Mondry demonstrates, the entire Jewish family in the novel shows “signs of pathology that is both hereditary and acquired due to the unhealthy lifestyle of Jewish people.” See Mondry, “Constructing the Jew,” in her Exemplary Bodies: Constructing the Jew in Russian Culture, 1880s to 2008 (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2009), 46. In a description uncannily close to that of Seryozha in “At Home,” Chekhov identifies Vasya’s distinctly childish difference from other people as follows: “Because of this acuity of sight, Vasya had, in addition to the world that everybody saw, a different world, all his own, not accessible to anyone and probably very good because it was difficult not to envy him when he observed and admired [it].” Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 56. Ibid., 25–6. Ibid., 85. Ibid., 86. Ibid., 87. Katsell, “Cexov’s,” 317–18. V.B. Shklovskii, “A.P. Chekhov: [Glava iz knigi]” in A.P. Chekhov: Pro et Contra II, 834. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 15. Rousseau writes: “This education comes to us from nature itself, or from other men, or from circumstances. The internal development of our faculties and of our organs is the education nature gives us; the use we are taught to make of this development is the education we get from other men; and what we learn, by our own experience, about things that interest us, is the education of circumstances. Each of us is therefore formed by three kinds of teachers. The pupil in whom their different lessons contradict one another is badly educated, and will never be in harmony with himself; the one in whom they all touch upon the same points and tend toward the same

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object advances toward that goal only, and lives accordingly. He alone is well educated.” Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or Concerning Education, trans. Eleanor Worthington (Boston: D.C. Health and Co., 1889), 12–13. In his letter of 9 February 1888 to Pleshcheev, Chekhov refers to Dymov as a “superfluous man.” He writes, “Such individuals as the prankster Dymov are created by life not for schism, wandering, or settled life, but directly for revolution … Revolution in Russia will never take place, while Dymov will end up either drinking himself to death or in prison. This is a superfluous man.” Cited in Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 632. Ibid., 66. Ibid., 88. Egorushka’s “Why do people marry?” and “it is shameful (sovestno) to get married” are a verbatim repetition of Grisha’s thoughts in “The Cook.” Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 73. Ibid., 72–3. Letter to Leont’ev (Shcheglov), 11 January 1888 (cited in Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 626). See more on Chekhov’s steppe cycle in L.P. Gromov, “Step’,” Realizm A.P. Chekhova vtoroi poloviny 80-kh godov, online version: http://apchekhov.ru /books/item/f00/z0000024/st005.shtml. Larionova, “V nashei literature,” 1–2. On Chekhov’s indebtedness to the writings by Gogol’, Turgenev, Lermontov, and Tolstoy, see, see Bitsilli, “Tvorchestvo Chekhova: Opyt stilisticheskogo analiza” in Pro/Contra II, 537–96. Larionova, “V nashei,” 2–3. In the spirit of Mayne Reid’s exploration of American wilderness, Chekhov’s work on The Steppe was preceded by a fact-finding trip to the south in 1887. The novel is also evocative of Chekhov’s childhood experiences of a journey through the steppe a decade before. On Chekhov’s indebtedness to small form, see Bitsilli, “Tvorchestvo,” 529–35 and N.V. Kapustin Chuzhoe slovo v proze A.P. Chekhova: zhanrovye traditsii (Ivanovo: Ivanovskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet, 2003), 120–47. Bitsilli, “Tvorchestvo,” 544–5. http://az.lib.ru/t/turgenew_i_s/text_0102.shtml Part IV. First published in Sovremennik 9 (1854). Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 1, 224. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 6, 218. Chekhov later evoked Turgenev’s image of the dew on the grass in “The Lady with a Dog” (1899). The image is the focal interpretive point of

Notes to pages 226–31

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Radislav Lapushin’s “Dew on the Grass”: The Poetics of Inbetweenness (Bern: Peter Lang Publishing, 2010). Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 16. For a discussion of differences in critical opinion about the point of view in The Steppe, see Katsell, “Cexov’s” 313–23. Thomas Winner, “Syncretism in Chekhov’s Art: A Study of Polystructured Texts,” in Chekhov’s Art of Writing: A Collection of Critical Essays, eds. Paul Debreczny and Thomas Eekman (Columbus, Ohio, 1977), 156. Larionova, “V nashei,” 3. In the descriptions of dreams that Chekhov removed from the journal version of The Steppe, Tit is featured again. Another deleted dream offers a detailed description of Egorushka’s return to his mother’s home together with Countess Dranitskaia, embodying the boy’s anguish about his separation from home and a desire to return to childhood. See more on the symbolism of gestures in David Maxwell, “A System of Symbolic Gesture in Cexov’s “Step’,” The Slavic and East European Journal 17, 2 (Summer 1973): 146–54. Correspondence with D.V. Grigorovich suggests that Chekhov was thinking about a sequel to The Steppe featuring his protagonist’s eventual suicide. Instead, he addressed the topic of teenage suicide in “Volodya.” See Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 6, 664. In a letter of 9 February 1888 to Pleshcheev, Chekhov’s sketches his characters’ future as follows: “Silly father Christopher has died. Countess Dranitskaia is living badly. Varlamov keeps on circling.” CHAPTER EIGHT

1 5 February 1888. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 5, 632. 2 First published in Peteterburgskaia Gazeta 354 (25 December 1886): 4. Tolstoy considered “Van’ka” to be one of Chekhov’s best stories. See Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 5, 677. 3 For an exhaustive analysis of the tradition in Russian literature, see E.V. Dushechkina, Russkii sviatochnyi rasskaz. Stanovlenie zhanra (St Petersburg: St Petersburg University, 1995). On Dickens’s influence, ibid., 143–7. See also M.I. Bondarenko, “Traditsii ‘Rozhdestvenskikh povestei’ Dikkensa v russkom sviatochnom rasskaze 1840-1890kh godov” (PhD dissertation, Kolomensk State Pedagogical University, 2006). 4 See Dushechkina, Russkii sviatochnyi, 155–6. 5 For a detailed discussion of Rückert’s ballad in relation to the Russian tradi-

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Notes to pages 231–8

tion and particularly to Dostoevsky, see G.M. Fridlender, Realizm Dostoevskogo (Nauka: Moscow–Leningrad, 1964), 298–308. andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheLittleMatchGirl_e.html. Ibid. Ibid. See also E.A. Akel’kina, “Filosofskie cherty v povestvovanii rozhdestvenskogo rasskaza A.P. Chekhova ‘Van’ka,’” 2016. https://cyberleninka.ru/articl /n/filosofskie-cherty-v-povestvovanii-rozhdestvenskogo-rasskaza-a-p-chehovavanka-1886; S.O. Semeniuta, “Vizual’nye obrazy v rozhdestvenskikh rass kazakh A.P. Chekhova,” Vestnik Cheliabinskogo gosudarstvennogo pedagogicheskogo universiteta 1 (2017): 157–62. F.M. Dostoevsky, Sobranie sochinenii v dvenadtsati tomakh, vol. 12 (Moscow: Pravda, 1982), 457–62. Fridlender, Realizm, 304–5. Ibid. Dushechkina, Russkii sviatochnyi, 155–7. On Leikin’s version of the plot in “Apraksintsy” (N.A. Leikin, Apraksintsy: Stseny i ocherki. Dopozharnaia epokha [St Petersburg: Tip. Gogenfel’da i Ko., 1864], 52–3) see O.V. Ovcharskaia, “Ranniaia proza A.P. Chekhova v kontekste maloi pressy 1880-kh godov” (PhD dissertation St Petersburg: St Petersburg University, 2016), 167–9. Chekhov, Complete Works vol. 5, 481. As S.P. Stepanov points out in his “Gnoseologicheskaia kontseptsiia chekhovskoi prozy V.B. Kataeva,” Vestnik Severnogo (Arkticheskogo) federal’nogo universiteta. Ser.: Gummanitarnye i sotsial’nye nauki 5 (2017), 132. On allusions to Gogol’, see E.G. Rudneva, “Gor’kii iumor Antoshi Chekhonte (rasskaz ‘Van’ka’),” in A.P. Chekhov i mirovaia kul’tura, ed. M. Ch. Larionova (Rostov-na-Donu: Logos, 2010), 146, 148. Rudneva, “Gor’kii,” 146. Carol Apollonio, “Eshche o probleme kommunikatsii u Chekhova: Rasskaz ‘Van’ka’,” in Chekhovskaia karta mira, ed. V.B. Kataev (Melikhovo: Ministerstvo Kul’tury Moskovskoi Oblasti, 2015), 463. V.B. Kataev, If Only We Could Know!, ed. and trans. Harvey Pitcher (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), 43. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 5, 481. Apollonio, “Eshche,” 462. G.G. Ramazanova, “Khudozhestvennyi mir rozhdestvenskikh rasskazov (na material proizvedenii M. E. Saltykova-Shchedrina, A.P. Chekhova,” Sovremennye problemy nauki i obrazovaniia 1–2 (2015). http://www.science-education .ru/ru/article/view?id=20368. E.A. Akel’kina, “Filosofskie cherty v povestvovanii rozhdestvenskogo rasskaza

Notes to pages 238–43

24

25

26

27

28 29 30 31 32 33 34

35 36 37

315

A.P. Chekhova ‘“Van’ka,’” Omskii Regional’nyi nauchno-issledovatel’skii Tsentr izucheniia tvorchestva F. M. Dostoevskogo, Filologicheskie nauki (2016): 12–13. I.A. Esaulov, “O nekotorykh osobennostiakh rasskaza A.P. Chekhova ‘Van’ka’,” in Problemy istoriheskoi poetiki, vol. 5, https://poetica.pro/journal /article.php?id=2544. “Spat’ khochetsia.” First published in Peterburgskaia gazeta, 24 (25 January 1888). Like “Van’ka,” “Sleepy” was considered by Tolstoy to be one of Chekhov’s best stories. See Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 626. For an illuminating account of the connection between “Oysters,” The Steppe, and “Sleepy,” on the structural, symbolic, lexical, and phonetic levels, see Elizabeth Ginzburg, Elizabeth Ginzburg’s “Muzyka snov mezhdu vspyshkami lampady v rasskaze A.P. Chekhova ‘Spat’ khochetsia’: formy sinteza Ii sinesteziia formy,” Russian Literature LII (2002): 379–418. Ginzburg links the musicality of the story to Chekhov’s experiments with representation in The Steppe. In the scholar’s opinion, Chekhov’s form in “Sleepy” is akin to rondo. Ibid., 391–4. Carol Apollonio, “Teaching Chekhov in Translation,” in Approaches to Teaching the Works of Anton Chekhov, eds. Michael C. Finke and Michael Holquist (New York: mla, 2016), 50. E.I. Lelis, “K probleme vidov podteksta v rasskaze A. P. Chekhova ‘Spat’ khochetsia’,” Vestnik Udmurtskogo universiteta 2 (2011): 147. The colour of the icon lamp suggests that the time of narration is not a holiday (when red icon lamps are ordinarily used). Lelis, “ K probleme,” 147. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 9. V.V. Golovin, Russkaia kolybel’naia pesnia v fol’klore i literature (Turku: Abo Akademi University Press, 2000), 14. Ibid., 15. Today’s scholars observe the importance of cradlesongs for the development of communication skills; the songs also help maintain the infant’s undivided attention, modulate infant’s arousal, and regulate behaviour. See Albert Doja, “Socializing Enchantment: A Socio-Anthropological Approach to Infant-Directed Singing, Music Education and Cultural Socialization,” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 45, 1 (June 2014): 118–20. Golovin, Russkaia, 22. Ibid., 23. D.A. Baranov “Simvolicheskie funktsii russkoi kolybeli,” in Problemy istorii Severo-Zapada Rusi (Slaviano-russkie drevnosti: 3), eds. I.V. Dubov and I. Ia Froianov (St Petersburg: St Petersburg University, 1995), 237–8. See also

316

38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45

46 47 48 49

50

51

52

Notes to pages 243–5

A.K. Baiburin, Ritual v traditsionnoi kul’ture (St Petersburg: Nauka, 1993), 40. G.K. Zavoiko, “Verovaniia, obriady i obychaii velikorossov Vladimirskoi gubernii,” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie 103–4 (1914): 96. Ginzburg, “Muzyka,” 402–9. In its metaphorical connotation, parshivaia can be rendered as “black sheep” (see the Russian expression, “parshivuiu ovtsu iz stada von” – “Cast a mangy sheep out of the herd!”); podlaia literally means “low in status” http://wordhist.narod.ru/podlij.html. On the opposition of svoi vs chuzhie, see Baiburin, Ritual, 182–6. Golovin, Russkaia, 2234. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 11. Ibid., 11–12. Ginzburg suggests that Var’ka’s loss of synesthesia, intersensory association formed by similarity or “contiguity” of perceptions, is responsible for the psychosis that leads to murder. I would argue that the loss is a symptom rather than the cause of the psychosis. Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 12. Ibid. Ibid. Chekhov’s depiction of Var’ka’s symptoms is uncannily close to those provided by Manasseina in her study of fatigue and sleep deprivation, published several years after the appearance of Chekhov’s story. The emergence of a “split personality” is another point of confluence with Manasseina’s description of the symptoms. The information could have come Manasseina’s research director and lover Tarkhanov (Chekhov’s friend) or could have been the result of Chekhov’s own observations. According to present knowledge based on experimental data, going without sleep for long periods of time can produce a range of experiences, including perceptual distortions and hallucinations. Psychotic symptoms develop with increasing time awake, from simple visual/somatosensory misperceptions to hallucinations and delusions, ending in a condition resembling acute psychosis. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6048360/. See for example, N.M. Shcharenskaia, “Kontsepty ‘Zhizn’ i ‘Rebionok’ v rasskaze A.P. Chekhova ‘Spat’ khochetsia’,” in Tvorchestvo A.P. Chekhova: Tekst, kontekst, intertekst, ed. M. Ch. Larionova (Rostov-na-Donu: Logos, 2011), 321–30 and V. Okeanskii, “Asketika isikhazma v poetike rasskaza A.P. Chekhova ‘Spat’ khochetsia,’” (2008) https://ocean.ucoz.ru/publ/16-1-0-163. Lelis, “K probleme,” 150.

Notes to pages 245–53

317

53 Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 7, 8. On the “walking dead” see, A.A. Lazareva, “Domovoi, khodiachii pokoinik i pokinuvshaia telo dusha: interpetatsii sonnogo paralicha v vostochnoslavianskoi kul’ture,” in Demonologiia kak semioticheskaia Sistema, eds. O.B. Khristoforova and D.I. Antonov (Moscow: RGGU, 2018), 94–8. 54 Baiburin, Ritual, 72–3. 55 O.A. Grekhova, “Tema ‘ustalogo’ detstva v rasskazakh A.P. Chekhova i K. Mensfild,” Ural’skii filologocheskii vestnik 4 (2017): 178–86. 56 T.F. Kupriianova, “Neskol’ko slov or dvukh finalakh: ‘Toska’, ‘Spat’ khochetsia’,” in A.P. Chekhov i mirovaia kul’tura, 287–98. The saint is mentioned by one of Chekhov’s characters in The Steppe. 57 In Oskolki Moskovskoi zhizni (1883). See Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 16, 54. 58 Iu. Aikhenvald on Chekhov’s “Van’ka” in “Chekhov,” Pro/Contra I, 765. See similar assessments quoted in introduction. CHAPTER NINE

1 The epigraph comes from A.P. Chekhov, “Arkhierei,” Chekhov, Complete Works, vol. 10, 188. The story was published in 1902. 2 I am grateful to one of my anonymous readers for the summation of the insight. 3 Tolstoy, Sobranie sochinenii v 20 tomakh, eds. N.N. Akopova et al (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1960, vol. 1, 62. 4 Aksakov, Sobranie sochinenii v 5 tomakh, vol. 2 (Moscow: Pravda, 1966), 10. Andrew R. Durkin’s translation, in his Sergei Aksakov and Russian Pastoral (New Brunswick, nj: Rutgers University Press, 1983), 179.

318

Notes to pages 000–000

Introduction

319

Index

Figures indicated by page numbers in italics adults, reminiscences by, 40, 41–2 adventures and adventurers: dreamer vs. doer, 192, 195, 197–201; genre conventions, 191–2, 307n55 aesthetics. See art and aesthetics afterchildhood, 22, 39, 230, 246–7. See also “Sleepy” (Chekhov); “Van’ka” (Chekhov) age, and child development, 89, 149–50, 178, 251, 283n59, 302n102 Aikhenvald, Iu.I., 10–11, 13, 188, 200, 246, 260n34, 304n34 Aksakov, Sergey: about, 22, 29; on aesthetic sensibilities and nature, 46–7, 267n42; Chekhov and, 52, 248, 251; on childhood, 6, 40–2, 50–1, 253; on death, 49–50; on knowledge acquisition and learning, 43–6; on maturation, 42, 43, 48–9, 50, 51, 268n47; pedagogical debates and literature by, 18; on reminiscences by adults, 40, 41–2; on sexuality, 47–8; The Steppe (Chekhov) and, 225, 227; works: The Childhood Years of Bagrov’s Grandson, 28; Family

Chronicle, 41; Reminiscences, 28, 41, 42, 43, 50, 52, 207, 213; Years of Childhood of Young Bagrov, 40–1, 42, 43, 45, 49, 52, 152, 158, 207, 213, 267n42 Alarm Clock (journal), 117, 124 Andersen, Hans Christian: “The Little Match Girl,” 230, 231, 232, 233–4 Anschuetz, Carol, 267n32 Apollonio, Carol, 237, 238, 239 Apreleva, E.A., 81 Aristotle, 273n30 Arndt, Walter, 153, 155 Arsen’ev, K.K., 10 art and aesthetics: Aksakov on, 46–7, 467n42; and good and evil, 152–3, 153–4; Tolstoy on artistic selfexpression, 33–4, 167–8; Vygotsky on children and, 167, 170–1, 304n30 artlessness, of children, 10, 11, 12, 13 “At Home” (Chekhov), 164–71; about, 22, 164, 172, 256n4; comparison to Childhood (Tolstoy), 169–70; comparison to The Steppe (Chekhov),

320

Index

223, 227, 311n47; on creating narratives for children, 164–9, 171, 304n31, 305n42; critics on, 10, 11, 169, 304n34, 305n42; “Soft-Boiled Boots” (Chekhov) and, 122; Vygotsky on effective art for children and, 167, 170–1 Auerbach, Berthold, 64, 275n53 Austin, Jane: Pride and Prejudice, 263n65 Bain, Alexander, 87, 273n30; Education as a Science, 58 baryshnia stereotype, 131–2. See also institutes, educational Basargin, A., 200 Baskakova, L.V., 12–13 beauty. See art and aesthetics Beilis, Monahem, 285n78 Belinsky, Vissarion, 4, 29, 56–7, 89, 225 Belousov, A.F., 130, 298n56 Beneke, F.E., 87, 88, 273n30 Berg, P.: Children’s Leisure (children’s journal), 83 Bernard, Claude, 273n30 Bezrogov, V.G., 277n86 Bialyi, G.A., 11 “Big Event, The” (Chekhov), 173–82; about, 22, 173, 256n4; character depictions, 175–6; children’s point of view, 174–5; communication and, 190–1; comparison to “The Boys” (Chekhov), 192; comparison to “Kids” (Chekhov), 185, 190–1; comparison to The Steppe (Chekhov), 227; critics on, 173–4; death of kittens and children’s maturation, 178–80, 181–2; narrator’s relationship with children, 180–1;

role-playing with kittens, 176–8; synopsis, 174 Billroth, Theodor, 20, 264n69 biological determinism, 285n78. See also race Bitsilli, P.M., 11, 27, 29, 225, 300n80 blissful childhood, 28–9, 40, 51, 96, 253 “blue stocking” stereotype, 132 Borodin, V.P., 81 “Boys, The” (Chekhov), 191–201; about, 22, 173, 191, 256n4; adventure genre conventions and, 191–2; comparison to “The Big Event” (Chekhov), 192; comparison to The Steppe (Chekhov), 213, 227; critics on, 200; Decembrists and, 308n60; on dreamers vs. doers in adventures, 192, 195, 198–201; Montigomo persona, 192–3, 195–6, 306n40; nature in, 213; proposed adventure to America, 194–5, 307n57; protagonists and family and social hierarchies, 192–4; The Scalp-Hunters (Reid) and, 196–7 Brehm, Alfred, 87 Buckle, Henry Thomas, 4 Bunakov, N.F., 73, 74, 75–6, 81, 278n98, 279nn105–6 Burdach, Karl Friedrich, 87 Byford, Andy, 101 bylichka (“true story”) narratives, 185–6, 190, 223 Charcot, Jean-Martin, 20, 264n69 Charskaia L., 82 Chekhov, Anton: approach to, 3–4, 17–18, 21–3; on adventurers and adventure genre conventions, 197–8, 307n55; baryshnia-institutka stereo-

Index

types and, 132; Chekhov’s time, definition, 255n1; on childhood and child development, 9–13, 52, 146, 248–53, 302n102; on child labour, 246; comparison to literary canon, 27–9, 52, 251–2; conflation of personal life with stories about children, 13–14; on creative process, 148–9; critical recognition and departure from small press, 203, 308n2; critics on, 8–17, 259n29, 260n34, 260n36, 262n52; dramatic sketch and, 118, 119–21, 139, 149; early writings and background in the small press, 113–14, 117–18, 124, 128–9, 308n3; on education and learning, 77, 78, 247, 252; familiarity with high school curriculum, 134, 299n67; on gender and sexuality, 251; interest in children and writing about children, 4–5, 6–7, 17; journey to Sakhalin, 198, 307n57; literary recycling by, 18, 116, 118, 121, 156, 296n31; medical background and stories about children, 14–15, 256n6, 264n69; on play, 201–2, 250; on psychic and physiological phenomena, 301n97; quotations, use of, 18, 263n60; relationship with literature, 113, 293n2; on Tolstoy and peasantry, 77–8; trifles (melochishka) genre and, 117–18; writing style of, 7–8, 18–21 – nonfiction: “Autobiography,” 15, 20; essay on Nikolai Przhevalsky, 197–8, 199, 200, 308n60; “The Fragments of Moscow Life,” 197, 200, 306n40; The Island of Sakhalin, 14, 197, 198, 200 – novels and short story collections: Drama at the Hunt, 308n3; In the

321

Twilight, 203; The Unnecessary Victory, 308n3. See also The Steppe (Chekhov) – plays: The Cherry Orchard, 116; The Fatherless (Platonov), 114; Three Sisters, 118 – short stories: “After the Theater,” 256n4; “At Friends’ House,” 118; “Belolobyi,” 82; “The Bishop,” 253; “The Case with a Classic,” 256n4; “The Chameleon,” 119; “The Dacha Dwellers,” 120; “The Darling,” 16; “A Day in the Country,” 256n4; “The Death of an Official,” 119; “The Duel,” 201; “Found Most Often in Novels, Etc.,” 115–16, 117; “Happiness,” 224, 225, 226; “Ivan Matveevich,” 256n4; “June 29th,” 225, 226; “The Lady with a Dog,” 312n72; “The Letter to a Learned Neighbour,” 297n46; “The Mad Mathematician’s Problems,” 138; “The Mean Boy,” 22, 139–40, 256n4, 300nn79–80; “On Drama,” 256n4; “Out of Sorts,” 256n4; “Oysters,” 22, 142–4, 245, 256n4, 300nn85–6; “Paterfamilias,” 22, 141–2, 256n4; “Pink Stocking,” 132; “Privy Council,” 256n4; “Soft-Boiled Boots,” 121–4, 125–7, 296n30; “The Student,” 168; “A Trifle,” 256n4; “Two Romances,” 19–21; “Volodya,” 256n4, 313n79; “Zinochka,” 132, 140–1, 256n4, 299n70, 300n80. See also “At Home” (Chekhov); “The Big Event” (Chekhov); “The Boys” (Chekhov); “The Cook Gets Married” (Chekhov); “The Fugitive” (Chekhov); “Grisha” (Chekhov); “Kids” (Chekhov); “Naden’ka N.”

322

Index

(Chekhov); “Sleepy” (Chekhov); “Van’ka” (Chekhov) Chekhov, Mikhail, 83, 122, 282n29 Chernova, L., 82 Chernyshevsky, N.G., 66–7, 272n22; What Is to Be Done?, 296n28 Childhood (Tolstoy): about, 39–40, 51; on artistic self-expression, 33–4, 167–8; Chekhov and, 27, 52; child’s perceptions, 31–2; comparison to “At Home” (Chekhov), 167–8, 169–70; death and leaving childhood, 38–9, 42–3, 267n32; idealization of children, 65; individualized maturation, 32–3; love, sexuality, and gender, 35–8; moral corruption from society, 33–4, 45; mother in, 34, 38, 42, 170; reminiscences by adults, 40, 42; significance of, 29; social hierarchy and, 34–5, 266n24; on socialization, 34–5. See also Tolstoy, Leo child psychology, 85–6. See also pedagogical psychology child rearing, 54–5, 248, 270n9. See also pedagogical psychology; pedagogy children and childhood: Aksakov on, 6, 40–2, 50–1, 253; artlessness of, 10, 11, 12, 13; blissful childhood trope, 28–9, 40, 51, 96, 253; changing societal perceptions, 5, 54; Chekhov on, 9–13, 52, 146, 248–53, 302n102; Chekhov’s interest in, 4–5, 6–7, 17; distinctiveness of, 29, 52, 168, 304n34; Dostoevsky on, 6, 13, 28–9, 261n46, 265nn7–9; Goncharov on, 29, 30–1; humanizing newborns, 270n10; literary models of, 6, 29; lost innocence trope, 28–9, 30, 31,

50–1; Piaget on child development, 178, 180, 301nn94–6; pronouns and, 255n1; purity of, 10, 14, 36; Tolstoy on, 6, 29–30, 31–2, 50–1, 253. See also cognition, development of; communication; death; gender; knowledge acquisition; language; mothers; pedagogical psychology; pedagogy; play; sexuality; socialization Children’s Leisure (children’s journal), 83, 122 Children’s Literature (children’s journal), 82, 281n26 child studies, 79. See also pedagogical psychology; pedagogy Chmeleva, E.V., 284n68 Christmas tales: “Des Fremden Kindes Heiliger Christ” (Rückert), 231, 232; development of and narrative elements, 230–1, 231–2, 238; “The Beggar Boy at Christ’s Christmas Tree” (Dostoevsky), 232–4; “The Little Match Girl” (Andersen), 230, 231, 232, 233–4. See also “Van’ka” (Chekhov) Chudakov, A.P., 11, 119, 206–7, 208, 256n5, 295n20 Chumikov, A.A., 80, 282n35 cognition, development of: about, 29, 149; in “At Home” (Chekhov), 164–9, 171; Belinsky on, 56; Chekhov on, 250–1; in “The Cook Gets Married” (Chekhov), 150–3, 156–7; in “The Fugitive” (Chekhov), 157–64; in “Grisha” (Chekhov), 144–5; language and, 252; play and, 94; Ushinsky on, 59–60, 273n33. See also knowledge acquisition; pedagogical psychology; pedagogy

Index

communication: breakdown in, 16–17, 120, 139, 146–7, 160, 171, 187, 190–1, 237–8, 252; effective communication, 168; play and, 187, 190–1; verbal vs. nonverbal, 166–7. See also language conceptosphere, 12 Contemporary, The (journal), 81 “Cook Gets Married, The” (Chekhov): about, 22, 172, 256n4; on cognitive development, 150–3, 156–7; comparison to “The Fugitive” (Chekhov), 158, 159, 161, 163; comparison to The Steppe (Chekhov), 227, 312n59; engagement with Pushkin’s Ruslan and Liudmila, 153, 154; “Soft-Boiled Boots” (Chekhov) and, 122 Darwin, Charles, 4, 86, 273n30 Dawn, The (children’s journal), 82 death: Aksakov on, 49–50; in “The Beggar Boy at Christ’s Christmas Tree” (Dostoevsky), 233–4; in “The Big Event” (Chekhov), 178–80, 181–2; in Childhood (Tolstoy), 38–9, 42–3, 267n32; in “The Fugitive” (Chekhov), 161–4; in “Sleepy” (Chekhov), 243, 244–5, 316n45; in The Steppe (Chekhov), 208, 221–2 Decembrists, 308n60 Demkov, M.I., 81 Dickens, Charles, 230; Oliver Twist, 234 disciplinary methods, 66, 104, 107 Disterlo, R., 205 Dmitriev, D., 118 Doak, Connor, 260n36 Dobroliubov, Nikolai, 30, 81, 272n22 Dostoevsky, Fyodor: Chekhov and, 27,

323

249; on children, 6, 13, 28–9, 261n46, 265nn7–9; institutka stereotype and, 131; works: The Adolescent, 27; “The Beggar Boy at Christ’s Christmas Tree,” 232–4; “A Boy With a Little Hand,” 232; Crime and Punishment, 131, 232; Poor Folk, 29, 232 Dragonfly (journal), 117, 124; In Class (cartoon), 131, 133 dramatic sketch, 118, 119–21, 139, 149 Dressler, J.G.: Beneke oder die Seelenlehre als Naturwissenschaft, 88 Durkin, Andrew, 7, 43, 49–50, 118, 267n42, 268n47 Dushechkina, E.V., 234 Dzhonson, I., 259n29 education. See institutes, educational; pedagogical psychology; pedagogy Education and Instruction (journal), 82, 85. See also The Kindergarten (journal) Education Journal, The, 80–1 Educator, The (journal), 81 Eikhenbaum, Boris, 15, 74–5, 275n53, 276n82 El’nitskii, K.V., 279n105 Emerson, Caryl, 263n59 Epstein, M., 265n8 Erisman, F.F., 4, 292n165 Ermolova, M.N., 114 Evtuhov, Catherine, 73 fairy tales, 95, 104, 107, 252, 290n149 Family and School (journal), 81 Family Nights (children’s journal), 82 fatigue and sleep deprivation, 91, 104, 105, 245, 316nn49–50 Fechner, Gustav, 87

324

Index

Fedotov, Pavel: Baptism, 124; The Demise of Fidel’ka, 124, 128 Flechsig, Paul Emil, 283n59 Fount, The (children’s journal), 82, 83 Fragments (journal), 117, 124, 295n19 Freud, Sigmund, 6, 293n178 Fridlender, G.M., 233 Fries, Jacob Friedrich, 273n30 Froebel Society, 84 “Fugitive, The” (Chekhov), 157–64; about, 22, 157, 172, 256n4; child’s perspective, 158–60; cognition limitations, 157–8; communication failures, 160; comparison to “The Cook Gets Married” (Chekhov), 158, 159, 161, 163; comparison to “Grisha” (Chekhov), 160, 161; comparison to The Steppe (Chekhov), 213, 227, 229; confrontation with death, 161–3; initiation and, 163, 303n22; nature in, 213; parallels between physical and cognitive journeys, 158; psychological profile of protagonist, 161; separation from home and maturation, 163–4; Tolstoy’s edited copy, 159, 303n16 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 304n35 Gall, Franz Joseph, 283n59 gender: about, 29; Chekhov on, 251; in Childhood (Tolstoy), 36–8; distinctions between in “Kids” (Chekhov), 189–90; pedagogical psychology and, 108; Sikorsky on, 91; Vessel’ on, 88–9. See also mothers; sexuality; women genre, dislocation of, 18–21 Ginzburg, Elizabeth, 260n36, 300n85, 315n26, 316n45

Gogol, Nikolai, 27, 113, 224, 227; The Dead Souls, 224, 227, 296n30; Mirgorod, 224; Taras Bul’ba, 224, 227 Golovin, V.V., 242 Gol’tsev, V., 200 Goncharov, I.A., 82, 281n27; Oblomov and “Oblomov’s Dream,” 27, 29, 30–1, 42, 52 Gorbunov, I., 118 Gornfeld, A.G., 8 Governess, The (journal), 81 Grigorovich, D.V., 82, 313n79 “Grisha” (Chekhov), 144–7; about, 22, 256n4; Bialyi on, 11; communication breakdown, 123, 146–7, 171; comparison to “The Fugitive” (Chekhov), 160, 161; language acquisition and child development, 144–6, 175, 301n94; model for protagonist, 300n90 Gromov, Mikhail, 3, 27 Grot, K.K., 84 Gurevich, Ia.G., 81 Gustafson, Richard F., 302n11 Haeckel, Ernst, 86 Hartley, David, 87 Hasse, Karl, 87 Heart to Heart (children’s journal), 82, 281n27 Helmholtz, Hermann, 87 Herbart, J.F., 87, 273n30 Hermann, Ludimar, 87 Herzen, Alexander: Who Is to Blame?, 296n28 Huizenga, Johan, 305n2 humanization, 54–5, 65, 76–7, 270n10. See also pedagogy hygiene, 92

Index

illustrations and visuality: Chekhov’s use of, 121; in pedagogy, 61, 62, 64, 69, 74, 274n39; in “Soft-Boiled Boots” (Chekhov), 121, 123–4, 125–7; in The Steppe (Chekhov), 208, 210, 213, 218–19, 228 In Class (cartoon), 131, 133 initiation, 37, 55, 163, 228–9, 245, 270n9 innocence, lost, 28–9, 30, 31, 50–1. See also purity, of children institutes, educational: about, 297n47, 298nn56–7; institutka stereotype, 129–32, 298n49, 298n56. See also “Naden’ka N.” (Chekhov) Iukina, E., 265n8 Jackson, Robert Louis, 21 Jakobson, Roman, 148, 252 Journal for Parents and Teachers, The, 101 Journal of the Ministry of Education, The, 80 journals: for children, 82–3; pedagogical, 80–2, 83, 85 Kant, Emmanuel, 273n30 Kapterev, P.F.: about, 6, 22, 87; on child development and education, 92–7, 287n108; on peasant pedagogy, 55; pedagogical associations and, 84, 85; pedagogical journals and, 81, 82; on play, 94–5, 201; on psychological profiles, 97, 99–100, 182, 287n109; review of pedagogical psychology literature, 106; on Ushinsky’s pedagogical model, 58, 62; works: Encyclopedia of Family Education and Instruction, 85; Pedagogical Psychology, 92, 287n109

325

Karamzin, Nikolai, 29 Kataev, V.B., 15, 237 Katsell, Jerome H., 310n29 Kelly, Martha M.F., 304n35 “Kids” (Chekhov), 182–91; about, 22, 173, 182, 256n4; character depictions, 182–3; communication during game, 187, 190–1; comparison to “The Big Event” (Chekhov), 185, 190–1; critics on, 188, 306n24; individuality and gender distinctions, 189–90; interruptions to game, 185–7; play as fun, 191; point of view, 182; retreat from game to mother’s bed, 187–8, 190; rules and transgressions during game, 183–4, 190; secret language, 184–5 Kign, V.L., 205 Kindergarten, The (journal), 81, 82, 289n136. See also Education and Instruction (journal) Kiseleva, M.V., 83, 118, 121, 122 knowledge acquisition: about, 29; Aksakov on, 43–6; in Childhood (Tolstoy), 39–40; from play, 177–8, 181–2. See also cognition, development of; pedagogical psychology; pedagogy Konradi, E.I.: A Mother’s Confession, 102, 106 Korolenko, V.G., 204, 206 Kovaleva, M.A., 12, 13 Kozhevnikov, A.Ia., 4, 256n6 Krasno, I.N., 306n24 Kuprin, Aleksandr, 173–4, 181 Kussmaul, Adolf, 290n142; The Study of the Inner Life of Newly Born Children, 86

326

Index

language: acquisition of and maturation, 94, 144–6, 252; attempts to approximate children’s language, 122–3; Belinsky on, 56; Chekhov’s use of, 252, 263n59; communication breakdown and, 16–17, 146–7, 160, 252; in “The Fugitive” (Chekhov), 160; in “Grisha” (Chekhov), 144–7; institutka stereotype and, 131, 133–4; literary appropriation and, 135–8; in “The Mean Boy” (Chekhov), 139–40; in “Naden’ka N.” (Chekhov), 133–4, 135–8; naïveté and, 143–4; in “Oysters” (Chekhov), 143–4; in “Paterfamilias” (Chekhov), 141–2; play and, 194–5; power dynamics and, 139–42; in “Zinochka” (Chekhov), 140–1. See also communication Lapushin, Radislav, 264n72 Larionova, M.Ch., 311n46 learning. See pedagogy Leikin, N.A., 118, 120, 295n19 Leisure (journal), 114 Lem, Stanislaw: Solaris, 212 Lemonius, V.Kh., 282n35 Lermontov, Mikhail, 257n11; “Taman,” 309n9 Lesgaft, P.F.: about, 6, 87; Chekhov and, 4; on development stages, 288n112; Family Education, 97; Kapterev on, 99–100, 106; Pedagogical Miscellany (journal) and, 81; on psychological profiles, 97–9, 182; publications by, 288n110; Rumiantsev on, 86 Levitov, A., 118 Liatskii, E.A., 11 literary recycling, 116–18 Little Toy (children’s journal), 83

Liubimov, N.A., 291n154 Lobisch, G.E., 290n142 Locke, John, 87, 96, 273n30 Lotman, Iurii, 123 love. See sexuality lubok genre, 123–4 Ludwig, Carl, 87, 273n30 Lukashevich, K., 82 lullaby, 242–3, 315n34 Maikov, A.N., 82, 265n7 Malapert, Paulin, 287n109 Manasseina, Maria: about, 6, 22, 87; background, 289n138; on child development and education, 102–5, 290n142, 290n149; on fatigue and sleep deprivation, 105, 316n49; impact of, 106; on play, 201; publications by, 289n138; on sexuality, 103–4, 108; works: On Children’s Upbringing in the First Years of Life, 102–4, 106, 289n137, 292n165; Foundations of Upbringing from the First Years of Life to University Graduation, 104–5, 106; Sleep, 105, 291n158 marriage, 47–8, 136, 150–3, 156–7, 222, 312n59 Marsh, Cynthia, 263n60, 295n18 masturbation, 103, 107, 108 Mathewson, Rufus, Jr, 7, 11, 17 maturation. See cognition, development of; pedagogical psychology; pedagogy memory, 41. See also reminiscences, by adults Merezhkovskii, D.S., 10 Mezhov, V.I., 83, 292n173 Miasnitskii, I., 118 Mikhailovskii, N.K., 10, 206, 259n29

Index

Mill, John Stuart, 87 Miller, Robin Feuer, 40, 267nn31–2 Modzalevskii, L.N., 81 Mondry, Henrietta, 285n78, 311n46 monomania, 105, 291n162 morality, 30, 34, 39, 45, 56, 57, 58, 180 Morel, Benedict, 284n64 Morson, Gary Saul, 263n59, 275n60 Mossman, Elliott, 275n62 mothers: ambivalent view of, 101, 108; in “At Home” (Chekhov), 165, 170; Chekhov on, 251; child development and, 88–9, 90; in Childhood (Tolstoy), 34, 38, 42, 170; in “The Fugitive” (Chekhov), 163–4; in “Kids” (Chekhov), 187–8, 190; Pirogov on, 90, 170; Sikorsky on, 170. See also women Mroz, T., 304n31 Müller, Johannes Peter, 87, 273n30 Nabokov, Vladimir, 7, 8 “Naden’ka N.” (Chekhov), 132–8; about, 22, 129, 256n4, 297n46; comparison to The Steppe (Chekhov), 213; institutka stereotype and, 129, 132–5; language and, 123, 133–4; literary appropriation in, 118, 135–8, 225; nature in, 137–8, 213 naiveté, 51, 130, 143–4, 253 Nankov, Nikita, 260n36, 305n42 nature, 46–7, 137–8, 213, 224, 225–7, 267n42 Navy Miscellany, The (journal), 81 Nechaev, Petr, 279n104 Nekrasov, Nikolai, 6, 54, 77; “A Song for Eremushka,” 53; “Peasant Children,” 27–8 newborn babies, 68, 88, 243, 270n10 Nilsson, Nils Ake, 207

327

nondifferentiation, 10 Notes of the Fatherland (journal), 81 O’Bell, Leslie, 154, 266n24 Obolenskii, L.E., 124, 300n79 obrazovanie (education), 65, 269n2 obuchenie (instruction), 65, 107–8, 269n2 Orbinskii, R.V., 81 Ostrogorskii, A.Ia., 82 Ostrogorskii, A.N., 81, 82 Ostrogorskii, V.P., 81, 82 Ostrovskii, P.N., 206 Ovcharskaia, O.V., 297n42 Passek, T.P.: Little Toy (children’s journal), 83 Paulson, I.I., 80, 81, 84 Pazukhin, A., 118 peasants: Chekhov on Tolstoy’s views, 77–8; humanization project and, 54–5; pedagogy of, 55, 270n9; rabskaia (slavish) term and, 270n5; scholarship on, 270n8; Tolstoy on education of, 64–5, 70, 72–3; Ushinsky on education of, 70–2 Peasant School, The (journal), 81 Pedagogical Bulletin, The (journal), 81–2 Pedagogical Chronicle (journal), 84 Pedagogical Miscellany (journal), 81 Pedagogical Museum, The (journal), 82 pedagogical psychology: about, 5–6, 22, 79–80, 107–9, 280n2; age and child development, 89, 149–50, 178, 251, 283n59, 302n102; child psychology, development of, and, 85–7; developmental benchmarks, 145–6; Kapterev on, 92–7, 287n108; Manasseina on, 102–5, 290n142, 290n149;

328

Index

psychological profiling by Kapterev vs. Lesgaft, 97–100; Sikorsky on, 89–92, 283n59, 284n67; sources used in Russia, 87; Vessel’ on, 87–9; Vodovozova on, 106–7; women and, 101–2. See also pedagogy Pedagogical Record, The (newspaper), 82 pedagogy: about, 22, 53–4; Belinsky on, 56–7; Bunakov on, 75–6, 279nn105–6; changing perceptions of, 56–7; Chekhov on, 77, 78, 247, 252; children’s journals, 82–3; civilizing mission approach, 70–2, 271n19; Froebel Society and, 84; humanization approach, 54–5, 65, 76–7; journals on, 80–2, 83, 85; maturation and learning, 247; Nechaev on, 279n104; nineteenth century reforms, 5, 53–4, 269n1; peasants and, 55, 71–3; Pirogov on, 56–7, 80, 89, 272n22; Rousseau on, 311n55; Russian interest in child rearing and, 248; The Steppe (Chekhov) on, 219–20; St Petersburg Parents Circle and, 84–5; St Petersburg Pedagogical Society and, 83–4; Tolstoy on, 58, 64–6, 72–3, 77, 275n53, 275n60, 275n62, 276n82; Tolstoy’s critics, 66–7, 75–6, 96; Tolstoy’s critique of Ushinky’s views, 67–71, 276n72; Tolstoy’s primer for children, 73–5, 277nn94–5, 278n96, 278n100; Ushinsky on, 58–62, 66, 76–7, 80, 89, 273n33, 273n36, 274nn38–9; Ushinsky’s primers for children, 62–4, 75, 277n86; women’s contributions, 101–2. See also cognition, development of; pedagogical psychology

Perez, Bernard, 95, 287n109 Pertsov, P.P., 10 petition (proshenie) genre, 235 Piaget, Jean, 6, 178, 180, 301nn94–6 Pirogov, N.I.: Chekhov and, 4; on distinctiveness of childhood, 29, 168, 304n34; literature and, 18; on mothers, 90, 170; The Navy Miscellany (journal) and, 81; on pedagogy, 56–7, 57–8, 80, 89; “Questions of Life,” 58–9, 272n22; “To Be and to Appear to Be,” 57–8; Ushinsky and, 58, 272n22 play: about, 22, 173, 201–2, 250; communication and, 187, 190–1; fun of, 176–7, 191; Huizenga on, 305n2; individuality and, 189; Kapterev on, 94–5, 201; knowledge acquisition and, 177–8, 181–2; language and, 194–5; Sikorsky on, 90–1, 201, 284n68; Ushinsky on, 61–2, 173, 201; Vodovozova on, 107; Vygotsky on, 173, 180, 188–9. See also “The Big Event” (Chekhov); “The Boys” (Chekhov); “Kids” (Chekhov) Pleshcheev, A.N., 204, 206, 312n56, 313n79 Pokrovskii, E., 291n154 Polevoi, P.N., 277n95 Pomialovskii, N.G., 81, 130, 268n50; Meshchanskoe schast’e, 300n80; Molotov, 300n80; “School Sketches,” 51 Popkin, Cathy, 21, 166, 268n47 power, and language, 139–42 Preyer, William, 90, 91; The Soul of a Child, 86, 89, 283n58 Przhevalsky, Nikolai, Chekhov’s essay on, 197–8, 199, 200, 308n60 psychology, 280n2. See also pedagogical psychology

Index

purity, of children, 10, 14, 36. See also innocence, lost Pushkareva, V.S., 265n9 Pushkin, Alexander: “Anchar,” 136; Captain’s Daughter, 309n9; engagement with literary canon, 156; Eugene Onegin, 149, 225; Ruslan and Liudmila, 153–4, 155, 302n11; “Sleep,” 154–5, 156 race, 88, 92, 285n78 Rauchfus, K.A., 84 recapitulation theory, 86, 108 Redkin, P.G., 80, 83, 84, 282n34 Reid, Thomas, 273n30 Reid, Thomas Mayne, 225, 227, 312n67; The Scalp-Hunters, 196–7 reminiscences, by adults, 40, 41–2 restorying, 237, 239, 241, 249–50, 252, 268n47 Ribot, T., 287n109 Richter, Jean Paul, 290n142 Riehl, Wilhelm, 64, 275n53 Rossolimo, G.I., 4–5 Rostovskaia, M., 82; Family Nights (children’s journal), 82 Rousseau, Jean Jacques: on being humane, 53; on children, 56, 96, 304n34; on disciplining, 107; on education, 220, 271n16, 311n55; pedagogical psychology and, 80, 87; Tolstoy and, 64, 68 Rückert, Friedrich: “Des Fremden Kindes Heiliger Christ,” 231, 232 Rumiantsev, N.F., 85–6, 293n178 Russian Orthodox Church, 57, 58, 149–50 Russian Pedagogical Herald (journal), 81 Russian School, The (journal), 85

329

Saltykov-Shchedrin, M.E., 51, 113, 249, 257n11; The Golovlyov Family, 28; Old Times in Poshekhon’e, 27, 28 Scherr, Ignaz Thomas, 62 Schmidt, Karl, 273n33, 290n142 School Life (journal), 82 Schwann, Theodor, 273n30 Sechenov, Ivan, 87 Semenov, D.D., 81, 82 sexuality: about, 29; Aksakov on, 47–8; in “The Big Event” (Chekhov), 181; in Boyhood (Tolstoy), 39; Chekhov on, 251; in Childhood (Tolstoy), 35–6, 37–8; in “The Cook Gets Married” (Chekhov), 152–3, 156–7; marriage and, 47–8, 136, 150–3, 156–7, 222, 312n59; masturbation, 103, 107, 108; in “The Mean Boy” (Chekhov), 140; pedagogical psychology on, 103–4, 108; in The Steppe (Chekhov), 216, 220, 222; in “Zinochka” (Chekhov), 141. See also gender Shchepkina-Kupernik, T., 82 Shestov, Lev, 158, 262n52 Shklovskii, Viktor, 11 Shmelev, I.S., 197, 307n55 Shteinman, I.V., 282n35 Sigismund, Berthold, 290n142; The Child and the World, 86 Sikorsky, I.A.: about, 6, 22; biological determinism and, 285n78; Chekhov and, 4; on child development and education, 87, 89–92, 283n59, 284n67; Kapterev and, 93, 95, 106; Morel and, 284n64; on mothers, 170; on play, 90–1, 201, 284n68; Preyer and, 283n58; on psychological types, 182; Rumiantsev on, 86;

330

Index

works: Dusha rebenka, 283n58; Early Childhood Education, 89 Simashko, Iu., 81 Simonovich, A.S., 81, 102, 289n136, 291n154 Simonovich, Ia.M., 81, 291n154 Sipovskii, V.D., 82 Skabichevskii, A.M., 205 sleep deprivation and fatigue, 91, 104, 105, 245, 316nn49–50 “Sleepy” (Chekhov), 239–46; about, 22, 230, 239, 246–7, 256n4, 315n25; comparison to “Oysters” (Chekhov), 300n85; critics on, 10, 245–6, 259n29, 315n26; death and protagonist’s murder of baby, 243, 244–5, 316n45; lullaby and, 242–3; marginalization of protagonist, 243–4, 316n40; opening paragraphs, 239; protagonist’s sleep deprivation, 240–2, 316n49; time of narration, 315n29; title, 239–40 small press: about, 113, 114–16, 294n6; baryshnia-institutka stereotypes and, 131–2; Chekhov’s background in, 113–14, 124, 128–9; illustrations in, 121; literary recycling in, 116–18, 297n42 Snowdrop, The (children’s journal), 82 Soboleva, Sofia, 82 socialization: Aksakov on, 44–5; in Childhood (Tolstoy), 34–5, 39–40; in peasant culture, 55; in preverbal stage, 145; in The Steppe (Chekhov), 229. See also play space, and time, 216–19 Spencer, Herbert, 4, 87, 107 Stenina, V.F., 163 Stepanov, A.D., 17, 212, 214, 262n54 Steppe, The (Chekhov), 203–29; about,

3, 22, 227, 256n4; afterchildhood and, 230; characters on education, 219–20; Chekhov’s perceptions of, 204–5, 224, 308n3; Chekhov’s research for, 312n67; child’s conflicts and maturation, 220–2; child’s dreams, 229, 313n77; child’s relationship to time and space, 216–19; comparison to “At Home” (Chekhov), 223, 227, 311n47; comparison to “The Big Event” (Chekhov), 227; comparison to “The Boys” (Chekhov), 213, 227; comparison to “The Cook Gets Married” (Chekhov), 227, 312n59; comparison to “The Fugitive” (Chekhov), 213, 227, 229; comparison to “Naden’ka N.” (Chekhov), 213; critics on, 11, 205–6, 206–7, 212, 256n5, 308n3; as encyclopedic, 224–5; genre of, 308n3; impetus and significance of, 203; initiation practices and, 228–9; Jewish inn as transition point, 213–16, 310n43, 311n46; literary models, 224, 225, 226–7, 309n9; maturation themes, 227, 229; nature and steppes, 210–12, 213, 226–7; Piaget and, 301n94; points of view in, 206–7, 208–10; proposed sequel, 313n79; sexuality in, 216, 220, 222; socialization in, 229; storytelling in, 222–3; structure of, 207–8, 227–8; superfluous man in, 220–1, 312n56; synopsis, 203–4; visuality in, 208, 210, 213, 218–19, 228 Stoiunin, V.Ia., 84 Stolpianskii, N.P., 82, 281n17 storytelling. See literary recycling; restorying

Index

St Petersburg Parents Circle, 84–5 St Petersburg Pedagogical Museum, 84–5 St Petersburg Pedagogical Society, 83–4, 282nn34–5 Stutterer, The (journal), 114 suicide, teenage, 313n79 Sukhikh, I.N., 8, 268n51 superfluous men, 136, 220–1, 312n56 Suslova-Erisman, N.P., 106, 292n165 Suvorin, A.S., 13, 27, 77, 148, 301n97, 308n2 Sveshnikova, E.P., 82 Sysoeva-Al’medingen, E.A., 82, 83 Tarkhanov, I.R., 105, 289n138, 291n157, 316n49 Tendriakova, M.V., 277n86 Tikhomirov, D.I., 81, 281n26 Tikhomirova, E.N., 81 time, and space, 216–19 Toll’, F., 64 Tol’skii, N.A., 4, 256n6 Tolstoy, Leo: about, 22, 29, 54; on afterchildhood, 39; Bunakov and, 73, 74, 75–6, 278n98, 279n106; characters used in psychological profiling, 257n11; Chekhov and, 27, 52, 77–8, 248, 251; on childhood, 6, 29–30, 31–2, 50–1, 253; critics on pedagogical views of, 66–7, 75–6, 96; critique of Ushinsky’s pedagogical views, 67–71, 276n72; on “The Darling” (Chekhov), 16; favourite Chekhov short stories, 159, 169, 188, 200, 313n2, 315n25; “The Fugitive” (Chekhov) copy, 159, 303n16; on maturation, 68; pedagogical debates and literature by, 18; pedagogical views, 58, 64–6, 72–3, 77,

331

275n53, 275n60, 275n62, 276n82; primer for children, 73–5, 277nn94–5, 278n96, 278n100; The Steppe (Chekhov) and, 225, 227; Yasnaya Polyana (journal), 64, 65, 66, 81; works: Anna Karenina, 149; Boyhood, 30, 36, 38–9, 43, 49, 52, 157, 225; Confession, 32; Novaia Azbuka (formerly Azbuka), 73–5, 277nn94–5, 278n96, 278n100; “On the Language of Books for Peasants,” 72; “Three Deaths,” 38; War and Peace, 46–7; “What is Art,” 170; “Who Should Teach Whom How to Write,” 68; Youth, 30, 39. See also Childhood (Tolstoy) trifles (melochishka) genre, 117–18 Tsebrikova, M.K., 82 Turgenev, Ivan, 6, 27, 82, 130, 227, 312n72; The Quiet, 136–7, 225–6, 299n70; Sportsman’s Sketches, 225 Ushinsky, K.D.: about, 22, 54; Belinsky and, 56; Chekhov and, 4; on childhood, 29; child psychology and, 86; educational institutes and, 298n57; humanizing and civilizing approach to education, 70–2, 76–7; influence of, 80; Kapterev and, 93; literature and, 18; pedagogical journals and, 80; on pedagogy, 58–62, 66, 76–7, 80, 89, 273n33, 273n36, 274nn38–9; Pirogov and, 58, 272n22; on play, 61–2, 173, 201; primers for children, 62–4, 75, 277n86; scholarship on, 269n3; St Petersburg Pedagogical Society and, 84; works: Children’s World, 58, 62, 64, 66, 67–71, 73, 134, 277n86; “Four Wishes,” 63–4; The Native Word, 58, 62–3, 80, 152,

332

Index

274n49; “On Elementary Instruction in the Russian Language,” 61; “On Peasant Schools,” 71–2; Pedagogical Anthropology, 5, 58–9, 60, 61, 80, 87, 272n29, 273n30; Pedagogical Miscellany, 58 Uspenskii, G.I., 197 Uspenskii, N., 118 Uspensky, Boris, 302n5 “Van’ka” (Chekhov), 234–9; about, 22, 230, 246–7, 256n4, 313n2; Christmas tale tropes in, 120–1, 230, 234–5, 238; critics on, 11, 238–9, 259n29; letter writing and maturation, 235–8, 239 Veselovskii, G.M., 80–1 Vessel’, N.Kh.: about, 6, 22, 87; on education, 87–9; Kapterev and, 93; pedagogical associations and, 84, 282n35; pedagogical journals and, 81; works: Applied Psychology of Education and Instruction, 88; Handbook on Teaching in General Education, 88 Vinogradov, P.G., 84 Virchow, Rudolph, 87 Virenius, A.S., 287n109 visuality. See illustrations and visuality Vodovozov, V.I., 81, 84 Vodovozova, E.N., 22, 81, 106, 108, 257n11, 292n172; Mental and Moral Development of Children, 106–7, 292n168, 292n171 volition, 98, 104, 107, 284n67. See also will

von Liebig, Justus, 273n30 Voronov, A.S., 282n35 vospitanie (guided/affective rearing), 65, 107–8, 269n2 Vvedenskii, A., 205 Vygotsky, Lev: on art by and for children, 167, 170–1, 304n30; on maturation process, 146, 302n102; pedagogical psychology and, 6; on play, 173, 180, 188–9; on sexuality, 108, 293n178 Vyshnegradskii, N.A., 81, 84 Wachtel, Andrew Baruch, 32, 50–1, 151 Wiegers, Ben, 11, 209, 256n5, 301n94 will, 59, 90, 284n67. See also volition Wolf, M.O.: Heart to Heart (children’s journal), 82, 281n27 women: baryshnia stereotype, 131–2; “blue stocking” stereotype, 132; educational institutes for, 297n47, 298nn56–7; institutka stereotype and, 129–32, 298n49, 298n56; pedagogical psychology contributions, 101–7. See also mothers Women’s Education (journal), 82, 85, 281n18 Wundt, Wilhelm, 87, 273n30 Yasnaya Polyana (journal), 64, 65, 66, 81 Zakhar’in, G.A., 4, 15, 256n6 Zhuk, V.N.: Mother and Child, 102