' Imbibe What Is Useful to You'

In his Confessions of Edward Dahlberg (1971), the author quotes with approval from a letter by Chekhov: “I divide literary works into two classes: those I like and those I do not like.” Chekhov wrote this to the promising young writer Ivan Leontyev (pseudonym: Ivan Shcheglov) on March 22, 1890, and I suspect even the most erudite literary critics, during bouts of pre-dawn honesty, would agree. We all rationalize our judgments and tastes, and sometimes dress them up with fancy arguments. Snobbery plays a part. The late Terry Teachout steered me right when he observed that there is no such thing as a guilty pleasure. We enjoy a book (or music, or painting, or movie) or we don’t. Here is the context of Chekhov’s useful admission as translated by Michael Henry Heim and Simon Karlinsky in their Letters of Anton Chekhov (1973): 

“As to the word ‘artistic,’ it frightens me the way brimstone frightens merchants’ wives. When people speak to me of what is artistic and anti-artistic, of what is dramatically effective, of tendentiousness and realism and the like, I am at an utter loss, I nod to everything uncertainly, and answer in banal half truths that aren’t worth a brass farthing. I divide all works into two categories: those I like and those I don’t. I have no other criterion.”

 

A student writes to ask what I find so interesting about Chekhov’s story “My Life” (1896), cited in Saturday’s post. I mustered some arguments but quickly experienced that sense of futility I know whenever I pretend to be a critic and presume to advocate for a work of literature. I can express how Misail Poloznevit’s story still moves me after many readings and how deftly Chekhov narrates it, but none of that really explains the sort of love and loyalty it inspires in me, as do many of his stories. But that’s all a posteriori. I’m reduced to pointing at the story and saying, “This is really good. You might enjoy it too. Get it a try." After quoting the Chekhov letter in his Confessions, Dahlberg writes:

 

“Go through Aristotle’s Poetics, Horace, Dryden’s essays, La Bruyère’s The Characters and Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria. Imbibe what is useful to you, and you will forget the rest anyway.”