'My Temperament Is Inclined to Be Cheerful'

A friend reading Chekhov marvels at his novella “In the Ravine” (1899), so I suggested he read another of the longer stories, “My Life” (1896). As Murray Kempton writes in a 1988 column, “Hostage to History”: “None of us could be so bold as to advance a particular Chekhov story as the greatest of all but ‘My Life’ would be a splendid candidate.” My friend agreed. It’s at least as good as that other masterpiece, which is like conceding that Macbeth is all right and King Lear isn’t too bad either.

On this date, October 6, in 1897, Chekhov was in Nice, where he stayed in a hotel owned by a Russian on the Côte d’Azur. He writes a letter to Lydia Alexeyevna Avilova, whose first story collection had been published a year earlier. In his 1997 biography of Chekhov, Donald Rayfield refers to Avilova as “Anton’s most deluded admirer.” In her posthumously published memoir A.P. Chekhov in My Life (1947), Avilova claimed to have had a decade-long love affair with the writer, and that his story “About Love” (1898) is a histoire à clef of their relationship. Chekhov was a ladies' man and certainly no angel but scholars dismiss the claim as fantasy. Chekhov writes to her:

 

“You complain that my characters are gloomy. Alas, this is not my fault! They come out like that without my necessarily wanting them to, and when I am writing I don’t feel as though I am writing gloomily.”

 

The accusation of gloom is sometimes made against Chekhov and other Russian writers. It seems to be a common stereotype favored by certain readers and critics, especially among those in the West. They misread Chekhov’s tone, a unique mingling of comedy and solemnity, leaving him prey to misunderstanding by literal-minded readers. Chekhov continues his letter to Avilova:

 

“In any case, I’m always in a good mood when I’m writing. It is a well-documented fact that pessimists and melancholics always write in a very upbeat way, whereas cheerful writers generally manage to depress their readers. My temperament is inclined to be cheerful; at least for the first thirty years of my life I have lived, as they say, content with my lot.”

    

Rayfield succinctly characterizes Chekhov as a writer of stories and plays: “He lets his reader and spectator react as they wish, draw their own conclusions.”

 

[The Chekhov letter is collected in A Life in Letters (Penguin Books, 2004), translated by Rosamund Bartlett and Anthony Phillips. Bartlett describes Avilova’s memoir as “notorious.”]