Prologue:
Anton Chekhov is “one of the
most popular great Russian writers” (Asiado, 2008); his prolific pen made him
known in the world, and his works are constant part of Literature textbooks and
courses. According to Boyd (2004), his works are:
…extremely
interesting but somehow ancillary and complimentary to his main achievement.
And this Russian conception of his work has some validity: Chekhov, whatever
his standing as a playwright, is quite probably the best short story writer
ever.
His writings placed him in the ranks of the world’s literary cannon.
Like certain great pieces of music, his stories repay
constant reading and revisiting; renowned and critically acclaimed.
Chekhov’s stories, aside from being classics,
are unexpected to reveal postmodern ideas since he was born in late 19th
Century—the peak of Modernism. But strangely, his stories: “The Wife” and “A
Dreary Story” provide traces of postmodern ideas, especially absurdity. Such
was validated by William Boyd’s (2010) narrations:
Chekhov’s personal world was a godless one:
despite his orthodox religious upbringing, he asserted, in 1892, that ‘I have
no religion now’. But intelligent people who believed in God seemed baffling to
him. ‘I squandered away my faith long ago and never fail to be puzzled by an
intellectual who is also a believer.’
Boyd further added that Chekhov as a writer was “secular, refusing to pass judgment, cognizant of the
absurdities of our muddled, bizarre lives and the complex tragi-comedy that is
the human condition.”
This paper employs the postmodern approach in deconstructing two of
the longest fictions of Anton Chekhov entitled “The Wife” and “A Dreary Story”.
The reading of the texts is centered in identifying intriguing lexical items
used by the author; and the interpretation of meaning is anchored in the
postmodern perspective of “absurdity”. In doing so, the researcher endeavored
in identifying lexical items that contribute in establishing the ideas of
postmodernism.
The Texts
“The Wife” is composed of seven chapters which tell about Pavel Andreitch’s search for peace of mind, and for the answers to
plenty of his questions in life. He is
described by his wife as educated, honest, high principled, rich; but in
effect, he becomes suffocating, oppressing, insulting and humiliating. In his
quest to find himself and the real meaning of his existence, he gave up all his
wealth and belongings, almost literally everything that he posses in order to
help the peasants who were under famine. He was uncertain of what will happen
in the future, that he might grow old and poor; but he worried not. He found
happiness in such action, he found pleasure seeing his wife doing good things
for others in the expense of his own money and properties, and very selflessly,
he said towards the end of the story, when his wife was looking for what more
she can give for the starving peasant: “…there will soon be nothing of our
property left and we shall be poor; but that does not trouble me, and I smile
at her gaily.”
“A Dreary Story” is a composed of six
chapters told through the Stream of Consciousness of an old professor named
Nikolay Stepanovitch, a dying medical professor, who recounts at length his
final months, his night fears and insomnia, his impatience with colleagues and
weariness with family matters. Alarmed by his own indifference to his
daughter's decision to run away with a man which he does not like, he registers
that indifference as “a paralysis of the soul, a premature death,” and
discovers within himself only a bundle of peevish desires. Towards the end of
the story, his intimate friend named Katya, a prostrated stage actress, becomes
bitterly disappointed because she asks for Nikolay’s advice but he cannot give
an answer. Having discovered the meaninglessness of life, he becomes useless to
the living.
Basic Tenets of Postmodernism
According to Feyerabend
“The only absolute truth is that there are no absolute truths.” This argument
seems to question the organized body of knowledge that has been established by
history and human experience. Since the 1960s, when different thinkers started
questioning the validity of human Subject, leading to the rise of theories such
as “phenomenology” and sociological outlooks toward liberal and subjective
thinking; the birth of a new perspective now known as “postmodernism” has arise.
Fackerell (2007) asserts that “Postmodernism arms us with a method of calling everything into question and promoting a new cultural agenda.”
Postmodern is the time when
people could do away with theologies that has been the basis of human life
throughout the history of mankind. It dismantles the premodern’s belief in god,
and the modern’s belief in science. Copan (2007) further explains that god was
excluded as the foundation of making sense of reality and human experience; as
well as science; postmodernism is “critical of any view
that claims to be neutral, unbiased, or rational.” According to Fackerell
(2007), “Postmodernists can accept any god or God (or goddess) as long as this
being takes his place obediently within the grid…Any claims of supreme
authority is unacceptable” Copan (2007) further asserts that “we cannot speak
of any universal truth, reason, or morality. We just have fragmented
perspectives.” Furthermore, eNotes (2009) supports these claims, as it
describes the social and political ferments of the 1960s to “indicate a
profound distrust in historical and cultural traditions, as well as modernist
notions of progress, objectivity, and reason.” Moreover, it added that in
literature, “postmodernism represents the rejection of the modernist tenets of
rational, historical, and scientific thought in favor of self-conscious, ironic,
and experimental works.”
The article entitled “On Truth and Reality” (Haselhurts & Howie,
2010) published by spaceandmotion.com states that “The current postmodern
belief is that a correct description of Reality is impossible.” This extreme
skepticism which is popularized by proponents such as: Friedrich
Nietzsche, Ludwig
Wittgenstein, Karl Popper
and Thomas Kuhn
, produced the following postmodern assumptions (spaceandmotion.com, 2010):
- All truth is limited, approximate, and is constantly evolving.
- No theory can ever be proved true - we can only show that a theory is false.
- No theory can ever explain all things consistently.
- There is always a separation between our mind and ideas of things and the thing in itself.
- Physical reality is not deterministic.
- Science concepts are mental constructs.
- Metaphysics is empty of content.
- Absolute and certain truth that explains all things is unobtainable.
The Theory of the Absurd
The picture we present of the reality is
the product of the stories we tell. Since the stories we create are different
and multiple, so is the world (multiple), as well. Accordingly, the realities
that exist about the world will be incomplete, and non-shared, as well. The world
is ‘made’ not ‘found’” (Parker, 1997).
According to Sajjadi (2007), “There is no fixed, unique and
universal reality or truth so that one can analyze and evaluate good or bad
deeds, right and wrong, the good and the evil, ugly and beautiful by recourse
to it.” Thus, Postmodernism proposed a method of deconstruction that restored
the fundamental difference of things, a singular elevation of difference
thoroughgoing subjectivism, whereas objectivity was sacrificed to personal
subjective responses (Heartfied, 2002). Martin Esslin mentions Ionesco's
parallel concept of the absurdity: "Absurd is that which is devoid of
purpose. ...Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots,
man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless.”
In “The Myth of Sisyphus” by Alfred Camus (1942), he introduced the
problem of human absurdity and how it arises. Through Sisyphus—the absurd hero,
he describes the characteristics of human basic ontological categories as the
feelings of "denseness" and "the strangeness of the world",
which are the feelings of the Absurdity of man in a world where the decline of
religious belief has deprived man of his certainties. “Absurdity does not
reside in the world itself, or in a human being, but in a tension which is
produced by their mutual indifference. Human existence is in its essence
completely different from the existence of things outside the human subject”
(Navratilova, 2010).
The “Theatre of the Absurd” (Esslin,
1962) is another movement that supports postmodern thinking. “The playwrights
loosely grouped under the label of the ‘absurd’ attempt to convey their sense
of bewilderment, anxiety, and wonder in the face of an inexplicable universe”
(Crabb, 2010). Theater of the Absurd is surreal, illogical, conflictless and
plotless. The dialogue often seemed to be complete gibberish. They, in a sense,
attempt to reestablish man’s communion with the universe. Dr. Jan Culik, as
cited by Crabb, says:
Absurd Theatre can be seen as an attempt to
restore the importance of myth and ritual to our age, by making man aware of
the ultimate realities of his condition, by instilling in him again the lost
sense of cosmic wonder and primeval anguish. The Absurd Theatre hopes to
achieve this by shocking man out of an existence that has become trite,
mechanical and complacent. It is felt that there is mystical experience in
confronting the limits of human condition.
According to eNotes.com (2009), in literature, postmodernism
represents the rejection of the modernist tenets of rational, historical, and
scientific thought in favor of self-conscious, ironic, and experimental works.
Shadows of Absurdity in
“The Wife” and “A Dreary Story”
Irony and absurdity are some of the ideas of postmodernism. These
were manifested many times in “the Wife’ and “A Dreary Story”. In postmodern
literature, according to eNotes.com “the authors abandon the concept of an
ordered universe, linear narratives, and traditional forms to suggest the
malleability of truth and question the nature of reality itself, dispensing
with the idea of a universal ordering scheme in favor of artifice, temporality
and a reliance on irony.”
In “The Wife” and “A Dreary Story”, Chekhov evidently depicted irony
and absurdity through some noticeable lexical choices. Notably, his style of
writing manifested many ironic and contradicting statements which somehow
support the theory of the absurd. In doing so, Chekhov employed oxymoron, defined by TheFreeDictionary (2011) as “a
rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined”. To
Dictionary.com (2011), it is “a figure of speech by which a locution produces
an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect. The following are example
of oxymoron excerpted from the text:
STATEMENT 1: STATEMENT 2:
talking about serious things never speaks
seriously
given me such enjoyment as lecturing at lectures I feel nothing but
torture
talking about serious things never speaks
seriously.
I will never go I know I shall go
I am master here the word
"master" had no meaning.
Katya listens and laughs…strange laugh I grow depressed …and cry…
Furthermore, observe the contradiction between the underlined
phrases and sentences, and his constant use of words with opposing meaning (notice
the highlighted words) in following excerpts:
- No
kind of sport, no kind of game or diversion, has ever given me such enjoyment as lecturing. Only at
lectures have I been able to abandon myself entirely to passion, and have
understood that inspiration is not an invention of the poets, but exists
in real life… That was in old times. Now at
lectures I feel nothing but torture… There is
a dryness in my mouth, my voice grows husky, my head begins to go round…(A
Dreary Story)
The underlined statements realize the
idea of “temporality”; as highlighted by the transition in time connoted by the
opposition between the phrase “old times” and the word “now”. People cannot
really say what will happen in the future. All
truth is limited, approximate, and is constantly evolving. What is true today may be falsified tomorrow because
nothing is permanent. There
are conflicts between meanings in both statements and undeniably, lexical items
which connote opposite meaning “enjoyment” and “torture” take an important role
in building up this idea.
- He is
always talking about serious things, but he never speaks
seriously. His judgments are always harsh and railing, but, thanks to his soft, even, jesting tone, the harshness and abuse do not jar
upon the ear…(A Dreary Story)
- And I vow
to myself that I will never go
to Katya's again, though I
know I shall go next evening. (A Dreary Story)
In item-two, the prominence of oxymoron
manifests the confusing effect connoted by the meaning of each underlined
statements, which is also the same effect created by the opposing
pronouncements in the underlined statements in item-three. These were further
reinforced by Chekhov’s preference of lexical items with opposing meaning such
as the oxymoron in item-two: “talking about serious things” and “never speaks
seriously”; apparently, the lexical relation between the words talking and speaks by means of synonymy made the bridge between the two
statements of the oxymoron, while the contradiction was highlighted by the word
never (the effect of these lexical
items is realized by rephrasing the statements to: serious things-never
seriously). Moreover, the anomaly on Chekhov’s choice of lexical items is
obvious in the proceeding sentence of item-two where he used the opposing words
harsh and soft. Furthermore, these ironic statements in effect support the
postmodern claim of “…the malleability of truth
and question the nature of reality itself, dispensing with the idea of a
universal ordering scheme in favor of artifice, temporality and a reliance on
irony.” Such appears to be further realized in the oxymoron in item-three: “I will never go” and “I know I shall go”.
By and large, the opposition between the words “enjoyment” and
“torture”; “harsh” and “soft”; “never go” and “shall go” also prove the
postmodern idea that language “is more an act of conflict…” , that language
cannot be a defining factor for determining the truth.
- "After
all, why am I so troubled?" I thought.
"What force draws me to the starving peasants like a butterfly to a
flame? I don't know them, I don't understand them; I have never seen them and I don't like them. Why this uneasiness?" (The Wife)
According to eNotes.com (2009), “language is inherently unable to convey any semblance of the external
world, and that verbal communication is more an act of conflict than an
expression of rational meaning.” The same idea is
conveyed in item-four whereas somebody is troubled and uneasy for people, whom
he doesn’t know, don’t understand, have never
seen, and don’t like. All these
are absurd. The effect of negation brought about by the auxiliary verbs: doesn’t and don’t, and the adverb never
was successfully employed by Chekhov in advancing the idea of absurdity.
According to Haselhurts & Howie, (2010) our language is too
imprecise, our senses too limited and deceptive to ever absolutely describe
Reality. Thus, according to Feyerabend “The only absolute truth is
that there are no absolute truths.” Furthermore, some absurdities are also
depicted in the following excerpts:
- And
she thought it funny that the
students fought and I made them go down on their
knees, and she laughed. She
was a gentle, patient, good child. It happened not infrequently that I saw
something taken away from her, saw her punished without reason, or her curiosity repressed; at such times a look of sadness was mixed with the invariable expression of
trustfulness on her face -- that was all. (A Dreary Story)
- "Excuse
us for troubling you, Natalie. We are discussing a very important matter,
and we had the happy thought that we might take advantage of your good advice, which you will not
refuse to give us. Please sit down."…Natalya Gavrilovna looked at
me inquiringly and shrugged her
shoulders as though to say, "What
do I know about it?" (The Wife)
The underlined statements above depict
confusing ideas. In item-five, how could a person who is gentle, patient and
good; will find it funny that students fight? Such is absurd. In a conventional
pattern of behavior, someone gentle, patent and good is expected to think in a
manner that aligns to these behaviors. Notably, although the discourse is
coherent, the build up of Chekhov’s lexical choices contributes more to the
absurdity of language that “…verbal
communication is more an act of conflict than an expression of rational
meaning.” (realized with his set of vocabulary as he started with affirmative
words: funny, laughed, gentle, patient, and good; and as he ended with downbeat
words: punished, repressed, and sadness). Postmodernists
open a man’s mind to unconventional ideas by showing those which are least
expected. According to Crabb (2006) postmodernists “achieve this by
shocking man out of an existence that has become trite, mechanical and
complacent.” In item-six, the contradiction
connoted by the positive statement “take advantage of your good advise”,
(affirmation highlighted by words advantage
and good); and the negative
revelation of the proceeding statement “…inquiringly…What do I know about it?”(negation
highlighted by the word inquiringly which
connotes an act of not knowing or asking question—further supported by an
interrogative sentence, made heavier by the word what) made unconventional thinking prominent in the text. Life
has been made predictable, postmodernism offers new things to ponder. A woman who thinks she doesn’t know about the matter is
expected to give good advice. In conventional reality, one cannot give what he
doesn’t have.
Furthermore, some evidences of the absurd are also noticeable in the
following:
- My wife's
face wears a look of triumph
and affected dignity, and her
habitual expression of anxiety.
(A Dreary Story)
- I
listened and thought: "I am master
here; if I like, I can in a moment turn out all that fine crew." But
I knew that all that was nonsense,
that I could not turn out any one, and the word "master" had no
meaning. One may think oneself master,
married, rich, a kammer-junker, as much as one likes, and at the same time
not know what it means. (The
Wife)
In item-seven, Chekhov’s choice of
lexical items again depicts absurdity; the highlighted words and their
conventional sense manifest absurd implication. Expectedly, upon hearing such
statement, one might ask, “How could you be triumphant and dignified when you
are anxious?” To answer such question is futile since according to “On Truth
and Reality” (Haselhurts & Howie, 2010): “Absolute and certain truth that explains all
things is unobtainable.” In item-eight, Chekhov made an obvious series of
paring words with somehow associated opposite meanings to the word “master”: master-nonsense, master-no meaning, master-not
know; such pairs if used to define the word master will create
unconventional meaning, something frustrating—something absurd. This idea of
opposing meanings is carried out when Camus (1942) says, “When the images of
earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too
insistent, it happens that melancholy arises in man's heart: this is the rock's
victory, this is the rock itself.” Thus, to Fackerell, (2007) “The mind can be
fooled. How could we know that our thinking patterns are reliable?”
Finally, Chekhov also manifested absurd behaviors which are evident
in the following:
- Katya
listens and laughs. She has a
strange laugh; she
catches her breath in rhythmically regular gasps, very much as though she
were playing the accordion, and nothing in her face is laughing but her
nostrils. I grow depressed
and don't know what to say. Beside myself, I fire up, leap up from my
seat, and cry…(A Dreary
Story)
- …being
very cold, burst out with, "Scoundrels,
these Germans!"I behave badly
with Pyotr Ignatyevitch, and only when he is going away, and from the
window I catch a glimpse of his grey hat behind the garden-fence, I
want to call out and say, "Forgive
me, my dear fellow!"
(A Dreary Story)
The situations depicted in above items
illustrate irony; what has been said and done are different from what is really
meant. In item-nine, ironic behavior was highlighted by extracting the
contradicting words: laughs-depressed and
laugh-cry. In item-ten, the opposing
sense of the words: scoundrels which
connotes a villain, and the phrase dear fellow
which connotes someone loved; in addition to the contradicting sense of the negative
phrase behave badly, and the positive
intention of the statement forgive me
highlights human instability of thoughts. According
to Haselhurts & Howie, (2010) our language is too imprecise, our senses too
limited and deceptive to ever absolutely describe reality.
Looking at the behaviors manifested by the characters in both texts,
and paying attention to how the author somehow utilized lexical items to signal
an ideological stance, Chekhov was able to present evidences of human confusion
and uncertainty. He make the characters portray the so called “human’s limited
and deceptive senses” by showing ironic responses. Navratilova in “The Absurdity of Samuel Beckett” says,
It is not concerned with the representation
of events, the narration of fates, or the adventures of characters. It is
instead interested in the presentation of an individual's basic situation. It
presents individual human being's intuition of his basic situation as he
experiences it.
Conclusion
“The ideas of those who think that they have some kind of objective
truth or reality now need to be firmly suppressed!” (Fackerell, 2007). To Camus:
If I were a tree among trees, a cat among
animals, this life would have a meaning, or rather this problem would not
arise, for I should belong to this world. I should be this world to which I am
now opposed by my whole consciousness and my whole insistence upon familiarity.
This ridiculous reason is what sets me in opposition to all creation.
The world becomes alien and the human being becomes a stranger in
it, he feels isolated and limited. This is what is absurd. We do not know and
cannot know the truth. Furthermore, Fackerell (2007) asserts, “Postmodernist no
longer believe in the existence of the objective truth.” Human is now left with
a question which will remain unanswered. Notice the last words in the ending of
both text:
- My wife
often comes up to me and looks about my rooms uneasily, as though looking
for what more she can give to the starving peasants "to justify her
existence," and I see that, thanks to her, there will soon be nothing
of our property left and we shall be poor; but that does not trouble me,
and I smile at her gaily. What will happen in the future I don't know. (The Wife)
- "Let
us have lunch, Katya," I say.
"No,
thank you," she answers coldly. Another minute passes in silence. "I
don't like Harkov," I ; "it's so grey here -- such a grey town."
"Yes,
perhaps. . . . It's ugly. I am here not for long, passing through. I am going
on today."
"Where?"
"To the Crimea . . . that is, to the Caucasus."
"To the Crimea . . . that is, to the Caucasus."
"Oh!
For long?"
"I don't know." (A Dreary
Story)
Chekhov ended both text with the statement: “I don’t know.” This is
the statement that best depicts absurdity. Crabb (2006) in explaining
postmodernism, talked about “The Myth of Sysiphus” by Albert Camus, and further
concludes: “Camus argued that humanity had to
resign itself to recognizing that a fully satisfying rational explanation of
the universe was beyond its reach; in that sense, the world must ultimately be
seen as absurd.”
Anton Chekhov in “The Wife” and in “A Dreary Story”, through the
anomaly in his lexical choices by indiscriminate usage of oxymoron, irony and
lexical contradictions, manifested several shadows of the Absurd—such is a
genuine characteristic of Postmodernism.
References:
Asiado, T.
(2008). Anton Chekhov biography: Russian short story writer and playwright,
known for Uncle Vanya. Retrieved at:
Crabb, J. P.
(2006) Theatre of the Absurd. Retrieved at:
Copan, P. (2007). What Is Postmodernism? Retrieved at:
eNotes.com. (2009). Postmodernism
introduction. Retrieved at:
Fackerell, M. (2007). Postmodernism and the Death
of Truth. Retrieved at:
http://www.christian-faith.com/forjesus/postmodernism-and-death-truth
Haselhurst,
G. & Howie, K. (2010).
On Truth & Reality. Retrieved at:
Heartfield, J. (2002). Postmodernism
and the ‘Death of the Subject.
Retrieved at:
http://marxistsfr.org/reference/subject/philosophy/index.htm.
Navratilova, E. The
absurdity of Samuel Beckett Retrieved on September, 2010 at
Walang komento:
Mag-post ng isang Komento