Chekhov - The House with the Mansard
A while back I was talking to a friend about music, and he was sharing with me some blues that he especially enjoyed (Lush Life, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgbLtG8PBv4). But it left me almost completely cold, as do almost all blues songs. Why this is... I can only take a guess, but my speculation is that the blues are always the result of contrast: they had times that were gay and carefree, when romance seemed easy and the wine sweet in the mouth. But those times have since passed away, and they're left with memories beckoning from all the familiar places but without the ability to join them any longer. Because of this there is a wistfulness in their reflections, a feeling like they would like to return to the good times, or even if they don't want to return directly nonetheless would like something of the old comradery and warmth to be infused into their current life.
Now, not to sound self-pitying but I've never existed in such a thoughtless state. Since I hit any semblance of adulthood self-consciousness and anxiety have ruled my experience, and while I have had enjoyable times, friends, and even romance they've never existed in that form of carefree eternity which infuses a blue musing. As such, at some emotional level, it just doesn't make sense to me, either to want to return to the past or to envision such a life in my future. You can't mourn what was never alive to you. Perhaps I'll develop some appreciation of the music in my life, but I'm not sure if the sentiment will ever be more than a distraction.
Coming to Chekhov, then, I wonder if I have a similar problem because after reading several of his stories, which on the surface ought to mean something to me, I just... can't get into. The editors call the mood he evokes "Chekhovian", a purposefully circular definition because it's really it's own unique flavor that this story in particular exhibits in spades:
When the green garden, still moist with dew, shines in the sun and seems happy, and when the terrace smells of mignonette and oleander, and the young people have just returned from church and drink tea in the garden, and when they are all so gaily dressed and so merry, and when you know that all these healthy, satisfied, beautiful people will do nothing all day long, then you long for all life to be like that. So I thought then as I walked through the garden, quite prepared to drift like that without occupation or purpose, all through the day, all through the summer.
It is not that I mistake the narrator's view directly for Chekhov's, but that this and other moments are evoked with such a fond clarity that they are part of the weave. They come to the fore when things are going well, are dwelt upon even in their mundanity during moments that are only sometimes recognized as precious and crucial, but which are all too aware of their own melancholy transitoriness. For some reason it reminds me of Watteau, where he loved his paintings of social gatherings, especially of women and music, but periodically there appears a painting of distinct sadness that feels practically autobiographical:
As though amidst this revelry the one who ought to be the most amused, the clown, is not swept away at all and instead cuts the most thoughtful figure in the scene. It gives me the feeling that the two are somewhat alike in that way, Chekhov and Watteau, in that both of them quite intimately feel a joy of life but also aren't quite able to submerge themselves in it:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shalt taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
Which gets back to the core of why I think Chekhov isn't making sense to me. I can't burst joy's grape, my experience of melancholy being quite different from his (and Watteau's) as a result. So when Chekhov reaches the end, and in a blues fashion recollects:
I have already begun to forget about the house with the mansard, and only now and then, when I am working or reading, suddenly--without rhyme or reason--I remember the green light in the window, and the sound of my own footsteps as I walked through the fields that night, when I was in love, rubbing my hands to keep them warm. And even more rarely, when I am sad and lonely, I begin already to recollect and it seems to me that I, too, am being remembered and waited for, and that we shall meet....
Misuce, where are you?
I feel the stab, the power of Chekhov's ability to condense in mundane prose so much feeling, but it misses my vitals. I don't quite have enough love for life to regret its passing in the same way, and though I would love to lay claim to all human experience it may be unfortunately that this great author by and large passes me by.
(p.s. I was given a little something I could sink my teeth into with the argument between the narrator and Lyda, but I feel like that is almost a distraction. It's part of the story, and in fact quite key as it serves to highlight how strangely, the ideology of both sides seems to stand in the way of simple joy even as they endeavor to make life more full, but I think also somehow a diversion, because the ideas seem less real than the Sunday mornings)
Kipling - The Man Who Would Be King
Well, these two served for quite the back-to-back contrast, Chekhov into Kipling. If Chekhov is delicately reflective, almost feminine, then Kipling stamps forth in manly army boots.
I've read a few Kipling short stories in the past as well as his Kim, and what always endears me to them is how I can feel his India. Despite his own status they are never relayed romantically by some sahib looking out from his veranda, instead immersing you in the full heat and bustle of a subtropical subcontinent. It's like the British Wild West, now that I think about it: a place removed from the regular, where you can still find incredible people and experience genuine adventure not trammeled by too much civilization.
Which that last word really strikes at the heart of what I also find confusing about Kipling. He's an unapologetic imperialist, yet when you read his stories it... doesn't come through in the same way as his other writings. Here we've got a newspaper correspondent for the Backwoodsman, and there's nothing glamorous about the jostling of power. He reports with little interest about the deaths of kings and princes, notes but does not praise the grotesque British manipulation, and of course the demise of the man who who would be king to a bit of hubris does little to praise such ventures in savage lands. Indeed, there's something ominous in that little misadventure, that the "civilization" he brought was that of guns and slavish worship, and that the natives were only temporarily fooled. And this is to say nothing of Kim, which exhibits a man whose soul seems very sympathetic to spiritual Asia, if not its social squalor. So as I read this story I find myself wondering what was going on in his head.
[Answered a phone call]
I realized after that break that I don't have much else to add to what I put above. I have this sense that Kipling was always of two minds, and that while that doesn't excuse his public proclamations it makes me feel as though his punitive exile from the literary hall of fame masks more complexity than he is commonly given credit for.
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