Anton Chekhov's Rules for Writing
Posted Sun, 10/18/2009 - 14:53 by Ben
Anton Chekhov's Rules for Writing - On May 10, 1889, Anton Chekhov (already an influential literary figure in Russia) wrote a letter to his older brother, Alexander. His brother had taken up writing years before, too, but only with inconsistent success. In the letter, quoted by the translators in Anton Chekhov: Stories, the famous author laid down six principles that "make for a good story":
"It is a remarkably complete picture of Chekhov's artistic practice," Richard Pevear writes. Pevear, incidentally, is one half of the best Russian translator team working today; his partner is Larissa Volokhonsky. Together they have translated many works of Russian literature, from Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (their translation was a national bestseller) to Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls (which was gifted to me by a dear friend) to Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.
There's no telling if Chekhov's rules still make for a good story (as John Gardner said, "The god of novelists will not be tyrannized by rules.") But, even admitting there are no rules for a good story or novel, one can see the similarity in Chekhov's rules to the rules that governed the personal philosophies of Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver. In fact, Carver's short story "Errand," printed in his collection Where I'm Calling From, specifically deals with Anton Chekov. The lyrical short story (which tells of the moments following Chekhov's death) was written shortly before Carver himself died, and, in my opinion, it's as beautiful as anything he ever wrote.
Francine Prose also thinks highly enough of Chekhov that she included an entire chapter on him in Reading Like a Writer; so far as I can tell, this tenth chapter, "Learning from Chekhov," is the only one that deals exclusively with a legendary writer. Other writers are mentioned, of course, in previous chapters: that's the book's premise. But Chekhov is the only one who gets his own chapter.
It's interesting (and worth noting) that Prose leads off the chapter with a page-long anecdote about her life at the time. She was depressed, anxious, and forced to commute two and a half hours every day to her teaching job by bus. And Chekhov, she says, moved her, distracted her, and showed her the world -- his stories told of sorrow and, most importantly, of hope.
This is important because Chekhov is often mistakenly viewed as a pessimist or a fatalist or a cynic. His writing, it has been said, is too sad. There's an old saying this reminds me to include here: "In a Russian heart there is always winter." But Anton Chekhov's winter is not the winter of depression. This wintry landscape, this void sensed by readers, is a blackness so deep and overarching and crushing that nothing escapes it; when faced with it a man or woman can do little but - to borrow an image from Pevear - beat their heads against the cobblestones in despair. This calls to mind the endless sorrows in Shakespeare's King Lear. How can people carry on beyond their breaking points? Somehow, from this void, the men and women and children in Chekhov's stories do carry on. Slowly, painfully, the author and his characters grope their way forward in darkness. To the untrained eye, literary critic Lev Shestov, wrote, they might not even appear to be moving. "It may be Chekhov himself does not know for certain whether he is moving forward or marking time."
"His only hope lies in utter hopelessness," Pevear writes of Chekhov. "Anything else would be 'a lie or a form of violence,' a general idea or a utopia at gunpoint. And it is here, in this 'void,' that Chekhov begins 'seeking new paths.'"
Winter is often used by second-rate writers as a metaphor for death, the end of things, a trite extension of the human condition - that is, mortality. But by writing beyond hope, exploring the darkest winters of humanity, Chekhov was detailing a very different version of the void: A winter of stark beauty, resolute survival, and unyielding compassion detached from philosophy but indebted to the force of nature colloquially known as God.
If anyone is interested, you can buy Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's Anton Chekhov: Stories by clicking here. You might also want to check out Lev Shestov's "Creation from the Void," an essay published in 1908, four years after Chekhov's death (it's the highly respected article I quoted above). The text is available for free by clicking here.