The Forgotten Symbol or, rather, a Non Sequitur Exposed?

Some months ago, I wrote to my loyal correspondent in the very heart of Russia – a Chekhovian scholar of great learning and intuition (whom I shall call Guru Anton Instinctsikov, to spare his blushes) –  in pursuit of answers following what I believed was my close reading of Chekhov’s short story, Ivan Matveyich (1886).

In fact, you might say that the two participants in that minor tale of Chekhov’s are reflective of our own respective rôles – on my part, an ignoramus; on his part, a polyglot encyclopaedist of lightly worn erudition – because the story concerns a professor and his feckless clerk-amanuensis, Ivan Matveyich, a naïve young man, characterised by a ‘…foolish smile which is seen only on the faces of children or very good-natured people.’

As the Man of Learning fumes, the ‘wretched boy is two or three hours late with unfailing regularity every day…’ and ‘… shows the utmost disrespect for another man’s time and work. In England such a person would not earn a farthing …’  In short, young Ivan is bored, uninterested in his clerkly duties (copying from dictation), and yearns for the innocent, sunlit country pursuits of his youth far from the snowy region the Professor inhabits. In particular, in a break from his duties, Ivan retails to the Man of Learning his schoolboy fondness for a breed of killer-spider (bihorka), a single specimen of which can conquer a hundred tarantulas in a staged fight.

So … 

Hence the three questions I posed to my Guru Anton Instinctsikov as, to my mind, in rereading this story there seemed to emerge a symbolic standoff: a case of the Common Man versus the Intelligentsia.

Was there, then, I asked my guru, a hidden political message when Ivan says: ‘In a fight one bihorka can kill a hundred tarantulas’ since Ivan is from the southern Don region and, therefore, his words might seemingly be an anti-imperialist boast? 

And thirdly, more pertinently, is Ivan’s seeming boast specifically in response to his master’s dictated words, ‘More independence is found by the forms which have not so much a political, as a social character.’

To my limited understanding, there seemed to be a thread of socialistic polemical commentary in the story that is cunningly hidden by Chekhov; after all, it is well-known that there was much coded writing at that time (the Eighties) to deceive the Censor. Coded writing is surely a constant underground stream in Russian literature (even today) and the one-against-the-many-tarantulas imagery is simply begging for socio-political interpretation.

Roy Fuller wrote a poem, Chekhov, pointing out that a person like Ivan Matveyich holds the secret key to Chekhov’s code when the important word is hidden. 

And what there was of meaning in it all
Is left entirely to the minor figures:
Aged or stupid, across the deserted stage,
They carry, like a tray, the forgotten symbol.

Lost in Translation: a False Non Sequitur.

Well, let me tell you straightaway my quest for the forgotten symbol turned out to be rather disappointing for me.

In an act of extraordinary literary supererogation, my Guru Anton Instinctsikov explained at length that Ivan’s seeming boast in response to the Man of Learning’s dictated ‘independence’ of ‘forms’ of a ‘social character’ is nothing but a failure of translation to impart the mild punning association of idiomatic Russian sparked in the wool-gathering mind of Ivan by the word, ‘form’. Instead, a non sequitur results. 

My Russian guru explains it more cogently:

To say the truth, I haven’t found a reason to consider the phrase to be a hidden political message. In the story, in the whole, Chekhov tried and achieved comic effect having made comparison between purely the scientific, markedly difficult-to-understand style of the ‘Man of Learning’ and the simple, everyday style of Ivan Matveyich. He shows that the ‘Man of Learning’ was bored with his own pseudoscientific writings and was more interested in real events from Ivan’s life. A fight of bihorka and tarantulas was just a sample of the ‘childish’ entertainment Ivan was interested in. Ivan was too simpleminded to say anything that might be an anti-imperialist boast.
    The phrase dictated by the ‘Man of Learning’ was chosen by Chekhov for two reasons. It makes an excellent specimen of idiotic profundity (in spite of Ivan’s also idiotic naivety). The second reason is the word ‘forms’. In Russian ‘forms’ and ‘uniforms’ are the same: ‘forms’. Simple Ivan was not able to understand what his master had been dictating. So, having heard the word ‘forms’, he thought his master meant students’ ‘uniforms’. The comic effect is achieved. Chekhov is laughing at socio-political philosophizing which has no real base.

A comparison of the two texts, Russian:English, my indulgent guru kindly supplies here for my edification (and yours). As may be seen my initial confusion was due to my failure in detecting the buried homonyms:

In sum, my guru confirms that, in regard to the seeming non sequitur of the introduction of the new topic, ‘uniform’, in the English translation, there is an entirely prosaic explanation in the Russian … 

‘Exactly. Straight cause-and-effect relationship. The Man of Learning says forms in the metaphysical sense, Simple Ivan hears form as students’ clothes.’

All of which is truly humbling when one attempts to contemplate the multitude of nuanced Russian texts that must escape our understanding.  I wrote to my guru with my profound thanks for his thoughtfulness: ‘Your conclusion will interest English readers of Chekhov, who have been denied this textual richness.’  (I am certain this will be found to be the case.)

Nuances Restored.

I suppose a solution to the restoration of the nuances without the non sequitur would be to write two unrelated sentences, such as: ‘More independence is found by principal forms which have not so much a political, as a social character.’ ‘Since the new Principal, the high school boys have a different uniform now.’

Maybe translators should seek more creative licence in meeting these challenges. Anyhow, such renderings, however faithful, would still not reveal the underlying purposes of the text. Guru Anton Instinctsikov additionally cautions me:

Modern literary criticism allows you to interpret things deeper than the author did himself. After all, a writer and a reader are co-creators. I don’t see political allusion in bihorka and tarantulas. You do. That’s normal. In my opinion, the story is nice, but not significant (by Chekhov’s standards). As I understand it, Chekhov didn’t value the story too much … he was not going to include it in the full collection, and did it only after readers’ requests. By the way, in the first edition of the story the ‘Man of Learning’ was a ‘quite famous Russian writer’ (whose prototype was Pyotr Boborykin), and the prototype for Ivan was Chekhov’s brother, Ivan. I agree with Roy Fuller that, stated simply, Chekhov told big things via minor ones. But Chekhov was not Saltykov-Shchedrin, nor Aesop. His minor things were rather tops of icebergs hidden in the water than symbols for expressing different things or for fooling censorship. I (personally me) am sure the bihorka and tarantulas are ‘local colour’ and not so-called Aesopian language. But why not make the story deeper than it is?

Why not, indeed? I have to confess I continue to cleave to my ‘Coded Chekhov’ theory … even after these many deliberations, it’s not so easy to let it go.