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5.0 out of 5 stars
A cruel classic, May 28, 2005
This volume contains six stories by Chekhov , Ward Six, The Duel, A Dull Story, My Life, The Name- Day Party, In the Ravine. It is translated by Ann Dunnigan and has an insightful afterword by Rufus W. Mathewson.
I have been reading a lot of Chekhov lately, and have also written a number of reviews on his story collections. However I now have the sense that I have previously missed completely an important side of Chekhov, if not a very attractive one. I have previously tended to see Chekhov as an author who shows great sympathy and even love for his characters, whose careful description of their pains and sufferings comes out of his own strong identification with them.
But here I sense something quite different . In the title story ' The Ward' Chekhov presents a picture of a small - town's insane asylum. He presents a picture of the aristocratic and lonely supervisor , Dr. Andrei Yefimych Ragin and of the various inmates .As is usually the case with Chekhov the descriptions of the characters are lively and moving, and give insight not only in regard to their physical presence, but their moral and spiritual state. In the course of this story we see much of the cruelty, irrationality and absurdity of the world. This is often the case in Chekhov's stories.
There is also in this story the kind of intellectual dialogue between the only two of its characters capable of this Ragin, and Ivan Dmitrich- a kind of dialogue that Russian literature so excels at. These dialogues illuminate character and provide metaphysical depth. In this particular story the main character comes to suffer a tremendous injustice, and in the end be confined to the very same asylum he once managed.
The story like so many of Chekhov's story holds the reader , amuses the reader, gives the reader a glance at life and characters in a way never seen before.
In other words there is another Chekhov classic well worth reading.
My own problem is that in this work( rightly or wrongly, and importantly or not) I sensed not simply the cruelty of circumstance, fate and life , a cruelty so often the theme of Chekhov's work- I also sensed a certain cruelty in the author himself, in the voice of the story.
Again this may not be important to other readers. For me however it is. For while it may not impinge upon Chekhov's literary greatness it does impinge upon my sense of his moral worthiness.
And here I am made to think of how often in Russian literature characters go from one extreme to another, and how the most kind can become in an instant the most cruel.
But again and most importantly for the reader. There are not so many great works, and not so many literary classics. 'Ward Six' is one of them.
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