The Duel (18 page)
Authors: Anton Chekhov
—from Von Koren’s first assessment of Laevsky in
Chekhov
’s
The Duel.
CAIN: And this is Life?—Toil!
And wherefore should I toil?—because
My father could not keep his place in Eden?
What had I done in this?—I was unborn:
I sought not to be born; nor love the state
To which that birth has brought me. Why did he
Yield to the Serpent and the woman? or
Yielding—why suffer? What was there in this?
The tree planted, and why not for him?
If not, why place him near it, where it grew
The fairest in the center? They have but
One answer to all questions, “ ’Twas his will,
And he is good.” How know I that? Because
He is all-powerful, must all-good, too, follow?
I judge but by the fruits—and they are bitter—
Which I must feed on for a fault not mine.
Why do I exist? Why art all things wretched?
Ev’n he who made us must be, as the maker
Of things unhappy! To produce destruction
Can surely never be the task of joy,
And yet my sire says he’s omnipotent:
Then why is Evil—he being Good? I asked
This question of my father; and he said,
Because this Evil only was the path
To Good. Strange good, that must arise from out
Its deadly opposite. I lately saw
A lamb stung by a reptile: the poor suckling
Lay foaming on the earth, beneath the vain
And piteous bleating of its restless dam;
My father plucked some herbs, and laid them to
The wound; and by degrees the helpless wretch
Resumed its careless life, and rose to drain
The mother’s milk, who o’er it tremulous
Stood licking its reviving limbs with joy.
Behold, my son! said Adam, how from Evil springs Good!
But I thought, that ’twere a better portion for the animal
Never to have been stung at all than to
Purchase renewal of its little life
With agonies unutterable, though
Dispelled by antidotes.
—from
Cain
by
Lord George Gordon Byron
(1788
–
1824). Byron’s 1821 play centers around the character of Cain and his view of life and the world. Both the character of Cain as well as Childe Harold from the epic narrative poem
, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,
served as foundational archetypes for what would come to be known as the “Byronic hero.” Typically a Byronic hero would be extremely intelligent, most often physically strong, and generally quite capable The hero is held back, however, by an innate flaw or disdain for authority, quotidian life or societal norms. Thus, the Byronic hero must struggle to either overcome his defect or to endure despite it. The idea of the Byronic hero was a major influence on 19
th
century literature, and particularly on the Russian concept of the “superfluous man.
”
“A quarter of an hour later Pechorin returned from the chase. Bela ran to meet him and threw her arms around his
neck, and not a single complaint, not a single reproach for his long absence did I hear … Even I had lost patience with him. ‘Sir,’ said I, ‘Kazbich was on the other side of the river just now and we fired at him; you could easily have run into him too. These mountaineers are vengeful people, and do you think he does not suspect you helped Azamat? I’ll wager he saw Bela here. And I happen to know that a year ago he was very much attracted by her—told me so himself in fact. Had he had any hope of raising a substantial
kalym
he surely would have asked for her in marriage …’ Pechorin was grave now. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we have to be more careful … Bela, after today you must not go out on the rampart anymore.’
“That evening I had a long talk with him; it grieved me that he had changed toward the poor girl, for besides being out hunting half the time, he began to treat her coldly, rarely showing her any affection. She began to waste away visibly, her face grew drawn, and her big eyes lost their luster. Whenever I asked her, ‘Why are you sighing, Bela? Are you sad?’ she would reply, ‘No.’ ‘Do you want anything’ ‘No!’ ‘Are you grieving your kinsfolk?’ ‘I have no kinsfolk.’ For days on end you couldn’t get more than ‘yes’ or ‘no’ out of her.
“I resolved to have a talk with him about this. ‘Listen, Maxim Maximych,’ he replied, ‘I have an unfortunate character; whether it is my upbringing that made me like that or God who created me so, I do not know. I know only that if I cause unhappiness to others I myself am no less unhappy. I realize this is poor consolation for them—but the fact remains that it is so. In my early youth after leaving the guardianship of my parents, I plunged into all the pleasures money could buy, and naturally these pleasures grew distasteful to me. Then I went into society, but soon enough grew tired of it; I fell in love with beautiful society women and was loved by them, but their love only spurred on my ambition and vanity while my heart remained desolate. I began to read and to study, but wearied of learning too; I saw that neither fame nor happiness depended on it in the slightest, for the happiest people were the ignorant and fame was a matter of luck, to achieve which you only had to be shrewd. And I grew bored … Soon I was transferred to the Caucasus; this was the happiest time of my life. I hoped that boredom would not survive under Chechen bullets—but in vain; in a month I had become so accustomed to their whine and the proximity of death that, to tell the truth, the mosquitoes bothered me more, and life became more boring than ever because I had now lost practically my last hope. When I saw Bela at my home, when I held her on my lap and first kissed her raven locks, I foolishly thought she was an angel sent down to me by a compassionate Providence. Again I erred: the love of a barbarian girl is little better than that of a well-born lady; the ignorance and simplicity of the one are as boring as the coquetry of the other. I still love her, if you wish, I am grateful to her for a few rather blissful moments, I am ready to five my life for her, but I am bored with her. I don’t know whether I am a fool or a scoundrel; but the fact is that I am to be pitied as much, if not more than she. My soul has been warped by the world, my mind is restless, my heart insatiable; nothing suffices me: I grow accustomed to sorrow as readily as to joy, and my life becomes emptier from day to day. Only one expedient is left for me, and that is to travel. As soon as possible I shall set out—not for Europe, God forbid—but for America, Arabia, India—and perhaps I shall die somewhere on the road! At least I am sure that with the help of storms and bad roads this last resort will not soon cease to be a consolation.’ He talked long in this vein and words seared themselves in my memory for it was the first time I had heard such talk from a man of twenty-five, and I hope to God, the last. Amazing! You probably were in the capital recently; perhaps you can tell me,” the captain went on, addressing me, “whether the young people there are all like that?”
I replied that there are many who say the same, and that most likely some of them are speaking the truth; that, on the whole, disillusionment, having begun like all vogues in the upper strata of society, had descended to the lower which wear it threadbare, and that now those who are really bored the most endeavour to conceal that misfortune as if it were a vice. The captain did not understand these subtleties, and he shook his head and smiled
slyly:
“It was the French, I suppose, who made boredom fashionable?”
“No, the English.”
“Ah, so that’s it!” he replied. “Of course, they’ve always been inveterate drunkards!”
—from
A Hero Of Our Time
by
Mikhail Lermontov
.
Written in 1839 and published in 1841, Lermontov’s celebrated novel of the adventures of a Byronic hero named Pechorin, is considered one of 19th century Russia’s most influential works. Pechorin’s character is a man of extremes, alternating between moments of great daring, melancholy brooding and moral cravenness. He clearly defined the temperament of 19
th
century Russian literature’s “superfluous man.” The character of Pechorin is drawn in contrast to the older, more traditional character of Captain Maxim Maximych, who, despite disapproving of Pechorin’s behavior, believes him to be, at heart, a good man
.
Winter again. The snow is falling in flakes. Superfluous, superfluous.… That’s a capital word I have hit on. The more deeply I probe into myself, the more intently I review all my past life, the more I am convinced of the strict truth of this expression. Superfluous—that’s just it. To other people that term is not applicable.… People are bad, or good, clever, stupid, pleasant, and disagreeable; but superfluous … no. Understand me, though: the universe could get on without those people too … no doubt; but uselessness is not their prime characteristic, their most distinctive attribute, and when you speak of them, the word ‘superfluous’ is not the first to rise to your lips. But I … there’s nothing else one can say about me; I’m superfluous and nothing more. A supernumerary, and that’s all. Nature, apparently, did not reckon on my appearance, and consequently treated me as an unexpected and uninvited guest. A facetious gentleman, a great devotee of preference, said very happily about me that I was the forfeit my mother had paid at the game of life. I am speaking about myself calmly now, without any bitterness.… It’s all over and done with!
Throughout my whole life I was constantly finding my place taken, perhaps because I did not look for my place where I should have done. I was apprehensive, reserved, and irritable, like all sickly people. Moreover, probably owing to excessive self-consciousness, perhaps as the result of the generally unfortunate cast of my personality, there existed between my thoughts and feelings, and the expression of those feelings and thoughts, a sort of inexplicable, irrational, and utterly insuperable barrier; and whenever I made up my mind to overcome this obstacle by force, to break down this barrier, my gestures, the expression of my face, my whole being, took on an appearance of painful constraint. I not only seemed, I positively became unnatural and affected. I was conscious of this myself, and hastened to shrink back into myself. Then a terrible commotion was set up within me. I analyzed myself to the last thread, compared myself with others, recalled the slightest glances, smiles, words of the people to whom I had tried to open myself out, put the worst construction on everything, laughed vindictively at my own pretensions to ‘be like every one else,’—and suddenly, in the midst of my laughter, collapsed utterly into gloom, sank into absurd dejection, and then began again as before—went round and round, in fact, like a squirrel on its wheel. Whole days were spent in this harassing, fruitless exercise. Well now, tell me, if you please, to whom and for what is such a man of use? Why did this happen to me? what was the reason of this trivial fretting at myself?—who knows? who can tell?
I remember I was driving once from Moscow in the diligence. It was a good road, but the driver, though he had four horses harnessed abreast, hitched on another, alongside of them. Such an unfortunate, utterly useless, fifth horse—fastened somehow on to the front of the shaft by a short stout cord, which mercilessly cuts his shoulder,
forces him to go with the most unnatural action, and gives his whole body the shape of a comma—always arouses my deepest pity. I remarked to the driver that I thought we might on this occasion have got on without the fifth horse.… He was silent a moment, shook his head, lashed the horse a dozen times across his thin back and under his distended belly, and with a grin responded: ‘Ay, to be sure; why do we drag him along with us? What the devil’s he for?’ And here am I too dragged along. But, thank goodness, the station is not far off.
Superfluous.… I promised to show the justice of my opinion, and I will carry out my promise. I don’t think it necessary to mention the thousand trifles, everyday incidents and events, which would, however, in the eyes of any thinking man, serve as irrefutable evidence in my support—I mean, in support of my contention. I had better begin straight away with one rather important incident, after which probably there will be no doubt left of the accuracy of the term superfluous. I repeat: I do not intend to indulge in minute details, but I cannot pass over in silence one rather serious and significant fact, that is, the strange behaviour of my friends (I too used to have friends) whenever I met them, or even called on them. They used to seem ill at ease; as they came to meet me, they would give a not quite natural smile, look, not into my eyes nor at my feet, as some people do, but rather at my cheeks, articulate hurriedly, ‘Ah! how are you, Tchulkaturin!’ (such is the surname fate has burdened me with) or ‘Ah! here’s Tchulkaturin!’ turn away at once and positively remain stockstill for a little while after, as though trying to recollect something. I used to notice all this, as I am not devoid of penetration and the faculty of observation; on the whole I am not a fool; I sometimes even have ideas come into my head that are amusing, not absolutely commonplace. But as I am a superfluous man with a padlock on my inner self, it is very painful for me to express my idea, the more so as I know beforehand that I shall express it badly. It positively sometimes strikes me as extraordinary the way people manage to talk, and so simply and freely.… It’s marvellous, really, when you think of it. Though, to tell the truth, I too, in spite of my padlock, sometimes have an itch to talk. But I did actually utter words only in my youth; in riper years I almost always pulled myself up. I would murmur to myself: ‘Come, we’d better hold our tongue.’ And I was still. We are all good hands at being silent; our women especially are great in that line. Many an exalted Russian young lady keeps silent so strenuously that the spectacle is calculated to produce a faint shudder and cold sweat even in any one prepared to face it. But that’s not the point, and it’s not for me to criticize others. I proceed to my promised narrative.