history, the inglorious bankruptcy of the middle classes (intelligentsia) in 1917."
An American who does not read Russian, while at liberty to take exceptions to almost any American interpretation of Chekhov, should, I think, dissent warily from an obviously well informed and acute Russian critic. All the same, I am constrained by the full force of my own personal reaction to my author to protest against accepting pessimism, negativity or defeatism as the keynotes of Chekhov's character, and, therefore, as the logical essence of Chekhovism. The center of the man is positive. The force of his character is positive. The letters prove it.
Chekhovism is always defeated in war, but in the long run Chekhovism undermines war and returns generation after generation to its task of defeating the passions which make war possible. Negativity can perform no such stupendous work. To declare that Chekhov made "a cult of inefficiency" is a partisan's disparaging way of saying that Chekhov had an exalted, inalterable faith in humane culture, which you, for one, can't quite bring yourself to share. You probably believe that humane culture, like Christianity, is too rare, too slow. It doesn't get "results." It is too fragile for this world. It is too easily trampled under and made naught of by any uprush or inrush of vigorous barbarism.
Poor Chekhov! I take it that he is out of date in this respect only: He thought he was standing for "European culture" as against "Asiatic barbarism" If his life had been spared ten years longer he would have seen the European frock coats cast aside just as hastily as the Asiatic smocks. And if he had stood fast by his own ideals he would have withdrawn to some
