Here we have another splash of cruelty from Chekhov. He never shied away from portraying difficult lives and difficult people. This one, though heavy handed like many of the others, seems relevant to the current political moment in the US.
The story: A Russian landowner, Kamyshev, employs a Frenchman, Champoun, as his personal companion and, essentially, punching bag. Champoun had been a tutor to Kamyshev’s children, but the children are grown and now his duties are simply to listen to the old man gas. Kamyshev is a boor and a bully, and he delights in insulting the French–French food, French culture, French morals. He even makes light of France’s small size, compared with Russia. (Yes, it’s as if Kamyshev is saying, “Mine’s bigger!”)
Finally, Champoun can take no more. He leaps up from the dining table and cries that he has had enough. He rues the day that he left France, so many years ago. In a tearful rage, he races to his rooms to pack his bags.
Alas, his employer has “misplaced” Champoun’s passport, and therefore he will not be able to return to his homeland. He is trapped, possibly for all time.
Like I said, it’s cruel, it’s sad, and it’s too cartoonish to stand as a particularly strong story.
But Kamyshev’s ugly, jingoistic ranting sounds an awful lot like the way a certain American political leader talks to and about the world – “Mine’s bigger!”
READ THIS? READ THAT!
As a rule, I would say that Chekhov’s best stories remain relevant to this day because they speak to our basic human natures: Our hunger for love, our ambition, our greed, our ignorance… all the basic characteristics of humanity, he was able capture in his writing, and balance them in ways that very few artists are able.
Some of his tales, though, have a ring of relevancy because they resonate with current political or social trends. “In a Strange Land” is a document of Russian chauvinism and as such it’s weirdly on point in a world turned upside down by the Russian war on Ukraine.
Other stories that might feel particularly relevant to current day American readers are “Difficult People,” where a tight-fisted rural father expresses his suspicions of his son’s college education; “The New Villa,” which explores class divisions, inequality, and the pressures of modernization on a rural economy; “The Horse-Stealers,” a less good story that illustrates urbanites’ disdain and outright fear of countryfolk; and “A Peculiar Man,” which can’t help but remind American readers about the problems of our healthcare system.
A Chekhov Circus 