This could be a decent sketch of an ineffectual man, but it’s just too long. I for one don’t have the patience for 7,500 words about a man who tries to work himself up to do something and then [spoiler alert] does nothing.
Pyotr Mihalitch Ivashin has a problem: His sister has run off with Vlassitch, a married man, bringing shame on herself and, more importantly, on Ivashin himself (as he sees it, and as I suppose Russian society generally would see it, too.)
Ivashin decides to chase the sinning couple down (they live nearby, hence the title “Neighbours”) and horsewhip them. But then he doesn’t. They plead their case and the brother rides home.
That’s the whole story; there’s just not enough there to fill so many pages.
Chekhov rarely if ever wrote a truly autobiographical tale, but lots of his stories draw on his life–so many of his stories and plays include a character who is a doctor, for instance, and there are many tales featuring artists, echoing the career of his brother Kolya.
“Neighbours,” echoes the life experience of another Chekhov brother, Aleksandr, who ran off with a married woman, scandalizing (and dividing) the Chekhov family. Chekhov himself seemed fine with Aleksandr and Anna’s common-law marriage, but he was irritated that Aleksandr cared so much about other people’s opinion of it.
In any case, “Neighbours” (I’m using the British spelling per Constance Garnett’s translation) is a portrait of an ineffectual man; he dithers and dithers and can’t quite figure out what to do about his sister, until in the end he does nothing, in part because he is ineffectual. All his talk of horsewhipping is just a bunch of horseradish. But his inability to act is also a reflection of his fondness for Vlassitch, the man who has “ruined” his sister.
One small note about language in this story: The use of the word “love.” The following passage sparked my curiosity:
“He is a Quixote, an obstinate fanatic, a maniac,” thought Pyotr Mihalitch, “and she is as soft, yielding and weak in character as I am… She and I give in easily, without resistance. She loves him; but then, I, too, love him in spite of everything.”
I just don’t know what to make of that last sentence. “She loves him” refers to a woman’s love for a man–a love strong enough that she is willing to scandalize society by moving in with him. Immediately, that thought is qualified: “But then, I, too, love him in spite of everything.” It may be that the author and/or the translator was just being a little sloppy with words–after all, “love” in English can refer to a wide range of emotions and desires. There’s nothing really wrong with the sentence, and I can easily imagine that the first “love” means an intense romantic feeling, whereas the second it refers to a general friendly fondness. Each use is perfectly proper but somehow when used twice in the same breath in such different ways, the word feels flat and meaningless. Which in fact is my reaction to the story as a whole.
I couldn’t locate a dual-language version of this story (I searched for about 12 seconds, so who knows, there may be one readily available), but I am curious: Did Chekhov use the same word to describe both sentiments? Did Garnett elide some crucial differentiation of vocabulary or usage?
Probably not. As noted elsewhere on this site, Chekhov was not a particularly careful writer. Clunky sentences, ungrammatical constructions… these things didn’t matter to him so much as getting at the psychological truth of a matter.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
A more readable, shorter story of an ineffectual man bent on revenge, “An Avenger” follows Fyodor Sigaev into a gun shop, where he must decide what sort of pistol to purchase in order to right a wrong. It’s not a great tale but it’s economically told, unlike “Neighbours.”
A Chekhov Circus 