George Saunders, in A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, his extended study of how Russian short stories work, makes a watertight case for Anton Chekhov’s genius within the form. Saunders chooses for his title piece a story that encapsulates one variant on the literary story: the slice-of-life or epiphany narrative, built around a small cast and taking place in a concentrated unit of time. Such stories (Raymond Carver is perhaps the modern master) allow a moment to speak for a human life or personality. Often these moments incorporate a choice or decision, a pivot in someone’s life journey. My Chekhov selection does something quite different. ‘In the Ravine’ is novelistic in scope, a portrayal of provincial life built around a grasping, sentimental family of shopkeepers. There are multiple characters, but the essence of the narrative concerns itself with two daughters-in-law. One of them, the innocent and kindly Lipa, suffers abominably; the other, Aksinya, murderously take power. Beyond the shop, there is a highly polluting factory, a drunken and despairing peasantry, and a general atmosphere of hopelessness. There are episodes within episodes that could, in themselves, furnish a story. Even minor characters have inner lives and longings, however impoverished. Yet inarticulacy and a kind of ethical bewilderment stunt the lives of everyone in the village. Kindness and fellow feeling exist, but they are largely ineffectual before the avarice, corruption and selfishness in which everyone seems mired. When the story was published in 1900, it shocked the reading public, and with good reason: the fate of Lipa’s new baby is one of the most harrowing things you are likely to encounter. As the socialist journalist Vladimir Posse wrote in a letter to Chekhov: ‘What a merciless, cruel revelation. Nothing theatrical, but the effect is immense, all-pervading, and continues to grow long after the story has been read.’
First published in the January 1900 issue of the Russian literary magazine Zhizn. English language translation by Constance Garnett first published in The Wife and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov, Chatto and Windus, London, 1918. Widely collected thereafter, including in In the Ravine & Other Stories, Macmillan Collector’s Library, 2019
A Personal Anthology 