Chekhov’s Naturalistic Irony

Abstract

We have analyzed the plight of the nihilistic writer as he attempts to portray what he considers the hopeless human condition with a mixture, varying with temperament and outlook, of irony and pity. There is no incongruity in his doing so. All the greater is the need for compassion if the writer believes, as do Chekhov and O’Neill, that life is a senseless spectacle and that there is no redemption beyond this mortal span. But if man dies and if he knows that in the end the race is destined to perish, he can still live his life and meet his death with some degree of courage and fortitude. Perhaps men need the pipe dreams to which they cling so tenaciously; perhaps the heroic spirit manifests itself in this very determination to go beyond illusion to “the truth” that man is the sole God, the maker of history, the Promethean builder of society and civilization. Perhaps, as Chekhov seems to say, there is no solution, the fate of the dreams and ideals men cherish is to be shattered, but then all the more reason for a show of compassion and for belief in what E. M. Forster calls “the importance of personal relationships.”¹