At a Country House by Anton Chekhov 10 out of 10

 At a Country House by Anton Chekhov

10 out of 10

 

 

This is part of a series of fifty two short stories by the Master, the one that made another great story teller to say "Reading Chekhov was just like the angels singing to me" -- Eudora Welty –and it is exalting to find so much inspiration, joy, amusement, complexity in such an accessible, readable Magnum opus, which is also so modern and timely – indeed, Anton Chekhov was considered the father of modern short stories, the one who said "Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress"…the narrative At a Country House is no exception, in that it has a main theme which has not changed for ages and it is in the spotlight and headlines to this day, when white supremacists and other nut cases have gain more infamy when they have occupied the Congress of The United States no less…

 

Pavel Ilitch Rashevitch is the anti-hero of the tale, a sort of proto Trump, the one talking to his visitor, Monsieur Meyer, a guest that the host assumes to belong to the same caste – which would be the higher one, he could not possibly belong to the lower, the untouchable one, albeit the main character has a history of blunders, he has once travelled on a train where he told passengers that Germans are awful, only to find that they were all…well, Germans – has very vicious views of those he sees as ‘commoners’ and now the thing that comes to mind is the interview that is already called the Interview of the Year, though we are only at the start of 2021, wherein Meghan attacks the British Monarchy or the commoner versus the aristocracy as we could call them and if we are as vile as Pavel Ilitch, we could argue that the blue blood appears to have won, in that the outsider had not looked at the contract, The Firm requires dedication and sacrifice in the name of the outfit and it is not about personal gain and glory…

Yes, the liberal, progressive, young take on the Interview is that the monarchy is obsolete, medieval and so passé, while the ingénue, modern, woke Duchess of Sussex – is that not a contradiction in terms an oxymoron in itself, keeping a title and then throwing mud at the concept – is all for the future of the royals, only they missed the chance…actually, for this viewer – who now testifies to being so conservative, old school and retrograde, for this is the view held by the older fellows – it seems that the obscure actress has gained world recognition, title, riches – incidentally, she was all for the money, but did not want to engage in the boring, demanding tasks of opening boo clubs, going to small dance rooms to meet common people – but all she wanted the goodies, glamour, fame, wealth, title, being able to push around the staff – yes, there are at least two, or is it three, complaints of harassment and that shows a very ignoble double standard in that I will take no shit from anybody, princes, dukes, but let me show you how I can kick your ass around, for you are talking about the duchess baby – and taking all the good, but refusing to comply to the rules of the Firm…

 

Which is exactly the point made by the Inglorious Bastard, Pavel Ilitch and he says “From the point of view of fraternity, equality, and all that sort of thing the swineherd Mitka is as good a man as Goethe or Frederick the Great…But look at it from the point of view of science; have the courage to look actuality straight in the face, and you cannot possibly deny that the white bone is not a prejudice, not a silly woman’s invention…’

 

On the other hand, The Economist has published about a week or two weeks ago a study that looked at the results of inbreeding in the history of Spain, where the argument was that because the monarchs tried to marry only in house, cousins and the like, in order to keep as much territory under their control as possible – in the case of the House of Habsburg that meant at a certain point Austria, Spain and the Netherlands – the results were eventually disastrous and the look at the historical dates and the inbreeding index seems to demonstrate that the result of keeping all this ‘blue blood’ untouched led eventually to catastrophe…

“if some Richard the Lion-hearted or Frederick Barbarossa, for instance, a man courageous and magnanimous, has a son, his good qualities will be inherited by the son, together with his bumps; and if this courage and magnanimity are fostered in the son by education and exercise, and he marries a princess also courageous and magnanimous, then these qualities will be transmitted to the grandson, and so on, until they become peculiarities of the species, and descend organically, so to speak, in flesh and blood’…the argument proposed by the protagonist of this narrative looks like being confirmed by the discovery of the DNA and recent studies that show we tend to inherit even the tendency to watch the same number of hours of television as our parents – only these are tendencies and the conflict between Nature and Nurture appears to have been solved by having to accept that both have an impact on humans and animals.

 

‘Who are our best people…Take our first-class artists, authors, composers…. Who are they…All these, my dear sir, are representatives of the white bone. Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontoff, Turgenieff, Tolstoy…. Were these cook-maids’ children…Gontcharoff was a tradesman said Meyer…What does that prove…The exception, my friend, proves the rule…And as to the genius of Gontcharoff there can be two opinions…But let us leave names and return to facts…Tell me how you can reply, sir, to the eloquent fact that when the potboy climbs to a higher place than he was born in—when he reaches eminence in literature, in science, in local government, in law—what have you to say to the fact that Nature herself intervenes on behalf of the most sacred human rights, and declares war against him…As a matter of fact, hardly has the potboy succeeded in stepping into other people’s shoes when he begins to languish, wither, go out of his mind, and degenerate; and nowhere will you meet so many dwarfs, psychical cripples, consumptives, and starvelings as among these gentry’…this is the mad plea of a Hitler, probably, and there would be a figurative slap when the guest reveals he is of ‘modest extraction’

However, if we take a jocular, and sinister look at the aforementioned Interview, we could argue again that Meghan has climbed up the ladder as a ‘commoner’ and broke things incredibly fast – the climb was as a fast as the destruction process – with no respect for the history and tradition of the family she has joined – willingly by the way, she was not forced into it – and soon started acting up, but as a modest actress, she bullied though under her power, while demanding so much from the rest – a typical case of you are not allowed to ask from me what I demand with authority and then with ferociousness from the others – what does she mean she has had nobody to talk to…is she not married to her husband, who even has connections with a charity in the field of mental health…how could she ask for security detail when she lives abroad and nobody else has those benefits…does she realize she benefited from tax payers money…