Anton Chekhov: Onni [Happiness: Selected Short Stories 1880-1903] (a book)

Isaac Levitan: Вечерний звон / Evening Bells (RU 1892). Oil on canvas. 87 cm × 107.6. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. From: Arthive.net. Public Domain. Wikimedia Commons. Please click on the image to expand it.

Anton Chekhov / Anton Tšehov: Onni: valitut novellit 1880-1903 [Happiness: Selected Short Stories 1880-1903]. 1104 pages. 52 short stories edited and translated by Martti Anhava, 21 for the first time in Finnish in a book edition. Hard cover. Helsinki: Siltala & Sanavalinta, 2025.

Repeating myself from the 2025 Helsinki Book Fair: a literary highlight of the year was the publication of Onni [Happiness], the largest ever Finnish edition of Anton Chekhov's short stories, edited and translated by Martti Anhava, the Finnish Chekhov maestro himself. According to my estimate, Chekhov wrote 605 short stories (according to Anhava, 580). I thought then that a third might have been translated into Finnish. 

But for the Finnish Chekhov reader there is a double whammy: the Finnish National Library has made available and searchable the digital archive of all old Finnish newspapers and magazines, and there are hundreds of Anton Chekhov translations now available from the decades of the Autonomy, starting from 1889. 

Chekhov was popular in Finland already in his lifetime. Not only humoresques but also weightier pieces, such as My Life, were in demand (My Life was serialized in several newspapers across the country). It is not easy to count the number of the Chekhov pieces which have been translated since they appear under different titles, and sometimes names of characters have been changed. But now I think that a half of Chekhov's work has been translated. I also believe that essential pieces remain untranslated.

In 2012-2013 was the last time I had a big project to read as much Chekhov as possible. I wrote then several Chekhov entries in this blog. I have written in anthologies about "Dostoevsky and the cinema" and "Tolstoy and the cinema" and hope one day to cover "Chekhov and the cinema". Common to all three writers is that I don't find actual adaptations of their work indispensable. Yet their indirect impact is huge.

I used to think that The Lady with the Dog by Iosif Heifitz was the only really great Chekhov adaptation, and the movie is distinguished, indeed (thanks to superb performances by Aleksei Batalov and Iya Savvina), but I no longer find it quite as great as before. Now Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car (JP 2021), based on the novel by Haruko Murakami, has become my favourite Chekhov adaptation. It is a marriage tragedy in which Uncle Vanya, both as text and performance, is a profound reference. It is a story of spiritual resurrection in which Uncle Vanya reads us.

The indirect impact of Chekhov might be even bigger than that of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. To give only one example: A Simple Event / Yek etefagh sadeh (IR 1973) by Sohrab Shahid Saless.

IMPRESSIONISM

Two years ago the 150th anniversary of Impressionism was celebrated, and for the first time I  understood what the epochal change truly meant. It was l'art pour l'art in a certain way, but it was a turn to a heightened sense of realism in a more important way. 

It was a new way of seeing eternity in the instant, the extraordinary in the ordinary and the infinite in the finite.

It was also a philosophical turn to a knowledge about knowledge, understanding about understanding and perception about perception.

There are different meanings to the term "impressionist" and one of them is being sketchy, but the Impressionist turn of Pissarro, Monet, Renoir and their soulmates was the opposite of sketchy. Monet sometimes devoted decades to complete a painting. 

It was not only about seeing but seeing the way of seeing. Including the blur, the shadow, the reflection, the particles, the perpetually changing light. That had already been seen during the Renaissance, but Impressionism was a new stage.

Impressionism in its "l'art pour l'art" sense was turning one's back to prestige subjects, classic themes, famous men, but also society, history, tendency and topical issues.

The impressionist did not seek greatness in great subjects. He found greatness in ordinary and little subjects, and perhaps it was a greatness of the most enduring kind.

For the first time I understood why Chekhov and Proust are seen as the greatest Impressionists of literature.

REDISCOVERING CHEKHOV

A distinguished Russian friend of mine has emphasized that whereas Westerners prefer what they call "mature Chekhov" (starting from The Steppe), Russians have always loved at least as much the young Chekhov, and not only the humoristic pieces. Reading Martti Anhava's (who seems to share my Russian friend's opinion) edition I understand what he meant. Chekhov is brilliant since the beginning, and there are several pieces of substance long before The Steppe, such as Oysters, The Hunter, On the Road and Verochka. 

My Russian friend had also remarked on Chekhov's antisemitism, which I had not registered before, but now it was undeniable, starting from mean Sarah Bernhardt parodies and expanding to vile terminology. It is hard to find a positive Jewish character in Chekhov's work and easy to find negative examples. It is disturbing, because Chekhov found a soulmate in Isaak Levitan, and he was also a Dreyfusard.

Chekhov's misogyny I had registered long ago. This I have always found puzzling. It is out of character, and it diminishes his achievement. In a patriarchal society, women are not allowed to grow, and a parallel situation is everywhere where there is oppression. The oppressed cannot rise to the full height of his potential. There is a temptation to despise the oppressed instead of the oppression.

With these reservations I enjoy Chekhov more than ever. His amazingly wide perspective, his empathy for characters from all walks of life, his talent of observation and ability to express himself in a subtle language, rich and concise at once. Chekhov is a writer's writer. What a pleasure it must be to read it in Russian. But one of the great insights of Drive My Car, the short story by Haruko Murakami and the film by Ryusuke Hamagachi, is that Chekhov transcends barriers of language and culture. Martti Anhava's translations are a superb example of this.

This volume took me a long time to read, because the unwieldy size of the edition made it impossible to carry it around.