Three Key Quotes

The fol­low­ing are some of Anton Chekhov’s words on the art of writ­ing, as first quoted in Francine Prose’s Read­ing Like a Writer:

In my opin­ion a true descrip­tion of nature should be very brief and have the char­ac­ter of rel­e­vance. Com­mon­places such as “the set­ting sun bathed the waves of the dark­en­ing sea, poured its pur­ple gold, etc.”—“the swal­lows fly­ing over the sur­face of the water tit­tered merrily”—such com­mon­places one ought to aban­don. In descrip­tions of nature one ought to seize upon the lit­tle par­tic­u­lars, group­ing them in such a way that, in read­ing, when you shut your eyes you get the picture.

For instance you will get the full effect of a moon­lit night if you write that on the mill­dam, a lit­tle glow­ing star­point flashed from the neck of a bro­ken bot­tle, and the round black shadow of a dog or a wolf emerged and ran, etc….

In the sphere of psy­chol­ogy, details are also the thing. God pre­serve us from com­mon­places. Best of all is to avoid depict­ing the hero’s state of mind; you ought to try to make it clear from the hero’s actions.

You under­stand it at once when I say, “The man sat on the grass.” You under­stand it because it is clear and makes no demands on the atten­tion. On the other hand it is not eas­ily under­stood if I write, “A tall, narrow-chested, middle-sized man, with a red beard, sat on the green grass, already tram­pled by pedes­tri­ans, sat silently, shyly, and timidly looked about him.” That is not imme­di­ately grasped by the mind, whereas good writ­ing should be grasped at once—in a second.

…

That the world “swarms with male and female scum” is per­fectly true. Human nature is imper­fect. But to think that the task of lit­er­a­ture is to gather the pure grain from the muck heap is to reject lit­er­a­ture itself. Artis­tic lit­er­a­ture is called so because it depicts life as it really is. Its aim is truth—unconditional and hon­est. A writer is not a con­fec­tioner, not a dealer in cos­met­ics, not an enter­tainer; he is a man bound under com­pul­sion, by the real­iza­tion of his duty and by his con­science. To a chemist, noth­ing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objec­tive as a chemist.

…

It seems to me that the writer should not try to solve such ques­tions as those of God, pes­simism, etc. His busi­ness is but to describe those who have been speak­ing or think­ing about God and pes­simism, how and under what cir­cum­stances. The artist should be not the judge of his char­ac­ters and their con­ver­sa­tions, but only an unbi­ased observer.

…

You are right in demand­ing that an artist should take an intel­li­gent atti­tude to his work, but you con­fuse two things: solv­ing a prob­lem and stat­ing a prob­lem cor­rectly. It is only the sec­ond that is oblig­a­tory for the artist.

…

You abuse me for objec­tiv­ity, call­ing it indif­fer­ence to good and evil, lack of ideas and ideals, and so on. You would have me, when I describe horse thieves, say: “Steal­ing horses is an evil.” But that has been known for ages with­out my say­ing so. Let the jury judge them; it’s my job sim­ply to show what sort of peo­ple they are. I write: you are deal­ing with horse thieves, so let me tell you that they are not beg­gars but well-fed peo­ple, that they are peo­ple of a spe­cial cult, and that horse steal­ing is not sim­ply theft but pas­sion. Of course it would be pleas­ant to com­bine art with a ser­mon, but for me per­son­ally it is impos­si­ble owing to the con­di­tions of tech­nique. You see, to depict horse thieves in 700 lines I must all the time speak and think in their tone and feel in their spirit. Oth­er­wise, the story will not be as com­pact as all short sto­ries out to be. When I write, I reckon entirely upon the reader to add for him­self the sub­jec­tive ele­ments that are lack­ing in the story.

…

It is time for writ­ers to admit that noth­ing in this world makes sense. Only fools and char­la­tans think they know and under­stand every­thing. The stu­pider they are, the wider they con­ceive their hori­zons to be. And if an artist decides to declare that he under­stands noth­ing of what he sees—this in itself con­sti­tutes a con­sid­er­able char­ity in the realm of thought, and a great step forward.

Brief Fic­tion Example:

And with all her force brought it down straight on the skull of the cousin she hated. Matvey reeled, and in one instant his face became calm and indif­fer­ent. Yakov, breath­ing heav­ily, excited, and feel­ing plea­sure at the gur­gle the bot­tle had made, like a liv­ing thing, when it had struck the head, kept him from falling and sev­eral times (he remem­bered this very dis­tinctly) motioned Aglaia towards the iron with his fin­ger; and only when the blood began trick­ling through his hands and he heard Dashutka’s loud wail, and when the ironing-board fell with a crash, and Matvey rolled heav­ily on it, Yakov left off feel­ing anger and under­stood what had happened.

“Let him rot….” Aglaia cried…still with the iron in her hand. The white blood­stained ker­chief slipped on to her shoul­ders and her grey hair fell in dis­or­der. “He’s got what he deserved!”

Every­thing was ter­ri­ble. Dashutka sat on the floor near the stove with the yarn in her hands, sob­bing, and con­tin­u­ally bow­ing down, utter­ing at each bow a gasp­ing sound. But noth­ing was so ter­ri­ble to Yakov as the potato in the blood, on which he was afraid of step­ping, and there was some­thing else ter­ri­ble which weighed upon him like a bad dream and seemed the worst dan­ger, though he could not take it in for a minute. This was the waiter, Sergey Nikanoritch, who was stand­ing in the door­way with the reck­on­ing beads in his hand, very pale, look­ing with hor­ror at what was hap­pen­ing in the kitchen.

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