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Paradise island mystery and Anton Chekhov By Wendell W. Solomons

Literary scholars from Russia arrived in Sri Lanka for a symposium on writers Chekov and Bunin. After a July 1890 visit, Chekhov, in letters to friends described the Russian island of Sakhalin as hell and called Ceylon paradise. During the March 2006 visit the Russian scholars were wondering why Anton Chekhov wrote a detailed book to describe Sakhalin, a prison colony island, whereas he did not publish as much a short essay about the island he had called paradise. The larger world has named a place of historical pilgrimage in the island - Adams Peak.

Chekhovs compatriot Sergei Bunin had visited and written about Ceylon. Bunin had become the first Russian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The scholars had arrived for the March symposium from frosty Moscow attired in suit and tie. You could sense what the tropical sun did to them in Colombo. The local side, Sri Lankan scholars arriving at the Russian Cultural Centre for the symposium, wore light cotton-mix clothing. Yet, it was not the tropical sunlight alone that the Russian team had to overcome. A mystery of Anton Chekhov pursued them to the symposium. They asked - Why had Chekhov not shared impressions of Ceylon with his large readership? Although Chekhov's fame today rests primarily on his plays, he had written hundreds of short stories even if you were to set apart those of his teenage years. It was pointed out at the symposium that Chekhov had travelled to Kandy in the central highlands where he met a Russian-speaking Buddhist monk from Russias Buryatia. This monk sought out details about a native lady healer and travelled subsequently with Chekhov to seek a remedy for an ailment of Chekovs.

We know Chekhov was impressed with the lady and presented her with a necklace. When leaving the island, among finds that Chekhov took with him were a pair of little mongooses and a palm civet Yet, why did he not share with his large audience, a story of his findings in Ceylon? At the symposium, a member of the Sri Lankan group tried to place the Russian guests at ease. He suggested: Perhaps Chekhovs major interest was to get acquainted with Buddhism? At that you almost sensed an Ah! going through the thinking of the participants; here was relief at last!

Buddhism wafted me into thoughts of Helen P. Blavatsky. Her visit with Henry Steele Olcott had preceded Chekhov to Ceylon. It had prompted Olcott to lead a major drive for founding more schools in the island. Seated next to me was a woman journalist from Moscow, and I reminded her of Yelena Blavatskaya She remarked, "There seems more to Blavatskaya than we presently realise." Then she commented on the now vivid faces at the symposium, "Look at the natural smiles. They arent the ones staged by American advertising industry." The home scholars were happy that the guests were at ease. I read the smiles also as of two groups who had broken the ice and received affirmation of shared interests. A cocktail evening was scheduled to follow. Yet, after dipping into some snacks. I was deep in concern: "Was the mystery solved? Had Buddhism interested Chekhov?" To Research Now

The Russian scholars had reminded us that after Shakespeare, Chekhov has become the worlds next most popular dramatist. They also told the audience that the only memorial to Chekhov they knew outside the former Soviet Union is located in the Grand Oriental Hotel - or GOH - in Colombo. I could go to the Grand Oriental Hotel to search for clues. The location of hotel, which had been bought by a state bank in the 1950s, was quite familiar. At the bank, my father was picked to supervise reconstruction of the hotel and as a child I had visited him at work. A hotel isnt a museum but my fathers generation, like the preceding one, had preserved a memorial in the Chekhov suite. In the alcove that leads into the room are framed Chekhov pictures. Inside the room are more pictures; Chekov seated with Tolstoy and then with Gorky. The illustrations and the room took me out in time. They reminded me of the sentiments involved and again of the nature of the people who had preserved the memorial to the writer. Speaking of sentiments involved was Chekhov studying Buddhism as a consequence of the debate on the origins of biological life prompted by the 19th Century publication of Darwins Theory of Evolution? Was Chekhov in search of an earlier or stronger ethical anchor for society as in the case of Blavatskaya and Olcott? Speaking historically, the ethic of philosophies such as Buddhism appeared at 600 BC, that is, before Christianity. Preceding philosophies do gain illustration in the Bible and this quote briefly describes an issue that absorbs page after page of Ecclesiastes: The wise man has eyes in his head, while the fool walks in the darkness; but I came to realise that the same fate overtakes them both.

Then I thought in my heart, "The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise?" I said in my heart, "This too is meaningless." (Eccl 2:13/14) Do Buddhism and Christianity deal with the issue of meaningless in human life? Chekhov was raised in a religiously focussed family that sang Old Slavonic liturgies at home and read the Bible. Foundational philosophies did not escape him. Take one response to the issue in his story Ward No: 6. A Chekhov hero exclaims on the Greek Stoics whose ethic of detachment reached its zenith not long after the arrival of Buddhism "What was I saying? Oh, yes! This is what I mean: one of the Stoics sold himself into slavery to redeem his neighbour, so, you see, even a Stoic did react to stimulus"

We know that among forms of stimulus, compassion takes priority in Gautama Buddhas teachings. In the Four Noble Abodes of Existence the first place is reserved for Karuna (Pali language compassion.) Last but not least we witness that Gautama Buddhas personal life provides us with the example of his practicing a caring for people and all life. Audience and Chekhovs Message

Regarding compassion in Chekhov, he outlined his choice of form and substance for his own work in a letter to his brother Alexander: 1

Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature;

2

Total objectivity;

3

Truthful descriptions of persons and objects;

4

Extreme brevity;

5

Audacity and originality; flee the stereotype;

6

Compassion.

Chekhov did not intend that his work be restricted to a solitary sectarian subculture. From what he writes at point 1 above you might estimate that he had chosen to write for large audiences. To do that his work fends off mutant fads and ideologies of the day.

That original phrase is one of 1998 and comes from Western banker named James Wolfensohn. Gaining spport - like Kurt Waldheim - James Wolfensohn had climbed to head the Washington-based World Bank in the 1990s. As to Waldheim in the UN Secretary-Generals post, his bio-data later exposed him as a Nazi officer. Wolfensohn was shifted to the Washington DC development bank from the lead position of the J Schrder Bank in New York and from the same canny and queer commercial bank's board of directors Allan Dulles had been elevated to head the CIA. The J Schrder Bank represented Gremanys I H Stein Bank that was in turn headed by a Schrder relation. To complete the circle, Adolph Hitler and Heinrich Himmler belonged among old faithfuls of the I H Stein Bank clan and issued cheques drawn on their personal accounts in Cologne. The Wolfensohn words were spoken to World Bank directors after the 1998 final collapse of the Russian rouble at the hands of reformers who under the Monetarist label had been sent to Moscow in 1993. According to testimony placed before US Congress by Professor Janine Wedel and according to the research of Anne Williamson (both available on the WWW,) the fad Monetarist group was put together by Wolfensons direct deputy, who also holds the banks second forceful position of Chief Economist. After the Wolfensohn comment the Monetarist leader Milton Friedman started closing his book but the viral mutant, a negative nihilism, runs wild creating community antipathy and social dissolution. Chekhov in answer to Nihilism

In Chekhovs time, a strain of Russian nihilism had become a professionals shelter from myriad social and political movements such as those of Anarchists, Decembrists and Narodniks who preached a removal of the monarchy. Alexander II was the Tsar who answered US President Abraham Lincolns call when he faced violent separation by slave-holding southern US states. Alexander II sent a flotilla of Russian warships to New York and California at Lincolns request. At home, the reform-oriented Alexander II abolished serfdom in 1861 and corporal punishment. He established local self-government, initiated judicial reform, revised the educational system and improved administration of the police. Dissolution of Social Ethic

If the social good is deconstructed or hidden by a myth or fad, then a finger may seem to exist without the body of humanity. In that blissful ideology, "I" survive though society freezes to death. Monetarists such as Milton Friedman associated closely with Alice Rosenbaum. Born in Petrograd in 1906, Rosenbaum later settled in the USA to begin expositions on social philosophy in the 1930s under the name Ayn Rand. She borrowed nihilism and then took it over the brink to Thomas Hobbes of the 1650s. Looking at a rash of marauding frauds that hit US companies, illustrious New York financier George Soros called the situation "self-defeating." Two can play the same game. Rizal admired Colombos beautiful buildings, barracks, temples, tree-lined streets, botanical garden, and museum. After visiting a hospital the physician wrote: No odour of sickness, no dirt, nothing that reminds one of illness... Chekhov is thus apt for both Sri Lanka and Russia where populations must return and incorporate the social good. Populations have to extricate themselves from shape shifting by a pre-civic, pre-agrarian and pre-industrial cult of selfishness.

Looking further at our wounded world, billions of people can be inspired by the work of great personalities such as Anton Chekhov. Today video and TV are available. Sri Lankan-born Michael Ondaatjes book was converted to the movie "The English Patient." It shone for Oscars and winning more awards than Evita. The US President went on record with a remark that he preferred Ondaatje. An ending Chekhov quote comes from "The Artists Story" (1896) : "My life is tedious, dull, monotonous, because I am a painter, a queer fish, and have been worried by envy, discontent, disbelief in my work all my life: I am always poor, I am a vagabond, but you are a wealthy, normal man, a landowner, a gentleman - why do you live so tamely and take so little from life?"

Chronology

I had to develop a chronology of events for this attempt to decipher the mystery.

Born on January 29th, 1860, Chekhov had contracted tuberculosis. From age 24 when he suffered his first episode of bloody sputum and painful lungs, his health was seen to deteriorating. In 1889 he had seen his brother Nikolai die of tuberculosis. More, his training as a physician would have left no doubt that his life span would not allow him to raise children to maturity. After noting that, we have to come to grips with a dedication through which Chekhov who had reached 30-years, travelled 5,000 miles to Sakhalin overland and returned by steamer via Hong Kong, Singapore (which he found depressing,) India, Ceylon, Port Said and Odessa to Moscow. Before this journey that began in April 1890, Chekhov had noted: "After Australia in the past, and Cayenne, Sakhalin is the only place where one can study colonisation by criminals. All Europe is interested in it and is it of no use to us? From the books I have read it is clear that we have let millions of people rot in prison, destroying them carelessly, thoughtlessly, barbarously; we drove people in chains through the cold across thousands of miles, infected them with syphilis, depraved them, multiplied criminals and placed the blame for all this on red-nosed prison warders. All civilised Europe knows that it is not the warders, who are to blame, but all of us, yet this is no concern of ours, we are not interested."

John Coope annotates Chekhovs study of Sakhalin: From the outside the prison gave an impression of cleanliness and order but inside the blocks conditions were very squalid. The whole of the middle of the building was taken up by a long sloping plank platform on which the convicts slept. There were no bedclothes and the entire room was littered with rags, paper, bread, and miscellaneous belongings.

"It is a beastly existence, it is nihilistic, a negation of personal rights, privacy and comfort." Returning to the Chekov family house in Moscow on December 1st, 1890, Chekhov immediately began to compile and organise his work on Sakhalin. Just as immediately, the strain of the expedition took its toll on his health and his usual benign humour. "Life in Moscow after my toils on Sakhalin seems so dreary and mundane I feel like screaming out loud," he wrote to his publisher Suvorin shortly after his return. "I am becoming sick and tired of my Moscow friends and acquaintances". Chekhov spent four years on the writing, published finally in 1895 as The Island: A Journey to Sakhalin and it was hailed both by liberals and Leftists as a signal contribution to the movement for prison reform. This writing was slowed by, among other things, Chekhovs role as a census taker and his commitment to helping victims of Russias devastating famine of 1891. In addition he fought for the construction of TB sanatoria and schools for peasants whom he tended during the epidemics of cholera, typhoid and other fevers, treating thousands free of charge. In 1892 Chekhov had bought and moved to a country estate in the village of Melikhovo, where some of his best stories emerged including stories depicting intellectual aloofness, self-centredness and megalomania such as Ward Number Six (1892) and The Black Monk, (1894). In 1897 Chekhovs tuberculosis began to hold up his work. Needing mild weather, he took to living either in the Crimea or abroad. Pictures do not often depicted that he had been a tall and handsome man, attractive to women and only after turning 40 years did a debilitated Chekov opt for what might have interfered with his work, involvement in marriage. From August 1900 Moscow Art Theatre actress Olga Knipper (who performed central roles in Chekhovs plays) began playfully to cajole the sick dramatist about marriage in her letters and Chekhov married her in May 1901. Chekhovs play The Cherry Orchard reached the stage with great acclaim on January 17th, 1904 but Chekhov died in July in the same year in Badenweiler. In a search for more foreign memorabilia, I later discovered that Germany (he has became the most popularly performed dramatist there) had in 2004 named a city square for Chekhov in Badenweiler thus adding to a bust erected in 1906 by his Russian friends in the city where Chekhov went for medical treatment in 1904. Chekhov is interred at Moscows Novodeviche Monastery, traditional for celebrities and leaders. My special acknowledgements for commentaries are due to Brook

Stowe and Andreas Teuber respectively at:

http://www.theater2k.com/ChekhovAnnote3.html

http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/chekhovbio.html

Buddhist Concepts

Online WWW resource for Buddhist concepts are available in the Kandy Buddhist Societys Buddhist Dictionary. For more details online see, for instance, the writings of Nyanaponika Thero. Speaking in brief here, I might add that in the Four Noble Abodes, the second, Mettha, teaches that one should live at peace with all beings. The third, Muditha, teaches sympathetic joy for anothers achievement (say, my practising altruism to replace envy and covetousness.) Greek Stoics taught detachment from worldly things so as to achieve peace of mind for scholarly work (the Cynics went further to cultivate indifference by jesting at the world.) Yet, Gautama Buddha, through the fourth Noble Abode "Upekkha", asked that householders not be awed or bowled over by joys or sorrows of the world. He does not ask householders to break away from the world; his Four Noble Abodes contain a call for balance and equanimity but not indifference. The Chekhov legacy includes more than 400 short stories. So much awaits evolution into scripts for video and TV. The Chekhov legacy also includes scores of dramas that can still more rapidly be transferred to TVChekhov cannot be judged within the framework of advertising-driven consumerism. He needs study as a mobiliser for compassion and for the social good.A Return to Incorporating the Social GoodBy then it appeared so dangerous to me that on July 28th, 1992 I sent a 3,000-word explanatory protest (visible on the WWW) to the World Bank and copied it to the Moscow News. I suggested there too that a tricked Russia could turn towards the East, as it now has, where China, for instance, had begun a careful reform policy.The 1977 label for the islands social deconstruction was "Open Economy". After one and a half decades of tests, the social virus was repackaged as economic reform and used by the Monetarists in Russia in 1993.Impressed by what he saw, Rizal remarked: Colombo is more beautiful, smart and elegant than Singapore, Point Galle and Manila...His observations are not alone. We might take up the a second plaque at the Grand Oriental Hotel that states that Jose Rizal, physician, man-of-letters, patriot, martyr, and national hero of the Philippines lodged at the hotel in 1882, during one of his four visits to Colombo.In Sri Lanka the self-defeating savagery was imposed since 1977 when the World Bank and affiliates began social surgery. As a result, Chekhovs paradise island can no longer be easily evoked.They were blind to the civic traditions that developed from the year 1215 Magna Carta, an agreement that limited the power of the King of England. In the hands of Rosenbaum and Milton Friedman who had leaped onto the platform of US Presidential Economics Advisor, nihilism began to shift whole societies to a pre-civic, savage and heady opportunism.Hobbes, a plagiarist of Italys Machiavelli, had pamphleteered that a war of each against the other would help British elites dominate over common folk. This fad was discarded because it would create social dissolution in Britain. Yet, Rosenbaum and Friedman belonged within recent, migrant groups that were alien in the 20th Century to Western civilisation.The rise of a nihilist ethic (treat everything external to your work table as nothing) allowed a doctor, for example, to tend a sick patient irrespective of whether the patient broke into anarchist, liberal, monarchist or other politics in the hospital ward.

We must distinguish that some part of this coincided with Anton Chekhov. Taking the oath of Hypcrites during his training as a doctor, he perceived a need to help a general population, irrespective of political fraction and labelled himself a free artist.

Yet, more. Starting in the land he knew at first hand, Russia, Chekhov was to become worldwide, a mobiliser of audiences towards the social good without his being sidelined by man-made viruses such as sectarian exclusivism or philosophic deconstruction.Yet, Alexander II was assassinated by a bomb thrown into his carriage. The name of a local revolutionary group, the Narodnaya Volya (Peoples Will) was invoked but what could not always be assessed was the flow of money into political groups including monies that arrived from foreign sources for subversion in Russia.Using prime-time state TV channels, the faddists promised a stable, convertible rouble. They then went on to wreak havoc. With currency devalued more than a hundred times, family incomes dwindled to nothing. Mothers and fathers sold their apartments to seek food. Without a roof, they and their children were lost in the dark. Frozen bodies had to be picked up in icy streets in the morning.Scapegoating Jews was used to rally Germans to Hitler. So we might decide that Wolfensohn was speaking from authority on fads and ideologies of the day. Media can be used to spread a myth to impoverish a population.

However, witnessing the difference between (a) the Buddhist temple where stanzas are chanted in ancient Pali and (b) the Christian church today where hymns are sung in a local language, can you expect any similarity of values?Something to pursue propped up. Not in ritualistic but in deeper sense, can the anchor of Buddhism be considered to belong in Chekhovs work? That may have contributed to Chekhov ascent to his now traditional popularity among Sri Lankas Buddhists - or said in another way, Chekhovs sentiments had long found sympathy NOT ONLYin the Christian heart. First Web publication: http://news.lk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=351&Itemid=52 Friday, 30 June 2006

Paradise island mystery and Anton Chekhov

By: Wendell W Solomons

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