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By Wendell W. Solomons 

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 1930's under the name ‘Ayn Rand.' She borrowed nihilism and then took it over the brink to Thomas Hobbes of the 1650's.

"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 Chekhov's 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."

He suggested: Perhaps Chekhov's major interest was to get acquainted with Buddhism?

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.

The third, ‘Muditha', teaches sympathetic joy for another's achievement (say, my practising altruism to replace envy and covetousness.)

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.

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.

She remarked, "There seems more to Blavatskaya than we presently realise."

1




Literary scholars from Russia arrived in Sri Lanka for a symposium on writers Chekov and Bunin.

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.

Do Buddhism and Christianity deal with the issue of ‘meaningless' in human life?

An ending Chekhov quote comes from "The Artist's Story" (1896) :

Alexander II was the Tsar who answered US President Abraham Lincoln's 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 Lincoln's 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.

Rizal admired Colombo's 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...'

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.

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-General's post, his bio-data later exposed him as a Nazi officer.



At that you almost sensed an ‘Ah!' going through the thinking of the participants; here was relief at last!

"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.

 

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.

After a July 1890 visit, Chekhov, in letters to friends described the Russian island of Sakhalin as ‘hell' and called Ceylon ‘paradise.'

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?"

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.

 

Today video and TV are available. Sri Lankan-born Michael Ondaatje's 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.

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.

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.

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 Darwin's Theory of Evolution? Was Chekhov in search of an earlier or stronger ethical anchor for society as in the case of Blavatskaya and Olcott?

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 Russia's Buryatia. This monk sought out details about a native lady healer and travelled subsequently with Chekhov to seek a remedy for an ailment of Chekov's.

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 Wolfenson's direct deputy, who also holds the bank's second forceful position of Chief Economist.

 

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 - Adam's Peak.

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 Chekhov's plays) began playfully to cajole the sick dramatist about marriage in her letters and Chekhov married her in May 1901.

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)

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.

 

 

 

Chekhov's compatriot Sergei Bunin had visited and written about Ceylon. Bunin had become the first Russian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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.)

To Research Now

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?

 

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…

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).

http://news.lk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=351&Itemid=52

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 isn't a museum but my father's generation, like the preceding one, had preserved a memorial in the ‘Chekhov suite.'

Then she commented on the now vivid faces at the symposium, "Look at the natural smiles. They aren't the ones staged by American advertising industry."

"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 Buddha's 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 Buddha's personal life provides us with the example of his practicing a caring for people and all life.

 

 

Friday, 30 June 2006

In 1897 Chekhov's tuberculosis began to hold up his work. Needing mild weather, he took to living either in the Crimea or abroad.

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.

Audience and Chekhov's Message
Regarding ‘compassion' in Chekhov, he outlined his choice of form and substance for his own work in a letter to his brother Alexander:

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 —

This writing was slowed by, among other things, Chekhov's role as a census taker and his commitment to helping victims of Russia's 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.

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:

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".

They asked - Why had Chekhov not shared impressions of Ceylon with his large readership?

 

 

The Russian scholars had reminded us that after Shakespeare, Chekhov has become the world's 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.

 

First Web publication:

 

Wolfensohn was shifted to the Washington DC development bank from the lead position of the J Schröder 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 Schröder Bank represented Gremany's I H Stein Bank that was in turn headed by a Schröder 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.

At the symposium, a member of the Sri Lankan group tried to place the Russian guests at ease.

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.

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:

Chekhov in answer to Nihilism
In Chekhov's time, a strain of Russian nihilism had become a professional's shelter from myriad social and political movements such as those of Anarchists, Decembrists and Narodniks who preached a removal of the monarchy.

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.

Chekhov is interred at Moscow's Novodeviche Monastery, traditional for celebrities and leaders.

 

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.

Chekhov's 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.

 

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 Society's ‘Buddhist Dictionary.' For more details online see, for instance, the writings of Nyanaponika Thero.

 

 

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