"A creed which teaches indifference to wealth,
indifference to the conveniences of life, and contempt for suffering
is quite incomprehensible to the great majority who never knew either
wealth or the conveniences of life, and to whom contempt for suffering
would mean contempt for their own lives, which are made up of feelings
of hunger, cold, loss, insult, and a Hamlet-like terror of death. All
life lies in these feelings, and life may be hated or wearied of, but
never despised. Yes, I repeat it, the teachings of the Stoics can
never have a future; from the beginning of time, life has consisted in
sensibility to pain and response to irritation."
No better indictment has ever been made against those to whom
self-denial and renunciation are merely a luxurious attitude of the
mind.
Chekhov's sympathy with Imagination and his hatred for commonplace
folk who stupidly try to repress its manifestations are shown again
and again in his tales. He loves especially the imagination of
children; and he shows them as infinitely wiser than their practical
parents. In the short sketch "An Event" the children are wild with
delight over the advent of three kittens, and cannot understand their
father's disgust for the little beasts, and his cruel indifference to
their welfare. The cat is their mother, that they know; but who is the
father? The kittens must have a father, so the children drag out the
wooden rocking-horse, and place him beside his wife and offspring.
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