It would show small understanding of Tchekhov to take it into one's head to interpret Ivanov's words to Lvov as meaning that Tchekhov, like the Tolstoi of the _War and Peace_ period, saw his ideal in the everyday arrangement of life. Tchekhov was only fighting against the idea, and he said to it the most abusive thing that entered his head. For what can be more insulting to the idea than to be forced to listen to the praise of everyday life? But when the opportunity came his way, Tchekhov could describe everyday life with equal venom. The story, _The Teacher of Literature,_ may serve as an example. The teacher lives entirely by Ivanov's prescription. He has his job, and his wife--neither Jewess nor abnormal, nor blue-stocking--and a home that fits like a shell...; but all this does not prevent Tchekhov from driving the poor teacher by slow degrees into the usual trap, and bringing him to a condition wherein it is left to him only 'to fall down and weep, and beat his head against the floor.' Tchekhov had no 'ideal,' not even the ideal of 'everyday life' which Tolstoi glorified with such inimitable and incomparable mastery in his early works. An ideal presupposes submission, the voluntary denial of one's own right to independence, freedom and power; and demands of this kind, even a hint of such demands, roused in Tchekhov all that force of disgust and repulsion of which he alone was capable. [Footnote 1: A hero from Fon-Vizin's play _The Minor._ Starodoum is a _raisonneur,_ a 'positive' type, always uttering truisms.] V Thus the real, the only hero of Tchekhov, is the hopeless man. He has absolutely no _action_ left for him in life, save to beat his head against the stones. It is not surprising that such a man should be intolerable to his neighbours. Everywhere he brings death and destruction with him. He himself is aware of it, but he has not the power to go apart from men. With all his soul he endeavours to tear himself out of his horrible condition. Above all he is attracted to fresh, young, untouched beings; with their help he hopes to recover his right to life which he has lost. The hope is vain. The beginning of decay always appears, all-conquering, and at the end Tchekhov's hero is left to himself alone. He has nothing, he must create everything for himself. And this 'creation out of the void,' or more truly the possibility of this creation, is the only problem which can occupy and inspire Tchekhov. When he has stripped his hero of the last shred, when nothing is left for him but to beat his head against the wall, Tchekhov begins to feel something like satisfaction, a strange fire lights in his burnt-out eyes, a fire which Mihailovsky did not call 'evil' in vain.