IONITCH

Ionitch

I woke up early in the morning and read Ionitch. What a wonderful and sad story. There is so much packed into this story. 

Dmitri Ionitch Startsev is a district doctor who becomes acquanted with the Turkins. In the provincial town of S-- the Turkins are considered the most cultured  family. The father is charming, tells stories; the wife writes novels; and the daughter plays the piano. The doctor has a fine time when he first visits them.

Some time later, Startsev begins attending the Turkin home and falls for the daughter, Kitten. She is eighteen and has ambitions of attending the Conservatoire in Moscow. When Startsev talks to her in the garden about his feelings for her she slips him a note to meet in the cemetery late at night, and although suspecting she is playing with him -- he still visits the cemetery.

The scene in the cemetery is Chekhov at his best: "It seemed as though it were lighter here than in the fields; the maple leaves stood out sharply like paws on the yellow sand of the avenue and on the stones, and the inscriptions on the tombs could be clearly read." The cemetery scene vividly captures the longing the doctor has for love, for human connection -- and Chekhov uses every aspect of the cemetery to comment on the urgency of living and our ultimate fate: " How wickedly Mother Nature jested at man's expense, after all!"

Ekaterina Ivanovna rejects the advances of Startsev, telling him she is an artist and doesn't want to settle down to be a wife in a provincial town. Startsev is crushed. Soon Ekaterina Ivanovna goes off to the Conservatoire and Startsev resigns himself to building up his practice.

Four years pass and Startsev is invited to the Turkins. He is by now a changed man. Has grown stout and less tolerant of those around him. This time when he vistits the Turkins all that he enjoyed the first time about them annoys him. The father's stories are a bore; the mother is a lousy novelist; and the daughter is a hack musician.

Ekaterina Ivanovna asks Startsev out to the garden and lets him know she has grown up and no longer fancies herself an artist and is ready to settle down -- but Startsev rejects her advances. Why?

Rejected once, his pride shattered,  instead of bouncing back and continue to search for love -- the nectar of life -- he becomes bitter and puts a fence around him -- the consequence of that action is that he shuts himself off to life. He puts himself up on a pedestal and looks down at everyone else while becoming an obese, boorish, and unhappy man.

Meanwhile, Ivan Petrovitch Turkin ages little and still entertains with his old jokes.