“Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man…”
Perhaps I’m selling this quote a bit short, but I see it as a beauty is subjective type of sentiment. No not in the corny, “beauty is in the eye of beholder” way but more in the sense that there is poetry to be found in the simple and common images we are handed from day to day. They are overlooked by us, because we’re accustomed to them. The emphasis of an artist like Anton Chekov is to point out these beauties, which may or may not actually be present from our perspective. Chekov, in particular, seems to be the writer who most closely fits this quote – because he is an observor and allows us to draw our conclusions on beauty, and on what is important.
In Russian literature, only Dostoevsky is Chekov’s equal in humanism, but it comes from a completely different angle. Dostoevsky’s work is that of somehow who is deeply lost within their own thoughts. Instead of letting us reflect on the events occuring on the surface, Dostoevsky produces a majority of his work by providing a transparent commentary on the meditations of himself and/or those of the character. The beauty in his work is less of a mystery, he tells us what to focus on and what to avoid, where as Chekov is the silent observer, the documentary filmmaker if you will. He doesn’t pull punches, or state. He believes in the study of people, and not forcing their arcs or types into the convenience of plots, action, or expository dialogue. In this case, he is most prolific writer to capture the “terrible mystery” and that’s part of what makes his work so fascinating.
