caviar by itself . . . , then a raw radish with salt, then herring once more, but best of all
. . . are salted pink mushrooms, if they're minced with caviar . . . and onion, with olive oil . . . delicious! But eelpout liver--that's Tragedy!" (Chekhov Short Stories 61).
If such a poshlost obsession were merely a part of a human tapestry of diverse interests, one might only laugh, but this story has nothing but fixation with food. These are the men who decide the fates of human beings in the court of law, but their passions lie not with justice but with the bliss of eating and its sated aftermath. These men may be intelligent, educated, powerful, well-respected and important, but in this story they are nevertheless without higher purpose and shown to be complete slaves to poshlost. They might believe themselves to be connoisseurs, but Chekhov shows them to be little more than talking pigs, without redeeming features.
The longer story "In the Ravine" offers a significance and a contrast missing from "The Siren's Song." The significance is in the development of characters, and the contrast is between the bulk of the members of the Tsybukin family and Lipa and her mother Praskoyva. The patriarch of the Tsybukin clan would be horrified to hear himself accused of being immersed in a poshlost life, but that is precisely his true position. He is wont to judge those lower in socioeconomic standing than himself: "He despised and was repelled by the peasants" (Chekhov Short Novels 400). However, he and his family are ruthless thieves in their business life, and eventually their corruption is exposed when one son is arrested for counterfeiting and the father becomes addled "because he is totally unable to distinguish genuine from counterfeit" (Chekhov Short Novels 431). This inability is a metaphor for his and his family's inability to distinguish the genuine in humanity from the counterfeit. Although they pride
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