I Don’t Know 2: Chekhov’s Gooseberries
This is but one example of Chekhov’s immense storytelling power, the one I thought best suited to “IDK.” In “Gooseberries”, an old man named Ivan speaks of his brother Nikolai’s desire to flee the city and buy a farm: “To leave town, and the struggle and the swim of life, and go and hide yourself in a farmhouse is not life – it is egoism, laziness; it is a kind of monasticism, but monasticism without action. A man needs, not six feet of land, not a farm, but the whole earth, all Nature, where in full liberty he can display all the properties and qualities of the free spirit.”
Nikolai is given some dashes of telling characterisation during his pursuit of the farm, such as that “he liked reading newspapers, but only the advertisements of land to be sold…” We learn how Nikolai eventually obtained his own farm with the gooseberry bush that was so essential to him: “[He] married an elderly, ugly widow, not out of any feeling for her, but because she had money.” Although Nikolai obtains his blissful little farm-world, his hands are not clean.
Ivan pays Nikolai a visit, and finds that his brother is still enraptured by gooseberries. Ivan tries one: “It was hard and sour, but, as Poushkin said, the illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.”
All this rumination culminates in Chekhov’s philosophical payload: “In my idea of human life there is always some alloy of sadness, but now at the sight of a happy man I was filled with something like despair… I thought: ‘After all, what a lot of contented, happy people there must be! What an overwhelming power that means! I look at this life and see the arrogance and the idleness of the strong, the ignorance and bestiality of the weak, the horrible poverty everywhere, overcrowding, drunkenness, hypocrisy, falsehood… . Meanwhile in all the houses, all the streets, there is peace; out of fifty thousand people who live in our town there is not one to kick against it all. Think of the people who go to the market for food: during the day they eat; at night they sleep, talk nonsense, marry, grow old, piously follow their dead to the cemetery; one never sees or hears those who suffer, and all the horror of life goes on somewhere behind the scenes. Everything is quiet, peaceful, and against it all there is only the silent protest of statistics; so many go mad, so many gallons are drunk, so many children die of starvation… . And such a state of things is obviously what we want; apparently a happy man only feels so because the unhappy bear their burden in silence, but for which happiness would be impossible. It is a general hypnosis. Every happy man should have some one with a little hammer at his door to knock and remind him that there are unhappy people, and that, however happy he may be, life will sooner or later show its claws, and some misfortune will befall him – illness, poverty, loss, and then no one will see or hear him, just as he now neither sees nor hears others. But there is no man with a hammer, and the happy go on living, just a little fluttered with the petty cares of every day, like an aspen-tree in the wind – and everything is all right.‘”
Realising his own blissful folly, Ivan compels his young listeners to take action: “"Pavel Koustantinich,” he said in a voice of entreaty, “don’t be satisfied, don’t let yourself be lulled to sleep! While you are young, strong, wealthy, do not cease to do good! Happiness does not exist, nor should it, and if there is any meaning or purpose in life, they are not in our peddling little happiness, but in something reasonable and grand. Do good!“”
But will they take his advice?
“Ivan Ivanich’s story had satisfied neither Bourkin nor Aliokhin… it was tedious to hear the story of a miserable official who ate gooseberries… . Somehow they had a longing to hear and to speak of charming people, and of women. And the mere fact of sitting in the drawing-room where everything – the lamp with its coloured shade, the chairs, and the carpet under their feet – told how the very people who now looked down at them from their frames once walked, and sat and had tea there, and the fact that pretty Pelagueya was near – was much better than any story.”
Much like Nikolai and his gooseberries, Ivan’s young listeners are exalted by their own illusion. They perhaps feel indignant: older generations will always lecture the young to do not as they did. They carry the suspicion that this hypocritical message is delivered with the intent of denying them their birth-right of peaceful happiness. It seems as if each generation needs to learn the same lesson about the hollowness of bliss by repeating the same mistakes. But Ivan does plant a seed: “A smell of burning tobacco came from his pipe which lay on the table, and Bourkin could not sleep for a long time and was worried because he could not make out where the unpleasant smell came from.”
The questions the story raises aren’t answered: they are articulated through the story and delivered to the reader for him or her to consider. And yet they are so monumental in size that we don’t expect the reader to answer the question themselves. This story is the “someone” with the little hammer at the door to knock and remind us that there are unhappy people. How much happiness we should have versus how much social injustice we should find it within our power/responsibility to tackle is forever unclear. Nowadays we have never been more aware of the world’s social injustices. The internet is the man with the hammer at the door, but he doesn’t have Chekhov’s humanity. “FW: FW: Leo: Tell Cameron Ice Caps Can’t Melt Bees!” Those of us pluged in have no farms on which to hide, and the effect can be debilitating: surely there is a balance? Everyone requires their dose of happiness as much as their face-rubbed-into-it-ness, but when, how, where, which, and to what degree is something I will never know, something Chekhov can’t know, nor does he expect the reader to know. Is it really true that while social injustice prevails, happiness doesn’t exist?
Chekhov has successfully reflected life and the human condition without claiming to know what to do about it, which is the most intelligent and truthful thing a storyteller can do.
