Search for Escapes
[In this excerpt, Kirk examines Chekhov's treatment of romantic values in "Gooseberries."]
"Gooseberries" continues the narrative thread begun in "The Man in a Shell." The story opens with a description of Burkin and Ivan Ivanych walking on the open plain, where the vast landscape appears endless and beautiful to them. There is a mild pensive mood in nature that is somewhat reminiscent of the serene moonlit night the two men spent together in the barn, and perhaps this association leads Burkin to mention the story Ivan had desired to relate that night.
Ivan had intended to talk about his brother, but before he can begin the story it starts to rain. The two men seek refuge at a friend's, Alekhin's, house, where the theme of the beauty of nature is again introduced with Ivan's idyllic swim in the river.
The opening mood created by the wide unfenced expanse of the steppe is deliberately developed as a contrast to Ivan Ivanych's subsequent narration. Ivan speaks of his brother Nikolai Ivanych's obsession with acquiring a country estate, and remarks that he never sympathized with his brother's desire "to shut himself up for the rest of his life on a little property of his own. It is a common saying that a man needs only six feet of earth. But six feet is what a corpse needs, not a man." Ivan's comment, as many critics have already noted, establishes an association with Tolstoi's didactic story "How Much Land Does Man Need?" in which Tolstoi concludes that man needs only enough earth to be buried in. Both authors agree that greed is destructive to freedom, but whereas Tolstoi's tale refutes ambitious desire altogether, "Gooseberries" attempts to shift its focus from petty, personal goals to wider, more humanistic pursuits:
To retire from the city, from the struggle, from the hubbub, to go off and hide on one's own farm—that's not life, it is selfishness, sloth, it is a kind of monasticism, but monasticism without works. Man needs not six feet of earth, not a farm, but the whole globe, all of Nature, where unhindered he can display all the capacities and peculiarities of his free spirit.
Ivan's description of Nikolai's life is one of Chekhov's most powerful portraits of the blind and sometimes destructive powers of banal romanticism. Nikolai deprives himself of food, of youthful enjoyment, and of love, and even drives his wife to her death—all because he
dreamed of eating his own shchi [sour cabbage soup], which would fill the whole farmyard with a delicious aroma, of picnicking on the green grass, of sleeping in the sun, of sitting for hours on the seat by the gate at field and forest. Books on agriculture and the farming items in almanacs were his joy, the delight of his soul . . . And he pictured to himself garden paths, flowers, fruit, bird houses with starlings in them, crucians in the pond, and all that sort of thing, you know. These imaginary pictures varied . . . but somehow gooseberry bushes figured in every one of them. . . .
The pathos of Nikolai's sacrifice and cruelty in order to attain his patch of land only increases after his dream has been realized. To begin with, the land itself hardly conforms to the idealized image Nikolai had dreamed about:
Through an agent my brother bought a mortgaged estate of three hundred acres with a house, servant's quarters, a park, but with no orchard, no gooseberry patch, no duck pond. There was a stream, but the water in it was the color of coffee, for on one of its banks there was a brickyard and on the other a glue factory. But my brother was not disconcerted.
Neither is Nikolai disconcerted when he tastes his first batch of homegrown but sour gooseberries. "He looked at the gooseberries in silence, with tears in his eyes. He could not speak for excitement . . . with the triumph of a child . . . he ate the gooseberries greedily, and kept repeating 'How tasty'."
Chekhov does not merely describe Nikolai's life in the country with such bathetic undertones. His depiction of that man's slothful yet high-handed morality also contains a vituperative denunciation of liberalism. When Ivan Ivanych first visits the estate, his initial impression centers on the selfish, pretentious life his brother leads there:
I made my way to the house and was met by a fat dog with reddish hair that looked like a pig. It wanted to bark, but was too lazy. The cook, a fat barelegged woman, who also looked like a pig, came out of the kitchen and said that the master was resting after dinner. I . . . found him sitting up in bed. . . . He had grown older, stouter, flabby . . . it looked as though he might grunt at any moment. . . . He was no longer the poor, timid clerk he used to be but a real landowner, a gentleman. . . . And he concerned himself with his soul's welfare too in a substantial, upperclass manner, and performed good deeds not simply, but pompously. He dosed the peasants . . . and then treated the villagers to a gallon of vodka. . . . Nikolai Ivanych, who when he was a petty official was afraid to have opinions of his own even if he kept them to himself, now uttered nothing but incontrovertible truths and did so in the tone of a minister of state: "Education is necessary, but the masses are not ready for it . . . I know the common people, they love me. I only have to raise my little finger, and they will do anything I want."
Although Nikolai is happy, Ivan questions his brother's smug contentment that is oblivious to the suffering around him. The theme of futliarnost' is thus transferred onto a political level, and Ivan comments:
Look at life: the insolence and idleness of the strong, the ignorance and brutishness of the weak, horrible poverty everywhere, overcrowding, degeneration, drunkenness, hypocrisy, lying . . . but we do not see or hear those who suffer, and what is terrible in life goes on somewhere behind the scenes. . . . And such a state of things is evidently necessary. . . . It is a general hypnosis. . . . That night I came to understand that I too had been contented and happy. . . . Freedom is a boon, I used to say, it is as essential as air, but we must wait awhile. Yes, that's what I used to say, and now I ask: why must we wait?
Ivan concludes that he is too old now to combat the suffering around him, but he pleads with Alekhin to do something greater and more rational than simply to attain personal happiness. "Do good!" he advises.
However, neither Alekhin nor Burkin is visibly moved by Ivan's proselytizing. His final admonition to them shows that he is ignorant of the vital role beauty plays in their values, and they can only think:
It was tedious to listen to the story of the poor devil of a clerk who ate gooseberries. One felt like talking about elegant people, about women. . . . and the fact that lovely Pelageya was noiselessly moving about—that was better than any story.
Get Ahead with eNotes
Start your 48-hour free trial to access everything you need to rise to the top of the class. Enjoy expert answers and study guides ad-free and take your learning to the next level.
Already a member? Log in here.