More Winter Reading: Checkhov's "Gooseberries"

I still remember the first time I chanced across this story as a hapless graduate student (ages ago, now) back at the University of Iowa --one of the best short story's ever written, in my not so humble opinion.  Critics have often stated it is Chekhov's answer to Tolstoy's How Much Land Does a Man Need?, and I'd agree with it at least offering an alternative to that work.  But it's so much more than that:  beautifully written, wonderfully evocative, and ironic in the sense that there is no easy answer to the question, What does it mean to live a meaningful life?

Gooseberries

By Anton Chekhov

From early morning the sky had been overcast with clouds; the day was still, cool, and wearisome, as usual on grey, dull days when the clouds hang low over the fields and it looks like rain, which never comes. Ivan Ivanich, the veterinary surgeon, and Bourkin, the schoolmaster, were tired of walking and the fields seemed endless to them. Far ahead they could just see the windmills of the village of Mirousky, to the right stretched away to disappear behind the village a line of hills, and they knew that it was the bank of the river; meadows, green willows, farmhouses; and from one of the hills there could be seen a field as endless, telegraph-posts, and the train, looking from a distance like a crawling caterpillar, and in clear weather even the town. In the calm weather when all Nature seemed gentle and melancholy, Ivan Ivanich and Bourkin were filled with love for the fields and thought how grand and beautiful the country was.

"Last time, when we stopped in Prokofyi's shed," said Bourkin, "you were going to tell me a story."


"Yes. I wanted to tell you about my brother."


Ivan Ivanich took a deep breath and lighted his pipe before beginning his story, but just then the rain began to fall. And in about five minutes it came pelting down and showed no signs of stopping. Ivan Ivanich stopped and hesitated; the dogs, wet through, stood with their tails between their legs and looked at them mournfully.


"We ought to take shelter," said Bourkin. "Let us go to Aliokhin. It is close by."

"Very well."


They took a short cut over a stubble-field and then bore to the right, until they came to the road. Soon there appeared poplars, a garden, the red roofs of granaries; the river began to glimmer and they came to a wide road with a mill and a white bathing-shed. It was Sophino, where Aliokhin lived.

Entire story is here:  http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/ac/gooseb.html