NATURE DESCRIPTIONS
Modern readers tend to skip nature descriptions and get back
to the action of the story. But if you are a good reader, one who knows how to
read genuine literary fiction—there are, admittedly, few of us left—you don’t
do that. The nature description is not there just so the author can escape from
his narrative, take a break from characters he may not like to breathe in the
fragrance of the night-blooming jasmine that he so lyrically describes.
Take the description at the end of “Man in A Case.” His story
of Belikov told, the high school teacher Burkin walks out of the shed to where
we the readers can see him for the first time. He is not an imposing figure: “He
was short in stature, stout, absolutely bald, with a long black beard reaching
nearly to his waist; two dogs came out with him.
‘Look at that moon!’ he said, gazing up overhead.
“It was already midnight. The whole of the village was
visible on the right, the long street extending for a good five versts.
Everything was plunged into a deep, quiet sleep; not a sound, not a stir,
incredible how nature could be so silent. When on a moonlit night you gaze upon
a village street, with its peasant huts, and hayricks and sleeping willow
trees, a quietude descends on your soul. Steeped in serenity, sheltered by the
shadows of the night from all toil, cares and grief, the village seems meek, melancholy
and beautiful, the very stars seem to look down upon it caressingly, with deep
feeling, and there seems to be no more evil in the world and all is well. To
the left, where the village ended, the fields began, visible far, far away, to
the very horizon, and throughout the whole broad expanse of those fields,
flooded with moonlight, once more nothing stirred, and all was silent.”
Immediately following this description Ivan Ivanovich begins
nattering on about how sad life is, how people lie and scheme, how we simply
have to stop living the way we do. This will carry on from the end of this
story into the following story, “Gooseberries.” So an obvious function of the
nature description here is for contrast: life is beautiful, but we don’t know
how to live. A typical attitude of the narrator in a great many Chekhov stories
is to stand observing human nature while pondering human evil and stagnation.
But here the nature description has another function: it
prepares us for the next story, “Gooseberries,” which describes a true lover of
nature, a man who strives to escape city life and find joy in country living,
communing with nature. And who ends up, nonetheless, living like a pig and reveling
in tasteless gooseberries. Nature, it seems, cannot protect humanity from
encasement.
Near the beginning of “Gooseberries” the melancholic Ivan
Ivanovich, brother of the gooseberry man, splashes about merrily, reveling in
the very thing (lovely nature) that has brought his brother to ruin:
“Ivan Ivanovich emerged from the shed, splashed noisily into
the water, and began swimming beneath the rain, taking broad swim strokes with
his arms, making waves all around him, and the white water lilies rocked on the
waves he made. He swam into the very middle of the river and then dived, a
moment later came up at another place and swam further, diving constantly,
trying to touch the bottom. ‘Ah, my God,’ he kept exclaiming joyfully, ‘Ah, my
God.’ He swam up to the mill, had a talk with some peasants there and turned
back, but when he reached the middle of the river he floated on his back,
holding his face up to the rain. Burkin and Alyokhin were dressed and ready to
go, but he went on swimming and diving.
‘God, God!’ he kept saying. ‘Lord have mercy!’
‘Enough, then!’ shouted Burkin.”
In his communion with nature this is the only time in “The
Little Trilogy” that Ivan Ivanovich—who often plagues the reader and his
companions with long melancholy moaning about how people live—is shown to be
enjoying himself. Nature is different things for different people; some want to
grow gooseberries, some want to swim.
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