Hymns of Praise

Chekhov Becomes Chekhov, by Bob Blaisdell
Available at bookshop.com

For publication in New Times on the eve of Easter, April 13, 1886, Anton Chekhov wrote “Easter Eve."

His brother Mikhail remembered their childhood in Taganrog: “We were not allowed to miss a single Saturday-night vigil or Sunday liturgy, which explains why Anton exhibited such a thorough knowledge of church services in his story ‘Easter Eve’ and others.”

Despite the physical abuse with which their father enforced their church and choral attendance and participation, Chekhov loved Easter and church bells. He respected respectable priests and monks. He knew the Bible, he appreciated unselfishness. He shed trappings that did not seem to him to have a moral or practical basis, and he wouldn’t lie and pretend to believe what he didn’t believe, but he was a model of someone ever striving toward moral behavior.

Chekhov wrote so many great stories that it’s easy for even some of us fervent admirers to have overlooked or never even read dozens of gems. “Easter Eve” is one that I had completely forgotten until I started reading for this biography.

It begins:

I was standing on the bank of the River Goltva, waiting for the ferry-boat from the other side.

Is the “I” of Chekhov’s first-person narrated stories ever himself?. . . The story will point toward the idea that the narrator’s experience is only important to the extent that it is a reliable source of observation and judgment about the meaning of someone else’s experience. Chekhov insisted that the subjects of the stories were not himself and tried to make sure in circumstantial details that they were not, and yet he, like this narrator, was a good traveler and evoked the pleasures and weariness of travel as well as anyone.

The narrator describes the flooded stream and the night sky:

The world was lighted by the stars, which were scattered thickly all over the sky. I don’t remember ever seeing so many stars. Literally one could not have put a finger in between them.

So simple! We are indeed in the narrator’s shoes looking up at the sky and lifting our hand and pointing our index finger. How does a writer present perspective? Chekhov does it this way, sometimes. He engages the reader’s physical imagination. And such an imagination also shifts to look before him.

The sky was reflected in the water; the stars were bathing in its dark depths and trembling with the quivering eddies.

The narrator remains nameless throughout the story, because, as Chekhov might say, the narrator knows who he is. He now realizes he has company on the riverbank, and he asks the unnamed peasant about the ferry. The peasant says the ferry is due, but he himself is not waiting for it. The peasant is there to watch the light and fireworks across the way at the monastery. The peasant calls out through the darkness to the ferryman, the monk Ieronim.

The first peal of the bell is heard, followed by a celebratory cannon shot. How Chekhov savored the bells of Easter! He tomcatted for them every year. Donald Rayfield writes: “During his adult life, right up until his death, Chekhov would rarely spend an Easter night in bed; instead he would wander the streets, listening to the church bells.”

Before the vibrations of the first peal of the bell had time to die away in the air a second sounded, after it at once a third, and the darkness was filled with an unbroken quivering clamor.

For a while, there is no sign or sight of Ieronim, and the narrator is impatient.

[. . .] but behold at last, staring into the dark distance, I saw the outline of something very much like a gibbet. It was the long-expected ferry. It moved toward us with such deliberation that if it had not been that its lines grew gradually more definite, one might have supposed that it was standing still or moving to the other bank.

How have I never noticed before how active Chekhov makes our imagination? He creates our perspective so efficiently: those lines growing “gradually more definite.” The ferry arrives and Ieronim, unlike a bus driver, apologizes:

“Why have you been so long?” I asked jumping upon the ferry.

“Forgive me, for Christ’s sake,” Ieronim answered gently. [. . .]

Chekhov has immediately inclined us in Ieronim’s favor, though we are taking in the story from the narrator’s perspective. The subject, however, of most of Chekhov’s first-person stories this year is not the narrator himself. Chekhov has us rely on the narrator’s observations to reveal not the narrator’s inner life but that of the person he is observing.

And off the narrator and Ieronim go, floating slowly toward the monastery. The core of the story, we’ll discover, happens now, not at the destination that they can see lit up by barrels of burning tar, but here during the seemingly casual conversation between Ieronim and the narrator. A firework shoots off.

“How beautiful!” I said.

“Beautiful beyond words!” sighed Ieronim. “Such a night, sir! Another time one would pay no attention to the fireworks, but today one rejoices in every vanity. Where do you come from?”

I told him where I came from.

Chekhov is suggesting where the narrator comes from doesn’t matter and/or the narrator knows, so why state it? The idle conversation leads to what the narrator thinks at first is an idle question:

“To be sure . . . a joyful day today. . . .” Ieronim went on in a weak sighing tenor like the voice of a convalescent. “The sky is rejoicing and the earth and what is under the earth. All the creatures are keeping holiday. Only tell me kind sir, why, even in the time of great rejoicing, a man cannot forget his sorrows?”

Reading that question in the midst of being steeped in Chekhov’s life, I conclude: This is one of Chekhov’s own recurring questions, but it doesn’t, at first, interest the narrator.

I fancied that this unexpected question was to draw me into one of those endless religious conversations which bored and idle monks are so fond of. I was not disposed to talk much, and so I only asked:

“What sorrows have you, father?”

“As a rule only the same as all men, kind sir, but today a special sorrow has happened in the monastery: at mass, during the reading of the Bible, the monk and deacon Nikolay died.”

“Well, it’s God’s will!” I said, falling into the monastic tone. “We must all die. To my mind, you ought to rejoice indeed. . . . They say if anyone dies at Easter he goes straight to the kingdom of heaven.”

“That’s true.”

The “idle” chat, we see, is the narrator’s, not humble Ieronim’s. The narrator replies without feeling, or rather trying to undermine feeling. But Ieronim is in one of those moods or states where the heart is open and the tongue is free:

[. . .] “The Holy Scripture points clearly to the vanity of sorrow and so does reflection,” said Ieronim, breaking the silence, “but why does the heart grieve and refuse to listen to reason? Why does one want to weep bitterly?”

The narrator does not try to answer. Ieronim’s sincerity has humbled him.

Ieronim shrugged his shoulders, turned to me and said quickly:

“If I died, or anyone else, it would not be worth notice perhaps; but, you see, Nikolay is dead! No one else but Nikolay! Indeed, it’s hard to believe that he is no more! I stand here on my ferry-boat and every minute I keep fancying that he will lift up his voice from the bank. He always used to come to the bank and call to me that I might not be afraid on the ferry. He used to get up from his bed at night on purpose for that. He was a kind soul. My God! how kindly and gracious! Many a mother is not so good to her child as Nikolay was to me! Lord, save his soul!”

The narrator’s silence—having been moved to silence, to humility, in the presence of actual, sincere grief—is ours too, with tears perhaps as well.

Ieronim took hold of the rope, but turned to me again at once.

“And such a lofty intelligence, your honor,” he said in a vibrating voice. “Such a sweet and harmonious tongue! Just as they will sing immediately at early matins: ‘Oh lovely! Oh sweet is Thy Voice!’ Besides all other human qualities, he had, too, an extraordinary gift!”

“What gift?” I asked.

There we are—as is the narrator—quietly entranced by this wonderful man and interested in all he can tell us.

The monk scrutinized me, and as though he had convinced himself that he could trust me with a secret, he laughed good-humoredly.

“He had a gift for writing hymns of praise,” he said. “It was a marvel, sir; you couldn’t call it anything else! You would be amazed if I tell you about it.

Our Father Archimandrite comes from Moscow, the Father Sub-Prior studied at the Kazan academy, we have wise monks and elders, but, would you believe it, no one could write them; while Nikolay, a simple monk, a deacon, had not studied anywhere, and had not even any outer appearance of it, but he wrote them! A marvel! A real marvel!” Ieronim clasped his hands and, completely forgetting the rope, went on eagerly:

“The Father Sub-Prior has great difficulty in composing sermons; when he wrote the history of the monastery, he worried all the brotherhood and drove a dozen times to town, while Nikolay wrote canticles! Hymns of praise! That’s a very different thing from a sermon or a history!”

“Is it difficult to write them?” I asked.

“There’s great difficulty!” Ieronim wagged his head. “You can do nothing by wisdom and holiness if God has not given you the gift. The monks who don’t understand argue that you only need to know the life of the saint for whom you are writing the hymn, and to make it harmonize with the other hymns of praise. But that’s a mistake, sir. Of course, anyone who writes canticles must know the life of the saint to perfection, to the least trivial detail. To be sure, one must make them harmonize with the other canticles and know where to begin and what to write about. [. . .] but the lives of the saints and conformity with the others is not what matters; what matters is the beauty and sweetness of it. Everything must be harmonious, brief, and complete. There must be in every line softness, graciousness, and tenderness; not one word should be harsh or rough or unsuitable. It must be written so that the worshipper may rejoice at heart and weep, while his mind is stirred and he is thrown into a tremor. [. . .]”

I keep stopping in the midst of this paragraph with the realization that the very best biography that I could write of Chekhov would be such a canticle. I would know the life of St. Anton “to perfection, to the least trivial detail” (including all the unsaintly jokes and his sexual follies). In sum: “conformity with the others is not what matters; what matters is the beauty and sweetness of it. Everything must be harmonious, brief, and complete.”

But my second thought and realization is this: that these qualities of canticles describe Chekhov’s own principles of writing. The qualities of Monk Nikolay’s writings are Chekhov’s. (Chekhov later told Suvorin: “I know how to speak briefly on important subjects. It is odd but I have contracted a sort of mania for brevity. Everything I read, whether written by myself or someone else, seems to me to be too long.”) Is it a coincidence that the great canticle-artist shares Chekhov’s talented but wayward brother’s name? Chekhov saw the good in his sin-laden brother, but the good is actually what we, from our distance, perceive in Chekhov himself:

“To think that a man should find words like those! Such a power is a gift from God! For brevity he packs many thoughts into one phrase, and how smooth and complete it all is! [. . .] ‘Light-radiating!’ There is no such word in conversation or in books, but you see he invented it, he found it in his mind! Apart from the smoothness and grandeur of language, sir, every line must be beautified in every way, there must be flowers and lightning and wind and sun and all the objects of the visible world. And every exclamation ought to be put so as to be smooth and easy for the ear. ‘Rejoice, thou flower of heavenly growth!’ comes in the hymn to Nikolay the Wonder-worker. It’s not simply ‘heavenly flower,’ but ‘flower of heavenly growth.’ It’s smoother so and sweet to the ear. That was just as Nikolay wrote it! Exactly like that! I can’t tell you how he used to write!”

The narrator is moved, but for now he thinks his destination is what’s important:

“Well, in that case it is a pity he is dead,” I said; “but let us get on, father, or we shall be late.”

The narrator asks if the hymns have been published, and Ieronim explains that no one at the monastery was interested. Ieronim was Nikolay’s primary audience:

“What did he write them for?”

“Chiefly for his own comfort. Of all the brotherhood, I was the only one who read his hymns. I used to go to him in secret, that no one else might know of it, and he was glad that I took an interest in them. He would embrace me, stroke my head, speak to me in caressing words as to a little child. He would shut his cell, make me sit down beside him, and begin to read....”

Ieronim left the rope and came up to me.

“We were dear friends in a way,” he whispered, looking at me with shining eyes. “Where he went, I would go. If I were not there, he would miss me. And he cared more for me than for anyone, and all because I used to weep over his hymns. It makes me sad to remember. Now I feel just like an orphan or a widow. You know, in our monastery they are all good people, kind and pious, but... there is no one with softness and refinement, they are just like peasants. They all speak loudly, and tramp heavily when they walk; they are noisy, they clear their throats, but Nikolay always talked softly, caressingly, and if he noticed that anyone was asleep or praying, he would slip by like a fly or a gnat. His face was tender, compassionate....”

Father Nikolay’s qualities are Chekhov’s – but Chekhov would not have wanted us to conclude that. Still, we know Chekhov did indeed respect and admire refinement of behavior, and unlike his older brothers he could resist stomping around and bothering others.

Ieronim asks the narrator to be sure to appreciate the Easter hymn, as tonight he has to continue running the ferry. None of the other monks are coming to relieve him. The narrator reaches the muddy shore and surveys the festivities outside and inside the monastery. He goes and listens to the choir, yet in the midst of the crowd, he has sympathetic pangs for Ieronim:

I looked at the faces; they all had a lively expression of triumph, but not one was listening to what was being sung and taking it in, and not one was “holding his breath.” Why was not Ieronim released? I could fancy Ieronim standing meekly somewhere by the wall, bending forward and hungrily drinking in the beauty of the holy phrase. All this that glided by the ears of the people standing by me he would have eagerly drunk in with his delicately sensitive soul, and would have been spell-bound to ecstasy, to holding his breath, and there would not have been a man happier than he in all the church. Now he was plying to and fro over the dark river and grieving for his dead friend and brother.

The narrator attempts to find where “dead Nikolay, the unknown canticle writer,” is lying. He is unable to do so and decides, after all, it’s better he hasn’t.

God knows, perhaps if I had seen him I should have lost the picture my imagination paints for me now. I imagine the lovable poetical figure solitary and not understood, who went out at nights to call to Ieronim over the water, and filled his hymns with flowers, stars, and sunbeams, as a pale timid man with soft mild melancholy features. His eyes must have shone, not only with intelligence, but with kindly tenderness and that hardly restrained childlike enthusiasm which I could hear in Ieronim’s voice when he quoted to me passages from the hymns.

In the early light of dawn, the narrator and a merchant’s wife and a peasant ride back across the river with Ieronim. The narrator couldn’t find the deceased Nikolay, but he can now see Ieronim:

He was a tall narrow-shouldered man of five-and-thirty, with large rounded features, with half-closed listless-looking eyes and an unkempt wedge-shaped beard. He had an extraordinarily sad and exhausted look.

They don’t chat much this time.

We floated across, disturbing on the way the lazily rising mist. Everyone was silent. Ieronim worked mechanically with one hand. He slowly passed his mild lustreless eyes over us; then his glance rested on the rosy face of a young merchant’s wife with black eyebrows, who was standing on the ferry beside me silently shrinking from the mist that wrapped her about. He did not take his eyes off her face all the way.

There was little that was masculine in that prolonged gaze. It seemed to me that Ieronim was looking in the woman’s face for the soft and tender features of his dead friend.

The end. Again and again, Chekhov’s dearest characters realize their connections to and dependence on others.