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.”16) 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.”