It was not Chekhov’s critique of Tsarist Russia that captured my attention. As the working-class sledge driver Iona transports cruel and dismissive patrons around the frozen streets of 1886 St. Petersburg, Russia, I was struck by the sense that there was much more happening – that the actions and dialogue were all very surface level – that Chekhov was telling a story within a story. Yes, the bourgeoisie who shout orders and abuses at the poor protagonist are framed in a critical light. Chekhov offers stern commentary on a Russia where the very destitute and the very well-off co-exist uneasily thanks to a clearly unfair social and economic system. The country is on the verge of revolution, and this short story is one of many heralds. However, what eventually gripped me was the sorrow that was in due course revealed and how the sledge driver deals with it.
We discover that he had just lost a son. The death was untimely. The weight of the new reality is unbearable. Despite being in the company of his fellow Russians all day long, he chooses instead to spill out his grieving heart to his horse, the only one willing to listen.
Thus ends a five-page story. In under a thousand words, Chekhov delivers a message that resonates with me all these many years later.
It is true that man can be callous and uncaring. Perhaps this was how Chekhov was able to set up the quiet climax of the story. The reader is not surprised by how Iona is treated. We see this all too often. What is not so obvious is that his need to open up would eventually be directed towards a co-laborer – another of creation – a creature that has been partnered with humankind for millennia. We should not be so dismissive, then, of what I will call the heart value of the rest of creation. To be sentient is to suffer, and on this basis, Chekhov seems to suggest, there can be found true empathy. The sledge driver suffers. The horse suffers. In each other, in ways difficult to describe, there is small comfort.
All at once, therefore, “Misery” is not just a critique of some system but of a condition: one that it would be vain of humankind to say it experiences alone. As Saint Paul tells us, all of creation groans for this condition to cease. Chekhov holds this up to be true. The sin that negatively affects ourselves is the same sin that negatively affects the rest of creation. Sin and the death it brings is universal, which means that the hope Christians have is the hope everybody, every creature, everything has even if they cannot or will not articulate it to be so. Misery, thus, is a reminder of our common plight and a hint at the common remedy. Even if the ears are not human, creation listens and the Creator through it. All we have to do is speak, and our heart will be known.
