Spiritual Matters in Chekhov’s “The Student” and “A Medical Case”

In Chekhov’s stories, beautiful natural surroundings are often a setting for unnatural lives and ugly social conditions. This sets the stage for a reflection on the relationship between physical and spiritual needs. His story “The Student” suggests that material deprivation–whether it is the exhaustion of the apostle Peter or the poverty of the Russian peasant–can undermine the capacity for fidelity and cultivation. In “A Medical Case,” a young heiress is made physically ill by her guilty awareness of oppressive conditions in her family’s factories. Can art, science, and faith truly redeem the individual human spirit without first transforming its social environment? Wes & Erin analyze. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Thanks to Nick Ketter for the audio editing on this episode. Transcript 0:08 Wes: In Chekhov's stories, beautiful natural surroundings are often a setting for unnatural lives and ugly social conditions. This sets the stage for a reflection on the relationship between physical and spiritual needs. His story, the Student, suggests that material deprivation, whether it is the exhaustion of the apostle Peter or the poverty of the Russian peasant, can undermine the capacity for fidelity and cultivation. In a medical case, a young heiress is made physically ill by her guilty awareness of oppressive conditions in her family's factories. Can art, science, and faith truly redeem the individual human spirit without transforming its social environment? This is Wes Alwan. 0:53 Erin: And this is Erin O'Luanaigh. 0:55 Wes: And you're listening to Subtext. And not all episodes of Subtext will appear here. subtextpodcast.com subscribe or by searching for us within the app itself. Okay, so today we are doing two more short stories by Chekhov. We did the lady with the Little Dog and the House with the Mezzanine. So today we're talking about the Student and a Medical case, two more really wonderful stories. And. I don't know. I was reading A Medical Case this week, and it's weird. I just. I'm immediately cheered up when I read Chekhov. Strangely enough, a lot of his writing features the negative social conditions in Russia at the time. But there's something so uplifting about it to me. So I thought maybe we'd just read the first paragraph of the Student, start off with that and say something about it, because I find it so affecting and winning. And it's just. It's enough to read that for me and be pulled into the story. At first, the weather was fine, still blackbirds called, and in the nearby swamp, something alive hooted plaintively, as if blowing into an empty bottle. A woodcock churned by, and a shot rang out boomingly and merrily in the spring air. But when the forest grew dark, an unwelcome east wind blew up, cold and piercing, and everything fell silent. Needles of ice reached over the puddles, and the forest became inhospitable, forsaken, desolate. It felt like winter. I was kind of reminded of Narnia, the sudden wintering of a place. It's interesting because you start out with some images of spring, and they have that. Well, I'm going to say redemptive quality Because I think that Chekhov, you always get these periodic descriptions of the natural environment and they always play a certain kind of redemptive role in the story. So we'll see in a medical case that they will come to represent the promise of a better future socially for Russia. In the midst of all the social blight, the landscape represents the promise of something better. We saw it in the lady with the Little Dog, where you had these scenes of. It was kind of the vacationy version of the enjoyment of the natural environment and the way that kind of became a foundation for a real relationship between Gurov and Anna. But in this case, we get this quick turn to darkness. The wind blows up cold and piercing. So this sudden change, it's like an immediate plot point regarding the weather, which is really cool. Yeah. 3:57 Erin: And of course, it's taking place on Good Friday. And there's a sort of a getting colder and darker at the beginning. And then at the end, it sort of lightens up immediately in the last paragraph, too, it's obviously at that part of the year where he says, oh, winter is coming back again. You get those false coming, the false springs and the returns to winter in that part of the year. But then also, of course, it's Good Friday, so it's a time of darkness. And there's also maybe something in this descent that's reminiscent of entering the tomb and having that sort of. I don't wanna say sort of gestational period for the student. A. It's a gestation of death for Christ at this point. But then there'll be a resurrection of hope maybe at the end. Maybe. 4:47 Wes: Well, yeah, we can discuss that. 4:50 Erin: Yeah. 4:50 Wes: I'm reminded that Game of Thrones begins very similarly. 4:53 Erin: Except I've never seen Game of Thrones and I probably never will. 4:58 Wes: Well, it's similar, except it involves zombies. And it's not all that well written. And also it's not similar at all except for the winter is coming part. But anyway. 5:08 Erin: Well, this is Gospel of Luke, right? 5:11 Wes: Right. 5:11 Erin: The zombies are in Gospel of Matthew, of course. 5:14 Wes: But one day we'll be reading the Bible and zombies. I like the fact that he kind of takes Kurt Vonnegut's advice and just tells you everything you need to know. If there's symbolism, he tells you what's going on and it doesn't detract from anything. So when he says, it seemed to him that the sudden onset of cold violated the order and harmony of everything, that nature herself felt dismayed. And therefore the evening darkness fell more quickly than it should. So I commented on this in our previous episodes, the way in which, especially in the plays, Chekhov characters are providing their own commentaries on what's going on, and they have their own strong political and cultural opinions that they insert. And then you get the same sort of thing with the narration from the point of view of the protagonist. So I find that a very winning. Another very winning thing, Chekhov. Just the people telling you exactly what they think and feel and interpreting their own experience, basically. 6:15 Erin: Right. 6:15 Wes: Because we do that. There's a virtue as a writer to not hiding the fact that we do that, because the instinct is to say, well, I want the reader to do that. Especially I think, in more contemporary prose, I don't know. So I don't want the protagonist to do that for the reader. 6:27 Erin: Well, and as I mentioned, I think also in previous episodes, I think that allows for a tremendous amount of interpretive variety too, because then one can argue whether or not Chekhov himself is agreeing with whatever the internal monologue of his characters is. 6:43 Wes: I think you're right. We were always wondering in the Chekhov story about the protagonist's interpretation of their own experience, because it's so strong. But, yeah, in this case, we get some more commentary up front. Right. It's a pessimistic reflection on the connection between future and past. 7:00 Erin: Yeah. And in this instance, since the main character is not just a student, but a seminary student, he's well educated, so we have some lofty connections. And then later some, of course, theological connections that he's going to make. He's continuing on. And Chekhov writes. And now, hunching up from the cold, the student thought how exactly the same wind had blown in the time of Rurik and of Ivan the Terrible and of Peter. And in their time there had been the same savage poverty and hunger, the same leaky thatched roofs, ignorance and anguish, the same surrounding emptiness and darkness, the sense of oppression. All these horrors had been and were and would be. And when another thousand years had passed, life would be no better, and he did not want to go home. 7:42 Wes: He's stating a kind of pessimistic version of the thesis that's at issue in this story. And it'll be redeemed in the end. We'll get a more positive version of this sense of connection between past and present. So in this case, it's the same thing happening over and over again. It's almost like a story with no real plot, or just a repetition of pain and suffering that has no point and no meaning and no forward progress. Which is interesting, because in a way, as a student, he's a representative of a kind of progress at a time in Russia in which there is a newly found possibility of upward mobility. So Chekhov's grandfather had been a serf, right? And then his father, before things went wrong, had become middle class. And part of what. What's going on in Chekhov stories is their reflection on this transitional state and people who fall within that transitional realm. And so people suited to doing this sort of reflection. So I take the student as, to some extent, a representative of that. And of course, students are a progressive force in society and are thinking about its. And in part because they're young and thinking about its social transformation. But in the beginning, pure pessimism. 8:56 Erin: I think that's really good. I think also I was wondering what this significance of this list of three is. I was trying to think Rurik, Ivan the Terrible and Peter. And I was thinking, okay, what do I know about these three people as a group? I mean, not much. Rurik, of course, was the founder of the Rurik dynasty, which were the ruling dynasty that ruled Russia for 6, 700 years, something like that. And they were ultimately replaced by the Romanovs. Ivan the Terrible was a Rurik, and he united all of the kingdoms of Rus, I suppose, as it was called. And then, of course, Peter was a Romanov. And Peter, very Westernizing force in Russia, made a lot of changes to Russian society in order to make the country more like a Western power. So I suppose that there's even a little bit of. I mean, quite a bit. Several hundred years, almost a thousand years of progression in this little list as well. And certainly, I think Chekhov would. Not to speculate on the mind of Chekhov, but I think he would probably recognize that Peter the Great made a lot of wonderful changes to Russian society. And certainly a student would think that way as well, I would imagine. So this is sort of going back through time and imagining suffering through all these times. But he's also. I think there's a clear sense, maybe Ivan the Terrible because of his name and because of the fact that he's terrible. Maybe. Maybe we're not supposed to read this quite so positively as I am. 10:30 Wes: No, I think. I think we are. I mean, it's. What he's trying to say is. Yeah, I think, yeah, the Rurik, Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, reforms that, say, sort of stereotypical representation of the progress of things in Russia. And he's saying, in fact. No, despite that conventional idea, in fact, you know, this this pessimistic thesis holds same savage poverty and hunger, etc. It's all for naught. All the reforms are for naught. 10:56 Erin: Yeah. So then the student Ivan is walking along and he sees these two widows, mother and daughter, sitting in front of a fire. And they're sort of. I don't know. What do we want to say about them? Should we read their description? 11:10 Wes: Sure. 11:11 Erin: The fire burned hotly with a crackle, throwing light far around over the ploughed soil. The widow Vasilisa, a tall, plump old woman in a man's coat, stood by and gazed pensively at the fire. Her daughter Lukerya, small, pockmarked, with a slightly stupid face, was sitting on the ground, washing the pot and spoons. Evidently, they had only just finished supper. 11:32 Wes: What I like in this passage is this contrast between the pensive mother and the slightly stupid face of the daughter Chekhov never pulls punches about. One of the things about the Russian peasant that draws his sympathy is their ignorance and illiteracy and lack of education. Right. So today it would be taboo in the United States to say yes. To remedy social injustice, we have to think about the education of the lower classes. That would be entirely forbidden. It's forbidden to think about class in the way that Chekhov is thinking about it here. Some of this might be alien to people, but he's thinking just as much about their psychosocial conditions as he is about their material deprivation. And we get a nice contrast between the mother, who once served gentlefolk as a wet nurse, and so her speech is delicate, and then the daughter beaten down by her husband. So in the mother, we get another one of these transitional figures. And then in the next story, we'll have that in the governess. But they are rubbing up against the upper classes in ways that make them kind of hover between the two situations. But the daughter is firmly on the losing end of power relations. So you get this immediate, interestingly textured and tense social dynamic just between two women in a family. And it's delivered to us very succinctly but very effectively. 12:59 Erin: Yeah. I was going to ask, what do you think the significance of that is? That Lukerya does say, as you mentioned, that she's beaten down by her husband and that she only squinted at the student and kept silent. Her expression was strange, like that of a deaf mute. 13:13 Wes: Yeah, yeah. 13:14 Erin: There's something very affecting about her and very sad. I don't know if she's supposed to be, you know, a kind of a holy fool or. She seems almost to be a childlike presence. 13:24 Wes: Yeah. Well, I think, as we'll find out in the story, he, in a way, is recapitulating the role of Peter, not Peter the Great, but the apostle. I think the idea is that something has been denied. You know, in this social situation. There's an element of denial that Chekhov is getting at in his stories, not just this one. And here we get another negative representation of progress. Right. It's the daughter, so she should be in the better position. It shouldn't be a regression to the worst position of the peasant. It should be something better than the mother. But it isn't. And he's doing what Peter did. He's about to tell them the story of Peter in a wonderful, beautiful way. But he's finding warmth by the fire, which for the apostle Peter, leads to his betrayal or denial of Jesus because he's recognized, and then three times denies that he knows Jesus. So I think we're set up for that parallel in the situation, and we'll be able to maybe say more about what the mother and daughter represent here after we say a little more about the story of Peter. I think we get kind of three iterations of the idea of the connection between past and present, the very pessimistic one up front. But then the story of Peter is going to give us this idea of a connection between past and present as well. 14:38 Erin: That's good. I'd like to read a little bit from it. It's kind of difficult to deal with a story this short and not just want to read the whole thing aloud. And his telling of this story, I believe it's the version from the Gospel of Luke, and it is extremely beautiful. So Ivan, the student, is talking to Vasilisa and Lukerya, and he's asking if they've been to the 12 Gospels. This is the reading on Maundy Thursday of significant Gospel passages having to do with Christ's passion. And Vasilisa says, yes, she has. And then the student starts recounting the story. At the time of the Last Supper, you remember, Peter said to Jesus, I am ready to go with you both into prison and to death. And the Lord said to him, I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day before you deny three times that you know me. After the supper, Jesus was praying in the garden, sorrowful unto death. And poor Peter was worn out. In his soul he was. He grew weak. His eyes were heavy, and he could not fight off his sleepiness. He slept. Then that same night, as you heard, Judas kissed Jesus and betrayed him to the Executioners. He was bound and led to the high priest and was beaten. And Peter, exhausted, suffering in sorrow and anguish. You see, not having had enough sleep, sensing that something terrible was about to happen on earth, followed after him. He loved Jesus passionately, to distraction. And now, from afar, he saw how they beat him. Lukerya abandoned the spoons and turned her fixed gaze on the student. They came to the high priest. He went on. Jesus was questioned, and the servants, meanwhile, made a fire in the courtyard because it was cold and they warmed themselves. Peter stood by the fire with them and also warmed himself, as I'm doing now. A woman saw him and said, this man was also with Jesus, meaning that he too should be taken and questioned. And all the servants who were by the fire must have looked at him suspiciously and sternly because he became confused and said, I do not know the man. A little later, someone again recognized him as one of Jesus disciples and said, you are one of them. But he denied it again. And a third time someone turned to him, Did I not see you today in the garden with him? A third time he denied it. And right after that, the cock crowed. And Peter, looking at Jesus from afar, remembered the word he had said to him at the supper. Remembered, recovered, went out of the courtyard and wept bitterly, the Gospel says, and he went out and wept bitterly. I picture it a very, very silent and dark garden, and barely heard in the silence, a muffled sobbing. The student sighed and fell to thinking, still smiling. Vasilisa suddenly choked, and big, abundant tears rolled down her cheeks. She shielded her face from the fire with her sleeve, as if ashamed of her tears. And Lukerya, gazing fixedly at the student, flushed, and her expression became heavy, strained, as in someone who is trying to suppress intense pain. 17:23 Wes: Yeah, yeah. 17:24 Erin: I love the detail that the student gives to imagining the garden. It reminds me of in Ignatian spirituality, which the student wouldn't necessarily be studying. I don't know if in, you know, Russian Orthodox seminaries, they necessarily studied different Catholic methods of spirituality, but in Ignatian spirituality, you try to imagine the Gospels as if you're there and place yourself in that situation through the five senses, as a form of meditation. And this. This strikes me as something that he's doing, that he's. He's well versed in, that he can. He can place himself on the scene. And then. Then we get this impression that Vasilisa and Lukerya are also, you know, through the power of his storytelling or perhaps meditating on their own lives, maybe are putting themselves in that situation, or maybe. Maybe Something else is happening. But I think it's really significant that Vasilisa weeps openly and she weeps through smiling, which is interesting. And then she sort of turns away and is ashamed of her tears, while Lukerya has this expression like she's trying to suppress her pain and does not. Isn't moved to tears. 18:33 Wes: Yeah. 18:34 Erin: I wonder what the significance of that is, because one would expect Vasilisa perhaps, as the more educated of the two of them and the less simple, maybe, to be able to restrain herself a bit more. And so there's an indication here that maybe Lukerya has been misjudged by the student or that perhaps she has some hidden depths or some hidden strength maybe that her mother doesn't have. And this sort of surprising twist, I think, is an indication that we're, of course, not getting the full story here, because we don't know very much about these two women, but that either Ivan or we, the reader, are not understanding something that's happening here within these two women. 19:18 Wes: Yeah, I think one of the things that's so touching about the story, part of the question here is why the women are reacting the way they do and why they're so touched by a story. Right. That they've heard a million times. And of course, he's giving a very. He's giving his own spin on this. What I love about this is that Peter's betrayal is a product of loving Jesus passionately to distraction and exhaustion. So Peter exhausted suffering and sorrow and anguish, and in that state, in that state of physical exhaustion, he's seeking warmth, he's cold now, and he's subject to these basic physiological and material needs. And he's too run down basically, to live up to spiritual demands, to live up to any requirement that he not deny Jesus. So I think the idea behind all of this is that to meet one's spiritual needs, you have to be able to meet your material needs first. So as a seminary student, ultimately, he's going to be ministering to these people. Right? He's going to be delivering these types of sermons. So he has to minister to the spiritual needs of people. But how do you do that if they are overworked and if they are suffering and if they work, if they are so involved in physical labor that they are illiterate or semi literate? So I interpret the capacity of the mother to actually mourn and cry over this is more advanced to me than the reaction of the daughter. What the daughter recognizes in that story is the abjectness of her own situation. So what is the parallel here as far as, you know, Peter's denial of Jesus versus the social denial of the conditions of the peasant. Something like that. And I think the daughter, again, recognizes the kind of abjectness and hopelessness of her situation in this. You know, they're exploited, they're overworked, and the story of Peter is not fully available to them in that condition. 21:36 Erin: I wonder if the tears of Vasilisa are tears of repentance in this moment. It's curious that these two village women are evidently not devout because they are eating. They've just finished supper, in spite of the fact that it's Good Friday and they should be fasting. So if they were believers, or if they were devout believers, they would be like Ivan's family, who has had no cooking going on in the house all day. They're not fasting. They've just finished supper. So their material needs have been satisfied against the directions of the church. So I don't know how that. If that works into your reading of the story. 22:21 Wes: Well, I think it might be in tension with it in a way, although it fits with my idea that the spiritual stuff is less available to them because they're worried about survival and material stuff. So if they're not devout, they're distracted by the abject social and material circumstances in which they live. This is the experience of the apostle Peter to go out seeking warmth, and because he's seeking warmth, because he's cold, to be in denial of Jesus. Right. They are in the same position of denial. This is why I think it's complicated, because they are denied and they are denying. And likewise, the student is in the position of Peter as well. The student is pointing to the redemptive part of this. He's stopping by for warmth, like Peter, but it's a movement toward the needy, not away from them. Yeah. 23:13 Erin: The more I think about this, the more I think that the student is kind of doing them a service. I don't know. 23:18 Wes: Yeah, he's ministering to them. 23:20 Erin: Sure. Yeah. And he's not accusing them either. He's not coming over to them and saying, gee, why are you eating? This is really inappropriate. 23:28 Wes: Exactly. 23:28 Erin: And he's also. He's putting them in the. In the shoes of Peter in this. Really. You know, I've never quite, at least that I remember, interpreted Peter's story in such a sympathetic way. You know, it's supposed to be that Peter's. Well, why does Peter do this? Because he's a flawed guy and because he's embarrassed and because he's you know, it's supposed to be that Peter is so weak that he's. He's the weakest. And of course, upon, upon Peter the entire church is going to be built. So his weakness is necessary to his sort of redemption and in fact to the story of the entire church. But that it comes out of this lovely idea of, as you say, that this love of Christ. And in this moment that Ivan describes, he was bound and led to the high priest and was beaten. And Peter exhausted, suffering and sorrow and anguish, you see, not having had enough sleep, sensing that something terrible was about to happen on earth, followed after him. There's a kind of a blending of Christ and Peter in that sentence. You know, who's the one who's being beaten and suffering and. Right. So there's a kind of an identification of Peter with Jesus and of the student with Peter and with Jesus. There's that three person identification again, which is interesting because there's a Rurik and an Ivan the Terrible and a Peter in his earlier list of three. And of course his name is Ivan and there's a Peter. And I don't know that Rurik and Jesus are of a pair, but this identification of the three together is sort of interesting. 25:00 Wes: Yeah. Well, there are two moments for Peter, right. And one of them is more representative of the position of the women and one of them more representative of the position of the student. So the moment of denial is representative of the position of the women and like I said, the position of society. So there's two denials on my reading. There's the societal denial of the humanity of the peasants and their material needs and their social needs. 25:28 Erin: Sure. 25:28 Wes: And then there's the peasants denial of. In a sense, they're turning away from the spiritual and religion, even though, of course, right, they're commonly religious, but turning in the way, in the sense of not being devout or being essentially distracted by material needs. And then in the second moment, right, that's the remorse of Peter and his redemption through remorse. And I think that's where the student, that's the student version of Peter, where to walk towards the fire is not just to be in need, but to be moving towards ministering to those in need. Right. So you go from being cold and betraying your friend to movement towards the fire, because that's where the needy people are that you are going to help. So you can undo the denial of Jesus by not denying the needs of the peasants. And that gives him a new reading on this connection between the past and present which we can get to in a second. It transforms his view, his very pessimistic view of the way the past leads to the present and is causally implicated in the present. 26:39 Erin: I'm interested in what you said about Lukerya, who has, of course, Luke in her name. The fact that she doesn't cry as being a sort of lesser reaction than Vasilisa's crying. 26:50 Wes: Well, because she can't fully recognize what's lost. So you have to have some sort of pathos of difference in order to recognize what's lost, you have to know something different. The mother has a hint of that difference through her contact with gentlefolk. And the daughter, I think, is in a non comparative position. Which is worse in the sense is that all she knows is her abjection and she's giving the story gives her a hint of the difference, right? I mean, of course she knows the difference on one level, right? You know, she knows that she's poor and other people are rich and all that. But I'm talking about the ability to, you know, the person who's. Who's illiterate and uneducated doesn't know what it's like to be literate and educated. They have some sort of outside picture of it. And I think the fantasies. If you're on the losing end of social relations, your fantasies end up revolving around material differences, right? So you look at the way rich people live and the way they eat and the way they dress and their power and all that stuff, and the opportunity for a richer inner life is not fully available. The mother knows what's lost. And I think Lucaria's. Because she can't fully imagine what's lost, because she can only get the barest hint of it, can feel nothing but pure pain, because what's lost is, in a sense, incomprehensible. And that's even worse. 28:15 Erin: Oh, I see. So Vasilisa can smile and cry at the same time. That's interesting. 28:22 Wes: Yeah, she can smile, she can cry. But all Lukerya can do is try to survive and essentially be mute. You know, it's like someone who's almost. Has been treated as if she's an animal, you know? And it captures the irony of going. Of going to someone who's been so mistreated, right? If you take someone who's been severely traumatized and mistreated and you go to them and say, well, I'm here. I'm here to convert you. I'm here to preach the gospel of Jesus to you, what sense does that make in the face of that trauma and. And severe deprivation. It's almost like the spiritual stuff is a luxury. How do you come to them trying to sell them the luxury when they can't even meet their basic needs? And I think that's part of what's being pointed to in this story. 29:11 Erin: Let's move on to his maybe interpretation of their reaction on the last page of the story. 29:16 Wes: Yeah, so this leads to him for a kind of redemptive epiphany and a transformation of the pessimism which begins the story. So, like I said, he recasts. He's still thinking about the connection between past and present and future, but he has a new spin on that now. So when he leaves, it's still a cruel wind blowing. It's still winter was indeed coming back, and it didn't seem like it's going to be two days to Easter. But what he comes away with is a reaction to the weeping of the mother. If she wept, it meant that everything that had happened to Peter on that dreadful night had some relation to her. So now you get, instead of this, it's Rurik and then Ivan the Terrible, and then Peter, instead of that sequence of events which seems, according to his pessimism, goes nowhere, you get the possibility of this spiritual redemption. And I think this kind of reaffirmed from some of your intuition about the daughter as well, the incompleteness of my account of that. So he's just left. He looked back. The solitary fire flickered peacefully in the darkness, and the people around it could no longer be seen. The student thought again that if Vasilisa wept and her daughter was troubled, then obviously what he had just told them, something that had taken place 19 centuries ago had a relation to the present, to both women, and probably to this desolate village, to himself, to all people. If the old woman wept, it was not because he was able to tell it movingly, but because Peter was close to her and she was interested with her whole being in what had happened to Peter's soul. And joy suddenly stirred in his soul, and he even stopped for a moment to catch his breath. The past, he thought, is connected with the present in an unbroken chain of events flowing one out of the other. And it seemed to him that he had just seen both ends of that chain. He touched one end and the other moved. 31:17 Erin: I love that. 31:18 Wes: Yeah, it's so beautiful. So part of this is a reflection on historical causality. Right. If you give a more secular or materialistic interpretation of history, you might see the movement from Rurik towards Peter as a certain kind of progress. And so it's structured. It's not just the same thing. It's not just suffering the same suffering. There's something happening there. And people, the conditions of people's lives are improving. And we can think about ourselves as determined in the present by a variety of forces, right? Deterministically by whether we want to think of it at the level of physics or the social and cultural forces that shape who we are and what we do. But he has a different way now to think about this, because now this is about human subjectivity affecting the present. It's amazing to think about the fact, the influence of the thoughts and feelings of Peter on the present, right? They can speak to the present, and his grief especially, and his remorse can speak to the present. So we're not just products of blind sociocultural forces, but of the acts and decisions and thoughts and feelings of those who have come before us. So their humanity can live in the present. It can be propagated into the present. And so that's the redemptive thing here, that despite the, like, the, the whole idea of causality can lead you to a kind of pessimism. It's all determined and it's all suffering. But the redemptive thought is that human subjectivity in the past is available to us, whether it's religious or whether it's through the arts. And that's my reading of all of this, my very biased, agenda driven reading. But. Yeah, go ahead. 33:06 Erin: No, I think that's very good. I, you know, normally I tend to read things in a. In a kind of a positive way, but I had a very negative reaction to this the first time reading it. I know, I'm. I'm kind of surprised myself. I mean, you know, the student believes that Vasilisa is reacting to this story because the student has chosen to believe it, I suppose. I mean, he is one who, you know, by nature of the fact that he is a seminary student is going to believe that Peter can have that. This bearing in modern day life. And he's going to believe that this is true. And he's also interpreting the behavior of these women according to their being affected by his story. And he says, not by the way that he told it, but by the story itself. He's humble. But I wonder whether or not Vasilisa's reaction has anything to do at all with the story or. Or if it sparked some recollection or reminiscence of something else in her that she's responding to. And I wonder if the student is completely wrong. As to its having some kind of positive result, I don't know. I just. I think that the student is reading these women a certain way according to the way that he wants to kind of view their reaction. And. And I think that that's a mistake. They've said very little in the entire story. I mean, one of them has said absolutely nothing. And he's just talked at them for a very long time and then interprets their reaction favorably as regards to, you know, the effect of his story, what he's trying to do. So he's told them this story and then produced what he thinks is a commensurate reaction from them. And I don't know. I resist that. 34:58 Wes: Let me read the last paragraph, because I think it supports your position in the sense that the possibility that he's kind of engaged in an overcorrection into a kind of. From pessimism to unrealistic optimism. And when he crossed the river on the ferry and then going up the hill, looked at his native village and to the west where a narrow strip of cold, crimson sunset shone, he kept thinking how the truth and beauty that had guided human life there in the garden and in the high priest's courtyard went on unbroken to this day, and evidently had always been the main thing in human life and generally on earth. And a feeling of youth, health, strength, who's only 22, and an inexpressibly sweet anticipation of happiness, an unknown, mysterious happiness, gradually came over him, and life seemed to him delightful, wondrous, and filled with lofty meaning. This sort of ending for Chekhov is not unusual, and especially this kind of theme of anticipation of happiness, it kind of happens at the end of a medical case story as well. So, yeah, I think this supports the idea, even though I'm still inclined to read this more positively. I think I even had some of that reaction as well. It's such a quick kind of manic reaction to what is just passionate reaction to what's just happened. And partly a product of his youth. Right. He does have his future ahead of him. It's easier for him to take on this more optimistic view of the future. But what I think if we do accept some of his more positive account, then I think it's the grief of Peter that can live on in the present. He's not in a particularly grieving mode at the end of the story, but it's because Peter's remorse and grief can affect the present, that good things can happen through it. So when the student, like I said, when the student moves towards Warmth. It's not just because he's exhausted and needs to be physically warm and is so exhausted that he doesn't care about anyone else. He's also there to minister to the needy and give them a kind of warmth. So that's the redemptive reversal, if we can read it that way, or extract something more realistically positive from the more Pollyannish view that comes at the end where it's. What is it? Let's just reread this one part of it. Truth and beauty that had guided human life there in the garden and in the high priest's courtyard went unbroken to this day. Yeah, it's extremely. Went from extreme pessimism to extreme optimism. 37:46 Erin: Right. We know he's a student, of course, so we know he must be young. But I think it's interesting that, you know, only three lines from the end do we actually learn his age. I do think it kind of washes the whole story, or at least this ending in a kind of, you know, naivete. However, by that same token, I think, you know, he is the conduit for the transmission of this truth of the story. Right. As presumptuous as I think it is that he is speculating what's going on in the heads of these. These two women and has as ill equipped as I think he is to understand what could be going on in the heads of these. These two widows who are obviously of a different social class than he is and come from. From much worse circumstances. I think that's kind of the position of the priest, perhaps, and of the artist. As wrong as I think it is to presume, it's kind of his job. He has to presume and just sort of take what. What's in front of him or be like a doctor, you know, has to take. Take what's in front of him and. And try to ferret out from it what the truth of the situation is, what the, you know, what he thinks these women might need and then provide it for them. And even if he's wrong, hopefully in his failing, he's still sort of able to accidentally help them. I think that's that connection between being a priest, a doctor and an artist. I think those all three maybe are kind of. Now I'm. Now I'm arguing against myself, are kind of the same in that like. Like people will say all the time, you know, like the idea of a Catholic priest giving marriage counseling, for instance, you know, you've never been married. How could you possibly know about this? Well, you know, that's the way it goes. And all you can do is kind of hope that through what, what you've studied that there might be some overlap, there might be some help that you can offer for those. Those people receiving your. Your instruction or your guidance or your therapeutic advice or whatever the case may be, and that. That maybe even accidentally you might reach them in some way, even through something that you're not intending to do. Maybe that's what I'm seeing here is I'm not satisfied that she's crying for the reasons that the student thinks that she is crying. And maybe that doesn't matter either. Maybe that's the positive thing I should take from this, is that he has produced a genuine reaction from her. It may not be for the reasons that he thinks, but maybe something good has come of it. And regardless, his optimism is going to be essential to fulfilling his own mission. So he must be. He must continue to have this kind of stupid, you know, optimism, this, this naivete in order to carry out his job. I mean, obviously, I think there's a positive and a negative reading of this, and I'm reading it now somewhat negatively or even now my revision of this is a sort of like a negative with a positive spin. But that this. It takes all sorts of people to make a world, and we need as many of these students as we do of these Vasilisas. Perhaps. 40:57 Wes: Yeah, I mean, you're reminding me something someone told me, which is that. Because. Because as a therapist, you always feel like you're. Who am I to give any advice? 41:05 Erin: Right, right. 41:05 Wes: And often you feel like you don't know what you're doing in the. In a session with a patient. So. And you know, who am I to give this advice? I have all my own problems and my own limitations and it's just. It's a joke. Sometimes you feel like it's just a joke. But, you know, I was reminded by someone that those situations can bring out the best in us. And when we find ourselves in certain roles, we can rise to the occasion in those roles we can be more than just what we are as a person in a therapeutic role. For instance, there are lots of crazy therapists out there. Right. But that doesn't mean that they can't be very effective in a therapeutic role. Although often that's not the case as well. There's a lot of poorly trained therapists as well, but. Yeah, so he can play an effective therapeutic role despite his youth and. And his limitations. This vacillation from extreme pessimism to extreme optimism, which I Think you're right. Your reading of that is right, even though I still would stick to my more positive reading. Ultimately, in a way, the role of Peter lives on in him, despite himself. And that's the positive thing, which is that, again, we can be inhabited by the ghosts of the past, in a good sense, by former subjectivities, by the grief of a Peter. And it can lead us to do helpful things. And in this case, Chekhov is always reflecting on this question of what we saw in the house with the mezzanine. Are we going to work on being progressives and social reform and getting people doctors and building schools and meeting their basic needs, or do we do what the artist said we should do, attend to people's spiritual needs? Right. There's that tension in this story and the sense that they somehow have to go together. So the question is, in the end, does the student understand that they go together? Right. I think you're right. It's not clear that he. Even though that's the implication of the story, I think, at least on my reading, it's not clear that the student understands that. He seems to walk away thinking, in a sense, hey, hey, I just ministered to two people. Isn't that great? I'm saving them. I'm. I'm. 43:20 Erin: Right. 43:21 Wes: He's walking away. He doesn't. He doesn't ever consciously ref. Well, he does, but he's not consciously reflecting on this point about the. How desperate their situation is. And. And that's my. You know, maybe. Maybe I'm reading too much into this myself. Maybe. But that. That's the sense I get, that their situation is representative of the Russian peasant and its desperation. 43:41 Erin: No, I think you're right, and I think that it really doesn't matter. I mean, as a seminary student, he is going to be, in a very real way, a continuation of Peter's legacy in the church as a priest, so he doesn't have to do anything or be right in order to be a priest. You know, that's kind of the beauty of it, I guess. 44:01 Wes: Yeah. 44:02 Erin: Shall we move on to A Medical Case? Yeah. I'm very excited to hear your opinion of this story because I wanted you to read it specifically so that we could talk about it, because I thought you would like it. So did you enjoy it as much as I thought? 44:13 Wes: Yeah, I think it's incredible. 44:14 Erin: Great. 44:15 Wes: I don't know that there's a story, a Chekhov story I've read yet that I haven't had that reaction to, but really, really wonderful. 44:21 Erin: I love, even from the first paragraph, a professor received a telegram from the Lialikov's factory asking him to come quickly. The daughter of a certain Mrs. Lialikov, apparently the owner of the factory was sick. Nothing more could be understood from the long, witlessly composed telegram. The professor did not go himself, but sent his intern Korolev in his place. So I love this because then the whole story is going to be about Korolev. So you. The bait and switch that happens in the first paragraph is really funny to me for some reason, because read this, you're like, oh, okay, a professor. No, not a professor. 44:54 Wes: And in a way you get three different levels of status here in the first paragraph as well, or actually more than that, because you get the factory owner who's going to turn out to be not an educated person and so she's witless. But there's also, that's evocative of the poor people who work in those factories. And there's the professor who's too good to go out on that call himself and Korolev. It's great. What follows this is the obsequiousness of his driver responding with no, sir, yes, sir. And then we get some of this wonderful redemptive scenery that Chekhov always includes. You know, he was enchanted by the evening and the country houses and dachas along the way and the birches and that quiet mood all around when it seemed that together with the workers, the fields, the woods and the sun were preparing to rest on the eve of the holy day. To rest and perhaps to pray. 45:50 Erin: Having these two stories in conversation strikes me how similar. Of course they are, and how similar the main character is. Korolev, I think, is very similar to Ivan, perhaps better, I'm not sure, but there's this positivity at the beginning. And then he actually goes to this factory area to minister to this woman who's sick, this young woman. It's noted that he did not know the countryside he was born and raised in. Moscow, had never been interested in factories or visited them. But he had a chance to read about factories and to visit factory owners and talk with them. And when he saw some factory in the distance or up close, he thought each time of how quiet and peaceful everything was outside and how inside there must be the impenetrable ignorance and obtuse egoism of the owners, the tedious, unhealthy labor of the workers. Squabbles, vodka, vermin. And now, as the workers deferentially and timorously stepped aside before the carriage, in their faces, caps and gaits he could discern physical uncleanness, drunkenness, nervousness, perplexity. So he has no experience with factories themselves, except for his preconceptions about them. And what he finds, or what he thinks he finds is a confirmation of his preconceptions. 47:02 Wes: Immediately I highlighted and underlined that paragraph as something essential to read. Yeah. So again we get this whole rumination on social conditions, the dachas versus the factory. And then once he gets into the factory, of course it's the driver instead of slowing down for workers saying watch out. And the kind of pathetic little oases within the factory grounds. You know, these five huge buildings with smokestacks and warehouses and barracks and stuff. And you know, most of the ground's not covered in grass, but there are these little oases with gardens and green and red roofed houses where management live. Dust covered lilacs. I love that. 47:46 Erin: That's so evocative, that detail. 47:48 Wes: Yeah. And then we get Mrs. Lialikov, the writer of the telegram. Right. Simple and illiterate. And then Christina, the governess. And so again, like the mother in the previous story, she's brushed up against gentlefolk more. And so she's through her being governess. And so she's the most educated person in the household, apparently. Again, you get a lot of very similar themes and tropes. And then Chekhov stories, the poor social conditions, the beautiful environment, then figures who are representatives of social transition. The governess, whether negative or positive, you know, so the daughter in the previous story, the governess here, who will turn out to be a somewhat negative representative or Lida in the house with the mezzanine. 48:31 Erin: So, and then we get the daughter, Liza, a girl of 20. She had long been ill and had been treated by various doctors. And during the past night, from evening till morning, she had had such a pounding of the heart that no one in the house had slept for fear she might die. And no one knows what it is that's wrong with her. 48:48 Wes: Yeah, it's going to turn out to be neurosis, basically unresolved guilt feeling. 48:54 Erin: Feeling of being a factory heiress. 48:57 Wes: Heiress and living on the grounds. 48:59 Erin: Right. 49:00 Wes: Seeing people suffering. I love his description of her as this wretched woebegone creature who had been taken in and given shelter here out of pity. And it was hard to believe that she was the heiress to five huge buildings. So that's his and that's his impression of her. And then, you know, she's sick, her heart is pounding. And it starts out he's kind of repulsed by her, you know, her big, cold, uncomely hands. And then he quickly moves to feeling empathy. You know, he sees her squinting in a light when a lab is brought in. And so the. The impression of the woebegone and uncomely creature vanishes. And he saw a soft, suffering look, which was both reasonable and touching. And then the mother who is, you know, there's despair and grief in the mom. So speaking of material needs, again, she had spared nothing, right? Teachers, dancing, music, so education as well, but the best doctors, the governess. That turns out not to be enough. Although she doesn't know what's missing, right? The way he puts it, despite sparing nothing, she could not understand where these tears came from, why so much torment, could not understand and was at a loss, had a guilty, anxious, despairing look, as if she had missed something else very important, had failed to do something else, to invite someone else, but whom she did not know. So Lisa doesn't need doctors, right. She needs a therapist. That's the person you're supposed to invite. I'm just kidding. Partly half kidding, but, you know, she. Yes, she needs someone to help her with what's going on with her morally and psychologically. So whether you want to put the emphasis on the psychological or the ethical, that's what she needs help with. 50:44 Erin: I find this so incredibly affecting that it actually makes me want to cry right now. Yeah, this is so painful, you know, this poor girl. And the mother just wants so badly to help her daughter and doesn't know the right thing because she doesn't have the education or the sense or the tools or whatever to help her. I think that the doctor's sort of transformation. I think, you know, the transformation is obviously within him. When he looks at her and sees her in this new way, he's, you know, he's. As you say, he thinks that she's rather unattractive. And then all of a sudden, the whole of her seemed shapely to him, Feminine, simple. And he would have liked to comfort her now, not with medications, not with advice, but with a simple, tender word. And that is ultimately, I think, what he tries to do. And the only thing he really can do for her. He tries to say something comforting to her. 51:37 Wes: I thought this is why you thought I would like the story so much, because he plays the role of a psychoanalyst and his goal is to convince her to leave, right? That's the source of her suffering, right? She's stuck in this morally compromising situation. But he can't just tell her that in the Same way you can't just tell a patient to do something. He has to give her a kind of interpretation and let her come to that conclusion. And so we'll see how that plays out as we go along. 52:03 Erin: But I love this mother and daughter. They're quite different from Vasilisa and Lukerya, but they're also sort of similar in a way. They're sort of roles reversed there. 52:14 Wes: Yep. The mother is the ignorant one and the daughter is the more educated one. So again, you know, transition, upward mobility. Except, you know, here in the case of Vasilisa and the daughter, you had a. A regression, I think. Right. The daughter was worse off. But here you're getting a progression right, 52:32 Erin: in the proper direction. But that then comes with its own price. It seems that it comes with the cost of psychological anguish. So you don't escape suffering either way. If you escape physical suffering, then you get your comeuppance and mental suffering. 52:47 Wes: Yeah. I mean, if she had just gone to college, right, she could find like minded progressives and go to protests and do the things that young people do. She could be friends with passion about social progress and. Yeah, that is kind of the natural position of youth, right. To be outraged by injustice and to want to transform the world and to be in a way that's one's focus. The spiritual and the material are kind of fused in youth, Right. You save people by doing something about social injustice, not by giving them God or great books or something like that. In this case, she's right. She is the. She's an implicated party, the privileged party, as they would put it today. And she's stuck on the factory grounds. So leaving, yeah, leaving is precisely what she needs. Right? And maybe she'll become more like Leda from the house with the mezzanine. Or maybe she'll end up becoming an artist. But she needs something different than. And we're going to find out what's. You know, the way he finds out what's troubling her is so beautiful and so great. By having another one of the Chekhovian epiphany. Walking outside and hearing the birds and then hearing the metallic sounds and counting out the time. So maybe we should go into some of that. 54:06 Erin: Sure. 54:07 Wes: So yeah, he's invited to stay over, right? And then he sees more signs of upward mobility, which is to say the ugly portraits in his room. The culture was poor. The luxury, accidental, unconscious, ill at ease, like his uniform. The gleam of the floors was annoying. The chandelier was annoying. It's new money. It's a Kind of tastelessness that comes along with people who are figuring out how to fake class. You know, hints of Great Gatsby here. 54:37 Erin: And he dines with Christina. 54:39 Wes: Yeah. So let's take a minute to talk about her character, how she's characterized. It's great. 54:43 Erin: Yeah. So she's rather pedantic and sort of idiotic in her way. 54:49 Wes: She's always talking. She wants to ceaselessly converse with him at the. That's what she thinks she's supposed to do. When he gets there, she's going on obsessionally about the details of the case and not pointing him to where the patient is. And so he's stuck having dinner with her. She's like, come to dinner. And then it's just him and her. 55:07 Erin: Right. Because the mom is too upset about the daughter and obviously the daughter's bedridden. And so she starts going on about how they treat the workers so well, and she says they're uneducated and yet they too have feelings. 55:22 Wes: Yeah. So that's in the context of saying, well, we provide them with the opportunity to put on plays. Right. And theatricals. We have theatricals at the factory every winter. The workers themselves act in them. And there are magic lantern lectures, a magnificent tea room and whatever you like. And then before that, the workers are very pleased with us. So she has the idea they're doing enough socially for the workers to justify what are presumably terrible conditions and overwork and exploitation, essentially. 55:55 Erin: Right. And then he thinks to himself, after the fact, you know, she's been eating this very fine food and drinking these very expensive French wines and then wiping her mouth with her hand. And it occurs to Korolev that only Christina Dmitrievna, rather stupid old maid, in a pince Nez, lives to her full satisfaction. And so it turns out that all five of these buildings work and poor quality calico is sold on the Eastern markets only so that Christina Dmitrievna can eat Sterlet and drink Madeira. 56:26 Wes: Yeah. So that's the interesting thing that'll turn out to be the case about who really benefits. Right. The daughter, the heiress, is not going to benefit. The mother isn't really benefiting in a way from the exploitation. It's going to be someone like Christina. I wanted to back up a little bit and just read this paragraph where he has the epiphany. So he puts his coat on and he goes out after dinner. And then we get this description of the fire coming from the smokestack occasionally. And then the further away the frog's croaking and the singing Of a nightingale. And then there's the epiphany, right? Or one of several. But there may be theatricals for the workers, magic lanterns, factory doctors, various improvements. But even so, the workers he had met that day on his way from the station did not look different in any way from the workers he had seen back in his childhood when there were no factory theatricals or improvements. As a physician he could make correct judgments about chronic ailments, the fundamental cause of which was incomprehensible and incurable. And he looked at factories as a misunderstanding, the cause of which was also obscure and irremediable. And while he did not consider all the improvements in the workers lives superfluous, he saw them as the equivalent of treating an incurable illness. You know, he's a doctor, but he sounds more like the artist in the mezzanine story, or in a way, like the student at the beginning of the previous story. We discussed, you know, more. More pessimistic about progress and the idea that it's little improvements aren't enough. What's going on here is that there's illness, but it's beyond the. The, you know, in the same way that there are chronic ailments that are beyond. Even even though he can diagnose them, he can categorize the symptoms, there's not much he can do about them because the causes are. We don't know them and they're. They're beyond us scientifically. You know, like the speculation about scrofula. Right. In the same way these are social problems, the deep causes of which are obscure. And when we do these improvements, theatricals and stuff, we're just treating the symptoms and it's not effective ultimately. But in the meantime you get the, as we'll see, the promise of the landscape, the promise of the natural environment. So what he tells her. You've already read the part about the poor quality calico, right. And Christina benefiting from that. This next part I really, I love, right. Because it starts with the short, sharp, impure sounds that are counting out time. 58:55 Erin: That's great. 58:56 Wes: Banging out 11 o'. Clock. It seemed as if these sounds were being produced by the crimson eyed monster, the devil himself, who ruled here over both owners and workers and deceived the ones like the others. 59:10 Erin: Do you think ultimately that the factory though, turns out to be entirely demonic? I don't want to get ahead of ourselves here because this marks a kind of a low point in his perception of the factory and the goings on there. And certainly there is something rather demonic 59:26 Wes: about It, Yeah, he goes out the farther away, to a place where he can hear the nightingales and frogs better and the train sleepy cocks crowed somewhere. But even so, the night was still. The world slept peacefully. He's engaged in diagnosis at this point. He's thinking about what is ailing Lisa. It's this experience that he's having outside which is going to allow him to make the diagnosis. And it begins especially with the banging out of, you know, the short, sharp and pure sounds that are banging out the time. Because that monotonous sound is what Liza is hearing all night, right. You know, it speaks to the monotony of the work and the way in which the day is structured around time and work. And it's something that Lisa has to listen to every night so she can't escape her conscience because she has to listen to those sounds. He says nobody feels good here except the governess. And the factory works for her satisfaction, but it just seems so. She's only a straw man here. The main one that everything here is done for is the devil. And he thought about the devil in whom he did not believe and kept glancing back at the two windows gleaming with fire. It seemed to him that the devil himself was gazing at him through those crimson eyes. The unknown power that created the relations between strong and weak, the grave mistake that now could in no way be set right. So this is a theory of what causes the sickness. Now is power relations could in no way be set right. It had to be that the strong hindered the life of the weak. Such was the law of nature. But this thought could be clearly and easily formulated only in a newspaper article or a textbook, while in the mishmash that is everyday life in the tangle of all the trifles of which human relations are woven. It was not a law, but a logical incongruity when strong and weak alike fell victim to their mutual relations, inadvertently obeying some controlling power, unknown, extraneous to life, alien to man. This is what people are trying to say in a less artful way when they talk about what is systemic, systemic injustice or power relations that are beyond us. Right? This is a very cool way of interpreting the idea of the devil. Class relations, social relations of inequality. 1:01:44 Erin: And yet, what's interesting to me is that it seems to me that, I mean, the greatest victim of all is the one for whom all of this is perpetuated, because at least the factory workers have each other and they have a community. Liza, or Liza, has no community and is completely isolated. She has everything according to the narrator, she was taught French, dancing, music, had invited dozens of tutors, the best doctors had kept a governess. So she's had all this education and she's like a saint on a pillar or something. Like she can't, you know, she has no. No one can reach her. She's also beyond the reach of her mother. So she doesn't even have. She's been educated out of the mother's capacity for understanding. So she's completely socially isolated and says 1:02:34 Wes: that, says she's lonely. 1:02:35 Erin: Yeah, yeah. And the very thing that is feeding her continual education, care, comfort, et cetera, is also the thing that's tormenting her. It's like the factory itself is some sort of giant life support machine that she's on that's. Rather than giving her life, is sort of leeching her life away or something like that. That's the illness. 1:02:57 Wes: Yeah. That's really good. I love the way he, you know, he talks about the five buildings and the smokestacks and they are. There's steam engines, electricity and telephones. But one somehow kept thinking of pile dwellings of the Stone Age. One sense the presence of crude unconscious power. That's great. 1:03:16 Erin: It is so. 1:03:18 Wes: And then hearing the sounds again, you know, he. He knows what he has to tell her, which is to leave the devil. And the message, the kind of. The message he's bringing into it first. Right. Is about again, the redemptive aspect of the environment. What he brings in with him is the croaking of the frogs and the. And the nightingale. He tells her, you know your first thing? He says to her, the weather is wonderful outside. It's spring, the nightingales are singing, and you sit in the dark and brood on something. That's the beginning of a therapeutic intervention, one that appeals to the beauty of the external world, the place that she has to go. She has to go, like him, farther away from the factory to a place where she can hear the nightingales, proverbial and non proverbial. 1:04:00 Erin: He asked her if the rapping, keeping time, upsets her, and she says, I don't know. Everything here upsets me. Everything. I hear sympathy in your voice. At the first sight of you. I thought for some reason that I could talk with you about everything. He says, please do talk. And she says, I want to tell you my opinion. It seems to me that I'm not ill, but I'm upset and afraid because that's how it should be and it can't be otherwise. Even the healthiest person can't help being upset if, for instance, A robber is prowling under his windows. I've been treated often, she went on, looking into her lap and smiling bashfully. I'm very grateful, of course, and I don't deny the benefits of the treatment, But I'd like to talk, not to a doctor, but to someone close to me, a friend who would understand me, who could convince me that I'm either right or wrong. 1:04:45 Wes: Therapist. 1:04:46 Erin: Yeah, right. 1:04:47 Wes: Right. 1:04:48 Erin: Well, it's funny, because she speaks about her, the perpetuity of her suffering, in the same way that people in these Chekhov stories usually talk about the perpetual suffering of the peasantry. That's how it should be. And it can't be otherwise. It's too big to overhaul it, you can't fix it, you can't start over, that kind of thing. Like I said, I feel like she's worse off than the peasants are. Chekhov has finally found someone who's suffering even more than the peasants. 1:05:18 Wes: Yeah, well, again, it's a return of the repressed. Or it's the denial that we saw in the previous story. Except the denial, it can't simply be denied. It becomes a sickness within the upper classes. So this idea of both classes being controlled by the devil, both being subject to these forces beyond their control and both being damaged by them. 1:05:37 Erin: So she wants him to say something to her, and he knows what he has to tell her. And he knew what to tell her. It was clear to him that she ought quickly to leave those five buildings and the million, if she had it, to leave that devil who. Who watched at night. It was also clear to him that she herself thought so too, and was only waiting for someone she trusted to confirm it. But he did not know how to say it, how it was mortifying to ask condemned people what they were condemned for, just as it was awkward to ask very rich people what they needed so much money for, why they disposed of their wealth so badly, why they would not abandon it even when they could see it was to their own misfortune. And if such a conversation began, it usually turned out to be embarrassing. Awkward. 1:06:19 Wes: Long. Yeah. So I love this because he's going to do what therapists would call an interpretation. And like I said earlier, he can't just tell her directly, so he's got to give her the idea that she needs to leave, which he's already started to do by talking about how nice it is outside. But he's got to do it somewhat indirectly. It's not completely indirect. Right. Because he tells her, you're not content in your position. As a factory owner and a rich heiress, and you don't believe in your right to it, and now you can't sleep. So pretty direct intervention there. It tells you this is a perfectly natural reaction to your being in this situation and it's unjust. And then makes a general comment about their generations. So this is the part of the interpretation which I think is really cool. Your insomnia is respectable. In any event. It's a good sign, in fact, for our parents, such a conversation as we're having now would have been unthinkable. They didn't talk at night, they slept soundly. But we, our generation, sleep badly, are anguished, talk a lot, and keep trying to decide if we're right or not. But for our children or grandchildren, this question, whether they're right or not will be decided. They'll see better than we do. Life will be good in 50 years or so. It's only a pity we don't make it that far. It would be interesting to have a look. So, you know, he's telling her it would be interesting to see the future in which. This is an overly optimistic assessment, but I don't think the point here is to give her an overly optimistic assessment. It's to get her to be interested in taking a look at something else, some future, some different sort of possibility. So that's ingenious. Instead of just telling her to leave, he says it would be interesting to have a look. And she'll say, but what would they do? What would the children and grandchildren do? And then he says they'll probably drop it all and leave. He's talking about they're leaving in order to give her the idea of her leaving, and then says, there's lots of places a good, intelligent person can go, and so on. So he incepts her, except he doesn't have to go into her dream. So I love that. I thought that's what you were onto when you thought I would like this. 1:08:29 Erin: Yeah. Do you think she will leave? 1:08:31 Wes: I don't know. Yeah. It's hard to say. 1:08:34 Erin: She wants to say something to him. Maybe we should just read that last paragraph and we'll talk about this at length. Next morning, when the carriage drove up, everybody came out on the porch to see him off. Liza was festive, in a white dress with a flower in her hair, pale, languid. She looked at him as yesterday, sadly and intelligently smiled, talked and all with an expression as if she would have liked to say something special, important to him alone. One could hear the larks singing the church bells ringing, the windows of the factory shone merrily. And driving through the yard and then on the way to the station, Korolev no longer remembered the workers or the pile dwellings or the devil, but thought about the time, perhaps close at hand, when life would be as bright and joyful as this quiet Sunday morning. And he thought about how nice it was on such a morning in springtime to ride in a good carriage with a troika and feel the warmth of the sun. I wonder what it is that she would have liked to have said to him. If this is perhaps just an expression of gratitude, she would like to repay him, perhaps, for what he said to her and to thank him for what he's done for her. Or. 1:09:38 Wes: Yeah, that's the way I take it. 1:09:39 Erin: Okay. 1:09:40 Wes: Or what's the other alternative? 1:09:42 Erin: I don't know. I kind of wonder why he doesn't marry her or something interesting. I wonder why he doesn't say something a little bit more, why he doesn't take her away from there himself and marry her. I think. I don't know, maybe I'm naive in that, you know, he's affected by it and then he moves on. 1:10:00 Wes: I'm trying to figure out, did I have that thought at some point in the story that they were going to get together. I might have. I can't remember. I mean, if he were her actual therapist, of course, then that would be completely inappropriate. But I don't know about doctor. 1:10:14 Erin: Patient marrying a doctor seems to be exactly what she's been set up for in life by being so sickly true. And this redemption, I mean, she's brought about, I think, a change in him as well. Now he doesn't think about the devil. He now sees the factory in this merry, shining way rather than in the negative way. And she has brought about a bit of a transformation in him, I think. I mean, at the beginning, he was, of course, expecting to find certain things at the factory, a certain amount of squalor and misery. And it's fair to say that he did find that beyond his own prejudices, but he also found something more than that. I think the story, maybe on his part, is about learning to look past his presuppositions and his snap judgments about people, because Liza lives up to more than that and becomes more than that, in his estimation, very quickly and has a lot of dignity right away. And so, I don't know, I think she helped him see something differently and perhaps become a better doctor as a result. And, of course, his effect on her is obvious. So I think the sadness for me in the end is that they don't get together, but maybe that's very silly of me to think that the solution to everything is. Is a wedding at the end of the story. 1:11:28 Wes: Well, maybe they will, you know, who knows? 1:11:31 Erin: But he's never going to go back there or see her again. He'll never know. 1:11:34 Wes: How do you know? 1:11:35 Erin: I don't know. It seems very final when he leaves. 1:11:38 Wes: Maybe she'll find him. 1:11:40 Erin: Right, that's true, that's true. I'll imagine that she's the one who's got to leave. We're gonna have to commission some fan fiction to. 1:11:48 Wes: That's right, that's right. A medical case, Part two. Part two or a marriage case. A case for marriage. The case for marriage. All right. You get another transition to Rosie, optimism at the end, just like the last story. And you wonder what he's doing at the end. Right. If he's kind of engaged now in his own suppression of the existence of the squalid conditions for the workers. And is it a good thing to just forget about the devil and the pile dwellings and all that? For Chekhov, there's somehow a promise of social redemption. And I said this before, but I'll say it again, a promise of social redemption in the beauty of the natural environment. So that's what he's onto again here. He's outside, he's leaving. He can hear the lark singing. And I think there's something true about that, the idea that not just that we have to be Luddites or that we have to kind of return to nature or something like that, but that our engagement with the beauty of the world is really important. She's a reader, but as she says, she doesn't get out much. She has no life getting out. That's the solution in this story, and that's what he's doing at the end. He's modeling that for her. He's led her to that conclusion and now he's doing it. So maybe she'll be able to follow. 1:13:10 Erin: That's good. Should we end there? 1:13:12 Wes: Sure. Thank you. 1:13:13 Erin: Thank you. 1:13:16 Wes: And thank you to everyone who listened to this episode. I just wanted to say that if you're listening to this on the feed for the Partially Examined Life, you're not yet subscribed. And if you like us, a rating or review would help a lot. 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