Lights Page #3

"Lives" is a poignant short story by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov that explores the complexities of human emotion and relationships. Set against the backdrop of ordinary life, the narrative delves into the introspections of its characters, revealing their innermost thoughts and struggles. Chekhov masterfully employs his signature style, blending subtle humor with deep pathos, as he examines themes of love, loss, and the fleeting nature of happiness. The story invites readers to reflect on the intricacies of human connections and the quiet moments that define our existence.

								

have been, and are to this day, the highest and final stage in the realm
of thought. The thinker reaches that stage and--comes to a halt! There is
nowhere further to go. The activity of the normal brain is completed
with this, and that is natural and in the order of things. Our
misfortune is that we begin thinking at that end. What normal people end
with we begin with. From the first start, as soon as the brain begins
working independently, we mount to the very topmost, final step and
refuse to know anything about the steps below."

"What harm is there in that?" said the student.

"But you must understand that it's abnormal," shouted Ananyev, looking
at him almost wrathfully. "If we find means of mounting to the topmost
step without the help of the lower ones, then the whole long ladder,
that is the whole of life, with its colours, sounds, and thoughts, loses
all meaning for us. That at your age such reflections are harmful and
absurd, you can see from every step of your rational independent life.
Let us suppose you sit down this minute to read Darwin or Shakespeare,
you have scarcely read a page before the poison shows itself; and your
long life, and Shakespeare, and Darwin, seem to you nonsense, absurdity,
because you know you will die, that Shakespeare and Darwin have died
too, that their thoughts have not saved them, nor the earth, nor you,
and that if life is deprived of meaning in that way, all science,
poetry, and exalted thoughts seem only useless diversions, the idle
playthings of grown up people; and you leave off reading at the second
page. Now, let us suppose that people come to you as an intelligent man
and ask your opinion about war, for instance: whether it is desirable,
whether it is morally justifiable or not. In answer to that terrible
question you merely shrug your shoulders and confine yourself to some
commonplace, because for you, with your way of thinking, it makes
absolutely no difference whether hundreds of thousands of people die a
violent death, or a natural one: the results are the same--ashes and
oblivion. You and I are building a railway line. What's the use, one may
ask, of our worrying our heads, inventing, rising above the hackneyed
thing, feeling for the workmen, stealing or not stealing, when we know
that this railway line will turn to dust within two thousand years, and
so on, and so on. . . . You must admit that with such a disastrous way
of looking at things there can be no progress, no science, no art, nor
even thought itself. We fancy that we are cleverer than the crowd, and
than Shakespeare. In reality our thinking leads to nothing because we
have no inclination to go down to the lower steps and there is nowhere
higher to go, so our brain stands at the freezing point--neither up nor
down; I was in bondage to these ideas for six years, and by all that is
holy, I never read a sensible book all that time, did not gain a
ha'porth of wisdom, and did not raise my moral standard an inch. Was not
that disastrous? Moreover, besides being corrupted ourselves, we bring
poison into the lives of those surrounding us. It would be all right if,
with our pessimism, we renounced life, went to live in a cave, or made
haste to die, but, as it is, in obedience to the universal law, we live,
feel, love women, bring up children, construct railways!"

"Our thoughts make no one hot or cold," the student said reluctantly.

"Ah! there you are again!--do stop it! You have not yet had a good sniff
at life. But when you have lived as long as I have you will know a thing
or two! Our theory of life is not so innocent as you suppose. In
practical life, in contact with human beings, it leads to nothing but
horrors and follies. It has been my lot to pass through experiences
which I would not wish a wicked Tatar to endure."

"For instance?" I asked.

"For instance?" repeated the engineer.

He thought a minute, smiled and said:

"For instance, take this example. More correctly, it is not an example,
but a regular drama, with a plot and a dénouement. An excellent lesson!
Ah, what a lesson!"

He poured out wine for himself and us, emptied his glass, stroked his
broad chest with his open hands, and went on, addressing himself more to
me than to the student.

"It was in the year 187--, soon after the war, and when I had just left
the University. I was going to the Caucasus, and on the way stopped for
five days in the seaside town of N. I must tell you that I was born and
grew up in that town, and so there is nothing odd in my thinking N.
extraordinarily snug, cosy, and beautiful, though for a man from
Petersburg or Moscow, life in it would be as dreary and comfortless as
in any Tchuhloma or Kashira. With melancholy I passed by the high school
where I had been a pupil; with melancholy I walked about the very
familiar park, I made a melancholy attempt to get a nearer look at
people I had not seen for a long time--all with the same melancholy.

"Among other things, I drove out one evening to the so-called
Quarantine. It was a small mangy copse in which, at some forgotten time
of plague, there really had been a quarantine station, and which was now
the resort of summer visitors. It was a drive of three miles from the
town along a good soft road. As one drove along one saw on the left the
blue sea, on the right the unending gloomy steppe; there was plenty of
air to breathe, and wide views for the eyes to rest on. The copse itself
lay on the seashore. Dismissing my cabman, I went in at the familiar
gates and first turned along an avenue leading to a little stone summer-
house which I had been fond of in my childhood. In my opinion that
round, heavy summer-house on its clumsy columns, which combined the
romantic charm of an old tomb with the ungainliness of a Sobakevitch,*
was the most poetical nook in the whole town. It stood at the edge above
the cliff, and from it there was a splendid view of the sea.

*A character in Gogol's Dead Souls.--Translator's Note.

"I sat down on the seat, and, bending over the parapet, looked down. A
path ran from the summer-house along the steep, almost overhanging
cliff, between the lumps of clay and tussocks of burdock. Where it
ended, far below on the sandy shore, low waves were languidly foaming
and softly purring. The sea was as majestic, as infinite, and as
forbidding as seven years before when I left the high school and went
from my native town to the capital; in the distance there was a dark
streak of smoke--a steamer was passing--and except for this hardly visible
and motionless streak and the sea-swallows that flitted over the water,
there was nothing to give life to the monotonous view of sea and sky. To
right and left of the summer-house stretched uneven clay cliffs.

"You know that when a man in a melancholy mood is left tête-à-tête
with the sea, or any landscape which seems to him grandiose, there is
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