RE-BROADCAST - At Christmas Time by Anton Chekhov w/Jesan Sorrells

0:00 So I just wanted to let you know that what you're listening here today is a rebroadcast of a previously posted episode of the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast. No new episode today, but enjoy this rebroadcast because listening to a rebroadcast of the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast is still better than reading and trying to understand yet another business book. Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells and this is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode number 88 with our very short story today.

0:41 A very brief character study of peasants and their lives, both on the Russian steppes and in Russian cities, is an examination of the reality of their lives, juxtaposed against the Christian cultural narrative, particularly the Russian Orthodox Christian cultural narrative of Christmas, a story written by the Russian playwright and short story writer who trained and practiced medicine among the very peasants about whom he wrote so brilliantly. We are going to be covering today Anton Chekhov's very short story At Christmas Time.

1:23 Leaders have a vision of the future at the end of the year, rather than continuing to flagellate in navel gazing abstraction about sins and transgressions.

1:47 Vasilisa had not seen her for years. Her daughter Yefimaya. And gone after her wedding to Petersburg, had sent them two letters, and since then seemed to vanish out of their lives. There had been no sight or nor sound of her, and whether the old woman were milking her cow at dawn, or heating her stove, or dozing at night, she was always thinking of one and the same thing. What was happening to Yefimaya, whether she were alive out yonder? She ought to have sent a letter, but the old father could not write, and there was no one to write.

2:19 But now Christmas had come and Vasilissa could not bear it any longer, and went to the tavern to Yegor, the brother of the innkeeper's wife, who had sat in the tavern doing nothing ever since he came back from the army. People said that he could write letters very well if he were properly paid. Vasilissa talked to the cook at the tavern, then to the mistress of the house, then to Yegor himself. They agreed upon 15 kopecks, and now it happened on the second day of the holidays in the tavern kitchen.

2:49 Yegor was sitting at the table, holding a pen in his hand. Vasilissa was standing before him, pondering with an expression of anxiety and woe on her face. Piotr, her husband, a very thin old man with a brownish bald patch, had come with her. He stood looking straight before him like a blind man. On the stove a piece of pork was being braised in a saucepan. It was spurting and hissing, and it seemed to be actually saying. It was stifling. What am I to write? Yegor asked again. What? Asked Vasilissa, looking at him angrily and suspiciously.

3:22 Don't worry me. You are not writing for nothing. No fear, you'll be paid for it. Come, write. To our dear son in law, Andre Harasinevich, and to our beloved, only beloved daughter, Yefimaya Petrovna, with our love we send a low bow and our parental blessing abiding forever written fire away. And we wish them a happy Christmas. We are alive and well. And I wish you the same, please the Lord, the Heavenly King. Vasilissa pondered and exchanged glances with the old man. And I wish you the same, please the Lord, heavenly King, she repeated, beginning to cry.

4:00 She could say nothing more. And yet before, when she lay awake thinking at night, it had seemed to her that she could not get all she had to say into a dozen letters. Since the time when her daughter had gone away with her husband, much water had flowed into the sea. The old people had lived feeling bereaved and sighed heavily at night as though they had buried their daughter. And how many events had occurred in the village since then, how many marriages and deaths, how long the winters had been, how long the nights?

4:27 It's hot, said Jaegor, unbuttoning his waistcoat. It must be 70 degrees. What more? He asked. The old people were silent.

4:57 So our book here, our short story, very short story, it's only like five pages that we're going to be covering here at the end of our Christmas season of shows. Or maybe not the end. It's the beginning actually, of the Christmas season of shows, because on this podcast we're having come up next, the Christmas Carol, we're going to be covering that rebroadcast from last year and we'll have a couple of Christmas messages in our shorts episodes, as well as a reading on Christmas Day from the Book of Luke, which I think is very important for reminding us all what the actual reason for the season is.

5:37 And it ain't Santa anyhow, when we read At Christmas Time by Anton Chekhov. And by the way, we covered Anton Chekhov and we covered three of his short stories in episode number 14 in season one, published back on April 13, 2022, so you can go back and listen to that. And we talked a lot in that episode about the nature of Chekhov's writing and the nature of how Chekhov fits as a writer into the pantheon of Russian authors, including Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy and others. Anton Chekov, as was mentioned in that episode, and I mentioned it briefly here in the opener, wrote about the people that he actually helped.

6:27 He was a medical doctor, and he spent a lot of time outside of the major city centers in Russia. And just like in any other country, there are things that are happening in the country and there are things that are happening in the cities. And in Russia, particularly during the time of serfdom, the illiterate peasant was an individual that Chekhov would have often run across. We take for granted that people will be literate in our society and culture. We take for granted that people will be able to read.

7:02 Now, there is illiteracy even in our own culture. And of course, more troubling for us is a lack of comprehension, a lack of understanding of what you're reading. Yeah, you can read the words on the page, but you don't actually know what they mean. That's far more of a problem in the year of our Lord 2023 than the actual act of, or the actual fact of illiteracy, which was a huge problem in Russia because serfs and peasants alike, and many peasants who were maybe a little bit above serfs, could not read well.

7:39 And what that meant was that communication.

7:45 And meaning and existence were all floated together. Right. So if you couldn't communicate with an individual, a person dropped off the face of the planet. As the mother Vasilisa points out in that clip there, the mother, she had no concept that her daughter was still alive. Communication or even a lack of communication was seen as a way of maintaining a lifeline. And when that communication was cut off, as we will see later on in the story, when that communication was interrupted, existence itself ended.

8:24 Now, there's another piece to pick up here in this first part of At Christmas Time that I think is hugely important, particularly for our end of the year considerations with us, you know, reading this story at Christmas time during the Christmas holiday season.

8:45 The patriarch of this story. And this is another sort of juxtaposition that Chekhov played with. The patriarch in this situation initially seems to be the husband, and the husband is blind. The husband can't see, and the matriarch is illiterate. There's a comment here or commentary here that's being made about the nature of reality and how illiteracy and blindness meet at the end of the year to write a letter that will hopefully bring reconciliation.

9:45 Back to the book, back to At Christmas Time by Anton Chekhov. So we're going to move ahead in the story a little bit, go to our next page and read a couple of pieces here.

10:01 Here it is, written down to the old woman taking the letter out of her pocket. We got it from Yefimaya. Goodness knows when. Maybe they are no longer in this world. Jaegor thought a little and began writing rapidly. At the present time, he wrote, since your destiny, through your own doing, allotted you to the military career, we counsel you to look to the code of disciplinary offenses and fundamental laws of the War Office, and you will see in that law the civilization of the officials of the War Office.

10:26 He wrote and kept reading aloud what was written, while Vasilisa considered what she ought to write. How great had been their want the year before, how their corn had not lasted even till Christmas, how they had to sell their cow. She ought to ask for money, ought to write that the old father was often ailing and would soon no doubt give up his soul to God. But how to express this in words? What must be said first and what afterwards? Take note, Jaegor went on writing in volume five of the army regulations.

10:56 Soldier is a common noun and a proper one. A soldier of the first rank is called a general, and of the last a private. The old man stirred his lips and said softly, it would be all right to have a look at the grandchildren. What grandchildren? Asked the old woman, and she looked angrily at him. Perhaps there are none. Well, but perhaps there are. Who knows? And thereby you can judge. Jaeger hurried on. What is the enemy without and what is the enemy within? The foremost of our enemy with our of our enemies within is Bacchus.

11:28 The pen squeaked, executing upon the paper flourishes like fish hooks. Jaegor hastened and read over every line. Several times he sat on his stool, sprawling his broad feet under the table, well fed, bursting with health, with a coarse animal face and a red bull neck. He was vulgarity itself, coarse, conceited, invincible, proud of having been born and bred in a pothouse. And Vasilisa quite understood the vulgarity, but could not express it in words, and could only look angrily and suspiciously at Jaeger.

11:59 Her head was beginning to ache and her thoughts were in confusion from the sound of his voice and his unintelligible words, from the heat and the stuffiness. And she said nothing and thought nothing, but simply waited for him to finish scribbling. But the old man looked with full confidence. He believed in his old woman who brought him there and in Yegor. And when he had mentioned the hydropathic establishment, it could be seen that he believed in the establishment and the healing efficacy of water.

12:24 Having finished the letter, Jaeger got up and read the whole of it through from the beginning. The old man did not understand, but he nodded his head trustfully. That's all right. It is smooth, he said. God give you health. That's all right.

12:40 They laid on the table three five kopeck pieces and went out of the tavern. The old man looked immovably straight before him, as though he were blind and perfect trustfulness was written on his face. But as Vassila came out of the tavern, she waved angrily at the dog and said angrily, ugh, the plague. Sam.

13:41 So you've got three male characters in At Christmas Time by Anton Chekhov, and they all represent three different faces of the patriarchy, right? And so we're going to explore. I'm going to talk a little bit about all three of those faces here. So we've got Jaeger, right, who writes a letter that is supposed to be. Well, it's supposed to be dictating a letter, supposed to be writing down what other people are saying, and yet goes off script, right? And he goes off script when he finds out that Andre, who is the old couple's, in essence, son-in-law, works at a hydropathic establishment in Petersburg and left the army as a.

14:35 Or left the service, sorry, as a soldier. Once Jaeger connects on to that, then he sort of writes his own letter to Andrew. Now he's a tyrannical male because he's vulgar, right? Even in Anton Chekhov's description of him, he points to his vulgarity. He points to his lack of leadership. His lack of social.

15:00 Savoir faire, right? His. His ways. He puts his feet up and the way he handles himself. But he is the one, of course, who can only write. In a town full of illiterates, the vulgar man is king. Then you've got Andre, who we'll meet later on in a little bit here. And I'm not going to talk too much about him yet. I'm going to kind of let him unfold in part two of the story. And of course you have the blind father who we just talked about, and that's three different conceptions here where these patriarchs, these men in a highly patriarchal society have power, and yet they behave in manners that are not honoring of that power.

15:45 And via doing that or the ways in which they do that impacts and it controls and it creates fear. And suspicion and anger and pride and ignorance in others. This is a theme that weaves through most of Anton Chekhov's writing. Most of Anton Chekhov's short stories follow this sort of path. When he writes about. Well, when he writes about male peasants, when he writes about individuals who are not kings of the country, they're not czars, they don't rule their own country, but they do rule with a blind, iron fist, their own households.

16:30 And of course, that blindness leads them to be tyrannical, and of course that tyranny leads to rebellion. And then of course, the rebellion leads to a tightening of the fist, and so on and so on and so on. And we in the west, particularly us in America, who come from a little bit of a different understanding of how patriarchal power should be meted out and how leadership should be meted out, usually fail to understand how strong men work in Russia. But when you read Chekhov's writing and when you read about how the peasants and the serfs, the history of.

17:06 The history of male and female relationships as navigated through short stories and novels, and as demonstrated through short stories and novels, when you read about all that, you begin to get an inkling of an understanding of exactly the tragic nature of this cycle. And you see some of this in At Christmas Time. The old woman has agency, but her agency is incredibly limited. And it's limited by the blind and tyrannical patriarchs that are all around.

18:18 Back to the book, back to At Christmas Time by Anton Chekhov. So we're going to. We're going to pick up with part two a little bit here. We're going to read just a couple of paragraphs from, from part two, just to kind of get the flavor. And then we're going to turn the corner and start to close here. By the way, one of the points I want to make about Andre, the, the. The brother. I'm sorry, the brother. The son in law of, Of Fecila. And, and. And the blind. The blind father there, Piotr. So Andre worked at what was called a hydropathic establishment.

19:04 And I had to look this up because I really didn't know anything about this. This is kind of interesting. Apparently there was an idea in, in Russia in the late 19th century that water could be a curative or had curative impact, had curative effect on a human being, on an individual, on disease. Right. And on the. The aspects of disease that were deleterious to a human being. Well, that, that led to the creation of hydropathic establishments. Right. And this is Critically important as a tip, because.

19:46 Or not as a tip, but as an indication of sort of where we're going with this. And by the way, in Christian religion, water is considered to be purifying, right? But it is also seen as a tool or as a symbol of uniting and unifying. You know, baptism is hugely important from the time of John the Baptist, baptizing Jesus in order to begin his public ministry. And baptism, particularly in Protestantism, but even more so in Orthodox, Catholic, Christian rites and sects, baptism is hugely important for sealing a person, sealing a soul, and in confirming as an outward sign to the community.

20:35 This is how it's taken in Protestant religions, as an outward sign to the community of sacred salvation, right of Jesus's inner work. And the baptism is an external. An external demonstration of that internal work. And so water, water as a cure for what physically ails, but water also is a cure for what spiritually ails, is one of the themes here that Chekhov is trying to get to in At Christmas Time. Okay, back to the book, back to At Christmas Time and pick up with part two here. Dr. Bo Mazelweiser's hydropathic establishment worked on New Year's Day exactly as on ordinary days.

21:17 The only difference was that the porter Andre has Ranovich had on a uniform with new braiding, his boots had an extra polish, and he greeted every visitor with a Happy New Year to you. It was the morning Andre Hasranovich was standing at the door, reading the newspaper. Just at 10 o' clock there arrived a general, one of the habitual visitors, and directly after him the postman Andrei Haresinovich helped the general off of his greatcoat and said, a happy New Year to you, your excellency. Thank you, my good fellow, the same to you.

21:48 And at the top of the stairs, the general asked, nodding towards the door. He asked the same question every day and always forgot the answer. And what is there in that room? The massage room, your excellency. When the general's steps had died away, Andrei Hrasevich looked at the post that had come and found one addressed to himself. He tore it open, read several lines. Then, looking at the newspaper, he walked without haste to his own room, which was downstairs, close by. At the end of the passage, his wife Yefimya was sitting on the bed, feeding her baby.

22:20 Another child, the eldest, was standing by, laying its curly head on her knee. A third was asleep on the bed. And, and the communication choke point there is Andre. Remember what I said about there being tyrannical patriarchs, right? Well, this is a very specific form of tyranny on Andre's part. It is not the tyranny. And you'll see this later on one of the other shoe drops here in the moment. But it's not a tyranny of neglect from a material level. Right? He's got a job, he's working in a hydropathic establishment.

22:31 The general comes in, he's working on New Year's Day, which by the way, in Russian Orthodox Christianity, Christmas comes not on December 25th, Christmas comes on January. I believe it's January 6th, it's January 6th or January 12th, I believe it's January 6th.

23:15 So the old woman got her Hus, got her daughter married to a man who totally and completely ignored her three children in a nursery.

23:30 And, and the communication choke point there is Andre. Remember what I said about there being tyrannical patriarchs, Right? Well, this is a very specific form of tyranny on Andre's part. It is not the tyranny. And you'll see this later on one of the other shoe drops here in the moment. But it's not a tyranny of neglect from a material level. Right? He's got a job, he's working in a hydropathic establishment. The general comes in, he's working on New Year's Day, which by the way, in, in Russian Orthodox Christianity, Christmas comes not on December 25th, Christmas comes on January.

24:16 I believe it's January 6th, it's January 6th or January 12th, I believe it's January 6th. And so in Orthodox Christianity, just as in traditional Catholicism, going all the way back to, oh gosh, I mean, I mean, Christmas didn't really start being celebrated until after Constantine in the year. Oh gosh, in the year like 360, 380 something AD and then it started slowly ramping up, but really didn't kick off into what we know as modern Christmas until the latter part of the.

24:55 17Th and, and the latter part of the 17th and the early part of the. The 18th century. And then with the rise of industrialism and consumer culture, all of which trans. Charles Dickens bemoaned, by the way. You'll hear that in the Christmas Carol.

25:11 You know, then we get into a more modern conception of what Christmas is and Christmas celebrations and things like Santa and the tree and all of that came, came way late. But traditional Christendom, traditional Orthodox understanding of Christmas, a traditional Orthodox understanding Christmas puts Christmas after the New Year, which is interesting for us because, you know, we put Thanksgiving and then Christmas, then the New Year, in that order. And of course, in Orthodox Christianity and in many other parts of the world, you know, the last Thursday in November means nothing.

25:47 What means a lot is New Year's Day. And what means a lot is of course, Christmas Day. Now, where that falls and why that falls after New Year's is interesting background information. But what's more interesting on the, when you think about Tom is he is merely doing his work as he's supposed to be doing it. He's checking all the boxes. Many leaders, by the way, do this. And I know this is a leadership podcast and we are focused on literature here at the end of the year. But the leadership aspects of this are very important.

26:21 So as a leader, if you're just focused on checking the boxes and you're not nourishing the emotional or psychological life of your followers, you're probably just barely feeding them. And you probably have a poverty of imagination now on the part of the daughter. The daughter got a husband, right? And the old woman got her daughter married off. But they both didn't get a reprieve from tyranny.

26:50 Jaegor got his literacy, we talked about that in the military. And Andre got his hydropathic career after leaving the army. But they both. Neither of them got a reprieve from tyranny either. The tyrannical nature of rulership, the tyrannical nature of the peasant reality is something that needs to be reconciled. It's something that needs to be solved, and it's something that needs to be examined. And Chekhov's critique of Orthodox Christian society, fundamentally because he came from a medical background, because he was writing in the mid to latter part of the 19th century in a Russia that was transitioning into something else, transitioning into a new thing in the maelstrom of European understanding in a post Napoleon world.

27:48 Well, Chekhov's critique of Orthodox Christian society fundamentally is nihilistic in its examination in this story. But. But unlike Friedrich Nietzsche, Chekhov holds on to the slim hope that Jesus might still have a place in the season.

28:29 Back to the story. We're gonna wrap up here. Back to At Christmas Time by Anton Chekhov. We're going to turn the corner here and wrap up. Andre just gave her the letter. As she was sitting. Yehamaya, as she was sitting on the bed. He could hear Yefimaya with a shaking voice, reading the first lines. She read them and could read no more. These lines were enough for her. She burst into tears and hugging her eldest child, kissing him, she began saying, and it was hard to say whether she was laughing or crying.

29:06 It's from Granny, from grandfather, she said, from the country. The heavenly mother. Saints and martyrs. The snow lies heaped up under the roofs now. The trees are as white as white. The boys slide in on little sledges. And dear old bald grandfather is on the stove. And there is a little yellow dog. My own darlings. Andrei Rasinovich, hearing this, recalled that his wife had on three or four occasions given him letters and asked him to send them to the country. But some important business had always prevented him.

29:36 He had not sent them, and the letters somehow got lost. And little hares run about in the fields. Yefimaya went on chanting, kissing her boy and shedding tears. Grandfather is kind and gentle. Granny is good too. Kind hearted. They are warm hearted in the country, they are God fearing. And there is a little church in the village. The peasants sing in the choir. Queen of Heaven, Holy Mother and Defender, take us away from here. Andre Harosanovich returned to his room to smoke a little, till there was another ring at the door and Yefimaya ceased speaking, subsided and wiped her eyes, though her lips were still quivering.

30:10 She was very much frightened of him. Oh, how frightened of him. She trembled and was reduced to terror by the sound of his steps, by the look in his eyes, and dared not utter a word in his presence. Andrei Harasanovich lighted a cigarette, but at that very moment there was a ring from upstairs. He put out his cigarette and, assuming a very grave face, hastened to his front door. The general was coming downstairs, fresh and rosy from his bath. And what is there in that room? He asked, pointing to a door.

30:44 Andrey Harasenovich put his hands down swiftly to the seams of his trousers and pronounced loudly, char Kadouche. Your Excellency.

31:28 Gotta admit, when I got to the end of that, I had no, no idea what charcoal douche meant, so I had to go look that up. So the last lines of At Christmas Time by Anton Chekov. Really are focused around and really are. Sort of indicative of the. And, and, and, and, and, and, and hearkening back to this idea of hydro pathy, right, this idea of a water cure.

32:05 Shark o douche. And I have a link to the definition of what it is when in inside of Anton Chekhov's short story At Christmas Time basically is. It's a, it's a, it's a French. It'S a French term, right, that it was a type of high-pressure shower that was invented by a French neurologist named Jean Martin Charcot. And it was initially used as a medical device. It was called a Charcot shower. And it was, it was, it was, it was used in spas in the late 19th and in the early 20th century in order to.

32:53 Have order to create a massage, you know, over the patient's body. And it was so powerful with, and was operated at such a high pressure that it almost, it could sometimes cause hematoma on the patient or in the individual who was doing that and who was using it. So high-pressure on a shower head, you know, coming out of that. And so basically what, you know, Andre is saying at the end of this story is that, you know. You know, the, the thing that's behind the door is a restorative bath, right? But it could also indicate, and there's many different ideas of this floating around on the Internet.

33:39 I'm not the first person to say this, but it could also indicate that Chekhov is looking for that hope, right? That hope of healing and restoration between the daughter and the parents, between what is in the country and what is in the city, between the sophisticated folks that are now living in St. Petersburg and the hillbilly hicks that are out on the steps in Russia.

34:53 When we think about this short story at Christmas time, and when we think about the restoration of relationship, leaders engage in healing and restorative work. Leaders avoid tyranny. And of course they need to be literate to write and see and comprehend. But even more so than this, at the end of this year, at the end of any year, we would encourage you to think about what is the cost of introspection? What is the cost of looking backward? Who are you bringing forward in order to restore them and restore relationship, in order to engage in acts of reconciliation?

35:41 Forgiveness is not necessarily for the person who has done you wrong as a leader, or has done your team wrong, or has done your organization wrong. Forgiveness is really for you. It's so that you could be restored. Look, the. The daughter, right? When she gets the letter, what is one of the first things that she does? Well, the first thing that she does is that she starts crying. Tears. Hydro pathi charcadouche. The healing water of baptism, restoration at the beginning of a new year, and all before Orthodox Christmas.

36:29 Chekhov didn't write this story by accident, and he didn't write it in a vacuum. As leaders, at the end of this year, think about restoration, think about reconciliation, and work very hard to open up those lines of communication so that existence can be reconfirmed between you and the people that you love.

36:55 And, well. That'S it for me.

37:11 Sam.

37:37 Foreign.

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