Ron Reads Boring Books

The Reflections of a Sissy

• Ron

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A young clerical student, returning home on a cold Good Friday evening, experiences a profound revelation about human connection through time after sharing the biblical story of Peter's denial with two widows. What begins as a tale of despair transforms into a powerful realization about the unbroken chain linking past suffering to present emotions, ultimately restoring the student's sense of meaning and purpose.

• Setting of desolate Russian countryside with winter returning unexpectedly on Good Friday
• Student's initial pessimism about unchanging human suffering throughout history
• Encounter with two widows by their campfire where he retells Peter's denial of Jesus
• Unexpected emotional response from the women to the ancient biblical story
• Student's revelation about the continuity of human experience across centuries
• Final epiphany that "truth and beauty" have guided human life from biblical times to present
• Transformation from despair to seeing life as "enchanting, marvelous and full of lofty meaning"

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Speaker 1:

Hello, are you tired? You will be, because this is Ron Reads Boring Books and today, for your displeasure, we're reading the Student by Anton Chekhov. Let's begin At first. The weather was fine and still. The thrushes were calling, and in the swamps close by, something alive droned pitifully, with a sound like blowing into an empty bottle. With a sound like blowing into an empty bottle, a snipe flew by and the shot aimed at it rang out with a gay resounding note in the spring air. But when it began to get dark in the forest, a cold, penetrating wind blew inappropriately from the east and everything sank into silence. Needles of ice stretched across the pools and it felt cheerless, remote and lonely. In the forest there was a whiff of winter.

Speaker 1:

Ivan Velikopolsky, the son of a sacristan and a student of the clerical academy, returning home from shooting, kept walking on the path by the waterlogged meadows. His fingers were numb and his face was burning with the wind. It seemed to him that the cold that had suddenly come on had destroyed the order and harmony of things, that nature itself fell ill at ease, and that was why the evening darkness was falling more rapidly than usual. All around it was deserted and particularly gloomy. The only light was one gleaming in the window's gardens near the river, the village over three miles away, and everything in the distance all around was plunged in the cold evening mist. The student remembered that as he had left the house, his mother was sitting barefoot on the floor in the entryway cleaning the samovar while his father lay on the stove coughing. As it was Good Friday, nothing had been cooked and the student was terribly hungry and now, shrinking from the cold, he thought that just such a wind had blown in the days of Rurik and in the time of Ivan the Terrible and Peter, and in their time there had been just the same desperate poverty and hunger, the same thatched roofs with holes in them, ignorance, misery. The same desolation around the same darkness, the same feeling of oppression. Desolation around the same darkness, the same feeling of oppression. All these had existed, did exist and would exist, and the lapse of a thousand years would make life no better. And he did not want to go home. The gardens were called the widows because they were kept by two widows, mother and daughter.

Speaker 1:

A campfire was burning brightly, with a crackling sound throwing out light far around on the plowed earth. The widow Vasilisa, a tall, fat old woman in a man's coat was standing by and looking thoughtfully into the fire. Her daughter Lucaria, a little pockmarked woman with a stupid-looking face, was sitting on the ground washing a cauldron in spoons. Apparently they had just had supper. There was a sound of men's voices. It was the laborers watering their horses at the river. Here you have winter back again, said the student going up to the campfire. Good evening, vasilisa started, but at once recognized him and smiled cordially. I did not know you. God bless you. She said You'll be rich, they talked. Vasilisa, a woman of experience who had been in service with the gentry, first as a wet nurse, afterwards as a children's nurse, expressed herself with refinement and a soft, sedate smile, never left her face. Her daughter, lucuria, a village peasant woman who had been beaten by her husband, simply screwed up her eyes at the student and said nothing. She had a strange expression like that of a deaf mute At just such a fire.

Speaker 1:

The Apostle Peter warmed himself, said the student, stretching out his hands to the fire. So it must have been cold then too. Ah, what a terrible night it must have been, granny, an utterly dismal, long night. He looked around at the darkness, shook his head abruptly and asked no doubt you have heard the reading of the twelve apostles. Yes, I have answered, Vasilisa. If you remember, at the last supper, Peter said to Jesus I am ready to go with thee into darkness and unto death. And our Lord answered him. Thus I say unto thee, peter, before the cock croweth thou wilt have denied me thrice.

Speaker 1:

After the supper, jesus went through the agony of death in the garden and prayed, and poor Peter was weary in spirit and faint, his eyelids were heavy and he could not struggle against sleep. He fell asleep. Then you heard how Judas, the same night, kissed Jesus and betrayed him to his tormentors. Wait a minute, I was supposed to be reading that with the student's voice, so let's start over. After the supper, jesus went through the agony of death in the garden and prayed, and poor Peter was weary in spirit and faint, his eyelids were heavy and he could not struggle against sleep. He fell asleep. Then you heard how Judas, the same night, kissed Jesus and betrayed him to his tormentors. They took him bound to the high priest and beat him, while Peter exhausted, worn out with misery and alarm, hardly awake, you know, feeling that something awful was just about to happen on earth, followed behind. He loved Jesus passionately, intensely, and now he saw him from afar how he was beaten.

Speaker 1:

Lucaria left the spoons and fixed in an immovable stare upon the student. They came to the high priests. He went on. They began to question Jesus. In the meantime, the laborers made a fire in the yard, as it was cold, and warmed themselves. Peter too stood with them. It was cold and warmed themselves. Peter too stood with them near the fire and warmed himself, as I am doing. A woman seeing him said he was with Jesus too. That is as much as to say that he too should have been taken to be questioned. And all the laborers were standing near the fire must have looked sourly and suspiciously at him, because he was confused and said I don't know him.

Speaker 1:

A little while after, again, someone recognized him as one of Jesus' disciples and said Thou art too one of them. But he denied it. And for the third time someone turned to him and said why did I not see thee with him in the garden today? For the third time he denied it. And immediately after that time the cock crowed and Peter, looking from afar off at Jesus, remembered the words he had said unto him in the evening. He remembered. He came to himself, went out of the yard and wept bitterly, bitterly. In the gospel it is written he went out and wept bitterly, I imagine it.

Speaker 1:

The still still dark, dark garden, and in the stillness faintly audible, smothered, sobbing. And in the stillness, faintly audible, smothered, sobbing, the student sighed and sank into thought. Still smiling, vasilisa suddenly gave a gulp, big tears flowed freely down her cheeks and she screamed her face from the fire with her sleeve, as though ashamed of her tears, and Luckerya stared immovably at the student, flushed crimson and her expression became strained and heavy, like that of someone enduring intense pain. The laborers came back from the river, and one of them, riding a horse, was quite near and the light from the fire quivered upon them. The student said good night to the widows and went on, and again the darkness was about him and his fingers began to be numb. A cruel wind was blowing, winter had really winter really had come back, and it did not feel as though Easter would be the day after tomorrow.

Speaker 1:

The student was thinking about Vasilisa, thinking about Vasilisa. Vasilisa, since she had shed tears. All that had happened to Peter the night before the crucifixion must have some relation to her. Dot, dot, dot. He looked around. The solitary light was still gleaming in the darkness and no figures could be seen near it.

Speaker 1:

Now the student thought again that if Vasilisa had shed tears and her daughter had been troubled, it was evident that what he had just been telling them about, which had happened nineteen centuries ago, had a relation to the present, to both women, to the desolate village, to himself, to all people.

Speaker 1:

The woman had wept, not because he could tell the story touchingly, but because Peter was near to her, because her whole being was interested in what was passing in Peter's soul, and joy suddenly stirred in his soul and he even stopped for a minute to take breath.

Speaker 1:

The past, he thought, is linked with the present by an unbroken chain of events flowing one out of another. It seemed to him that he had just seen both ends of that chain, that when he touched one end, the other quivered. When he crossed the river by the ferry boat and afterwards, mounting the hill, looked at his village and towards the west, where the cold, crimson sunset lay a narrow streak of light, he thought that truth and beauty, which had guided human life there in the garden and in the yard of the high priest, had continued without interruption to this day and had evidently always been the chief thing in human life and in all earthly life, and in all earthly life, indeed in the feeling of youth, health, vigor. He was only 22, and the inexpressible, sweet expectation of happiness, of unknown, mysterious happiness, took possession of him little by little, and life seemed to him enchanting, marvelous and full of lofty meaning. Well, this has been the Student by Anton Chekhov, check Hove. Please like and leave a five-star rating and a review, and share this wonderful story with someone near.