From Simon Ley’s “Marginalia,” an essay included in his posthumous collection, The hall of uselessness (2013)...
Chekhov wrote some 250 stories — among all of them he singled out “The Student” as his favorite. Harold Bloom finds this choice surprising:[1] “Why did Chekhov prefer this story to scores of what seem like to many of his admirers far more consequential and vital tales. I have no clear answer. Nothing in ‘The Student’ except what happened in the protagonist’s mind is anything but dreadfully dismal. It is the irrational rise of impersonal joy and personal hope out of cold and misery, and the tears of betrayal, that appear to have moved Chekhov himself.” Yet Bloom remains puzzled: “The rejoicing has no sense of piety or of salvation.”
If the story seems mysterious, it is because the simplicity of the soul is the greatest mystery under heaven. Otherwise, it presents only one genuine enigma: Chekhov who was a confirmed agnostic displays here an intuitive grasp of the religious experience, reaching to its very essence, which wholly escapes the learned speculations of theologians. We may naturally assume that the student in the story was pious and learned: he sincerely believed the events surrounding Peter’s denial took place 1,900 years ago in the courtyard of the High Priest’s palace; his faith had already taught him the Gospel narrative is true, then, suddenly, the tears of the women showed him that the story is real; it is happening to all of us, now. The tears of the women enable the young theologian to effect a giant leap from abstract knowledge to actual experience, from truth to reality — which is the ground of all truths…Instead of pondering dogmas and doctrines, the student is suddenly faced with evidence. Hence his joy, which was overwhelming and mysterious indeed, but which presented nothing “irrational” (contrary to Bloom’s strange assessment).
Yet Chekhov — with scrupulous intellectual honesty — did not altogether discount other elements in the student’s ecstatic happiness — “youth, health, vigor” — for, after all, “he was only 22 years old.”
Editor’s Note
1 Back in his day, Simon Leys recalled how he was “at first delighted” to find out Harold Bloom had ranked “The Student” among “the masterpieces of literature.” Ranking Harold and his sort might still have their uses in this era when so many Doctors of Literature are at loss when it comes to justifying what they do (beyond talking up “subversive” japes). In the end, though, critics/professors whose first instinct is to get students to bow to great books (and their assessors) aren’t much better than rad jokers. They’re surely not the solution to the “crisis of the humanities.” What’s needed are teachers (like Leys) who bring home how writing may prompt us to imagine the real.