CHEKHOV AND THE GREAT RUSSIAN LENT

 

CHEKHOV AND THE OLD BELIEVERS

 

Lent. Veliki post. The great fast for the Russian Orthodox, diets that are strictly followed without milk or meat. Fasting elevates the soul, puts us on guard against instincts and is even beneficial for health.

I go on a diet without purely spiritual hedonistic intentions, and with abstinence I hope to purify myself from the sins of my past life and be pleasing to God.

Every time I read Chekhov I discover a different message, something new.

  I think I know almost all of his work in the version of Lain Entralgo, Cansinos Assens and other Austral translators.

  I lost the complete works in that waiting room at the Princes Beatrice Hospital in London. The leather-bound book I had bought at the Madrid Book Fair in 1969, when my daughter Helen was born.

I attribute it to nerves and the day something terrible happened to me in Oviedo, the most terrible night of my existence in which I went through the Caudine gallows that anyone has to go through was left out in the Hotel Historia de mi vida.

I was sorry not only for losing that valuable book but also because I had inserted a bookmark photograph in which I was a blonde boy dressed as a sailor with my parents and the colonel of the artillery regiment Gaudencio Tomé. When they gave us the protected housing in Valdevilla.

This Lent I have returned to his stories. Room Number 6 is a devastating, terrible text: that psychiatrist Andrei Efimevich who is stripped of his functions by the meritorious and ends up crazy and degraded.

  Tenderness, brutality, sordidness and beauty alternate in its chapters.

In a “Murder” the deep religious sense of the novelist will come to light, among whose family there is no shortage of devout and enlightened people who recite the psalms and celebrate the great liturgies of the holy Russian church, some of which last more than six hours.

  You have to stand with a candle in your hand, constantly cross yourself.

Chekhov admits that a grandmother of his belonged to the schismatic branch of the Old Believers (staroi vierosi) who wanted to follow the old observance and did not accept the reforms initiated by Peter the Great.

In this case the protagonist is a certain Matei, a man of deep spirituality who does not like priests because they smoke and drink vodka and wear luxurious natural silk cassocks.

That is why he builds an oratory at home where he sings the psalms, reads the epistle and celebrates the mass to the great scandal of his wife who burns the stoles and chasubles. “The Tejerovs were very religious people to the point that in the village they were called the “Blessed”

Matei Tejerov's problem was that he wanted a church all to himself. A cousin of the protagonist Yakov Ivanich blamed Matei for his impudence.

"What you're doing is sacrilege... you'll end up badly, cousin"

He did not pay attention and continued to prolong his vigils and fasts in the usual way. He soon spread his fame as a saint throughout the province.

Pilgrims came to the oratory from distant towns to see the saint, as they said that he performed several miracles.

There was no shortage of women and the devil got involved.

Mysticism led to a sexual orgy. And the saying goes that when it comes to money and holiness, half of Chekhov's half refers to the sects of the Jumpers and the Flagellants.

  The “saint” got some of those devotees pregnant and had children with them.

The Tejerovs were wealthy people. Disagreements arose between them and one day the “Saint” appears dead.

Inquiries are made by the gendarmes and it turns out that it was his brothers who carried out the murder.

After a series of adventures full of confusion and emotion but narrated masterfully - Chekhov is the greatest writer of stories and short novels that ever existed although the French say he was Maupasant - the Blesseds walk as if forced towards Siberia and are imprisoned on the island of Sakhalin, a sinister place that Anton visited before he died.

The Tejerovs' problem (the novelist tells us) was that they wanted a church their own way. I think he was right but in the case of Catholics hic et nunc with that apostate who pontificates in the Vatican, I prefer to stay at home and not go around the church. In my heart I built a particular oratory-

The liturgies of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow officiated by Patriarch Cyril excite me and are a reference for my return to the Faith

 

Thursday, April 11, 2024