Gooseberries, Chekhov

Yet another short story from Anton Chekhov that revolves around one of the riddles of existence : what life should one live ? How wide does one’s horizon need to be ?

A man needs more than six feet of earth and a little place in the country, he needs the whole wide world, the whole of nature, where there is room for him to display his potential, all the many attributes of his free spirit.

But still, in order not to turn mad, one has to convince himself that his life is as good as the Gooseberries that Nikolay grows…

They – the gooseberries – were hard and sour, but as Puschkin says : “Uplifting illusion is dearer to us than a host of truths”.

There comes the beautiful wrapper everyone seems to need.