This is a perfectly horrible, extremely well-wrought story. A young Tatar has been banished to the steppe. There he meets old Semyon, who has been eking out a living in exile for years, and whose philosophy of life is that it is better to be miserable, because you’ll get used to it. If you grow accustomed to even the simplest of life’s pleasures, you’re bound to lose them and feel that loss bitterly.
Semyon then relates stories of others who suffered in exile nearby; they pined for their old lives and paid for it in unhappiness. He who has nothing, says old Semyon, is free.
The poor Tatar, hearing this, is horrified. His only consolation is the hope that his wife and family may join him in exile. Semyon sneers at this: it will only end in sadness, he assures the young man.
The story ends with the young Tatar crying quietly by the riverbank, bemoaning his dreadful fate.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
The sheer hopelessness of the young Tatar brings to mind another Chekhov portrait of a forlorn man, Iona, the mournful cabdriver of “Misery.” (Some translators have the story titled “Grief.”) It would be fair to object that these two stories are in essence sorrow porn, existing simply to express another person’s suffering and give the reader a chance to exercise his empathy muscles. But if that is a criticism, I’ll temper it by saying that both stories are affecting, tightly constructed, and very well written.
A Chekhov Circus 