This is one of Chekhov’s short sketches, and not one of his better ones.
Two ragged shepherds trade tales about treasure supposedly buried in the woods around them. Listening in on them is another man, better-dressed and in possession of a horse–he would seem to be an overseer, or bailiff of the land.
The overseer listens for a while, then dismisses their wild talk. “Your elbow is near but you can’t bite it,” he says. Similarly, there is treasure in the world–”but there is not the wit to find it.”
The shepherds wonder how to find the treasure, and if it might be hidden with a spell, making it impossible to recover.
And then he delivers a dark lesson: ‘Yes, so one dies without knowing what happiness is like.”
Oddly, though, this apparently hard-hearted overseer then tells the shepherds about two other treasures supposedly buried in the woods. Apparently he is a believer, too.
This story falls somewhere uncomfortably in the middle of a pastoral sketch, a comedy, and a parable. At first we are tempted to laugh at the shepherd’s homely attire and their foolish credulousness. Then we are spoon fed a lesson about reality vs. fantasy. And finally the story closes with an elegiac portrait of nature, the treasure that is all around the men.
I say fooey.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
This story rather reminds me (in good ways and bad) of “A Dead Body,” which features two peasants assigned with the unpleasant task of standing watch over a corpse in the woods until a medical examiner arrives. Like “Happiness,” it is similarly off-kilter–not quite comic, not quite serious.
Unlike any Chekhov story I can recall, the title of this one is a mystery to me. I *think* the word “happiness” refers to the poor shepherds’ dreams of ease and wealth, but it’s not clear. It’s not much of a story, in any case.
A Chekhov Circus 