About Love and Other Stories Read online

  The texts used for these translations are to be found in the Academy of Sciences edition of Chekhov’s complete collected works (Moscow, 1974–83).

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Editions

  A. P. Chekhov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v tridsati tomakh, ed. N. F. Belchikov et al. (Moscow, 1974–83).

  Peter Constantine (tr.), The Undiscovered Chekhov: Thirty–Eight New Stories (New York, 1998).

  Constance Garnett (tr.), The Tales of Tchehov, 13 vols. (London, 1916–22).

  Ronald Hingley (tr.), The Oxford Chekhov (complete mature works), 9 vols. (Oxford, 1972).

  Patrick Miles and Harvey Pitcher (trs.), Early Stories (Oxford, 1994).

  Letters

  Rosamund Bartlett (ed.), R. Bartlett and A. Phillips (trs.), Anton Chekhov: A Life in Letters (London 2004).

  Simon Karlinsky (ed. and intr.), Anton Chekhov’s Life and Thought: Selected Letters and Commentary, tr. Michael Henry Heim in collaboration with Simon Karlinsky (New York, 1973).

  Gordon McVay (ed. and tr.), Chekhov: A Life in Letters (London, 1994).

  Biographies

  Rosamund Bartlett, Chekhov: Scenes from a Life (London, 2004).

  Ronald Hingley, A New Life of Anton Chekhov (London, 1976).

  V. S. Pritchett, Chekhov: A Spirit Set Free (New York, 1988).

  Donald Rayfield, Anton Chekhov: A Life (London, 1997).

  Ernest J. Simmons, Chekhov: A Biography (Boston, 1962).

  Background Reading

  Edward Acton, Russia: The Tsarist and Soviet Legacy, 2nd edition (London, 1986).

  D.S. Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature from its Beginnings to 1900 (New York, 1958).

  Charles Moser (ed.), The Cambridge History of Russian Literature, revised edition (Cambridge, 1992).

  Hans Rogger, Russia in the Age of Modernisation and Revolution: 1881–1917 (London, 1983).

  David Saunders, Russia in the Age of Reaction and Reform: 1801–1881 (London, 1992)

  Victor Terras, A History of Russian Literature (New Haven, 1991).

  Criticism and Interpretation

  Petr M. Bitsilli, Chekhov’s Art: A Stylistic Analysis, tr. Toby W. Clyman and Edwina Jannie Cruise (Ann Arbor, 1983).

  A. P. Chudakov, Chekhov’s Poetics, tr. Edwina Jannie Cruise and Donald Dragt (Ann Arbor, 1983).

  J. Douglas Clayton, Chekhov Then and Now: The Reception of Chekhov in World Culture (New York, 1997).

  Toby W. Clyman, A Chekhov Companion (Westport, Conn., 1985).

  Paul Debreczeny and Thomas Eekman (eds.), Chekhov’s Art of Writing (Columbus, Ohio, 1977).

  Julie W. de Sherbinin, Chekhov and Religious Culture: The Poetics of the Marian Paradigm (Evanston, Ill., 1997).

  Thomas A. Eekman, Critical Essays on Anton Chekhov (Boston, 1989).

  Victor Emeljanow, Chekhov: The Critical Heritage (London, 1981).

  William Gerhardie, Anton Chehov: A Critical Study (London, 1923).

  Vera Gottlieb and Paul Allain (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Chekhov (Cambridge, 2000).

  Adrian Hunter, ‘Constance Garnett’s Chekhov and the Modernist Short Story’, Translation and Literature (Spring 2003), 69–87.

  Robert Louis Jackson (ed.), Chekhov: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1967).

  —— (ed.), Reading Chekhov’s Text (Evanston, 1ll., 1993).

  R. L. Johnson, Anton Chekhov: A Study of the Short Fiction (New York, 1993)

  Vladimir Kataev, If Only We Could Know! An Interpretation of Chekhov, tr. and ed. Harvey Pitcher (New York, 2002).

  Virginia Llewellyn–Smith, Anton Chekhov and ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ (Oxford, 1973)

  Janet Malcolm, Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey (New York, 2002).

  Charles W. Meister, Chekhov Criticism: 1880 through 1986 (Jefferson, NC, 1989).

  L. M. O’ Toole, ‘Chekhov: The Black Monk’ Structure, Style and Interpretation in the Russian Short Story (New Haven, Conn., 1982), 161–79.

  ——‘Chekhov’s “The Student”, in Joe Andrew (ed.), The Structural Analysis of Russian Narrative Fiction (Keele, 1984), 1–25.

  Cathy Popkin, The Pragmatics of Insignificance: Chekhov, Zoshchenko, Gogol (Stanford, 1993).

  Donald Rayfield, Chekhov: The Evolution of his Art (London, 1975).

  ——Understanding Chekhov (London, 1999).

  Savely Senderovich and Munir Sendich (eds.), Anton Chekhov Rediscovered: A Collection of New Studies with a Comprehensive Bibliography (East Lansing, Mich., 1987).

  Rene and Nonna D. Wellek (eds.), Chekhov: New Perspectives (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1984).

  Thomas Winner, Chekhov and His Prose (New York, 1966).

  Further Reading in Oxford World’s Classics

  Anton Chekhov, Early Stories, trans. Patrick Miles and Harvey Pitcher

  ——Five Plays, ed. and trans. Ronald Hingley.

  ——The Princess and Other Stories, ed. and trans. Ronald Hingley.

  ——The Russian Master and Other Stories, ed. and trans. Ronald Hingley.

  ——The Steppe and Other Stories, ed. and trans. Ronald Hingley.

  ——Twelve Plays, ed. and trans. Ronald Hingley.

  ——Ward Number Six and Other Stories, ed. and trans. Ronald Hingley.

  Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls, ed. and trans. Christopher English, introd. Robert A. Maguire.

  A CHRONOLOGY OF ANTON CHEKHOV

  1855

  Alexander II becomes tsar of Russia.

  1860

  Chekhov is born on 17 January in Taganrog, a town on the Azov Sea in southern Russia, the third son of the merchant Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov (1825–98) and Evgeniya Yakovlevna Chekhova (1835–1919). Chekhov’s parents married in 1854: of their seven children, five boys and two daughters, only the youngest, Evgeniya (1869–71), did not survive infancy.

  1861

  Emancipation of the serfs; Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons published.

  1864

  Legal reforms; establishment of local government (zemstvo).

  1865–9

  Tolstoy’s War and Peace published.

  1866

  Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment published.

  1868

  Chekhov accepted as a pupil at the Taganrog Classical Gymnasium, following an unsuccessful first year at the Greek Parish school.

  1873

  Attends the theatre for the first time.

  1873

  Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina published; Repin paints The Volga Bargehaulers.

  1874

  Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov first performed.

  1876

  Chekhov’s father is declared bankrupt and flees with his family to Moscow, leaving Anton behind in Taganrog to finish school.

  1879

  Moves to Moscow and becomes a student in the Medical Faculty of Moscow University; Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin first performed.

  1880

  Chekhov’s first story published in a St Petersburg comic journal; meets the artist Levitan, who becomes a close friend.

  1880

  Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov published.

  1880

  Pobedonostsev becomes Procurator of the Holy Synod and is responsible for increase in censorship.

  1881

  Assassination of Alexander II; accession of Alexander III; deaths of Dostoevsky and Mussorgsky.

  1882

  Chekhov is invited to contribute to the leading St Petersburg comic journal Fragments by its editor, Nikolay Leikin.

  1883

  Death of Turgenev.

  1884

  Chekhov graduates from medical school; first signs of tuberculosis; writes almost 300 stories over the course of the year; publication of first book of stories, Tales of Melpomene; serialization of only novel, Drama at a Shooting Party, in a Moscow newspaper.

  1885

  Invited to write for the Petersburg Newspaper.

  1886

  Invited to write for New Times by its owner Alexey Suvorin
, who becomes a close friend; first story published in Suvorin’s newspaper is also under his own name; letter from Dmitry Grigorovich exhorting Chekhov to take his writing more seriously.

  1887

  Travels back to Taganrog and the steppe landscapes of his childhood.

  1888

  Publication of ‘The Steppe’ in the Northern Messenger-the first story to appear in a serious literary journal; awarded the Pushkin Prize by the Imperial Academy of Sciences; first performance of his play Ivanov in Moscow.

  1889

  Death of brother Nikolay from tuberculosis during a summer spent in the Ukrainian countryside.

  1890

  Travels across Siberia to the island of Sakhalin, where over a period of three months and three days he completes a census of its prison population; returns by sea.

  1891

  First trip to Western Europe with Suvorin: six-week tour to Vienna, Venice, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples, Nice, and Paris; assists with famine relief; Trans-Siberian Railway begun.

  1892

  Purchases small country estate at Melikhovo, 50 miles south of Moscow, and moves there with his parents. Works as a doctor to prevent cholera epidemic; publishes ‘Ward No. 6’.

  1893

  Opening of Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the first public collection of Russian art. In 1897 Tretyakov commissions Yosif Braz to paint a portrait of Chekhov.

  1893

  Death of Tchaikovsky soon after the premiere of his Sixth Symphony.

  1894

  Death of Alexander III; accession of Nicholas II.

  1895

  Chekhov’s first meeting with Tolstoy; The Island of Sakhalin published as a book.

  1896

  Builds the first of three schools in the Melikhovo area, and starts sending books to the Taganrog library. Disastrous first performance of The Seagull at the Imperial Alexandrinsky Theatre in St Petersburg.

  1897

  Falls seriously ill; publishes The Peasants, whose unvarnished depiction of rural life causes a furore; spends winter in Nice, and takes serious interest the Dreyfus Case.

  1898

  Meets Olga Knipper; death of father; successful first performance of The Seagull at the Moscow Art Theatre; Diaghilev founds a new journal, The World of Art, which Chekhov later declines to edit.

  1899

  Moves into house built for him in Yalta; first performance of Uncle Vanya at the Moscow Art Theatre; publishes ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’.

  1900

  Elected an honorary member of the literary section of the Imperial Academy of Sciences; the first volumes of the Marx edition of his collected works are published.

  1901

  First performance of Three Sisters at the Moscow Art Theatre; marries Olga Knipper later in the year; excommunication of Tolstoy; assassination attempt on Pobedonostsev; student riots lead to closure of universities; Lenin’s What Is To Be Done? published.

  1904

  First performance of The Cherry Orchard at the Moscow Art Theatre; worsening of medical condition leads to decision to seek treatment in Germany; dies in Badenweiler on 15 July (2 July according to Russian calendar).

  ABOUT LOVE

  AND OTHER STORIES

  THE HUNTSMAN

  A sweltering, muggy midday. Not a cloud in the sky… The scorched grass looks dejected and hopeless: even if there were to be rain, it is too late for it to turn green now… The forest stands motionless and silent, as if the tops of the trees are looking somewhere or waiting for something.

  A tall, narrow-shouldered man of about forty, wearing a red shirt, high boots, and patched trousers handed down from his boss, is sauntering with a lazy swagger along the edge of the clearing. Now he is sauntering down the road. On the right is a mass of greenery, and on the left a gold ocean of ripened rye stretches as far as the eye can see. He is red-faced and sweating. A white cap with a straight jockey’s peak, obviously a charitable gift from some gentleman, sits rakishly on his handsome head of fair hair. There is a game-bag swung across his shoulder in which there is a squashed black grouse. The man is holding a cocked double-barrelled gun in his hands and looking through narrowed eyes at his scraggy old dog which has run on ahead and is sniffing around in the bushes. Everything alive has hidden from the heat…

  ‘Yegor Vlasych!’ The huntsman suddenly hears a quiet voice.

  He gives a start and frowns when he turns round. A pale-faced woman of about thirty, with a scythe in her hand, is standing beside him, as if she had just grown up out of the ground. She tries to look into his face and smiles shyly.

  ‘Oh, it’s you Pelageya!’ the huntsman says as he comes to a stop and uncocks his gun. ‘Hmm!… What are you doing here?’

  ‘There’s women from our village working here, so I came along with them… as a labourer, Yegor Vlasych.’

  ‘Uh-huh…’ Yegor Vlasych mumbles as he walks slowly on.

  Pelageya follows him. They walk on about twenty paces without saying anything.

  ‘I haven’t seen you for a long time, Yegor Vlasych…’ says Pelageya, looking tenderly at the huntsman’s moving shoulder-blades. ‘You dropped in to our hut to get drunk on vodka in Holy Week, but we haven’t seen you since… You just dropped in for a minute or two in Holy Week, and when I think of the state you were in… all drunk you were… Swore at me you did, and beat me, and then you left… And I’d been waiting and waiting… Keeping a look out, waiting for you… Ah, Yegor Vlasych, Yegor Vlasych! You might have stopped by just once!’

  ‘And what’s there for me to do at your place?’

  ‘Well, there’s nothing much to do, of course, but you know… there’s the housekeeping… You could look over things… You’re the master… Hey, I see you’ve shot a grouse. Yegor Vlasych! You should sit down and have a rest…’

  Pelageya laughs like a fool as she says all this, then she looks up into Yegor’s face… Happiness is just radiating from her face…

  ‘Sit down? Could do…’ Yegor says in an indifferent tone, as he chooses a spot between two fir trees growing together. ‘Well, what are you standing there for? You sit down, too!’

  Pelageya sits down a little way off in the full glare of the sun, and covers her smiling mouth with her hand, embarrassed by feeling so happy. A couple of minutes pass in silence.

  ‘You might have stopped by just once!’ Pelageya says softly.

  ‘Why?’ says Yegor with a sigh, taking off his cap and wiping his red brow with his sleeve. ‘There’s no point. Dropping in just for an hour or so would be a waste of time and you’d just get upset, and I certainly couldn’t put up with living in the village the whole time… I’ve been spoilt, as you know… I need a bed to sleep in, good tea and nice conversations… everything’s got to be proper, whereas where you are in the village it’s just poverty and soot… I wouldn’t last a day. Just supposing there was an order that I absolutely had to live with you–I’d either burn down the hut or take my own life. I’ve liked fine things ever since I was a boy, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’

  ‘So where you are living these days?’

  ‘At Dmitry Ivanych, the master’s place, as a huntsman. I bring game to his table… but mostly he just likes having me around.’

  ‘That’s not proper work, Yegor Vlasych… That would be just playing games for other people, but it’s like that’s your trade… your actual job…’

  ‘You don’t understand, you fool,’ says Yegor, looking dreamily up at the sky. ‘You’ve never understood what kind of a person I am, nor will you in a million years… You just think I’m a mad person who has thrown his life away, but for people who know, I’m the best marksman in the district. The gentlemen round here all know it; they’ve even written about me in a magazine. There’s no one who can compete with me where hunting is concerned… And it’s not pride or being spoilt that makes me loathe all your village work. I haven’t known anything apart from guns and dogs since when I was young, you know. Take the gun from me, and I’ll pi
ck up a fishing rod; take that away and I’ll use my hands. Well, maybe I’ve done a bit of horse-dealing too, and I used to roam the fairs when there was money, but you should know yourself that it’s goodbye to the plough whenever a peasant starts hunting or getting into horses. Once the free spirit has taken hold of a man, there’s no way of getting it out of him. It’s just like if one of the gentlemen goes off to act in plays or does something else artistic; he can’t be an office person or a landowner after that. You’re a woman and you don’t understand, but you should understand.’

  ‘I do understand, Yegor Vlasych.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think you can, seeing as you are about to start crying…’

  ‘I’m… I’m not crying…’ says Pelageya, turning away. ‘It’s a sin, Yegor Vlasych! You could at least have the heart to spend one day with me. It’s twelve years since I got married to you, and… there hasn’t been love between us once! I’m… I’m not crying…’

  ‘Love…’ mumbles Yegor, scratching his arm. ‘There can’t be any love. We might officially be man and wife, but is that what we really are? To you I’m someone wild, and for me you’re just a simple woman who doesn’t understand anything. Do you really think we are a couple? I’m an idler, I’m spoilt and free to roam, but you’re a labourer, a peasant; you live in filth and you’re always bent over double. To see things your way, I might be the best huntsman around, but you just look at me in pity… How can we be a couple?’