"The Bishop" (1902)

This late story by Anton Chekhov, written two years before his death at 44, is perhaps not surprisingly full of the foreboding of death. Chekhov had been battling, as we say, tuberculosis for some time. It does not feel much self-pitying but is instead artful and quiet, with a series of great moments, like the movie Wild Strawberries. It's Holy Week and Easter on the way and the bishop is dying. At the Palm Sunday service he is surprised to see his mother—a mother of nine and grandmother of 40 by now. It feels dreamlike. He has not seen her in nine years. Her behavior toward him has become more like a parishioner's, intimidated by his stature and fearful, and he feels sad and distant from her. The memories well forth: "Why did it, that long-past time that could never return, why did it seem brighter, fuller, and more festive than it had really been?" Why indeed. This story is a stark reminder that Chekhov was still getting better. Even in the face of eternity it's little details that tell, perhaps even more so in memory. The bishop may be sad for the distance he feels from his mother, but he is brave and stoic as he faces death and ruminates over his life. It's no crisis of faith, exactly. He continues with his rituals and their meanings. His most evocative memories have little to do with death or afterlife and everything to do with life, telltale moments of existence. I like the detail of electric lights first being installed in the town in some of these scenes. The times they are a-changing. People gather around to watch and look at the lights. In many ways this story feels like all encounters of parents and grown children—awkward, affectionate, strange. Are bishops generally middle-aged like Chekhov? This one feels older. He shows courage and dignity facing death but is peevish about his routines. The diagnosis of typhus appears to be news but he doesn't seem surprised, as if it only confirms what he has suspected. He dies and is replaced. Life just goes on. In the end his mother is seen saying "that she had a son, a bishop, and this she says very timidly, afraid that she may not be believed.... And, indeed, there are some who do not believe her."

Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov

"The Darling" (1899)

I finally got to Anton Chekhov's version of "The Darling," going about it all ass-backwards and reading the Scott Bradfield demi-homage from 1990 first, a few years back. I like the Chekhov more, perhaps needless to say, though I appreciate Bradfield's stunt work. The stories have parallels but are rather different. Chekhov is more artful and lacerating about the comic aspects of his tale and the main character's strange emptiness. Olenka starts as a young woman whose father, a retired collegiate assessor (whatever that is), is dying. Kukin is a theater manager and impresario who lives at "the lodge" with them. He's always complaining about his business. After her father's death, Olenka falls in love with him and they marry. Olenka discusses the ins and outs of theater business with everyone she meets, and they live happily ever after. Until Kukin dies rather suddenly after a few years. Olenka retires within herself and mourns for several months. Then she meets a lumber merchant, they get along very well, and they marry. Now her conversation is full of remarks like, "Timber gets dearer every year; the price rises twenty per cent." Of course this guy dies too after a few years, equally untimely. And there's another one. On a certain level the psychological realism is remarkably modern, looking forward to Woody Allen's Zelig, Jerzy Kosinki's Chauncy Gardner, and a disorder known as environmental dependency syndrome. Olenka's style is a strange mix of disappearing and consuming. She disappears into her partners yet somehow also seems to be eating them up. Or maybe it's bad luck, or perhaps it's an ironical take. We learn nothing of her mother, which suggests another untimely exit in Olenka's life, another trauma. When we meet her she is losing her father. As a woman alone in the world at the turn of the 20th century, she was dependent on a man for her survival. Women could push against that and did, currents of suffrage and feminism were in the air by then, but the baseline was still dependency on men. Olenka does not seem to push against it—except, perhaps, in a passive-aggressive way—but rather to accept it whole-heartedly. She gives herself entirely to her men. "You darling!" they say. Later in the story, when she is much older and maternal instincts have taken hold, it's a boy. All things must pass, as our strange darling Olenka learns well. The pathos of her emptiness is drawn to a tee.

Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov

"A Doctor's Visit" (1898)

In many ways this story by Anton Chekhov is another that speaks to the gathering social unrest in Russia at the turn of the 20th century. The doctor of the title, a young man still in the early part of his career, is called to the house of a factory owner to attend the family's only daughter, who is 20 and showing symptoms of heart problems. The family patriarch is dead, but the estate is vast, with the factory itself and accommodations for the workers as well as the family mansion, which now houses only the widow, the daughter, and a governess. The story has a good deal of social awareness, as the doctor observes the poor living conditions of the workers, the constant din of the factory, how much the governess enjoys the fine dining and living conditions and how it contrasts with the lives of everyone else there. But the story seems most alive when it involves the doctor's interactions with the young heiress, Liza. It appears the heart malady is more the result of anxiety, with some suggestion that she is suffering from the disparity of her wealthy life contrasted with all around her (the social focus again, with Communist revolution less than 20 years away, though Chekhov did not know it). There seems to be a connection, perhaps even love, between the doctor and Liza, though it is noted the doctor has a family waiting for him at home. The story could be the beginning of a novel about their romance, so likely does it feel. At first the doctor dismisses Liza (and her mother) as hysterical, but then a second impression of Liza overtakes that: "He saw a soft, suffering expression which was intelligent and touching: she seemed to him altogether graceful, feminine, and simple; and he longed to soothe her, not with drugs, not with advice, but with simple, kindly words." This happens early and immediately charges the story with a tension that is at odds with the subtle critique of income distribution. These two elements continually pull at one another even as Liza and the doctor make their tentative connections. The doctor is implored to stay overnight even though it is inconvenient for him. I have the impression it's his budding interest in Liza that ultimately convinces him to stay. As he broods and frets about her and the troubling factory scene, unable to sleep, the essential tension always remains central: "One is shy of asking men under sentence what they have been sentenced for," he thinks; "and in the same way it is awkward to ask very rich people what they want so much money for, why they make such a poor use of their wealth, why they don't give it up, even when they see in it their unhappiness." For a story that doesn't appear to have that much going on, there is a fair amount going on here.

Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov

Little Trilogy (1898)

"The Man in a Case" / "Gooseberries" / "About Love"

It's tempting to make a joke about the efficiencies of Anton Chekhov writing a trilogy of short stories rather than novels. You can read this trilogy in an hour or less. He did intend the stories to be linked but for me it's more of an excuse to read three instead of just one, particularly as they are from one of his strongest periods. It is not one of those accidental trilogies, yoking together three unrelated things later under some semi-fabricated conceptual umbrella (e.g., random William Burroughs novels, Bugs Bunny cartoons, or Roman Polanski movies set in apartments). Chekhov wrote these stories consecutively, they are linked by continuing characters, and they are unified by a theme of people's tendency toward self-delusion (admittedly a theme in a lot of Chekhov). The frame is two sportsmen hiking the Russian countryside on a hunting trip, the younger schoolteacher Burkin and the elder veterinarian Ivan Ivanovitch, who are familiar companions. In "The Man in a Case," Burkin tells a story of another teacher, Byelikov, a social misfit who has an opportunity for marriage which he blows. Burkin sees the man as someone trembling forever inside a protective shell but Ivan Ivanovitch thinks he may not be so different from anyone else. "Isn't our living in town, airless and crowded, our writing useless papers, our playing vint—isn't that all a sort of case for us?" he says. It reminds him of another story, which he tells the next day in "Gooseberries." Now they are sheltering from rain in the country home of a third, Alehin. The story involves Ivan Ivanovitch's brother, a civil servant in a lifeless clerk's existence who dreams of a farm with gooseberry bushes, which he finally obtains through various unscrupulous means. He proudly serves the berries to Ivan Ivanovitch on his first visit at the farm. The berries are bitter, but Ivan Ivanovitch's brother cannot stop snacking on them and commenting how good they are. In "About Love," Alehin gets a chance to tell a story, with full membership now in this trilogy. It's the story of his own thwarted love affair with a neighbor who is married with children. It went on for years, until she and her family finally moved away for reasons unrelated. The affair was one of those cow-eyed unconsummated things, felt on both sides. The two often spent time together on walks and such but never came close to acknowledging their feelings until the very end. In fact, over the years it became so curdled that they had periods of being unpleasant to one another. Yet they always felt a bond of attachment. Alehin quite evidently still does, even as he tells the story years since her departure. After Alehin's story the rain finally stops and they can step outside and enjoy the fresh air and the view. All three stories, separately but even more so together, are a great example of the way Chekhov tells just enough to suggest vast interior worlds lost inside the equally vast exterior of the Russian countryside. He is always so quiet about being so remarkably good.

Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov

"Ionitch" (1898)

It's possible that my favorite part of this wry story of love and courtship by Anton Chekhov is that the girl's father is an early but recognizable version of a Dad jokester. "Bongjour," he appears prone to say in greeting. "Not badsome," he assesses things. Chekhov writes, "He knew a number of anecdotes, charades, proverbs, and was fond of being humorous and witty, and he always wore an expression from which it was impossible to tell whether he was joking or in earnest." He's the father of Ekaterina Ivanovna, called Kitten, the girl / woman love interest out there in the isolated hinterlands, where Ionitch has arrived as the village doctor. The story cuts pretty close to the bone on vagaries of love. At first, for no discernible reason other than her family is charming and Kitten is attractive and of age, Ionitch (not to be confused with "bee-yotch," as the father might say in the 21st century) is nutty for her. He's in hot pursuit, steals kisses when he can, and presses her to marry him. As a doctor he is a good prospect. But Kitten is only 18 and desperate to leave the village and study music. She turns him down. Ionitch never saw it coming. Four years later, things are different. Ionitch has discovered he likes his bachelorhood and Kitten has learned she is not an exceptional talent. Now Ionitch looks good to her, but alas her chances with him are not what they were. In fact, he treats her as a bullet dodged, and avoids her after she declares herself. There is an interesting and familiar complexity to this. In many ways it's classic Chekhov because in many ways it's classic human psychology. I have the impression Ionitch is not spiteful about his rejection, though he is unfeeling toward her, which could well be spite. On balance it seems more like he has just realized he doesn't want to be in a relationship. Kitten's declaration is full of humility and pathos. Ionitch's fear of intimacy is palpable. Isn't it thus, perhaps, the better idea for him to live out his days as a single man? Maybe. That's part of what makes this a good story. At the end Ionitch seems to be denying that he ever even knew Kitten's family, which is pathetic, if not pathological. So maybe he is only a weak man after all. Kitten also lives out her life single, with her parents. Sad day when they die! A lot packed into this one.

Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov

"Peasants" (1897)

This bracing long story by Anton Chekhov was a sensational controversy on first being published. Even Leo Tolstoy thought it was too much, a "crime against the people." Russian censors disapproved its bleak portrait and the report by one (a V. Sokolov), per Wikipedia, makes as good a case as any for the importance of the story, even though he was arguing for cuts and changes:

In the first part of the April volume of Russkaya Mysl there is a story by A.P. Chekhov called "Peasants" which demands special attention. In it the life of peasants in villages is depicted in exceedingly grim tones. Throughout summer they toil in fields from morning till late at night along with members of their families, and yet are unable to store bread even for half a year. Nearly dying of hunger because of that, almost all of them, nevertheless, are engaged in excessive drinking. For this they are ready to part with everything, even their last piece of clothes... Their helplessness is aggravated by the immense burden of taxes which for peasants' families are unbearable. The real curse for these peasants, or rather their families, is indeed their total ignorance. The majority of the muzhiks, if the author is to be believed, do not believe in God and are deaf to religion. Peasants long for light and knowledge but are unable to find the way to them on their own because very few of them can read or write at all. Most of them are seemingly unaware of the concept of literacy as such.

Thus the results to date, in 1897 (if the author is to be believed!), of the liberation of the Russian serfs in 1861, nearly 40 years on. That makes the story important politically and historically, but it also has the usual high polish of Chekhov, if decidedly in the brutal naturalist style, taking a page from Zola and even upping the ante. Chekhov's observant eye and ear are trained on squalor and degraded living conditions. It feels true because it goes so far so unflinchingly. It's not hard to see why people objected and resisted giving it credence—much the way police brutality is treated in the US nowadays. But, as they say, that doesn't make it any less true, and we know now that Chekhov's story is closer to journalism than fiction. But it is fiction, a good story, and as if to prove the point it comes with a tender and bittersweet resolution. Bittersweet with all emphasis on the bitter. The sweetness lies only in futile hope.

Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov

An Anonymous Story (1893)

The title of this long story by Anton Chekhov seems to be translated more often as "The Story of an Unknown Man," but I'm sticking with Constance Garnett, who has it this way, "An Anonymous Story." Her work is also why I keep pushing the Delphi kindle product, as I haven't seen any better translations, but perhaps because her versions of Chekhov are in the public domain now they are less available. This is a really great story—pure Chekhov in certain ways, an almost Dostoevskian departure in others, with an unusual premise that brings an element of exotic intrigue. The narrator is a spy of some kind, who takes work as a footman with a cynical and worldly minor government bureaucrat. The narrator's mission, never really made clear, has something to do with this functionary's father, a much more powerful political figure. The narrator describes his footman duties and the household in detail. The bureaucrat, Orlov, is a dedicated bachelor, and has three close friends who gather on Thursdays to snigger at the world and play cards. All four are great characters, odd and callous eccentrics, drawn well. Then, one day, one of Orlov's mistresses appears, announcing she has left her husband and is moving in. She appears to be genuinely smitten with Orlov. For Orlov and his friends she is an impossible problem. The friends' only counsel to Orlov is to end it and the sooner the better. Orlov cannot confront her, however, and instead starts to tell her he is going on business trips when he is really staying in town with one of his friends. Orlov cannot even stand to be around her at all before long. Meanwhile, our footman narrator's mysterious mission comes to an end and he prepares to bug out. But first he must unburden himself of all his contempt for Orlov in a letter. The letter is a very Dostoevskian passage, and almost infects the story from that point on, as the narrator also feels he must unburden himself and come clean with the mistress about her situation, Orlov's deceptions, and his (the narrator's) part in all of it. Then the mistress, finally convinced of the truth, declares she wants to be part of the narrator's revolutionary movement. The narrator is all for that but really what he wants—in a perfect Chekhov twist—is for the mistress to fall in love with him. But she doesn't. She is fond of him, and nurses him when he is sick with pleurisy, but she's there for the revolution. Complications, tragic and perhaps inevitable, ensue. For all its zigs and zags this story has a wrenching yet gratifying finish. Really good one.

Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov

"Rothschild's Fiddle" (1894)

It's short and even obvious in some ways, but Anton Chekhov loaded a tremendous amount into this story. Yukov, the main character—Rothschild is important too, but in a supporting role—is a 70-year-old coffin maker who is self-centered and profoundly unhappy with his lot. He is full of regrets for all the things he wishes he had done, such as working harder and saving more money, but they are also things he still doesn't want to do. In addition, he's a detestable anti-Semite. Rothschild is one of his particular targets for abuse and hatred. Rothschild plays the flute in a mostly Jewish orchestra. When the orchestra needs a violin player, Yukov is invited. He takes the work for the money but he is unpleasant company so he is not asked often. Yukov is worse to his wife of 52 years—he has even forgotten they had a child who died as a baby. He is never kind to her and often abusive. In the story she takes sick and dies, and then, of course, Yukov begins to see the error of his ways and find himself full of more regrets. It's hard to feel much sympathy for him, but Chekhov stays close to him, faithfully grinding through his feelings and revelations. Somehow Yukov's epiphany—even as his own death suddenly closes on him—becomes quite moving and believable. He has thoughts like, "If it were not for hatred and malice people would get immense benefit from one another," and somehow they are convincing. Perhaps more so to the other characters in the story, such as Rothschild, than the reader. But Rothschild gets to hear the music Yukov makes in this redemptive state (his only response: "Vachhh!" and tears), and he also receives the violin as a gift after Yukov's death. Chekhov was in his mid-30s when he wrote this, but his approximation of an embittered man passing into his old age and facing death seems uncanny and on the nose. Is it partly because he made Yukov so unlikable? Possibly. His poor wife never gets to see a lot of these fruits (after 52 years!), as it's her death which sets them in motion. And Yukov does not get so many of them himself, as he dies shortly after her. It sounds like a matter of weeks, if not days. I don't think we're intended to learn a lesson here about letting go of our own regrets and their causes before it's too late. Ultimately it's just a story of a sad old man coming to his sad old end, full of surprising pathos and beauty.

Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov

Reading Chekhov (2001)

I actually forgot this book existed when I started on a project of reading stories by Anton Chekhov recently. I wish I would have remembered sooner because Janet Malcolm discusses another dozen or two stories beyond the ones I cherry-picked from internet recommendations. I know I have to get to his plays as well. Malcolm's slim book is based on travels as well as reading. She visits Russia and Ukraine to see the places Chekhov lived and knew. I don't do much of that sort of traveling myself—or any—but it does provide some interesting side details. As with much of the best of Malcolm, she excels at deep dives reaching for connections with an almost clinical precision. The story she returns to repeatedly is "The Lady With the Dog," but she ranges widely across Chekhov's work and brings an assortment of interesting insights to stories that might not have done much for me at first, such as the long "Ward No. 6" and "Peasants." She talks about Chekhov's literary relationship with Dostoevsky, for whom Chekhov claimed not to care much, and traces out points where Dostoevsky's influence is apparent. I still take much of the similarities I've noticed between them—largely, the blunt voice—as artifact of Constance Garnett, the prolific translator who worked extensively on material by both. I can feel the connection with Dostoevsky most in some of Chekhov's stories I don't like as much. I prefer the ones, like "The Lady With the Dog," that are almost pedestrian, yet elliptical and strangely moving, achieving their effects in ways that send me back with the idea of picking them apart to see how they work. That, in many ways, is Malcolm's project here, and she lingers over and returns frequently to a specific handful, including some of the plays. She loves Chekhov profoundly but resents the way he has become a kind of sentimental icon, a reflexive genius attended by platitudes. She focuses a lot on Chekhov's use of suggestive compressions, implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) arguing it as his greatest strength. I think I agree—there's something deceptively casual about his best work, almost anecdotal, yet so many of these things stick with you for a long while. With his focus on the short story Chekhov can verge on the poetical. But he's also a consummate social realist, and the melancholy of his short life can subtly or not so subtly suffuse the work. Like Thoreau, like Kafka, like H.P. Lovecraft, like Elvis Presley, Chekhov died in his 40s. I'm happy for the beefed-up list.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic.

"The Black Monk" (1894)

This story by Anton Chekhov seems to have a certain unwillingness to commit to its own reality, which is what I think I like about it. On the one hand it's almost ridiculously straightforward about a man, Kovrin, who is succumbing to mental illness, a carefully constructed tale of woe verging on tragedy. On the other hand, the delusion that defines Kovrin's madness, the encounters with a mysterious monk in black, are so seductively believable I have a hard time writing them off as the workaday madness of so much fiction—the cheap device. Certainly that's how the story appears to work. His madness makes no sense. Kovrin is an orphan but much beloved by a creative, interesting, and somewhat kooky family, into which he eventually marries. We see the seeds of Kovrin's delusion when he is fascinated by a legend whose source he cannot recall, about a monk in black who has wandered the world for centuries. Not long after, Kovrin sees him in a strange vision, and not long after that the monk engages Kovrin in conversation, telling him he has been uniquely chosen. "I exist in your imagination, and your imagination is part of nature, so I exist in nature," he explains himself to Kovrin, who is continually questioning his reality. 'You are a phantom, an hallucination," Kovrin says. "So I am mentally deranged, not normal?" "What if you are?" the monk soothes him. "Why trouble yourself?" The classic words of a devil's imp sitting on your shoulder. Meanwhile, as the years go by, the view from outside Kovrin is increasingly clear. His life is going to hell. He is cold and alienating to his wife, who at one point catches him talking to empty air. As she confronts Kovrin, the monk soon disappears. She and her father attempt to "cure" his mental illness and he improves some, but grows increasingly bitter and paranoid, believing they are betraying his genius for mediocrity. Things get worse and they never get better. Kovrin is curious in that he doesn't deny his mental illness but indeed seems to prefer it. The illusion of the monk in this story is the most interesting part. No one denies what it is, but Kovrin likes having him around—it's a bit like the "we need the eggs" joke—and the reader tends to agree. Is it angel or demon? It doesn't seem to matter much. I'm not sure whether it's just the monk's soothing words but something about him is attractive. At story's end I'm pretty much in perfect sympathy with Kovrin, even though he is insane.

Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov

The Steppe (1888)

Anton Chekhov characterized his long story (novella, whatever) as "something rather odd and much too original." It does feel distinctly modern now. He wrote it after a journey to Ukraine for his health, rejuvenated by a reacquaintance with the geography of the steppe. I have similar feelings, I think, for the North American Great Plains, the grasslands of eastern Montana and Wyoming and the western Dakotas, which are steppe-like. The story focuses on a young boy, an orphan about 9, who is traveling with his uncle to be placed in a boarding school. It's high summer, hot and sweltering. The uncle has other business in the region and the boy is sent ahead with a group of peasants hauling a wagon train. A priest is also traveling with him. The action is built out of the boy's perceptions of this immense journey and the radical changes in his life. All these characters—a handful of the peasants become familiar to us—are like vivid phantoms flickering in and out of the vision of the boy. Many times he doesn't understand them but we often can even when he is confused. Toward the end he and the wagon train party encounter a giant thunderstorm. Chekhov has a great way of staying inside the boy yet always keeping us aware of the situation outside him too. It alternates between the concrete—the storm is wonderfully done—and the dreamy, as the boy's perceptions are often mixed-up and childlike. We grasp the poignancy of his situation as he will not for years. He's so alone in the world—his uncle accepts the responsibility for him, but he's not cut out to be a family man or father figure (even though he obviously has become the boy's father figure). The story often reminded me in pleasant ways of road trips I've taken across the Great Plains, not just the geography, though that is striking, but the sense of travel as an emotional or even spiritual transition from Point A to Point B. This journey obviously represents a lifetime before-and-after event for the boy no matter what happens next. Somehow Chekhov captures the almost unimaginable hugeness of it.

Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov

"The Kiss" (1887)

This story by Anton Chekhov is lighthearted in its premise, almost sitcom material in a way, yet the yearning for connection, pathetic or otherwise, is where it somehow finds a strange fascination. It focuses on a small event that is improbable but not unlikely. A lot of us might have stories like it. A traveling brigade of soldiers puts up in a small village and the local land baron invites them to tea. It's mostly a matter of social obligation on both sides. The retired General von Rabbek is entertaining others as well at the same time and his hospitality is perfunctory. The officers briefly meet the general and his wife and then they are on their own. Ryabovitch, our hero, is young, shy, and inexperienced. He can't stand the crowd and follows some others to the billiard-room, where he is ignored. It is still some time before supper will be served, so he wanders off, exploring the mansion. He enters a room so dark he can't see. Then he realizes someone else is there. It's a woman. "At last!" she says, embracing and kissing him. Then she realizes her mistake, shrieks, and Ryabovitch leaves the room. He never sees her face or dress or anything that can identify her. He remembers everything about the moment—the lotion she wore, a drop of peppermint oil on his cheek, the sense of her presence. He will live on this experience for weeks, though he has no idea who she is and knows well she was in the room to meet someone else. Yet he spins out a life of happiness and marriage with her. It is a boost of confidence to a very shy man. He fights with his rational self for the meaning of the incident. In the end, when he returns weeks or months later to the village, his rational side appears to have won. But we also know how hard it is to vanquish the irrational. I like how Chekhov isolates the desire in such a hopeless situation. Not only does Ryabovitch have no idea who she is, but he already knows she's likely a philanderer. But he remembers her in his arms, kissing him, the lotion and the peppermint oil. In spite of everything it augurs hope and promise.

Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov

"Vanka" (1886)

This very short story by Anton Chekhov packs an emotional punch, which is likely as intended, published on Christmas Day in 1886. It's a letter written on Christmas Eve by a 9-year-old boy to his grandfather. The boy, an orphan, has been apprenticed to a shoemaker in Moscow, who may or may not be cruel but certainly he is a disciplinarian and impatient with foolishness. The boy is miserable. He wants out. He wants it so badly you can feel it through the page. As his circumstances and backstory are sketched in, it's evident that won't happen, and also his situation might not be as bad as he thinks. But that won't help him in the weeks and months ahead, because we already know something he doesn't. By addressing it only "To grandfather in the village, Konstantin Makaritch," the letter will never make it to his grandfather. All his hopes enclosed in that letter are in vain, we know even on this Christmas Eve, but the boy will suffer through diminishing hope and a sense of abandonment all winter. It's poignant and well done, and in Russia, according to Wikipedia, it even contributed a figure of speech: "the village, to grandfather" refers to mail sent in such a way that it will never be received. I'm not sure why I have such confidence that the boy will be all right with the shoemaker. A fair number of 19th-century storylines involve the ill treatment of orphaned apprentices. By the boy's account he's not treated that well by the master, but it reads more like junior-high teachers I remember getting impatient with me or others and snapping. A 9-year-old is still a handful. And I feel for this boy. The story reminded me of going to summer camp when I was 11 or 12, which was bad enough, being away from home for nearly two weeks. But then we went on a miserable canoe trip, in the sweltering dog days of August, with portages and other outrageous creature discomforts. I found myself utterly desolate one late night at about 4 a.m., huddled up in a stuffy pup tent with two others. They were sleeping but I could not, had not been able to all night. I crawled out of the humid canvas space thinking I might find relief at last from a nagging constipation, only to find instead a creepy orange-light vibe and all the stall doors removed in the outbuilding bathroom facilities. I felt like I was in hell. The bugs were really bad too and I was afraid of seeing someone at that hour. That's the kind of misery I feel coming from this boy, and I sympathize. But I also know I was back home within days and things were back to normal. For this boy, however that's not what's going to happen. Great story, all done in the boy's voice.

Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov

"The Lady With the Dog" (1899)

Read story by Anton Chekhov online.

Anton Chekhov's late story fits neatly enough into the 19th-century European realist version of adultery, with Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina. It's shorter, obviously, so somewhat abstracted, but no less potent. It focuses more on the mutual attraction between lovers, not just the woman's, though she gets pride of place in the title. (Translation note: The title has been variously rendered as "The Lady With a Dog," "The Lady With the Little Dog," "The Lady With the Small Dog," "The Lady With the Pet Dog," and "[The] Lady With [the] Lapdog." The literal translation from Russian is "Lady With Dog." I'm working with the Constance Garnett translations.) She's an eligible woman in a bad marriage. He's a banker also in a bad marriage. They meet on vacation, and have a brief affair. The story is told third-person, mostly from the point of view of the banker, who expects it will be a fling that soon fades from memory. But it does not. He can't stop thinking of her. Eventually he tracks her down and finds she feels the same. They begin a long-term, long-distance affair. The story's tone is not particularly judgmental, though it notes the inconvenience and meager rewards of their behavior. It's neither a glorious romance nor a doomed one. It simply exists more or less as a condition of life—a welcome one, in many ways, and an annoying one too, in many others. It's hard to envy them, but also hard not to sympathize. It feels very much like modern life as we understand it—or, more accurately, as we don't understand it. I like the way it moves along a spectrum of illicit relationship, from objectified sexual conquest as a kind of hobby, to the indignities of love. The story feels modern partly because it's so obvious that divorce would do nothing to change anything. Indeed, a modern version could well include both divorcing and then marrying each other and still come to a similar bittersweet conclusion. I'd like to take this place to raise my objections to the admonitions of William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, in their Elements of Style book, against using the term "the human condition." They—or Strunk, with White evidently concurring a few decades on—view it as a self-evident cliché or banality. But some things seem to fall squarely in the camp of exactly "the human condition"—that impossible paradox of desire and "reality" (I insist on the scare quotes). Among those things are a good many of the people and situations found in Chekhov's stories, not least this tale set in Crimea of inexplicable human passion. By the way, if it's any help, the dog is a white toy Pomeranian.

Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov

"The Bet" (1889)

Read story by Anton Chekhov online.

Anton Chekhov's very short and much anthologized story has more gimmicks than I normally expect from him, though I think it works and also has many characteristic notes. It's more of a fable in structure, a thought experiment, and arguably gets twisty toward the end. The bet of the title is between a banker and a lawyer. The banker bets "two millions" (from the Constance Garnett translations) that the lawyer could not tolerate five years of solitary confinement, that no man could. The lawyer cries, "Make it 15 years and you've got a bet, mister," or words to that effect, and they're on. This all comes of a discussion about the death penalty. Neither man is entirely happy with himself about making the commitment, but there's no going back. The banker sets him up in a room and the rules are settled: "It was agreed that for fifteen years he should not be free to cross the threshold of the lodge, to see human beings, to hear the human voice, or to receive letters and newspapers. He was allowed to have a musical instrument and books, and was allowed to write letters, to drink wine, and to smoke." There was a system for exchanging food, books, and letters. If you're anything like me, it doesn't actually sound so bad. Chekhov's imagination feels lively and engaged, as he imagines various changes in approach to living over the years. At the end of the story, a number of ironic events transpire, and various surprises. They seem to be about the characters of the kinds of men who would make a bet like this. My favorite parts, actually, after the entertainment of the premise itself, are their private doubts and misgivings, which we're privy to via the omniscient narrator. The banker paces and agonizes later: "What was the object of that bet? What is the good of that man's losing fifteen years of his life and my throwing away two millions? Can it prove that the death penalty is better or worse than imprisonment for life? No, no. It was all nonsensical and meaningless." I love it when Russian writers sound like that (which is possibly Garnett). The lawyer's own sense of the meaninglessness of the bet informs his actions in the resolution, more or less. But more than anything I liked reading about the terms of the confinement, though it was indeed very harsh and strict about human relations. Among other things, there's a good case here that both of them won the bet, and lost the bet, and did so independently of one another. A pretty neat little literary stunt—as I said, a thought experiment more than anything else, but a nicely done and intriguing one.

Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov