Anton Chekhov
61) Excellent People
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One must never judge by appearances! Look at this book: it has long ago been read. It is warped, tattered, and lies in the dust uncared for; but open it, and it will make you weep and turn pale. My sister is like that book. Lift the cover and peep into her soul, and you will be horror-stricken.
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While vacationing in Yalta, Gurov, a married, middle-aged man, becomes enraptured by a lovely young woman on the beach walking her dog. After a brief affair, the couple part, but despite the pressures of their separate lives, both are deeply affected by their fleeting attachment.
"The Lady with the Dog" was written shortly after Chekhov met Olga Knipper, an actress he would marry two years later. Considered to be one of his greatest stories, "The...
63) The Chorus Girl
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One day when she was younger and better-looking, and when her voice was stronger, Nikolay Petrovitch Kolpakov, her adorer, was sitting in the outer room in her summer villa. It was intolerably hot and stifling. Kolpakov, who had just dined and drunk a whole bottle of inferior port, felt ill-humoured and out of sorts. Both were bored and waiting for the heat of the day to be over in order to go for a walk.
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A collection of Short Stories by Anton Chekhov featuring A Tragic Actor, In A Strange Land, Oh The Public, The Looking Glass, Her Husband and Overdoing It. These stories are small masterpieces. The scene is set quickly and within a few sentences the story line is underway. But all seem to contain an element of the unexpected.
65) Gooseberry
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Nikolai Ivanich has never reconciled himself to life in the city and makes plans to acquire enough money to buy a small estate where he can grow gooseberries, a symbol in his mind of happy life in the countryside. He saves every penny and spends his days dreaming of the future estate: where the main building will be located, ducks swimming in a pond, and where the gooseberry bushes will be planted. His brother sees it as an escape from reality and...
66) Happiness
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A flock of sheep was spending the night on the broad steppe road that is called the great highway. Two shepherds were guarding it. One, a toothless old man of eighty, with a tremulous face, was lying on his stomach at the very edge of the road, leaning his elbows on the dusty leaves of a plantain; the other, a young fellow with thick black eyebrows and no moustache, dressed in the coarse canvas of which cheap sacks are made, was lying on his back,...
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A native Frenchman no longer tutors the wealthy landlord's children as they've grown up and left the house. The Frenchman is now paid simply to be around, to be properly dressed, to smell of scent, and to listen to Kamyshev's babble, to eat and drink and sleep. It may sound like a dream job but there's always a catch.
68) The Huntsman
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Yegor the huntsman, walking down a country road accidentally meets his estranged wife Pelageya whom he's been married for twelve years but visited just several times, and even then, drunk and violent. She weeps and, fawning before him, implores him to visit her more often. He tries to explain why he, the best sportsman around, 'a pampered man', enjoying good tea and 'refined conversation', could not bear to live in a village.
69) A Tragic Actor
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Young impressionable Masha sees a tragic actor Fenogenov during his benefit night and falls madly in love with him. Masha decides to run away with the actor and marry him despite her father's clear disapproval. Her father disowns her describing her husband as idle, stupid, and of no fixed home or occupation. Masha later finds herself in desperate need of money and has to seek help from her farther.
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Chekhov's trilogy of interlinked stories about Truth, Freedom and Love. First published in 1898 in Russian and released as separate stories. This title, based on translations by Constance Garnett with revision and adaptation by Max Bollinger follows Chekhov's original vision by bringing the three stories together once again.
72) Grisha
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A boy of two years and eight months makes his first foray into the outside world in a company of his somewhat wayward nanny and is quite overwhelmed, having got even his first taste of alcohol. In the evening he cannot get to sleep. The soldiers with the brooms, the big cats, the horses, the bit of glass, the tray of oranges, the bright buttons, all gathered together, weigh on his brain. He tosses from side to side, babbles, and, at last, unable to...
73) Her Husband
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Natalya Bronin is lying in her bedroom, her whole being abandoned to repose. She lies, deliciously drowsy, thinking of her little daughter who lives somewhere far away with her grandmother or aunt. The child is more precious to her than the public, bouquets, notices in the papers, adorers and she would be glad to think about her till morning. She is happy, at peace, and all she longs for is not to be prevented from lying undisturbed, dozing and dreaming...
74) Overdoing It
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Smirnov is scared of being robbed. To compensate and deter the cabman from attacking him, he blusters on in a comical way about his fighting abilities, the three revolvers he doesn't have, and how a party of armed friends will join him soon.
75) Anyuta
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In the cheapest room of a big block of furnished apartments Stepan Klotchkov, a medical student in his third year, was walking to and fro, zealously conning his anatomy. In the window, covered by patterns of frost, sat Anyuta, a thin little brunette of five-and-twenty, very pale with mild grey eyes. Sitting with bent back she was busy embroidering with red thread the collar of a man's shirt. She was working against time...
76) The Grasshopper
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Olga Ivanovna Dymova enjoys the company of extraordinary people, all painters, writers and musicians, who look to her bright and original. All members of the small artistic circle which she is a hostess of, they all tell her she herself is a promising artist and pianist, the reputation she tries to uphold by practicing regularly and producing countless and, apparently, not very original 'etudes'.
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Nellie, a young and pretty girl, dreaming day and night of being married, gazes into a looking-glass. In the mirror her future husband emerges and they live together through days and months in fast forward, yet she sees her future distinctly in all its details.
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Eaten away by illness, an elderly coffin maker named Yakov reflects on his life-in particular his indifferent relationship with his now-deceased wife, Marfa, and his antipathy towards Rothschild, the flutist in the Jewish klezmer orchestra in which Yakov occasionally plays.
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The theme of romance continues in this volume and begins with iconic 'The Lady with the Dog' by Anton Chekhov. Set in Yalta, Crimea, appears at first as a holiday romance. Gurov is a married man but he holidays on his own and has a history of holiday affairs. He meets the lady of the story's title with her Pomeranian dog. But Chekhov's love stories are not romantic accounts of unrequited love or of love at first sight. Or, even of tortured love that...