Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Language: English
Pages: 424
ISBN: 2:00313409
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Called the greatest of short story writer, Anton Chekhov changed the genre itself with his spare, impressionistic depictions of Russian life and the human condition. Now, thirty of his best tales from the major periods of his creative life are available in this outstanding one volume edition. Included are Chekhov's characteristically brief, evocative early pieces such as "The Huntsman" from 1885, which brilliantly conveys the complex texture of two lives during a meeting on a summer's day. Four years later, Chekhov produced the tour de force "A Boring Story" (1889), the penetrating and caustic self-analysis of a dying professor of medicine. Dark irony, social commentary, and symbolism mark the stories that follow, particularly "Ward No. 6" (1892), where the tables turn on the director of a mental hospital and make him an inmate. Here, too, is one of Chekhov's best -known stories. "The Lady with the Little Dog" (1899), a look at illicit love, as well as his own favorite among his stories, "The Student," a moving piece about the importance of religious tradition.
Atmospheric, compassionate, and uncannily wise, Chekhov's short fiction possesses the transcendent power of art to awe and change the reader. This monumental edition, expertly translated, is especially faithful to the meaning of Chekhov's prose and the unique rhythms of his writing, giving readers an authentic sense of his style-and, in doing so, a true understanding of his greatness.
not conceal it, Madly do I love Tatiana …” 1 When they came home, Yegor Semyonych was already up. Kovrin was not sleepy, he got to talking with the old man and went back to the gardens with him. Yegor Semyonych was tall, broad-shouldered, big-bellied, and suffered from shortness of breath, but he always walked so quickly that it was hard to keep up with him. He had an extremely preoccupied air, was always hurrying somewhere, and with a look implying that if he were even one minute late, all
must pay the zemstvo for their little pills and primers, and that means bending their backs even more.” “I won’t argue with you,” said Lida, lowering the newspaper. “I’ve already heard it all. I’ll tell you just one thing: it’s impossible to sit with folded arms. True, we’re not saving mankind, and maybe we’re mistaken in many ways, but we do what we can, and we’re right. The highest and holiest task for a cultured person is to serve his neighbor, and we try to serve as we can. You don’t like
in. “I’ve come to you with a request,” he began, addressing Klochkov and looking ferociously from under the hair hanging on his forehead. “Be so good as to lend me your beautiful maiden for an hour or two! I’m working on a painting, and I can’t do without a model!” “Ah, with pleasure!” Klochkov agreed. “Go on, Anyuta.” “What business do I have there?” Anyuta said softly. “Well, really! The man’s asking for the sake of art, not for some trifle. Why not help if you can?” Anyuta began to dress.
blood is as obscure for him now as twenty years ago. At the table in my office, bending low over a book or a slide, sits my prosector Pyotr Ignatievich, a hardworking, humble, but untalented man of about thirty-five, already bald and with a big stomach. He works from morning to night, reads voluminously, remembers everything he reads excellently—and in that respect he’s not a man, he’s pure gold; in all the rest he’s a cart horse, or, to put it differently, an educated dolt. The characteristic
whirling around there was no need at all to bring man out of non-being, along with his lofty, almost divine reason, and then, as if in mockery, turn him into clay. The life cycle! But what cowardice to comfort oneself with this surrogate of immortality! The unconcious processes that occur in nature are even lower than human stupidity, for in stupidity there is still consciousness and will, while in these processes there is nothing. Only a coward whose fear of death is greater than his dignity