Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated) (609 page)

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A storm at sea. Lawyers ought to regard it as a crime.

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X. went to stay with his friend in the country. The place was magnificent, but the servants treated him badly, he was uncomfortable, although his friend considered him a big man. The bed was hard, he was not provided with a night shirt and he felt ashamed to ask for one.

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At a rehearsal. The wife:

“How does that melody in Pagliacci go? Whistle it.”

“One must not whistle on the stage; the stage is a temple.”

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He died from fear of cholera.

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As like as a nail is to a requiem.

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A conversation on another planet about the earth a thousand years hence. “Do you remember that white tree?”

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Anakhthema!

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Zigzagovsky, Oslizin, Svintchulka, Derbaliguin.

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A woman with money, the money hidden everywhere, in her bosom and between her legs….

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All that procedure.

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Treat your dismissal as you would an atmospheric phenomenon.

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A conversation at a conference of doctors. First doctor: “All diseases can be cured by salt.” Second doctor, military: “Every disease can be cured by prescribing no salt.” The first points to his wife, the second to his daughter.

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The mother has ideals, the father too; they delivered lectures; they built schools, museums, etc. They grow rich. And their children are most ordinary; spend money, gamble on the Stock Exchange.

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N. married a German when she was seventeen. He took her to live in Berlin. At forty she became a widow and by that time spoke Russian badly and German badly.

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The husband and wife loved having visitors, because, when there were no visitors they quarreled.

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It is an absurdity! It is an anachronism!

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“Shut the window! You are perspiring! Put on an overcoat! Put on goloshes!”

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If you wish to have little spare time, do nothing.

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On a Sunday morning in summer is heard the rumble of a carriage — people driving to mass.

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For the first time in her life a man kissed her hand; it was too much for her, it turned her head.

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What wonderful names: the little tears of Our Lady, warbler, crows-eyes.

[Footnote 1: The names of flowers.]

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A government forest officer with shoulder straps, who has never seen a forest.

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A gentleman owns a villa near Mentone; he bought it out of the proceeds of the sale of his estate in the Tula province. I saw him in Kharkhov to which he had come on business; he gambled away the villa at cards and became a railway clerk; after that he died.

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At supper he noticed a pretty woman and choked; a little later he caught sight of another pretty woman and choked again, so that he did not eat his supper — there were a lot of pretty women.

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A doctor, recently qualified, supervises the food in a restaurant. “The food is tinder the special supervision of a doctor.” He copies out the chemical composition of the mineral water; the students believe him — and all is well.

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He did not eat, he partook of food.

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A man, married to an actress, during a performance of a play in which his wife was acting, sat in a box, with beaming face, and from time to time got up and bowed to the audience.

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Dinner at Count O.D.’s. Fat lazy footmen; tasteless cutlets; a feeling that a lot of money is being spent, that the situation is hopeless, and that it is impossible to change the course of things.

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A district doctor: “What other damned creature but a doctor would have to go out in such weather?” — he is proud of it, grumbles about it to every one, and is proud to think that his work is so troublesome; he does not drink and often sends articles to medical journals that do not publish them.

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When N. married her husband, he was junior Public Prosecutor; he became judge of the High Court and then judge of the Court of Appeals; he is an average uninteresting man. N. loves her husband very much. She loves him to the grave, writes him meek and touching letters when she hears of his unfaithfulness, and dies with a touching expression of love on her lips. Evidently she loved, not her husband, but some one else, superior, beautiful, non-existent, and she lavished that love upon her husband. And after her death footsteps could be heard in her house.

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They are members of a temperance society and now and again take a glass of wine.

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They say: “In the long run truth will triumph;” but it is untrue.

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A clever man says: “This is a lie, but since the people can not do without the lie, since it has the sanction of history, it is dangerous to root it out all at once; let it go on for the time being but with certain corrections.” But the genius says: “This is a lie, therefore it must not exist.”

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Marie Ivanovna Kladovaya.

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A schoolboy with mustaches, in order to show off, limps with one leg.

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A writer of no talent, who has been writing for a long time, with his air of importance reminds one of a high priest.

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Mr. N. and Miss Z. in the city of X. Both clever, educated, of radical views, and both working for the good of their fellow men, but both hardly know each other and in conversation always rail at each other in order to please the stupid and coarse crowd.

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He flourished his hand as if he were going to seize him by the hair and said: “You won’t escape by that there trick.”

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N. has never been in the country and thinks that in the winter country people use skis. “How I would enjoy ski-ing now!”

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Madam N., who sells herself, says to each man who has her: “I love you because you are not like the rest.”

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An intellectual woman, or rather a woman who belongs to an intellectual circle, excels in deceit.

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N. struggled all his life investigating a disease and studying its bacilli; he devoted his whole life to the struggle, expended on it all his powers, and suddenly just before his death it turned out that the disease is not in the least infectious or dangerous.

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A theatrical manager, lying in bed, read a new play. He read three or four pages and then in irritation threw the play on to the floor, put out the candle, and drew the bedclothes over him; a little later, after thinking over it, he took the play up again and began to read it; then, getting angry with the uninspired tedious work, he again threw it on the floor and put out the candle. A little later he once more took up the play and read it, then he produced it and it was a failure.

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N., heavy, morose, gloomy, says: “I love a joke, I am always joking.”

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The wife writes; the husband does not like her writing, but out of delicacy says nothing and suffers all his life.

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The fate of an actress: the beginning — a well-to-do family in Kertch, life dull and empty; the stage, virtue, passionate love, then lovers; the end: unsuccessful attempt to poison herself, then Kertch, life at her fat uncle’s house, the delight of being left alone. Experience shows that an artist must dispense with wine, marriage, pregnancy. The stage will become art only in the future, now it is only struggling for the future.

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(Angrily and sententiously) “Why don’t you give me your wife’s letters to read? Aren’t we relations?”

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Lord, don’t allow me to condemn or to speak of what I do not know or do not understand.

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Why do people describe only the weak, surly and frail as sinners? And every one when he advises others to describe only the strong, healthy, and interesting, means himself.

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For a play: a character always lying without rhyme or reason.

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Sexton Catacombov.

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N.N., a littérateur, critic, plausible, self-confident, very liberal minded, talks about poetry; condescendingly agrees with one — and I see that he is a man absolutely without talent (I haven’t read him). Some one suggests going to Ai-Petri. I say that it is going to rain, but we set out. The road is muddy, it rains; the critic sits next to me, I feel his lack of talent. He is wooed and made a fuss of as if he were a bishop. And when it cleared up, I went back on foot. How easily people deceive themselves, how they love prophets and soothsayers; what a herd it is! Another person went with us, a Councillor of State, middle-aged, silent, because he thinks he is right and despises the critic, because he too is without talent. A girl afraid to smile because she is among clever people.

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Alexey Ivanitch Prokhladitelny (refreshing) or Doushespasitelny (soul-saving). A girl: “I would marry him, but am afraid of the name — Madam Refreshing.”

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A dream of a keeper in the zoological gardens. He dreams that there was presented to the Zoo first a marmot, then an emu, then a vulture, then a she-goat, then another emu; the presentations are made without end and the Zoo is crowded out — the keeper wakes up in horror wet with perspiration.

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“To harness slowly but drive rapidly is in the nature of this people,” said Bismarck.

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When an actor has money, he doesn’t send letters but telegrams.

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With insects, out of the caterpillar comes the butterfly; with mankind it is the other way round, out of the butterfly comes the caterpillar.