I've Been Checking Off Chekhov

Chekhov and Tolstoy

I bought Ecco Press' box set of Chekhov's short stories all translated by Constance Garnett—the design of the artifice is beautiful. I get irritated sometimes with translations because I don't like counting on someone else to tell me what an author meant to say. But I don't have time to learn Russian and have decided that Garnett probably did a bit of research.

It's slow going. I'm only on the second book. The first realization I've had thus far in reading is that the majority of the fiction I like is gossip at base. The second realization I've had is that the first is not novel.

I came to the first realization while drinking wine, eating and gossiping with my roommate and his mother at a restaurant. Episodes were discussed that I remembered hearing on previous visits. Don't misunderstand; I was giddy as the others to contribute to conversations about the misfortunes of people that I didn't know and didn't know me. But I thought to myself, "This sounds like dialogue from a parlor in a Chekhov story." Of course I didn't ride to the restaurant on a horse, through the snow, and I wasn't wearing a top coat or a pince nez. And I don't think unmarried women over 23 are a lost cause. But at base, we were Chekhov's characters.

Below are two passages from "The Duel" that I thought worthy of being written down in my notebook.

Laevsky played, drank wine, and thought that duelling was stupid and sensless, as it did not decide the question but only complicated it, but that it was sometimes impossible to get on without it.

'It flings the boat back,' he thought; 'she makes two steps forward and one step back; but the boatmen are stubborn, they work the oars unceasingly, and are not afraid of the big waves. The boat goes on and on. Now she is out of sight, but in half an hour the boatmen will see the steamer lights distinctly, and within an hour they will be by the steamer ladder. So it is in life....In the search for truth man makes two steps forward and one step back. Suffering mistakes, and weariness of life thrust them back, but the thirst for truth and stubborn will drive them on and on. And who knows? Perhaps they will reach the real truth at last.'

There's not a lot else to do but toil at the Sisyphean task when we're able and gossip while we rest.