Anton Chekhov may just be my favourite Russian author. At least for now!

These stories are universally great. If it weren't all so miserable, this could be a desert island volume for me.

Now I just need to check out "The Complete Short Novels". I don't think I've read any of those.

Each and every story had a lesson which I could relate to...beautifully written stories

[Insert joke about gun]

I read a couple of these stories when I had some time off, and I enjoyed the quite a lot. Chekhov manages to paint such vivid pictures in just the right amount of words it takes to describe them, especially when focalized through such an excellent translator as Hans Boland.
I did not read all of the stories in my particular collection, but I plan on returning to it occasionally to read some titles that catch my eye. I feel like reading them all in one go can easily cause some mild "overchekhovisation".

Favourites so far: The lady with the dog, the cossack, and the horse-stealers

This collection of thirty stories by the Russian dramatist and short story master is a fine career sample, beginning with early sketches and including major stories often anthologized such as “Ward No. 6” and “The Lady with the Little Dog.” His subjects are doctors, peasants, petty officials, ferrymen, monks, nannies, soldiers, patients, artists, society folks. His topics are as broad—fidelity, integrity, meaning, duty, survival, faith, class. There are stories about a medical student and an artist whose servant is almost beneath notice but is the story’s subject; an illiterate shopkeeper whose daughter is an actress but who some believe to be a harlot so he innocently asks that the harlot be remembered in the congregation’s prayers, a woman who marries a doctor but squanders her life searching for a celebrity among her artist friends who might be a hero, a coffin maker and musician who is a tragic bully but lives to bestow a gift on a victim of his bullying; and stories about a factory heir who is ill and might never survive to inherit her factory, an unhappy conformist who leverages local authority to enforce social norms that no one else believes in, a pair of lovers who court despite the displeasure of the woman’s older sibling. They are stories about complicated human beings in a range of circumstances that illuminate life’s dilemmas and humankind’s capacities and limitations. They are artful, disciplined stories with little that appears false or contrived. Reading this selection, it is easy to see why modern short story writers view him not just as an influence, but a continuing resource for pleasure, insight, and the study of the craft of storytelling.

Chekhov's style is really unique. The stories are natural, most don't have a formal plot, there are no teachings or morals to be drawn. Beginnings and endings are often irrelevant. Most of the stories don't end, just like real life. What strikes you is the incredible brevity with which he strikes, every detail is vital to the story.

Consider, At Christmas time. It's probably 5 pages long. It's about an old couple in a village, who haven't talked to their daughter since she moved to the city after her marriage two years ago. They hire someone to write her a letter, as they're illiterate. Yet, they don't know where to start, whether they should bring up their financial difficulties, how the old man was sick most of the time, ask about any grandchildren.. It's incredibly powerful and moving, probably because I could picture thousands of families in India undergoing the same plight. The story then shows us how ecstatic the daughter is on receiving the letter. Turns out, her husband never posted any of the letters she's written. And the story ends with a glimpse of the luxurious life of the general for whom the husband works.

If you're looking for happy endings, Chekhov isn't for you. But each story will leave you with a surreal glow in awe of his genius. He was the David to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky's Goliaths!

I just finished the final story of this collection!
This guy is... Awesome, a master short story writer.
I fell in love with his stories almost every time.
His stories are so simple yet so powerful in the impact that I have decided to write a review for each of his stories separately!

For now, three words for this collection...
Captivating!
Enthralling!
Bewitching!

I had not read any stories by Chekhov before I picked this book up. Russian literature has always seemed meaningful, but too challenging for me, and I assumed Chekhov would be similar.

Many of these stories don’t contain much plot or characterization. What they do contain, however, is brilliantly personified philosophical debate. I get a sense that Chekhov is in the spiritual family of the Classical Athenian philosophers, except that he injects humanity into his works in a way they never did. Chekhov isn’t so much interested in arguing and rhetoric as he is interested in human beings, though he arrives at the same irrefutable philosophical truths as the Greeks by absolute clarity of thought and writing:

“...all these Annas, Mavras, Pelageyas bend their backs from early morning till dark, get sick from overwork, tremble all their lives for their hungry and sick children, fear death and sickness all their lives, get treated all their lives, fade early, age early, and die in dirt and stench…billions of people live worse than animals -only for the sake of a crust of bread… The whole horror of their situation is that they have no time to think of their souls, no time to remember their image and likeness; hunger, cold, animal fear, a mass of work, like a snowslide, bar all the paths to spiritual activity”

“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.”

I can really feel Chekhov sitting alone and considering the nature of humanity here. I think we have all had these intense moments where we feel that there must be more to life than this. There must be some greater meaning, and toiling away at work is basically nothing but an obstacle to true happiness and fulfillment. After all, how can we consider the infinite realm of space or the peaceful beauty of a tree swaying in the breeze if we do nothing but worry about how to afford medicine, retire, or struggle for a measly pizza and a beer at the end of the week?

Unfortunately, these are simply the realities of life (even more for peasants in Chekhov’s Russia), and we must do what we can to spread joy and comfort. Characters in these stories who spend their lives in idleness are grumpy, annoying, and naive; Chekhov argues that we must find purpose in what we can do and how we love our fellow humans, not simply by thinking and considering abstract concepts of beauty. He is especially critical of artists who do nothing but paint, consume the food of their wealthy neighbors, and demand a life of spiritual contemplation for all humans. Utopia is not achievable, and philosophizing about it does not concretely improve the lives of anyone around us. Life is hard, but we get through it together, and enjoy moments of beauty when we can. Chekhov was a genius, and I get the sense that I don’t always understand his points, but I feel much more at peace with life after reading his stories. Maybe that makes me naive, too…

“Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.” This famous principle of Chekov on writing and which he had followed in earnest has produced some of the finest, crisp short stories.

His stories are a reflection on the Russian society in the late nineteenth century; moral conflicts of individuals; soul searching; philosophical enquiries. They are not just confined to few genres and are quite wide in encompassing a wide range of subjects and emotions. Though most of them are tragic, laced with melancholy, yet in few of the stories he had splashed a dash of comedy and satire. Some of them might appear to be dated but one would surely enjoy the luxury of reading good short stories; right from couple of them on a given day to just one good one before hitting the bed.

You know, man, it doesn't matter who translates you. You always sound just like yourself. A casual observer. And yet the casualness reveals so much about us.

I picked up one of your books yesterday, having a hard time concentrating on anything else. The want to read was there, but nothing sounded good. And then I thought, Chekhov! We haven't read Chekhov in a bit. Two sentences into a randomly picked story I knew it was you, and I knew I would not put down the book until it was finished. And as expected, that little tingle in the middle of the chest, it was there.

You always bring the good stuff. Whether it's a chance (or was it?) meeting on an overcast day, or a story with a slow build, your characters always reveal themselves, their hopes and dreams, and I sit and wait to see what will happen. Usually, it's nothing big. Sometimes as simple as confirming something you already thought. But the simple way you reveal these things, and make it seem so effortless.

What were you thinking about when you wrote Gusev? Just to watch you work, gah, that would have been awesome. Did you draft and redraft, or did the scenes come spilling out of you?

From the moment I received this on Christmas morning, nearly a decade ago, I knew we were gonna get on. The Death of a Government Clerk. I bet Kafka read that and said, eureeka!, don't you? And he was good. But what you could do the two and a half pages. It boggles me every time.

But The Huntsman. I will be eternally grateful to you for it, especially. Just, damn.

Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that. You rock, man. In that casual, we're-just-talking way you had, you rock. Oh. And thanks

Many writers pride themselves on the beauty of their prose style. Flaubert would spend days composing the perfect sentence for Madame Bovary. Nabokov wrote his prose ecstatically, his vocabulary was formidable and formed a core part of his aesthetic values. Proust’s composition was like a flower, the sentences formed a stem upon which the petals of his metaphors were able to grow and develop. Thomas Mann was concerned with weighty philosophical problems, Dostoevskii with psychological ones, Conrad with composing the perfect grammatical sentence and Joyce with redefining literature.

Chekhov held aloof from all of this, his prose is simple, his vocabulary limited, his metaphors plain poppies compared to Proust’s redolent roses, he does not deal with great issues, has no axe to grind, nothing particular original to say, yet his stories are as psychologically insightful as anything by Dostoevsky, his prose as poetic as anything by Flaubert, his stories as beautiful as anything by Nabokov, as original as anything by Joyce.

Why? Because Chekhov’s stories are alive. Chekhov was able to observe the beauty in the most quotidian things: the fold of a dress, the reflection of the moon on a river bank, the unfettered joy of a young peasant pining after his wife. Chekhov not only depicts the joys of life but it’s tribulations-the heartbreaking loss of a young baby, the boredom of a ride across the steppes or having to play the tedious role of the perfect hostess at your husband’s birthday party. Chekhov represents things as they are; sometimes good, sometimes bad, yet full of hope beyond all the setbacks and pitfalls which life has to throw at you.

Indeed, Chekhov as a writer can teach us more about life than any philosopher because his stories are ostensibly about living, about love for people, Chekhov’s story radiate with a love for being alive , he treats people, however intolerable, cruel or kind they may be, as individuals rather than types, he never judges, merely describes, never moralises, merely sympathises and as Nabokov states, his stories which are so full of humour are infused with a imperceptible sadness: “Chekhov’s books are sad books for humorous people; that is, only a reader with a sense of humour can appreciate their sadness” (Nabokov, ‘Lectures on Russian Literature’)

THE STEPPE



The Steppe is the story of a young boy, Yegorushka’s first journey away from home, to a grammar school, where he is being taken by his uncle, Kuzmichovic, and a retired local clergyman, Father Khristofor. Chekhov had an eye for the pathetic, the unloved and the worthless elements of society; like an alchemist he was able to transform the banal into something beautiful. Not the way, for example, he describes the carriage which Yegorushka is travelling in, “It rattled and squeaked to the slightest jolt-to the mournful accompaniment of a pail tied to the backboard. From these sounds alone the pathetic leather strips dangling from its peeling chassis one could determine its great antiquity and fitness for the scrapheap”. Note how Chekhov is not afraid to depict the carriage as it is-dilapidated and barely usable, yet is able to imbue it with it’s own individual traits, such as the ‘pathetic leather strips’ and the ‘rattles and squeaks’ it admits. Chekhov is, however, able to build our sympathy for the carriage, it is old and pathetic but it carries on proudly nonetheless, Chekhov is a master of pathos and a person who didn’t feel empathy would never be able to appreciate Chekhov.

Chekhov is a master of brevity. He is able to describe the psychological state of his characters via subtle notes on body language. Note, for example, how Father Khristofor is described as “gazing at God’s world in wonderment with his small moist eyes and with a smile so broad it seemed to take the brim off his hat” or of his uncle’s cold, business like demeanour. Chekhov’s characters in effect become the sum total of their physical characteristics, Father Khristofor is a kindly old man and Kuzmichovic is obsessed with money, but Chekhov paints them as individuals, not types, as humans not mannequins dressed up as ones, and more importantly, Chekhov is able to establish that there is a secret, inaccessible region of every personality which will always remain a mystery.

One of the most beautiful moments in The Steppe is the linkage between the lone poplar tree in the steppes and the beautiful Countess Dranitsky. During Yegorushka’s journey across the steppe he notices a lone poplar, “And then a solitary poplar appears on the hill…it ward hard to take one’s eyes off the graceful trunk and green attire. Was that beautiful tree happy? Scorching heat in the summer, biting frosts and blizzards in the winter, terrifying nights in autumn when you see only pitch darkness and hear nothing but the wayward, angrily, howling wind. But worst of all, you are alone, alone all your life.” He then sees Countess Dranitsky “In the middle of the room there was a ladyship the form of a young, very beautiful buxom woman in a black dress and straw hat. Before Yegorushka could make out her features, for some reason he recalled the solitary, graceful poplar he had seen on the hill that day” Note how Chekhov is able to use his powers of intuition to show how this seemingly proud and beautiful young woman is lonely, that behind her beauty there lay a vulnerability which she hid from the world, but a kind of inner beauty and grace which few noticed behind the her proud outer appearance. It is this kind of description which best demonstrates Chekhov’s genius.

Note his description of the pathetic Solomon, “Now by the light of the small lamp, one one could see every detail of his smile. It was extremely complex but expressed a wide variety of feelings-but predominant was one of blatant contempt”, and a few pages later “judging from his eyes and grin, he genuinely despised and hate people, but this was so at odds with his plucked head appearance that Yegorushka construed his defiant attitude and sarcastic, supercilious expression as deliberate clowning, calculated to amuse the honoured guests” Chekhov is able to take the seemingly benevolent Solomon and break him down as a rather pathetic figure, whose arrogance cannot be taken seriously because it is so at odd’s with his comical and pathetic appearance. Maybe Solomon is a truly arrogant person, maybe he is only pretending to be arrogant, maybe he merely lacking on confidence and try’s to put on an act? Chekhov does not provide no solid answers because there are none; the door to Solomon’s soul is forever locked away from us, but by carefully observing another person without prejudice, we can deduce much of what they choose to hide, consciously or not. Chekhov teaches us to take people as they come, not to pass judgement too soon and not to take seemingly negative characteristics at face value, there is usually an underlying reason behind them.

The theme of complexity and deception does not solely apply to human nature, but also to nature itself. Note Yegorushka’s observations on nature during his journey along the steppe; “To the right were dark hills which seemed to be concealing something mysterious and terrifying…the far distance was as visible as by day, but now it’s soft lilac hue faded, veiled by a twilight gloom in which the whole steppe was hiding..” or his wonderful description of the windmill, “a windmill which from the distance resembled a tiny man waving his arms”, “and in the distance that windmill was waving its arms again, still resembling a tiny man swinging his arms. One grew weary of looking at it and it seemed to be running away from the carriage, never to be seen”, “the windmill still did not recede and kept up with them…what a sorcerer that windmill was”. Chekhov’s repetitious comparison of a windmill to a waving old man is able to both create a comic image of the windmill and implant an idea in our minds about what the windmill would have looked like, Chekhov’s description of a windmill is also unique and original and demonstrates his talents as an observer extended beyond human nature.

Chekhov, however, does not choose to sentimentalise nature and depict it in a ‘beautiful’ way, nature is and could be violent, tempestuous and unforgiving as well as being a devilish trickster; for example, not the violent storm which Yegorushka is caught in during his trip with Panteley, or the pseudo storm which looks like it is developing but fails to materialise. Yet, beyond this, like the people who Chekhov depicts, nature has a quiet dignity, which means it is able to take all that life can throw at it and to defy it, not to conquer it, but merely to show it can exist; notice his masterful use of pathetic fallacy: “As he looked around, Yegorushka could not make out where the strange singing was coming from. But then, when he had grown used to it, he fancied the grass might be singing. Through its song, the half-dead, already doomed grass, plaintively and earnestly…was trying to convince someone that it was guilty of no crime, that the sun had scored it without reason. It insisted that it passionately wanted to live, and that it was still young and would have been beautiful but for the burning heat and drought.” or the wonderful description of the weak stream “Limped, gaily sparkling in the sunlight and softly murmuring, as if it had imagined itself a powerful raging torrent.”

Indeed, nature’s many mysteries is a recurrent theme with The Steppe. Note, for example, the shy yet observant Vasya’s inspections of his surroundings; “Oh you darling, you beauty” said Vasya…only Vasya with his small, lacklustre grey eyes of his was able to see anything and he was in raptures…his sight was amazingly keen-so keen that the desolate brown steppe was always full of life and content for him…Thanks to his keen vision, for Vasya there was another world-his own special world that was inaccessible to everybody else and which was no doubt absolutely delightful…it was difficult not to envy him.” Vasya, who to many may seem a strange and ridiculous figure to be made fun of, with his bandaged head and absurd clockwork soldier walk, had his own unique world and a love and passion for nature , the steppes which many saw as being brown and lifeless were in fact teeming with life and whilst many regarded their journey along them with indifferent boredom, for Vasya it was a thing of delight; in fact, pathetic, little noticed Vasya resembles the steppes in that if you look hard enough you can see that what may seem barren and ugly is in fact full of beauty-but only if you have the patience to do so.

We again come back to the people who populate Chekhov’s novels, the self-absorbed merchants, the kindly old men Khristofor and Panteley, the corpulent Jewess with her children hiding like jewels under her duvet, the beautiful countess, the bully Dymov all of them exist as unique parts of the tapestry which makes up Chekhov’s stories. They are never sentimentalised, but depicted as they are, and Chekhov is able to use his talent for observation and need for brevity to show how small changes in body language represent what the inner working of the characters soul.

For example, his description of the shopkeeper, “His face was the picture of apathy, but every sigh seemed to be saying, “You wait! I’ll give you what for!” or of Yemelyan’s fear of water “with his bony shoulder-blades and and that swelling under his eye, stooping and clearly terrified of the water, he was a comical sight. His face was stern and solemn and he looked at the water angrily, as if about to curse it for having once given him a cold when bathing in the Donets and robbing him of his voice”. It is this synthesis of the pathetic and the comic which endows Chekhov’s stories with the power of pathos; his characters are never sentimentalized but one cannot help feeling sentimental about them, from the most pathetic bumpkin to the bellicose coach-driver, all of his characters are individuals and have a certain quiet dignity about them.

Chekhov is not beyond self-parody. Consider, for example, the discussion between Kuzmichovic and Father Khristofor when they discuss the merits of education. Kuzmichovic considers education as something superfluous which you forget anyway, Father Khristofor states that education is important but soon admits that he forgot everything he ever learnt because he never needed to use it.

Or consider the passage when Panteley tells some absurd and repetitious fireside stories about murderous inn-keepers or villagers, the narrator wonders why Panteley who has been through so much in life, has travelled around in Russia and met so many people, should turn to fanciful murder stories instead of describing his past and the people he has met; for Chekhov literature should be naturalistic and should describe people as accurately as possible, artists are merely people who are able to articulate emotions which everybody experience but lack the power to articulate. Yet, the case can also be made for the power of the imagination, the surreal image of the sorceress windmill or the thunder and lightning speaking to each other, the story is told, after all, from the point of view of a child and Chekhov is able to give free reign to the vibrant and often irrational imagination of a child.

The novel, like life, ends ambiguously. For Chekhov, there was no beginning, middle or end, his stories merely acted as snapshots in a certain period of a persons life. Yegorushka eventually arrives at the village where he will be attending grammar school, but his unable to locate the residence of the lady who Yegorushka is supposed to stay with. In classic Chekhov fashion he does not miss anything out, from the bemusement of the villagers when questioned about where Natasya Petrovna lives, the the tenor like bark of the ginger dog to the to the blushing Katka who meets Yegorushka. For Chekhov, life’s beauty lies in the quotidian, every day moments which nobody notices.

When Yegorushka says goodbye to Father Khristofor he bursts into tears: “Yegorushka kissed his hand and burst into tears. Something deep down whispered that he would never see that old man again.” Yegorushka realises that he will never again see the kindly Father Khristofor, that all that would remain of him would be memories, which Chekhov is able to immortalise via his fiction. Yet, only a few moments later, he realises that life is for living, that it is beautiful beyond words, beautiful beyond description and mysterious beyond human comprehension: “He sank exhausted onto the bench, shedding bitter tears as he greeted that new, unknown life that was just beginning for him. What would life be like?”

Chekhov wrote in a period of rapid social change and turmoil: from the serf emancipation of 1860s to the revolution of 1905. Nonetheless, his short stories are tranquil, peaceful, and nuanced. In the dullness of a gentry's countryside estate or a rural factory, life's misery evolve, and unhappy people bear their burden silently: drunkenness, idleness, jealousy, peasants' poverty, gentry's nostalgia and indifference. But still, an ephemeral revelation of life's meaning and eternal salvation might strike, like a flickering light shining solitarily in the darkness, and life is, all of a sudden, happy and beautiful.

WOW. These are total stories. Chekhov truly is a courageous champion of the unsaid, the stories of the untold lives of ordinary folk, of social justice.

Who knew that grey language could evoke so many emotions, transcend so many genres, and bite and rage and ironically smirk after so many years?? From horror stories like Sleepy and Ward No. 6 to the terror, humour and tedium of A Boring Story, the apparent celebration of madness in The Black Monk, the revelation of the sea, nay, the universe’s(!) brutality in Gusev, the density of a living, breathing village of In The Ravine, the delicateness and pathos of The Lady with the Little Dog.

When I first started reading these stories, I wasn’t so sure what Chekhov meant by “cutting off the beginning and ending of his stories”, but it becomes clearer with each story. We often join families in the midst of their misery and leave them not shortly after, see a bride after her wedding or leave just before what would appear to be the true story begins. The effect of this is brilliant: with no complete beginning or ending, we’re not completely sure how everyone wound up where they are, or the total effect of the stories’ happenings. As a result, you really can’t read Chekhov passively. He draws no forced conclusions, he paints no virtuous nor evil picture of any of his characters: everything is masterfully complex and unclear, and each story leaves you with more questions than answers. I started to think ‘Well, this character says this, but I don’t see the total impact of this on what happens. I can’t refute what he says, but does Chekhov agree with it? What is he trying to tell me? Would what happened have been any different if he hadn’t done that? Was it that bad anyway, or was it just the consequence that was bad? Did he deserve that or not?’ but there is no didacticism here, no message, only a call to understanding, to challenging your opinions. You will find yourself reading many of these stories at least twice.

I’ll be reading more Alice Munro soon!

You can find 201 of Chekhov’s wonderful stories here:
http://www.eldritchpress.org/ac/jr/

And here’s the list of the ones I read (from The Selected Stories) bold ones are my favourites.

The Death of a Clerk
Small Fry
The Huntsman
The Malefactor
Panikhida
Anyuta
Easter Night (The Night Before Easter)
Vanka
Sleepy
A Boring Story
Gusev
Peasant Women
The Fidget (The Grasshopper)
In Exile
Ward No. 6
The Black Monk
Rothschild’s Fiddle
The Student
Anna on the Neck
The House with the Mezzanine (An Artist’s Story)
The Man in a Case
Gooseberries
About Love (and what we talk about when we talk about it, maybe?)
A Medical Case
The Darling
On Official Business
The Lady with the Little Dog
At Christmastime
In the Ravine
The Bishop
The Fiancée