I liked the stories very much.

The Kindle reading experience however was not so good. The footnotes do not work and you have to flip to the need of the book to find the russian terms explained. The footnotes are set in a very small font size making them unreadable.

Honest, Efficient, Poignant

I guess I picked a weird time to finally get around to reading these now that Russia is now at war with Ukraine. Most of the characters are surprisingly relatable considering the stories all take place at the end of the 19th century. Maybe that's because Nihilism began in Russia and did not make its way here until much later. That and much of the material would be shocking by 1950s standards.

Although I really found all of these tales to be page-turners, I thought the final story, about the son of a nobleman who decided to become a common laborer, could have been an inspiration for the movie It's a Wonderful Life. Though the protagonist was no George Bailey, the overall message was that even a total non-entity can have a profound impact on everyone around them.

“There is nothing more awful, insulting, and depressing than banality.”
― Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov translucently agrees to have been inspired from contemporary russian authors(Tolstoy) ; but his perspective on life (or rather non-existentialism) makes it treat to go through every rampant description of miniscule fragments of Élan vital.

Nihilism fascinates me , but Chekhov introduced me to horrifying, cringeworthy, notably real side of it, which in my simple mindedness(?), I'd have ignored.These stories just pass by, like glimpses of your reflections(not narcissism) in Steppe.You feel like you're going through episodes of recurrent memory flashes.They're yours but so distant, unreachable, almost non existent.These are experiences; perpetual contemplation of humanly emotions which won't fail to startle you.

This book with novellas was quite an adventure. You are transported in time to 19th century Russia. In ‘the Steppe’ you smell and see the countryside with beautiful descriptions. I read ‘the Duel’ for the 2nd time now, fascinating (and funny) story of relationships in a far away town. With strong female character making her own decisions which might have been quite out of odds with society in those days. The ‘my life’ story I found most interesting. Seems like early thought experiment with communism, written in 1896, with striking thoughts from the main character, especially when you know how Russia and communism since developed. Also how different classes in society treat each other is quite shocking.

The short story master masters a larger canvas


In his short, prolific career (he died at age 44), Anton Chekhov wrote hundreds of short stories, over a dozen plays, and five short novels. This last category is usually considered to be an awkward length—too long to be considered a short story, too short to be considered a novel and usually not published by itself as novels usually are. Personally, I love the short novel; many of my favorite literary works are in this category. Chekhov’s five contributions to the form are all full, expansive experiences, more so than the brevity of the short story can usually contain. In my opinion, Chekhov’s abilities were given free rein in this form. All of his strengths are on ample display in these five novellas.

‘The Steppe’ (1888)
The earliest story in this collection concerns a nine-year old boy, Egorushka, who is being taken by his uncle, Kuzmichov, and family friend the priest, Father Khristofer, to enroll in a school far away. The boy’s mother is a widow. The reason why the boy is being sent away is never explained although Kuzmichov says no one is forcing the boy. In fact, very little is explained as the story continues wherever Egorushka is present. Kuzmichov is combining this trip with business concerns, namely, to sell wool. After wandering through a few nearby villages and encountering some interesting characters at an inn where they stop overnight, they catch up with a wagon train where Kuzmichov drops the boy off. Kuzmichov will sell wool and eventually catch up with the wagon train and deposit Egorushka at the school.

Entrusting a child’s safety with strangers strikes me as well as most modern readers as tremendously irresponsible and neglectful. Presumably this action was considered differently in 19th century Russia. The presence of the priest seems to provide a moral sanction to the decision. Fortunately, the boy comes through the trip relatively unscathed, although he reacts with hostility to some older boys’ rather harsh way of teasing. His uncle finally returns to deposit him in the new school. Once they have left, he realizes with sudden finality that his life has now changed irrevocably and he is on the cusp of a new life. All of this melodramatic thinking is perfectly natural in young children that haven’t built up enough experience, maturity, and objectivity to view the changes in their lives. Chekhov captures this perception of the child’s view of the constantly changing world around him. The rambling, episodic nature of the story is exactly how the child would see the world around him.

‘The Duel’ (1891)
‘The Duel’ has the most cohesive premise and plot of any of these short novels and I am not surprised that it is the only one to be filmed in recent years. Ivan Laevsky is a young man living in a coastal town in the Caucasus with his mistress, Nadezhda Fyodorovna, who is married to another man. He confides to his friend the doctor Samoilenko that he has fallen out of love with her. He’s not comfortable cutting her off without some consolation. He says that Nadia is without resources. He has intercepted a letter that notifies her that her husband has died. He’s decided to withhold the knowledge from her because he feels to show it to her now would amount to an automatic proposal to marry because the way is now clear.

Meanwhile, Laevsky and Nadia have been living on credit that keeps mounting. It is implied that Nadia has resorted to sleeping with the occasional merchant in order to get a debt forgiven. Nadia still loves Laevsky but is becoming frustrated with his listlessness. Among the crowd of men that gather at the local bar is a zoologist named Von Koren that is also a friend of Samoilenko’s, whereas there is a mutual dislike between him and Laevsky. During all of their encounters there is a simmering tension between them as Von Koren likes to provoke Laevsky and Laevsky does not feel comfortable with direct confrontation so he lets these mild insults pass. On one occasion, however, the argument between them escalates to the point where Von Koren challenges Laevsky to a duel. This duel is not being fought over the woman they both love—Von Koren never indicates that he has any interest in Nadia—but because Von Koren is an extreme Darwinist who feels that Laevsky is a superfluous person and “natural selection” dictates that Society would be improved by being rid of him. Dueling at the end of the 19th century is widely considered an archaic, antiquated custom and to seriously contemplate it would be the height of absurdity. This is how Laevsky views it and he fully intends to fire at the sky when the moment arrives. Without divulging any more details, the duel does not go off as expected and both men survive. Laevsky’s close brush with death has enabled him to value his life and to realize that he does indeed love Nadia. He has already given her the letter informing her of her husband’s death in the middle of an argument during which neither of them felt kindly disposed toward the other. But now he admits that he loves her and the way is clear to marry. Relations between Laevsky and Von Koren are cool but civil and Von Koren sees that Laevsky has become a responsible, married man that now cares about his family and his job (he is a civil servant).

Chekhov delves into each character’s minds as well as their hearts in this story, in which ideologies as well as temperaments do battle with each other. There are no real villains, even Von Koren, who is capable of evolving possibly beyond his world view. ‘The Duel’ is one of Chekhov’s best stories in any form.

‘The Story of an Unknown Man’ (1892)
The first-person narrator (referred to as Stepan) of ‘The Story of an Unknown Man’ is some kind of radical extremist (he refers to “my cause”) working as a butler in the home of a man named Orlov, whose father is a prominent statesman and foe of the narrator. He is ostensibly spying on the son and gathering information on the father and the father’s whereabouts. However, he plays his role almost too well. A perfect servant is the fly on the wall for many scenes of a personal nature. Orlov is as indolent as Laevsky, with less of a moral conscience. He too has a live-in mistress, Zinaida, that he neglects after boredom has set in, telling her that he has to go on an extended business trip when in reality he stays at one of his friend’s houses on the other side of town. Stepan at one point even comes in contact with the old man, who has visited when his son is not there. Faced with the perfect opportunity, the narrator does not act. The old man is weak and decrepit and the narrator’s awareness of his own mortality, brought about by the emergence of consumption, brings him to an awareness of kinship rather than enmity with the dying man (“It’s hard to strike a match on a crumbling wall”, he says to himself).

Meanwhile, Stepan is thrown into more frequent contact with Zinaida and becomes her confidant. They decide to leave Orlov and travel to another city. Zinaida gets pregnant and, realizing that her life is hopeless with either Stepan, who is dying himself, or Orlov, poisons herself after giving birth to a baby girl. Stepan raises the infant as best he can over the next couple of years but returns to Orlov and leaves the child with her father. Orlov will make arrangements with someone to take the child into a boarding school.

This story is an engrossing maze of ironies and unexpected turns. Obviously, the best-laid plans of radicals can get diverted by completely unexpected factors. Life has a way of disrupting all expectations. Stepan accomplishes none of the goals he was certain of achieving in the beginning of the story.


‘Three Years’ (1895)
Alexei Laptev is the son of a successful factory owner. He is wealthy but unattractive and socially awkward. His sister, Nina Fyodorovna, is being treated for cancer and is a friend of the daughter, Yulia Sergreevna, of the doctor who is treating her. Laptev sees Yulia frequently during her visits to his sister and has decided he is in love with her. He blurts out a proposal of marriage even before he’s bothered to court her. She refuses at first but then considers his wealth and the fact that she is already 25 and reconsiders. After Nina’s death, Alexei and Yulia take in her two daughters as their father is another of Chekhov’s irresponsible parents. Laptev eventually becomes the default manager of the factory as his brother suffers from mental illness and his father is old and blind. Laptev is now the father of a new daughter as well as his sister’s daughters. He feels like he needs to escape the weight of this overwhelming responsibility and then his wife surprises him with her sincere declaration of love.

This story also has that rambling quality and the feeling that you’re not absolutely certain who is who and what is really happening. Individual scenes are quite dynamic such as Yulia’s encounter with her father-in-law, the self-righteous patriarch of the clan. The character of Laptev’s ex-mistress, Polina Nikolaeavna Rassudina, is particularly well-developed. Polina is described as very thin, with a long nose, looking very exhausted. She supports herself by giving music lessons. Despite the raw deal Life has dealt her she is intelligent and full of caustic remarks. She is obviously jealous of Yulia:
“Whom have you married? Where were your eyes, you crazy man? What did you find in that stupid, worthless girl? I loved you for your intelligence, your soul, but this china doll only needs your money!”

Polina also has a natural ability to be a drama queen:
“The working class, to which I belong, has one privilege: the consciousness of its incorruptibility, the right not to owe anything to little merchants and to despise them. No sir, you won’t buy me! I’m not Yulechka!”

Later in the story, when Laptev becomes more restless and overwhelmed, Polina moves in with another friend of his. We sense that he had still considered her as a viable alternative to his wife.

‘My Life’ (1896)
“My Life” has one of the best opening paragraphs I’ve read:
‘The manager said to me: “I keep you only out of respect for your esteemed father, otherwise I’d have sent you flying long ago.” I answered him: “You flatter me too much, Your Excellency, in supposing I can fly.” And then I heard him say: “Take the gentleman away, he’s bad for my nerves.”

This story concerns an idealistic young man, Missail Poloznev, upper class and born into another successful family business like Laptev in ‘Three Years’. He feels ashamed of his social position and that it’s an injustice to be a parasite of the working class. He tells his father he wants to become a manual laborer. In an inverse of the parable of the prodigal son, his father cuts him off and, in fact, beats his grown son, vowing to disown him. This makes Missail even more determined to live by the sweat of his brow. After disgracing his father by working a job as a house painter, the daughter of the court magistrate suggests that he try the railway office. Missail doesn’t make much of an impression on the railway manager but he does impress his beautiful daughter, Marya Viktorovna. Marya is also idealistic and has dreams of starting a Utopian community. Chekhov wrote this story after meeting Tolstoy and seeing his attempts at building a rural, equitable community. Chekhov is not rejecting Tolstoy; rather, he is putting the ideals into practice in the form of a man who is willing to sacrifice his upbringing on behalf of his ideals.

Missail is reviled by both the members of his own class, who consider him a traitor, as well as many of his fellow workers, who view him as someone that doesn’t belong down in the ditches with them. More so than the male protagonists in the other short novels, he is brave, determined, realistic, and undaunted. He is prepared to live the rough life, to wear himself out as a laborer as a sort of penance in the name of social justice. He inspires his sister, Cleopatra, to seek a life for herself away from being her father’s caretaker. Meanwhile, he and Marya get married. Life with the lower class does not suit Marya, who feels she has talked herself into a trap. She leaves Missail and writes him that she and her father are traveling to America. Cleopatra dies in childbirth and Missail is now raising the daughter.

My summaries have not done justice to Chekhov’s stories because they can’t be summarized as easily as the works of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. The large ideas that those titans dealt with front and center are simmering under the surface in Chekhov’s stories. He lets the circumstances speak for themselves. With simple narrative language (rendered with effortless clarity in the Richard Pevear/Larissa Volokhonsky translation) he tells you all you need to know; you are eavesdropping on the life of a fully rendered, believable human. With perfectly chosen details he renders people that speak to us across time and geography and radically different cultures with a familiarity that convinces us that they are our human kindred.

Chekhov is a master at writing short fiction, and I feel most of these novellas are more like short stories than novels. The first, second and fourth seem more like short-fiction character sketches – which he couldn't conclude without so many extra pages.

The first novella "The Steppe" is a warm, coming-of-age tale that displays Chekhov's versatility. Autobiographical to some extent, the story portrays the provincial yet savage side of Ukrainian life in the 19th century. The point of view falters somewhat when digressions show a maturity which a nine-year-old could not possibly possess (e.g. Egorushka's musings on solitude in ch.VI, or on death in ch.VII). Descriptions of the brutal weather of the steppe are beautiful. From the familiar intro, this novella seems to be a nod to Gogol's Dead Souls, and has its fair share of the macabre as well, but ultimately sheds these elements as literally "fireside" anecdotes (Pantelei's tall tales). All in all, Chekhov's realism shines through his Gogolian and Ukrainian folk theme, leaving the reader and Egor in safe hands.

"The Duel" struck me as completely unlike Chekhov and quite ahead of its time. The setting (a tropical coastal settlement on the Black Sea) and circumstances (alcoholic intellectuals and adultery) both remind me of Fitzgerald or Hemingway. The only Russian element of the plot is the duel itself. Chekhov's zoologist, deacon and libertine remind me of a bar-room joke, and leave me wondering who could be the hero. The zoologist's rationale is particularly unique – I've never heard a Darwinist defense of Christ and the crucifixion. I wonder if these were the author's opinions. The feeble Nadezhda could be the first characterization of the 20th century's "fallen woman."

"The Story of an Unknown Man," despite its ambiguous title, is a great and original work and my favorite of these five. It's less than 90 pages, but has the depth of plot and conclusion of a Tolstoy epic. Chekhov's ability to connect different class strata – authentic muzhiks, lackeys, coachmen and maids – has always been impressive and realistic. This story is most distinct, since the hero enters the story as a member of the nobility disguised as a servant. He goes through a reversal in attitude as a result of witnessing the acts and opinions of dissipated men. His choices are all poor, but he endures their consequences. His character is messianic and it's a genuine joy to see him purify himself.

"Three Years" is a sort of agonizing tale of hopeless characters. I didn't enjoy it. Chekhov must have been going through some dismal phase when he wrote this, because I saw none of the signature redeeming qualities of his prose. Perhaps he meant to represent the woes of merchant life. Laptev has wise words near the end, which go seemingly unheeded by his deluded family. I feel that this wisdom is what Chekhov feels about the emerging nouveau-riche class of his day. In a dramatic reversal, Laptev's words change the heart of Yulia, but he fails to notice. An ironic but unsatisfying ending.

"My Life" is an amazing and well-developed story, and the only of these five that seems worthy of being called a novel. Like many Russian works, it reflects the struggle of the 1840s vs. 1860s generations, with emphasis on the dissipation of the nobility. Mostly, however, Chekhov indicts the small town life, with its corruption and ignorance. The main character's father is the strongest and most abiding of the small-town character type, and the father/son argument in the last pages is an incredible passage.

My biggest concern with this collection is Chekhov's ability to develop novel-calibur plot lines, but even in their "stretched" condition these works exceed expectation and presage Lost Generation classics by 20 years.

The Kiss is my favorite piece of literature. Spiraling, falling into the depths of fantasy all from one small human interaction. All this us extrapolated, twisted into new meaning, as we do all the time.

How do I draw deeper meaning from them?

It’s all lies. Chekhov is sardonic, dreamlike and comical in his writing, the tone of this piece mirroring the subject.

ydoifeel? - saam sultan

I think of chekhov as the king of the short story and the master of grayness, disillusionment and ennui. The majority of his short stories and novels are depressing and dark, exploring the meaningless nature of life and human nature. this one is no different. Chekhov's language, i think, is what defines him as an author. He takes the most mundane subject and gives it life, and death simultaneously. He is also able to make you laugh mercilessly in the middle of tragedy and boredom...something only he can really do artfully. { also love his shout-out to tolstoy in "the duel" }

The Stepp: 5/5
Finished the first novella. This is my first experience with Chekhov. Such a beautiful story that happens without anything really happening. The world is at times beautiful, terrible, enticing, menacing, good, and evil as the Egorushka travels through the stepp. The people he meets, all of whom are precisely characterized, disappear in his memory by the end of the novella. Just amazing work overall.

The Duel: 5/5
The second novella is also amazing. The story revolves primarily around Laevsky but occasionally we do get into the heads of Nadezhda Fyodorovna. The narrative relies heavily on the arc of falling out of love, which is precisely described in referencing Anna Karenina at various points yet does not capitalize on it as the title suggests "The Duel," which is about the antagonism between two men. There is a surplus of characterization here. Doctor Samoilenko, through his continued benefit-of-the-doubt mindset reserved for Laevsky, is a complex character with generosity, gullibility, pride, restraint, and tenderness. Von Koren, albeit being less focused on, is a dedicated scientist devoted to believing in and practicing natural selection who seeks to destroy his enemy, Laevsky, a small walking library.

The Story of an Unknown Man 3.5/5
This one is okay. It is definitely not my favorite. A good practice on unreliable narration.

Three Years 5/5
The ubiquitous non-love from Panaurov to Yulia to Yartsev... welp we see why our protagonist feels so drained by the end of three years, despite the newfound love from his wife. The passage where he sits in the garden reflecting on his childhood is amazing. I also relate to the tug of war between being between an intellectual world and another motivated purely by monetary gains.

My Life 4.5/5
A struggle between labor and intellectual works. Perhaps I find myself in Masha a bit much... The introductory essay makes a great point about how this is a stripping of the Tolstoian idealization of labor. Great!

Rich, haunting, and full of suffering, these novels stick. The characters can appear almost farcical with their extremes and yet they are engagingly real also. They remind me more of caricatures created by the mind in nightmares and they draw you in, with morbid fascination for the unpleasant outcome that certainly lurks behind the next corner. They are a surprisingly suspenseful reads considering that they deal in what would usually be considered the commonplace and petty affairs of the human condition.

The Duel is one of the best novellas ever.