Complete Works of Anton Chekhov

Sophie was afraid that her dog might catch cold, because of the draught.

* * * * *

The soil is so good, that, were you to plant a shaft, in a year’s time a cart would grow out of it.

* * * * *

X. and Z., very well educated and of radical views, married. In the evening they talked together pleasantly, then quarreled, then came to blows. In the morning both are ashamed and surprised, they think that it must have been the result of some exceptional state of their nerves. Next night again a quarrel and blows. And so every night until at last they realize that they are not at all educated, but savage, just like the majority of people.

* * * * *

A play: in order to avoid having visitors, Z. pretends to be a regular tippler, although he drinks nothing.

* * * * *

When children appear on the scene, then we justify all our weaknesses, our compromises, and our snobbery, by saying: “It’s for the children’s sake.”

* * * * *

Count, I am going away to Mordegundia. (A land of horrible faces.)

* * * * *

Barbara Nedotyopin.

* * * * *

Z., an engineer or doctor, went on a visit to his uncle, an editor; he became interested, began to go there frequently; then became a contributor to the paper, little by little gave up his profession; one night he came out of the newspaper office, remembered, and seized his head in his hands — “all is lost!” He began to go gray. Then it became a habit, he was quite white now and flabby, an editor, respectable but obscure.

* * * * *

A Privy Councillor, an old man, looking at his children, became a radical himself.

* * * * *

A newspaper: “Cracknel.”

* * * * *

The clown in the circus — that is talent, and the waiter in the frock coat speaking to him — that is the crowd; the waiter with an ironical smile on his face.

* * * * *

Auntie from Novozybkov.

* * * * *

He has a rarefaction of the brain and his brains have leaked into his ears.

* * * * *

“What? Writers? If you like, for a shilling I’ll make a writer of you.”

* * * * *

Instead of translator, contractor.

* * * * *

An actress, forty years old, ugly, ate a partridge for dinner, and I felt sorry for the partridge, for it occurred to me that in its life it had been more talented, more sensible, and more honest than that actress.

* * * * *

The doctor said to me: “If,” says he, “your constitution holds out, drink to your heart’s content.” (Gorbunov.)

* * * * *

Carl Kremertartarlau.

* * * * *

A field with a distant view, one tiny birch tree. The inscription under the picture: loneliness.

* * * * *

The guests had gone: they had played cards and everything was in disorder: tobacco smoke, scraps of paper, and chiefly — the dawn and memories.

* * * * *

Better to perish from fools than to accept praises from them.

* * * * *

Why do trees grow and so luxuriantly, when the owners are dead?

* * * * *

The character keeps a library, but he is always away visiting; there are no readers.

* * * * *

Life seems great, enormous, and yet one sits on one’s piatachok.

[Footnote 1: The word means five kopecks and also a pig’s snout.]

* * * * *

Zolotonosha? There is no such town! No!

[Footnote 1: The name of a Russian town, meaning literally

“Gold-carrier.”]

* * * * *

When he laughs, he shows his teeth and gums.

* * * * *

He loved the sort of literature which did not upset him, Schiller,

Homer, etc.

* * * * *

N., a teacher, on her way home in the evening was told by her friend that X. had fallen in love with her, N., and wanted to propose. N., ungainly, who had never before thought of marriage, when she got home, sat for a long time trembling with fear, could not sleep, cried, and towards morning fell in love with X.; next day she heard that the whole thing was a supposition on the part of her friend and that X. was going to marry not her but Y.

* * * * *

He had a liaison with a woman of forty-five after which he began to write ghost stories.

* * * * *

I dreamt that I was in India and that one of the local princes presented me with an elephant, two elephants even. I was so worried about the elephant that I woke up.

* * * * *

An old man of eighty says to another old man of sixty: “You ought to be ashamed, young man.”

* * * * *

When they sang in church, “Now is the beginning of our salvation,” he ate glavizna at home; on the day of St. John the Baptist he ate no food that was circular and flogged his children.

[Footnote 1: Glavizna in Russian is the name of a fish and also means beginning; the root of the verbs “to behead” and “to flog” are the same.]

* * * * *

A journalist wrote lies in the newspaper, but he thought he was writing the truth.

* * * * *

If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry.

* * * * *

He himself is rich, but his mother is in the workhouse.

* * * * *

He married, furnished a house, bought a writing-table, got everything in order, but found he had nothing to write.

* * * * *

Faust: “What you don’t know is just what you want; what you know is what you can’t use.”

* * * * *

Although you may tell lies, people will believe you, if only you speak with authority.

* * * * *

As I shall lie in the grave alone, so in fact I live alone.

* * * * *

A German: “Lord have mercy on us, grieshniki.”

[Footnote 1: Grieshniki means “sinners,” but sounds like grietchnieviki which means “buckwheat cakes.”]

* * * * *

“O my dear little pimple!” said the bride tenderly. The bridegroom thought for a while, then felt hurt — they parted.

* * * * *

They were mineral water bottles with preserved cherries in them.

* * * * *

An actress who spoilt all her parts by very bad acting — and this continued all her life long until she died. Nobody liked her; she ruined all the best parts; and yet she went on acting until she was seventy.

* * * * *

He alone is all right and can repent who feels himself to be wrong.

* * * * *

The archdeacon curses the “doubters,” and they stand in the choir and sing anathema to themselves (Skitalez).

* * * * *

He imagined that his wife lay with her legs cut off and that he nursed her in order to save his soul….

* * * * *

Madame Snuffley.

* * * * *

The black-beetles have left the house; the house will be burnt down.

* * * * *

“Dmitri, the Pretender, and Actors.” “Turgenev and the Tigers.”

Articles like that can be and are written.

* * * * *

A title: Lemon Peel.

* * * * *

I am your legitimate husband.

* * * * *

An abortion, because while birthing a wave struck her, a wave of the ocean; because of the eruption of Vesuvius.

* * * * *

It seems to me: the sea and myself — and nothing else.

* * * * *

Education: his three-year-old son wore a black frock-coat, boots, and waistcoat.

* * * * *

With pride: “I’m not of Yuriev, but of Dorpat University.”

[Footnote 1: Yuriev is the Russian name of the town Dorpat.]

* * * * *

His beard looked like the tail of a fish.

* * * * *

A Jew, Ziptchik.

* * * * *

A girl, when she giggles, makes noises as if she were putting her head in cold water.

* * * * *

“Mamma, what is a thunderbolt made of?”

* * * * *

On the estate there is a bad smell, and bad taste; the trees are planted anyhow, stupidly; and away in a remote corner the lodge-keeper’s wife all day long washes the guest’s linen — and nobody sees her; and the owners are allowed to talk away whole days about their rights and their nobility.

* * * * *

She fed her dog on the best caviare.

* * * * *

Our self-esteem and conceit are European, but our culture and actions are Asiatic.

* * * * *

A black dog — he looks as if he were wearing goloshes.

* * * * *

A Russian’s only hope — to win two hundred thousand roubles in a lottery.

* * * * *

She is wicked, but she taught her children good.

* * * * *

Every one has something to hide.

* * * * *

The title of N.’s story: The Power of Harmonies.

* * * * *

O how nice it would be if bachelors or widowers were appointed

Governors.

* * * * *

A Moscow actress never in her life saw a turkey-hen.

* * * * *

On the lips of the old I hear either stupidity or malice.

* * * * *

“Mamma, Pete did not say his prayers.” Pete is woken up, he says his prayers, cries, then lies down and shakes his fist at the child who made the complaint.

* * * * *

He imagined that only doctors could say whether it is male or female.

* * * * *

One became a priest, the other a Dukhobor, the third a philosopher, and in each case instinctively because no one wants really to work with bent back from morning to night.

* * * * *

A passion for the word uterine: my uterine brother, my uterine wife, my uterine brother-in-law, etc.

* * * * *

To Doctor N., an illegitimate child, who has never lived with his father and knew him very little, his bosom friend Z., says with agitation: “You see, the fact of the matter is that your father misses you very much, he is ill and wants to have a look at you.” The father keeps “Switzerland,” furnished apartments. He takes the fried fish out of the dish with his hands and only afterwards uses a fork. The vodka smells rank. N. went, looked about him, had dinner — his only feeling that that fat peasant, with the grizzled beard, should sell such filth. But once, when passing the house at midnight, he looked in at the window: his father was sitting with bent back reading a book. He recognized himself and his own manners.

* * * * *

As stupid as a gray gelding.

* * * * *

They teased the girl with castor oil, and therefore she did not marry.

* * * * *

N. all his life used to write abusive letters to famous singers, actors, and authors: “You think, you scamp,…” — without signing his name.

* * * * *

When the man who carried the torch at funerals came out in his three-cornered hat, his frock coat with laces and stripes, she fell in love with him.

* * * * *

A sparkling, joyous nature, a kind of living protest against grumblers; he is fat and healthy, eats a great deal, every one likes him but only because they are afraid of the grumblers; he is a nobody, a Ham, only eats and laughs loud, and that’s all; when he dies, every one sees that he had done nothing, that they had mistaken him for some one else.

* * * * *

After the inspection of the building, the Commission, which was bribed, lunched heartily, and it was precisely a funeral feast over honesty.

* * * * *

He who tells lies is dirty.

* * * * *

At three o’clock in the morning they wake him: he has to go to his job at the railway station, and so every day for the last fourteen years.

* * * * *

A lady grumbles: “I write to my son that he should change his linen

every Saturday. He replies: ‘Why Saturday, not Monday?’ I answer:

‘Well, all right, let it be Monday.’ And he: ‘Why Monday, not

Tuesday?’ He is a nice honest man, but I get worried by him.”

* * * * *

A clever man loves learning but is a fool at teaching.

* * * * *

The sermons of priests, archimandrites, and bishops are wonderfully like one another.

* * * * *

One remembers the arguments about the brotherhood of man, public good, and work for the people, but really there were no such arguments, one only drank at the University. They write: “One feels ashamed of the men with University degrees who once fought for human rights and freedom of religion and conscience” — but they never fought.

* * * * *

Every day after dinner the husband threatens his wife that he will become a monk, and the wife cries.

* * * * *

Mordokhvostov.

* * * * *

Husband and wife have lived together and quarreled for eighteen years. At last he makes a confession, which was in fact untrue, of having been false to her, and they part to his great pleasure and to the wrath of the whole town.

* * * * *

A useless thing, an album with forgotten, uninteresting photographs, lies in the corner on a chair; it has been lying there for the last twenty years and no one makes up his mind to throw it away.

* * * * *

N. tells how forty years ago X., a wonderful and extraordinary man, had saved the lives of five people, and N. feels it strange that every one listened with indifference, that the history of X. is already forgotten, uninteresting….

* * * * *

They fell upon the soft caviare greedily, and devoured it in a minute.

* * * * *

In the middle of a serious conversation he says to his little son:

“Button up your trousers.”

* * * * *

Man will only become better when you make him see what he is like.

* * * * *

Dove-colored face.

* * * * *

The squire feeds his pigeons, canaries, and fowls on pepper, acids, and all kinds of rubbish in order that the birds may change their color — and that is his sole occupation: he boasts of it to every visitor.

* * * * *

They invited a famous singer to recite the Acts of the Apostles at the wedding; he recited it, but they have not paid his fee.

* * * * *

For a farce: I have a friend by name Krivomordy (crooked face) and he’s all right. Not crooked leg or crooked arm but crooked face: he was married and his wife loved him.

* * * * *

N. drank milk every day, and every time he put a fly in the glass and then, with the air of a victim, asked the old butler: “What’s that?” He could not live a single day without that.

* * * * *

She is surly and smells of a vapor bath.

* * * * *

N. learned of his wife’s adultery. He is indignant, distressed, but hesitates and keeps silent. He keeps silence and ends by borrowing money from Z., the lover, and continues to consider himself an honest man.

* * * * *

When I stop drinking tea and eating bread and butter, I say: “I have had enough.” But when I stop reading poems or novels, I say: “No more of that, no more of that.”

* * * * *

A solicitor lends money at a high rate of interest, and justifies himself because he is leaving everything to the University of Moscow.

* * * * *

A little sexton, with radical views: “Nowadays our fellows crawl out from all sorts of unexpected holes.”

* * * * *

The squire N. always quarrels with his neighbors who are Molokans; he goes to court, abuses and curses them; but when at last they leave, he feels there is an empty place; he ages rapidly and pines away.

[Footnote 1: Molokans are a religious sect in Russia.]

* * * * *

Mordukhanov.

* * * * *

With N. and his wife there lives the wife’s brother, a lachrymose young man who at one time steals, at another tells lies, at another attempts suicide; N. and his wife do not know what to do, they are afraid to turn him out because he might kill himself; they would like to turn him out, but they do not know how to manage it. For forging a bill he gets into prison, and N. and his wife feel that they are to blame; they cry, grieve. She died from grief; he too died some time later and everything was left to the brother who squandered it and got into prison again.

* * * * *

Suppose I had to marry a woman and live in her house, I would run away in two days, but a woman gets used so quickly to her husband’s house, as though she had been born there.

* * * * *

Well, you are a Councillor; but whom do you counsel? God forbid that any one should listen to your counsels.

* * * * *

The little town of Torjok. A sitting of the town council. Subject: the raising of the rates. Decision: to invite the Pope to settle down in Torjok — to choose it as his residence.

* * * * *

S.’s logic: I am for religious toleration, but against religious freedom; one cannot allow what is not in the strict sense orthodox.

* * * * *

St. Piony and Epinach. ii March, Pupli 13 m.

* * * * *

Poetry and works of art contain not what is needed but what people desire; they do not go further than the crowd and they express only what the best in the crowd desire.

* * * * *

A little man is very cautious; he sends even letters of congratulation by registered post in order to get a receipt.

* * * * *

Russia is an enormous plain across which wander mischievous men.

* * * * *

Platonida Ivanovna.

* * * * *

If you are politically sound, that is enough for you to be considered a perfectly satisfactory citizen; the same thing with radicals, to be politically unsound is enough, everything else will be ignored.

* * * * *

A man who when he fails opens his eyes wide.

* * * * *

Ziuzikov.

* * * * *

A Councillor of State, a respectable man; it suddenly comes out that he has secretly kept a brothel.

* * * * *

N. has written a good play; no one praises him or is pleased; they all say: “We’ll see what you write next.”

* * * * *

The more important people came in by the front door, the simple folk by the back door.

* * * * *

He: “And in our town there lived a man whose name was Kishmish (raisin). He called himself Kishmish, but every one knew that he was Kishmish.”

She (after some thought): “How annoying … if only his name had been

Sultana, but Kishmish!…”

* * * * *

Blagovospitanny.

* * * * *

Most honored Iv-Iv-itch!

* * * * *

How intolerable people are sometimes who are happy and successful in everything.

* * * * *

They begin gossiping that N. is living with Z.; little by little an atmosphere is created in which a liaison of N. and Z. becomes inevitable.

* * * * *

When the locust was a plague, I wrote against the locust and enchanted every one, I was rich and famous; but now, when the locust has long ago disappeared and is forgotten, I am merged in the crowd, forgotten, and not wanted.

* * * * *

Merrily, joyfully: “I have the honor to introduce you to Iv. Iv.

Izgoyev, my wife’s lover.”

* * * * *

Everywhere on the estate are notices: “Trespassers will be prosecuted,” “Keep off the flowers,” etc.

* * * * *

In the great house is a fine library which is talked about but is never used; they give you watery coffee which you cannot drink; the garden is tasteless with no flowers in it — and they pretend that all this is something Tolstoian.

* * * * *

He learnt Swedish in order to study Ibsen, spent a lot of time and trouble, and suddenly realized that Ibsen is not important; he could not conceive what use he could now make of the Swedish language.

[Footnote 1: Ibsen wrote in Norwegian of course. Responding to a request for his interpretation of this curious paragraph. Mr. Koteliansky writes:

“Chekhov had a very high opinion of Ibsen; the paragraph, I am sure, is by no means aimed at Ibsen. Most probably the paragraph, as well as many others in the Notes, is something which C. either personally or indirectly heard someone say. You will see that Kuprin [“Reminiscences of Chekhov,” by Gorky, Kuprin and Bunin, New York: Huebsch.] told C. the anecdote about the actor whose wife asked him to whistle a melody on the stage during a rehearsal. In C.’s Notes you have that anecdote, somewhat shortened and the names changed, without mentioning the source.”

“The reader, on the whole, may puzzle his head over many paragraphs in the Notes, but he will hardly find explanations each time. What the reader has to remember is that the Notes are material used by C. in his creative activity and as such it throws a great deal of light on C.’s mentality and process of working.”]

* * * * *

N. makes a living by exterminating bugs; and for the purposes of his trade he reads the works of — — . If in “The Cossacks,” bugs are not mentioned, it means that “The Cossacks” is a bad book.

* * * * *

Man is what he believes.

* * * * *

A clever girl: “I cannot pretend … I never tell a lie … I have principles” — and all the time “I … I … I …”

* * * * *

N. is angry with his wife who is an actress, and without her knowledge gets abusive criticisms published about her in the newspapers.

* * * * *

A nobleman boasts “This house of mine was built in the time of Dmitry

Donskoy.”

* * * * *

“Your Worship, he called my dog a bad name: ‘son of a bitch.’“

* * * * *

The snow fell and did not lie on the ground reddened with blood.

* * * * *

He left everything to charity, so that nothing should go to his relations and children, whom he hated.

* * * * *

A very amorous man; he is no sooner introduced to a girl than he becomes a he-goat.

* * * * *

A nobleman Drekoliev.

* * * * *

I dread the idea that a chamberlain will be present at the opening of my petition.

* * * * *

He was a rationalist, but he had to confess that he liked the ringing of church bells.

* * * * *

The father a famous general, nice pictures, expensive furniture; he died; the daughters received a good education, but are slovenly, read little, ride, and are dull.

* * * * *

They are honest and truthful so long as it is unnecessary.

* * * * *

A rich merchant would like to have a shower bath in his W.C.

* * * * *

In the early morning they ate okroshka.

[Footnote 1: A cold dish composed of cider and hash.]

* * * * *

“If you lose this talisman,” said grandmother, “you will die.” And suddenly I lost it, tortured myself, was afraid that I would die. And now, imagine, a miracle happened: I found it and continued to live.

* * * * *

Everybody goes to the theatre to see my play, to learn something instantly from it, to make some sort of profit, and I tell you: I have not the time to bother about that canaille.

* * * * *

The people hate and despise everything new and useful; when there was cholera, they hated and killed the doctors and they love vodka; by the people’s love or hatred one can estimate the value of what they love or hate.

* * * * *

Looking out of the window at the corpse which is being borne to the cemetery: “You are dead, you are being carried to the cemetery, and I will go and have my breakfast.”

* * * * *

A Tchech Vtitchka.

* * * * *

A man, forty years old, married a girl of twenty-two who read only the very latest writers, wore green ribbons, slept on yellow pillows, and believed in her taste and her opinions as if they were law; she is nice, not silly, and gentle, but he separates from her.

* * * * *

When one longs for a drink, it seems as though one could drink a whole ocean — that is faith; but when one begins to drink, one can only drink altogether two glasses — that is science.

* * * * *

For a farce: Fildekosov, Poprygunov.

* * * * *

In former times a nice man, with principles, who wanted to be respected, would try to become a general or priest, but now he goes in for being a writer, professor….

* * * * *

There is nothing which history will not justify.

* * * * *

Zievoulia.

[Footnote 1: A name or word invented by Chekhov meaning “One who yawns for a long time with pleasure.”]

* * * * *

The crying of a nice child is ugly; so in bad verses you may recognize that the author is a nice man.

* * * * *

If you wish women to love you, be original; I know a man who used to wear felt boots summer and winter, and women fell in love with him.

* * * * *

I arrive at Yalta. Every room is engaged. I go to the “Italy” — not a room available. “What about my room number 35” — “It is engaged.” A lady. They say: “Would you like to stay with this lady? The lady has no objection.” I stay in her room. Conversation. Evening. The Tartar guide comes in. My ears are stopped, my eyes blindfolded; I sit and see nothing and hear nothing….

* * * * *

A young lady complains: “My poor brother gets such a small salary — only seven thousand!”

* * * * *

She: “I see only one thing now: you have a large mouth! A large mouth!

An enormous mouth!”

* * * * *

The horse is a useless and pernicious animal; a great deal of land has to be tilled for it, it accustoms man not to employ his own muscles, it is often an object of luxury; it makes man effeminate. For the future not a single horse.

* * * * *

N. a singer; speaks to nobody, his throat muffled up — he takes care of his voice, but no one has ever heard him sing.

* * * * *

About absolutely everything: “What’s the good of that? It’s useless!”

* * * * *

He wears felt boots summer and winter and gives this explanation: “It’s better for the head, because the blood, owing to the heat, is drawn down into the feet, and the thoughts are clearer.”

* * * * *

A woman is jocularly called Fiodor Ivanovitch.

* * * * *

A farce: N., in order to marry, greased the bald patch on his head with an ointment which he read of in an advertisement, and suddenly there began to grow on his head pig’s bristles.

* * * * *

What does your husband do? — He takes castor oil.

* * * * *

A girl writes: “We shall live intolerably near you.”

* * * * *

N. has been for long in love with Z. who married X.; two years after the marriage Z. comes to N., cries, wishes to tell him something; N. expects to hear her complain against her husband; but it turns out that Z. has come to tell of her love for K.

* * * * *

N. a well known lawyer in Moscow; Z., who like N. was born in Taganrog, comes to Moscow and goes to see the celebrity; he is received warmly, but he remembers the school to which they both went, remembers how N. looked in his uniform, becomes agitated by envy, sees that N.’s flat is in bad taste, that N. himself talks a great deal; and he leaves disenchanted by envy and by the meanness which before he did not even suspect was in him.

* * * * *

The title of a play: The Bat.

* * * * *

Everything which the old cannot enjoy is forbidden or considered wrong.

* * * * *

When he was getting on in years, he married a very young girl, and so she faded and withered away with him.

* * * * *

All his life he wrote about capitalism and millions, and he had never had any money.

* * * * *

A young lady fell in love with a handsome constable.

* * * * *

N. was a very good, fashionable tailor; but he was spoiled and ruined by trifles; at one time he made an overcoat without pockets, at another a collar which was much too high.

* * * * *

A farce: Agent of freight transport company and of fire insurance company.

* * * * *

Any one can write a play which might be produced.

* * * * *

A country house. Winter. N., ill, sits in his room. In the evening there suddenly arrives from the railway station a stranger Z., a young girl, who introduces herself and says that she has come to look after the invalid. He is perplexed, frightened, he refuses; then Z. says that at any rate she will stay the night. A day passes, two, and she goes on living there. She has an unbearable temper, she poisons one’s existence.

* * * * *

A private room in a restaurant. A rich man Z., tying his napkin round his neck, touching the sturgeon with his fork: “At least I’ll have a snack before I die” — and he has been saying this for a long time, daily.

* * * * *

By his remarks on Strindberg and literature generally L.L. Tolstoi reminds one very much of Madam Loukhmav.

[Footnote 1: L.L. Tolstoi was Leo Nicolaievitch’a son, Madame Loukhmav a tenth rate woman-writer.]

* * * * *

Diedlov, when he speaks of the Deputy Governor or the Governor, becomes a romanticist, remembering “The Arrival of the Deputy Governor” in the book A Hundred Russian Writers.

* * * * *

A play: the Bean of Life.

* * * * *

A vet. belongs to the stallion class of people.

* * * * *

Consultation.

* * * * *

The sun shines and in my soul is darkness.

* * * * *

In S. I made the acquaintance of the barrister Z. — a sort of Nika, The Fair … He has several children; with all of them he is magisterial, gentle, kind, not a single rude word; I soon learn that he has another family. Then he invites me to his daughter’s wedding; he prays, makes a genuflection, and says: “I still preserve religious feeling; I am a believer.” And when in his presence people speak of education, of women, he has a naïve expression, exactly as if he did not understand. When he makes a speech in Court, his face looks as if he were praying.

* * * * *

“Mammy, don’t show yourself to the guests, you are very fat.”

* * * * *

Love? In love? Never! I am a Government clerk.

* * * * *

He knows little, even as a babe who has not yet come out of his mother’s womb.

* * * * *

From childhood until extreme old age N. has had a passion for spying.

* * * * *

He uses clever words, that’s all — philosophy … equator … (for a play).

* * * * *

The stars have gone out long ago, but they still shine for the crowd.

* * * * *

As soon as he became a scholar, he began to expect honors.

* * * * *

He was a prompter, but got disgusted and gave it up; for about fifteen years he did not go to the theatre; then he went and saw a play, cried with emotion, felt sad, and, when his wife asked him on his return how he liked the theatre, he answered: “I do not like it.”

* * * * *

The parlormaid Nadya fell in love with an exterminator of bugs and black beetles.

* * * * *

A Councillor of State; it came out after his death that, in order to earn a rouble, he was employed at the theatre to bark like a dog; he was poor.

* * * * *

You must have decent, well-dressed children, and your children too must have a nice house and children, and their children again children and nice houses; and what is it all for? — The devil knows.

* * * * *

Perkaturin.

* * * * *

Every day he forces himself to vomit — for the sake of his health, on the advice of a friend.

* * * * *

A Government official began to live an original life; a very tall chimney on his house, green trousers, blue waistcoat, a dyed dog, dinner at midnight; after a week he gave it up.

* * * * *

Success has already given that man a lick with its tongue.

* * * * *

In the bill presented by the hotel-keeper: was among other things:

“Bugs — fifteen kopecks.” Explanation.

* * * * *

“N. has fallen into poverty.” — “What? I can’t hear.” — “I say N. has fallen into poverty.” — “What exactly do you say? I can’t make out. What N.?” — “The N. who married Z.” — “Well, what of it?” — “I say we ought to help him.” — “Eh? What him? Why help? What do you mean?” — and so on.

* * * * *

How pleasant to sit at home, when the rain is drumming on the roof, and to feel that there are no heavy dull guests coming to one’s house.

* * * * *

N. always even after five glasses of wine, takes valerian drops.

* * * * *

He lives with a parlormaid who respectfully calls him Your Honor.

* * * * *

I rented a country house for the summer; the owner, a very fat old lady, lived in the lodge, I in the great house; her husband was dead and so were all her children, she was left alone, very fat, the estate sold for debt, her furniture old and in good taste; all day long she reads letters which her husband and son had written to her. Yet she is an optimist. When some one fell ill in my house, she smiled and said again and again: “My dear, God will help.”

* * * * *

N. and Z. are school friends, each seventeen or eighteen years old; and suddenly N. learns that Z. is with child by N.’s father.

* * * * *

The priezt came … zaint … praize to thee, O Lord.

* * * * *

What empty words these discussions about the rights of women! If a dog writes a work of talent, they will even accept the dog.

* * * * *

Hæmorrhage: “It’s an abscess that’s just burst inside you … it’s all right, have some more vodka.”

* * * * *

The intelligentsia are good for nothing, because they drink a lot of tea, talk a lot in stuffy rooms, with empty bottles.

* * * * *

When she was young, she ran away with a doctor, a Jew, and had a daughter by him; now she hates her past, hates the red-haired daughter, and the father still loves her as well as the daughter, and walks under her window, chubby and handsome.

* * * * *

He picked his teeth and put the toothpick back into the glass.

* * * * *

The husband and wife could not sleep; they began to discuss how bad literature had become and how nice it would be to publish a magazine: the idea carried them away; they lay awake silent for awhile. “Shall we ask Boborykin to write?” he asked. “Certainly, do ask him.” At five in the morning he starts for his work at the depot; she sees him off walking in the snow to the gate, shuts the gate after him…. “And shall we ask Potapenko?” he asks, already outside the gate.

* * * * *

When he learnt that his father had been raised to the nobility he began to sign himself Alexis.

* * * * *

Teacher: “‘The collision of a train with human victims’ … that is wrong … it ought to be ‘the collision of a train that resulted in human victims’ … for the cause of the people on the line.”

* * * * *

Title of play: Golden Rain.

* * * * *

There is not a single criterion which can serve as the measure of the non-existent, of the non-human.

* * * * *

A patriot: “And do you know that our Russian macaroni is better than the Italian? I’ll prove it to you. Once at Nice they brought me sturgeon — do you know, I nearly cried.” And the patriot did not see that he was only gastronomically patriotic.

* * * * *

A grumbler: “But is turkey food? Is caviare food?”

* * * * *

A very sensible, clever young woman; when she was bathing, he noticed that she had a narrow pelvis and pitifully thin hips — and he got to hate her.

* * * * *

A clock. Yegor the locksmith’s clock at one time loses and at another gains exactly as if to spite him; deliberately it is now at twelve and then quite suddenly at eight. It does it out of animosity as though the devil were in it. The locksmith tries to find out the cause, and once he plunges it in holy water.

* * * * *

Formerly the heroes in novels and stories (e.g. Petchorin, Onyeguin) were twenty years old, but now one cannot have a hero under thirty to thirty-five years. The same will soon happen with heroines.

* * * * *

N. is the son of a famous father; he is very nice, but, whatever he does, every one says: “That is very well, but it is nothing to the father.” Once he gave a recitation at an evening party; all the performers had a success, but of him they said: “That is very well, but still it is nothing to the father.” He went home and got into bed and, looking at his father’s portrait, shook his fist at him.

* * * * *

We fret ourselves to reform life, in order that posterity may be happy, and posterity will say as usual: “In the past it used to be better, the present is worse than the past.”

* * * * *

My motto: I don’t want anything.

* * * * *

When a decent working-man takes himself and his work critically, people call him grumbler, idler, bore; but when an idle scoundrel shouts that it is necessary to work, he is applauded.

* * * * *

When a woman destroys things like a man, people think it natural and everybody understands it; but when like a man, she wishes or tries to create, people think it unnatural and cannot reconcile themselves to it.

* * * * *

When I married, I became an old woman.

* * * * *

He looked down on the world from the height of his baseness.

* * * * *

“Your fiancée is very pretty.” “To me all women are alike.”

* * * * *

He dreamt of winning three hundred thousand in lottery, twice in succession, because three hundred thousand would not be enough for him.

* * * * *

N., a retired Councillor of State, lives in the country; he is sixty-six. He is educated, liberal-minded, reads, likes an argument. He learns from his guests that the new coroner Z. walks about with a slipper on one foot and a boot on the other, and lives with another man’s wife. N. thinks all the time of Z.; he does nothing but talk about him, how he walks about in one slipper and lives with another man’s wife; he talks of nothing else; at last he goes to sleep with his own wife (he has not slept with her for the last eight years), he is agitated and the whole time talks about Z. Finally he has a stroke, his arm and leg are paralyzed — and all this from agitation about Z. The doctor comes. With him too N. talks about Z. The doctor says that he knows Z., that Z. now wears two boots, his leg being well, and that he has married the lady.

* * * * *

I hope that in the next world I shall be able to look back at this life and say: “Those were beautiful dreams….”

* * * * *

The squire N., looking at the undergraduate and the young girl, the children of his steward Z.: “I am sure Z. steals from me, lives grandly on stolen money, the undergraduate and the girl know it or ought to know it; why then do they look so decent?”

* * * * *

She is fond of the word “compromise,” and often uses it; “I am incapable of compromise….” “A board which has the shape of a parallelepiped.”

* * * * *

The hereditary honorable citizen Oziaboushkin always tries to make out that his ancestors had the right to the title of Count.

* * * * *

“He is a perfect dab at it.” “O, O, don’t use that expression; my mother is very particular.”

* * * * *

I have just married my third husband … the name of the first was Ivan Makarivitch … of the second Peter … Peter … I have forgotten.

* * * * *

The writer Gvozdikov thinks that he is very famous, that every one knows him. He arrives at S., meets an officer who shakes his hand for a long time, looking with rapture into his face. G. is glad, he too shakes hands warmly…. At last the officer: “And how is your orchestra? Aren’t you the conductor?”

* * * * *

Morning; M.’s mustaches are in curl papers.

* * * * *

And it seemed to him that he was highly respected and valued everywhere, anywhere, even in railway buffets, and so he always ate with a smile on his face.

* * * * *

The birds sing, and already it begins to seem to him that they do not sing, but whine.

* * * * *

N., father of a family, listens to his son reading aloud J.J. Rousseau to the family, and thinks: “Well, at any rate, J.J. Rousseau had no gold medal on his breast, but I have one.”

* * * * *

N. has a spree with his step-son, an undergraduate, and they go to a brothel. In the morning the undergraduate is going away, his leave is up; N. sees him off. The undergraduate reads him a sermon on their bad behavior; they quarrel. N: “As your father, I curse you.” — “And I curse you.”

* * * * *

A doctor is called in, but a nurse sent for.

* * * * *

N.N.V. never agrees with anyone: “Yes, the ceiling is white, that can be admitted; but white, as far as is known, consists of the seven colors of the spectrum, and it is quite possible that in this case one of the colors is darker or brighter than is necessary for the production of pure white; I had rather think a bit before saying that the ceiling is white.”

* * * * *

He holds himself exactly as though he were an icon.

* * * * *

“Are you in love?” — “There’s a little bit of that in it.”

* * * * *

Whatever happens, he says: “It is the priests.”

* * * * *

Firzikov.

* * * * *

N. dreams that he is returning from abroad, and that at Verzhbolovo, in spite of his protests, they make him pay duty on his wife.

* * * * *

When that radical, having dined with his coat off, walked into his bedroom and I saw the braces on his back, it became clear to me that that radical is a bourgeois, a hopeless bourgeois.

* * * * *

Some one saw Z., an unbeliever and blasphemer, secretly praying in front of the icon in the cathedral, and they all teased him.

* * * * *

They called the manager “four-funneled cruiser,” because he had already gone “through the chimney” (bankrupt) four times.

* * * * *

He is not stupid, he was at the university, has studied long and assiduously, but in writing he makes gross mistakes.

* * * * *

Countess Nadin’s daughter gradually turns into a housekeeper; she is very timid, and can only say “No-o,” “Yes-s,” and her hands always tremble. Somehow or other a Zemstvo official wished to marry her; he is a widower and she marries him, with him too it was “Yes-s,” “No-o”; she was very much afraid of her husband and did not love him; one day he happened to give a loud cough, it gave her a fright, and she died.

* * * * *

Caressing her lover: “My vulture.”

* * * * *

For a play: If only you would say something funny. But for twenty years we have lived together and you have always talked of serious things; I hate serious things.

* * * * *

A cook, with a cigarette in her mouth, lies: “I studied at a high school … I know what for the earth is round.”

* * * * *

“Society for finding and raising anchors of steamers and barges,” and the Society’s agent at all functions without fail makes a speech, à la N., and without fail promises.

* * * * *

Super-mysticism.

* * * * *

When I become rich, I shall have a harem in which I shall keep fat naked women, with their buttocks painted green.

* * * * *

A shy young man came on a visit for the night: suddenly a deaf old woman came into his room, carrying a cupping-glass, and bled him; he thought that this must be the usual thing and so did not protest; in the morning it turned out that the old woman had made a mistake.

* * * * *

Surname: Verstax.

* * * * *

The more stupid the peasant, the better does the horse understand him.

THEMES, THOUGHTS, NOTES, AND FRAGMENTS.

… How stupid and for the most part how false, since if one man seeks to devour another or tell him something unpleasant it has nothing to do with Granovsky.

[Footnote 1: A well-known Radical professor, a Westerner.]

* * * * *

I left Gregory Ivanovitch’s feeling crushed and mortally offended. I was irritated by smooth words and by those who speak them, and on reaching home I meditated thus: some rail at the world, others at the crowd, that is to say praise the past and blame the present; they cry out that there are no ideals and so on, but all this has already been said twenty or thirty years ago; these are worn-out forms which have already served their time, and whoever repeats them now, he too is no longer young and is himself worn out. With last year’s foliage there decay too those who live in it. I thought, we uncultured, worn-out people, banal in speech, stereotyped in intentions, have grown quite mouldy, and, while we intellectuals are rummaging among old rags and, according to the old Russian custom, biting one another, there is boiling up around us a life which we neither know nor notice. Great events will take us unawares, like sleeping fairies, and you will see that Sidorov, the merchant, and the teacher of the school at Yeletz, who see and know more than we do, will push us far into the background, because they will accomplish more than all of us put together. And I thought that were we now to obtain political liberty, of which we talk so much, while engaged in biting one another, we should not know what to do with it, we should waste it in accusing one another in the newspapers of being spies and money-grubbers, we should frighten society with the assurance that we have neither men, nor science, nor literature, nothing! Nothing! And to scare society as we are doing now, and as we shall continue to do, means to deprive it of courage; it means simply to declare that we have no social or political sense in us. And I also thought that, before the dawn of a new life has broken, we shall turn into sinister old men and women and we shall be the first who, in our hatred of that dawn, will calumniate it.

* * * * *

Mother never stops talking about poverty. It is very strange. In the first place, it is strange that we are poor, beg like beggars, and at the same time eat superbly, live in a large house; in the summer we go to our own country house, and generally speaking we do not look like beggars. Evidently this is not poverty, but something else, and rather worse. Secondly, it is strange that for the last ten years mother has been spending all her energy solely on getting money to pay interest. It seems to me that were mother to spend that terrible energy on something else, we could have twenty such houses. Thirdly, it seems to me strange that the hardest work in the family is done by mother, not by me. To me that is the strangest thing of all, most terrible. She has, as she has just said, a thought on her brain, she begs, she humiliates herself; our debts grow daily and up till now I have not done a single thing to help her. What can I do? I think and think and cannot make it out. I only see clearly that we are rushing down an inclined plane, but to what, the devil knows. They say that poverty threatens us and that in poverty there is disgrace, but that too I cannot understand, since I was never poor.

* * * * *

The spiritual life of these women is as gray and dull as their faces and dresses; they speak of science, literature, tendencies, and the like, only because they are the wives and sisters of scholars and literary men; were they the wives and sisters of inspectors or of dentists, they would speak with the same zeal of fires or teeth. To allow them to speak of science, which is foreign to them, and to listen to them, is to flatter their ignorance.

* * * * *

Essentially all this is crude and meaningless, and romantic love appears as meaningless as an avalanche which involuntarily rolls down a mountain and overwhelms people. But when one listens to music, all this is: that some people lie in their graves and sleep, and that one woman is alive — gray-haired, she is sitting in a box in the theatre, quiet and majestic, and the avalanche seems no longer meaningless, since in nature everything has a meaning. And everything is forgiven, and it would be strange not to forgive.

* * * * *

Olga Ivanovna regarded old chairs, stools, sofas, with the same respectful tenderness as she regarded old dogs and horses, and her room, therefore, was something like an alms-house for furniture. Round the mirror, on all tables and shelves, stood photographs of uninteresting, half-forgotten people; on the walls hung pictures at which nobody ever looked; and it was always dark in the room, because there burnt there only one lamp with a blue shade.

* * * * *

If you cry “Forward,” you must without fail explain in which direction one must go. Do you not see that, if without explaining the direction, you fire off this word simultaneously at a monk and at a revolutionary, they will proceed in precisely opposite directions?

* * * * *

It is said in Holy Writ: “Fathers, do not irritate your children,” even the wicked and good-for-nothing children; but the fathers irritate me, irritate me terribly. My contemporaries chime in with them and the youngsters follow, and every minute they strike me in the face with their smooth words.

* * * * *

That the aunt suffered and did not show it gave him the impression of a trick.

* * * * *

O.I. was in constant motion; such women, like bees, carry about a fertilizing pollen….

* * * * *

Don’t marry a rich woman — she will drive you out of the house; don’t marry a poor woman — you won’t sleep; but marry the freest freedom, the lot and life of a Cossack. (Ukrainian saying.)

* * * * *

Aliosha: “I often hear people say: ‘Before marriage there is romance, and then — goodbye, illusion!’ How heartless and coarse it is.”

* * * * *

So long as a man likes the splashing of a fish, he is a poet; but when he knows that the splashing is nothing but the chase of the weak by the strong, he is a thinker; but when he does not understand what sense there is in the chase, or what use in the equilibrium which results from destruction, he is becoming silly and dull, as he was when a child. And the more he knows and thinks, the sillier he becomes.

* * * * *

The death of a child. I have no sooner sat down in peace than — bang — fate lets fly at me.

* * * * *

The she-wolf, nervous and anxious, fond of her young, dragged away a foal into her winter-shelter, thinking him a lamb. She knew that there was a ewe there and that the ewe had young. While she was dragging the foal away, suddenly some one whistled; she was alarmed and dropped him, but he followed her. They arrived at the shelter. He began to suck like the young wolves. Throughout the winter he changed but little; he only grew thin and his legs longer, and the spot on his forehead turned into a triangle. The she-wolf was in delicate health.

[Footnote 1: A sketch of part of the story “Whitehead.”]

* * * * *

They invited celebrities to these evening parties, and it was dull because there are few people of talent in Moscow, and the same singers and reciters performed at all evening parties.

* * * * *

She has not before felt herself so free and easy with a man.

* * * * *

You wait until you grow up and I’ll teach you declamation.

* * * * *

It seemed to her that at the show many of the pictures were alike.

* * * * *

There filed up before you a whole line of laundry-maids.

* * * * *

Kostya insisted that the women had robbed themselves.

* * * * *

L. put himself in the place of the juryman and interpreted it thus: if it was a case of house-breaking, then there was no theft, because the laundresses themselves sold the linen and spent the money on drink; but if it was a case of theft, then there could have been no house-breaking.

* * * * *

Fiodor was flattered that his brother had found him at the same table with a famous actor.

* * * * *

When Y. spoke or ate, his beard moved as if he had no teeth in his mouth.

* * * * *

Ivashin loved Nadya Vishnyevsky and was afraid of his love. When the butler told him that the old lady had just gone out, but the young lady was at home, he fumbled in his fur coat and dress-coat pocket, found his card, and said: “Right.”

But it was not all right. Driving from his house in the morning, to pay a visit, he thought that he was compelled to it by conventions of society, which weighed heavily upon him. But now it was clear to him that he went to pay calls only because somewhere far away in the depths of his soul, as under a veil, there lay hidden a hope that he would see Nadya…. And he suddenly felt pitiful, sad, and a little frightened….

* * * * *

In his soul, it seemed to him, it was snowing, and everything faded away. He was afraid to love Nadya, because he was too old for her, thought his appearance unattractive, and did not believe that young girls like Nadya could love men for their minds and spiritual qualities. Still there would at times rise in him something like a hope. But now, from the moment when the officer’s spurs jingled and then died away, there also died away his timid love…. All was at an end, hope was impossible…. “Yes, now all is finished,” he thought, “I am glad, very glad.”

* * * * *

He imagined his wife to be not Nadya, but always, for some reason, a stout woman with a large bosom, covered with Venetian lace.

* * * * *

The clerks in the office of the Governor of the island have a drunken headache. They long for a drink. They have no money. What is to be done? One of them, a convict who is serving his time here for forgery, devises a plan. He goes to the church, where a former officer, now exiled for giving his superior a box on the ears, sings in the choir, and says to him panting: “Here! There’s a pardon come for you! They have got a telegram in the office.”

The late officer turns pale, trembles, and can hardly walk for excitement.

“But for such news you ought to give something for a drink,” says the clerk.

“Take all I have! All!”

And he hands him some five roubles…. He arrives at the office. The officer is afraid that he may die from joy and presses his hand to his heart.

“Where is the telegram?”

“The bookkeeper has put it away.” (He goes to the bookkeeper.) General laughter and an invitation to drink with them.

“How terrible!”

After that the officer was ill for a week.

[Footnote 1: An episode which Chekhov heard during his journey in the island, Saghalien.]

* * * * *

Fedya, the steward’s brother-in-law, told Ivanov that wild-duck were feeding on the other side of the wood. He loaded his gun with slugs. Suddenly a wolf appeared. He fired and smashed both the wolf’s hips. The wolf was mad with pain and did not see him. “What can I do for you, dear?” He thought and thought, and then went home and called Peter…. Peter took a stick, and with an awful grimace, began to beat the wolf…. He beat and beat and beat until it died…. He broke into a sweat and went away, without saying a single word.

* * * * *

Vera: “I do not respect you, because you married so strangely, because nothing came of you…. That is why I have secrets from you.”

* * * * *

It is unfortunate that we try to solve the simplest questions cleverly, and therefore make them unusually complicated. We should seek a simple solution.

* * * * *

There is no Monday which will not give its place to Tuesday.

* * * * *

I am happy and satisfied, sister, but if I were born a second time and were asked: “Do you want to marry?” I should answer: “No.” “Do you want to have money?” “No….”

* * * * *

Lenstchka liked dukes and counts in novels, not ordinary persons. She loved the chapters in which there is love, pure and ideal not sensual. Descriptions of nature she did not like. She preferred conversations to descriptions. While reading the beginning she would glance impatiently at the end. She did not remember the names of authors. She wrote with a pencil in the margins: “Wonderful!” “Beautiful!” or “Serve him right!”

* * * * *

Lenstchka sang without opening her mouth.

* * * * *

Post coitum: We Balderiovs always excelled in vigor and health.

* * * * *

He drove in a cab, and, as he watched his son walking away, thought: “Perhaps, he belongs to the race of men who will no longer trundle in scurvy cabs, as I do, but will fly through the skies in balloons.”

* * * * *

She is so beautiful that it is even frightening; dark eye-brows.

* * * * *

The son says nothing, but the wife feels him to be an enemy; she feels that he has overheard everything….

* * * * *

What a lot of idiots there are among ladies. People get so used to it that they do not notice it.

* * * * *

They often go to the theatre and read serious magazines — and yet are spiteful and immoral.

* * * * *

Nat: “I never have fits of hysterics. I am not a pampered darling.”

[Footnote 1: This and the following few passages are from the rough draft of Chekhov’s play Three Sisters.]

* * * * *

Nat: (continually to her sisters): “O, how ugly you have grown. O, how old you do look!”

* * * * *

To live one must have something to hang on to…. In the provinces only the body works, not the spirit.

* * * * *

You won’t become a saint through other people’s sins.

* * * * *

Koulyguin: “I am a jolly fellow, I infect every one with my mood.”

* * * * *

Koul. Gives lessons at rich houses.

* * * * *

Koul. In Act IV without mustaches.

* * * * *

The wife implores the husband: “Don’t get fat.”

* * * * *

O if there were a life in which every one grew younger and more beautiful.

* * * * *

Irene: “It is hard to live without a father, without a mother.” — “And without a husband.” — “Yes, without a husband. Whom could one confide in? To whom could one complain? With whom could one share ones’s joy? One must love some one strongly.”

* * * * *

Koulyguin (to his wife): “I am so happy to be married to you, that I consider it ungentlemanly and improper to speak of or even mention a dowry. Hush, don’t say anything….”

* * * * *

The doctor enjoys being at the duel.

* * * * *

It is difficult to live without orderlies. You cannot make the servants answer your bell.

* * * * *

The 2nd, 3rd, and 6th companies left at 4, and we leave at 12 sharp.

[Footnote 1: Here the fragments from the rough draft of Three

Sisters end.]

* * * * *

In the daytime conversations about the loose manners of the girls in secondary schools, in the evening a lecture on degeneration and the decline of everything, and at night, after all this, one longs to shoot oneself.

* * * * *

In the life of our towns there is no pessimism, no Marxism, and no movements, but there is stagnation, stupidity, mediocrity.

* * * * *

He had a thirst for life, but it seemed to him to mean that he wanted a drink — and he drank wine.

* * * * *

F. in the town-hall: Serguey Nik. in a plaintive voice: “Gentlemen, where can we get the means? Our town is poor.”

* * * * *

To be idle involuntarily means to listen to what is being said, to see what is being done; but he who works and is occupied hears little and sees little.

* * * * *

In the skating rink he raced after L.; he wanted to overtake her and it seemed as if it were life which he wanted to overtake, that life which one cannot bring back or overtake or catch, just as one cannot catch one’s shadow.

* * * * *

Only one thought reconciled him to the doctor: just as he had suffered from the doctor’s ignorance, so perhaps some one was suffering from his mistakes.

* * * * *

But isn’t it strange? In the whole town there is not a single musician, not a single orator, not a prominent man.

* * * * *

Honorable Justice of the Peace, Honorable Member of the Children’s

Shelter — all honorable.

* * * * *

L. studied and studied — but people who had finished developing could not understand her, nor could the young. Ut consecutivum.

* * * * *

He is dark, with little side-whiskers, dressed like a dandy, dark eyes, a warm brunet. He exterminates bugs, talks about earthquakes and China. His fiancée has a dowry of 8,000 roubles; she is very handsome, as her aunt says. He is an agent for a fire-insurance company, etc. “You’re awfully pretty, my darling, awfully. And 8,000 into the bargain! You are a beauty; when I looked at you to-day, a shiver ran down my back.”

* * * * *

He: Earthquakes are caused by the evaporation of water.

* * * * *

Names: Goose, Pan, Oyster.

“Were I abroad, they would give me a medal for such a surname.”

* * * * *

I can’t be said to be handsome, but I am rather pretty.