My soul loved this story. It is divinely sensitive, and moving, and deep; a wonderful sample of the depths literature reached in days gone by. Such realism is from a literary world that is just over there... in recent history... before the advent of tel... (I won't say it, I won't even say it). Thank you, Ruby Love!
Chekhov and many writers, artists, and romantic thinkers of Russia's Silver Age (1890-1920) were extraorinary. As Gary Lachman says, in his wonderful _The Return of Holy Russia, it was "A Time of Magic and Mysticism." A time of anxiety and uncertainty, of serching for idenity in a turbulent world, as you charaterize it, not unlike our own. Thanks for sharing with us.
I agree, a wonderful story. Chekov was insightful in many ways in this story. The depiction of the young girl rings very true to the father of an 18 year old. The section about class struggle poignantly harkens to the current day as well.
"The only person who feels happy here is the governess, and the factory hands are working for her gratification. But that's only apparent: she is only the figurehead. The real person, for whom everything is being done, is the devil."
And he thought about the devil, in whom he did not believe, and he looked round at the two windows where the fires were gleaming. It seemed to him that out of those crimson eyes the devil himself was looking at him -- that unknown force that had created the mutual relation of the strong and the weak, that coarse blunder which one could never correct. The strong must hinder the weak from living -- such was the law of Nature; but only in a newspaper article or in a school book was that intelligible and easily accepted. In the hotchpotch which was everyday life, in the tangle of trivialities out of which human relations were woven, it was no longer a law, but a logical absurdity, when the strong and the weak were both equally victims of their mutual relations, unwillingly submitting to some directing force, unknown, standing outside life, apart from man. [different translation]
One more thing, the painter Repin is wonderful too!
What a wonderful story. Chekov had such a penetrating eye for character and society.
1898 Russia was still ahead of the unimaginable, and so unimagined, upheaval and destruction to come in the next two decades. But Chekov vividly sketches the roots of that terrible reckoning.
I recently read Boris Pasternak’s extraordinary “Dr. Zhivago”, of which the sweeping epic Hollywood film was a gratuitous caricature; a kind of “Gone With the Wind” with Russian dressing.
The book opens at the 1905 revolution; the squall line storm preceding the hurricane to come in 1917. It carries its characters through 1917 and the following civil war that tore away control of their lives, casting them into struggles to survive within absolute uncertainty.
Like Chekov’s story, it resonated for me with the vulnerabilities of our society and times. Now one of my favorite books, a definite reread.
My soul loved this story. It is divinely sensitive, and moving, and deep; a wonderful sample of the depths literature reached in days gone by. Such realism is from a literary world that is just over there... in recent history... before the advent of tel... (I won't say it, I won't even say it). Thank you, Ruby Love!
Thank you.
she just needs to get married 🤣 is there anything of Bulhakov's in the public domain? Master and Margharita are one of my favourites
Lol, couldn't hurt.
No, Bulhakov is not yet in the public domain, but I'm adding it to my own reading list. Thanks!
Chekhov and many writers, artists, and romantic thinkers of Russia's Silver Age (1890-1920) were extraorinary. As Gary Lachman says, in his wonderful _The Return of Holy Russia, it was "A Time of Magic and Mysticism." A time of anxiety and uncertainty, of serching for idenity in a turbulent world, as you charaterize it, not unlike our own. Thanks for sharing with us.
I think we are missing a PS! I do enjoy those too in addition
to the stories.
Yes! I think the prolonged winter must have been dampening my inspiration last week ;)
great!
I agree, a wonderful story. Chekov was insightful in many ways in this story. The depiction of the young girl rings very true to the father of an 18 year old. The section about class struggle poignantly harkens to the current day as well.
"The only person who feels happy here is the governess, and the factory hands are working for her gratification. But that's only apparent: she is only the figurehead. The real person, for whom everything is being done, is the devil."
And he thought about the devil, in whom he did not believe, and he looked round at the two windows where the fires were gleaming. It seemed to him that out of those crimson eyes the devil himself was looking at him -- that unknown force that had created the mutual relation of the strong and the weak, that coarse blunder which one could never correct. The strong must hinder the weak from living -- such was the law of Nature; but only in a newspaper article or in a school book was that intelligible and easily accepted. In the hotchpotch which was everyday life, in the tangle of trivialities out of which human relations were woven, it was no longer a law, but a logical absurdity, when the strong and the weak were both equally victims of their mutual relations, unwillingly submitting to some directing force, unknown, standing outside life, apart from man. [different translation]
One more thing, the painter Repin is wonderful too!
“…some directing force…standing outside life, apart from man.” Powerful words!
What a wonderful indulgence in another world.
What a wonderful story. Chekov had such a penetrating eye for character and society.
1898 Russia was still ahead of the unimaginable, and so unimagined, upheaval and destruction to come in the next two decades. But Chekov vividly sketches the roots of that terrible reckoning.
I recently read Boris Pasternak’s extraordinary “Dr. Zhivago”, of which the sweeping epic Hollywood film was a gratuitous caricature; a kind of “Gone With the Wind” with Russian dressing.
The book opens at the 1905 revolution; the squall line storm preceding the hurricane to come in 1917. It carries its characters through 1917 and the following civil war that tore away control of their lives, casting them into struggles to survive within absolute uncertainty.
Like Chekov’s story, it resonated for me with the vulnerabilities of our society and times. Now one of my favorite books, a definite reread.
Yes, he seemed to have had an intuition for what was coming.