Chekhov Short Story Thread

"Heartache" is "Misery"

"The Chameleon" is about a dog and wondering if it is a stray or the General's dog. Opinions change on what to do with the dog depending on the owner. This is humorous.

"The Culprit" is about a guy who unbolts parts of passenger trains so he can use the nut as a weight for fishing. Apparently it was a common practice. He's arrested and sent to hard labor. It left me puzzled, but I can see the story as a humorous piece if one is in the right mood.

I didn't particularly like "A Calamity" although the details were interesting. It was a story of adultery out of boredom as you mentioned.

That leaves in the short list:

The Letter
The Name-Day Party
Anna on the Neck
About Love
The Darling
The Lady With the Pet Dog
At Christmas Time

Read "The Chameleon" today. It´s the dogs luck that the chief of police doesn´t know where the dog coes from. And Russian authorities are very much like Brazilian. The treatment of a street dog is very different of the one given to a dog that belongs to an important person.

The Chameleon was funny. I haven't read any more of the stories, but I may get a chance today. I am also thinking of reading Balzac's Droll Stories, but that would be for another thread.

As usually when animals are involved, I was angry with the treatment of the dog and so I didn´t think the story so funny. But it was a good satire of the police officer.
I´ll see if I can find Balzac´s Droll Stories.

As usually when animals are involved, I was angry with the treatment of the dog and so I didn´t think the story so funny. But it was a good satire of the police officer.
I´ll see if I can find Balzac´s Droll Stories.

I didn't like Hrukin putting his cigarette out on the dog's nose either, but it was an effective way for Chekhov to show that the dog's accuser lack of empathy. I suppose it is more satire than comedy.

I read "The Letter" http://www.eldritchpress.org/ac/jr/116.htm and "At Christmas Time" http://www.eldritchpress.org/ac/jr/198.htm. Chekhov's bad guys are people who lack empathy. His good guys express their suffering which should have been evident to the others, but isn't.

"The Letter" was satirically humorous. An alcoholic wanted a drink. A deacon wanted to be a good father and send his son a letter advising him how to behave. The chief deacon wrote the letter for him. These three have different motivations and different levels of empathy toward that son.

The story "At Christmas Time" was heartbreaking. The contrast between suffering and the lack of empathy here was very sharp. It was the best story so far and very much like "Vanka".

Read "At Christmas Time" just now, I had not noticed that you had added to your post.
I agree with the contrast between feelings and lack of empathy. Chekhov´s world is a very hard world and that makes it sound very up to date.
Taken away the snow, this could have been a Brazilian story. Many people are iliterate and therefore in some public places like the Central Train Station in Rio de Janeiro there are people that write letters for a small amount.
I´ll read "The Letter" tomorrow.

I'm glad you posted, Danik! This will get me back reading Chekhov. It is amazing how distracted I get. "At Christmas Time" is how I see Chekhov in my mind especially the ending to that story. It is interesting that this could represent Rio de Janeiro today. I tend to assume everyone is literate with access to email, but I know that can't be the case.

I must have got distracted too, for only yesterday I noticed you had added two more stories to your post.
In Brazil there still is a lot of iliteracy, allthough many people use the message funtion of their smatphones. I assume that in US most people, even the poor, have learnt to read and write.

I enjoyed "The Letter" very much. It´s very typical the awe both the less educated clerics have of the written words. I liked the ironical ending too.

I read "About Love" yesterday. http://www.eldritchpress.org/ac/jr/191.htm

It is another story about the breakup of a family due to affections by an outsider. There was no actual adultery as I read it. What I like about it is the power of thought.

Just finished "About Love". Why, I thought it an almost romantic story clad in realistic musings.

I read a story of his called "The cat", which is very typical too, but couldn´t find it in this collection. It is not "The Incident".

Searching for Chekhov and cat brought up The Incident. I didn't see something like that in the list of titles either. Maybe searching for the name of a character in the story would find it better.

"About Love" was romantic in the apparent longing between the three people involved. It left all three of them alone. I might have been missing the point of it.

Certainly not, Yes/No. I meant they are romantic in their longings. This story made me realise an aspect of Chekhov I had not noticed before: how the longings of his protagonists are usually crushed by an implacable and indiferent reality.

Just finished reading "Vanka". I liked it very much. You learn about the life of the boy through the letter (though his grandfather probably never will, because the boy didn´t stamp the letter). But living in a country with so much iliteracy I couldn´t help wondering about how wonderfully young Vanka did express himself.
I think the great curse of iliteracy is not the writing part. It is the inability to express oneself.

It is still not the story I was looking for. But to me it is an example of wrong pedagogy:

http://www.eldritchpress.org/ac/jr/094.htm

Good point about being crushed by an implacable and indifferent reality.

I found it odd that Vanka could write so well, but I let that go because the overall story was so nice. What I mainly remember is his belief that the letter would be delivered and this gave him peace.

Just read "A Transgression":http://www.eldritchpress.org/ac/jr/124.htm

A very good story with an unexpected ending!

I read "Anna on the neck": http://www.eldritchpress.org/ac/jr/180.htm It was about poverty, money and beauty rising above it all but not in a beautiful way.

I agree with you. But I guess at the beginning choices for Anna were limited. Having married a man she didn´t even like because of her family, she learnt to make the best of a bad job, and live the way she liked.

I read A Transgression after you mentioned it. It does have an unusual ending.

The story "Anna on the neck" got me thinking yesterday about groups of people and how they "evolve". In this story the family groupings were shifting as they must with each new generation as members of the groups make their choices. The original family because of the father's alcoholism was at risk. The children tried to keep it together. The daughter was able to escape, but at the price of not being able to solidify a family of her own. Her husband wasn't able to create a family or he would have done so by now. That makes three characters in the story who are not able to support a stable family group. Although the daughter looks like she is in good shape her indifference to her brothers and hostility toward her husband makes me suspect there is tragedy in store for her as well.

It is also interesting how Chekhov used addiction, in particular, alcoholism. Clearly the father was at fault for his inability to control his drinking. This the reader would pick up on easily, but so was his son-in-law who had no alcohol problem at all and explicitly criticized his father-in-law's drinking. His son-in-law's careerism may have been an addiction as bad as alcoholism as far as his new family is concerned. He is paying the price through his trophy wife whom he now can't get rid of. His daughter, also not an alcoholic, was addicted to socializing.

I agree with you, I think one of the things Chekhov depicts in several of his stories are the social relationships. The indifferent ones (those without empathy) are very often the rich and/or powerful ones. The dependents, which often suffer from this indifference are the poor, the children the animals. Anna would be a social climber. She is born in a poor family and has this father, who is addicted to alcohol. By marrying a rich man she doesn´t care for she first intends to provide for her family. But as she discovers her own female power she loses the fear from her husband and learns to provide for herself. But Chekhov stops short of a possible tragedy. In the French realism, which is still harder the story would probably include the tragedy.

Read "Grisha" a portrayal of a very small boy, who is going out for the first time. http://www.eldritchpress.org/ac/jr/056.htm

Chekhov's story sets up the tension for even deeper tragedy as you mention. I'll read Grisha tonight.

Yes, sometimes Chekhov seems to suggest another end for the story, one that goes beyond his own end and is born of the imagination of the readers.

Just read "A Trifle from Life" another story with a little boy as protagonist. He was very observant of small creatures, it seems.

http://www.eldritchpress.org/ac/jr/083.htm

Taking the perspective of a two-year-old was interesting in Grisha.