I was looking at the settings in this story, and it seems like there are three locations where action takes place: Yalta, just outside of Yalta, and Moscow. Yalta, the scene of their adultery and passionate love, is a colorful, vibrant city. Anna and Gurov meet in gardens, and the smell of flowers is never far. Yalta is also very hot. In a typical meeting, Chekhov describes the ambiance as,
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They walked and talked of the strange light on the sea: the water was of a soft warm lilac hue, and there was a golden streak from the moon upon it. They talked of how sultry it was after a hot day.
The color is often linked to the sense of variety that Gurov and Anna feel when on vacation from their spouses. The heat is both literal and sexual. For example, Chekhov summarizes the progression of the lovers' relationship as,
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Often in the square or gardens, when there was no one near them, he suddenly drew her to him and kissed her passionately...the heat, the smell of the sea...He was impatiently passionate, he would not move a step away from her.
Outside of the town this heated, passionate love affair they are having cools down and becomes almost tranquil. The landscape changes dramatically. Chekhov gives us the view from Oreanda, just a little outside of Yalta:
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At Oreanda they sat on a seat not far from the church, looked down at the sea, and were silent. Yalta was hardly visible through the morning mist; white clouds stood motionless on the mountain-tops. The leaves did not stir on the trees, grasshoppers chirruped, and the monotonous hollow sound of the sea rising up from below, spoke of the peace, of the eternal sleep awaiting us. So it must have sounded when there was no Yalta, no Oreanda here; so it sounds now, and it will sound as indifferently and monotonously when we are all no more. And in this constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards perfection. Sitting beside a young woman who in the dawn seemed so lovely, soothed and spellbound in these magical surroundings — the sea, mountains, clouds, the open sky — Gurov thought how in reality everything is beautiful in this world when one reflects: everything except what we think or do ourselves when we forget our human dignity and the higher aims of our existence.
Suddenly, the setting changes to this still and calm scene of universal peace and beauty. It seems like their feelings for each other change when they are affected by the view. They experience some more deeper or ideal sense of love. The words both "salvation" and "perfection" are in this paragraph, too. The more spiritual kind of love that they experience outside of Yalta might actually be redemptive. For whatever reason, the couple return to outskirts of Yalta and feel similarly:
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Rather late almost every evening they drove somewhere out of town, to Oreanda or the waterfall; and the expedition was always a success, the scenery invariably impressed them as grand and beautiful.
Gurov comes back to Moscow and the setting changes to a bleak, monochrome world where everything is white and grey:
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At home in Moscow everything was in its winter routine; the stoves were heated, and in the morning it was still dark when the children were having breakfast and getting ready for school, and the nurse would light the lamp for a short time. The frosts had begun already. When the first snow has fallen, on the first day of sledge-driving it is pleasant to see the white earth, the white roofs, to draw soft, delicious breath, and the season brings back the days of one's youth. The old limes and birches, white with hoar-frost, have a good-natured expression; they are nearer to one's heart than cypresses and palms, and near them one doesn't want to be thinking of the sea and the mountains.
Gurov experiences some happiness in Moscow. The comfort of familiarity makes him at least content, but there is none of the passion and variety of Yalta or the beauty of Oreanda around him in Moscow.
Oh, and littlewing, we are doing "The Lady with the Dog". While Jude the Obscure is a great book, and I encourage you to read it, this is a Chekhov thread. We're doing a story every month, and this one is "The Lady with the Dog".
