Book Reviews VI: Russian Literature

Plays by Anton Chekhov
The Queen of Spades & Other Stories by Alexander Pushkin
Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
Boris Godunov & Other Dramatic Works by Alexander Pushkin
About Love & Other Stories by Anton Chekhov
The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Other Short Stories by Leo Tolstoy
Fathers and Sons & Other Short Stories by Ivan Turgenev





Plays
By Anton Chekhov

Ivanov
1. Borkin: "There, there...I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
2. Borkin: "Would you believe it, dear boy, I've done seventeen versts in something like three hours...I'm worn out...Feel my heart beating..."
3. In the scene that follows, Ivanov complains that Borkin smells of vodka. Borkin explains that he and the magistrate each put away eight glasses.
4. Russian words that Chekhov uses include: versts, desyatinas, and the troika.
5. Chekhov suggests that sometimes, doctors also play the role of accountant and attorney.
Shabelsky: "Doctors are the same as lawyers, the sole difference being that lawyers only rob you, but doctors rob you and kill you too. In my lifetime I've got through twenty thousand rubles on treatments and I haven't come across a sinlge doctor who didn't seem to me an outright rogue."

6. Shabelsky: "It's so simple...Some little Madame Angot or Ophelia has a tickle in her throat and starts coughing out of boredom, so take out a sheet of paper and write a prescription following the rules of the profession."
7. Borkin: "Tell me, doctor, is Anna Petrovna really so seriously ill that she has to go to the Crimea?..."
8. Borkin: "Our life...Man's life is like a flower that blooms in its beauty in the field: a goat comes and eats it up and -- there's no more flower!..."
Shabelsky: "All nonsense, nonsense and more nonsense. [Yawns] Nonsense and a swindle."
9. Borkin: "And gentlemen, here I am teaching Nikolay Alekseyevich to make money. He's unteachable."

10. Lvov: "The best medicine for consumption is complete rest, and your wife doesn't have a moment's rest. She's constantly upset by your relationship with her."
11. Borkin: [To the Count] "You've still got a lot of trumps in your hand."
Shabelsky: "Which ones?"
Borkin: "In your place I'd have thirty thousand in a week, if not more."
12. Ivanov: "All that is true, true...I am probably dreadfully to blame, but my thoughts are confused, my soul is paralyzed by some kind of sloth, and I haven't the power to understand myself. I don't understand other people or myself... [Glances at the window.] "We could be overheard here, come, let's go for a walk."
[They get up.]
"I would tell you the story from the beginning, my friend, but it's a long story and so complicated you wouldn't have got to the end of it by morning."
13. Shabelsky: A Jew baptized, a thief pardoned, a horse ended--all for the same price.
14. Shabelsky: My word, he's not a crook but a thinker, a virtuoso! We should put up a monument to him. He strings together in his own single person the corruption of today in all its guises: lawyer, doctor, profiteer, accountant... So what a genius of villainy he would be if he were also a master of culture and the humanities! 'In a week you could have twenty thousand.' He says, 'You also hold the ace of trumps in your hand--your title of count. [Laughs.]

15. Anna Petrovna [laughing]: You can't make a simple joke without an injection of venom. You are a poisonous man. It's hideously boring to live with you. You're always grumpy, complaining, you find everyone bad, good for nothing. Tell me frankly, Count: did you ever speak well of anyone?
16. Shabelsky: What kind of test is this?
Ivanov: You only qualified last year, my dear friend, you're still young and confident, but I am thirty-five. I have the right to give you some advice. Don't marry a Jew or a psychopath or a bluestocking but choose yourself someone ordinary. In general, construct your whole life on a conventional pattern. The greyer, the more monotonous the background, the better.
"But the life I have lived - how exhausting it's been! Oh how exhausting!... How many mistakes, injustices, how much folly..."
17. Omitted.
18. Ivanov: "Oh I'm sorry. No, decidedly, I've lost my self-control...I'm sorry."
19. Lvov: I can't express it all to you, I haven't the gift of words, but...but I find you deeply antipathetic.
Ivanov: Maybe, maybe...You can see more clearly from outside...It's very possible that you understand me...I am probably very, very much to blame. Doctor, you don't like me and you don't conceal it. That does your heart honor... [Goes into the house.]
20. Lvov [alone]: My accursed character...Again I've missed the opportunity and haven't spoken to him as I should have...I can't talk to him calmly. As soon as I open my mouth and say one word, I feel something start to constrict me here [points to his chest], I feel it churning and my tongue sticks to my throat. I hate this Tartuffe, this pompous scoundrel, with all my heart...Now he's going off...His unhappy wife's entire happiness lies in his being near her, he is the air she breathes. She begs him to spend just one evening with her, but he...he cannot...Because, you see, he finds the atmosphere at home so heavy and suffocating. If he spends a single evening at home, he'll put a bullet into his head out of boredom. Wretched fellow...he needs space to do sme new bit of villainy...Oh, I know why you drive over every evening to those Lebedevs. I know!

21. Shabelsky: Nicolas, this is just inhuman!...You yourself go out every evening and we stay here by ourselves. We go to bed at eight out of boredom. This is a horror, not a life! And why can you go while we can't? Why?
22. Anna Petrovna: Count, let him be. Let him go, let him...
23. Ivanov [to his wife]: Well, where would you be going with your illness? You are ill and mustn't be in the open air after sunset...Ask the doctor here. You're not a child, Anyuta, you must use your reason... [To the Count] And why would you go there?
Shabelsky: I'd go into the flames of hell, into the jaws of the crocodile, just so as not to stay here. I am bored. I've become dulled from boredom. I've got on everyone's nerves. You leave me at home so she isn't bored alone, but I've made her life hell, I've eaten her up!
24. Anna Petrovna: Leave him alone, Count, leave him. Let him go if he enjoys it there.
25. Ivanov: Anya, why this tone? You know I don't go there for pleasure. I have to talk about the promissory note.

26. Ivanov: My friends, let's not devour one another! Do we have to?
27. Shabelsky [in a plaintive voice]: Nicolas my dear, I ask you, take me with you. I'll have a look there at the crooks and fools, and perhaps I'll be entertained. You know I haven't been anywhere since Easter.
28. Shabelsky asks to go with them.
Ivanov: You may, only hurry up please.
[The Count runs into the house.]
I'm so fed up with all of you! But what am I saying to you? My tone when I talk to you is impossible. That never used to happen to me before. Well, goodbye, Anya, I shall be back towards one.
29. Anna Petrovna: Kolya, my dearest, stay at home.
30. Ivanov: ...What depression? Don't ask why. I myself don't know. I swear by God's truth I don't know.
Anna Petrovna: Kolya, why don't you stay? We will talk as we used to...

31. Anna Petrovna: When you’re depressed? I understand, I understand…Do you know what, Kolya? Try and sing, laugh, get angry, as you once did…You stay in, we’ll laugh and we’ll drive away your depression in a flash. I’ll sing if you like.
32. Lvov: Anna Petrovna, make yourself a rule: as soon as it strikes six o’clock you must go to your rooms and not come out till the next morning.
33. Anna Petrovna: [after singing a modernish song] The flowers come up every spring, but joy there is none. Who said that sentence to me? God help me remember…[Listens.] The owl is shrieking again.
Lvov: So let it shriek.
34. Anna Petrovna: I am beginning to think, doctor, that fate has cheated me. The majority of people, who maybe are no better than I am, are happy and pay nothing for that happiness. I have paid for everything! Do you think I don’t know what’s wrong with me? But it’s boring to talk about that.
35. Anna Petrovna: And I’m also beginning to be surprised at people’s lack of justice: why is love not met with love, and why is truth paid for in lies? You don’t have a family, doctor, and you can’t understand much of this.

1. In Act Two, Scene I, the plot unfolds slowly.
2. One character, Babakina, illustrates the differences between young and old people.
3. One character, Zanaida Savishna, highlights the differences between religions.
4. After one guest yawns, Babakina says, "How can you yawn in front of ladies?"
5. Zinaida Savishna is very critical of all the other characters.

6. One character is criticized for his "bachelor life."
7. Sasha, meanwhile, is in admiration of the magnificent weather.
8. After discussing "the young people of today," Lebedev says,
"It's no great thing to drink - a horse too can drink ... No, one must drink intelligently..."
9. Of one young fellow, Nikolasha Ivanov, Babakina says,
"Yes, he's a good man, only an unhappy one."
Zinaida Savishna then says: "How could he be happy, my love. What a mistake he made, poor thing...He married his little Jewish girl and the poor man calculated that her father and mother would give mountains of gold with her, but it turned out the opposite..."
10. After some discussion, it becomes clear that Ivanov is aggressive towards his wife.

11. Additionally, Zinaida Savishna says,
"And how we have suffered because of him ... Would you believe it, dear, he's owed us nine thousand for three years!
12. Sasha says, "Ivanov is only guilty of having a weak character and lacking the guts to kick that Borkin out of his house..."
13. Sasha then asks to change the subject of discussion, "just for fun, to astonish us or make us laugh, summon up your energy and all together think up something witty or brilliant."
14. In Scene IV, Lebedev says, "Well...Zyuzyushka would sooner burst than give up her horses. My dear old friend, you know that for me you are nearer and dearer than anyone."
15. After some discussion, Shabelsky says,
"Nonsense, nonsense and more nonsense!...There is no consumption, it's doctor's quackery, hocus-pocus...I have never in my life trusted doctors or lawyers or women. Nonsense, nonsense, quackery and hocus-pocus.

16. Zinaida Savishna says, "It's a long time since Dr. Lvov came to us. He's quite forgotten us.
Sasha says, "My pet aversion. Honesty on legs. He can't ask for water or light a cigarette without displaying his exceptional honesty.
17. Shabelsky: "A narrow-minded, one-directional physician! Anyone who doesn't squawk is a criminal...I'm even frightened of him...I really am!"
18. Lebedev: "There, there, there!...You yourself were young, weren't you, and can understand."
Shabelsky: "Yes, I've been young and foolish, in my time..."
19. End of scene. In this scene, references were made to Asclepius, the Greek God of medicine, Nikolay Aleksandrovich Dobrolyubov, radical social and literary critic, and the the German idealist philosopher Georg Hegel.
20. Act Two, Scene V

21. Borkin: Noble signorina, I make so bold as to congratulate the universe on the birth of so marvellous a flower as you...
22. Shabelsky: The life and soul of the party...Immediately he came in, the atmosphere loosened up.
23. Borkin: Ladies and gentlemen, why are you so glum? Let's think up something. What would you like? Forfeits, tug of war, catch, dancing, fireworks?
24. Act Two, Scene XII
Babakina: It's so boring! I must loosen up!...

25. Borkin [seriously]: Let's talk business and have a straightforward commercial discussion. Answer me directly, without fancy words and without any tricks: yes or no? Listen. Do you want to be a countess?
Shabelsky [laughing loudly]: What an amazing cynic!
Borkin: Do you want to be a countess? Yes or no?
Babakina [agitatedly]: You're making things up, Misha, really...And these things aren't done like that...
26. Well, he'll confuse the issue. It's a business matter...Yes or no?
Babakina: Stop, stop, you've got me all frightened...
Borkin: Quick! Yes or no? We haven't time...
Babakina: Do you know what, Count? You come and stay with me for a few days...You aren't saying all this as a joke, are you?
Borkin: Who would joke about serious matters?

27. Act Two, Scene XIII
28. Sasha: I love you madly...There's no sense in my life without you, no happiness, no joy! You are everything to me... I'll go with you to the ends of the earth or wherever you want, even to the grave, only let it be quickly, for God's sake, or else, I'll suffocate...
Ivanov: What's all this? Do you mean, to begin life again? Do you Shurochka?...

28. Act Three
Ivanov's study. A desk with a clutter of papers, books, bundles of documents, knick-knacks...
29. Lebedev: France has a clear and defined policy...The French know what they want. But Germany, my friend, is playing a very different tune.
Shabelsky: Nonsense!...In my view the Germans are cowards and the French are cowards.
Borkin: And as I see it, why fight? What's the point of these armaments, congresses, expenditures?
[They drink and eat.]
Lebedev: ...Take a quarter of pressed caviar, two heads of spring onion, olive oil, mix everything together, and just, you know, a squeeze of lemon over the lot...It's to die for! You'll go crazy from just the aroma.
Lebedev: ...why the devil have you started visiting Marfutka?
Shabelsky: He wants to marry me off to her...
Lebedev: Marry?...How old are you?
Shabelsky: Sixty-two.
Lebedev: The perfect age to get married. And Marfutka is just the perfect partner for you.
Borkin: It's not a question of Marfutka but of Marfutka's cash...

30. Act Three, Scene Two
Lebedev: To Asclepius our most humble greetings...[Gives his hand and sings] 'Doctor, doctor, save me, I'm frightened to death of death...'
Shabelsky: I can't admit the notion that a living human being suddenly dies for no good reason. Let's stop this conversation.

31. Act Three, Scene III
Throughout the play, the character play a lot of cards.
32. Kosykh: [throwing up his hand]: What the hell. Is there really no one even to talk to? We might as well be living in Australia: no common interests, no solidarity...Everyone lives separate lives...But I must go...it's time. Time is precious...
[Kosykh goes out and in the doorway collides with Avdotya Nazarovna.]

33. Act Three, Scene IV
Avdotya Nazarovna: [shrieking]: Drat you - knocking me over!
All: Aha-a-a!...One can't get away from her!
34. Lebedev: Why have you come here?
Avdotya Nazarovna: On a matter of business, sir. [To the Count] Business concerning you, Your highness. She asked me to greet you and inquire after your health...and my little pet asked me to say that if you don't come by this evening, she will cry her pretty eyes out.
35. Lebedev: You're talking nonsense, Count. You and I, my friend, should be thinking about meeting our maker...the Marfutkas and their cash have left us behind long ago...Our time has passed.

36. Act Three, Scene V
Lvov: I ask you to find me just five minutes.
Lebedev: Nikolasha! I've been waiting for you a whole hour.
37. Ivanov: Gentlemen, you've again set up a drinking shop in my study...I have asked each and every one of you a thousand times not to do that...It's disgusting!
38. Lebedev: I'm sorry, Nikolasha, I'm sorry...Forgive me. I need a word with you, my friend, on something very important.
Borkin: So do I.
Lvov: Nikolay Alekseyevich, can I speak to you?
Ivanov [pointing at Lebedev]: He wants me too. Wait, you next...
39. Lebedev: Gentlemen, I want to speak privately, Please...
40. Ivanov: What is the problem?
Lebedev: My wife sent me...Do me a favor, be a friend and pay her the interest. Believe me, she's driven me crazy, she's worn me out and made my life hell! For God's sake, get free of her!...
41. One character, either Ivanov or Lebedev, it's not clear who, loans the other his private nest-egg, one thousand one hundred rubles, to give to his wife, who is demanding the money.
42. Lebedev: [Of Shurochka writes] she fired off an aphorism: 'Papa.' she said, 'fireflies only shine at night so that the night birds can see them more clearly and eat them, and good people exist so that slander and gossip have something to eat.'
43. Ivanov: Pasha! What's the matter with me?
Lebedev: I wanted to ask you that myself but I confess I held back. I don't know, old friend. On the one hand I thought you were being overwhelmed by various misfortunes, on the other you're not the kind of man to let that...
44. Ivanov: Once at threshing time, a workman wanted to show off his strength before the girls, he heaved two sacks of rye up on to his back and overstrained himself. He died soon after. The Gymnasium, university, then running the estate, schools, projects... all that, are my two sacks of rye...I heaved the load on my back and my back broke. At twenty we are all heroes, we take on everything, we can do everything, and at thirty we're already worn out, we're good for nothing...
Lebedev: Do you know what? You've got depressed by your environment, my friend... indeed it's silly! I see now myself that it's silly. I'm going, I'm going!...[Exit.]

45. Act Three, Scene VI
Ivanov has a deeply reflective moment. Then he says,
"I don't understand, I don't understand, I do not understand! Why don't I just put a bullet through my forehead!...
46. Lvov: ...it's as if they want to amaze Jehovah with their religious rigor.
47. Lvov: Do you really think you are so opaque and I have so little brain that I can't distinguish wrong-doing from honesty?
Ivanov: We are clearly never going to see eye to eye...

48. Act Three, Scene VII
Borkin: And, Nicolas, she has something, a sort of something which other women lack. Doesn't she?
49. Act Three, Scene IX
Anna Petrovna: ...You told me lies about truth, about good, about your honorable plans, I believed every word.
Ivanov: Anyuta, I never lied to you...

50. Act Four
Lvov: The blessing should be beginning very soon... The blessing will take place and they'll be taken off to be married. Here is the triumph of virtue and truth.

51. Act Four, Scene III
Kosykh: Him? He's a terrible rogue! An old fox who's seen everything. He and the Count are two of a kind...

52. Act Four, Scene VIII
Ivanov: ...Yes, I am mocking. And if I could mock myself a thousand times more forcefully and make the whole world burst out laughing, then I would do it!
53. Ivanov: No, I am not mad. I now see things in their real light, and my thoughts are as pure as your conscience...
The end.





The Seagull
By Anton Chekhov


1. Act One
2. Masha: "You're always philosophizing or talking about money. In your eyes there's no greater misfortune than poverty, but in mine it's a thousand times easier to go in rags and live by begging than to..."
3. Nina: "A lovely sky, the moon was beginning to rise, and I drove the horse..."
4. Nina: "...But I'm drawn to the lake like a seagull...My heart is full of you."
5. Polina Andreyevna: "You're a doctor and you know very well that damp air is bad for you, but you want me to suffer; yesterday you deliberately sat out on the terrace the whole evening..."
Dorn: "Say not that youth's destroyed."
6. Act Two
7. Arkadina: "And so, when a woman has chosen the writer whom she wants to snare, she lays siege to him with compliments, favors and treats."
8. Nina: "What are you reading?"
Arkadina: "Maupassant's Sur l'eau, dear. [Reads a few lines to herself.] Well, it gets uninteresting and false."
9. Dorn: "No, no rubbish. Alcohol and tobacco take away your personality. You are no longer Pyotr Nikolayevich but Pyotr Nikolayevich plus someone else.
10. Sorin: "It's all very well for you to argue. You've had a good life, but what about me? I served twenty-eight years in the Department of Justice, but never began to live. I finished without any experience of life, and understandably I very much want to live."

11. "One must have a serious attitude to life, to regret not having had much pleasure in youth is - forgive me - silly"
12. In the scene that follows, Treplyov enter carrying a dead seagull. Nina asks what's the matter with him, and after a pause he says, "Soon I'll kill myself like this."
13. Nina indicates that she doesn't understand much of what's going on about his behavior. Then, Treplyov indicates that he is unhappy with his current situation.

14. In the next scene, Trigorin and Nina talk.
15. Nina: "And I would like to be in your place.
To feel how a famous and talented writer feels. What does being famous feel like? How do you sense that you're famous?"
16. Nina: "And if you read about yourself in the papers?"
Trigorin: It's pleasant when it's praise, and when it's abuse you feel out of sorts for a couple of days."
17. Trigorin: "I'm happy? Hm...you're talking now about fame, happiness, some bright, interesting existence, but I'm sorry..."
18. Trigorin: "Am I not a madman? Do my friends and dear ones treat me as a healthy human being?
I'm sometimes afraid they'll creep up on me from behind and grab me and carry me off like Gogol's Poprishchin to a lunatic asylum.
19. In End Notes, we learn that Poprishchin is "the crazy civil servant narrator of Gogol's Notes of a Madman (1835)."
20. Trigorin: "A young writer feels clumsy, awkward, out of place, especially when things are not going his way."

21. Nina: "But, excuse me, don't inspiration and the actual process of creation give you some elevated, happy moments."
22. The character's then briefly discuss Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons."
23. Trigorin: "But I'm not just a landscape artist, I am also a citizen, I love my country, the people, I feel that if I am a writer it is my duty to talk about the people, their sufferings, their future, to talk about science, the rights of man and so on..."
"I see life and science advancing ever onward, and I get left further and further behind like a peasant who's missed his train, and in the end I feel that I can only write about the landscape."
24. Trigorin: "I'm making a note... [Putting away the notebook.] A plot for a short story: a young girl has lived since childhood on the shores of a lake, a girl like you; she loves the lake, like a seagull, and is happy and free, like a seagull. But a man injures her, like this seagull."
25. Treplyov: "You slaves of convention have grabbed the prime places in the arts and you only recognize your own activities as legitimate and real, and everything else you crush and stifle."

26. Treplyov: "How easy it is, doctor, to be a philosopher on paper, and how difficult in life."
27. Suggests that the horse piece in a game of chess came from the frequency of using horses in Russian culture.
28. Arkadina: "When the long autumn evenings come on, we play lotto here. Just look, the old lotto board on which my mother used to play with us when we were children."
29. Suggests that the other pieces in a game of chess were common objects at the time chess was invented.
30. Illustrates the difference between the game of chess and the reality of life.
31. In the final scene, Konstantin Gavrilovich meets an unfortunate end.





Uncle Vanya
By Anton Chekhov

Act One
1. Astrov: I sat down, closed my eyes - like this - and thought: will those who will be living a hundred, two hundred years from now, those for whom we are now laying down the road for the future, will they remember us in their prayers? Nyanya, they won't.
Marina: Man may not remember, but God will.
2. Throughout this play, and also in many other pieces by Chekhov and Pushkin, is the presence of the samovar in Russian life.
3. Telegin: The weather is delightful, the little birds are singing, we all live in peace and concord - what more could we want?
4. Voynitsky: Maman, our old tame jackdaw, still chatters about the emancipation of women - one eye looking into her grave and the other searching her learned books for the dawn of a new life.
5. Voynitsky: His first wife, my sister, a lovely meek creature, pure as that blue sky, noble, generous, with more admirers than he had students, loved him with the kind of love only pure angels have for those as pure and beautiful as themselves. His mother-in-law, my mother, still worships him and he inspires her with a holy awe.
6. Astrov: Is she faithful to the Professor?
Voynitsky: Unfortunately, yes.
Astrov: Why unfortunately?
Voynitsky: Because that 'fidelity' is false from start to finish. It's full of rhetoric but has no logic
7. Telegin: And what has became of her? Her youth has now gone, by the laws of nature her beauty has faded, the man she loved has passed on...
8. Of the tea in the samovar, Yelena Andreyevna says: Don't worry, Ivan Ilyich, we'll drink it cold.
9. Mariya Vasilyevna: Interesting but rather strange. He rejects a position that seven years ago he himself was defending. It's disgraceful!
10. Sonya: Every year Mikhail Lvovich plants new woods. He campaigns against the destruction of old forests. He says that forests embellish the earth, they teach man to understand beauty, they inspire ideals in him. In countries with gentle climate less energy is spent on the struggle with nature, and so man is gentler there, more delicate; people are handsome, versatile, their speech is refined, their movements graceful. The arts and sciences flourish among them, their philosophy isn't gloomy...

11. Astrov: Well, I grant you can cut down forests out of need, but why destroy them? The forests of Russia are being wiped out by the axe, thousands of millions of trees are dying, the homes of animals and birds are being laid waste, river levels are dropping and drying up, wonderful scenery vanishes for ever, and all because lazy man hasn't the sense to bend down and pick up fuel from the ground.
There are fewer and fewer forests...rivers are drying up, game is becoming extinct, the climate is damaged and every day the earth is becoming poorer and uglier.
12. Yelena Andreyevna: As Astrov said just now: all of you are mindlessly destroying the forests and soon there'll be nothing left on earth. In the same way you mindlessly destroy a man, and soon thanks to you the earth will have neither loyalty, nor purity, nor the capacity for self-sacrifice. You have no pity for the forests or the birds or each other.
13. Voynitsky: Allow me to speak of my love, don't drive me away - just that will be the greatest happiness for me...

14. Act Two
Serebryakov: Of course, you're right. I'm not stupid and I understand. You are young, healthy, beautiful, you want to live, and I am an old man, almost a corpse. And of course it's absurd that I'm still alive.
15. Serebryakov: It turns out that thanks to me, everyone is exhausted and bored and wasting their youth, while I'm the only one to enjoy life and have satisfaction. Of course.
16. Serebryakov: Don't I deserve that? I ask you, do I not have the right to a peaceful old age, to people's consideration?
Yelena Andreyevna: No one is disputing your rights.
17. Yelena Andreyevna: Ivan Petrovich, you are educated and clever and I think you must understand that the world is being destroyed, not by bandits, not by fires, but by hatred, enmity, and all these petty squabbles...Instead of grumbling you should reconcile everyone.
Voynitsky: First reconcile me with myself! My dearest...
18. Voynistky: The rain will pass now and all nature will be refreshed and give a gentle sigh. I alone will not be refreshed by the storm. Day and night I will be weighed down, as if by some devil, by the thought that my life is irrevocably gone.
19. Yelena Andreyevna: When you speak to me of your love, I somehow go numb and don't know what to say. I'm sorry, I can't say anything to you.
20. Voynitsky: I used to meet her ten years ago at my sister's. Why didn't I fall in love with her then and propose to her? Oh, wonderful thoughts, so good I'm even laughing...but God, my thoughts are confused in my head...Why am I old? Why doesn't she understand me?

21. Voynitsky: I was proud of him and his scholarship, I lived and breathed him! Every word he wrote and uttered seemed to me to come from genius...God, and now? Here he is in retirement, and now one can see the sum total of his life: not a single page of his labors will survive him, he's completely unknown, he's nothing!...
22. Astrov: What? Yes...I must admit, I am becoming coarse. You see, I'm drunk too. I usually get this drunk once a month. When I'm in this condition I become extremely aggressive and ambitious.
23. Astrov: I love life in general, but I can't stand our narrow Russian provincial life, and I despise it with all the strength of my soul.
24. Astrov: I've sobered up. You see, I am now completely sober and will stay so to the end of my days. This is what I say: my time is now past, it's late for me...
25. Yelena Andreyevna [opening the window]: The rain storm has passed. What wonderful air!

26. Yelena Andreyevna: ...So? Perhaps I should...Should fly away from all of you free as a bird, away from your sleepy faces, your conversations, should forget that all of you exist on the earth...But I am cowardly, timid...I'm tormented by conscience...

Act Three
27. Astrov [Pointing to the map]: Now look here. A portrait of our district as it was fifty years ago. The dark and light green indicate forest. Where there's a red grid over the green, there were elk and wild goats...I show here both flora and fauna...This lake had swans, geese, duck, and as old folk say, a mighty eyeful of all kinds of wildfowl, which used to take off in a great storm cloud.
Besides villages and hamlets, you can see scattered here and there various settlements, farmsteads, schismatic monasteries, watermills...There were a lot of cattle and horses. Here there were whole herds of horses and every household had three.
28. In one scene, one of the character's says that she was awakened by the rain, and that is how you can tell that it is "real" rain.
29. Astrov: Dear predator, don't look at me like that, I'm an old sparrow.
Yelena Andreyevna: [bewildered]: Predator? I don't understand.
Astrov: Beautiful fluffy polecat...You need victims! I submit. There, eat me up!
Yelena Andreyevna: You've gone out of your mind!
30. Serebryakov: I can't cope this way of life in the country. I feel as if I'd fallen from earth onto another planet.

31. Serebryakov: I am a scholar, a man of books, and have always been a stranger to the practical life. The fact is that manet omne una nox, that is, we are all God's creatures; I am old and sick, and so I find it timely to regulate my property arrangements insofar as they affect my family. My life is now over, I'm not thinking of myself, but I have a young wife and an unmarried daughter.
I cannot go on living in the country. But we cannot live in the city on the income we receive from this estate. Were we to sell, say, the forest, that would be an extraordinary measure which we could not utilize every year. If we convert the receipts into interest-bearing bonds, then we shall receive four to five per cent, and I think there will be a surplus of several thousand rubles which will allow us to buy a small dacha in Finland.
32. Voynitsky: For twenty-five years I've sat with my mother here within these four walls - like a mole. By day we talked about you, about your work, we were proud of you, we uttered your name with reverence: we ruined our nights reading magazines and books which I now deeply despise!
33. Serebryakov: What a worthless fellow!

34. Act Four
Astrov: Yes, my friend. In the whole District there used to be only two decent intelligent human beings - myself and you. But in the space of ten years or so the ordinary life we despise has dragged us down; it has poisoned our blood with its putrid exhalations and we've become as commonplace as everyone else.
35. Astrov: Admit it, you have nothing to do on this earth, you have no goal in life, you have nothing to hold your interest, and sooner or later you will surrender to feeling - it's inevitable.
36. Sonya: We shall live, Uncle Vanya. We shall live out many, many days and long evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials fate sends us; we shall labor for others both now and in our old age, knowing no rest, and when our time comes, we shall meekly die, and there beyond the grave we shall say that we suffered, that we wept, that we were sorrowful, and God will have pity on us, and you and I, dear Uncle, shall see a life that is bright and beautiful and full of grace, we shall look back on our present woes with tenderness, with a smile - and we shall rest.





Three Sisters
By Anton Chekhov

1. Early on in the play, we learn that "Father died exactly a year ago, on this day, the fifth of May..."
2. [Masha, lost in thought over her book, quietly whistles a song.]
Olga: Don't whistle, Masha. How can you!
3. After some dialogue, again,
[Masha quietly whistles a song.]
4. Masha: Let me again wish you health and happiness. In the old days, when father was alive, thirty or forty officers used to come on each of our name-days, it was really noisy, but today there are only one and a half people and it's quiet as the desert. I'm going...
5. Masha: What do you mean by that? You're being terribly scary.
6. Vershinin: How pleased I am, how pleased! But you are three sisters. I remember - three little girls. I don't remember the faces any longer, but I do remember very well that your father, Colonel Prozorov, had three little girls and I saw them with my own eyes. How time passes! Oh yes, how time passes!

7. Irina: Aleksandr Ignatyevich, you are from Moscow...What a surprise!
Olga: You see, we're moving there.
Irina: We think we'll be there by autumn. It's our home town, we were born there...In Staraya Basmannaya Street....
8. Vershinin: What! You've got such a good, healthy Slav climate here. The forest, the river...and there are birches here too. Dear humble birches, I love them best of all trees. It's good to live here. Only it's odd the railway station is twenty-five versts away...And no one knows why.
9. Solyony: But I do know why
Because if the station were near by, it wouldn't be far away, and if it's far away that means it isn't near by.
Tuzenbakh: What a joker you are, Vasily Vasilyich.

10. Vershinin: Didn't the discoveries of Copernicus or, say, Columbus, seem unnecesay at first, ridiculous, and didn't some vacuous nonsense written by a crank seem the truth? And maybe our life today, with which we are so comfortable, with the passage of time will come to seem strange, awkward, stupid, not pure enough, even sinful...
11. Masha: Oh dear, her clothes! It's not that they're ugly or unfashionable, they're simply pathetic. Some odd, bright-colored, yellowish skirt with a kind of horrid little fringe and a red blouse. Andrey isn't in love-I won't admit that, he still has some taste, but he just seems to be teasing us, playing the fool. Yesterday I heard that he's marrying Protopopov, the chairman of the local Council.
12. Irina: And he also made that little frame above the piano.
Olga: Our brother is a scholar and plays the violin and makes all kinds of bits of woodwork-in short, he's master of all trades.
13. Masha: What a funny man you are. Aleksandr Ignatyich once used to be called the Lovesick Major, and he wasn't cross at all.
Masha: And I'm going to call you the Lovesick Violinist.
Irina: Or the Lovesick Professor...
14. Vershinin: So you know English?
Andrey: Yes. My father, God rest his soul, piled education onto us. Thanks to my father, my sisters and I speak French, German and English, and Irina speaks Italian as well. But at what cost!
15. In this town to know three languages is an unecessary luxury. Not even a luxury but some unecessary appendage, like a sixth finger. We have a lot of superfluous knowledge.
16. Vershinin: But what a lot of flowers you've got. And a wonderful house. I envy you. My whole life I've been in quarters with two chairs and a sofa, and with stoves which always smoke. What I've lacked in my life is precisely flowers like these.
Tuzenbakh: Yes, one must work. You must be thinking the German is becoming sentimental. But I assure you I am Russian and don't even speak German. My father is Orthodox...
17. Kulygin: Let me offer you this little book as a present. A worthless little book, written out of idleness, but read it all the same
18. Masha: Only say you don't drink anything today. Do you hear? It's bad for you to drink.
Vershinin: I'll have some of that dark vodka. Your health! I feel so at ease here!...
19. Olga: You're wearing a green belt. It's not right, dear.
Natasha: Really? But it's not green, more a sort of neutral color.

21. In "Three Sisters," by Anton Chekhov, Chekhov suggests that it is good to acquire "superfluous knowledge."
Act Two
1. Natasha: I'm looking to see if there are any lights... one just has to keep one's eyes open for anything.
2. Natasha: This morning the little boy woke and looked at me and smiled suddenly; it means he recognized me. 'Bobik,' I said, 'Hello! Hello, darling!' And he laughed. Children understand, they understand very well.
3. Andrey: Good evening, old boy. What have you got to tell me?
Ferapont: The Chairman has send you a book and some sort of papers. Here they are...
Andrey: Thank you. Good. Why have you come so late? It's already after eight.
4. Andrey: To be a member of the local District Council, when every night I dream that I am a professor at Moscow University, a famous scholar who is Russia's pride!

5. Ferapont: I don't really know...I don't hear very well...
Andrey: I need to talk to someone but my wife doesn't understand me, and for some reason I'm afraid of my sisters, I'm afraid they'll laugh at me or make me feel ashamed.
Ferapont: And in Moscow, a contractor was telling us the other day at the Council, some merchants were eating pancakes; one of them ate forty pancakes and died of it. Forty or fifty. I can't remember.

6. Andrey: What nonsense. Have you ever been to Moscow?
Ferapont: I haven't. It hasn't been God's will.
7. Andrey: Yes, things to do... [Stretches unhurriedly and goes to his own room.]
8. Masha: Of course, habit counts for a lot. For instance, after our father's death it took us a long time to get accustomed to not having any orderlies to serve us. But apart from habit I think that what I said is quite right. Perhaps in other places it's different, but in our town the most decent, the finest, the most educated people are in the army.

9. Vershinin: If you listen to an educated man in this town, civilian or soldier, he's got problems with his wife, problems with his house, he's got problems with his estate, problems with his horses...It's very typical of the Russian to have elevated thoughts, but tell me why he aims so low in life? Why?
Vershinin: Why does he have problems with his children, problems with his wife? And why do his wife and children have problems with him?
10. Masha: You're not in a very good mood today.
Vershinin: Maybe not. I've had no dinner today. I haven't had anything to eat since the morning. One of my daughters is a bit unwell, and when my little girls are ill, then I become worried, I feel guilty that there mother is like that.

11.Tuzenbakh: I have a triple-barreled name. My name is Baron Tuzenbakh-Krone-Altschauer, but I am Russian and Orthodox like you.

12. Tuzenbakh: And every day I'll come to the Telegraph Office and see you home, and I will do so for ten or twenty years until you chase me away...Are you here? Good evening.

13. Irina: Just now a lady came and sent a telegram to her brother in Saratov to say that her son died today, and she just couldn't remember the address. In the end she sent it without the address, simply to Saratov. She was crying. And I was rude to her for no reason. 'I've no time,' I said. It sounded so stupid.

14. Tuzenbakh: When you come home from work you look so small, such an unhappy little thing.
Irina: I'm tired. No, I don't like the Telegraph Office, I don't like it.
Irina: Imust find another job, this one doesn't suit me. What I wanted, what I dreamed of, it definitely does not have. It's work with no poetry, no thinking...
15. Vershinin: ...We must just work and work, and happiness is something for our remote descendants. If I won't be happy, at least the descendants of my descendants will be.

16. Tuenbakh: ...life doesn't change, it remains constant, following its own particular laws. Migratory birds, cranes for example, fly and fly, and whatever thoughts, big or little, stray through their heads, they will still fly on without knowing why or where to.
Masha: But what's the meaning of it?
Tuzenbakh: Meaning...Look, it's snowing. What meaning is there in that?
Masha: I think human beings must have faith or must look for faith, otherwise our life is empty, empty...

17. Masha: Yes. I'm fed up with winter. I've now even forgotten what summer's like.
18. Natasha: Babies understand everything. He gave me a special kind of look. You're thinking it's just the mother in me speaking, but no, no, I assure you! This is an exceptional child.

19. Vershinin: The other day I was reading the diary of a French minister, written in prison. With what delight, with what rapture he talks about the birds he sees from his prison window and which he never noticed before when he was a minister. Of course, now he's been released, he doesn't notice the birds, just as before. In the same way you won't notice Moscow when you're living there. We have no happiness and it doesn't exist, we only desire it.

20. Tuzenbakh: Where are the sweets?
Irina: Solyony's eaten them.

21. Natasha: Dear Masha, why do you use such expressions in conversation? With your nice looks, I tell you frankly, you would be simply charming in good society if it weren't for those words of yours.
22. Solyony: I am strange, who is not! Be not angry.
23. Tuzenbakh: I often get angry with you, you're constantly picking on me when we're in company, but still for some reason I find you sympathetic.

24. Chebutykin: And they also gave us proper Caucasian food: soup with onion, and for the main course - chekhartma, of meat... Why am I having to argue with you? You've never been to the Caucasus and you haven't eaten chekhartma.
Solyony: I haven't eaten it because I can't stand it. Cheremsha gives off the same smell as garlic.

1. Just now I behaved tactlessly, without self-control. But you're not like all the others, you are high-minded and pure, you can see the truth.
2. Vershinin: My wife had the idea of giving me a fright and almost managed to poison herself. It turned out all right, and I'm glad, I can rest now.
3. Reminds us of two historical events: the Panama Affair, and the 1812 fire of Moscow (after which the French were apparently amazed).
4. Omitted.
5. Olga: The Doctor is drunk, terribly drunk, it's as if he's done it deliberately, and no one can go to him.

6. Anfisa: My darling, my golden girl, I slave, I work...When I get weak, they'll all say, 'Get out!' But where will I go? Where? Eighty years old. Eighty-one...
7. Olga: You sit down, Nyanya...You've got tired, poor thing...Have a rest, my dear. You're quite pale!

8. Natasha: We've got so many people everywhere, wherever you go, the house is full. There's a lot of influenza now in town, I'm frightened the people will catch it.
Natasha: And why you keep on that old woman I just do not understand!
Natasha: She's got nothing to do here. She's a peasant, she should live in her village...You're just pampering her!
9. In the following scene, suggests that the probability to have a catastrophic fire is higher in cities.
10. Olga: You must understand, my dear...perhaps we were brought up oddly but I can't stand it. Behavior like that brings me down, I become ill...I simply give up!...
Olga: Any rudeness, even something small, a roughly spoken word upsets me...

11. Chebutykin [drunk]: To hell with them all...all to hell... They think I'm a doctor, can treat all kinds of illnesses, but I know absolutely nothing, I've forgotten everything I knew, I remember nothing, absolutely nothing.
A couple of days ago they were chatting in the Club, talking about Shakespeare, Voltaire...I haven't read them, haven't read them at all, but I tried to look as if I had. And the others did what I did. How cheap! How low!
12. Vershinin: If it hadn't been for the soldiers, the whole town would have burnt down. Good boys! Pure gold!
13. Tuzenbakh: People keep asking me to organize a concert for the benefit of the fire victims. With a bit of will it could be organized. I think Marya Sergeyevna plays the piano beautifully.
Irina: She's forgotten it all now. She hasn't played for three years...or four.
Tuzenbakh: In this town absolutely no one understands music, not a soul, but I, I do understand it and I honestly assure you that Mariya Sergeyevna plays splendidly, she's almost got a real gift.
14. Chebutykin [imagining]: Perhaps it was...Mama's clock was Mama's clock. Perhaps I didn't break it but it just looks as if I did. Perhaps we just think we exists but really we don't. I don't know anything, no one knows anything.
15. Vershinin: And when just a bit more time goes by, say two or three hundred years, people will look at our life today both with alarm and mockery, everything we have now will seem clumsy and burdensome and very inconvenient and strange. Ah, what a life that will surely be, what a life. I'm sorry, I've begun to talk philosophy again. Let me go on, my friends. I terribly want to talk philosophy, I'm in the mood for it.

16. Tuzenbakh: You have tears in your eyes. Go to bed, it's already getting light...morning is coming...
17. Kulygin [laughing]: No, really, she's astonishing. I've been married to you for seven years, but it seems as if we only got married yesterday. I swear it. No, really, you're an astonishing woman. I'm happy, I'm happy, I'm happy!
18. Masha: I'm fed up, fed up, fed up...he mortgaged this house to the bank and his wife has grabbed all the money, but the house doesn't belong to him but to all four of us!
19. Kulygin: You and I aren't poor. I work, I go to the Gymnasium, then I give lessons...I am an honest man. A simple man...
20. Kulygin: You're tired, have a little rest for a half and hour, and I'll sit down at home and wait. Have some sleep...

21. Masha: ...When you read some novel, you think it's all old stuff and so easy to understand, but when you yourself love someone, then you can see that no one knows anything and everybody has to decide for themselves...My darlings, my sisters...I have confessed to you, now I will be silent...Now I will be like Gogol's madman...silence...silence...
22. Andrey: It's time now to stop being silly and sulking like this for no reason at all...
23. Irina: ...I will marry him, yes I will, only let us go to Moscow! I beg you, let us go! There's nothing better than Moscow in the whole world! Let us go, Olya! Let us go!

Act Four
1. Kulygin: Why, it's the done thing, the modus vivendi. Our Principal is clean-shaven, and I am too. I shaved my moustache off when I became an inspector. No one likes it but I don't care. I'm happy with it. Whether I have a moustache or not, it's all the same to me.
2. Andrey: My wife is my wife. She is honest, decent, yes, kind, but all the same there's something in her which brings her down to the level of a small, blind, horny-skinned animal. At all events, she isn't human. I'm talking to you as a friend, the only person I can open my soul to.
3. Solyony: There's no reason for an old chap to get worked up. I'll allow myself a little latitude, I'll just wing him like a woodcock. I've used up a whole bottle today and my hands still smell.

4. Tuzenbakh: It's already five years since I came to love you and I still can't get accustomed to it, and you seem to me more and more beautiful. What wonderful lovely hair! What eyes!
5. Andrey: The present is repulsive, but when I think of the future how wonderful things become! There's a feeling of ease, of space' a glimmer of the dawn, I see freedom...
6. Ferapont: The porter at the Accounts Office was telling me just now...He said apparently last winter Petersburg had two hundred degrees of frost.
Two thousand people froze to death. People were in a state of terror. It was in Petersburg, or in Moscow - I csan't quite remember.
7. Vershinin: That's kind of you. I'm in a hurry.
8. Vershinin: What else can I say to you as a goodbye? What bit of philosophy?... Life is a heavy load. I must go, I must!
9. After a bit more dialogue, the play ends.





The Cherry Orchard
By Anton Chekhov

A Comedy in Four Parts - Act One
1. Dunyasha: I don't know quite...He's a quiet fellow, only sometimes when he begins to speak, you can't understand anything. He talks well, with feeling, only you can't understand. I sort of like him.
2. Anya: Let's go in here. Mama, do you remember what room this is?
3. Anya: You're always on about the same thing...I've lost all my hairpins...
4. Dunyasha: I don't really know what to think. He loves me, he loves me so much!
He's sleeping in the bath-house, that's where he's staying. He says he's afraid of being in the way.
5. Varya: I don't think anything will work out for us. He's very busy, he hasn't time for me...and doesn't pay me any attention.

6. Anya: The birds are singing in the orchard. What's the time now?
Varya: It must be after two. It's time for you to be asleep, darling.
7. Dunyasha: When you left here, I was that high...Dunyasha, Fyodor Kozoyedov's daughter. Don't you remember!
8. Lyubov Andreyevna: You're still just the same as you were when we were children, Varya.

9. Pishchik: You mustn't take medicines, dear lady...they do no harm or good...Give them here...
10. Lyubov Andreyevna: What a wonderful orchard! The white masses of flowers, the blue sky...
11. Reminds us that life is a growth process.
12. Trofimov: I suppose I'm going to be a perpetual student.
13. Gayev: He only thinks of himself.
14. Yepikhodov: …why this morning do I wake up for example, and on my chest is a spider of horrendous size…

15. Yepikhodov: And again I take some kvass to have a drink, and I look and find in it something exceptionally unpleasing, something like a cockroach.
16. Dunyasha: I’ve become delicate, so refined, so ladylike, everything frightens me…it’s terrible. And if you deceive me, Yasha, I don’t know what my nerves will do.
17. Yasha: It's nice to smoke a cigar in the open air...
18. Yasha: I can’t hear your voice without laughing.
19. Lopakhin: You’ve got to lease out both the cherry orchard and the land for dacha plots, you’ve got to do that now, as quickly as possible.
20. Trofimov: Who knows? And what does it mean - you’ll die? Perhaps man has a hundred senses and death eliminates only the five that are known to us, but the other ninety-five remain alive.

21. Trofimov: Man goes forward perfecting his skills. Everything that is now beyond his reach will one day become near and comprehensible, only we must work, we must with all our strength help those who are seeking the truth.
21A. In this scene, one character takes a vitamin to help his beard grow.
22. Gayev: O nature, wonderful nature, you shine with an eternal light, lovely and indifferent, you whom we call mother, you combine within yourself being and death, you give life and you destroy.
Reminds us of the nature element.
23. Varya: He frightened me. My heart’s thumping
24. Trofimov: All Russia is our orchard. The land is great and beautiful, there are many wonderful places in it.
25. Lyubov Andreyevna: Petya, don’t think ill of me, don’t say anything to me, don’t say anything.

26. Anya tells Lyubov Andreyevna that someone has bought the cherry orchard. Lyubov Andreyevna asks who, then Anya points to an old man and asks Lyubov to follow him for more information.
The end.





The Queen of Spades and Other Stories
By Alexander Pushkin


1. "In his late imitation of a poem by Horace, Alexander Pushkin predicted that his own verse would come to be widely read."
2. "He had enjoyed extraordinary fame as a poet."
3. "He could not have foreseen the universality of his appeal as poet and prose-writer in modern Russian culture--nor the complexity of his status."
4. For the masses of Soviet Russia he became a set text in school and a visible presence: there is scarcely a town without its statue of Pushkin and a street bearing his name."
5. "Pushkin's career from 1820 till his death in 1837 spans what is widely known as the Golden Age of Russian Literature. Of the older generation of pre-Romantic poets, Konstantin Batyushkov and Vasily Zhukovsky stand out.

6A. "The poet's maternal great-grandfather, Abram Hannibal, was an African princeling who had been taken hostage as a boy by the Turkish sultan. Subsequently brought to Russia and adopted by Peter the Great, he became favorite of the emperor..."
6. "From Pushkin's immediate contemporaries are the idylls and pastoral verse of Anton Delvig, the philosophical and narrative poems of Evgeny Baratynsky, and the songs of Nikolai Yazykov, which still deserve to be read.
7. After visiting the homepage of RuVerses, I was able to read several Russian poems.
8. I enojyed reading "The Rose," by Alexander Pushkin. In another poem, “The Peasant and Death,” the poet Ivan Krylov explains that for the peasant, death is never far away.
9. "Against this constellation of major and minor poetic talents, most of them little known to Western readers, Pushkin's star shone brightest."
10. "From almost the moment when Pushkin fell in a duel in January 1837 he became a mythic figure in Russian culture.
11. "Pushkin had declared that prose demands 'thought, thought, and more thought..'"
12. At one point, the Tsar, Nicholas I, acted as the poet's personal censor.

13. In The Gypsies, drama and psychology make a riveting vehicle for Pushkin's deconstruction of the romantic reception of Rousseau and his idealized vision of man in a state of nature.
14. "When Evgeny Baratynsky, another great poet, read through some of Pushkin's later works, he was stunned by the compression of a whole range of philosophical argument and ideas that Pushkin had only hinted at in his earlier poems."
15. The Tales of Belkin marked a singular advance for positive qualities in Russian literature.
16. "The Stationmaster investigated not only the relation of literature to life, but of literature to literature."
17. "The Snowstorm," is another tale discussed.

18. The Queen of Spades remains unsurpassed in all of Russian fiction for its fusion of psychological complexity and symbolic density.
19. "Entire schools of interpetation have evolved around answers to these and other questions."
20. The first story in The Queen of Spades: Tales of Belkin is The Shot.
21. The story is primarily concerned with events concerning the life of an officer in the military and examines Russian military stereotypes.
22. Mentions that one officer was a good shot -- he could put a bullet through an ace.
23. The character, an officer in the army was rather hostile and drank a lot.
24. In the end of the story we learn that the officer met an unfortunate end in battle.

25. The Undertaker is the third short story in the collection.
26. In the story, the Russian-drinker stereotype is explored. We meet an undertaker who "is a very straight-forward man, and does not tolerate deviation from the norm." After attending a party, however, we learn that the undertaker get's drunk and the next day, does not do his job as he is supposed to.


1. In The Peasant Lady, we meet Ivan Petrovich Berestov.
2. Berestov was respected a great deal by his neighbors. The only person who didn’t get on with him was his nearest neighbor, Grigory Ivanovich Muromsky.
3. Muromsky “was a true Russian gentleman,” and possessed a fondness for English culture. He laid out an English garden, on which he spent most of what remained of his wealth. His daughter had an English governess. He used the English method in working his fields.
4. “But Russian grain won’t grow in foreign ways.”
5. We learn that Berestov, meanwhile, possessed a hatred of new-fangled notions. He could not speak of his neighbor’s Anglomania with detachment and was forever finding some occasion to pick fault.

6. He would say to visitors, “It’s different from the way my neighbor Grigory Ivanovich goes on. We can’t manage to ruin ourselves the English way, so we have to stay well-fed the Russian way.”
7. In the next scene, we learn that Berestov’s son visited him in the country. “He had been educated at the university and was minded to enter military service, but his father opposed the idea.”
8. “The young man felt himself to be wholly unsuited to a civilian career. Alexey was in truth a splendid fellow. It really would have been a pity if a military uniform had never hugged his slender frame, or if he had spent his youth hunched over papers in an office.”
9. “The young ladies would eye him, but Alexey paid them little heed. Those of my readers who have never lived in rural parts cannot imagine how delightful these provincial young ladies are!”
10. “Brought up in fresh air, in the shade of their apple orchards, they draw their knowledge of life and the world at large from books. Solitude, freedom, and reading are quick to develop in them emotions and passions unknown to our light-minded women.”

11. Their chief essential virtue is: “distinction of character, originality (individualite), without which, in the opinion of Jean Paul, human greatness cannot exist.”
12. “In the capital cities women receive a better education, perhaps, but the ways of society soon iron out their character and render their minds as indistinguishable as their hats.”
13. “It was easy to imagine the effect Alexey was bound to create on our young ladies.”
14. “But it was the daughter of our Anglomane who was taken with him most of all. Her high spirits and constant mischief captivated her father and drive to distraction her mistress.”
15. “Liza had a companion, Nastya,” and the two were very much alike.

16. In one scene, Liza says, “let the old folks fight among themselves, if it keeps them happy.”
17. Liza indicates that she and Alexey spent the day together.
18. “You know what?” Liza says, “I’ll dress up as a peasant-girl. And I can talk just like a local girl.”
19. Here, I learned that a sarafan is a Russian dress forming part of Russian traditional folk costume.
20. “As she tried on her new garments, she acknowledged, in front of the mirror, that she had never looked prettier.”

21. “Her heart was unaccountably thumping; but the trepidation which accompanies our youthful pranks is also their chief delight.
22. “She thought…but can one identify precisely what a seventeen-year-old young lady is thinking about, alone before six on a spring morning?”
23. She encounters Alexey, and pretends to be half-afraid and half-bashful.
24. After a bit of dialogue, “Liza shot a glance at him and burst out laughing.”
25. “Alexey felt more attracted to Liza with every minute that passed. Not being accustomed to stand on ceremony with pretty girls. He made to embrace her, but Liza leapt away from him and assumed such a cold and sever expression that, although Alexey found it funny, he refrained from further attempts.”

26. In the next scene, the young folk parted. Liza dashes to Nastya and changes her clothes, at which time the two talk.
27. Alexey “was enchanted and kept thinking about his new acquaintance the whole day.”
28. When the two meet again, they speak “in peasant dialect, but the thoughts and emotions, unusual in a simple girl, dumbfounded Alexey.”
29. Liza says, “Give me your word, that you will never seek me out in the village, or go round asking questions about me,” and Alexey swears this.
30. Alexey “was unable to comprehend how a simple peasant girl had contrived to establish such genuine dominion over him after only two meetings.”

31. “Before two months had passed, Alexey was head over heels in love, and Liza equally so, though less outspoken.”
32. “The thought of an indissoluble bond quite often flashed through their minds, but they never spoke about that to each other.”
33. In the next scene we learn that Ivan Petrovich Berestov one clear, cold morning (so frequent in Russian autumns), went out riding, taking with him three couple of Borzois, along with a groom and several serfs. The party goes hunting.
34. Then, we learn that the Berestov’s and the Grigory Ivanovich are going to have dinner together on the following day.
35. At dinner, they all talk about different things.

36. Meanwhile, the recent acquaintance between Ivan Petrovich Berestov and Grigory Ivanovich Muromsky was becoming ever firmer and soon turned into friendship, under circumstances of business that would make Alexey one of the richest landowners in the province, giving him reason to marry Liza.
37. This also establishes other business and social effects. “It was in the nature of things. Time would do its work.”
38. Alexey’s father offers advice that he should marry Liza.
39. Alexey, “for the first time, could see plainly that he was passionately in love with her; the romantic notion crossed his mind of marrying a peasant girl and living by his labours, and the more he thought of this drastic step, the more sense he saw in it.”
40. In the denouement, Alexey offers Liza his hand, and the two get married.


1. In The Queen of Spades, Narumov of the Horse Guards hosts a card party.
2. He tells the story of his grandmother, Countess Anna Fedorovna, who “about sixty years ago, went to Paris and became all the rage.”
3. In one scene, the Countess says, “just say the first thing that comes into your head!"
4. In one scene, the narrator quotes Dante in writing, “the bread of a stranger is bitter.”
5. “The Countess, of course, was not malicious by nature, but she was wilful, like any lady spoilt by society. She involved herself in all the vanities of high society.

6. She was quite the center of attention in a ballroom, and at home, she used to receive the whole town.
7. “Lizaveta Ivanovna was a domestic martyr. She poured out the tea and was berated for using too much sugar; she read novels aloud and was to blame for all the author’s failings; she accompanied the Countess on her outings, and was held responsible for the weather and the state of the roads.”
8. One character said that he believed that “calculation, moderation, and hard work: those are my three winning cards.”
9. When Lizaveta Ivanovna receives a respectful love letter from Hermann, a suitor, she was impressed, but troubled greatly, so she returned his letter, writing a few lines of her own.
10. In one scene, Hermann enters an ornately decorated bedroom.

11. Hermann invariably offends the Countess, in his asking for her secret to naming cards.
12. "The old woman said not a word in reply.”
13. Hermann threatens the Countess, and she dies, probably of a heart attack.
14. When Lizaveta learns of this, she calls Hermann a monster.
15. Hermann felt no remorse, yet was unable to stifle the voice of conscience altogether when it kept reminding him of the act.

16. “Though he possessed little genuine faith, he was a prey to superstition. So he made the decision to attend her funeral and beg for forgiveness.”
17. When Hermann reaches the Countess’ coffin, “at that moment it seemed to him that the deceased gave him a mocking glance and winked an eye.”
18. This startled Hermann so much that he recoiled, missed his footing, and crashes to the ground.
19. When Hermann gets home, the Countess visits him at night in a dream, and tells him her secret to picking cards, under the condition that he control his gambling.
20. The narrator writes, “two fixed ideas cannot coexist in the moral sphere, just as two bodies cannot occupy the same space in the physical world. The three, the seven, and the ace soon blotted out the image of the Countess from Hermann’s imagination.”

21. Hermann came to associate everyday people and objects with the cards. “Any pot-bellied gentleman reminded him of an ace,” for example.
22. “The three, seven, and ace haunted him in dreams, assuming every sort of guise.”
23. Meanwhile, Hermann wins great deal of money in his next card game.
24. But in his last game, “instead of an ace, indeed the queen of spades was indeed lying there, Hermann could not believe this, and loses the game.
25. “Just then it seemed to him that the queen of spades winked at him and grinned. The extraordinary likeness stunned him. ‘The old woman!’ he cried out in horror.”
26. Conclusion: “Hermann went out of his mind, Lizaveta Ivanovna married a very pleasant young man, and Tomsky, another character in the novel, has been promoted to captain and is going to marry Princess Polina.”
27. In "Italian Folktales", by Italo Calvino, I read the story "Money Can Do Everything." In the story, a prince meets an old woman who saves him and allows him to marry the king's daughter. Perhaps Alexander Pushkin had been alluding to this story when he wrote The Queen of Spades.


1. The Captain's Daughter, Chapter I - "A Sergeant of the Guards."
2. This chapter, like other pieces by Pushkin, explores the theme of drinking in Russian military culture.
3. One of the character's, Monsieur Beaupre, was "'no enemy of the bottle,' which meant, translated into Russian, he was fond of a drop too much.'"
4. Beaupre is a professor, who teaches the narrator French, German, and all other subjects. Fate, however, was soon to part them, because the narrator was going off into military service.
5. While the narrator is in the army, we learn that there is a great deal of drinking. This sometimes has negative consequences in the story.
6. The soldiers also gamble occasionally by playing cards, sometimes winning or losing extensive amounts of money.

7. In the second chapter, "The Guide," one character, Savelich, briefly discusses the theme of sin. Then he says, "What are the masters going to think of me? What are they going to say when they hear that their child is drinking and gambling?"
8. We learn that the narrator tries to comfort Savelich with the suggestion "not to lay out a kopeck henceforth without his permission. Savelich calmed down, little by little," although he still was a little bit uneasy.
9. The narrator, Savelich, and the driver, on the way to their destination, get lost in a snowstorm.
10. They see a traveller, who helps them along the way.
11. While the wagon slowly moved on, the narrator writes, "I dreamed a dream in which I still see something prophetic when I relate it to the strange events of my life. The reader will forgive me: he probably knows from experience how prone a man is to fall prey to superstition, whatever his contempt for such credulous beliefs might be."

12. In the chapter "The Duel," we learn that the narrator meets Ivan Ignatich, an honest garrison lieutenant who befriends him. After a short time in the army, the narrator is promoted to officer rank.
13. The narrator says, “It was the commandants whim to drill his men occasionally, but he had not yet been able to get all of them to tell their right side from their left, although many would cross themselves at every turn each in case they got it wrong.”
14. Several times in the story, we learn that the narrator studies French and develops a taste for literature.
15. The narrator indicates that one day he wrote a little song, or poem, and shared it with his friend Shvrabin.

16. “Thereupon he took my notebook and began mercilessly dissecting every line and every word. This was more than I could bear, and I snatched the book from his hand, saying that I would never again show him my compositions. Shvabrin laughed at that threat also.”
17. The narrator, Pyotr Andreitch also disagrees with Shvabrin after he makes the following comment, “If you want Masha Mironova to come and visit you after dark, give her a pair of earrings, not tender verses.”
18. “I explained in a few brief words that I had quarreled with Alexei Ivanich and I had come to ask him, Ivan Ignatich,” to propose a resolution.
20. The lieutenant says, “Then go your separate ways; we’ll make peace between you. Whereas harming your neighbor—is that a good thing to do, may I ask?”

21. “The lieutenant’s reasonable arguments did not sway me, however. I stuck to my intention.” I challenged Shvabrin to a duel.
22. At one point writes, “Shvabrin’s effrontery almost drove me to fury, but no one apart from me understood his coarse allusion; at least no one paid any attention.”
23. “The commandant gave me his friendly advice to leave off writing, as a business which was repugnant to the army and never led to any good.”
24. “Next day at the appointment time, I was standing behind the hay-ricks, awaiting my opponent. Soon he too appeared. We took off our jackets...”
25. At this point, Ivan Ignatich and five veterans step in and summon the two soldiers to the commandant.

26. When they went into the commandant's house, "Ivan Ignatich opened the door, announced solemnly: 'delivered!' Vasilisa Egorovna came to meet [them]."
27. "Ivan Kuzmich fully agreed with his spouse and kept putting in: 'Just you listen; what Vasilisa Egorovna says is right. Duels are expressly forbidden in military regulations.' I couldn't help but laughing."
28. The commandant's wife said, "Lock them up now in different places on bread and water, till they get over this nonsense of theirs; and let Father Gerasim impose a penance on them so that they pray to God for forgiveness and repent in the sight of all."
29. "Little by little the storm abated; the commandant's wife calmed down and made us kiss one another. We left the commandant's to all appearances reconciled. Ivan Ignatich accompanied us."
30. "'You should be ashamed,' I said to him angrily. 'Reporting us to the commandant, after giving me your word that you wouldn't!'
'As God's my judge I never told Ivan Kuzmich,' he replied, 'Vasilisa Egorovna wormed it all out of me. She organized everything without the commandant knowing. Anyway, thanks be to God that it's ended the way it has.'"

31. Still, the two men decide to continue with their duel, and put it off for a few days.
32. When they next speak to Vasilisa Egorovna and Maria Ivanovna, Maria Ivanovna says, "I practically fainted when I heard that you were going to fight with swords. How strange men are! For a single word, which would likely be forgotten in a week, they're ready to kill one another and sacrifice not just their lives, but their conscience and the happiness of those who... But I'm sure you didn't start the quarrel. Alexey Ivanich was bound to be to blame."
33. "'And why do you think that, Maria Ivanovna?'
'Oh it's just...he's such a scoffer! I don't like Alexey Ivanich.
34. "'As you can see. Alexey Ivanich, of course, is a clever man, and comes from a good and wealthy family..."
35. At this point, the two men set off in silence. After descending the steep path, they halted by the river. "We began the duel."
36. "Suddenly I heard someone loudly calling my name. I turned to see Savelich running down the steep path towards me...At that same moment I felt a sharp stab in the chest just below the right shoulder; I fell senseless.

37. Chapter 5 - Love - In the beginning of this chapter, we learn that the narrator awakens lying on a bed in an unfamiliar room, feeling extremely weak. He learns that he is in the commandant's house.
38. "When I awoke, I summoned Savelich and instead found Maria Ivanovna before me; the angelic voice greeted me."
39. The narrator asks Maria Ivanovna to be his wife, but she does not accept nor deny his proposal.
40. When he meets Ivan Kuzmich again, Ivan says, "Ah, Pyotr Andreich! I should place you under arrest, but you've been punished enough. As for Alexey Ivanich, I've got him shut up under guard in the granary. Let him think things over and repent."
41. When Shvabrin came to see the Pyotr, the two admit regret at having quarreled and dueled.
42. "Soon I had made a complete recovery and moved back to my quarters. I awaited the answer to my letter, not daring to hope, while trying to suppress and grim forebodings."
43. "Neither Maria Ivanovna nor I had attempted to disguise our feelings for each other, and we were confident in advance of their consent."
44. The narrator receives a letter from Savelich written by his father. In the letter, his father indicates that despite Pyotr's wishes, he will not give either his blessing or his consent to marriage with Maria Ivanovna.
45. Moreover, his father indicates, he intends to get over there and teach him a lesson for his misbehavior, which despite all his officer rank, resembled an urchin.
46. His father writes, "You have shown that you are not yet worthy to bear the sword, presented to you for the defense of your country, not for dueling with other hare-brained scamps like yourself. I shall write to Andrey Karlovich immediately, requesting him to transfer you a long way from Belogorsk Fort, where you might get over your foolishness. Your mother took ill with worry when she heard about your duel and that you'd been wounded. She's taken to her bed. What's going to become of you? Pray God to help you men your ways, though I dare not hope for his great mercy."
47. This made Pyotr incensed with Savelich, because the narrator felt that it was through Savelich that his parents had heard about the duel. Savelich keeps his cool, and apologizes.
48. When he meets Maria Ivanovna again, she says, "What's happened to you? How pale you are!"
49. When he discusses the contents of his father's letter with Maria, she says, "Evidently it is not my fate. God knows what is best for us," and wishes Pyotr Andreich happiness in his life.
50. Pyotr, however remains frustrated. "Let us go and throw ourselves at your parents' feet; they're simple folk, not hard-hearted and arrogant...They will bless us; we'll get married...and with time, I'm sure we can mellow my father; mother will be on our side; she'll forgive me."
51. "No, Pyotr Andreich,' Masha replied. 'I shan't marry you without the blessing of your parents. You would not be happy without their blessing. When you find the one destined for you, when you fall in love with another--God bless you, Pyotr Andreich; and I, for you both...'"
52. "At this she burst into tears and moved away from me," I returened home.
53. Shortly after this, the narrator retains his sense of humor and laughs once or twice after reading his serf's letter.
54. "From that time on my situation altered. Maria Ivanovna barely spoke to me and did her best to avoid me. The commandant's house became hateful to me. I gradually learned to sit at home by myself. The flame of love grew stronger in my isolation and became more and more trying. Certain startling developments, which were to have a profound effect on my entire life, suddenly delivered a powerful and salutary shock to my spirit."

55. Chapter 6 - The Pugachev Rebellion
56. Of the Orenburg Province writes, "This rich and extensive province was inhabited by a great many semi-savage peoples, who had only recently acknowledged the sway of Russian sovereigns." Their ways of life "demanded unceasing surveillance on the part of the government if their allegiance was to be maintained.
57. The Yaik Cossacks were entrusted with the duty of preserving the peace and security of this territory but they themselves had been restive and dangerous subjects for a time.
58. "One evening (it was the beginning of October 1773), I was sitting at home by myself, listening to the wailing of the autumn wind, and staring at the clouds through the window as they scudded past the moon. Someone came to summon me in the commandant's name.I found Shvabrin there, Ivan Ignatich, and the Cossack sergeant.
59. The commandant greeted Pyotr, and read a letter of important news from the general. "I herewith inform you that the escaped prisoner and schismatic Emelyan Pugachev, has assembled a gang of villains and incited unrest in the Yaik settlement. For this reason, you are to take all necessary measure to repulse this villain, if possible destroying him utterly, should he head towards the fort entrusted to your care."
60. "'Never fear, ma'am!' said Ivan Ignatich. 'God is merciful; we've got plenty of soldiers, plenty of powder.'
'And what sort of man is this Pugachev?' asked the commandant's wife.
61. "Soon everybody began talking about Pugachev. Rumors were various."
62. They meet a man who had obviously been tortured as one of the rebels in 1741.
63. Vasilisa Egorovna enters. She tells the men that the fort was captured in the morning, and that the commandant and all the officers were wiped out. "The scoundrels will be here before we know it," she said.
64. "'Listen Ivan Kuzmich!' Pyotr said to the commandant. 'Our duty is to defend the fort to the last breath; that goes without saying. But we must think about the safety of the women. Send them to Orenburg, or to a more secure fort a long way off, where the villains can't reach.'"
65. Reading this chapter, I learrned how the military used torture during times of war.
66. "'Nonsense!' said his wife. 'Where's the fort bullets can't reach?'
67. They decide to send Masha off. "'Goodbye, Pyotr Andreich,' she said to me. 'They're sending me to Orenburg. Take care and be happy; it may be that the Lord will permit us to see one another again; but if not...' Here she burst into tears.
'Whatever happens to me, be assured my last htought and prayer will be for you.'"
68. Chapter 7 - The Assault

1. Chapter 8 - An Uninvited Guest
2. “I was still rooted to the spot, unable to collect my wits, thrown into confusion by so many dreadful emotions.”
3. God almighty, what things we’ve lived to see!
4. Goodbye Pyotr Andreitch! What will be will be; we trust God will not abandon us!
5. …I suppressed with difficulty a surge of indignation, sensing that any intervention would be pointless.

6. I could not help marveling at the strange chain of circumstance: a boy’s jacket, given to a tramp, had rescued me from the noose, and a drunk who staggered about tavern courtyards was besieging forts and shaking the empire!
7. Left alone, I became a prey to reflection.
8. But love strongly prompted me to stay near Maria Ivanovna and be her defender and protector.
9. Omitted.
10. I did not deem it necessary to argue with the Cossack…

11. The narrator sits at the table with several officers in the army, and one by one, each officer boasted, put forward his opinion, and argued freely about their previous military experiences.
12. Then, Pugachev says, “Let’s have my favorite song to sing us to sleep,” and the men sing a mournful barge-hauler’s song.
13. At length my sense of duty triumphed over the human weakness within me.
14. “You are no fool, you would see yourself I was deceiving you.”
15. “Who am I then, in your opinion?”

16. I followed his advice and, after a heart supper, fell asleep on the bare floor, mentally and physically exhausted.
17. 9. Parting
18. An elder handed him a sack filled with copper coins, which he proceeded to throw out in handfuls. The people rushed to pick them up…
19. I walked along, preoccupied with reflections, when I suddenly heard hoof-beats behind me.
20. 10. A Town Under Siege

21. The old man in the brocade caftan hurriedly drained the last third of his cup of tea, with its significant admixture of rum, and replied to the general.

1. "'How do you mean, retake Belgorsk Fort?' he said at last.
2. "I left the general and hurried off to my quarters. Savelich met me with his usual exhortations."
3. "'You can speak out in front of them,' Pugachev told me, 'I hold no secrets from them.'"
4. "His honor and I are old friends; let's sit down to supper; then we'll sleep on it and decide what we're going to do in the morning."
5. “You’re spending too much time on reflections, try to get some sleep.”

6. “I did not deem it necessary to act based on his actions.”
7. "She covered her face with both hands....but at that moment my old acquaintance Palasha burst courageously into the room and began to see to her young lady."
8. "I don't know who you are, and I don't want to know...But as God is my witness, I would be glad to pay you with my life for what you have done for me."
9. "We consoled ourselves in our inactivity with thoughts of the imminent end of these dull and petty hostilities against brigands and savages."
10. "Keep your chin up, and off you go."

11. "Throughout the journey I pondered over the interrogation awaiting me…thinking this to be the simplest as well as most reliable way of proceeding."
12. “Maria Ivanovna was received by my parents with that genuine cordiality so typical of people of the old century. They saw the grace of God in having the opportunity to shelter and cherish a poor orphan.”
13. "This unexpected blow almost killed my father. He lost his accustomed firmness and his grief (normally silent) found vent in bitter complaints."
14. “My son involved in Pugachev’s plans! God of righteousness! That I should live to see it! The Empress spares him from execution!”
15. “…announcing that she was the niece of one of the court stokers, and proceeded to let her into all the secrets of court life.”

16. “Her face, full and rosy, radiated composed dignity, while her blue eyes and slight smile had an ineffable charm.”
17. “Here is a letter which you will take to your future father-in-law.”
18. "That same day Maria Ivanovna went back to the country, without being curious enough to give Petersburg a glance."

19. Peter the Great's Blackamoor
20. Meanwhile, society presented a most diverting spectacle. Culture and the demand for entertainment had brought all the classes together.
21. Ibrahim's arrival, his looks, cultivation, and native wit attracted wide attention in Paris. All the ladies wanted to see le Negre du Czar at their houses, and vied with one another to capture him...The young African was in love.
22. He sensed that for them he was a kind of exotic animal, a special creation, something alien, a chance apparition in a world with which he had nothing in common.

1. The narrator suggests that a goal for the youth is to travel, to learn, to experience life.
2. "'You say,' she wrote, 'that my peace of mind is more precious to you than anything in the world: Ibrahim!"
3. "...and in his domestic arrangements tried to preserve the customs of the good old days he cherished."
4. Suggests that Russian nesting dolls, or matroyshka dolls, can represent the members in a family.

1. Among the young men whom Peter the Great sent into foreign parts to acruire knowledge essential to the transformed Russian state was his godson, the blackamoor Ibrahim.
Perhaps the blackamoor Ibrahim, depicted in the novel, is a representation of Alexander Pushkin, the author.
2. The sovereign's carriage was brought round. He got in with Ibrahim and they galloped off. In an hour and a half they were in Petersburg. Ibrahim gazed about him curiously at the new-born capital, which was rising out of the swamps at the bidding of the autocrat. Rough dams, canals without embankments wooden bridges everywhere proclaimed the recent victory of human will over the resistance of the elements. The houses looked as though they had been built in a hurry. In the entire city there was nothing of magnificence, apart from the Neva, not yet adorned with its granite frame but already covered with warships and merchant vessels.
3. After dinner the Tsar, as was the Russian custom, went off to rest. Ibrahim was left alone with the Empress and the Grand Duchesses. He attempted to satisfy their curiosity, describing the Parisian way of life, the festivals there, and the vagaries of fashion.
4. "Don't you know it's not in human nature to be sad for long...?"
5. In the place of honor, next to the host, sat his father-in-law, Prince Boris Alexeyevich Lykov, a seventy-year-old boyar; the other guests observed family seniority, recalling the happy days when order of precedence ruled.

6. "...asked him with an acid smile what was wrong with the Assemblies.
"'What's wrong with them,' responded her spouse heatedly, 'is that since they were introduced, husbands have been at odds with their wives. Wives have forgotten the apologistic word: the wife should venerate her husband; it's new clothes they worry about now; not household affairs.."
Suggests that in the background to the Russian matroyshka dolls, are husbands, fathers, and children. The matroyshka dolls, however, being mostly female in gender, may represent a means of preserving the status of women in Russian society.
7. "...Now who's that driving through the gates?
"'...Old greybeard, are you in your right mind?' the fool Ekimovna broke in. 'Or are you blind: that's the sovereign's sleigh, the Tsar has arrived.'
8. "The host, out of respect and pleasure, ate nothing; the guests were all formality and listened in reverence as the sovereign conversed in German with the Swede about the 1701 campaign."
9. During a discussion between the Tsar and Ibrahim,
"'Then I'll get you better acquainted. Would you like to marry her?'
'I, sire?'
'Listen Ibrahim, you're a fellow on his own, no kith and kin, a stranger to everybody but me. If I were to die today, what would become of you tomorrow, my poor blackamoor? You have to get yourself settled while there's still time; find a support in new ties, make an alliance with the Russian boyar class'
10. "'It's all settled, my friend,' said Peter, taking his arm. 'I've arranged your marriage for you. Tomorrow go and see your father-in-law...'
11. The end.




Eugene Onegin
By Alexander Pushkin

Alexander Pushkin was born in Moscow. He was of mixed descent: on his father's side the family could trace its history in Russia six hundred years back. Pushkin's maternal great-grandfather was an Abyssinian (Ethiopian) princeling who was sent as a gift to Peter the Great . In 1828 Pushkin began writing a novel about the life of his African ancestor (The Negro of Peter the Great), but left it unfinished.
1. Chance, in Pushkin's view, was a complimentary concept to fate, and Pushkin was "willing as a man and artist to trust in chance."
2. "The poet for Pushkin is a mysterious being: inspired by strange gods, yet remaining at an everyday level" a relatively insignificant human.
3. Pushkin is "enormously alive to experience, fascinated by everything and everyone."
4. "The aim of poetry, Pushkin asserted, is poetry itself; the poet emerges from the creative spirit to show us the world..."
5. Eugene Onegin is a verse poem.
6. Eugene Onegin admired Adam Smith, author of Theory of Moral Sentiments.

1. Of the prince, Pushkin writes that early on, he could grasp different languages and understand different philosophical and scientific concepts.
2. Indicates that the prince could seize a moment’s weakness.
3. The prince should, “see the Russian muse of dance, Perform her soaring, soulful flight; rather than allow his mournful gaze to alight, on unknown faces on the stages.”
4. Suggests that we should learn to appreciate fine china, bronzes, imported goods.
5. Of the prince writes, “At least three hours he peruses, His figure in the looking-glass.”

6. The prince says, “So much of life have I neglected,” in his days, that he realizes that he should truly live a full life.
7. The prince says, “The ladies gowns so we’ll designed; I love their feet—although you’ll find, That all of Russia scarcely numbers, three pair of shapely feet…And yet, how long it took me to forget, Two special feet.” Perhaps this is a familiar story.
8. Suggests that we have cherished memories with loved ones.
9. Indicates that the hero of his poem, Onegin, “was born beside the Neva’s span.” Also invokes "mighty Zeus's will."
10. Compares "He who has lived as a thinking being," to "He who can feel [who] is always fleeing."
11. Discusses a “poet from Gottingen filled with Kantian truth.”

1. I also read The Stationmaster, by Alexander Pushkin. This short story begins by speaking badly about stationmasters, people whose job it is to administer duties of a clerk in a train station. Toward the story's end however, we meet a stationmaster face to face, and learn that he is actually a human being after all, after which point the stationmaster dies. It is believed that Pushkin was using his story to describe the struggles of Negroes abroad.
1.A The following are more notes from Eugene Onegin:
2. Explains that two of the characters wanted to live a peaceful life.
3."And thus they aged, as do all mortals.
Until the husband found
That death had opened wide its portals...
A tombstone tells the passer-by:
The humble sinner Dmitry Larin
A slave of God and Brigadier,
Beneath his stone now resteth here.
He honored too, in tears and pain,
His parents dust…their memories gladness…
By fate’s mysterious dispensation,
Then others too must heed the call.
So meanwhile friends, enjoy your blessing:
This fragile life that hurries so!
Its worthlessness needs no professing,"


4. At one point, the prince "had parted with convention."
5. Suggests that there can be harm in boredom.
6. Her soul awaited…someone’s touch.
7. Of Tanya, who “found a man,” writes,
”And now, alas…she lives attended—
All day, all night in sleeps embrace—
By dreams of him; each passing hour
The world itself with magic power.”


8. "He’d furnish his beloved child—
With tender soul and manly grace,
Intelligence and handsome face.”


9. ”But simply tell as best I may,
Of ancient customs unforgot,
Of ancient facts and fables too."


10. Indicates that she came to marry by, “The will of God.”
11. Mentions that “life is full of dangers.”
12. Says that a lady’s love has never been expressed in Russian, so she turns to French.
13. Writes that to read in Russian inspired dread in some people, and that many people have been weak at Russian conversation. Also, that mistakes in Russian grammar are common.


14. Tatyana spent a lot of time (day after day, hour after hour) dreaming about Onegin. In Tatyana's Letter to Onegin, she writes,
"I might have found (who knows) another
And been a faithful wife and mother,
Contented with the life I led...
Are you my angel of salvation,
Or hell's own demon of temptation?
My mind and will are almost broken,..
I wait for you...and your decision:
Receive my hopes with but a sign..."
End of letter.


15. "And tell him that he's not to mention
My name, or breathe a single word..."


16. "But, sweetheart, I've grown old...I mean...
I'm old; my mind...it does get muddled.
There was a time when I was keen,
When just the master's least suggestion..."


1. "In the morning he won't know
What evening holds or where he'll go."


2. I learned about Pradt, August Lafontaine, Walter Scott, as well as the reference to Childe-Harold, reading this piece.


3. In one scene, Tatyana, it’s unclear if she is dreaming or not, but Tatyana is in a snowy forest where she meets a bear. The bear chases her and she loses her slipper.
The bear takes her to a house in the forest where there are other anthropomorphic monsters, such as one with a rooster’s head. Sitting amid the monsters, we learn, is the hero Onegin, whose presence comforts the weary Tatyana.
At this point, all the monsters flee the room, and Olga and Lensky enter. Now, along with Onegin, the three humans occupy the room. After some dialogue, Tatyana falls asleep and dreams about a ball (or party) with clues that have to do with people’s similarities and differences. Tanya enters the ball, at which point there is celebration and cheer. Here, chapter 6 begins.


1. Onegin enjoyed “philosophical seclusion.”
2. Onegin “could put silence cunningly to use.”
3. Onegin “lives out his life a proper sage.”


4. Of another character,
”Eugene would hear his views intently,
And liked his common sense,
He’d spent some time with him with pleasure,
And so was not in any measure….”


5. If challenged, Onegin would pay close and wise attention to his first reaction.
6. Onegin was a man of honor and of sense.
7. In one scene, despite the outcome, explains that Onegin, “could have shown some spark of feeling.”
8. Suggests that we should not be impatient.
9. Of “poor Lensky” writes, “He hunts for words in vain.”
10. Suggests that the love Tatyana had for Onegin, “might well have made them friends once more.”


11. “Only she herself might have guessed,
But her old wits were slow at best.”


12. Suggests that we should read the books of all the great authors because it will contribute more to our lives.
13. Suggests that the age of thirty is when “life’s afternoon has started.”
14. Describes Moscow as “Russia’s favorite daughter,” and says that to visit Moscow is to “see the world.”
15. Tatyana asks to “read the books Onegin called his own.”


1. Tatyana “found Onegin’s soul reflected,” in the pages on which he wrote.
2. Tatyana checks her funds and decides that a winter in Moscow would be nice. She also indicates that she has dreamt of traveling there.
3. Before her departure, Tatyana says goodbye to the world she loves, she bids farewell to the peaceful vales and fountains, also to the familiar mountains, as well as the woods she used to roam.
4. When she meets Laura, she says that it is as though it is from some novel’s pages.
5. Laura (the old woman,) asks that they all have a nice rest, because she says that she has no strength.


7. In one scene writes,
“And there the Muse spread out for me
A feast of youthful fancies free…”


8. Points out that she visited the humble tents of wandering tribes of the people of Moldavia.


9. Writes, "She learned their ways and soon grew wild:
The language of the gods she shed
For strange and simple tongues instead."


10. Suggests that some things are the work of heaven and that other things are the work of hell.
11. Indicates, of course, that the prince honors Tatyana.

11A. In one scene toward the end of the novel, Prince Onegin was transfixed in dreamlike thought.


12. "Was this the Tanya he once lightly scolded,
In that forsaken distant place
Where first our novel’s plot unfolded?”

The End






Boris Godunov and Other Dramatic Works
By Alexander Pushkin

1. Introduction
"Pushkin's interest in Shakespeare, Byron, Schiller, and Goethe was mediated wherever possible through French prose translations..."
2. "Pushkin first tried his hand at dramatic satire at the age of 16...For him, being cosmopolitan meant more than just taking from other cultures. It also meant taking seriously the possibilty that one could offer an innovation or synthesis of one's own that other national cultures might find useful in the evolution of their traditions."
3. "As far as Europe could tell, Russia in its own tongue produced little more than barbaric, visual arabesques."
4. “The on-stage battle scenes in Boris (where troops clash and horses die on stage) are not easy to envision…The penultimate scene of Rusalka takes place on the bottom of the Dnieper River."
5. “Some of Pushkin’s stage directions have whole histories attached to them.”

6. Discusses the importance of expressing the emotions in dramatic pieces.
7. "Most dangerous for any playwright was monotony of technique. Even satiric laughter, if applied too predictably, could lose its cleansing force--and murders, if habitual, cease to shock."
7A. "Most dangerous, for any playwright was monotony of technique. Even satiric laughter, if applied too predictably, could lose its cleansing force..."
8. "Authentic tragedy must be as 'impartial as Fate'. And impartiality can be achieved only if the playwright resolves to 'express the people of the past, their minds, their prejudices' within the value-system of their own time."
8A. "Such playwrights combine in one person the voice of freedom against oppression..."
9. Questions the purpose(s) of drama.
10. Boris Godunov
11. "In the mid 1820s, Russia's encounter with Napoleon and the nation's bristling entry onto the European political stage was still fresh. Russian literature (along with the rest of Europe) was rife with 'Napoleon' tales: the ambitious underling of humble birth who struggles to a position of supreme power, justifying his crimes through appeals to the public good or national glory."
12. At the center of Nikolai Karamzin, a popular author, "sat the story of Boris Godunov, an untitled boyar, gifted statesman, and elected monarch with a dubious, perhaps criminal past. The failure and then fall of the brief Godunov dynasty (six years the father, two months the son) was the formal cause for the country's collapse into its first civil war, the bridge between Russia's two major dynasties."
13. For Boris, Pushkin "consulted medieval chronicles as well as accounts by foreign mercenaries..."
14. In one Alexander Pushkin novel that I've read, Pushkin describes a scene where two children get switched at birth, and one goes to a rich family, and one goes to a poor family.
15. Indicates that “Pushkin’s upbringing had been rather Germanophobic, and his A Scene from Faust, is an attempt to connect with German literary trends."
16. “Pushkin’s Faust resembles Byron’s Manfred, who in turn had been influenced by Goethe’s Faust.”

17. “In Pushkin’s universe, laughter is healthy, humbling, comedic, wisdom-bearing, harmonious; it reduces us to our proper proportions in the world and makes ethical behavior easier.”
18. To be continued.
19. "Again, spontaneity, responsiveness, the capacity to seize a cue and transform it into art with no loss of energy or excitement, emerge as central spiritual values for Pushkin the playwright."
19A. Pushkin possessed a great deal of admiration for his friend, the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz.
20. The Little Tragedies
21. "The death waiting at the end of each of these little tragedies is never a surprise. It is also not very significant. The conflict itself is important, not the outcome, for our psyche contains both antagonists."
22. End of Introduction.
23. "The poet's maternal great-grandfather, Abram Hannibal, was an African princeling who had been taken hostage as a boy by the Turkish sultan. Subsequently brought to Russia and adopted by Peter the Great, he became favorite of the emperor..."
23. In 1824, Pushkin writes narrative poem The Gypsies.


1. "And not in vain, has God so many years made me a witness, And granted me the art of writing words."
2. "That future men of Christian faith may learn, The bygone fortunes of their native land; That they recall their mighty Tsars of old."
3. "As I decline in age I live anew, And ancient days pass once again before me."
4. "I've often wondered, Just what he writes with such unflagging zeal: Of dismal days when Tartar hordes held sway? Of Tsar Ivan and bloody executions? Of stormy Novogorod and its Assembly? The glory of our land? But all in vain..."
5. "I dreamt that by a steep and winding stair, I climbed some tower, from the top of which, All Moscow seemed an antheap to my eyes..."

6. "Submit yourself to fasting and to prayer, And soon your nightly dreaming will be filled, With harmless visions."
7. "So heed my words: The luxuries of this life, Like women's love, seduce us from afar. I've lived long years and had my fill of pleasures, But never knew true bliss until the Lord."
8. Indicates that one Tsar lived like a monk inside his court, that is, under his rule, it took on the aspect of a monastery.
8A. Pushkin describes "an old man from a wandering tribe who was happy to be warmed by the fire."
9. "And contemplate his son, Tsar Fyodor, too, Who sat upon the throne and yearned in vain, To lead a silent hermit's humble life... And under Fyodor's reign our Russia thrived, In uncontested glory..."
10. "Then, when the Tsar had passed away, the palace, Was permeated with a holy fragrance, And his own face was shining like the sun."

11. "I've little use these days, For matters of this world. And now, my son, You've learned to read and write, and so to you, I pass along my work; and in these hours...Write down, avoiding crafty sophistries, All things that you shall witness in this life: Both war and peace, the edicts of our Tsars, The holy miracles of saintly men, All prophecies and blessed revelations... But now my time has come, my time to rest, To put the candle out..."
12. "And you shall not escape the court of man, No more than you'll escape the court of God!"


1. KURBSKY. (Galloping at their head.) There, there it is; there is the Russian frontier! Fatherland! Holy Russia! I am thine! With scorn from off my clothing now I shake The foreign soil, and greedily I drink New air; it is my native air.
2. PRETENDER. (Moves quietly with bowed head.) How happy Is he, how flushed with gladness and with glory His stainless soul! Brave knight, I envy thee! The son of Kurbsky, nurtured in exile...To shed thy blood, to give the fatherland Its lawful tsar. Righteous art thou; thy soul Should flame with joy.
3. KURBSKY. And dost not thou likewise Rejoice in spirit? There lies our Russia; she Is thine, tsarevich! There thy people's hearts Are waiting for thee, there thy Moscow waits, Thy Kremlin, thy dominion.
4. TSAR. Is it possible? An unfrocked monk against us Leads rascal troops, a truant friar dares write Threats to us! Then 'tis time to tame the madman!
5. TSAR. The Lord of Sweden hath by envoys tendered Alliance to me. But we have no need To lean on foreign aid; we have enough Of our own warlike people to repel Traitors and Poles. I have refused.—Shchelkalov!

6. Thou wilt wait quietly, until delusion Shall pass away; for pass away it will, And truth's eternal sun will dawn on all.
7. This is my counsel; to the Kremlin send The sacred relics, place them in the Cathedral Of the Archangel; clearly will the people See then the godless villain's fraud; the might Of the fiends will vanish as a cloud of dust.
8. POLES. Victory! Victory! Glory to the tsar Dimitry!
DIMITRY. (On horseback.) Cease fighting. We have conquered. Enough! Spare Russian blood. Cease fighting.
9. PRETENDER. An enviable life for the tsar's people! Well, how about the army?
PRISONER. What of them? Clothed and full-fed they are content with all.
10. A POLE. Tomorrow, battle! They are fifty thousand, And we scarce fifteen thousand. He is mad!
ANOTHER. That's nothing, friend. A single Pole can challenge Five hundred Muscovites.

11. The Pole looks at him haughtily and departs in silence. All laugh.
12. PRETENDER. Ah, my poor horse! How gallantly he charged Today in the last battle, and when wounded, How swiftly bore me. My poor horse!
13. PRETENDER. (Goes to his horse.) My poor horse!—what to do? Take off the bridle, And loose the girth. Let him at least die free.
14. TSAR. No, I am ill content with them; thyself I shall despatch to take command of them; I give authority not to birth, but brains. Their pride of precedence, let it be wounded!
15. Again his scattered forces, and anew Threatens us from the ramparts of Putivl. Meanwhile what are our heroes doing?

16. BASMANOV. A great thought Within his mind has taken birth; it must not Be suffered to grow cold.
17. TSAR. Let all depart—alone Leave the tsarevich with me. (All withdraw.) I am dying; Let us embrace. Farewell, my son; this hour Thou wilt begin to reign.—O God, my God! This hour I shall appear before Thy presence— And have no time to purge my soul with shrift. But yet, my son, I feel thou art dearer to me Than is my soul's salvation—be it so!
18. The royal voice must never lose itself Upon the air in emptiness, but like A sacred bell must sound but to announce Some great disaster or great festival.
19. Dear son, thou art approaching to those years When woman's beauty agitates our blood. Preserve, preserve the sacred purity Of innocence and proud shamefacedness; He, who through passion has been wont to wallow In vicious pleasures in his youthful days...
20. FEODOR. (On his knees.) No, no; live on, my father, and reign long; Without thee both the folk and we will perish.

21. Our army is mere trash, the Cossacks only Rob villages, the Poles but brag and drink; The Russians—what shall I say?—with you I'll not Dissemble; but, Basmanov, dost thou know Wherein our strength lies? Not in the army, no. Nor Polish aid, but in opinion—yes, In popular opinion.
22. Dost remember The triumph of Dimitry, dost remember His peaceful conquests, when, without a blow The docile towns surrendered, and the mob Bound the recalcitrant leaders? Thou thyself Saw'st it; was it of their free-will our troops Fought with him? And when did they so? Boris Was then supreme. But would they now?—Nay, nay,
23. Dishonour to deserve from age to age! The trust of my young sovereign to requite With horrible betrayal! 'Tis a light thing For a disgraced exile to meditate Sedition and conspiracy; but I? Is it for me, the favourite of my lord?— But death—but power—the people's miseries...
24. MOSALSKY. People! Maria Godunov and her son Feodor have poisoned themselves. We have seen their dead bodies. (The People are silent with horror.) Why are ye silent? Cry, Long live the tsar Dimitry Ivanovich! (The People are speechless.) THE END






About Love and Other Stories
by Anton Chekhov:

1. Introduction
2. Industrialization belatedly reached Russia at the end of the nineteenth century, and with it came the inevitable mass exodus from the villages, where it was becoming increasingly difficult for Russia's peasant population to earn a living.
3. Chekhov began his literary career by writing short stories for newspapers. This was also a way for him to support himself financially.
4. His pious family background provided him with an intimate knowledge of the Russian Orthodox Church and its clergy.
5. What is immediately striking about Chekhov's stories is his evenhanded approach to his characters. What interests him as a writer are individual human qualities...with persuading the Russian educated public of the virtues of simple peasant living...
6. Some of the pieces which Chekhov authored are comic stories.
7. Chekhov's On the Road, so inspired Rachmaninov that in 1893 he wrote an orchestral fantasy (op. 7, The Rock) based on it.
8. Chekhov's admiration for Tchaikovsky was reflected in his dedication of a short story collection to the composer.
9. Chekhov filled his writing with characters from all walks of Russian life. 'Rothschild's Violin' features a Jew, and is a sensitive exploration of Russian anti-Semitism.
10. Suggests that in life, we ask questions, and even if we do not have all of the answers, at least we have some of them, some of the answers.

11. What is also remarkable about both Pushkin and Chekhov is the apparent timelessness of their writing; when reading their works, one often has the impression that they are our contemporaries, so modern does their language seem. Suggests that these classic authors can also set trends in modern language and thought.
12. The beauty of his language lies not in the words themselves, however, but in the way they are put together.
13. To be continued.

Minds in Ferment, by Anton Chekhov:
1. The same evening Akim Danilitch sat in the grocer’s shop drinking limonade gaseuse, and writing...
2. "Limonade gazeuse is a French phrase that translates to "sparkling lemonade" or "gaseous lemonade" in English." -Google

A Chameleon, by Anton Chekhov:
1. "No, that’s not the General’s dog"... “the General hasn’t got one like that. His are mostly setters.”
I know it, too. The General has valuable dogs, thoroughbred, and this is goodness knows what!
2. It’s a stray dog! There’s no need to waste time talking about it….
3. A dog is a delicate animal…. And you put your hand down, you blockhead.

Oysters, by Anton Chekhov:
1. It needs no straining of memory to recall the rainy twilight autumn evening when I stood with my father in a crowded Moscow street and felt overtaken by a strange illness. I suffered no pain, but my legs gave way, my head hung helplessly on one side, and words stuck in my throat. I felt that I should soon fall on the pаvement and swoon away.
2. Had I been taken to hospital at the moment, the doctor would have written above my bed the word: “Fames” — a complaint not usually dealt with in medical text-books.
3. I must have kept my eyes on the notice at least half an hour. Its whiteness beckoned to me, and, it seemed, almost hypnotised my brain. I tried to read it, and my attempts were fruitless.
4. “Papa, what does ‘oysters’ mean?” I repeated.
“It is a kind of animal. . . . It lives in the sea. . . .”
And in a wink I visualised this mysterious animal. Something between a fish and a crab, it must be, I concluded; and as it came from the sea, of course it made up into delightful dishes, hot bouillabaisse with fragrant peppercorns and bay leaves, or sour solianka with gristle, crab-sauce, or cold with horse-radish. . . . I vividly pictured to myself how this fish is brought from the market, cleaned, and thrust quickly into a pot . . . quickly, quickly, because every one is hungry . . . frightfully hungry. From the restaurant kitchen came the smell of boiled fish and crab soup.
5. This smell began to tickle my palate and nostrils; I felt it permeating my whole body.
6. Frenchmen, they said, ate frogs. But children — never! And I saw this fish being carried from market in its shell, with claws, bright eyes, and shiny tail. . . . The children all hide themselves, and the cook, blinking squeamishly, takes the animal by the claws, puts it on a dish, and carries it to the dining-room.
7. I frowned disgustedly. But why did my teeth begin to chew.? An animal, disgusting, detestable, frightful, but still I ate it, ate it greedily, fearing to notice its taste and smell.
8. One animal was finished, already I saw the bright eyes of a second, a third. ... I ate these also.
9. Give me some oysters! Give me some oysters.” The cry burst from my lips, and I stretched out my hands.
10. "And so you'll eat oysters! Such a little whipper-snapper!” I heard a voice beside me.

11. In a minute a crowd had gathered, and looked at me with curiosity and amusement. I sat at a table, and ate something slippy, damp, and mouldy. I ate greedily, not chewing, not daring to look, not even knowing what I ate. It seemed to me that if I opened my eyes, I should see at once the bright eyes, the claws, the sharp teeth.
12. After this, I remember only my terrible thirst. I lay on my bed, kept awake by repletion, and by a strange taste in my hot mouth.

The Swedish Match, by Anton Chekhov:
1. Ten minutes later he was sitting on a stool, carefully nibbling lumps of sugar, and sipping tea as hot as a red-hot coal.
2. You should read Dostoevsky! And what does Lyeskov say… and Petchersky!
3. “You are convinced of the guilt of Nikolashka and Psyekov,” he said, nervously pulling at his youthful beard.
4. It was evident that he had not come back without news. “Veni, vidi, vici!” he cried, dashing into Tchubikov’s room and sinking into an armchair.
5. To her, to the fourth…. We must make haste, or… I shall explode with impatience!

The Marshal's Widow, by Anton Chekhov:
1. Lyubov Petrovna has taken a vow never to have in her house cards or spirituous liquors — the two sources of her husband’s ruin.
2. The guests approach the table and hesitatingly attack the pie. But the progress with eating is slow. In the plying of forks, in the cutting up and munching, there is a certain sloth and apathy…. Evidently something is wanting.

Small Fry, by Anton Chekhov:
1. A story about a man who kills a cockroach.

IN AN HOTEL, by Anton Chekhov:
1. Day and night! Sometimes he fires off such things that it simply makes one’s ears blush! Positively like a cabman. It’s a good thing that my poor girls don’t understand or I should have to fly out into the street with them…

BOOTS, by Anton Chekhov:
1. A PIANO-TUNER called Murkin, a close-shaven man with a yellow face, with a nose stained with snuff, and cotton-wool in his ears, came out of his hotel-room into the passage, and in a cracked voice cried: “Semyon! Waiter!”

NERVES, by Anton Chekhov:
1. From thought-reading they had passed imperceptibly to spirits, and from spirits to ghosts, from ghosts to people buried alive….
2. He had called up among others the spirit of his deceased uncle, Klavdy Mironitch, and had mentally asked him...
3. Suggests that you ask your doctor, "Do you think that I'm mentally ill?"

A Country Cottage, by Anton Chekhov:
1. "What have you got for our supper tonight?” “Chicken and salad…. It’s a chicken just big enough for two…. Then there is the salmon and sardines that were sent from town.”
2. Is a story about a happy family.

Malingerers, by Anton Chekhov:
1. MARFA PETROVNA PETCHONKIN, the General’s widow, who has been practising for ten years as a homeopathic doctor, is seeing patients in her study on one of the Tuesdays in May. On the table before her lie a chest of homeopathic drugs, a book on homeopathy, and bills from a homeopathic chemist.
2. I went home from you that Tuesday, looked at the pilules that you gave me then, and wondered what good there could be in them.
3. Omitted.
4. Suggests that doctors can assess their patients' health just by looking at them.
5. Compares homeopathic medicine to allopathic medicine.

A Horsey Name, by Anton Chekhov:
1. Suggests that there are dog names, and there are human names.

Gone Astray, by Anton Chekhov:
1. "Petya, my dear fellow…. I can’t…. I feel like dying if I’m not in bed in five minutes.”
2. Then through his sleep he hears the barking of dogs. First one dog barks, then a second, and a third…. And the barking of the dogs blends with the cackling of the fowls into a sort of savage music.
3. "What are you saying? Call the elder. He knows me.”
4. "Whew! Do you take this for the Dale? This is Sicklystead, but Rottendale is farther to the right, beyond the match factory. It’s three miles from here.” “Bless my soul! Then I’ve taken the wrong turn!”

The Huntsman, by Anton Chekhov:
1. A SULTRY, stifling midday. Not a cloudlet in the sky…. The sun-baked grass had a disconsolate, hopeless look: even if there were rain it could never be green again…. The forest stood silent, motionless, as though it were looking at something with its treetops or expecting something.
2. You know yourself I am a pampered man…. I want a bed to sleep in, good tea to drink, and refined conversation…
3. Omitted.
4. To be continued.

1. On the Road & The Letter - "...there was a tall, broad-shouldered man of about forty sitting at the large, unpainted table. With his elbows resting on the table and his head propped up on his fist, he was sleeping...Taken separately, his nose, his cheeks, and his eyebrows were crude and cumbersome, like the furniture and the stove in the travellers' room, but together they combined to look harmonious and even handsome." That is the hallmark of the Russian face, so they say: the larger and sharper its features, the softer and more kind-hearted it seems.
2. On one of the benches that stretched all the way along the wall, sleeping on a fox-fur coat, was a girl of about eight, dressed in a brown frock and long black stockings. She had a pale face, fair hair, narrow shoulders, and a body that was thin and frail...She was fast asleep...
3. The travellers' room had a festive appearance. There was a smell of freshly scrubbed floors in the air, for once there were no cloths hanging off the rope that stretched diagonally right across the room...
4. In this short story, Chekhov give quite accurate descriptions of Russian peoples' faces and other appearances.
5. The Fish, by Anton Chekhov, is another short story that I read. It is a comic story, about a group of three or so men, who go into a lake, and try to catch a big fish, but all of the mens' work is in vain, and the fish gets away.
6. The introduction of About Love and Other Stories, by Anton Chekhov indicates that the newspaper that Chekov wrote for, also contained comic strips, and a variety of other journalistic content, and was a great experience for Chekhov to learn about writing.
7. Suggests that breakfast, or to break the fast, is when you eat after "fasting" for hours at night when you're at rest.
8. Briefly discusses pharmacognosy.
9. Briefly discusses zoology.
10. Omitted.

11. Suggests that when we die, we do not “leave this world forever.”
12. “You have to teach! You have children yet, and you don’t instruct them! It’s a sin! It’s bad! It’s shameful!"
13. “…you will perish because you possess riches but you do not cherish them.”
14. “God forgive me, but there are some dreadful women in the world! Don’t you think? Where is her sense of shame?”
15. “When he saw the table already covered with Easter cakes and red painted eggs, he for some reason started crying, probably because he was remembering his own home…”
16. “I used to live like other people and didn’t have too many worries, but now that I have fallen from the one true path, all I want is for kind people to forgive me.”
17. “No, you should be forgiving the people who you feel pity for…really!”
18. “Anastasy propped his head up on his fist and became lost in thought.”

19. Fortune
20. "To judge from his upright, motionless posture, his manner, and the way that he behaved...he was a serious, level-headed man who knew his own worth..."
21. "Everyone was waiting for Zhmenya to show us the places, or dig them up himself, but it was like he was cutting off his nose to spite his face--he went and died..."
22. "The government has the same plan up its sleeve. It says in the law that if a peasant finds treasure, he has to report it to the authorities."
23. Suggests that the treasure could hold a spell or curse on it which only the government is capable of controlling.
24. “The old man was not able to give an answer as to what he would do with the treasure if he found it.”
25. “…everything which had moved and made noises in the night, sank into somnolence.”

Gusev, by Anton Chekhov:
1. “Human life is what is important, not plans! You’ve only got one life, and you’ve got to respect it."
2. “My lungs are healthy, and it’s just a gastric cough... I can put up with hell. So what is the Red Sea, anyway?"
3. “Everything will collapse without me and my father and his old lady will end up begging, I know it.”
4. "Actually my legs are a bit wobbly, and it’s a bit stuffy in here.”
5. “He is tormented like before with a vague desire for something but he cannot work out what it is that he wants.”

The Black Monk, by Anton Chekhov:
1. Andrew Kovrin, master of arts, was exhausted and on the edge of a nervous breakdown. He did not go for treatment, but managed to have an informal chat with a doctor friend, who advised him to spend the spring and summer in the country.
2. “Then, when the roads became passable he set off by carriage to stay with his former guardian and tutor Pesotsky, a horticulturalist renowned through Russia."
3. “Yes. I teach psychology, but my work generally is in philosophy.”
4. “Well, let’s hope it stays that way, said Yegor Semyonich, stroking his grey sideburns thoughtfully.”
5. “He suddenly felt stirring in his chest the feelings of youth and joy he used to have when he ran about the gardens as a child.”
6. “…they both went into the house and drank tea from old porcelain cups, with cream and thick pastries…”
7. Briefly discusses horticultural textbooks.
8. “But the ideas in the book he was reading did not satisfy him. He wanted something massive, uncontainable, earth-shattering.”
9. “I exist in your imagination, and your imagination is part of nature, so that must mean I also exist in nature.”
10. “An exalted mood, excitement, ecstasy—everything which distinguishes prophets, poets, and those who martyr themselves for an ideal, from ordinary people—is inimical to a person’s animal nature, that is, his physical health.”
11. “His look, the way he moved and talked, was gentle and refined, just like his mother. And his brain? His brain always astonished us. Well he’s not got his degree for nothing, you know! Absolutely not!”
12. “One long winter night Kovrin was lying in bed reading a French novel.”
13. "The greater a person’s intellectual and moral development, the greater his freedom, and the greater the pleasure he will derive from life.”
14. Briefly discusses Socrates, Diogenes, and Marcus Aurelius.
15. "Tanya put her arms around Kovrin…and covered his eyes with her hand.”
16. “It was quiet, and the sweet scent of tobacco plants came in through the open windows from the garden.”
17. In one Anton Chekhov story, one of the characters is rich, and has gold, and enjoys looking at his gold fortune. It is pleasant and even entertaining for the man to look at his fortune of gold. Chekhov even indicates that sometimes, the yellow image of the gold fortune is so strong that it remains imprinted in his eyes for some time after looking at it.
18. In one Anton Chekhov story, one of the characters mother tells him that eating soup is good for his health, so the son, in trying to attain good health, eats soup "like ten times a day," eats it until it makes him sick, eats soup religiously.

1. “The past, he realized, was linked to the present by an unbroken chain of events, which flowed from one into another.
2. “The men carried the baskets out of respect, not because they were paid to.”
3. The House with the Mezzanine:
4. "To my right, in an old orchard there was an oriole singing, reluctantly and feebly; it was probably old too."
5. “I’ve lost touch with good people, I really have! It’s just work, work, work, all the time.”
6. "Lida was never affectionate and always talked about serious matters."
7. “They always prayed together and shared a strong faith, and they understood each other, even when they were silent.”
8. “If you get caught up in books and handing out medicines you might not notice life going by…She ought to get married.”
9. To be continued.
10. “Belokurov arrived, decked out in his embroidered peasant shirt and coat.”
11. “…I carried away with me an impression of an incredibly long day spent in complete idleness…”
Cautions against wasting the day away.
12. Suggests that we should not make life more complicated and burdensome.
13. Suggests that when life is more complicated, we waste a lot of time and energy.
14. Briefly discusses Fables, by Ivan Krylov.
15. Suggests that people should not live in fear.

16. The Man in a Case, by Anton Chekhov:
17. Because of one of the characters "strange name," the people in the province called him only by his first name and his patronymic.
18. Omitted.

The Greatest Novellas & Short Stories of Anton Chekhov, by Anton Chekhov:
1. At the Barber's, by Anton Chekhov is one of the short story's that I read.
2. After reading many short story's by Anton Chekhov, is is clear that Chekhov influenced Henrik Ibsen.

3. A Living Chattel, by Anton Chekhov:
4. "Rain had just fallen, and made the fresh, transparent fragrant air still fresher."
5. "Throughout the whole night she had the most fascinating dreams…. She dreamed whole romances, novels, Arabian Nights…."
6. "Oh, dreams! In one night, lying with one’s eyes shut, one may sometimes live through more than ten years of happiness…."
7. "A grey cat with its tail in the air was rubbing itself against one of the table legs, and with a plaintive mew proclaiming its desire for food."
8. It seems that it is fated. I can imagine the awkwardness of his position when he meets us.
9. But the dinner did not pass off so quietly. During dinner precisely that “awkward position” which Groholsky so dreaded occurred. Just when the partridges, Groholsky’s favorite dish, had been put on the table, Liza was suddenly overcome with confusion, and Groholsky began wiping his face with his dinner napkin.
10. And at the word “here” Ivan Petrovitch passed his open hand from his neck down to the middle of his stomach.

11. Unluckily for her, Ivan Petrovitch’s papa spent his whole time in the open air, and even slept on the verandah.
12. He slept well,” he informed them. “Yesterday he was put out because I had no salted cucumbers… He has taken to Mishutka; he keeps patting him on the head.”
13. There was a worm gnawing at her vitals…. That worm was misery….
14. To be continued.

15. Bliss & Joy, by Anton Chekhov:
16. This short story is about a man who sustains an injury to his neck, after a horse accident.
17. You live like wild beasts, you don’t read the newspapers and take no notice of what’s published, and there’s so much that is interesting in the papers. If anything happens it’s all known at once, nothing is hidden! How happy I am! Oh, Lord!

18. A Classical Student, by Anton Chekhov:
19. The lodger was sitting at his table reading "Dancing Self-Taught." This Kuporosoff was considered a clever and learned person. He spoke through his nose, washed with scented soap that made every one in the house sneeze, ate meat on fast-days, and was looking for an enlightened wife; for these reasons he thought himself an extremely intellectual lodger. He also possessed a tenor voice.

20. The Death of a Government Clerk, by Anton Chekhov:
21. It is not reprehensible for anyone to sneeze anywhere. Peasants sneeze and so do police superintendents, and sometimes even privy councillors. All men sneeze.
22. "I ventured to disturb your Excellency yesterday,” he muttered, when the general lifted enquiring eyes upon him, “not to make fun as you were pleased to say. I was apologising for having spattered you in sneezing… . And I did not dream of making fun of you. Should I dare to make fun of you, if we should take to making fun, then there would be no respect for persons, there would be… .”
23. Reaching home mechanically, without taking off his uniform, he lay down on the sofa and died.

24. A Daughter of Albion, by Anton Chekhov:
25. Suggests that patience is related to fishing: sometimes you have to wait a very long time, before something exciting happens.

26. The Trousseau, by Anton Chekhov:
27. Tea, biscuits, butter, and jam were brought in, followed by raspberries and cream.
28. My husband’s pay is not very ample, and we are not able to permit ourselves luxuries. So we have to make up everything ourselves.
29. He is going into a monastery. He was unfairly treated in the service, and the disappointment has preyed on his mind.
30. To be continued.

31. The Man in a Case, by Anton Chekhov:
32. “Ukrainian is like Ancient Greek in its softness and pleasant sonority.”
33. “The things we get up to in the provinces from sheer boredom—so many unnecessary and stupid things! And it is because we do not do what actually needs to be done.”
34. “The atmosphere here is suffocating, it’s totally vile.”
35. “This is no sacred place of learning, it’s more like a police station, and it smells as sour as a sentry box.”
36. “I have been teaching for a long time, but you have just started your career, so I consider it my duty as your senior colleague to warn you. You have been riding a bicycle, and it is a pastime which is totally improper for an educator of young people.”
37. "Please leave me in peace. I am an honest man and do not wish to talk to a gentleman like you. I do not like sneaks.”
38. “But I do have to warn you that someone may have heard us, and lest our conversation is interpreted the wrong way, or there are repercussions, I will have to report the contents of our discussion to the principal…in general terms.”
38. Briefly discusses books about agriculture.
39. Omitted.
40. Omitted

41. About Love, by Anton Chekhov:
42. "The next day for lunch delicious pies, crayfish, and lamb rissoles were served…"
43. "They worried that instead of engaging in academic or literary work, here I was, an educated man who knew foreign languages, living in the countryside, running round and round like a hamster in a wheel, working fiendishly hard but never making any money."

44. The Lady with the Little Dog, by Anton Chekhov:
45. A story about a lady with a pomeranian.

46. Explanatory Notes: The Black Monk
47. "A healthy mind in a healthy body."

48. Explanatory Notes: The House with the Mezzanine
50. Gogol’s Petrushka: Petrushka, Chichikov’s servant in the novel “Dead Souls” by Nikolai Gogol, was fond of reading things he did not understand.
51. Omitted.

52. At Christmas Time, by Anton Chekhov:
53. Suggests that a good writing exercise, is to write a series of connecting loops, as though you were writing in script.
54. Chekhov suggests that if you add some additional characters, then you have created your own handwriting.

55. The Bishop, by Anton Chekhov:
56. As the worshippers surged forward in the twilight like the waves of the sea, it seemed to his Reverence Peter, who had been feeling ill for three days, that the people who came to him for palm leaves all looked alike, and, men or women, old or young, all had the same expression in their eyes.
The people in the crowd all looked identical.
57. The bishop is distinguished from everyone else.






The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Short Stories
by Leo Tolstoy:

1. Introduction
2. There was a giant in Leo Tolstoy's family. Tolstoy himself was also a large man. "He could lift 180lb (82 kilos) with one hand -- a large ego, a colossal appetite for life and learning, along with a formidable intellect. He was also recognized across the globe as a titan of moral and spiritual leadership."
3. Collected Works, by Tolstoy, ran to ninety volumes.
4. For Leo Tolstoy, the only scale was gargantuan.
5. Tolstoy was concerned with "the improvement of our lives."
6. Tolstoy lost four close family members to death, by the time he was thirteen.
7. "...her husband had been fiddling around with second-rate works of philosophy, morality, and religion that no one wanted to read."
8. "Ordinariness is the currency Tolstoy chooses to deal in, the ordinary."
9. "...the French writer Guy de Maupassant, before he died, is reported to have signed off with these unhappy words: 'I realize that everything I have done was to no purpose and that my ten volumes are worthless.'"
10. To be continued.
11. "'The Death of Ivan Ilyich' is an object lesson in style, construction and the sensitive use of language.
12. "Terrible contrasts are examined: sickness versus health, for example."
13. Omitted.
14. "Three Deaths," has very little purpose other than to tell us how to die: stay close to nature and the dying will be easy. Additionally, an education can help us face death bravely.
15. Examine the difference between masses of soldiers who die, and two young civilians who die.
16. Omitted.
17. "After the Ball," is considered by some as one of the very greatest things Tolstoy ever wrote. Its power is drawn from the shocking contrast between two opposite personalities displayed by an elderly colonel, seen first at a ball dancing serenely with his daughter and charming the company..."
18. "The sad truth is that, throughout his life, Tolstoy wanted to tell us all how we should conduct our lives, how we should love other people as a first priority, and how we should learn to die well. But the only way to do any of this would be to treat his life story like one of his cautionary tales, as an object lesson in how not to love and how not to prepare for death."
19. The Raid - "Well, please allow me to ignore your advice. I've been waiting here a whole month just for the chance of seeing some action and you want me to miss it!"
20. "If you really want to know what battles are like, read Mikhaylovsky-Danilevsky's Description of War -- it's a fine book and you'll find what you want there, where each corps was positioned, how battles are fought."

21. "However silly I felt at the captain's misinterpretation of my motives I did not start arguing with him."
22. "The old lady was absolutely delighted that I would be seeing her Pashenka (her pet name for the elderly, grey-haired captain)."
23. "After treating me to some excellent pie and smoked duck, she went away."
24. "He had been severely wounded in the Caucasus but, needless to say, had not written one word to his mother either about wounds or campaigns."
25. "'So let him wear his holy image now,' she continued. 'My blessing goes with it. May the Holy Mother of God protect him! Especially in battles -- that's when he must never forget to wear it.'"
26. "The captain lived frugally...and he smoked very cheap tobacco which, for some reason, he was too proud to call shag, giving it some obscure brand name instead. I had taken to the captain from the start: he had one of those simple, calm Russian faces that are easy to look straight in the eye."
27. "Although the good captain's appearance had nothing particularly martial or handsome about it, it expressed such equanimity towards everything around it that it could only inspire respect."
28. "The road ran along a deep and wide ravine by the side of a small stream in full spate. Flocks of wild pigeons circled over it, settling on its rocky banks or turning, swiftly wheeling and disappearing from sight."
29. "The other side of the ravine and the valley, were damp and gloomy and presented an elusive medley of colors -- pale lilac, shades of black, dark green and white. Directly in front of us rose the dazzling white masses of snowy mountains..."
30. "The air smelled of water, grass, mist -- all the scents of a beautiful early summer's morning. The captain struck a flint and lit his pipe. I found the smell of his cheap tobacco and tinder extremely pleasant."

31. "The captain seemed more pensive than usual, never took his Daghestan pipe from his mouth and at every step prodded his little horse with his heels."
32. Omitted.
33. The captain was a stern gentleman.
34. "The infantry, rifles and kitbags on their backs, slowly marched along the dusty road. Now and then their laughter and the sound of Ukranian could be heard in their ranks. A few old campaigners in white tunics -- mostly non-commissioned officers -- were walking by the roadside smoking their pipes and in solemn conversation."
35. Introduces us to another officer. "He was one of those young, daredevil officers who model themselves on Marlinsky's or Lermontov's heroes."
36. Briefly discusses A Hero of Our Time, by Mikhail Lermontov.
37. One of the things that the soldier carried was a large icon (pendant) which hung around his neck.
38. "Filled with curiosity, I listened to the soldiers' and officers' conversations and closely studied their expressions. But I could find absolutely no trace in any of them of the nervousness I was feeling..."
39. "I shall not say what I was thinking about then, firstly because I am too ashamed to admit to the succession of gloomy thoughts that kept nagging at me... and secondly because they would be quite irrelevant to my narrative."
40. "Most of the sky was overcast... The air was so warm and still that not one blade of grass, not one cloud moved. It was so dark that it was impossible to make out even the closest objects..."

41. "In war, it's best to be serious and stern."
42. "The whole village came alive. All of the townspeople were doing their duties."
43. "The captain sat on the roof of a hut smoking his cheap tobacco and sending streams of smoke from his short pipe with such a casual air that when I saw him I forgot that I was in an enemy village and felt quite at home."
44. Omitted.
45. "I saw a soldier killed by an enemy cannon ball. But why go into detail over a terrible scene I would give anything to forget?"
46. "'We'll beat them back,' he said convincingly.
'It's not necessary,' the captain replied softly. 'What we must do is retreat.'"
47. "Physical skill is only one element of military life."
48. "The wounded man looked round and a sad smile passed over his pale face.
The doctor then, rolled up his sleeves and went over to the ensign with an encouraging smile.
'Well, it seems they've given you a hole where you didn't have one before!' he said in a light-hearted, jocular tone."
49. The Woodfelling
50. "When I went to the fire to light a cigarette, Velenchuk...pulled a burning coal from the heart of the fire in a fit of zeal, with his bare hand, tossed it a couple times from one hand to the other then let it fall to the ground... I finally managed to light my cigarette with out the asistance of Velenchuk, who was again attempting to pick out a live coal. He then rubbed his burnt fingers on the flaps of his sheepskin coat and, most probably for want of something to do, lifted a huge piece of plane-tree wood and with a mighty swing hurled in on to the fire."

51. "'Man, I've forgotten my pipe. What a nuisance, lads!' Velenchuk repeated.
'Then you should smoke cigars, old chap,' Chikin said, twisting his mouth and winking. 'When I'm at home I always smoke cigars -- they're sweeter!'"
52. "There they are, twisting away and you can't stop laughing -- yes, you laugh yourself to death, you do!"
53. "Kirsanov was a shortish, stout man with a black moustache...when he laughed all that remained of his eyes were two moist little stars. Kirsanov behaved and bore himself better than anyone else in the regiment...although he was thought to be very dense. He knew the army, was industrious, diligent..."
54. Another soldier, "would bow, sit in one corner without saying a word for several hours, roll cigarettes and smoke them, after which he would get up, bow and leave."
55. "The guns were going off: Ta-ta-ta-ta! Pop-pop-pop-pop!"
56. To be continued.
57. "So, you see, death didn't call on him for nothing this morning when I had to wake him up..."
58. Three Deaths
59. "It's sad, it's hard to bear, but what can you do?"
60. "'Not jealous, are you?' Sergey replied, half-rising and tucking the bottom of his coat round his legs."

61. "'Throat giving you trouble, with all that coughing?'
'It all hurts. Time for me to die -- and that's it...' moaned the sick man."
62. "It was now spring. In little fenced-off gardens the buds had begun to swell on the trees, and you could just catch the murmur of branches rocking in the breeze...Sparrows squawked and twittered amidst a fluttering of tiny wings."
63. "'...inside, the lady who had been rushing to travel abroad lay dying.'
'The sick lady's husband and an elderly woman stood by the closed doors of her room. On the sofa sat a priest with downcast eyes...In one corner an old woman reclined in a high-backed armchair -- the sick lady's mother -- weeping bitter tears.'"
64. Sometimes, birds chirp, or sing, from trees, or bushes.
65. To be continued.

1. Polikushka
2. "Others -- the majority -- considered him a bad man but a great master of his trade."
3. "A pair of rubber boots would be a good investment."
4. "Aksyuta... instead of bending her arms she swung them, not at her sides but out in front of her body, like two pendulums keeping time with her running speed."
5. "Tinklin' away she were, tinklin' away while she got it right. What a treat! Mind you, I could've played, you know."
6. The children in the town played a game like tag, of hawk-and-chickens.
7. "This is a Christian village, not somewhere where they listen to a ranting drunk."
8. "It's obvious, isn't it? This is what you get for being honest."
9. "...by the yellow-green jacket which functioned in her family as blanket, coat, hood, carpet, overcoat, and many other things as well."
10. "Despite everything, though, Polikey was thinking pleasant thoughts."
11. "No tavern or shop, nothing could tempt him."
12. "Dutlov walked over, and lay down. Another peasant went out to sleep with the horses."
13. To be continued.

1. Polikushka
2. Examines the contrast between “dirty money,” or money gained by evil means — “the devil’s money,” and money that makes people happy.
3. The Death of Ivan Ilyich
4. “I must apply to have my brother-in-law transferred from Kaluga. My wife will be delighted. She won’t be able to tell me I never do anything for her people."
5. “Pyotr Ivanovich heard that she had made detailed enquiries about the cost of various plots of land before settling on the one she wanted.”
6. "Ivan Ilyich’s transfer to a new town meant meeting new people and making new contacts; he also struck a new attitude, and slightly changed his tone."
7. “For no reason that Ivan Ilyich could fathom, his wife began to disrupt the pleasant and decent run of his life. She became jealous of him for no apparent cause, demanded his closest attention…"

1. The Death of Ivan Ilyich
2. "After two years working in the new town Ivan Ilyich met his future wife. Praskovya Fyodorovna Mikhel was the most attractive, intelligent, and colorful young lady in the social circle frequented by Ivan Ilyich."
3. "Praskovya listened to all of this, pretending to believe it and not querying anything, but her real interest was only in sketching out the new way of life that they would lead in the city to which they were moving."
4. Where he was working with coworkers, the relationships had to be strictly official. Discusses friendly human relations. “At the point where an official relationship breaks off, everything else breaks off too."
5. "Personal relationships can interfere with business in the workplace."
6. "After dinner, if there were no guests, Ivan Ilyich sometimes read a book that people were talking about, and later in the evening he sat down to do some work, reading through papers, studying the law, comparing depositions and sorting them by statute. This neither bored nor amused him."
7. "There were more and more quarrels between husband and wife, the pleasant, easy-going way of life lapsed, and they were hard put to keep up an appearance of decency."
8. Ivan Ilyich went to see a doctor. "He was made to wait, the doctor was full of his own importance -- an attitude he was familiar with because it was one that he himself assumed in court..."
9. "Just place yourself in our hands and we'll sort it out, we know what we're doing, there's no doubt about it, we can sort things out the same way as we could for anyone you care to name."
10. "The doctor was holding forth...As far as Ivan Ilyich was concerned there was only one question that mattered: Is this condition life threatening or not?"

11. "And after this, however hard Ivan Ilyich tried to raise the subject of his appearance, his brother-in-law wouldn't say a word."
12. He was recovering from an illness. "'Yes, that's how it goes,' he said to himself. 'All you have to do is give nature a helping hand.'"
13. "'Can I get you some tea, sir?'
'He likes good order. The masters must have their tea in the morning,' he thought, but all he said was, 'No.'"
14. To be continued.

1. The Death of Ivan Ilyich
2. A shocking act occurred. "The act brought Ivan Ilyich to his senses."
3. "He was thinking of so many ideas, that he could hardly make sense of anything."
4. "'For Christ's sake, let me die in peace!' he said."
5. "What if I really have been wrong in the way I've lived my whole life, my conscious life?"
6. The end.
7. The Forged Coupon
8. "From the same drawer he took some Russian cigarette papers with their cardboard holders, stuffed a quantity of tobacco into one of them using a piece of cotton wool and started to smoke."
9. “‘Master, be sure your sins will find you out. One day we all must die,’ said Ivan Mironov.
'What's the matter with him? You must be dreaming.'"
10. One of the characters proceeds to explain his philosophy on life.

11. "It's common knowledge they're a stupid lot. Uneducated. Don't you worry, sir, I know what to say to the likes of him."
12. All because of Ivan's decision to forge a coupon, he goes on a whole chain of events and experiences: he winds up in jail, gets released and then goes to a new town to live, meets different people along the way, etc.
13. The end.
14. To be continued.






Fathers and Sons
by Ivan Turgenev:

1. His wife, "in short, lived her life to her heart's content."
2. "A bedraggled-looking cat, curled up foppishly against the railings, eyed it in an unfriendly way."
3. "A large grey dove flew down to the road and hurriedly set about drinking from a puddle beside the well."
4. "Nikolai Petrovich turned quickly round and...firmly squeezed his ungloved red hand, which the other had not immediately offered him."
5. "His chief subject is natural science. But he knows all sorts of things."
6. "But the latter did not move at all. He was a man of the old school who didn't share the latest ideas."
7. "How marevellous the air is here! What a wonderful scent it's got! It really does seem to me that nowhere in the world smells as good as here!"
8. "...but, firstly, I can't hide things and, secondly, you know that I've always had particular principles about the relationship between a father and a son."
9. "...the cows hungrily munched at the grass in ditches."
10. "He threw his greatcoat from him and looked at his father so happily, so like a small boy, that his father embraced him once again."

11. "Having done with the preliminary European 'shake hands', he kissed him in the Russian fashion three times, that is to say he brushed his cheeks three times with perfumed whiskers and said:
'Welcome home.'
12. "But your father's a splendid chap. He wastes his time reading poetry and he's hardly got any idea about running a farm, but he's a really good type."
13. "Pavel Petrovich...simply replaced the patent-leather shoes with red heelless Chinese slippers."
14. "I dissect the frog and have a look at what's going on inside it. Because you and I are just like frogs, 'cept we walk about on legs, I'll be able to find out what's going on inside us as well."
15. To be continued.
16. "We, men of another age, we suppose that without principes...' (Pavel Petrovich pronounced the word softly, the French way, while Arkady, by contrast, pronounced it 'principles' with the accent falling hard on the first syllable)..."
17. Briefly discusses German philosophers Schiller and Goethe.
18. "'Yes,' he declared without looking at anyone, 'it's a great misfortune to have spent five years of so in the country far removed from great minds! In a flash you become a perfect fool. You try not to forget what you've been taught and then--just like that!--it turns out everything you've been taught is nonsense and you're told sensible people don't concern themselves with such rubbishany more and that you're, so to speak, old hat."
19. "But Nikolai had the enduring consolation of a life well spent and a son who was growing up before his very eyes..."
20. Nikolai Petrovich "took up reading more and more in English and in general modelled his life on English tastes..."

21. "'His education?' queried Bazarov. 'Each man's got to educate himself--well, as I do, for instance."
22. "And both friends went off to Bazarov's room, in which some kind of medicinal, surgical smell had already established itself along with the smell of cheap tobacco."
23. "In response to these words Pavel Petrovich would simply turn away, but he didn't spoil his brother's illusions."
24. "Nikolai Petrovich, like all longstanding country residents, engaged in looking after the sick and had even ordered homeopathic remedies to be sent to him."
25. Briefly discusses The Gypsies, by Alexander Pushkin, notable for the 'realistic' treatment of gypsy life and the dilemma of the Byronic hero Aleko.
26. "The human personality must be strong as a rock, because everything is built on it."
27. Omitted.
28. "Civilization is what's dear to us--yes, indeed, my good sir."
29. To be continued.
30. "On such occasions he would say: 'What one needs is energy.'"

31. "...Such forms of expression were quite familiar to him. He even followed--true, with a certain majestic casualness--the developments in contemporary literature..."
32. "'Do you dance?'
'I do dance, only badly.'"
33. Briefly discusses George Sand and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
34. "Earlier I used to spend my winters in Moscow...What's more, Moscow's now--oh, I don't know--it's not what it was."
35. "Evdoksiya rolled a cigarette with her nicotine-stained fingers...and lit up."
36. "At last a point was reached when Evdoksiya...set about singing in a hoarse voice some gypsy songs..."
37. "...from several of her remarks Arkady concluded that here was a young woman who had already managed to experience a great deal emotionally and mentally in her life."
38. "'Why don't you want to allow the idea of freedom of thought among women?' he asked under his breath."
39. “…Odintsova never for a moment took her crystal-clear eyes off him.”
40. “Time, sometimes flies like a bird, sometimes crawls like a worm.”
41. “Bazarov’s eyes glittered for an instant beneath his dark brows.”

1. "Really? Well, now I see why we've got on so well. You're the same as I am."
2. "You can't bring back the past, Anna Sergeevna..."
3. Briefly discusses The Friend of Health, “a newspaper for the medical profession published in St. Petersburg from 1833 to 1869."
4. “Just you take a look at how my little garden’s doing now! I planted every sapling myself. I’ve got fruit trees and berries and all kinds of medicinal herbs.”
5. Briefly discusses Paracelsus, Swiss physician and alchemist, "who advocated the use of specific treatments for particular illnesses 'through herbs, words, and minerals.’”
6. Briefly discusses a woman who believed in “folk remedies.”
7. One of the characters galloped off to obtain some “Circassian beef.”
8. To be continued.
9. "'In that case it'd be good to have a doze,' Arkady remarked.
'Maybe. Only don't you look at me. A person's face always looks silly when he's asleep.'"
10. "'Just let's say we'll be friends as we were before. That was a dream, wasn't it? And who remembers dreams?'
'Who remembers them?'"
11. "Live a long life, that's best of all, and enjoy it while there's time."

1. "'Ectually I want to prove, my dear sir,' (whenever he grew angry Pavel Petrovich deliberately said 'ectually' and 'ectual,' although he knew only too well that they were incorrect. This quaint habit was a hangover from the Alexandrine epoch. Dandies in those days, on the rare occasions when they spoke Russian, used the terms 'ectually' and 'ectual' as much as to say that 'We native-born Russians though we are, are at the same time such grandees we're allowed to break school rules!') 'ectually I wanted to prove that..."
2. Many of the scenes in Fathers and Sons are deeply philosophical and reflective.
3. Two of the characters briefly discuss what it means to be a "real man."


First Love and other Stories, by Ivan Turgenev:
1. Introduction
2. Turgenev suggests that we have to work at love and relationships, in order to make them work.
"'Love!' he went on. 'Everything is mysterious about it: how it comes, how it grows, how it goes."
1. "Nobody restricted my freedom. I was able to do just what I wanted…"
2. "…my mother hardly paid any attention to me; she was consumed by other cares. My father, a man who was still young and very handsome, had married her for her money; she was ten years his senior."
3. Briefly discusses Schiller’s The Robbers.
4. Indicates that one couple often conversed in French.
5. "Zinaida paid no attention to me at all.”
6. Omitted.
7. "'Read me some poetry,' said Zinaida... 'I like it when you read poetry.'"
8. "Oh, you'll start arguing again about Romanticism and Classicism..."
9. "The next morning I got up early... and set off for a walk outside the town limits. I'll walk, I thought, and forget my sorrows. It was a beautiful day..."
1. "I didn’t feel happy and had left home…but youth, the beautiful weather, the fresh air, had got the better of me…"
2. Omitted.
3. “…there was not the slightest sound anywhere; everything was sound asleep; even our dog was fast asleep, curled up by the gate.”
1. "I didn’t ask myself when and how it had all happened. I didn’t feel surprised at not having guessed the truth for so long and I didn’t even blame my father. What I had learned was too much for me. The unexpected revelation had crushed me."
2. "We returned to town. I didn’t quickly throw off the past and I didn’t quickly start my studying again. My wound was slow to heal."
3. The narrator’s father has a horse named Electric.
4. “An unpleasant rawness rose from the river."
5. “Let psychologists explain this contradiction as best they can.”
6. To be continued.
7. Zinaida was upset. She was saying words of only one syllable.
8. Suggests that we let some things disappear like snow in the heat of the sun, disappear in the wind.
9. “Oh, the things I could have done if only I hadn’t wasted my time.”
10. “But I am not being fair to myself.”
11. The narrator was present, at the death of a poor old woman who lived with them in the same house. Covered in rags, she was dying painfully and with difficulty. Her whole life had been one of bitter struggle…
12. The end.



Asya, by Ivan Turgenev:
1. The story begins with the narrator indicating that he intends to travel to see the world. During his travels, he encounters different people, and it is people who interest him, their faces, their mannerisms, etc. he is not interested in monuments or buildings, but rather, is interested in people.
2. The narrator indicates that some of the people are smiling, and some of the people are not.
3. At one point, when some music was played, the narrator writes, "I felt all the strings of my heart quiver in response to its enticing melody."
4. In one passage, the narrator indicates that one of the characters was "as fresh-looking as the morning."
5. "The tenor of my thinking seemed exactly suited to the tranquil nature of that region."
6. "One has to know her well in order to pass judgement on her...you wouldn't blame her if you knew her background."
8. To be continued.
9. "No, what Asya needs is a hero...Look, I've been talking too much and holding you up," he added, getting to his feet.
10. Indicates the importance, in certain settings, of being serious.
11. "The expression on his face was very entertaining, but I was not in the mood for laughter."
12. "'One can't play with fire'-- Gagin's words, like arrows, buried themselves in my soul."

13. "Wrapped in a long shawl, she was hidden in a chair beside the window, her head turned away and almost hidden, like a frightened bird...I went up to her. She turned her head still further from me..."
14. "She suddenly straightened up, and tried to look at me--and couldn't."
15. "There was a slight rustling sound, like a sigh cut short, and I felt on my hair the touch of a feeble hand quivering like a leaf."
16. To be continued.
17. “She still can’t forget the moment when they dressed her in a silk dress for the first time and kissed her hand.”
18. Omitted.


King Lear of the Steppes, by Ivan Turgenev:
1. Introduces readers to Harlov, a tall, big man who, when he was home, had to be cautious not to knock things over and break them.
2. Indicates that Harlov descended from a line of Russian royalty.
3. The giant, “had great faith in himself and feared no man. ‘What can they do to me? Where is there a man on this earth who can?’ he used to ask and suddenly burst out laughing with a short but deafening guffaw.”
4. “Due to his size Harlov hardly went anywhere on foot: the ground wouldn’t bear his weight.”
5. “Besides, as a man he was completely straight, sought no one’s favor, was not in debt and did not drink — and he was no fool, though he’d received no education.”
6. He had a very healthy appetite.
7. Harlov, the colossus, also possessed a thunderous voice.
8. “I gazed at him in silence and could scarcely marvel enough at the mountainous size of the man.”
9. We are introduced to Anna Martinova, Harlov’s eldest daughter, who has a slight temper.
10. “Martin Petrovich’s face, when he lumbered into the room, and instantly sank down into a chair beside the door, had such an unusual expression…that my mother repeated her exclamation aloud and despite herself.”

11. “…that’s a bad sign. It’s a sign he has a weight on his heart and unhappiness…”
12. The group go for a trip, in a large four-seat family carriage drawn by six horses. Harlov’s mother had given the suggestion for this extraordinary vehicle to be used.
13. Omitted.
14. The group go to a court proceeding, and the superintendent asks, “Do you know of any just impediments?”
15. One of the characters turns down the corner of a page in a book as a makeshift bookmark.
16. Briefly discusses a horse, poor creature, whose ribs were almost breaking through the skin, and whose sides were sweating.
17. The giant writes only in large letters.
18. "Such silence dwelt everywhere that at a hundred paces one could hear a squirrel bounding through the dry leaves or catch the sound of a broken twig as it caught in other branches and fell at last into the soft grass…"
19. To be continued.
1. The giant had an enmity with a small person who lived nearby.
2. Suggests that one of the characters is a small person, who just eats moderate-sized meals.
3. “Just you go on being the big bully!…you go on being the bully-boy!"
4. At one point, the little dog ran under the table in fright.
5. “There are your daughters, Vladimir, making as much fun of you as they like in your very own house and home!”
6. One of the young girls, Yevlampia, says, “Forget the past. You can trust me now.”
7. "The speaker fell silent, we chatted for a while and then went our separate ways."
8. The end.




Top of page