Note-Book of Anton Chekhov Read online

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

  Any one can write a play which might be produced.

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

  By his remarks on Strindberg and literature generally L.L. Tolstoi reminds one very much of Madam Loukhmav.[1]

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

  A play: the Bean of Life.

  * * * * *

  A vet. belongs to the stallion class of people.

  * * * * *

  Consultation.

  * * * * *

  The sun shines and in my soul is darkness.

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

  "Mammy, don't show yourself to the guests, you are very fat."

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

  Perkaturin.

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  "Bugs—fifteen kopecks." Explanation.

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

  Title of play: Golden Rain.

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

  A grumbler: "But is turkey food? Is caviare food?"

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

  My motto: I don't want anything.

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

  When I married, I became an old woman.

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

  He holds himself exactly as though he were an icon.

  * * * * *

  "Are you in love?"—"There's a little bit of that in it."

  * * * * *

  Whatever happens, he says: "It is the priests."

  * * * * *

  Firzikov.

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

  Caressing her lover: "My vulture."

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

  Super-mysticism.

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

  Surname: Verstax.

  * * * * *

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

  THEMES, THOUGHTS, NOTES, AND FRAGMENTS.

  … How stupid and for the most part how false, since if one man seeks to devour another or tell him something unpleasant it has nothing to do with Granovsky.[1]

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

  * * * * *

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