Fifty-Two Stories

Chekhov was well aware of the political movements of his time and their main spokesmen. His characters refer at various moments to Sergei Aksakov and the Slavophiles, to the Nihilists, to the utilitarian Dmitri Pisarev, to the populist Nikolai Mikhailovsky, as well as to the French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the German philosopher Schopenhauer. He was friends with the conservative writer, journalist, and editor Alexei Suvorin, who published many of his stories in his journal Novoye Vremya (“New Times”), but he did not share the editor’s increasingly reactionary views, and broke with him over the controversy of the Dreyfus affair. Chekhov never espoused any ideas as a writer; he had no program, no ideology; the critics of his time wondered what his work was “about.” Tolstoy wrote of him in a letter to his son dated September 4, 1895: “he has not yet revealed a definite point of view.”^*3 Chekhov revealed his attitude to the peasantry by offering a large number of them free medical treatment while living on his small country estate in Melikhovo. He showed his concern for the environment, not like the old man in “The Shepherd’s Pipe,” who bemoans at great length the dying out of nature, but by planting trees, like Doctor Astrov in the play Uncle Vanya.

In his stories, Chekhov does what storytellers have always done: he satirizes human pretensions and absurdities, he plays out the comedy of human contradictions, and ultimately, even in the darkest of them, he celebrates natural and human existence in all its conditional variety.

Richard Pevear

*1

Translation by Cathy Popkin, in her edition of

Anton Chekhov’s Collected Stories

(New York: W. W. Norton, 2014), p. 517.

*2

Popkin, p. 518.

*3

Popkin, p. 505.

JOY

IT WAS MIDNIGHT.

Mitya Kuldarov, agitated, disheveled, came flying into his parents’ apartment and quickly passed through all the rooms. His parents had already turned in for the night. His sister was lying in bed, reading the last page of a novel. His schoolboy brothers were asleep.

“Where have you been?” his astonished parents asked. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Oh, don’t ask! I never expected it! No, I never expected it! It’s…it’s even incredible!”

Mitya laughed loudly and sat down in an armchair, unable to stay on his feet from happiness.

“It’s incredible! You can’t even imagine! Just look!”

His sister jumped out of bed and, covering herself with a blanket, went over to her brother. The schoolboys woke up.

“What’s the matter? You don’t look yourself!”

“It’s from joy, Mama! I’m known all over Russia now! All over! Before only you knew that in this world there existed the Collegiate Registrar Dmitri Kuldarov,¹ but now all of Russia knows it! Mama! Oh, lord!”

Mitya jumped up, ran through all the rooms, and sat down again.

“But what’s happened? Just tell us!”

“You live like wild animals, don’t read newspapers, don’t pay any attention to publicity, yet there are so many amazing things in the newspapers! When something happens, it gets known right away, nothing escapes them! I’m so happy! Oh, lord! Newspapers only write about famous people, and now they’ve written about me!”

“What’s that? Where?”

The papa went pale. Mama glanced at the icon and crossed herself. The schoolboys leaped out of their beds and, just as they were, in their nightshirts, went up to their older brother.

“That’s right! They’ve written about me! Now all of Russia knows me! Take this issue as a keepsake, mama! We’ll reread it sometimes. Look here!”

Mitya took a newspaper from his pocket, gave it to his father, and poked his finger at a place circled in blue pencil.

“Read!”

His father put on his spectacles.

“Go on, read!”

Mama glanced at the icon and crossed herself. The papa cleared his throat and began to read:

“On December 29th, at eleven o’clock in the evening, the Collegiate Registrar Dmitri Kuldarov…”

“You see, you see? Go on!”

“…the Collegiate Registrar Dmitri Kuldarov, leaving the alehouse on Malaya Bronnaya Street, at Kozikhin’s, and being in a state of inebriation…”

“It was me and Semyon Petrovich…It’s all described in minute detail! Keep reading! Go on! Listen!”

“…and being in a state of inebriation, slipped and fell under the horse of the cabby Ivan Drotov, a peasant from the village of Durykino, Yukhnovsky District. The frightened horse, having stepped over Kuldarov and dragged the sleigh over him, with Stepan Lukov, a Moscow merchant of the second guild, sitting in it, rushed off down the street and was stopped by the sweepers. Kuldarov, at first being in a state of unconsciousness, was taken to the police precinct and examined by a doctor. The blow which he had received on the back of the head…”

“I was hit by the shaft, Papa. Go on! Go on reading!”

“…which he had received on the back of the head, was classified as slight. The protocol of the incident was drawn up. The victim was given first aid…”