Owing to our flightiness, because the majority of us are unable and unaccustomed to think or to look deeply into life's phenomena, nowhere else do people so often say: "How banal!" nowhere else do people regard so superficially, and often contemptuously other people's merits or serious questions. On the other hand nowhere else does the authority of a name weigh so heavily as with us Russians, who have been abased by centuries of slavery and fear freedom….
* * * * *
A doctor advised a merchant to eat soup and chicken. The merchant thought the advice ironical. At first he ate a dinner of botvinia and pork, and then, as if recollecting the doctor's orders, ordered soup and chicken and swallowed them down too, thinking it a great joke.
* * * * *
Father Epaminond catches fish and puts them in his pocket; then, when he gets home, he takes out a fish at a time, as he wants it, and fries it.
* * * * *
The nobleman X. sold his estate to N. with all the furniture according to an inventory, but he took away everything else, even the oven dampers, and after that N. hated all noblemen.
* * * * *
The rich, intellectual X., of peasant origin, implored his son:—"Mike, don't get out of your class. Be a peasant until you die, do not become a nobleman, nor a merchant, nor a bourgeois. If, as you say, the Zemstvo officer now has the right to inflict corporal punishment on peasants, then let him also have the right to punish you." He was proud of his peasant origin, he was even haughty about it.
* * * * *
They celebrated the birthday of an honest man. Took the opportunity to show off and praise one another. Only towards the end of the dinner they suddenly discovered that the man had not been invited; they had forgotten.
* * * * *
A gentle quiet woman, getting into a temper, says: "If I were a man, I would just bash your filthy mug."
* * * * *
A Mussulman for the salvation of his soul digs a well. It would be a pleasant thing if each of us left a school, a well, or something like that, so that life should not pass away into eternity without leaving a trace behind it.
* * * * *
We are tired out by servility and hypocrisy.
* * * * *
N. once had his clothes torn by dogs, and now, when he pays a call anywhere, he asks: "Aren't there any dogs here?"
* * * * *
A young pimp, in order to keep up his powers, always eats garlic.
* * * * *
School guardian. Widowed priest plays the harmonium and sings: "Rest with the saints."
* * * * *
In July the red bird sings the whole morning.
* * * * *
"A large selection ofcigs"[1]—so read X. every day when he went down the street, and wondered how one could deal only incigsand who wanted them. It took him thirty years before he read it correctly: "A large selection of cigars."
[Footnote 1:Cigsin Russian is a kind of fish.]
* * * * *
A bride to an engineer: a dynamite cartridge filled with one-hundred-rouble notes.
* * * * *
"I have not read Herbert Spencer. Tell me his subjects. What does he write about?" "I want to paint a panel for the Paris exhibition. Suggest a subject." (A wearisome lady.)
* * * * *
The idle, so-called governing, classes cannot remain long without war. When there is no war they are bored, idleness fatigues and irritates them, they do not know what they live for; they bite one another, try to say unpleasant things to one another, if possible with impunity, and the best of them make the greatest efforts not to bore the others and themselves. But when war comes, it possesses all, takes hold of the imagination, and the common misfortune unites all.
* * * * *
An unfaithful wife is a large cold cutlet which one does not want to touch, because some one else has had it in his hands.
* * * * *
An old maid writes a treatise: "The tramline of piety."
* * * * *
Ryzeborsky, Tovbin, Gremoukhin, Koptin.
* * * * *
She had not sufficient skin on her face; in order to open her eyes she had to shut her mouth andvice versa.
* * * * *
When she raises her skirt and shows her lace petticoat, it is obvious that she dresses like a woman who is accustomed to be seen by men.
* * * * *
X. philosophizes: "Take the word 'nose.' In Russia it seems something unmentionable means the deuce knows what, one may say the indecent part of the body, and in French it means wedding." And indeed X.'s nose was an indecent part of the body.
* * * * *
A girl, flirting, chatters: "All are afraid of me … men, and the wind … all leave me alone! I shall never marry." And at home poverty, her father a regular drunkard. And if people could see how she and her mother work, how she screens her father, they would feel the deepest respect for her and would wonder why she is so ashamed of poverty and work, and is not ashamed of that chatter.
* * * * *
A restaurant. An advanced conversation Andrey Andreyevitch, a good-natured bourgeois, suddenly declares: "Do you know gentlemen, I was once an anarchist!" Every one is astonished. A.A. tells the following tale: a strict father; a technical school opened in the provincial town in a craze for technical education; they have no ideas and they did not know what to teach (since, if you are going to make shoemakers of all the inhabitants, who will buy the shoes?); he was expelled and his father turned him out of the house; he had to take a job as an assistant clerk on the squire's estate; he became enraged with the rich, the well-fed, and the fat; the squire planted cherry trees, A.A. helped him, and suddenly a desire came over him to cut off the squire's white fat fingers with the spade, as if it were by accident; and closing his eyes he struck a blow with the shovel as hard as he could, but it missed. Then he went away; the forest, the quiet in the fields, rain; he longed for warmth, went to his aunt, she gave him tea and rolls—and his anarchism was gone. After the story there passed by the table Councillor of State L. Immediately A.A. gets up and explains how L., Councillor of State, owns houses, etc.
* * * * *
I was apprenticed to a tailor. He cut the trousers; I did the sewing, but the stripe came down here right over the knee. Then I was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker. I was planing once when the plane flew out of my hands and hit the window; it broke the glass. The squire was a Lett, his name Shtoppev[1]; and he had an expression on his face as if he were going to wink and say: "Wouldn't it be nice to have a drink?" In the evenings he drank, drank by himself—and I felt hurt.
[Footnote 1:Shtopovmeans "cork-screw."]
* * * * *
A dealer in cider puts labels on his bottles with a crown printed on them. It irritates and vexes X. who torments himself with the idea that a mere trader is usurping the crown. X complains to the authorities, worries every one, seeks redress and so on; he dies from irritation and worry.
* * * * *
A governess is teased with the nickname Gesticulation.
* * * * *
Shaptcherigin, Zambisebulsky, Sveentchutka, Chemburaklya.
* * * * *
Senile pomposity, senile vindictiveness. What a number of despicable old men I have known!
* * * * *
How delightful when on a bright frosty morning a new sleigh with a rug comes to the door.
* * * * *
X. arrived to take up duty at N., he shows himself a despot: he is annoyed when some one else is a success; he becomes quite different in the presence of a third person; when a woman is present, his tone changes; when he pours out wine, he first puts a little in his own glass and then helps the company; when he walks with a lady he takes her arm; in general he tries to show refinement. He does not laugh at other people's jokes: "You repeat yourself." "There is nothing new in that." Every one is sick of him; he sermonizes. The old women nickname him "the top."
* * * * *
A man who can not do anything, does not know how to act, how to enter a room, how to ask for anything.
* * * * *
Utiujny
* * * * *
A man who always insists: "I haven't got syphilis. I'm an honest man.My wife is an honest woman."
* * * * *
X. all his life spoke and wrote about the vices of servants and about the way to manage and control them, and he died deserted by every one except his valet and his cook.
* * * * *
A little girl with rapture about her aunt: "She is very beautiful, as beautiful as our dog!"
* * * * *
Marie Ivanovna Kolstovkin.
* * * * *
In a love letter: "Stamp enclosed for a reply."
* * * * *
The best men leave the villages for the towns, and therefore the villages decline and will continue to decline.
* * * * *
Pavel was a cook for forty years; he loathed the things which he cooked and he never ate.
* * * * *
He ceased to love a woman; the sensation of not being in love; a peaceful state of mind; long peaceful thoughts.
* * * * *
Conservative people do so little harm because they are timid and have no confidence in themselves; harm is done not by conservative but by malicious people.
* * * * *
One of two things: either sit in the carriage or get out of it.
* * * * *
For a play: an old woman of radical views dresses like a girl, smokes, cannot exist without company, sympathetic.
* * * * *
In a Pullman car—these are the dregs of society.
* * * * *
On the lady's bosom was the portrait of a fat German.
* * * * *
A man who at all elections all his life long always voted against theLeft.
* * * * *
They undressed the corpse, but had no time to take the gloves off; a corpse in gloves.
* * * * *
A farmer at dinner boasts: "Life in the country is cheap—one has one's own chickens, one's own pigs—life is cheap."
* * * * *
A customs official, from want of love for his work, searches the passengers, looking for documents of a suspicious political nature, and makes even the gendarmes indignant.
* * * * *
A real male (mouzhtchina) consists of man (mouzh) and title (tchin).
* * * * *
Education: "Masticate your food properly," their father told them. And they masticated properly, and walked two hours every day, and washed in cold water, and yet they turned out unhappy and without talent.
* * * * *
Commercial and industrial medicine.
* * * * *
N. forty years old married a girl seventeen. The first night, when they returned to his mining village, she went to bed and suddenly burst into tears, because she did not love him. He is a good soul, is overwhelmed with distress, and goes off to sleep in his little working room.
* * * * *
On the spot where the former manor house stood there is no trace left; only one lilac bush remains and that for some reason does not bloom.
* * * * *
Son: "To-day I believe is Thursday."
Mother: (not having heard) "What?"
Son: (angrily) "Thursday!" (quietly) "I ought to take a bath."
Mother: "What?"
Son: (angry and offended) "Bath!"
* * * * *
N. goes to X. every day, talks to him, and shows real sympathy in his grief; suddenly X. leaves his house, where he was so comfortable. N. asks X.'s mother why he went away. She answers: "Because you came to see him every day."
* * * * *
It was such a romantic wedding, and later—what fools! what babies!
* * * * *
Love. Either it is a remnant of something degenerating, something which once has been immense, or it is a particle of what will in the future develop into something immense; but in the present it is unsatisfying, it gives much less than one expects.
* * * * *
A very intellectual man all his life tells lies about hypnotism, spiritualism—and people believe him; yet he is quite a nice man.
* * * * *
In Act I, X., a respectable man, borrows a hundred roubles from N., and in the course of all four acts he does not pay it back.
* * * * *
A grandmother has six sons and three daughters, and best of all she loves the failure, who drinks and has been in prison.
* * * * *
N., the manager of a factory, rich, with a wife and children, happy, has written "An investigation into the mineral spring at X." He was much praised for it and was invited to join the staff of a newspaper; he gave up his post, went to Petersburg, divorced his wife, spent his money—and went to the dogs.
* * * * *
(Looking at a photograph album): "Whose ugly face is that?"
"That's my uncle."
* * * * *
Alas, what is terrible is not the skeletons, but the fact that I am no longer terrified by them.
* * * * *
A boy of good family, capricious, full of mischief, obstinate, wore out his whole family. The father, an official who played the piano, got to hate him, took him into a corner of the garden, flogged him with considerable pleasure, and then felt disgusted with himself. The son has grown up and is an officer.
* * * * *
N. courted Z. for a long time. She was very religious, and, when he proposed to her, she put a dried flower, which he had once given to her, into her prayer-book.
* * * * *
Z: "As you are going to town, post my letter in the letter-box."
N: (alarmed) "Where? I don't know where the letter-box is."
Z: "Will you also call at the chemist's and get me some naphthaline?"
N: (alarmed) "I'll forget the naphthaline, I'll forget."
* * * * *
A storm at sea. Lawyers ought to regard it as a crime.
* * * * *
X. went to stay with his friend in the country. The place was magnificent, but the servants treated him badly, he was uncomfortable, although his friend considered him a big man. The bed was hard, he was not provided with a night shirt and he felt ashamed to ask for one.
* * * * *
At a rehearsal. The wife:
"How does that melody in Pagliacci go? Whistle it."
"One must not whistle on the stage; the stage is a temple."
* * * * *
He died from fear of cholera.
* * * * *
As like as a nail is to a requiem.
* * * * *
A conversation on another planet about the earth a thousand years hence. "Do you remember that white tree?"
* * * * *
Anakhthema!
* * * * *
Zigzagovsky, Oslizin, Svintchulka, Derbaliguin.
* * * * *
A woman with money, the money hidden everywhere, in her bosom and between her legs….
* * * * *
All that procedure.
* * * * *
Treat your dismissal as you would an atmospheric phenomenon.
* * * * *
A conversation at a conference of doctors. First doctor: "All diseases can be cured by salt." Second doctor, military: "Every disease can be cured by prescribing no salt." The first points to his wife, the second to his daughter.
* * * * *
The mother has ideals, the father too; they delivered lectures; they built schools, museums, etc. They grow rich. And their children are most ordinary; spend money, gamble on the Stock Exchange.
* * * * *
N. married a German when she was seventeen. He took her to live in Berlin. At forty she became a widow and by that time spoke Russian badly and German badly.
* * * * *
The husband and wife loved having visitors, because, when there were no visitors they quarreled.
* * * * *
It is an absurdity! It is an anachronism!
* * * * *
"Shut the window! You are perspiring! Put on an overcoat! Put on goloshes!"
* * * * *
If you wish to have little spare time, do nothing.
* * * * *
On a Sunday morning in summer is heard the rumble of a carriage—people driving to mass.
* * * * *
For the first time in her life a man kissed her hand; it was too much for her, it turned her head.
* * * * *
What wonderful names: the little tears of Our Lady, warbler, crows-eyes.[1]
[Footnote 1: The names of flowers.]
* * * * *
A government forest officer with shoulder straps, who has never seen a forest.
* * * * *
A gentleman owns a villa near Mentone; he bought it out of the proceeds of the sale of his estate in the Tula province. I saw him in Kharkhov to which he had come on business; he gambled away the villa at cards and became a railway clerk; after that he died.
* * * * *
At supper he noticed a pretty woman and choked; a little later he caught sight of another pretty woman and choked again, so that he did not eat his supper—there were a lot of pretty women.
* * * * *
A doctor, recently qualified, supervises the food in a restaurant. "The food is tinder the special supervision of a doctor." He copies out the chemical composition of the mineral water; the students believe him—and all is well.
* * * * *
He did not eat, he partook of food.
* * * * *
A man, married to an actress, during a performance of a play in which his wife was acting, sat in a box, with beaming face, and from time to time got up and bowed to the audience.
* * * * *
Dinner at Count O.D.'s. Fat lazy footmen; tasteless cutlets; a feeling that a lot of money is being spent, that the situation is hopeless, and that it is impossible to change the course of things.
* * * * *
A district doctor: "What other damned creature but a doctor would have to go out in such weather?"—he is proud of it, grumbles about it to every one, and is proud to think that his work is so troublesome; he does not drink and often sends articles to medical journals that do not publish them.
* * * * *
When N. married her husband, he was junior Public Prosecutor; he became judge of the High Court and then judge of the Court of Appeals; he is an average uninteresting man. N. loves her husband very much. She loves him to the grave, writes him meek and touching letters when she hears of his unfaithfulness, and dies with a touching expression of love on her lips. Evidently she loved, not her husband, but some one else, superior, beautiful, non-existent, and she lavished that love upon her husband. And after her death footsteps could be heard in her house.
* * * * *
They are members of a temperance society and now and again take a glass of wine.
* * * * *
They say: "In the long run truth will triumph;" but it is untrue.
* * * * *
A clever man says: "This is a lie, but since the people can not do without the lie, since it has the sanction of history, it is dangerous to root it out all at once; let it go on for the time being but with certain corrections." But the genius says: "This is a lie, therefore it must not exist."
* * * * *
Marie Ivanovna Kladovaya.
* * * * *
A schoolboy with mustaches, in order to show off, limps with one leg.
* * * * *
A writer of no talent, who has been writing for a long time, with his air of importance reminds one of a high priest.
* * * * *
Mr. N. and Miss Z. in the city of X. Both clever, educated, of radical views, and both working for the good of their fellow men, but both hardly know each other and in conversation always rail at each other in order to please the stupid and coarse crowd.
* * * * *
He flourished his hand as if he were going to seize him by the hair and said: "You won't escape by that there trick."
* * * * *
N. has never been in the country and thinks that in the winter country people use skis. "How I would enjoy ski-ing now!"
* * * * *
Madam N., who sells herself, says to each man who has her: "I love you because you are not like the rest."
* * * * *
An intellectual woman, or rather a woman who belongs to an intellectual circle, excels in deceit.
* * * * *
N. struggled all his life investigating a disease and studying its bacilli; he devoted his whole life to the struggle, expended on it all his powers, and suddenly just before his death it turned out that the disease is not in the least infectious or dangerous.
* * * * *
A theatrical manager, lying in bed, read a new play. He read three or four pages and then in irritation threw the play on to the floor, put out the candle, and drew the bedclothes over him; a little later, after thinking over it, he took the play up again and began to read it; then, getting angry with the uninspired tedious work, he again threw it on the floor and put out the candle. A little later he once more took up the play and read it, then he produced it and it was a failure.
* * * * *
N., heavy, morose, gloomy, says: "I love a joke, I am always joking."
* * * * *
The wife writes; the husband does not like her writing, but out of delicacy says nothing and suffers all his life.
* * * * *
The fate of an actress: the beginning—a well-to-do family in Kertch, life dull and empty; the stage, virtue, passionate love, then lovers; the end: unsuccessful attempt to poison herself, then Kertch, life at her fat uncle's house, the delight of being left alone. Experience shows that an artist must dispense with wine, marriage, pregnancy. The stage will become art only in the future, now it is only struggling for the future.
* * * * *
(Angrily and sententiously) "Why don't you give me your wife's letters to read? Aren't we relations?"
* * * * *
Lord, don't allow me to condemn or to speak of what I do not know or do not understand.
* * * * *
Why do people describe only the weak, surly and frail as sinners? And every one when he advises others to describe only the strong, healthy, and interesting, means himself.
* * * * *
For a play: a character always lying without rhyme or reason.
* * * * *
Sexton Catacombov.
* * * * *
N.N., a littérateur, critic, plausible, self-confident, very liberal minded, talks about poetry; condescendingly agrees with one—and I see that he is a man absolutely without talent (I haven't read him). Some one suggests going to Ai-Petri. I say that it is going to rain, but we set out. The road is muddy, it rains; the critic sits next to me, I feel his lack of talent. He is wooed and made a fuss of as if he were a bishop. And when it cleared up, I went back on foot. How easily people deceive themselves, how they love prophets and soothsayers; what a herd it is! Another person went with us, a Councillor of State, middle-aged, silent, because he thinks he is right and despises the critic, because he too is without talent. A girl afraid to smile because she is among clever people.
* * * * *
Alexey Ivanitch Prokhladitelny (refreshing) or Doushespasitelny (soul-saving). A girl: "I would marry him, but am afraid of the name—Madam Refreshing."
* * * * *
A dream of a keeper in the zoological gardens. He dreams that there was presented to the Zoo first a marmot, then an emu, then a vulture, then a she-goat, then another emu; the presentations are made without end and the Zoo is crowded out—the keeper wakes up in horror wet with perspiration.
* * * * *
"To harness slowly but drive rapidly is in the nature of this people," said Bismarck.
* * * * *
When an actor has money, he doesn't send letters but telegrams.
* * * * *
With insects, out of the caterpillar comes the butterfly; with mankind it is the other way round, out of the butterfly comes the caterpillar.[1]
[Footnote 1: There is a play on words here, the Russian word for butterfly also means a woman.]
* * * * *
The dogs in the house became attached not to their masters who fed and fondled them, but to the cook, a foreigner, who beat them.
* * * * *
Sophie was afraid that her dog might catch cold, because of the draught.
* * * * *
The soil is so good, that, were you to plant a shaft, in a year's time a cart would grow out of it.
* * * * *
X. and Z., very well educated and of radical views, married. In the evening they talked together pleasantly, then quarreled, then came to blows. In the morning both are ashamed and surprised, they think that it must have been the result of some exceptional state of their nerves. Next night again a quarrel and blows. And so every night until at last they realize that they are not at all educated, but savage, just like the majority of people.
* * * * *
A play: in order to avoid having visitors, Z. pretends to be a regular tippler, although he drinks nothing.
* * * * *
When children appear on the scene, then we justify all our weaknesses, our compromises, and our snobbery, by saying: "It's for the children's sake."
* * * * *
Count, I am going away to Mordegundia. (A land of horrible faces.)
* * * * *
Barbara Nedotyopin.
* * * * *
Z., an engineer or doctor, went on a visit to his uncle, an editor; he became interested, began to go there frequently; then became a contributor to the paper, little by little gave up his profession; one night he came out of the newspaper office, remembered, and seized his head in his hands—"all is lost!" He began to go gray. Then it became a habit, he was quite white now and flabby, an editor, respectable but obscure.
* * * * *
A Privy Councillor, an old man, looking at his children, became a radical himself.
* * * * *
A newspaper: "Cracknel."
* * * * *
The clown in the circus—that is talent, and the waiter in the frock coat speaking to him—that is the crowd; the waiter with an ironical smile on his face.
* * * * *
Auntie from Novozybkov.
* * * * *
He has a rarefaction of the brain and his brains have leaked into his ears.
* * * * *
"What? Writers? If you like, for a shilling I'll make a writer of you."
* * * * *
Instead of translator, contractor.
* * * * *
An actress, forty years old, ugly, ate a partridge for dinner, and I felt sorry for the partridge, for it occurred to me that in its life it had been more talented, more sensible, and more honest than that actress.
* * * * *
The doctor said to me: "If," says he, "your constitution holds out, drink to your heart's content." (Gorbunov.)
* * * * *
Carl Kremertartarlau.
* * * * *
A field with a distant view, one tiny birch tree. The inscription under the picture: loneliness.
* * * * *
The guests had gone: they had played cards and everything was in disorder: tobacco smoke, scraps of paper, and chiefly—the dawn and memories.
* * * * *
Better to perish from fools than to accept praises from them.
* * * * *
Why do trees grow and so luxuriantly, when the owners are dead?
* * * * *
The character keeps a library, but he is always away visiting; there are no readers.
* * * * *
Life seems great, enormous, and yet one sits on one'spiatachok.[1]
[Footnote 1: The word means five kopecks and also a pig's snout.]
* * * * *
Zolotonosha?[1] There is no such town! No!
[Footnote 1: The name of a Russian town, meaning literally"Gold-carrier."]
* * * * *
When he laughs, he shows his teeth and gums.
* * * * *
He loved the sort of literature which did not upset him, Schiller,Homer, etc.
* * * * *
N., a teacher, on her way home in the evening was told by her friend that X. had fallen in love with her, N., and wanted to propose. N., ungainly, who had never before thought of marriage, when she got home, sat for a long time trembling with fear, could not sleep, cried, and towards morning fell in love with X.; next day she heard that the whole thing was a supposition on the part of her friend and that X. was going to marry not her but Y.
* * * * *
He had a liaison with a woman of forty-five after which he began to write ghost stories.
* * * * *
I dreamt that I was in India and that one of the local princes presented me with an elephant, two elephants even. I was so worried about the elephant that I woke up.
* * * * *
An old man of eighty says to another old man of sixty: "You ought to be ashamed, young man."
* * * * *
When they sang in church, "Now is the beginning of our salvation," he ateglaviznaat home; on the day of St. John the Baptist he ate no food that was circular and flogged his children.[1]
[Footnote 1:Glaviznain Russian is the name of a fish and also means beginning; the root of the verbs "to behead" and "to flog" are the same.]
* * * * *
A journalist wrote lies in the newspaper, but he thought he was writing the truth.
* * * * *
If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry.
* * * * *
He himself is rich, but his mother is in the workhouse.
* * * * *
He married, furnished a house, bought a writing-table, got everything in order, but found he had nothing to write.
* * * * *
Faust: "What you don't know is just what you want; what you know is what you can't use."
* * * * *
Although you may tell lies, people will believe you, if only you speak with authority.
* * * * *
As I shall lie in the grave alone, so in fact I live alone.
* * * * *
A German: "Lord have mercy on us,grieshniki."[1]
[Footnote 1:Grieshnikimeans "sinners," but sounds likegrietchnievikiwhich means "buckwheat cakes."]
* * * * *
"O my dear little pimple!" said the bride tenderly. The bridegroom thought for a while, then felt hurt—they parted.
* * * * *
They were mineral water bottles with preserved cherries in them.
* * * * *
An actress who spoilt all her parts by very bad acting—and this continued all her life long until she died. Nobody liked her; she ruined all the best parts; and yet she went on acting until she was seventy.
* * * * *
He alone is all right and can repent who feels himself to be wrong.
* * * * *
The archdeacon curses the "doubters," and they stand in the choir and sing anathema to themselves (Skitalez).
* * * * *
He imagined that his wife lay with her legs cut off and that he nursed her in order to save his soul….
* * * * *
Madame Snuffley.
* * * * *
The black-beetles have left the house; the house will be burnt down.
* * * * *
"Dmitri, the Pretender, and Actors." "Turgenev and the Tigers."Articles like that can be and are written.
* * * * *
A title: Lemon Peel.
* * * * *
I am your legitimate husband.
* * * * *
An abortion, because while birthing a wave struck her, a wave of the ocean; because of the eruption of Vesuvius.
* * * * *
It seems to me: the sea and myself—and nothing else.
* * * * *
Education: his three-year-old son wore a black frock-coat, boots, and waistcoat.
* * * * *
With pride: "I'm not of Yuriev, but of Dorpat University."[1]
[Footnote 1: Yuriev is the Russian name of the town Dorpat.]
* * * * *
His beard looked like the tail of a fish.
* * * * *
A Jew, Ziptchik.
* * * * *
A girl, when she giggles, makes noises as if she were putting her head in cold water.
* * * * *
"Mamma, what is a thunderbolt made of?"
* * * * *
On the estate there is a bad smell, and bad taste; the trees are planted anyhow, stupidly; and away in a remote corner the lodge-keeper's wife all day long washes the guest's linen—and nobody sees her; and the owners are allowed to talk away whole days about their rights and their nobility.
* * * * *
She fed her dog on the best caviare.
* * * * *
Our self-esteem and conceit are European, but our culture and actions are Asiatic.
* * * * *
A black dog—he looks as if he were wearing goloshes.
* * * * *
A Russian's only hope—to win two hundred thousand roubles in a lottery.
* * * * *
She is wicked, but she taught her children good.
* * * * *
Every one has something to hide.
* * * * *
The title of N.'s story: The Power of Harmonies.
* * * * *
O how nice it would be if bachelors or widowers were appointedGovernors.
* * * * *
A Moscow actress never in her life saw a turkey-hen.
* * * * *
On the lips of the old I hear either stupidity or malice.
* * * * *
"Mamma, Pete did not say his prayers." Pete is woken up, he says his prayers, cries, then lies down and shakes his fist at the child who made the complaint.
* * * * *
He imagined that only doctors could say whether it is male or female.
* * * * *
One became a priest, the other aDukhobor, the third a philosopher, and in each case instinctively because no one wants really to work with bent back from morning to night.
* * * * *
A passion for the word uterine: my uterine brother, my uterine wife, my uterine brother-in-law, etc.
* * * * *
To Doctor N., an illegitimate child, who has never lived with his father and knew him very little, his bosom friend Z., says with agitation: "You see, the fact of the matter is that your father misses you very much, he is ill and wants to have a look at you." The father keeps "Switzerland," furnished apartments. He takes the fried fish out of the dish with his hands and only afterwards uses a fork. The vodka smells rank. N. went, looked about him, had dinner—his only feeling that that fat peasant, with the grizzled beard, should sell such filth. But once, when passing the house at midnight, he looked in at the window: his father was sitting with bent back reading a book. He recognized himself and his own manners.
* * * * *
As stupid as a gray gelding.
* * * * *
They teased the girl with castor oil, and therefore she did not marry.
* * * * *
N. all his life used to write abusive letters to famous singers, actors, and authors: "You think, you scamp,…"—without signing his name.
* * * * *
When the man who carried the torch at funerals came out in his three-cornered hat, his frock coat with laces and stripes, she fell in love with him.
* * * * *
A sparkling, joyous nature, a kind of living protest against grumblers; he is fat and healthy, eats a great deal, every one likes him but only because they are afraid of the grumblers; he is a nobody, a Ham, only eats and laughs loud, and that's all; when he dies, every one sees that he had done nothing, that they had mistaken him for some one else.
* * * * *
After the inspection of the building, the Commission, which was bribed, lunched heartily, and it was precisely a funeral feast over honesty.
* * * * *
He who tells lies is dirty.
* * * * *
At three o'clock in the morning they wake him: he has to go to his job at the railway station, and so every day for the last fourteen years.
* * * * *
A lady grumbles: "I write to my son that he should change his linenevery Saturday. He replies: 'Why Saturday, not Monday?' I answer:'Well, all right, let it be Monday.' And he: 'Why Monday, notTuesday?' He is a nice honest man, but I get worried by him."
* * * * *
A clever man loves learning but is a fool at teaching.
* * * * *
The sermons of priests, archimandrites, and bishops are wonderfully like one another.
* * * * *
One remembers the arguments about the brotherhood of man, public good, and work for the people, but really there were no such arguments, one only drank at the University. They write: "One feels ashamed of the men with University degrees who once fought for human rights and freedom of religion and conscience"—but they never fought.
* * * * *
Every day after dinner the husband threatens his wife that he will become a monk, and the wife cries.
* * * * *
Mordokhvostov.
* * * * *
Husband and wife have lived together and quarreled for eighteen years. At last he makes a confession, which was in fact untrue, of having been false to her, and they part to his great pleasure and to the wrath of the whole town.
* * * * *
A useless thing, an album with forgotten, uninteresting photographs, lies in the corner on a chair; it has been lying there for the last twenty years and no one makes up his mind to throw it away.
* * * * *
N. tells how forty years ago X., a wonderful and extraordinary man, had saved the lives of five people, and N. feels it strange that every one listened with indifference, that the history of X. is already forgotten, uninteresting….
* * * * *
They fell upon the soft caviare greedily, and devoured it in a minute.
* * * * *
In the middle of a serious conversation he says to his little son:"Button up your trousers."
* * * * *
Man will only become better when you make him see what he is like.
* * * * *
Dove-colored face.
* * * * *
The squire feeds his pigeons, canaries, and fowls on pepper, acids, and all kinds of rubbish in order that the birds may change their color—and that is his sole occupation: he boasts of it to every visitor.
* * * * *
They invited a famous singer to recite the Acts of the Apostles at the wedding; he recited it, but they have not paid his fee.
* * * * *
For a farce: I have a friend by name Krivomordy (crooked face) and he's all right. Not crooked leg or crooked arm but crooked face: he was married and his wife loved him.
* * * * *
N. drank milk every day, and every time he put a fly in the glass and then, with the air of a victim, asked the old butler: "What's that?" He could not live a single day without that.
* * * * *
She is surly and smells of a vapor bath.
* * * * *
N. learned of his wife's adultery. He is indignant, distressed, but hesitates and keeps silent. He keeps silence and ends by borrowing money from Z., the lover, and continues to consider himself an honest man.
* * * * *
When I stop drinking tea and eating bread and butter, I say: "I have had enough." But when I stop reading poems or novels, I say: "No more of that, no more of that."
* * * * *
A solicitor lends money at a high rate of interest, and justifies himself because he is leaving everything to the University of Moscow.
* * * * *
A little sexton, with radical views: "Nowadays our fellows crawl out from all sorts of unexpected holes."
* * * * *
The squire N. always quarrels with his neighbors who are Molokans[1]; he goes to court, abuses and curses them; but when at last they leave, he feels there is an empty place; he ages rapidly and pines away.
[Footnote 1: Molokans are a religious sect in Russia.]
* * * * *
Mordukhanov.
* * * * *
With N. and his wife there lives the wife's brother, a lachrymose young man who at one time steals, at another tells lies, at another attempts suicide; N. and his wife do not know what to do, they are afraid to turn him out because he might kill himself; they would like to turn him out, but they do not know how to manage it. For forging a bill he gets into prison, and N. and his wife feel that they are to blame; they cry, grieve. She died from grief; he too died some time later and everything was left to the brother who squandered it and got into prison again.
* * * * *
Suppose I had to marry a woman and live in her house, I would run away in two days, but a woman gets used so quickly to her husband's house, as though she had been born there.
* * * * *
Well, you are a Councillor; but whom do you counsel? God forbid that any one should listen to your counsels.
* * * * *
The little town of Torjok. A sitting of the town council. Subject: the raising of the rates. Decision: to invite the Pope to settle down in Torjok—to choose it as his residence.
* * * * *
S.'s logic: I am for religious toleration, but against religious freedom; one cannot allow what is not in the strict sense orthodox.
* * * * *
St. Piony and Epinach. ii March, Pupli 13 m.
* * * * *
Poetry and works of art contain not what is needed but what people desire; they do not go further than the crowd and they express only what the best in the crowd desire.
* * * * *
A little man is very cautious; he sends even letters of congratulation by registered post in order to get a receipt.
* * * * *
Russia is an enormous plain across which wander mischievous men.
* * * * *
Platonida Ivanovna.
* * * * *
If you are politically sound, that is enough for you to be considered a perfectly satisfactory citizen; the same thing with radicals, to be politically unsound is enough, everything else will be ignored.
* * * * *
A man who when he fails opens his eyes wide.
* * * * *
Ziuzikov.
* * * * *
A Councillor of State, a respectable man; it suddenly comes out that he has secretly kept a brothel.
* * * * *
N. has written a good play; no one praises him or is pleased; they all say: "We'll see what you write next."
* * * * *
The more important people came in by the front door, the simple folk by the back door.
* * * * *
He: "And in our town there lived a man whose name was Kishmish (raisin). He called himself Kishmish, but every one knew that he was Kishmish."
She (after some thought): "How annoying … if only his name had beenSultana, but Kishmish!…"
* * * * *
Blagovospitanny.
* * * * *
Most honored Iv-Iv-itch!
* * * * *
How intolerable people are sometimes who are happy and successful in everything.
* * * * *
They begin gossiping that N. is living with Z.; little by little an atmosphere is created in which a liaison of N. and Z. becomes inevitable.
* * * * *
When the locust was a plague, I wrote against the locust and enchanted every one, I was rich and famous; but now, when the locust has long ago disappeared and is forgotten, I am merged in the crowd, forgotten, and not wanted.
* * * * *
Merrily, joyfully: "I have the honor to introduce you to Iv. Iv.Izgoyev, my wife's lover."
* * * * *
Everywhere on the estate are notices: "Trespassers will be prosecuted," "Keep off the flowers," etc.
* * * * *
In the great house is a fine library which is talked about but is never used; they give you watery coffee which you cannot drink; the garden is tasteless with no flowers in it—and they pretend that all this is something Tolstoian.
* * * * *
He learnt Swedish in order to study Ibsen, spent a lot of time and trouble, and suddenly realized that Ibsen is not important; he could not conceive what use he could now make of the Swedish language.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ibsen wrote in Norwegian of course. Responding to a request for his interpretation of this curious paragraph. Mr. Koteliansky writes:
"Chekhov had a very high opinion of Ibsen; the paragraph, I am sure, is by no means aimed at Ibsen. Most probably the paragraph, as well as many others in the Notes, is something which C. either personally or indirectly heard someone say. You will see that Kuprin ["Reminiscences of Chekhov," by Gorky, Kuprin and Bunin, New York: Huebsch.] told C. the anecdote about the actor whose wife asked him to whistle a melody on the stage during a rehearsal. In C.'s Notes you have that anecdote, somewhat shortened and the names changed, without mentioning the source."
"The reader, on the whole, may puzzle his head over many paragraphs in the Notes, but he will hardly find explanations each time. What the reader has to remember is that the Notes are material used by C. in his creative activity and as such it throws a great deal of light on C.'s mentality and process of working."]
* * * * *
N. makes a living by exterminating bugs; and for the purposes of his trade he reads the works of ——. If in "The Cossacks," bugs are not mentioned, it means that "The Cossacks" is a bad book.
* * * * *
Man is what he believes.
* * * * *
A clever girl: "I cannot pretend … I never tell a lie … I have principles"—and all the time "I … I … I …"
* * * * *
N. is angry with his wife who is an actress, and without her knowledge gets abusive criticisms published about her in the newspapers.