A MEDICAL CASE
1. The reader will realize from this and other stories in the collection that summer nights in northern Russia are extremely short and dawn may come as early as two o’clock in the morning.
2. See note 16 to “A Boring Story.” Tamara is the heroine of the long poem The Demon (1839).
THE DARLING
1.Faust Inside Out may be the Russian title of Le Petit Faust (“The Little Faust”), an operetta by French composer Florimond Hervé (1825–92). Orpheus in the Underworld is an operetta by Jacques Offenbach (1819–80), French composer of German origin.
ON OFFICIAL BUSINESS
1. See note 4 to “Ward No. 6.”
2. That is, the emancipation of the serfs in 1861.
3. A line from Evgeny Onegin, by Alexander Pushkin.
4. “A little glass of Cliquot” (French). Cliquot is one of the finest champagnes.
5. “The Queen of Spades,” a short story by Pushkin, was made into an opera by Tchaikovsky.
THE LADY WITH THE LITTLE DOG
1. See note 4 to “Gusev.”
2. Selyanka is a casserole of cabbage and meat or fish, served in its own baking pan.
3. The Slavyansky Bazaar was a highly respectable hotel and restaurant in Moscow, frequented in Chekhov’s time by artists, actors, and writers.
AT CHRISTMASTIME
1. Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–93), a French doctor known for his work on nervous ailments, invented a method of treatment by means of cold showers.
IN THE RAVINE
1. Krasnaya Gorka (“Pretty little hill”) is the Tuesday of the second week after Easter, when the graves of dead relations are visited and decorated. It was usual to celebrate weddings after Easter, because they could not be celebrated in church during Lent.
2. The Flagellants were a sect in Russia (with its counterparts elsewhere) that believed in flagellation as a means of spiritual purification. They had their own prophets and scriptures, and were always rejected by the Orthodox Church.
3. A Persian term meaning “plenipotentiary,” the title of the highest Persian ministers, but here used simply by association with things Middle Eastern.
4. The church is named after the icon of the Mother of God from the city of Kazan, a sixteenth-century wonder-working icon the type of which is one of the most widespread in Russia.
5. The first Sunday after Easter, commemorating the disciple who doubted Christ’s resurrection.
THE BISHOP
1. In Russia on Palm Sunday, the feast celebrating Christ’s entry into Jerusalem a week before the Crucifixion, pussywillows are handed out to the people in church, for lack of palms. The day is known as “Pussywillow Sunday.”
2. Father Simeon is right: there is no mention of Iehudiel or his ass in the Bible.
3. A Latin-German macaronic phrase meaning “child-curing whipping birch.”
4. See notes 3 and 4 to “Panikhida.”
5. See note 21 to “A Boring Story.”
6. See note 4 to “Easter Night.”
7. The words come from hymns sung during the services known as “Bridegroom services” celebrated on the first three days of Holy Week: “Behold, the Bridegroom cometh at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless …” and “Thy bridal chamber I see adorned, O my Savior, and I have no wedding garment that I may enter …”
8. The washing of feet is part of the liturgy of Holy Thursday when it is served by a bishop. It commemorates Christ’s washing of his disciples’ feet before the Last Supper (John 13:3–15).
9. See note 1 to “The Student.”
10. John 13:31–18:1, the longest of the twelve Gospel readings.
11. See note 4 to “Anna on the Neck.”
THE FIANCÉE
1. Quotations from the hymns of matins of the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, three weeks before the beginning of Lent (see Luke 15:11–32).
2. That is, June 29.
3. A straight-sided hat, usually made of velvet, awarded to Orthodox priests as a token of distinguished service. The Russian kamilavka is a distortion of the Greek kalimavka (“beautiful hat”).
4. Russian civil servants wore uniforms similar to military uniforms, including hats with cockades.
5. See note 27 to “A Boring Story.”
6. The Cossack territory in the southeastern Ukraine enjoyed some measure of freedom and autonomy before it was fully annexed by Catherine the Great in the late eighteenth century. “Going to the Cossacks” meant living a life free of restrictions and conventions.
7. As a means of killing flies, a piece of paper treated with poison would be left to soak in a dish of water. The flies would drink the water and die.
8.Kumys is the Tartar word for fermented mare’s milk, which was believed to strengthen the lungs. Leo Tolstoy, among others, was an advocate of the “kumys cure,” which he took several times while visiting his property in Samara province during the summer.
STORIES
A Bantam Book / November 2000
All rights reserved.
Translation copyright © 2000 by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
Excerpts, as submitted, from Letters of Anton Chekhov by Michael Henry Heim and Simon Karlinsky copyright © 1973 by Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: Bantam Books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860–1904.
[Short stories. English. Selections]
Stories / by Anton Chekhov; translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-56828-1
1. Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860–1904—Translations into English. I. Pevear,
Richard, 1943– II. Volokhonsky, Larissa. III. Title.
PG3456.A13 P48 2000
891.73′3—dc21
00-037894
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.
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