Part of Chekhov's genius lay in knowing exact- ly when to summarize thought, when to reveal it in dialogue, and when to merely suggest it through detail. In "The Lady with the Dog," when Chekhov describes the day in which the relationship between Gurov and Anna moves from flirtation to physical intimacy, he first care- fullv distances us from Gurov and then brings us close to him to startling effect. It is a hot day, and Gurov entreats Anna to share an ice. Then they walk together to the harbor to watch a steamer dock as daylight gradually dwindles. Whatever passes through Gurov's mind is not mentioned, and any exchanges between the cou- ple are reported indirectly and at a great dis- tance: "She talked a great deal and asked discon- nected questions, forgetting next moment what she had asked; then she dropped her lorgnette in the crush." When Gurov's proposition finally comes, it is all the more jarring for what has passed so hazily before, more profound and vivid in the way that certain details seem in recollec- tion: "'Let us go to your hotel,' he said softly." Chekhov reports Gurov's thoughts only afterward, in a moment of postcoital melancholy as Gurov attempts to place "the lady with the dog" in his apparently considerable catalog of sexual exploits. We plunge directly into his mind with: "'What different people one meets in the world!"' It is a chilling moment, as if we were suddenly granted access to the thoughts of our own inscrutable lover.
Chekhov's most characteristic stories lack plot in the normal sense of rising action, climax, and denouement. They have, as john Galsworthy once noted, "apparently neither head nor tail, they seem all middle like a tortoise." But, as
Galsworthy goes on to point out, Chekhov's many imitators fail "to realize the heads and tails are merely tucked in." For example, "Gusev" seems particularly shapeless. It allows retelling no more than does a poem by Thomas Hardy. A consump- tive military orderly on sick leave travels home by steamer; he engages in conversation with some of the other men in the infirmary; he goes briefly above deck; and then he dies. The story continues for a page or two beyond Gusev's brusquely noted death. We follow his body into the water, where it slowly sinks, drifts, and then is cautiously approached by a shark that eventual- ly attacks it, ripping open the body bag. In a sense, the story is all anticlimax because Gusev is already dying when the story opens. The most dynamic event in the story is the shark attack on the body, and even that is implied rather than seen. The interior passages in which Gusev reflects on home provide no narrative tissue— only broken glimpses of Gusev's former life, seen through the gauze of fever. "Gusev," for all its lack of plot, is always compelling. When we read the story, we give ourselves up to a twilight mood that washes through us like the ebb and flow of dark waters.
Chekhov's stories frequently end abruptly and inconclusively, or they simply fade out. In his let- ters, Chekhov insisted on the necessity of the incompleteness of his art. "You are right in demanding that an artist approach his work con- sciously," he wrote to his friend Alcksey Suvorin in 1888, "but you are confusing two concepts: the solution of a problem and the correct formulation of a problem. Only the second is required of the artist." "The Lady with the Dog" breaks every rule of conventional storytelling, ending at the very place any other writer would begin a story about marital infidelity. The story comes full cir- cle with the realization that "it was clear to both of them that the end was still far off, and that what was to be most complicated and difficult for them was just beginning." Even in the stories that end with death, there is often no real closure or resolution, only cessation of suffering and dis- appointed hopes. And not always in those stories is there an end to suffering because so long as some character remains alive, suffering continues. By calculated design, Chekhov ends his stories—as things tend to end in real life—on broken musical notes.
—John Kulka March 2000
Note on this collection and translation\ Few would argue that the stories included here are not among Chekhov's best, but some will undoubted- ly complain about those stories that are missmg: some overlooked favorite or ignored classic. The only response to such objections is to agree with them. Another editor would certainly have made a different selection, but readers may rest assured that included among this baker's dozen are some of Chekhov's most accomplished masterpieces. These translations are the excellent ones by Constance Garnett, which, although roughly seized upon by contemporary critics, remain arguably the best English translations of Chekhovs work to date. No less a critic than V. S. Pritchett preferred Garnett's translations to any others, pointing out her proximity in age and spirit to Chekhov.
THE
BEST
STORIES
—°f— ANTON
CHEKHOV
THE BEST STORIES OF ANTON CHEKHOV
THE LADY WITH THE DOG I
It was said that a new person had appeared on the sea-front: a lady with a little dog. Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, who had by then been a fort- night at Yalta, and so was fairly at home there, had begun to take an interest in new arrivals. Sitting in Verney's pavilion, he saw, walking on the sea-front, a fair-haired young lady of medium height, wearing a beret; a white Pomeranian dog was running behind her.
And afterwards he met her in the public gardens and in the square several times a day. She was walking alone, always wearing the same be'ret, and always with the same white dog; no one knew who she was, and every one called her simply " the lady with the dog."
" If she is here alone without a husband or friends, it wouldn't be amiss to make her ac- quaintance," Gurov reflected.
He was under forty, but he had a daughter already twelve years old, and two sons at school. He had been married young, when he was a student in his second year, and by now his wife seemed half as old again as he. She was a tall, erect woman with dark eyebrows, staid and dignified, and, as she said of herself, intellectual. She read a great deal, used phonetic spelling, called her hus- band, not Dmitri, but Dimitri, and he secretly con- sidered her unintelligent, narrow, inelegant, was afraid of her, and did not like to be at home. He had begun being unfaithful to her long ago — had been unfaithful to her often, and, probably on that account, almost always spoke ill of women, and when they were talked about in his presence, used to call them " the lower race."
It seemed to him that he had been so schooled by bitter experience that he might call them what he liked, and yet he could not get on for two days together without " the lower race." In the society of men he was bored and not himself, with them he was cold and uncommunicative; but when he was in the company of women he felt free, and knew what to say to them and how to behave; and he was at ease with them even when he was siler;^. In his appearance, in his character, in his whole nature, there was something attractive and elusive which allured women and disposed them in his favour ; he knew that, and some force seemed to draw him, too, to them.
Experience often repeated, truly bitter experience, had taught him long ago that with decent people, especially Moscow people — always slow to move and irresolute — every intimacy, which at first so agreeably diversifies life and appears a light and charming adventure, inevitably grows into a regular problem of extreme intricacy, and in the long run the situation becomes unbearable. But at every fresh meeting with an interesting woman this experi- ence seemed to slip out of his memory, and he was eager for life, and everything seemed simple and amusmg.