page 71 / After: to your Sergey Pavlovich! — Hold on, be quiet! Let me finish! You’ve seen my desire to let you know that I didn’t complete my acquisition at that time, that I have some claims . . . You saw and . . . got scared? Your wretched family was against it! You have no right to despise me!
page 72 / After: eight rubles . . . — And played cards, lost two bottles of Lafitte . . .
page 74 / After: Worse than anyone on earth. — You looking for good people, Abram Abramych?
page 80 / Before: I could have smitten with a great love — There are people, my boy, who don’t smoke cigarettes, don’t talk nonsense to womenfolk, don’t put on boots without previously checking to see if there are boot trees in them . . . Boot trees or rules, they’re everything for them . . . And they’ll set off for the next world according to some legal statute . . . They’re arid, pedantic, constantly fussing over themselves and their rules.
page 80 / After: to our tongues! —
PLATONOV. Stupid . . . You spout the most hopeless poppycock . . . To talk that way you don’t have to have attended medical school for five years.
TRILETSKY. “Medical schools,” my grandfather Brigadier Triletsky wrote to his posterity, “are nothing but self-indulgence and perplexity for the upper classes. Among the ancient Hellenes and Romans of the Empire physicians were slaves, and astrologers superstitious swindlers, and a slavish nature has absolutely nothing to do with your blue blood! For your noble blue blood is such that however powerfully you strive to be a slave, you never will be, for a lord cannot be a boor, and a boor cannot be a lord.” A clever brain, you must admit, my grandfather!
PLATONOV. But don’t you cut off legs? Don’t you provide ointments for rashes?
TRILETSKY. The other day . . .
page 81 / Replace: Couldn’t find us . . . she does care . . .
with: However, I won’t grieve . . . My mind is fully made up on that point . . . No slavish hope will creep in . . . I’m very calm . . . I’m not Sofya Yegorovna!
page 81 / Before: She’s miffed — She has hopes . . .
page 81 / After: She imagines . . . Hm . . . — I don’t love her, being a sinful man. I find it depressing. From her head to her heels a bookworm, crammed with those lofty matters, concepts, high ideals, sublime, damn it, truth, faith, lack of faith, spontaneous impulses . . .
page 81 / After: Let’s go get a drink! — That doesn’t require honor or knowledge or duty or anything sublime, but no one has a right to forbid it either. Am I right? Let’s go, pal!
page 81 / After: On his money merrily we roll along . . . — These easygoing Voinitsevs surprise me not a little! Fireworks cost twenty-five smackers, champagne a hundred smackers, wine, vodka also go for a hundred . . . That’s three hundred rubles, all told, for this pernicious party. Three hundred rubles! And they probably borrowed five hundred from Vengerovich . . . Three hundred they’ve squandered today, and with the other two hundred Sergey will order a bicycle or buy his wife a little watch . . .
TRILETSKY. They’re organizing an amateur theatrical.
PLATONOV. Do tell! The scenery will cost about a hundred and fifty smackers . . . And up to their eyebrows in debt . . . Starting with the General’s lady’s chess games with Vengerovich! As God is my judge! And there’s some kind of underhanded deal being cooked up about the estate . . . It’s annoying and pathetic, especially since you consider them to be intelligent people!
page 82 / After: (Roars with laughter). — Pockmarks and chalk instead of powder . . .
page 83 / After: stench — and raggedy leggings instead of a scarf
page 83 / After: get married! — Well I shall thwart his eagerness to get married!
page 83 / After: You’re the idiot, Count! — It’s incredibly depressing to talk to you!
page 87 / After: Insufferable man! — After all he knows that I love him, that he loves me, he can’t breathe without me . . . Oh, no, you don’t! He has to play his little games, he has to put on his acts, has to flirt with his tongue! Plays with my respect like a musician on a violin! He doesn’t like to look at things simply, but has to have a preface to them . . . Oh, no, you don’t! Don’t try it on me!
page 89 / After: rather peculiar, Porfiry Semyonych! — You need my spiritual goodness, as you write in your letter, but what do you know about my spiritual goodness?
page 89 / Before: But actually I did . . . If only you would act for yourself . . .
page 92 / After: That’s frank — Oh, you idiot, you idiot!
page 92 / After: (Sits down.) — It’s become hideously obscured, my golden age is gone forever! I turned it into filthy nonsense . . . I buried it all in the grave, except this body . . .
page 93 / Before: How am I to rise above — My talents must be deeply hidden, they’re stuck in the quicksand . . . Either I haven’t unearthed them over the course of a lifetime or I’m stuck in it myself . . .
Pause.
page 93 / After: I’m not feeling sorry for myself! — I’m reaching the point when I must come to the definite conclusion that I am an irremediably ruined man!
page 93 / After: to lie? — Who gave you the right to prattle all day long on my behalf about labor, suffering, freedom, if you do nothing for them and intend to do nothing?
TABLEAU TWO
page 100 / After: prayed God for death, sinner that I am . . . — But, Osip, imagine my joy, when one day he walks over to me and says all of a sudden: “Little girl, would you like to be my wife?” Imagine my joy . . . In my joy I quite lost all sense of shame and threw my arms around his neck . . .
page 107 / After: despicable, absurd! — Why did I kiss her down by the river? There’s got to be a reason I didn’t pass up that pleasure. (Sits down.) Kiss her, you dunce: it’s a pretty face! She even offered her cheek! Aaah . . .
Pause.
I’ve got to get away from here . . . It’s over!
page 107 / After: perfectly revolting . . . — The General’s lady seemed like a peasant wench, Sofya a stupid old maid, I . . . What about Grekova?
page 107 / After: When? — They start to laugh through bloody tears . . .
page 107 / After: self-scrutiny! — When I’m drunk, I soar aloft and build towers of Babylon!
page 108 / After: monarch of all you survey! — Nature, Thou art mine! Thou art for me!
page 109 / Before: Just look at that sky! — On such a night, however, as this, it’s all right to be a bit of a poet . . .
page 109 / After: Just look at that sky! Yes . . . — Happy the man who can breathe this air! Yes . . . In my bosom there is such warmth, such expan-siveness . . . Isn’t this a poetic feeling, after all?
page 109 / After: ashamed of being young! — who blushes at emotions, which old age remembers with pleasure! Enough of setting up obstacles to what now constitutes your true strength! Do not alienate your youth! Do not violate its nature! You will be accursed! Woe to the man who was not and will not be young!