Stories

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

TRANSLATORS’ NOTE

THE DEATH OF A CLERK

SMALL FRY

THE HUNTSMAN

THE MALEFACTOR

PANIKHIDA

ANYUTA

EASTER NIGHT

VANKA

SLEEPY

A BORING STORY

GUSEV

PEASANT WOMEN

THE FIDGET

IN EXILE

WARD NO. 6

THE BLACK MONK

ROTHSCHILD’S FIDDLE

THE STUDENT

ANNA ON THE NECK

THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE

THE MAN IN A CASE

GOOSEBERRIES

A MEDICAL CASE

THE DARLING

ON OFFICIAL BUSINESS

THE LADY WITH THE LITTLE DOG

AT CHRISTMASTIME

IN THE RAVINE

THE BISHOP

THE FIANCEE

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

In the autumn of 1844 a young writer named Dmitri Grigorovich was sharing rooms with a friend of his from military engineering school, the twenty-three-year-old Fyodor Dostoevsky, who was at work on his first novel, Poor Folk. Through Grigorovich the finished manuscript reached the hands of Vissarion Belinsky, the most influential critic of the time, whose enthusiasm launched Dostoevsky’s career. More than four decades later, in 1886, this same Grigorovich, now an elder statesman of literature, came across the humorous sketches of someone who signed himself “Antosha Chekhonte,” brought them to the attention of the publisher Alexei Suvorin, and thus “recognized” the last great Russian writer of the nineteenth century—Anton Chekhov.

Grigorovich also wrote to the young man himself, scolding him for not taking his work seriously and for hiding behind a pseudonym. Chekhov was astonished and deeply moved. In his reply, dated March 28, 1886, after apologizing for scanting his talent, though he suspected he had it, and thanking Grigorovich for confirming that suspicion, he explained:

… In the five years I spent hanging around newspaper offices, I became resigned to the general view of my literary insignificance, soon took to looking down on my work, and kept plowing right on. That’s the first factor. The second is that I am a doctor and up to my ears in medicine. The saying about chasing two hares at once has never robbed anybody of more sleep than it has me.

The only reason I am writing all this is to justify my grievous sin in your eyes to some small degree. Until now I treated my literary work extremely frivolously, casually, nonchalantly; I can’t remember working on a single story for more than a day, and “The Huntsman,” which you so enjoyed, I wrote in a bathing house … All my hope lies in the future. I’m still only twenty-six. I may manage to accomplish something yet, though