My Life and Other Stories Volume 2

by Anton Chekhov

Among the great nineteenth-century Russian writers, Chekhov was the one least interested in the political issues of his time, but it is fair to claim, nonetheless, that of them all he was, in his own extraordinary way, the most radical. His miraculous stories not only changed the face of the short story form, but have provided for the innumerable readers who have cherished his work an access to the quiet dramas of the soul, and a degree of human fellow-feeling never before offered by literature.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Russia, Literature

586 pages, Hardcover

First published November 26, 1992

About the author

Antón Chéjov (Spanish)

Dramas, such as The Seagull (1896, revised 1898), and including "A Dreary Story" (1889) of Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, also Chekov, concern the inability of humans to communicate.

Born ( Антон Павлович Чехов ) in the small southern seaport of Taganrog, the son of a grocer. His grandfather, a serf, bought his own freedom and that of his three sons in 1841. He also taught to read. A cloth merchant fathered Yevgenia Morozova, his mother.

"When I think back on my childhood," Chekhov recalled, "it all seems quite gloomy to me." Tyranny of his father, religious fanaticism, and long nights in the store, open from five in the morning till midnight, shadowed his early years. He attended a school for Greek boys in Taganrog from 1867 to 1868 and then Taganrog grammar school. Bankruptcy of his father compelled the family to move to Moscow. At the age of 16 years in 1876, independent Chekhov for some time alone in his native town supported through private tutoring.

In 1879, Chekhov left grammar school and entered the university medical school at Moscow. In the school, he began to publish hundreds of short comics to support his mother, sisters and brothers. Nicholas Leikin published him at this period and owned Oskolki (splinters), the journal of Saint Petersburg. His subjected silly social situations, marital problems, and farcical encounters among husbands, wives, mistresses, and lust; even after his marriage, Chekhov, the shy author, knew not much of whims of young women.

Nenunzhaya pobeda , first novel of Chekhov, set in 1882 in Hungary, parodied the novels of the popular Mór Jókai. People also mocked ideological optimism of Jókai as a politician.

Chekhov graduated in 1884 and practiced medicine. He worked from 1885 in Peterburskaia gazeta.

In 1886, Chekhov met H.S. Suvorin, who invited him, a regular contributor, to work for Novoe vremya, the daily paper of Saint Petersburg. He gained a wide fame before 1886. He authored The Shooting Party , his second full-length novel, later translated into English. Agatha Christie used its characters and atmosphere in later her mystery novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd . First book of Chekhov in 1886 succeeded, and he gradually committed full time. The refusal of the author to join the ranks of social critics arose the wrath of liberal and radical intelligentsia, who criticized him for dealing with serious social and moral questions but avoiding giving answers. Such leaders as Leo Tolstoy and Nikolai Leskov, however, defended him. "I'm not a liberal, or a conservative, or a gradualist, or a monk, or an indifferentist. I should like to be a free artist and that's all..." Chekhov said in 1888.

The failure of The Wood Demon , play in 1889, and problems with novel made Chekhov to withdraw from literature for a period. In 1890, he traveled across Siberia to Sakhalin, remote prison island. He conducted a detailed census of ten thousand convicts and settlers, condemned to live on that harsh island. Chekhov expected to use the results of his research for his doctoral dissertation. Hard conditions on the island probably also weakened his own physical condition. From this journey came his famous travel book.

Chekhov practiced medicine until 1892. During these years, Chechov developed his concept of the dispassionate, non-judgmental author. He outlined his program in a letter to his brother Aleksandr: "1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality; flee the stereotype; 6. compassion." Because he objected that the paper conducted against [a:Alfred Dreyfu

Reviews

[إيمان · Rating 5 out of 5]

الكتاب عبارة عن مجموعة قصصية لانطوان
تشيخوف قامت بترجمتها للانجليزية
كونستنس غارنت التي قامت ايضا بنقل روائع
اخرى لنفس اللغة.عناوين القصص كما يلي
A DAUGHER OF ALBION 3/5
AN INCIDENT 5/5
A DREARY STORY 5/5
THE DUEL 5/5
THE CHORUS GIRL 4/5
WARD NO.6 5/5
THE TEACHER OF LITERATURE 5/5
AN ARTIST'S STORY 5/5
MY LIFE 5/5
THE DARLING 5/5
THE LADY WITH THE DOG 4/5
____________________________________
سيأسرك تشيخوف منذ الاسطر الاولى بذلك
الحس الانساني العميق ...بالتصاقه المريب
للواقع الذي يرويه ....الحوارات
بين الشخصيات ذات طابع فلسفي عميق
ولكنه يخلو من التعقيد... الشخصيات نفسها
مركبة بطريقة تجعلك تحس بانها و اقعية
تنبض بالحياة وقد برع خاصة في تصوير
حالتها النفسية وما يجول في خلدها من
افكار...اعجبني كثيرا نقده المتواصل
للمنظومة الاجتماعية و خاصة الطبقة
الثرية واسلوب عيش افرادها...باختصار
ابداع يفوق الوصف سيجعلك تتساءل هل
قرأت قبل ذلك حقا؟

[Micah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chekhov's dry Russian character studies are difficult to read after so much time and political upheaval have erased much of their relevances, but the human natures, social and relational difficulties, and deep psychological and philosophical dilemmas revealed timelessly expose a great depth of what it means to be human and know humans. I especially enjoyed "The Duel," "Ward No.6," and "My Life."

[Ostap Bender · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little weaker than "volume 1", with no stories that truly stand out, and some which go on a bit too long. On the other hand, there are thoughts and themes which Chekhov expresses which are truly striking in both how profound and modern they are.

Quotes:
On meaninglessness, from "Ward No. 6":
“Life is a vexatious trap; when a thinking man reaches maturity and attains to full consciousness he cannot help feeling that he is in a trap from which there is no escape. Indeed, he is summoned without his choice by fortuitous circumstances from non-existence into life…what for? He tries to find out the meaning and object of his existence; he is told nothing, or he is told absurdities; he knocks and it is not opened to him; death comes to him – also without his choice. And so, just as in prison men held together by common misfortune feel more at ease when they are together, so one does not notice the trap in life when people with a bent for analysis and generalization meet together and pass their time in the interchange of proud and free ideas. In that sense the intellect is the source of an enjoyment nothing can replace.”

Also:
"Oh, why is not man immortal? he thought. What is the good of the brain centers and convolutions, what is the good of sight, speech, self-consciousness, genius, if it is all destined to depart into the soil, and in the end to grow cold together with the earth’s crusts, and then for millions of years to fly with the earth round the sun with no meaning and no object? To do that there was no need at all to draw man with his lofty, almost godlike intellect, out of non-existence, and then, as though in mockery, to turn him into clay."

And:
"To stifle petty thoughts he made haste to reflect that he himself, and Hobotov, and Mihail Averyanitch would all sooner or later perish without leaving any trace on the world. If one imagined some spirit flying by the earthly globe in space in a million years he would see nothing but clay and bare rocks. Everything – culture and the moral law – would pass away and not even a burdock would grow out of them. Of what consequence was shame in the presence of a shopkeeper, of what consequence was the insignificant Hobotov or the wearisome friendship of Mihail Averyanitch? It was all trivial and nonsensical."

On memories, from "An Artist's Story"
"I am beginning to forget the old house, and only sometimes when I am painting or reading I suddenly, apropos of nothing, remember the green light in the window, the sound of my footsteps as I walked home through the fields in the night, with my heart full of love, rubbing my hands in the cold. And still more rarely, at moments when I am sad and depressed by loneliness, I have dim memories, and little by little I begin to feel that she is thinking of me, too – that she is waiting for me, and that we shall meet…
Misuce, where are you?"

On natural selection in man, from "The Duel":
“Human culture weakens and strives to nullify the struggle for existence and natural selection; hence the rapid achievement of the weak and their predominance over the strong. Imagine that you succeeded in instilling into bees humanitarian ideas in their crude and elementary form. What would come of it? The drones who ought to be killed would remain alive, would devour the honey, would corrupt and stifle the bees, resulting in a predominance of the weak over the strong and the degeneration of the latter. The same process is taking place now with humanity; the weak are oppressing the strong.”

On old age, from "A Dreary Story":
"I gaze at my wife and wonder like a child. I ask myself in perplexity, is it possible that this old, very stout, ungainly woman, with her dull expression of petty anxiety and alarm about daily bread, with eyes dimmed by continual brooding over debts and money difficulties, who can talk of nothing but expenses and who smiles at nothing but things getting cheaper – is it possible that this woman is no other than the slender Varya whom I fell in love with so passionately for her fine, clear intelligence, for her pure soul, her beauty, and, as Othello his Desdemona, for her ‘sympathy’ for my studies? Could that woman be no other than the Varya who had once borne me a son?"

On religion, from "The Duel":
"…Of all humane learning the most durable and living is, of course, the teaching of Christ; but look how differently even that is interpreted! Some teach that we must love all our neighbors but make an exception of soldiers, criminals, and lunatics. They allow the first to be killed in war, the second to be isolated or executed, and the third they forbid to marry. Other interpreters teach that we must love all our neighbors without exceptions…For that reason you should never put a question on a philosophical or so-called Christian basis; by so doing you only remove the question further from the solution."

On socialism, from "An Artist's Story":
“Take upon yourself a share of their labor. If all of us, townspeople and country people, all without exception, would agree to divide between us the labor which mankind spends on the satisfaction of their physical needs, each of us would perhaps need to work for only two or three hours a day. Imagine that we all, rich and poor, work only for three hours a day, and the rest of our time is free."

And this, from "My Life":
"We talked, and when we got upon manual labor I expressed this idea: that what is wanted is that the strong should not enslave the weak, that the minority should not be a parasite on the majority, nor a vampire forever sucking its vital sap; that is, all, without exception, strong and weak, rich and poor, should take part equally in the struggle for existence, each one on his own account, and that there was no better means for equalizing things in that way than manual labor, in the form of universal service, compulsory for all."

On suicide, from "Ward No. 6":
"…why hinder people dying if death is the normal and legitimate end of everyone? What is gained if some shopkeeper or clerk lives an extra five or ten years? If the aim of medicine is by drugs to alleviate suffering, the question forces itself on one: why alleviate it?"

On the younger generation, from "A Dreary Story":
"‘Yes; they have degenerated horribly,’ Katya agrees. ‘Tell me, have you had one man of distinction among them for the last five or ten years?’ …
It offends me that these charges are wholesale, and rest on such worn-out commonplaces, on such worldly vapourings as degeneration and absence of ideals, or on references to the splendours of the past. … I am an old man, I have been lecturing for thirty years, but I notice neither degeneration nor lack of ideals, and I don’t find that the present is worse than the past."

Also this, from "The Duel":
"The cause for his extreme dissoluteness and unseemliness lies, do you see, not in himself, but somewhere outside in space. And so – an ingenious idea – it is not only he who is dissolute, false, and disgusting, but we…”we men of the eighties”, “we the spiritless, nervous offspring of the serf-owning class”; “civilization has crippled us”…"

[Cecilia M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anton Chekhov offers great models for your own writing if you are trying to construct short stories.