“I realized how unnecessary, trivial and false everything had been that prevented us from loving each other. I realized that when you are in love, you must start your reflections about your love with what is highest, what is more important than happiness or unhappiness, or sin or virtue in their accepted senses–or you shouldn’t reflect at all.”
The Beauties, from Pushkin Press, is a splendid collection of Chekhov short stories. These 13 stories examine many facets of Russian life through the themes of love and loss, and that elusive, shimmering moment: when all that is important in life becomes crystal clear.
Here’s the contents:
The Beauties
The Man in a Box
A Day in the Country
A Blunder
About Love
Grief
The Bet
A Misfortune
Sergeant Prishibeyev
The Lady With the Little Dog
The Huntsman
The Privy Councillor
The Kiss
The Beauties is told by a man who recalls seeing two remarkably beautiful girls over the course of his life, and he notes how this beauty struck him on two different occasions: the desire to be near beauty, and also a sadness, a sense of longing.
Whether I envied her beauty, or whether I was sorry that this girl was not mine and never would be mine and that I was a stranger to her, or whether I had a vague feeling that her rare beauty was accidental , and like everything on earth, would not last; or whether my sadness was that special feeling aroused when a person contemplates real beauty-God only knows!
I loved The Man in a Box (a Burkin/Ivan Ivanovich story) for its intense character study of the neurotic teacher Belikov:
That man showed a constant, overpowering urge to surround himself with a sort of wrapping, to create an outer box for himself, which would isolate him and protect him from outside influences. Reality upset him, frightened him, kept him in a constant state of alarm; and perhaps it was to justify this timidity on his part, his aversion towards the present time, that he always praised the past, and things which had never been.
Although Belikov is in many ways, an introvert, nonetheless he dominates his surroundings and manages, through his warped sense of duty, to make everyone in his circle miserable. Belikov’s downfall, his bête noire, if you like, is love which appears in the form of Varenka, the sister of another teacher.
About Love is another one of Chekhov’s Burkin/Ivan Ivanovich stories. The narrator, Aliokhin relates how he fell in love with a married woman, and how we question love too much, intellectualize it when in fact we should just act:
And we too, when we’re in love, never stop asking ourselves questions–whether this is honorable or dishonourable, sensible or stupid, where this love is leading, and so forth. Whether all that’s good or not, I don’t know, but I do know that it’s unsatisfying and upsetting and gets in the way.
My favourite story in the entire collection is The Bet. This is a story that covers a fifteen year period and concerns a bet (19th century Russian bets always seem extreme) that takes place over the question of whether or not the death penalty is preferable to a long, solitary prison sentence. I can’t say much about this story without giving away some of its most delightful elements, but I will say that this story shows how well Chekhov understood human nature and why he is a master of the short story.
A couple of the short stories are a touch too sentimental for me, but overall, this is a magnificent collection. Of course, it includes The Lady With the Little Dog, which is arguably Chekhov’s most famous story–at least it seems to be the one that makes the anthologies so often. I’ve read this story many times, and yet I read it again, and this time I found it even more poignant than I remember. This collection is superb: either a great introduction of those new to Chekhov, or a great reminder of this writer’s phenomenal talent.
I wish Gooseberries had been included, but it isn’t, so now off to read it.
Translated by Nicolas Pasternak Slater
Review copy
His Futile Preoccupations ..... 
I’ve only read The Lady With the Dog. It’s in one of his collections I have and in at least two anthologies. There are people who say he’s the best short story writer ever. I’ll have to see whether I’ve got The Bet somewhere.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a collection of short stories by him. I like it when they publish stories around the same topic, it gives a great view of an author’s vision of one particular aspect of life.
Great book cover.
I’ve just started reading his novel, The Shooting Party. It’s slightly weird reading Chekhov’s contribution to the detective/crime genre, but I can already see some of the themes and psychological insights that appear in many of his later short stories.
I just read a compilation of international crime stories m, and the first one was by Chekhov.
I have an audio book with 16 stories but the only one in common is The Lady With The Dog. I didn’t realise how vast his output was.
Yes an incredible output. And then he died young.
I seem to remember reading that he wrote so much because he really needed the money- but they certainly aren’t potboilers!
I heard that some of the stories aren’t that great but then … the good ones are so good, it may be tough to compare.