Note-Book of Anton Chekhov Part 14

A theatrical manager, lying in bed, read a new play. He read three or four pages and then in irritation threw the play on to the floor, put out the candle, and drew the bedclothes over him; a little later, after thinking over it, he took the play up again and began to read it; then, getting angry with the uninspired tedious work, he again threw it on the floor and put out the candle. A little later he once more took up the play and read it, then he produced it and it was a failure.

N., heavy, morose, gloomy, says: "I love a joke, I am always joking."

The wife writes; the husband does not like her writing, but out of delicacy says nothing and suffers all his life.

The fate of an actress: the beginning--a well-to-do family in Kertch, life dull and empty; the stage, virtue, pa.s.sionate love, then lovers; the end: unsuccessful attempt to poison herself, then Kertch, life at her fat uncle's house, the delight of being left alone. Experience shows that an artist must dispense with wine, marriage, pregnancy. The stage will become art only in the future, now it is only struggling for the future.

(Angrily and sententiously) "Why don't you give me your wife's letters to read? Aren't we relations?"

Lord, don't allow me to condemn or to speak of what I do not know or do not understand.

Why do people describe only the weak, surly and frail as sinners? And every one when he advises others to describe only the strong, healthy, and interesting, means himself.

For a play: a character always lying without rhyme or reason.

s.e.xton Catacombov.

N.N., a litterateur, critic, plausible, self-confident, very liberal minded, talks about poetry; condescendingly agrees with one--and I see that he is a man absolutely without talent (I haven't read him). Some one suggests going to Ai-Petri. I say that it is going to rain, but we set out. The road is muddy, it rains; the critic sits next to me, I feel his lack of talent. He is wooed and made a fuss of as if he were a bishop. And when it cleared up, I went back on foot. How easily people deceive themselves, how they love prophets and soothsayers; what a herd it is! Another person went with us, a Councillor of State, middle-aged, silent, because he thinks he is right and despises the critic, because he too is without talent. A girl afraid to smile because she is among clever people.

Alexey Ivanitch Prokhladitelny (refreshing) or Doushespasitelny (soul-saving). A girl: "I would marry him, but am afraid of the name--Madam Refreshing."

A dream of a keeper in the zoological gardens. He dreams that there was presented to the Zoo first a marmot, then an emu, then a vulture, then a she-goat, then another emu; the presentations are made without end and the Zoo is crowded out--the keeper wakes up in horror wet with perspiration.

"To harness slowly but drive rapidly is in the nature of this people,"

said Bismarck.

When an actor has money, he doesn't send letters but telegrams.

With insects, out of the caterpillar comes the b.u.t.terfly; with mankind it is the other way round, out of the b.u.t.terfly comes the caterpillar.[1]

[Footnote 1: There is a play on words here, the Russian word for b.u.t.terfly also means a woman.]

The dogs in the house became attached not to their masters who fed and fondled them, but to the cook, a foreigner, who beat them.

Sophie was afraid that her dog might catch cold, because of the draught.

The soil is so good, that, were you to plant a shaft, in a year's time a cart would grow out of it.

X. and Z., very well educated and of radical views, married. In the evening they talked together pleasantly, then quarreled, then came to blows. In the morning both are ashamed and surprised, they think that it must have been the result of some exceptional state of their nerves. Next night again a quarrel and blows. And so every night until at last they realize that they are not at all educated, but savage, just like the majority of people.

A play: in order to avoid having visitors, Z. pretends to be a regular tippler, although he drinks nothing.

When children appear on the scene, then we justify all our weaknesses, our compromises, and our sn.o.bbery, by saying: "It's for the children's sake."

Count, I am going away to Mordegundia. (A land of horrible faces.)

Barbara Nedotyopin.

Z., an engineer or doctor, went on a visit to his uncle, an editor; he became interested, began to go there frequently; then became a contributor to the paper, little by little gave up his profession; one night he came out of the newspaper office, remembered, and seized his head in his hands--"all is lost!" He began to go gray. Then it became a habit, he was quite white now and flabby, an editor, respectable but obscure.