Copyright © 2016 by Peter Constantine
A Seven Stories Press First Edition
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860-1904, author.
[Short stories. Selections. English]
Little apples and other early stories / Anton Chekhov ; translated by Peter Constantine ; introduction by Cathy Popkin.
pages ; cm
ISBN 978-1-60980-664-4 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-60980-665-1 (e-book)
I. Constantine, Peter, 1963- translator. II. Popkin, Cathy, 1954- writer of introduction. III. Title.
PG3456.A13C66 2016
891.73’3--dc23
2015025047
Contents
Introduction
Translator’s Note
BECAUSE OF LITTLE APPLES
À L’AMÉRICAINE
THE TEMPERAMENTS
SALON DES VARIÉTÉS
AN IDYLL—BUT ALAS!
A DOCTOR’S ROMANCE
AN EDITOR’S ROMANCE
THE TURNIP
EASTER GREETINGS
TWENTY-SIX
THE PHILADELPHIA CONFERENCE OF NATURAL SCIENTISTS
MY NANA
FLYING ISLANDS
A BRIEF ANATOMY OF MAN
A CHILDREN’S PRIMER
SOOTHSAYER AND SOOTHSAYERESS
THE VAUDEVILLIAN
DIRTY TRAGEDIANS AND LEPROUS PLAYWRIGHTS
MARIA IVANOVNA
TROUBLING THOUGHTS
LETTER TO A REPORTER
RUSSIAN COAL
THE ECLIPSE
A PROBLEM
ON THE CHARACTERISTICS OF NATIONS
A MODERN GUIDE TO LETTER WRITING
MAN AND DOG CONVERSE
FEAST-DAY GRATUITIES)
MAY DAY AT SOKOLNIKI
THE MARRIAGE SEASON
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
VISITING CARDS
THE FOOLISH FRENCHMAN
PERSONS ENTITLED TO TRAVEL FREE OF CHARGE ON THE IMPERIAL RUSSIAN RAILWAYS
THE PROPOSAL
MAN
FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF A COUNTRY SQUIRE
NADIA N.’S VACATION HOMEWORK
WORDS, WORDS, WORDS
THE FRENCH BALL
About the Author
About the Translator
About Seven Stories Press
Introduction
by Cathy Popkin
FORTY GOOD READS
Of the nearly six hundred stories collected in The Complete Works of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, more than half stem from Chekhov’s early twenties (1880–85), well before he had been embraced by the literary establishment or acclaimed by critics as a great writer.
These were impecunious years for the young Chekhov, who, unlike his illustrious predecessors Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and Pushkin, emphatically did not hail from aristocracy. The grandson of a serf and the son of a merchant—a bankrupt one at that—the teenage Chekhov had been left behind in his native Taganrog to finish high school and fend off disgruntled creditors while his family fled in the dead of night. When Chekhov arrived in Moscow to matriculate at the university in 1879, he was reunited with parents and five siblings and assumed primary responsibility for the family’s keep; a good many of his early stories were written chiefly to keep the Chekhovs housed, clothed, and fed. Studying medicine by day and poring over the popular press after hours, Chekhov published humorous stories and sketches in the comic papers under dozens of pseudonyms; these pieces tended to be short, subject as they were to strict journalistic line limits, and calculated for quick laughs—as well as prompt payment.
Why should we bother, then, with such profit-driven juvenilia? Certainly publishers in the US and UK have shown scant interest in Chekhov’s early work. Until relatively recently, only a fraction of the 340-plus stories written before 1886 had appeared in English at all, and fewer still were readily available. Clearly the mythology of the “two Chekhovs”—one a young and callow humorist who dashed off trifles to make ends meet, the other a mature, sober tragedian who produced enduring works of art—has been tough to dislodge; the contrast between some of Chekhov’s initial efforts and his later, more widely known work is pronounced. But the connection between the early Chekhov of the comic press and the revered playwright of The Cherry Orchard is equally defining; even that last great drama of his Chekhov insisted on calling a comedy.
Indeed, chief among Peter Constantine’s purposes in treating us to the zanier side of Chekhov’s oeuvre1 has been to expand, and especially to diversify, our conception of what counts as “Chekhovian.” Not for nothing did Chekhov refer to his own stories as “motley”; until we accommodate the heterogeneity of the parts, we will be missing something essential about the whole.
Nor, importantly, are these variant Chekhovs a consequence of chronology alone. If Chekhov “differed” from himself, that divergence had only partly to do with attaining maturity or changing his modus operandi; Chekhov operated with multiple identities throughout his professional life (even beyond his prodigious use of pseudonyms). As a doctor who was also a writer, a man of science as well as a creator of verbal art, Chekhov actively pursued multiple avenues of investigation from the get-go. In letters to colleagues, he emphasized the complementarity of his disciplines (if I know the theory of circulation and can recite poetry, I’m that much richer)2 and the synergy of his dual professional allegiances (“when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other”).3 During his 1890 research expedition to Sakhalin Island4 he deployed an especially impressive array of disciplinary approaches. In keeping with the multidisciplinary imperatives of medical geography, Chekhov surveyed the hygienic conditions of the penal colony by collecting the data of an ethnographer, geographer, meteorologist, demographer, cartographer, sociologist, statistician, and physician. Chekhov’s literary forays, too, lay bare the possibilities and pitfalls of all kinds of investigatory practices, from diagnosis to deposition, from library to laboratory, from microscopy to metaphysics, from painting to politics.
If Chekhov was attuned to the plurality of possible modes of reconnaissance he was equally fascinated by his era’s myriad forms of documentation, the profusion of specialized formats for recording and disseminating one’s professional findings. From the time he was learning to construct medical case histories at school while also scouring the papers to figure out which literary genres might sell, Chekhov developed an abiding interest in the many possible ways to structure an effective—and affective—account. In the course of his careers both scientific and literary, Chekhov experimented with documentary formats as diverse as statistical tables, exhibition catalogues, obituary notices, census questionnaires, letters, travelogues, timelines, diagrams, photographs, drawings, and diary entries, not to mention the idiosyncratic short stories and innovative dramatic forms he refined to such a level of artistry.
This preoccupation with documentary, expository, and artistic form is arguably the most defining by-product of Chekhov’s commitment to more than one line of inquiry. It is surely the hallmark of his best-known work: it conjures up the Akathist Hymn5 we long to hear in “Easter Eve” (1886), the psychiatric case history that structures “A Nervous Breakdown” (1889), the Gospel story that both moves and betrays in “The Student” (1895), the error-ridden telegram that brings sad tidings in “The Darling” (1899), the Christmas letter that fails—or, by some miracle, succeeds—in establishing contact “At Christmastime” (1900), the parable (of the prodigal son) that doesn’t hold up in “The Bride” (1903), along with the innumerable other verbal artifacts (anecdotes, arias, autopsy reports, calendars, caricatures, equations, laments, lectures, ledgers, legends, math problems, moral exempla, newspaper clippings, property assessments, psalms, saints’ lives, sermons, songs, syllogisms, transcripts, and a wide variety of liturgical offerings) that underlie Chekhov’s work throughout.