ACT TWO
page 476 / Replace: The FIRST GUEST yawns.
with: FIRST GUEST (to the young lady beside him). What, ma’am?
YOUNG LADY. Tell me a story.
FIRST GUEST. What am I supposed to tell you?
YOUNG LADY. Well, something funny.
FIRST GUEST. Funny? (After a moment’s thought.) A man came up to another man and sees—there’s a dog sitting there, you understand. (Laughs.) So he asks, “What’s your dog’s name?” And the other man says, “Liqueurs.” (Roars with laughter.) Liqueurs . . . Get it? Like-yours . . .
YOUNG LADY. Like?
FIRST GUEST. Liqueurs.
YOUNG LADY. There’s nothing funny about that.
THIRD GUEST. That’s an old joke . . . (Yawns.) (Censor 1889)
page 477 / Replace:(Quickly exits into the garden.)
with: (Quickly exits to the terrace and stops near the card table. To Yegorushka.) How much did you put down? What did you put down? Wait . . . thirty-eight multiplied by eight . . . makes . . . eight times eight . . . Ah, the hell with it! . . . (Goes into the garden.) (Censor 1889)
page 485 / After: I’m a low-life too and a slave owner. — Nikolay doesn’t stay home nights—he’s a low-life too: it means he tortures his wife so as to put her in her grave and marry a rich woman. (Censor 1889)
page 488 / After: A waste of perfectly good sugar. — I’ll take it away, and let Matryona finish it. (Censor 1889)
ACT THREE
page 494 / Replace: A virtuoso!
with: A virtuoso . . . every day he generates thousands of projects, tears the stars out of the sky, but never makes a profit . . . He never has a penny in his pocket . . .
LEBEDEV. Art for art’s sake . . . (Censor 1889; Northern Herald)
page 498 / After the stage direction: Laughter. —
LEBEDEV. Why, he’s so addicted to card playing, the dear heart, that instead of good-bye he says pass . . . (Censor 1889; Northern Herald)
page 499 / After: (Greets them.) — I went through all the rooms, and there’s that doctor, like he’s been eating loco-weed, he bugged his eyes at me, and — “What’ya want? Get outta here . . . You’ll give the patient a turn,” he says . . . As if it’s that easy . . . (Censor 1889)
page 502 / After: a George Sand! — I thought only Borkin had great ideas in his head, but now it seems . . . I’m going, I’m going . . . (Exits.) (Censor 1889)
page 503 / After: farming, district schools, projects, — speeches, cheese-making that failed, a stud farm, magazine articles, plenty of mistakes . . . (Censor 1889])
page 503 / Replace: At the age of twenty . . . how else can you explain this lassitude?
with: All us Russians at twenty and twenty-five don’t get excited in moderation, we plunge into the fire and mindlessly squander our strength, and nature punishes us for this cruelly: at thirty we’re already old and worn out. (Censor 1889; Northern Herald)
page 504 / After: brains or hands or feet — as if it weren’t Ivanov inside me, but an old, sick horse . . . (Censor 1889)
page 507 / After: Have you indeed? — Well, if it’s come to that, then know that I love your wife! I love her as intensely as I hate you! That’s my right and that’s my privilege! When I first saw her torment, my heart couldn’t stand it and . . . (Censor 1889; Northern Herald)
page 508 / After: do a valiant deed! — The distinguishing feature of young Russian women is always the fact that they can’t tell the difference between a good painting and a caricature. (Censor 1889)
page 509 / After: but bellyachers and psychopaths — Ah, my little crackpot! What are you laughing at? You’re too young to teach me and save me. Little crackpot!
SASHA. If you don’t mind, what a thing to say! Really, this won’t do at all!
IVANOV. You are, my little crackpot!
SASHA. Can we do without the sarcasm?
IVANOV (shaking his head). We cannot!
SASHA. All right then! We know how to punish you. How about getting a move on! (Shoves his shoulder, then pulls him by the arm with all her might.) Move! Lord, what a heavy lummox! Get a move on, Oblomov!
IVANOV. No, I won’t stir from this spot. The likes of you, dear girl, won’t get me to budge. You can try with all your might and even send for your dear mamma to help! No, madam, it takes far more strength. A whole houseful of widows and a girl’s boarding school won’t move me from this spot.
SASHA. Oof, I’m out of breath . . . I wish you were an empty vessel!
IVANOV. There now, you shameless hussy, that’ll teach you to save people! Oh you . . . dark-eyed thing! (Censor 1889; Northern Herald)
page 509 / After: Nothing more! — Eh, feed me to the wolves, if only I could fumigate the sniveling brat out of myself, I might be a real man! Watch out, here comes the train! (Chases Sasha.) Choo-choo!
SASHA (jumps on to the sofa). Get away, get away, get away!
IVANOV. Oh frailty, thy name is woman! (Roars with laughter.) (Censor 1889; Northern Herald)
page 509 / After: what a ridiculous numbskull! — You know, in the reeds along the Dnieper there nests a certain bird — a grayish, very sullen, pitiful little thing, and it’s called a bittern. It sits all day in the reeds, dolefully going: boo-hoo! boo-hoo! Like a cow locked up in a barn. That’s what I’m like. I sit by myself in the reeds and (Censor 1889)
ACT FOUR
page 516 / After: I’m not talking on my own behalf, but your mother insisted. — Listen. Since the best man hasn’t got here yet and since we still haven’t spoken the benediction over you, to avoid any misunderstanding, you should know once and for all that we . . . I mean not we, but your mother . . . (Censor 1889)
page 522 / After: wherever I go I bring along boredom, depression, dissatisfaction — My life has become loathsome to me, but that alone does not give me the right to leach the color out of other people’s lives. (Censor 1889)
page 522 / After: I have no other names for them — So wherein lies my salvation? Tell me, in love? That’s an old gimmick! Love is that extra stab in the back; it complicates spiritual uplift, it adds a new tedium to tedium. Winning two hundred thousand? The same thing. Stimulating and uplifting my spirit can be achieved only by heaven itself, but the stimulation is followed by the hangover, and my spirit falls even lower than before. You must understand this and not hide from yourself! Our old friend, depression, has only one salvation, and, unfortunately, we are too intelligent for that salvation. (Censor 1889; Northern Herald; Plays)
page 523 / After: You don’t have a mother, sisters, friends . . . — Alone, alone, like an orphan. Whom shall I throw you at? (Censor 1889; Northern Herald; Plays)