42 Chekhartma, correctly, chikhartma, is a Caucasian soup of lamb or chicken, flavored with coriander and saffron. Cheremsha may refer to either cheremitsa (masculine, Allium angulosum), the sharp-edged leek, or cheremitsa (feminine, Allium ursinum), wild garlic.
43 A folksong sung as accompaniment to vigorous dancing.
44 Meshchanka, literally, petty-bourgeois female, commoner. Natasha is a social inferior to the Prozorovs, who come from the gentry.
45 Sleigh rides, preferably in a troika, decorated with colored ribbons and bells, were a favorite pastime during Maslennitsa. The sleighs would travel in wide semicircles to commemorate the sun’s passage.
46 Latin: “oh, vain is human hope!” from Cicero, The Orator (III, ii).
47 Ferapont alludes to the burning of Moscow in 1812 during its occupation by Napoleon’s troops. No one knows for sure, but rumor had it that the Russians started the fire.
48 “In Act Three, of course, you can appear in a double-breasted uniform tunic, that’s right, but why in Act Two should you come into the drawing-room in a fur coat?” (Chekhov to Aleksandr Vishnevsky, January 17 [30], 1901).
49 Rhyming wordplay in Russian, “chyort by pobral . . . podral” (May the devil carry you off, may the devil thrash you soundly).
50 Latin: in wine lies truth.
51 Poland at this time was a vice-regency of the Russian Empire. Chita was far away in the opposite direction, the capital of the region of Transbaikal, Siberia, on the Chinese frontier.
52 In Russian schools, grades ran from five to one, with five being highest. In Chekhov’s original, Kulygin gives Chebutykin “Zero minus.”
53 “Chebutykin sings only the words ‘A fig for you and tell me how you like it . . .’ They’re the words from an operetta that was once put on at the Hermitage Theatre. I don’t remember the name . . . Chebutykin shouldn’t sing any more than that, otherwise his exit will take too long” (Chekhov to I. A. Tikhomirov, January 14, 1901).
54 Vershinin is singing the opening of Gremin’s aria in Chaikovsky’s opera Yevgeny Onegin (1877), from Pushkin’s verse novel.
55 “Vershinin pronounces ‘trom-tom-tom’ in the form of a question, and you in the form of an answer, and this strikes you as such an original joke that you pronounce this ‘trom-trom’ with a grin . . . She would utter ‘trom-trom’—and begin to laugh, but not loudly, just barely. You mustn’t create the same kind of character as [Yelena in] Uncle Vanya at this point, but someone younger and livelier. Remember that you’re easily amused, angered” (Chekhov to Olga Knipper, January 20, [February 2], 1901).
56 The moral of Ivan Krylov’s fable The Geese (1811), in which the barnyard fowl boast of their ancestors, the geese who saved Rome, but have no merits of their own.
57 Latin: the basic conjugation of the verb amare, to love: I love, thou lovest, he, she, or it loves, we love, you love, they love.
58 Latin: “I carry all my goods on my person,” Cicero in Paradoxa. Expression of a member of the family of the philosopher Bias fleeing their country before the Persians and refusing to take any worldly goods with him (ca. 570 B.C.).
59 “You write that in Act Three, Natasha, making the rounds of the house at night, puts out the lights and looks under the furniture for burglars. But, it seems to me, it would be better to have her walk across the stage in a straight line, without a glance at anyone or anything, à la Lady Macbeth, with a candle—something a bit tighter and more frightening” (Chekhov to Olga Knipper, January 2 [15], 1901).
60 “Masha’s confession in Act Three is not exactly a confession, but only a frank statement. Behave nervously but not despondently, no shouting, even smiling now and then and for the most part behave so that one can feel the weariness of the night. And so that one can feel that you are more intelligent than your sisters, you think yourself more intelligent, at least. As to ‘trom-tom-tom,’ do it your way” (Chekhov to Olga Knipper, January 21 [February 3], 1901).
61 Poprishchin, hero of Gogol’s story Diary of a Madman (1835), is a victim of unrequited love. He continually repeats the phrase “Never mind, never mind . . . be still.”
62 Polish: beloved, dearest.
63 A British music-hall song, accompanied by a high-kicking dance, which had a certain vogue on the Continent. In the Russian translation, it goes, “Tarara boom de-ay / I’m sitting on a curbstone / And weeping bitterly / Because I know so little.” The second verse is slightly racy. Compare Chekhov’s story “Volodya the Great and Volodya the Little” (1893).
64 Latin: a means of living, a temporary compromise.
65 The Russian joke is that chepukha (“nonsense,” “rot”) written out in Cyrillic script looks like a nonexistent but ostensible Latin word renixa.
66 A speaking name, since kozyr means “ace.”
67 The rule in Latin grammar that demands the use of the subjunctive mood in subordinate clauses beginning with the conjunction ut (that, so that). Chekhov had trouble with it as a schoolboy.
68 One of the decorations bestowed in pre-Revolutionary Russia on civil servants and military men. The least important, the Stanislas second class, was bestowed on Chekhov in 1899 for his work in educating the peasants.
69 Sentimental piano piece by the Polish composer T. Badarzewska-Baranovskaia (1838–1862), “La prière d’une vierge.” Anyone who could read a note could play it. In Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s opera The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1929), after it is played by a whore in a brothel, a customer sighs deeply and says, “Ah! that is eternal art.”
70 Familiar quotation from the poem “The Sail” (“Parus,” 1832), by Mikhail Lermontov. Chekhov quotes it also in The Wedding.
71 “[Chekhov] demanded that in the last monologue Andrey be very excited. ‘He should almost threaten the audience with his fists!’ ” (V. V. Luzhsky, Solntse Rossii 228/25 [1914]).
72 Bad French for “Don’t make any noise. Sophie is already asleep. You are a bear!”
73 The images are from the opening lines of Pushkin’s Ruslan and Lyudmila. See note 11. Masha changes the rhyme words “green oak” (dub zelyony) and “learned cat” (kot uchyony) to “green cat” (kot zelyony).
74 “Irina does not know that Tusenbach is off to fight a duel; but she surmises that something untoward happened the day before, which might have serious and therefore evil consequences. And whenever a woman surmises, she says ‘I knew it, I knew it’” (Chekhov to I. A. Tikhomirov, January 14 [27], 1901).
1 “Of course you’re a thousand times right, Tusenbach’s body should certainly not be shown; I felt that myself when I wrote and told you about it, if you recall” (Chekhov to Stanislavsky, January 15 [28], 1901).
THE EVILS OF TOBACCO, FINAL VERSION
Six distinct variants exist of this monologue, the more serious changes concomitant with the greater depth of psychology of Chekhov’s works throughout the 1890s. Over the course of the recension, Chekhov heightened the emotional tone of the monologue, refined the comedy, and increased the pathos. The speaker’s pseudo-scientific jargon became more attenuated, with a concurrent introduction of clichés.
The impetus for further revision may have come when, in 1898, Ya. Mer-pert, a Russian man of letters living in Paris, asked Chekhov for a one-act to be performed at an amateur recital. Although Chekhov asked his friends to send their plays instead, at the same time he made more revisions to Tobacco and presented it to his brother Ivan. In this version, a number of the grotesque details in the earlier variants are deleted. Nyukhin casts more aspersions on his unseen wife and reveals more pain at his enforced nullity. What Chekhov had earlier left the audience to deduce was now spelled out in tones of complaint. It was first performed by the writer A. I. Kuprin at a private club in Moscow in September 1901.