“Splendidly punted!” said the players. Chekalinsky shuffled the cards afresh, and the game went on as usual.
Hermann went out of his mind, and is now confined in room Number 17 of the Obukhov Hospital. He never answers any questions, but he constantly mutters with unusual rapidity: “Three, seven, ace!” “Three, seven, queen!”
Lizaveta Ivanovna has married a very amiable young man, a son of the former steward of the old Countess. He is in the service of the State somewhere, and is in receipt of a good income. Lizaveta is also supporting a poor relative.
Tomsky has been promoted to the rank of captain, and has become the husband of the Princess Pauline.
First published in 1834, Alexander Pushkin’s The Queen Of Spades is considered one of his finest prose pieces and a definitive example of the rakish brand of antihero that came to define Russian literary fiction. A milieu of dissipation, gambling, misogyny and criminal activities all became hallmarks of Russian social fiction of the 19th century, due largely to works like Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades and Eugene Onegin.
“The Tavern Scene” by William Hogarth (1697–1764). This is the third in Hogarth’s eight painting cycle, The Rake’s Progress. It portrays the downfall of a young man of extravagant tastes, from his liberal education to his excessive drinking and carousing, to his eventual demise in an insane asylum.
Von Koren, Superman
Von Koren thins the herd
“I don’t understand, Kolya, what it is that you hope to gain from him,” said Samoylenko, no longer looking at the zoologist in anger but guiltily. “He’s the same kind of man, as everyone else. Of course, he’s not without his weaknesses, but he’s abreast of contemporary thought, he serves, benefits his motherland. Ten years ago, there was a little old envoy stationed here with us, a person of superior intellect. Here’s what he used to say …”
“Enough, enough!” the zoologist interrupted. “You say he serves. Well how does he serve? As a result of his appearance here, have things started running more smoothly or has the efficiency, integrity and politeness among functionaries improved? It’s just the opposite, with the authority of an intelligent, university educated man he has only sanctioned their libertine behavior. There are times when he’s industrious, such as the twentieth of the month when he receives his salary, every other day he drags his shoes around the house and tries his best to impart onto himself the illusion that he’s doing the Russian government a tremendous favor by living in the Caucasus. No, Alexander Davidich, don’t stand up for him. You have not been earnest from beginning to end. If you really did love him and considered him a close friend, there would be no way that you could be so apathetic about his weaknesses, you wouldn’t kowtow to them, you would try to neutralize him for his own good.”
“What’s that?”
“Neutralize him. But since he is incorrigible, there’s only one way of neutralizing him …”
Von Koren drew a finger across his throat.
“Or we can drown him, perhaps.” he continued. “For the good of all mankind and in their own respective interests, such people must be annihilated. It’s necessary.”
“What are you saying?!” muttered Samoylenko, rising and casting his shocked expression on the calm, cold face of the zoologist. “Deacon, what is he saying? Are you out of your mind?”
“I don’t stand firm on capital punishment.” Von Koren said. “If it’s been proven to be harmful, then come up with something else. Since we can’t annihilate Laevsky, then let’s quarantine him, disenfranchise him, send him to hard labor …”
“What are you saying?” Samoylenko recoiled. “With pepper, with pepper!” he shouted in a desperate voice noticing that the Deacon was eating stuffed squash without pepper. “You’re a man of superior intellect, what are you saying?! You want to give our friend, a proud, intelligent man, over to hard labor?!”
“If he’s proud, then he’ll resist—they’ll have to shackle him!”
Samoylenko could not say a single word, all he could do was fidget his fingers, the Deacon took one look at his dumbfounded and in all actuality, funny face and burst into laughter.
“We can stop talking about this,” the zoologist said. “But remember one thing, Alexander Davidich, primitive mankind was protected from the likes of Laevsky by the battle for survival and natural selection; now our culture has significantly weakened the battle and natural selection and we ourselves must take on the responsibility of annihilating the weak and the worthless, or else, when Laevsky reproduces, civilization will collapse, and mankind will completely deteriorate. We will be to blame.”
“If it is people who are doing the drowning and the hanging,” Samoylenko said, “then to hell with your civilization, to hell with mankind! To hell with it! Here’s what I’d like to say to you: you are well-educated, a man of superior intellect and the pride of your motherland, but the Germans ruined you. Yes, the Germans! The Germans!
Ever since he’d left Dorpat1 where he was educated in medicine Samoylenko rarely saw Germans, nor had he read a single German book but in his opinion, all the vice in politics and science transpired as a result of the Germans. He, himself, couldn’t explain where he’d gotten this idea from, but he held onto it dearly.
“Yes, the Germans!” he repeated one more time. “Let’s go have tea.”
—from The Duel by Anton Chekhov. Von Koren’s philosophy of Social Darwinism and his belief that man is weakened by a naïve, coddling society, clash violently with Laevsky’s lazy egoism. Laevsky and Von Koren trade slanders via their proxy Samoylenko. Their words serve as an accelerant to their mutual dislike, creating a parallel duel to the one they actually fight.
The Survival of The Fittest
Yet a further origin of moral dictates is to be recognized as having arisen simultaneously. Habits of conformity to rules of conduct have generated sentiments adjusted to such rules. The discipline of social life has produced in men conceptions and emotions which, irrespective of supposed divine commands, and irrespective of observed consequences, issue in certain degrees of liking for conduct favouring social welfare and aversion to conduct at variance with it. Manifestly such a moulding of human nature has been furthered by survival of the fittest; since groups of men having feelings least adapted to social requirements must, other things equal, have tended to disappear before groups of men having feelings most adapted to them.
The effects of moral sentiments thus arising are shown among races partially civilized. Cook says:—
The Otaheitans “have a knowledge of right and wrong from the mere dictates of natural conscience; and involuntarily condemn themselves when they do that to others, which they would condemn others for doing to them.”
So too that moral sentiments were influential during early stages of some civilized races, proof is yielded by ancient Indian books. In the Mahabharata, Draupadi complains of the hard lot of her righteous husband, and charges the Deity with injustice; but is answered by Yudishthira:—
“Thou utterest infidel sentiments. I do not act from a desire to gain the recompense of my works. I give what I ought to give … Whether reward accrues to me or not, I do to the best of my power what a man should do.… It is on duty alone that my thoughts are fixed, and this, too, naturally. The man who seeks to make of righteousness a gainful merchandise, is low. The man who seeks to milk righteousness does not obtain its reward.… Do not doubt about righteousness he who does so is on the way to be a born brute.”