The Brute
"Appearances, I admit, can be deceptive. In appearance, a woman may be all poetry and romance, goddess and angel, muslin and fluff. To look at her exterior is to be transported to heaven. But I have looked at her interior, Mrs. Popov, and what did i find there- in her soul? A crocodile. And, what is more revolting, a crocodile with an illusion, a crocodile that imagines tender sentiments are its own special province, a crocodile that thinks itself queen of the realm of love!
Hilarious! What a caricature of the female! Ha! And he's not that wrong!
Thought the story was very adorable. How word can say the exact opposite of what one feels at the moment, as an attempt to hide oneself. How one's principles and beliefs can be unexpectedly shaken, just as if they never existed, and one is really the opposite of who one thinks they are. And shaken in such a glimpse of a second! As if years of principles could stand against a fraction of a moment!
The Harmfulness of Tobacco
"When she's in a bad mood,s eh calls me dumb bell. Or viper. Or Satan."
I laughed so hard when I read this- i love the emphatic sentences! This was as funny as Gogol's play. How beautifully the element of surprise is used here- to create such ironic humor. This is such a genius parody- depicting such weak men. How pathetic such men are. And i love how the quote so comically shows the weakness, of the men under tyrannical rule- their wife. They are so helpless, and so pathetic! Oh so comic! Wonderful play!
"And to stop, somewhere far away, in the middle of a field, to stand there under the wide heavens like a tree, a post, a scarecrow, and watch the bright, gentle moon overhead and forget, just forget..."
Even he was capable of fantasizing.
Swan Song
"I'm alone, like the wind in the fields."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Goodness, Chekhov must've been such a great person to be around. Such wit and humor...Too bad he is dead.
--
Pub by Grove Press
Showing posts with label Chekhov. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chekhov. Show all posts
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Chekhov Stories 2
My Life
Portrays how people are not sincere sometimes...and just do things for "kicks". Even if they are momentarily convinced that a certain thing is what they want, they'll soon change their minds. That is because of the way they've been brought up. Like the character Masha, she had had everything from the beginning. Anything she wanted, she instantly got. Chekhov stresses this. So then, she could afford to play with life, be rich, or play the part of the peasant.
"Our meeting, this marriage of ours, was only an episode of which this alive, richly endowed woman would have many in her life. All that was best in the world, as I've already said, was at her disposal and came to her perfectly gratis, and even ideas and fashionable intellectual trends served her her pleasure, diversifying her life, and I was merely a coachman who drove her from one enthusiasm to another. Now she no longer needed me, she would flutter off, and I would be left alone."
And yet, she did this without guilt, fully convinced she had done right, and that that life was what she really wanted. Superficial people. These people take everything lightly, as if life was sort of a game...now peasants, cannot afford to be superficial. Some they may very well be scoundrels, but not insecure people, at the core. Chekhov also emphasized this, that what the peasants most believed in was truth.
"However much the muzhik looks like a clumsy beast as he follows his plow, and however much he befuddles himself with vodka, still, on looking closer, you feel that there is in him something necessary and very important that is lacking, for instance, in Masha and the doctor- namely, he believes that the chief thing on earth is truth, and that his salvation and that of all people lies in truth alone, and therefore he loves justice more than anything else in the world."
It is also beautiful how he sees all this, sees the errors of his wife's judgment, her superficiality, and accepts it. He not only does that, but he still loves her, even though he knows that it doesn't make much of a difference. Truthful people do not think life is a game, but it's about survival. And through survival comes suffering, which is the only way to live life rightly. The only way to know God. For how does one know whether God exists, if they have no need for Him? That man, the main character, was closer to God than Masha, with all her religion...
Ariadne
"Of course, a woman's a woman and a man's a man, but can all that be as simple in our day as it was before the Flood, and can it be that I, a cultivated man endowed with a complex spiritual organisation, ought to explain the intense attraction I feel towards a woman simply by the fact that her bodily function is different from mine? Oh, how awful that would be! I want to believe that in his struggle with nature the genius of man has struggled with physical love too, as with an enemy, and that, if he has not conquered it, he has at least succeeded in tangling it in a net- work of illusions of brotherhood and love; and for me, at any rate, it is no longer a simple instinct of my animal nature as with a dog or a toad, but is real love, and every embrace is spiritualised by a pure impulse of the heart and respect for the woman. In reality, a disgust for the animal instinct has been trained for ages in hundreds of generations; it is inherited by me in my blood and forms part of my nature, and if I poetize love, is not that as natural in our day as my ear's not being able to move and my not being covered in fur? I fancy that's how the majority of civilised people look at it, so that the absence of the moral, poetic element in love is treated in these as a phenomenon, as a sign of atavism; they say it is a symptom of degeneracy, of many forms of insanity. It is true that, in poetizing love, love assumed in those qualities that are lacking in them, and that is a source of continual mistakes and continual miseries for us. But to my thinking it is better, even so; that is, it is better to suffer than to find complacency on the basis of woman being woman and man being man."
Marvelous! Poetical love is necessary, love cannot truly exist without it. It is as if love goes off into the spiritual realms by the help of this "poetizing". As if it develops and transforms into something that is beyond us, beyond our feelings and emotions, and penetrates into our souls.
"The pure, gracious images which my imagination, warmed by love, had cherished for so long, my plans, my hopes, my memories, my ideas of love and of woman- all now were jeering an putting out their tongues at me."
An example of a man's illusion of woman, and how he worshiped the concept of woman. These ideas seem positively absurd in reality. Reality easily proves us disillusioned people wrong. And how hard it is to get to the point of complete disillusionment! How hard our imaginations have to work to lie to our so-rational mind!
It was interesting though, how he was willing to suffer and make mistakes, (which is ultimately what he did) and yet, he couldn't wait to be free of her. Is that perhaps because he didn't lover
anymore?
The Seagull
"One must depict life not as it is, and not as it ought to be, but as we see it in our dreams."
----
1. My Life- Pub. Everyman's Library
2. Ariadne- Pub. The Macmillan Co. 1916
Portrays how people are not sincere sometimes...and just do things for "kicks". Even if they are momentarily convinced that a certain thing is what they want, they'll soon change their minds. That is because of the way they've been brought up. Like the character Masha, she had had everything from the beginning. Anything she wanted, she instantly got. Chekhov stresses this. So then, she could afford to play with life, be rich, or play the part of the peasant.
"Our meeting, this marriage of ours, was only an episode of which this alive, richly endowed woman would have many in her life. All that was best in the world, as I've already said, was at her disposal and came to her perfectly gratis, and even ideas and fashionable intellectual trends served her her pleasure, diversifying her life, and I was merely a coachman who drove her from one enthusiasm to another. Now she no longer needed me, she would flutter off, and I would be left alone."
And yet, she did this without guilt, fully convinced she had done right, and that that life was what she really wanted. Superficial people. These people take everything lightly, as if life was sort of a game...now peasants, cannot afford to be superficial. Some they may very well be scoundrels, but not insecure people, at the core. Chekhov also emphasized this, that what the peasants most believed in was truth.
"However much the muzhik looks like a clumsy beast as he follows his plow, and however much he befuddles himself with vodka, still, on looking closer, you feel that there is in him something necessary and very important that is lacking, for instance, in Masha and the doctor- namely, he believes that the chief thing on earth is truth, and that his salvation and that of all people lies in truth alone, and therefore he loves justice more than anything else in the world."
It is also beautiful how he sees all this, sees the errors of his wife's judgment, her superficiality, and accepts it. He not only does that, but he still loves her, even though he knows that it doesn't make much of a difference. Truthful people do not think life is a game, but it's about survival. And through survival comes suffering, which is the only way to live life rightly. The only way to know God. For how does one know whether God exists, if they have no need for Him? That man, the main character, was closer to God than Masha, with all her religion...
Ariadne
"Of course, a woman's a woman and a man's a man, but can all that be as simple in our day as it was before the Flood, and can it be that I, a cultivated man endowed with a complex spiritual organisation, ought to explain the intense attraction I feel towards a woman simply by the fact that her bodily function is different from mine? Oh, how awful that would be! I want to believe that in his struggle with nature the genius of man has struggled with physical love too, as with an enemy, and that, if he has not conquered it, he has at least succeeded in tangling it in a net- work of illusions of brotherhood and love; and for me, at any rate, it is no longer a simple instinct of my animal nature as with a dog or a toad, but is real love, and every embrace is spiritualised by a pure impulse of the heart and respect for the woman. In reality, a disgust for the animal instinct has been trained for ages in hundreds of generations; it is inherited by me in my blood and forms part of my nature, and if I poetize love, is not that as natural in our day as my ear's not being able to move and my not being covered in fur? I fancy that's how the majority of civilised people look at it, so that the absence of the moral, poetic element in love is treated in these as a phenomenon, as a sign of atavism; they say it is a symptom of degeneracy, of many forms of insanity. It is true that, in poetizing love, love assumed in those qualities that are lacking in them, and that is a source of continual mistakes and continual miseries for us. But to my thinking it is better, even so; that is, it is better to suffer than to find complacency on the basis of woman being woman and man being man."
Marvelous! Poetical love is necessary, love cannot truly exist without it. It is as if love goes off into the spiritual realms by the help of this "poetizing". As if it develops and transforms into something that is beyond us, beyond our feelings and emotions, and penetrates into our souls.
"The pure, gracious images which my imagination, warmed by love, had cherished for so long, my plans, my hopes, my memories, my ideas of love and of woman- all now were jeering an putting out their tongues at me."
An example of a man's illusion of woman, and how he worshiped the concept of woman. These ideas seem positively absurd in reality. Reality easily proves us disillusioned people wrong. And how hard it is to get to the point of complete disillusionment! How hard our imaginations have to work to lie to our so-rational mind!
It was interesting though, how he was willing to suffer and make mistakes, (which is ultimately what he did) and yet, he couldn't wait to be free of her. Is that perhaps because he didn't lover
anymore?
The Seagull
"One must depict life not as it is, and not as it ought to be, but as we see it in our dreams."
----
1. My Life- Pub. Everyman's Library
2. Ariadne- Pub. The Macmillan Co. 1916
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
The Lady with the Little Dog by Anton Chekhov
"In Oreanda they sat on a bench not far from church, looked down o the sea, and were silent. Yalta was barely visible through the morning mist, white clouds stood motionless on the mountaintops. The leaves of the trees did not stir, cicadas called, and the monotonous, dull noise of the sea, coming from below, spoke of the peace, of the eternal sleep that awaits us. So it had sounded below when neither Yalta nor Oreanda were there, so it sounded now and would go on sounding with the same dull indifference when we are no longer there. And in this constancy, in this utter indifference to the life and death of each of us there perhaps lies hidden the pledge of our eternal salvation, the unceasing perfection. Sitting beside the young woman, who looked so beautiful in the dawn, appeased and enchanted by the view of this magical decor- sea, mountains, clouds, the open sky- Gurov reflected that, essentially, if you thought of it, everything was beautiful in this world, everything except for what we ourselves think and do when we forget the higher goals of being and our human dignity."
This description here is incredible, how Chekhov portrays the "utter indifference" of the sea... how it has lived before, and will live after us. This utter indifference is such an important concept when it comes to nature, and nature's view towards humanity. They are indifferent to humans...and will easily live without us. This indifference makes nature the more mystifying, not having to depend on any living thing but their instinct. This utter indifference shall lead to perfection as Chekhov says, that if we become like nature, then we shall indeed be complete, for nature itself is complete, and therefore perfect.
Now, becoming like nature- not indifferent to our humanity, and become animals, but embracing the "higher goals and our human dignity". The height of humanity is to be the height of our nature, and therefore perfect. Our "salvation". Everything else is rotten humanity, that is not any good but to destroy the beautiful, and distort our purpose of achieving this goal.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is one of the best, if not the best of Chekhov's works.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Chekhov Stories-
The Kiss
"He looked down at the river which sped swiftly, murmuring almost inaudibly against the bathing-box piles. Near the left bank glowed the moon's ruddy reflection, overrun by ripples which stretched it, tore it in tow, and, it seemed, would sweep it away as things and shavings are swept."
Beautiful imagery-- who would think to write such an idea about the moon reflecting on the water? Marvelous.
La Gigale
"Ryabovsky, who stood beside her, was telling her that the black shadow on the water were not shadows, but a dream, and when gazing at those bewitching waters, with their fantastic glitter, when looking at that fathomless sky and those gloomy pensive banks, which spoke to them of the troubles of life and of the existence of something higher, something eternal and glorious, it would be well to forget oneself- to die- to become a memory. The past was mean and uninteresting, the future was insignificant, but this beautiful night, unique in a lifetime, would soon be over, it would be blended with eternity- why live at all?"
And the moments will float away, no matter how close they are to the "beautiful and eternal", as Dostoevsky put it. The concept of forgetting oneself is really marvelous, to blend into the beautiful, the "eternal and glorious", and to become part of the past... And so the question Chekhov puts, "why live at all?" If everything fades into the past that is "mean and uninteresting", and nothing last, why bother to live if nothing stays alive with you? The optimistic would say that the moment itself is something to live for, for moments will always come, fresher than the ones before. The pessimistic would fade along with the memories... I think the fading, the deadening of the past memories helps bring contrast to the fresh, green memories that are blooming in the Field of the Future. Yes, a little optimistic. But thinking pessimistically in this case, only asks us to die in the end, for really, there would be nothing to live for, if one is completely dependent on the here and now.
Verotchka
"Day-dreaming girls who spend whole days lying down or in desultory reading, who suffer from tedium and melancholy, usually dress without care. But if Nature has given them taste and the instinct of beauty, this negligence in dress has often a charm of its own."
I do like that there is a sort of peculiar nature when it comes to these "day-dreaming girls". They do prefer to be melancholy and lazy, and yet, that is how they thrive- how their imaginations take wind and fly beyond the horizon, the stars. These creatures are created to ponder the novels and concepts, while life is being lived without them. And yet, they live beyond this reality, in a world all of their own.
The Duel
"It seemed to her that all her bad memories had left her head and were walking in the darkness beside her and breathing heavily, while she herself, like a fly that had fallen into ink, forced herself to crawl down the sidewalk, staining Laevsky's side and arm with black."
Beautifully said; how her idea, even her "bad memories" became alive and "left her head". What will come out of ours, if this would be possible? Would our entire earth be roamed by the ghosts that haunt us in our minds?
"He dislodged his own dim star from the sky, it fell, and its traces mingled with the night's darkness; it would never return to the sky, because life is given only once and is not repeated."
The traces mingled with the night's darkness, as if it has never been... never existed. Change, continuation, can be a cruel thing.
At the Manor
"But gradually, and unnoticed by himself, he passed on to abuse and calumny, and, what is more surprising, delivered himself to severe criticisms of science, art, and morals, although it was twenty years since he had read a book, been farther than the government town, or had any channel for learning what was going on in the world around him. Even when he sat down to write a congratulatory letter he invariably ended by abusing something or somebody. And as he reflected upon this, it seemed all the more strange, since he knew himself in reality to be a sensitive, lachrymose old man. It seemed almost as if he were possessed by an unclean spirit which filled him against his will with hatred and grumbling."
It is extremely strange, that something takes possession of us, and makes us do things that we would never do in "reality". As if someone else is living our lives...getting angry, having dramatic reaction towards trifles. It is as if we consciously do the things that we would never do... And for whose purpose does this "unclean spirit" fill us with "hatred and grumbling"? Who benefits from this all?
The story of an unknown man
"I believe that for the coming generations, it will be easier and clearer; they will have our experience at their service. But one wants to live independently of the future generations and not merely for them. Life is given only once, and one would like to live it cheerfully, meaningfully, beautifully. One would like to play a prominent, independent, noble role; one would like to make history, so that those same generations would have no right to say of each of us; "He was a nonentity," or even worse than that...I do not believe in the purposefulness and necessity of what happens around us, but what does that necessity have to do with me? Why should my 'I' perish?"
Every single life that has passed mattered, no matter how insignificant...it was needed to make up generations, history, humanity.
"He looked down at the river which sped swiftly, murmuring almost inaudibly against the bathing-box piles. Near the left bank glowed the moon's ruddy reflection, overrun by ripples which stretched it, tore it in tow, and, it seemed, would sweep it away as things and shavings are swept."
Beautiful imagery-- who would think to write such an idea about the moon reflecting on the water? Marvelous.
La Gigale
"Ryabovsky, who stood beside her, was telling her that the black shadow on the water were not shadows, but a dream, and when gazing at those bewitching waters, with their fantastic glitter, when looking at that fathomless sky and those gloomy pensive banks, which spoke to them of the troubles of life and of the existence of something higher, something eternal and glorious, it would be well to forget oneself- to die- to become a memory. The past was mean and uninteresting, the future was insignificant, but this beautiful night, unique in a lifetime, would soon be over, it would be blended with eternity- why live at all?"
And the moments will float away, no matter how close they are to the "beautiful and eternal", as Dostoevsky put it. The concept of forgetting oneself is really marvelous, to blend into the beautiful, the "eternal and glorious", and to become part of the past... And so the question Chekhov puts, "why live at all?" If everything fades into the past that is "mean and uninteresting", and nothing last, why bother to live if nothing stays alive with you? The optimistic would say that the moment itself is something to live for, for moments will always come, fresher than the ones before. The pessimistic would fade along with the memories... I think the fading, the deadening of the past memories helps bring contrast to the fresh, green memories that are blooming in the Field of the Future. Yes, a little optimistic. But thinking pessimistically in this case, only asks us to die in the end, for really, there would be nothing to live for, if one is completely dependent on the here and now.
Verotchka
"Day-dreaming girls who spend whole days lying down or in desultory reading, who suffer from tedium and melancholy, usually dress without care. But if Nature has given them taste and the instinct of beauty, this negligence in dress has often a charm of its own."
I do like that there is a sort of peculiar nature when it comes to these "day-dreaming girls". They do prefer to be melancholy and lazy, and yet, that is how they thrive- how their imaginations take wind and fly beyond the horizon, the stars. These creatures are created to ponder the novels and concepts, while life is being lived without them. And yet, they live beyond this reality, in a world all of their own.
The Duel
"It seemed to her that all her bad memories had left her head and were walking in the darkness beside her and breathing heavily, while she herself, like a fly that had fallen into ink, forced herself to crawl down the sidewalk, staining Laevsky's side and arm with black."
Beautifully said; how her idea, even her "bad memories" became alive and "left her head". What will come out of ours, if this would be possible? Would our entire earth be roamed by the ghosts that haunt us in our minds?
"He dislodged his own dim star from the sky, it fell, and its traces mingled with the night's darkness; it would never return to the sky, because life is given only once and is not repeated."
The traces mingled with the night's darkness, as if it has never been... never existed. Change, continuation, can be a cruel thing.
At the Manor
"But gradually, and unnoticed by himself, he passed on to abuse and calumny, and, what is more surprising, delivered himself to severe criticisms of science, art, and morals, although it was twenty years since he had read a book, been farther than the government town, or had any channel for learning what was going on in the world around him. Even when he sat down to write a congratulatory letter he invariably ended by abusing something or somebody. And as he reflected upon this, it seemed all the more strange, since he knew himself in reality to be a sensitive, lachrymose old man. It seemed almost as if he were possessed by an unclean spirit which filled him against his will with hatred and grumbling."
It is extremely strange, that something takes possession of us, and makes us do things that we would never do in "reality". As if someone else is living our lives...getting angry, having dramatic reaction towards trifles. It is as if we consciously do the things that we would never do... And for whose purpose does this "unclean spirit" fill us with "hatred and grumbling"? Who benefits from this all?
The story of an unknown man
"I believe that for the coming generations, it will be easier and clearer; they will have our experience at their service. But one wants to live independently of the future generations and not merely for them. Life is given only once, and one would like to live it cheerfully, meaningfully, beautifully. One would like to play a prominent, independent, noble role; one would like to make history, so that those same generations would have no right to say of each of us; "He was a nonentity," or even worse than that...I do not believe in the purposefulness and necessity of what happens around us, but what does that necessity have to do with me? Why should my 'I' perish?"
Every single life that has passed mattered, no matter how insignificant...it was needed to make up generations, history, humanity.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
