The Shooting Party

THE SHOOTING PARTY

ANTON PAVLOVICH CHEKHOV, the son of a former serf, was born in 1860 in Taganrog, a port on the Sea of Azov. He received a classical education at the Taganrog Gymnasium, then in 1879 he went to Moscow, where he entered the medical faculty of the university, graduating in 1884. During his university years he supported his family by contributing humorous stories and sketches to magazines. He published his first volume of stories, Motley Stories, in 1886 and a year later his second volume, In the Twilight, for which he was awarded the Pushkin Prize. His most famous stories were written after his return from the convict island of Sakhalin, which he visited in 1890. For five years he lived on his small country estate near Moscow, but when his health began to fail he moved to the Crimea. After 1900, the rest of his life was spent at Yalta, where he met Tolstoy and Gorky. He wrote very few stories during the last years of his life, devoting most of his time to a thorough revision of his stories, of which the first comprehensive edition was published in 1899–1901, and to the writing of his great plays. In 1901 Chekhov married Olga Knipper, an actress of the Moscow Art Theatre. He died of consumption in 1904.

RONALD WILKS studied Russian language and literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, after training as a Naval interpreter, and later Russian literature at London University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1972. Among his translations for Penguin Classics are My Childhood, My Apprenticeship and My Universities by Gorky, Diary of a Madman by Gogol, filmed for Irish Television, The Golovlyov Family by Saltykov-Shchedrin, How Much Land Does a Man Need? by Tolstoy, Tales of Belkin and Other Prose Writings by Pushkin, and six other volumes of stories by Chekhov: The Party and Other Stories, The Kiss and Other Stories, The Fiancée and Other Stories, The Duel and Other Stories, The Steppe and Other Stories and Ward No. 6 and Other Stories. He has also translated The Little Demon by Sologub for Penguin.

JOHN SUTHERLAND has edited Wilkie Collins’s Armadale, William Thackeray’s The History of Henry Esmond and Anthony Trollope’s The Eustace Diamonds, Phineas Finn and Rachel Ray for Penguin Classics. He is now Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English at University College London. His other publications include The Longman Companion to English Literature, Mrs Humphry Ward and Is Heathcliff a Murderer?, a collection of puzzle-pieces on Victorian fiction.

ANTON CHEKHOV

The Shooting Party

Translated with Notes by RONALD WILKS
With an Introduction by JOHN SUTHERLAND

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First published 2004
4

Translation, Chronology, A Note on the Text and Notes © Ronald Wilks, 2004

Introduction © John Sutherland, 2004

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The moral rights of the translator and editors have been asserted

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EISBN: 978–0–141–90681–2

Contents

Chronology

Introduction

Further Reading

A Note on the Text

The Shooting Party

Notes

Chronology

1836 Gogol’s The Government Inspector

1852 Turgenev’s Sketches from a Hunter’s Album

1860 Dostoyevsky’s Notes From the House of the Dead (1860–61)

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov born on 17 January at Taganrog, a port on the Sea of Azov, the third son of Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov, a grocer, and Yevgeniya Yakovlevna, née Morozova

1861 Emancipation of the serfs by Alexander II. Formation of revolutionary Land and Liberty Movement

1862 Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons

1863–4 Polish revolt. Commencement of intensive industrialization; spread of the railways; banks established; factories built. Elective District Councils (zemstvos) set up; judicial reform Tolstoy’s The Cossacks (1863)

1865 Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1864) by Leskov, a writer much admired by Chekhov

1866 Attempted assassination of Alexander II by Karakozov Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment

1867 Emile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin

1868 Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot

Chekhov begins to attend Taganrog Gymnasium after wasted year at a Greek school

1869 Tolstoy’s War and Peace

1870 Municipal government reform

1870–71 Franco-Prussian War

1873 Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1873–7)

Chekhov sees local productions of Hamlet and Gogol’s The Government Inspector

1875 Chekhov writes and produces humorous magazine for his brothers in Moscow, The Stammerer, containing sketches of life in Taganrog

1876 Chekhov’s father declared bankrupt and flees to Moscow, followed by family except Chekhov, who is left in Taganrog to complete schooling. Reads Buckle, Hugo and Schopenhauer

1877–8 War with Turkey

1877 Chekhov’s first visit to Moscow; his family living in great hardship

1878 Chekhov writes dramatic juvenilia: full-length drama Fatherlessness (MS destroyed), comedy Diamond Cut Diamond and vaudeville Why Hens Cluck (none published)

1879 Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (1879–80)

Tolstoy’s Confession (1879–82)

Chekhov matriculates from Gymnasium with good grades.

Wins scholarship to Moscow University to study medicine Makes regular contributions to humorous magazine Alarm Clock

1880 General Loris-Melikov organizes struggle against terrorism Guy de Maupassant’s Boule de Suif

Chekhov introduced by artist brother Nikolay to landscape painter Levitan with whom has lifelong friendship

First short story, ‘A Letter from the Don Landowner Vladi-mirovich N to His Learned Neighbour’, published in humorous magazine Dragonfly. More stories published in Dragonfly under pseudonyms, chiefly Antosha Chekhonte

1881 Assassination of Alexander II; reactionary, stifling regime of Alexander III begins

Sarah Bernhardt visits Moscow (Chekhov calls her acting ‘superficial’)

Chekhov continues to write very large numbers of humorous sketches for weekly magazines (until 1883). Becomes regular contributor to Nikolay Leykin’s Fragments, a St Petersburg weekly humorous magazine. Writes (1881–2) play now usually known as Platonov (discovered 1923), rejected by Maly Theatre; tries to destroy manuscript

1882 Student riots at St Petersburg and Kazan universities. More discrimination against Jews

Chekhov is able to support the family with scholarship money and earnings from contributions to humorous weeklies

1883 Tolstoy’s What I Believe

Chekhov gains practical experience at Chikino Rural Hospital

1884 Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck.J.-K. Huysmans’ À Rebours Chekhov graduates and becomes practising physician at Chikino. First signs of his tuberculosis in December

Six stories about the theatre published as Fairy-Tales of Melpomene. His crime novel, The Shooting Party, serialized in News of the Day

1885–6 Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886)

On first visit to St Petersburg, Chekhov begins friendship with very influential Aleksey Suvorin (1834–1912), editor of the highly regarded daily newspaper New Times. Chekhov has love affairs with Dunya Efros and Natalya Golden (later his sister-in-law). His TB is now unmistakable
Publishes more than 100 short stories. ‘The Requiem’ is the first story to appear under own name and his first in New Times (February 1886).