Massacre of Jews at Kishinev pogrom
Chekhov elected provisional president of Society of Lovers of Russian Literature
Completes ‘The Bride’ and the first draft of The Cherry Orchard. Arrives in Moscow for Art Theatre rehearsal of The Cherry Orchard; strong disagreement with Stanislavsky over its interpretation

1904   Assassination of Pleve, Minister of Interior, by Socialist revolutionaries. War with Japan
Chekhov dies of TB on 15 July at Badenweiler in the Black Forest (Germany)
Première of The Cherry Orchard at Moscow Art Theatre

NOTE ON TEXT

Chekhov’s stories (like most of the literature of the time) were not first published as separate books, but appeared in magazines or newspapers such as New Times, or in the thick journals, chiefly Russian Thought. Some of the stories were subsequently published in separate selections, such as Tales and Stories (1894).

In 1899 Chekhov made over the copyright of all his work (with the exception of the plays) to the publisher A. F. Marks in return for 75,000 roubles. Although the terms seemed favourable at the time, many of Chekhov’s friends felt he had been highly imprudent in signing the contract (Gorky unsuccessfully tried to get him to break the contract) as they considered the terms grossly inadequate. In addition the need to collate all the stories that had so far appeared in magazines and newspapers, together with meticulous editing and improving the material, taxed Chekhov sorely and was very time-consuming. The Marks edition was published in 1899–1901, in ten volumes, and reprinted in 1903. However, the main drawback of this edition was that the stories were not printed chronologically. The first scholarly edition, with full notes and commentary, was published in Moscow, 1944–51.

Between 1973 and 1983, the definitive thirty-volume edition, Polnoye Sobraniye Sochineniy i Pisem (Complete Collected Works and Letters) was published in Moscow, with extensive commentaries by leading Soviet Chekhov scholars. It is on this edition that these translations are based.

PATRONYMICS

Russian names consist of first name, patronymic and surname, the patronymic or middle name being derived from the father’s first name. For example, Chekhov’s middle name, Pavlovich, derives from his father’s first name, Pavel. In formal speech first name and patronymic are usual: a servant addressing his master would use both first name and patronymic. But a master would use only a first name when talking to a servant. In ‘Murder’ (p. 171), reference is made to the use of name and patronymic.

However, Chekhov does now and then use the direct equivalent of the English ‘Mr’ and ‘Mrs’, as in ‘A Woman’s Kingdom’.

Ward No. 6 and Other Stories

The Grasshopper

I

All Olga Ivanovna’s friends and close acquaintances were at her wedding.

‘Just look at him, don’t you think there’s something about him?’ she was telling them, nodding towards her husband as if eager to explain why on earth she was marrying such a simple, very ordinary and thoroughly undistinguished man.

Her husband, Osip Stepanych Dymov, was a junior doctor who worked at two hospitals. In one of them he was a temporary registrar and in the other a pathologist. Every day, from nine in the morning until noon, he saw out-patients and visited his ward, and in the afternoon he would take a horse tram to the other hospital, where he performed postmortems on patients who had died there. His private practice was quite negligible, bringing in about five hundred roubles a year. That is all. What else can one say about him? On the other hand, Olga Ivanovna and her cronies were not altogether run-of-the-mill people. Every one of them was distinguished in some way, pretty well known, had forged a reputation and was considered a celebrity: and if they weren’t actually famous yet, they showed brilliant promise. There was an actor with outstanding, long-recognized talent – an elegant, intelligent and modest man with a first-class delivery who gave Olga Ivanovna elocution lessons. There was the opera singer, a genial, fat man who would sigh and assure Olga Ivanovna that she was ruining herself and that if she would only stop being so lazy and apply herself she would develop into a remarkable singer. And there were several artists whose leading light was the genre, animal and landscape painter Ryabovsky, an extremely handsome man of about twenty-five, who had held successful exhibitions and whose latest picture had sold for five hundred roubles. He would put the finishing touches to Olga’s sketches and say that perhaps she might make something of herself. Then there was the cellist who could make his instrument weep and who frankly admitted that of all the women he knew Olga Ivanovna alone could accompany him properly. Then there was the writer – young, but already well known – who wrote novellas, plays and short stories.