[Footnote 1: Yuriev is the Russian name of the town Dorpat.]
* * * * *
His beard looked like the tail of a fish.
* * * * *
A Jew, Ziptchik.
* * * * *
A girl, when she giggles, makes noises as if she were putting her head
in cold water.
* * * * *
"Mamma, what is a thunderbolt made of?"
* * * * *
On the estate there is a bad smell, and bad taste; the trees
are planted anyhow, stupidly; and away in a remote corner the
lodge-keeper's wife all day long washes the guest's linen--and nobody
sees her; and the owners are allowed to talk away whole days about
their rights and their nobility.
* * * * *
She fed her dog on the best caviare.
* * * * *
Our self-esteem and conceit are European, but our culture and actions
are Asiatic.
* * * * *
A black dog--he looks as if he were wearing goloshes.
* * * * *
A Russian's only hope--to win two hundred thousand roubles in a
lottery.
* * * * *
She is wicked, but she taught her children good.
* * * * *
Every one has something to hide.
* * * * *
The title of N.'s story: The Power of Harmonies.
* * * * *
O how nice it would be if bachelors or widowers were appointed
Governors.
* * * * *
A Moscow actress never in her life saw a turkey-hen.
* * * * *
On the lips of the old I hear either stupidity or malice.
* * * * *
"Mamma, Pete did not say his prayers." Pete is woken up, he says his
prayers, cries, then lies down and shakes his fist at the child who
made the complaint.
* * * * *
He imagined that only doctors could say whether it is male or female.
* * * * *
One became a priest, the other a _Dukhobor_, the third a philosopher,
and in each case instinctively because no one wants really to work
with bent back from morning to night.
* * * * *
A passion for the word uterine: my uterine brother, my uterine wife,
my uterine brother-in-law, etc.
* * * * *
To Doctor N., an illegitimate child, who has never lived with his
father and knew him very little, his bosom friend Z., says with
agitation: "You see, the fact of the matter is that your father misses
you very much, he is ill and wants to have a look at you." The father
keeps "Switzerland," furnished apartments. He takes the fried fish out
of the dish with his hands and only afterwards uses a fork. The vodka
smells rank. N. went, looked about him, had dinner--his only feeling
that that fat peasant, with the grizzled beard, should sell such
filth. But once, when passing the house at midnight, he looked in at
the window: his father was sitting with bent back reading a book. He
recognized himself and his own manners.
* * * * *
As stupid as a gray gelding.
* * * * *
They teased the girl with castor oil, and therefore she did not marry.
* * * * *
N. all his life used to write abusive letters to famous singers,
actors, and authors: "You think, you scamp,..."--without signing his
name.
* * * * *
When the man who carried the torch at funerals came out in his
three-cornered hat, his frock coat with laces and stripes, she fell in
love with him.
* * * * *
A sparkling, joyous nature, a kind of living protest against
grumblers; he is fat and healthy, eats a great deal, every one likes
him but only because they are afraid of the grumblers; he is a nobody,
a Ham, only eats and laughs loud, and that's all; when he dies, every
one sees that he had done nothing, that they had mistaken him for some
one else.
* * * * *
After the inspection of the building, the Commission, which was
bribed, lunched heartily, and it was precisely a funeral feast over
honesty.
* * * * *
He who tells lies is dirty.
* * * * *
At three o'clock in the morning they wake him: he has to go to his job
at the railway station, and so every day for the last fourteen years.
* * * * *
A lady grumbles: "I write to my son that he should change his linen
every Saturday. He replies: 'Why Saturday, not Monday?' I answer:
'Well, all right, let it be Monday.' And he: 'Why Monday, not
Tuesday?' He is a nice honest man, but I get worried by him."
* * * * *
A clever man loves learning but is a fool at teaching.
* * * * *
The sermons of priests, archimandrites, and bishops are wonderfully
like one another.
* * * * *
One remembers the arguments about the brotherhood of man, public good,
and work for the people, but really there were no such arguments, one
only drank at the University. They write: "One feels ashamed of the
men with University degrees who once fought for human rights and
freedom of religion and conscience"--but they never fought.
* * * * *
Every day after dinner the husband threatens his wife that he will
become a monk, and the wife cries.
* * * * *
Mordokhvostov.
* * * * *
Husband and wife have lived together and quarreled for eighteen years.
At last he makes a confession, which was in fact untrue, of having
been false to her, and they part to his great pleasure and to the
wrath of the whole town.
* * * * *
A useless thing, an album with forgotten, uninteresting photographs,
lies in the corner on a chair; it has been lying there for the last
twenty years and no one makes up his mind to throw it away.
* * * * *
N. tells how forty years ago X., a wonderful and extraordinary man,
had saved the lives of five people, and N. feels it strange that every
one listened with indifference, that the history of X. is already
forgotten, uninteresting....
* * * * *
They fell upon the soft caviare greedily, and devoured it in a minute.
* * * * *
In the middle of a serious conversation he says to his little son:
"Button up your trousers."
* * * * *
Man will only become better when you make him see what he is like.
* * * * *
Dove-colored face.
* * * * *
The squire feeds his pigeons, canaries, and fowls on pepper, acids,
and all kinds of rubbish in order that the birds may change their
color--and that is his sole occupation: he boasts of it to every
visitor.
* * * * *
They invited a famous singer to recite the Acts of the Apostles at the
wedding; he recited it, but they have not paid his fee.
* * * * *
For a farce: I have a friend by name Krivomordy (crooked face) and
he's all right. Not crooked leg or crooked arm but crooked face: he
was married and his wife loved him.
* * * * *
N. drank milk every day, and every time he put a fly in the glass and
then, with the air of a victim, asked the old butler: "What's that?"
He could not live a single day without that.
* * * * *
She is surly and smells of a vapor bath.
* * * * *
N. learned of his wife's adultery. He is indignant, distressed, but
hesitates and keeps silent. He keeps silence and ends by borrowing
money from Z., the lover, and continues to consider himself an honest
man.
* * * * *
When I stop drinking tea and eating bread and butter, I say: "I have
had enough." But when I stop reading poems or novels, I say: "No more
of that, no more of that."
* * * * *
A solicitor lends money at a high rate of interest, and justifies
himself because he is leaving everything to the University of Moscow.
* * * * *
A little sexton, with radical views: "Nowadays our fellows crawl out
from all sorts of unexpected holes."
* * * * *
The squire N. always quarrels with his neighbors who are Molokans[1];
he goes to court, abuses and curses them; but when at last they leave,
he feels there is an empty place; he ages rapidly and pines away.
[Footnote 1: Molokans are a religious sect in Russia.]
* * * * *
Mordukhanov.
* * * * *
With N. and his wife there lives the wife's brother, a lachrymose
young man who at one time steals, at another tells lies, at another
attempts suicide; N. and his wife do not know what to do, they are
afraid to turn him out because he might kill himself; they would like
to turn him out, but they do not know how to manage it. For forging
a bill he gets into prison, and N. and his wife feel that they are to
blame; they cry, grieve. She died from grief; he too died some time
later and everything was left to the brother who squandered it and got
into prison again.
* * * * *
Suppose I had to marry a woman and live in her house, I would run away
in two days, but a woman gets used so quickly to her husband's house,
as though she had been born there.
* * * * *
Well, you are a Councillor; but whom do you counsel? God forbid that
any one should listen to your counsels.
* * * * *
The little town of Torjok. A sitting of the town council. Subject: the
raising of the rates. Decision: to invite the Pope to settle down in
Torjok--to choose it as his residence.
* * * * *
S.'s logic: I am for religious toleration, but against religious
freedom; one cannot allow what is not in the strict sense orthodox.
* * * * *
St. Piony and Epinach. ii March, Pupli 13 m.
* * * * *
Poetry and works of art contain not what is needed but what people
desire; they do not go further than the crowd and they express only
what the best in the crowd desire.
* * * * *
A little man is very cautious; he sends even letters of congratulation
by registered post in order to get a receipt.
* * * * *
Russia is an enormous plain across which wander mischievous men.
* * * * *
Platonida Ivanovna.
* * * * *
If you are politically sound, that is enough for you to be considered
a perfectly satisfactory citizen; the same thing with radicals, to be
politically unsound is enough, everything else will be ignored.
* * * * *
A man who when he fails opens his eyes wide.
* * * * *
Ziuzikov.
* * * * *
A Councillor of State, a respectable man; it suddenly comes out that
he has secretly kept a brothel.
* * * * *
N. has written a good play; no one praises him or is pleased; they all
say: "We'll see what you write next."
* * * * *
The more important people came in by the front door, the simple folk
by the back door.
* * * * *
He: "And in our town there lived a man whose name was Kishmish
(raisin). He called himself Kishmish, but every one knew that he was
Kishmish."
She (after some thought): "How annoying ... if only his name had been
Sultana, but Kishmish!..."
* * * * *
Blagovospitanny.
* * * * *
Most honored Iv-Iv-itch!
* * * * *
How intolerable people are sometimes who are happy and successful in
everything.
* * * * *
They begin gossiping that N. is living with Z.; little by little
an atmosphere is created in which a liaison of N. and Z. becomes
inevitable.
* * * * *
When the locust was a plague, I wrote against the locust and enchanted
every one, I was rich and famous; but now, when the locust has long
ago disappeared and is forgotten, I am merged in the crowd, forgotten,
and not wanted.
* * * * *
Merrily, joyfully: "I have the honor to introduce you to Iv. Iv.
Izgoyev, my wife's lover."
* * * * *
Everywhere on the estate are notices: "Trespassers will be
prosecuted," "Keep off the flowers," etc.
* * * * *
In the great house is a fine library which is talked about but is
never used; they give you watery coffee which you cannot drink; the
garden is tasteless with no flowers in it--and they pretend that all
this is something Tolstoian.
* * * * *
He learnt Swedish in order to study Ibsen, spent a lot of time and
trouble, and suddenly realized that Ibsen is not important; he could
not conceive what use he could now make of the Swedish language.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ibsen wrote in Norwegian of course. Responding to
a request for his interpretation of this curious paragraph. Mr.
Koteliansky writes:
"Chekhov had a very high opinion of Ibsen; the paragraph, I am sure,
is by no means aimed at Ibsen. Most probably the paragraph, as well as
many others in the Notes, is something which C. either personally or
indirectly heard someone say. You will see that Kuprin ["Reminiscences
of Chekhov," by Gorky, Kuprin and Bunin, New York: Huebsch.] told C.
the anecdote about the actor whose wife asked him to whistle a melody
on the stage during a rehearsal. In C.'s Notes you have that anecdote,
somewhat shortened and the names changed, without mentioning the
source."
"The reader, on the whole, may puzzle his head over many paragraphs
in the Notes, but he will hardly find explanations each time. What the
reader has to remember is that the Notes are material used by C. in
his creative activity and as such it throws a great deal of light on
C.'s mentality and process of working."]
* * * * *
N. makes a living by exterminating bugs; and for the purposes of his
trade he reads the works of ----. If in "The Cossacks," bugs are not
mentioned, it means that "The Cossacks" is a bad book.
* * * * *
Man is what he believes.
* * * * *
A clever girl: "I cannot pretend ... I never tell a lie ... I have
principles"--and all the time "I ... I ... I ..."
* * * * *
N. is angry with his wife who is an actress, and without her knowledge
gets abusive criticisms published about her in the newspapers.
* * * * *
A nobleman boasts "This house of mine was built in the time of Dmitry
Donskoy."
* * * * *
"Your Worship, he called my dog a bad name: 'son of a bitch.'"
* * * * *
The snow fell and did not lie on the ground reddened with blood.
* * * * *
He left everything to charity, so that nothing should go to his
relations and children, whom he hated.
* * * * *
A very amorous man; he is no sooner introduced to a girl than he
becomes a he-goat.
* * * * *
A nobleman Drekoliev.
* * * * *
I dread the idea that a chamberlain will be present at the opening of
my petition.
* * * * *
He was a rationalist, but he had to confess that he liked the ringing
of church bells.
* * * * *
The father a famous general, nice pictures, expensive furniture; he
died; the daughters received a good education, but are slovenly, read
little, ride, and are dull.
* * * * *
They are honest and truthful so long as it is unnecessary.
* * * * *
A rich merchant would like to have a shower bath in his W.C.
* * * * *