Nine Plays of Chekov

Anton Chekov

Universal Library : Grosset & Dunlap

<p>The Great Books Reading and Discussion Program anthologies include many Western classics-the ones you always "meant" to read. These works are presented in manageable selections specially chosen for their ability to stimulate discussion. Reading through these volumes is to survey the best that has been thought and said in the Western tradition.</p>

The Great Books Reading and Discussion Program (First Series, Volume 1): Rothschild's Fiddle, On Happiness, The Apology, Heart of Darkness, Conscience, Genesis, Alienated Labour, Social Contract

BIBLE

Immanuel, Kant

Karl, Marx

sigmund-freud

Jean-Jaques Rousseau

Joseph, Conrad

Plató

Aristotle

The Great Books Foundation

The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov.                   Translated by Constance Garnett.                "The Lady with the Dog"  is a short story by Anton Chekhov first published in 1899. It tells the story of an adulterous affair between a Russian banker and a young lady he meets while vacationing in Yalta. The story comprises four parts: part I describes the initial meeting in Yalta, part II the consummation of the affair and the remaining time in Yalta, part III Gurov's return to Moscow and his visit to Anna's town, and part IV Anna's visits to Moscow. Vladimir Nabokov declared that it was one of the greatest short stories ever written.  Dmitri Gurov is a Moscow bank worker, married with a daughter and two sons. Unhappy in his marriage, he is frequently unfaithful and considers women to be of “a lower race”. While vacationing in Yalta, he sees a young lady walking along the seafront with her small dog, and endeavors to make her acquaintance. The lady, Anna Sergeyevna, is also vacationing, while her husband remains at home in an unnamed provincial town. They are soon engaged in an affair, and spend most of their time together walking and taking drives to nearby Oreanda. Though she is expecting her husband to come to Yalta, he eventually sends for her to come home, saying that something is wrong with his eyes. Gurov sees her off at the station.  Returning to Moscow and his daily routine, working by day and clubbing by night, Gurov expects to soon forget young Anna but finds he is haunted by her memory. On the ruse of going to St. Petersburg to take care of some business, he sets off to her town to find her. Learning the location of the family’s residence from a hotel porter, he finds the house, only to realize that it would be futile to intrude. In despair, he reasons that Anna has probably forgotten him and found someone else, and heads back to his hotel for a long nap.

Lady With The Dog And Other Stories

Constance Black Garnett

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

The Seagull is generally considered to be the first of his four major plays. It dramatises the romantic and artistic conflicts between four characters: the famous middlebrow story writer Boris Trigorin, the ingenue Nina, the fading actress Irina Arkadina, and her son the symbolist playwright Konstantin Tréplev.

Sea-gull

The Steppe

The Steppe, subtitled The Story of a Journey, is a novella by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov first published in 1888. In 1887, exhausted from overwork and ill health, Chekhov took a trip to Ukraine, which reawakened him to the beauty of the steppe. On his return, he began the novella-length short story, which he called "something rather odd and much too original," and which was eventually published in Severny Vestnik (The Northern Herald). In a narrative that drifts with the thought processes of the characters, Chekhov evokes a chaise journey across the steppe through the eyes of a young boy sent to live away from home, and his companions, a priest and a merchant. The Steppe has been called a "dictionary of Chekhov's poetics", and it represented a significant advance for Chekhov, exhibiting much of the quality of his mature fiction and winning him publication in a literary journal rather than a newspaper.

Steppe

Gabriela Guzman

The Lady with the Dog is perhaps Chekhov's best known and certainly one of his best-loved stories. It exemplifies the author's subtle yet powerful style, as Chekhov is economical with language and never says more than he needs. He conveys emotional complexity in just a few words, thus preserving the intensity of his characters' feelings. For example, on first seeing Anna at the theater in her hometown, Chekhov expresses Dmitri's romantic yearning with the passage: "she, this little woman, in no way remarkable, lost in a provincial crowd, with a vulgar lornette in her hand, filled his whole life now, was his sorrow and his joy. He thought and dreamed." The author writes as though he is painting a canvas, producing a work that is grand in scope yet intimate in feel. The author uses colors to convey both the changing spirits and feelings of the characters, as they veer from the grandly impressive to the muted and prosaic. For example, the aging Dmitri's hair is described as graying, and he often wears gray suits, whereas the sea at Yalta is suffused with color as "the water was of a soft warm lilac hue, and there was a golden streak from the moon upon it." Chekhov presents Yalta as a romantic oasis for Anna and Dmitri, a place of color, freedom, and intimacy that they cannot hope to recreate elsewhere. The lovers worry about what they mean to one another--Anna frets that Dmitri thinks of her only as a "common woman," while Dmitri thinks that Anna is beguiled by a false impression of him as a "kind, exceptional, lofty" man--because both recognize that their relationship is founded on past disappointments and future hopes, as well as on present desires. Chekhov thus plays with our implicit belief that characters do not exist beyond their narrative framework: clearly, Anna and Dmitri are people defined by the past and their dreams for the future, as much as they are by the short period of their lives conveyed here.

Lady With The Little Dog And Other Stories

Cedar Lake Publications

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