Page Reprint: The Duel by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Дуэль на Антон Павлович Чехов)

It is through his plays that I best know Anton Chekov. The Duel is the first prose work of this Russian writer that I’ve read and the impetus for the reading was the adaption of the novella into a film, which I recently viewed. Although The Duel (1891) was written four years before Chekhov’s first play, The Seagull (Чайка), a four-act play structure, preferred by Chekhov, can be seen in this prose piece with the addition of a Prologue and Epilogue. Chekhov wrote the piece in twenty-one sections and the following is my break down of the prose work into a play format. This is one approach to the reading of The Duel. The titles given to the sections/scenes are mine.

Prologue – Section I – Summer Morning in the Caucasus
Here on an early Summer morning in a small town located in the Caucasus, the reader is introduced to two men swimming in the sea and later having coffee In the pavilion. First is the main character of the story, Ivan Andreich Laevsky (hereafter, Laevsky), a young government official whose unhappiness with his life away from Moscow and Petersburg has come to a crisis point and he longs to escape “To the pines, to the mushrooms, to people, to ideas…” (page 122). And the second man is Alexander Davidych Samoilenko (hereafter, Samoilenko), older and an army doctor who is the focal character of the narrative, the person others seek out and who willingly gives them his advice.

Act I – Summer Afternoon
During the afternoon of the morning in the Prologue, lunchtime is presented in two households. The first is the one that Laevsky shares with Nadezhda Fyodorovna (hereafter, Nadezhda), the married woman Laevsky ran away with from Petersburg to the Caucasus and the second is Samoilenko’s, who provides lunch for the zoologist Nikolai Vassilievich von Koren (hereafter, von Koren), who is hostile to Laevsky “’…everything comes down to drink, cards, slippers, and women. Women play a fatal, overwhelming role in his life.’” (page 137) and for the deacon Pobedov (hereafter, the deacon).
Scene 1 – Section II – Lunch with Laevsky and Nadezhda
Scene 2 – Section III – Samoilenko’s Table d’Hôte
Scene 3 – Section IV – Von Koren Discusses Laevsky with Samoilenko

Act II – Sunday and Monday
The reader meets more inhabitants of the small Caucasus town during an evening picnic in the countryside. Three of them are Marya Konstantinovna Bitiugov (hereafter, Marya), who provides the moral compass for Nadezhda; the police chief Ilya Mikhailych Kirilin (hereafter, Kirilin), Nadezhda’s discarded lover; and young Atchmianov, Nadezhda’s would-be lover. And Laevsky’s opinion of von Koren is voiced “’Despotism is a strong in science as in war. And he’s living for the second summer in this stinking little town, because it’s better to be first in a village than second in a city. Here he’s a king and an eagle; he’s got all the inhabitants under his thumb and oppresses them with his authority. He’s taken everybody in hand, he interferes in other people’s affairs, he wants to be in on everything, and everybody’s afraid of him. I’m slipping out from under his paw, he senses it, and he hates me’” (page 169).
Scene 1 – Section V – Nadezhda and Marya at the Shore
Scene 2 – Section VI – Picnic at the Black and Yellow Rivers
Scene 3 – Section VII – Nadezhda Talks with Kirilin and Atchmianov
Scene 4 – Section VIII – Von Koren Dismisses Nadezhda to Samoilenko
Scene 5 – Section IX – Laevsky Discusses von Koren with Samoilenko

Act III – Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
Revelations come forth over the course of three days. Marya was the only woman of the town to receive Nadezhda “You horrified me from the very first day, but I was unable to treat you with scorn, like everyone else. I suffered for dear, kind Ivan Andreich as for a son.” (page 173); some of the money for Laevsky’s “escape” would come from von Koren; and Kirilin is actually repulsive not respectable.
Scene 1 – Section X – Nadezhda and Marya Speak of Domestic Issues
Scene 2 – Section XI – Roubles for Laevsky
Scene 3 – Section XII – Kostya’s Birthday Celebration
Scene 4 – Section XIII – Laevsky’s Nervous Breakdown
Scene 5 – Section XIV – Nadezhda Meets Kirilin and Misses Atchmianov

Act IV – Friday and Saturday
Resolutions are made between persons: the affair between Nadezhda and Kirilin; the love of Laevsky and Nadezhda; the philosophies of von Koren and the deacon; and the hate between Laevasky and von Koren “…coming back from a cemetery where they had just buried a difficult, unbearable man who had interfered with all their lives.” (page 231).
Scene 1 – Section XV – The Challenge and the Betrayal
Scene 2 – Section XVI – Philosophy of the Strong Versus the Weak
Scene 3 – Section XVII – Duel Day Dawns
Scene 4 – Section XVIII – The Deacon’s Journey
Scene 5 – Section XIX – Duelists Arrive, Duelists Fire
Scene 6 – Section XX – Duel Dénouement

Epilogue – Section XXI – Autumn Night in the Caucasus
It is three months after the events and von Koren is taking his leave of the town. So on the night of a storm-filled day and before he is rowed out to the waiting steamer, von Koren says good-bye to some of the people of the town. As he has always been von Koren’s friend, Samoilenko sees him off at the shore with a fond farewell into the dark “’Don’t forget me, Kolya…Write…We’ll expect you next spring.’” (page 236).


Note: The adage has always been “to not judge a book by its cover”. However, I propose that a book cover can be judged by its art. The cover of the short novel collection in which I read The Duel can be seen above right. I don’t like the dots that go across most of the cover (they don’t add anything positive to the overall image) and the red rectangle should be higher on the cover so that there is space between it and the heads of the people in the photograph. Actually, my suggestion for a revision of the elements on this cover would be to eliminate the dots; to keep the photograph; to put Chekhov’s name across the top (above the heads!) in red lettering (no rectangle); to move the title down a little to below the man’s hand; and to keep the white lettering as is for the title, et.al.


Book Facts: Title: The Complete Short Novels, Author: Anton Chekhov, Translators: Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky, Table of Contents: Introduction, Select Bibliography, Chronology, The Steppe, The Duel, The Story of an Unknown Man, Three Years, My Life, Notes, Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, Book Division: Borzoi, Book Series: Everyman’s Library, Book Format: Hardcover with dust jacket, Year: 2004, Pages: 600, Language: English, ISBN: 1-4000-40249-3


Images:
Left: Anton Pavlovich Chekhov from the website upload.wikimedia.org
Center: Graphic interpretation of The Duel by Adrean Darce Brent
Right: Front cover of The Complete Short Novels

Jane Austen – Saturday 16 December 1775 – Friday 18 July 1817

Introduction

I have always been amused by Jane Austen ever since the first book of hers I read, Pride and Prejudice (spoiler alert), and continuing with her other novels, including Sense and Sensibility (spoiler alert). Reading the novels with current day eyes often evokes chuckles at the maneuvers and manners displayed in the pursuit of matrimony in that earlier century. But to be fair, I’m sure a future reader/viewer of our present day procedures in the quest for marriage will find much to amuse her. The Bachelor and The Bachelorette come to mind.

Excerpt from Chapter 1 of Sense and Sensibility

“The family of Dashwood had been long settled in Sussex. Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance. The later owner of this estate was a single man who lived to a very advanced age, and who for many years of his life had a constant companion and housekeeper in his sister. But her death, which happened ten years before his own, produced a great alteration in his home; for to supply her loss, he invited and received into his house the family of his nephew Mr. Henry Dashwood, the legal inheritor of the Norland estate, and the person to whom he intended to bequeath it. In the society of his nephew and niece, and their children, the old gentleman’s days were comfortably spent. His attachment to them all increased. The constant attention of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Dashwood to his wishes, which proceeded not merely from interest, but from goodness of heart, gave him every degree of solid comfort which his age could receive; and the cheerfulness of the children added a relish to this existence.

By a former marriage, Mr. Henry Dashwood had one son: by his present lady, three daughters. The son, a steady respectable young man, was amply provided for by the fortune of his mother, which had been large, and half of which devolved on him on his coming of age. By his own marriage, likewise, which happened soon afterwards, he added to his wealth. To him, therefore, the succession to the Norland estate was not so really important as to his sisters; for their fortune, independent of what might arise to them from their father’s inheriting the property, could be but small. Their mother had nothing, and their father only seven thousand pounds in his own disposal, for the remaining moiety of his first wife’s fortune was also secured to her child, and he had only a life interest in it.

The old gentleman died; his will was read, and like almost every other will gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew; but he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife and daughters than for himself or his son; but to his son and his son’s son, a child of four years old, it was secured in such a way as to leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear to him, and who most needed a provision, by any charge on the estate, or by any sale of its valuable woods. The whole was tied up for the benefit of this child, who, in occasional visits with his father and mother at Norland, had so far gained on the affections of his uncle, by such attractions as are by no means unusual in children of two or three years old; an imperfect articulation, an earnest desire of having his own way, many cunning tricks, and a great deal of noise, as to outweigh all the value of the attention which, for years, he had received from his niece and her daughters. He meant not to be unkind however, and as a mark of his affection for the three girls, he left them a thousand pounds apiece.”

Excerpt from the Afterword by Patricia Meyer Spacks in Sense and Sensibility

“Sense and Sensibility begins with money and ends with love. By the time the novel achieves its inevitable culmination in the happy marriages of the principal characters, the reader has come to understand the intricate ways in which money affects feelings, how the realities of the outside world impinge on the interior realm. Economic and psychic facts, from Jane Austen’s point of view, bear closely on one another. Their relationship defines her novelistic subject.”


Yesterday’s writer – Harriette Arnow
Tomorrow’s writer – Maeve Binchy

Source: Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. Bantam Classic, January 1983. ISBN 0-553-21110-2. Chapter 1 Excerpt: pages 1-2; Afterword Excerpt: page 332

Images:

Left: Front cover of personal copy of Sense and Sensibility

Center: Jane Austen from website en.wikipedia.org