Anton Chekhov (1840 – 1904) was a physician, a great Russian playwright, and a master craftsman of the short story. He famously said that “Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress.” In the long view however, Chekhov may have proved more faithful to literature than to medicine, though he practiced medicine throughout his literary career. His plays The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard have been reinterpreted for the stage by every generation up to the present, and form part of the standard modernist repertory. Chekhov’s stories, from short stories to novellas, continue to be read by a vast international audience, and are everywhere emulated by students of creative writing.
Chekhov owned a home and a summer cottage in Yalta, Russia’s famous resort town on the Black Sea. In 1899 he wrote a story set in Yalta and in Moscow: the shrewdly poignant masterpiece “Lady with a Dog.”
The following quotation in Russian from “Lady with a Dog” is followed by a translation of the passage into English:
У него были две жизни: одна явная, которую видели и знали все, кому это нужно было, полная условной правды и условного обмана, похожая совершенно на жизнь его знакомых и друзей, и другая - протекавшая тайно. И по какому-то странному стечению обстоятельств, быть может случайному, всё, что было для него важно, интересно, необходимо, в чем он был искренен и не обманывал себя, что составляло зерно его жизни, происходило тайно от других, всё же, что было его ложью, его оболочкой, в которую он прятался, чтобы скрыть правду, как, например, его служба в банке, споры в клубе, его "низшая раса", хождение с женой на юбилеи, - всё это было явно. ––ДАМА С СОБАЧКОЙ
He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental, conjunction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest and of value to him, everything in which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden from other people; and all that was false in him, the sheath in which he hid himself to conceal the truth -- such, for instance, as his work in the bank, his discussions at the club, his "lower race," his presence with his wife at anniversary festivities -- all that was open. ––Lady with a Dog
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