he says he shares, he wrote ahead and arranged for Monsieur Pleshcheyev to bring the scores.
Georges wants a few days to practice, and then we shall have an evening of words and music. Mama is terribly excited. I believe she feels all of Saint Petersburgâthe good side, that isâhas come to our drawing room.
Natasha, bold as ever, said to Anton Pavlovich that if we wereto have Pleshcheyev and Tchaikovsky, then we must surely also have Chekhov. He gave a short laugh, and there was a moment of silence until he agreed that he would read a story from a collection he had just had published, called In the Twilight.
Later she told me he seemed almost annoyed, but flattered in a way as well, that he looked down at his feet before agreeing, as if requesting the consent of his toes.
THE DELIGHT OF SOFT padded envelopes, waiting for her in the crisp February air, in her mailbox. Three biographies, in addition to the volumes of stories (multiple translators) and the major plays, some on DVD with eminent British actors.
For several days of foul weather, Ana stayed in and read about Anton Chekhov. She found the obvious references, which, like Masha in black, had become clichés: the rambling, crumbling estates with their bumbling servants and samovars in the garden; the three sisters. But those familiar elements had to come from somewhere: They were a way of life, his everyday reality. An immense country with an educated, bored middle class; women whose lives were stunted and circumscribed by society and tradition. Zinaida Mikhailovna and her sisters, Elena and Natalya, stood out, anachronisms; they belonged, Ana learned, to the inaugural generation who attended the Bestuzhev Courses in Saint Petersburg, which for the first time in Imperial Russia offered higher education to young ladies of means.
Chekhov, on the other hand, earned his success. He was able to work his way up from relative poverty because he was talented, but also because his childhood had taught him that life was a struggle. As a boy, he and his brothers were thrashed repeatedly by their pious shopkeeper father; later, the whole family fled to Moscow to escape their creditors, leaving the young Antosha alone in Taganrog to finish secondary school. He wrote short, humorous stories, initially to finance his medical studies and help his family. What started as the source of a studentâs supplemental income evolved into a body of work, turning him,not even ten years after his summers at Luka, into an author and playwright whose stature was almost mythic. Ana studied the photographs, let her mind wander as they told the stories the words could not. He completely looked the part: tall, handsome, youthful, funnyâmediagenic, in todayâs parlance . The props, most of which came long after his summers at Luka, were inimitable: the goatee, the pince-nez, the walking stick, the dachshundâwhen it wasnât the pet mongoose he brought back from his travels to the Far East. (Apparently, he despised cats.) It would seem that Chekhov hated his celebrity status, the shaking of hands and dealing with gushing admirers on the waterfront at Yaltaâeven though many of them were womenâand going to receptions, being seen in the right places. But for all that, he knew how to enjoy the benefits of his success. He befriended Tolstoy, Gorky, Diaghilev, Rachmaninov; he married late and, on the whole, wellâthe actress Olga Knipper; he bought villas and dachas and traveled to France and Italy, and he didnât have to go on author tours or give signings or spout witticisms on a social network to keep himself in the public eye.
She learned in an interesting, oddly relevant footnote that Chekhovâs paternal grandmother was Ukrainian, and late in life he claimed that as a small child he had been able to speak Ukrainian.
Ana was beginning to feel genuine affection for the blind narrator and her story; that sentiment would show through, surely, in the
Georges wants a few days to practice, and then we shall have an evening of words and music. Mama is terribly excited. I believe she feels all of Saint Petersburgâthe good side, that isâhas come to our drawing room.
Natasha, bold as ever, said to Anton Pavlovich that if we wereto have Pleshcheyev and Tchaikovsky, then we must surely also have Chekhov. He gave a short laugh, and there was a moment of silence until he agreed that he would read a story from a collection he had just had published, called In the Twilight.
Later she told me he seemed almost annoyed, but flattered in a way as well, that he looked down at his feet before agreeing, as if requesting the consent of his toes.
THE DELIGHT OF SOFT padded envelopes, waiting for her in the crisp February air, in her mailbox. Three biographies, in addition to the volumes of stories (multiple translators) and the major plays, some on DVD with eminent British actors.
For several days of foul weather, Ana stayed in and read about Anton Chekhov. She found the obvious references, which, like Masha in black, had become clichés: the rambling, crumbling estates with their bumbling servants and samovars in the garden; the three sisters. But those familiar elements had to come from somewhere: They were a way of life, his everyday reality. An immense country with an educated, bored middle class; women whose lives were stunted and circumscribed by society and tradition. Zinaida Mikhailovna and her sisters, Elena and Natalya, stood out, anachronisms; they belonged, Ana learned, to the inaugural generation who attended the Bestuzhev Courses in Saint Petersburg, which for the first time in Imperial Russia offered higher education to young ladies of means.
Chekhov, on the other hand, earned his success. He was able to work his way up from relative poverty because he was talented, but also because his childhood had taught him that life was a struggle. As a boy, he and his brothers were thrashed repeatedly by their pious shopkeeper father; later, the whole family fled to Moscow to escape their creditors, leaving the young Antosha alone in Taganrog to finish secondary school. He wrote short, humorous stories, initially to finance his medical studies and help his family. What started as the source of a studentâs supplemental income evolved into a body of work, turning him,not even ten years after his summers at Luka, into an author and playwright whose stature was almost mythic. Ana studied the photographs, let her mind wander as they told the stories the words could not. He completely looked the part: tall, handsome, youthful, funnyâmediagenic, in todayâs parlance . The props, most of which came long after his summers at Luka, were inimitable: the goatee, the pince-nez, the walking stick, the dachshundâwhen it wasnât the pet mongoose he brought back from his travels to the Far East. (Apparently, he despised cats.) It would seem that Chekhov hated his celebrity status, the shaking of hands and dealing with gushing admirers on the waterfront at Yaltaâeven though many of them were womenâand going to receptions, being seen in the right places. But for all that, he knew how to enjoy the benefits of his success. He befriended Tolstoy, Gorky, Diaghilev, Rachmaninov; he married late and, on the whole, wellâthe actress Olga Knipper; he bought villas and dachas and traveled to France and Italy, and he didnât have to go on author tours or give signings or spout witticisms on a social network to keep himself in the public eye.
She learned in an interesting, oddly relevant footnote that Chekhovâs paternal grandmother was Ukrainian, and late in life he claimed that as a small child he had been able to speak Ukrainian.
Ana was beginning to feel genuine affection for the blind narrator and her story; that sentiment would show through, surely, in the
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