He couldn’t any longer be attracted to Kuzminky as before. Apparently they wanted advice or money from him again now. Kuzminky had been her dowry only six years ago but it had already been ruined by that Sergei Sergeyitch, and now every time they owed money to the bank or had to pay off a mortgage they sought advice from Podgorin as a lawyer, and had also twice asked him to lend them money. This short, playful letter was also alien to him it had probably been composed over a long moment and with difficulty, and while Tatiana was writing her husband Sergei Sergeyitch had probably been standing behind her. Their present life was quite unfamiliar to him, incomprehensible and alien. He loved them dearly, but he seemed to have loved them more in his memories than now. And now, although he was already a lawyer and beginning to turn grey, they still called him Misha and considered him young and said that he hadn’t yet experienced anything in life.
Tatiana, Varya and he were almost the same age but he’d been a student then and they were already grown-up girls and had looked on him as a boy. "Dear Va!” Podgorin thought, giving himself up to his memories. “How sweet she is!" She’d finished her medical studies now and was working somewhere outside Tula in a factory, and she apparently had come to Kuzminky to visit. He remembered a simple, lively, intelligent face with freckles that matched her dark red hair – Tatiana’s friend Varya, or Varvara Pavlovna. But who was Va? Podgorin thought back on long conversations, gay laughter, romance, a flower garden and walks in the evening with girls and young women who lived in Kuzminky and nearby. The letter was from Tatiana Alexeevna Loseva, who ten or twelve years ago, when Podgorin lived in Kuzminky, was called Ta for short. We beg you both on our knees, come today, show us your lovely, clear eyes. "Dear Misha, you’ve forgotten us completely, come to see us soon, we want to see you. Īn e-book, with the Russian text in an annex, is available for downloading below.
They talk, they dance, they sing, they recite poetry and go for walks, but the old magic just isn’t there for Podgorin somehow.Ī sad story, characteristic of the author’s works in his last period on the theme of decline and loss of things in general and of past attachments in particular.Ħ,600 words, translated specially for this site. They ask him for legal help, the husband asks him for a loan and the young sister would clearly like to bring him into their family. Which turns out to be very much the case, as they are bankrupt, the estate is about to be sold, and Ta, Va and Na are desperate at the prospect of being deprived of the ancient family home. He feels obliged to go, knowing that the husband is a wastrel and a profligate and that they probably have financial problems. 4.Podgorin, a thirty-year-old lawyer, receives a mail from Tatyana and Varya, two young women of his age with whom he’d been very close ten years previously, asking him to come for a visit to Tatyana’s family home where she lives with husband and two young children and her young sister Nadezhda.3.5 – How do we make Non-Fiction ‘Compelling’?.3.3 – Writing: Dead Metaphors to Irony – Year 9.2.5 – Unseen Poetry – Approaching Unseen Poetry for GCSE.2.4 – The Sound & Rhythm of Power & Conflict Poetry (AQA).2.3 – Lyric Poetry Scheme of Work – Year 9.1.4 – The Why of Fiction – A Year 9 Scheme of Work.1.3 – The How of Fiction – A Year 8 Scheme of Work.1.2 – What of Fiction: Ghost Stories – A Year 7 Scheme of Work.1.1 – Favourite Fiction – Year 7 Book Review.0.0 – 10 Lesson Scheme of Work to Introduce Debating at Key Stage 3/4.
…it’s as though for once, in late Chekhov, the ‘working-out’ is on show, and the effect is undermined: the ambiguity and the beauty of Chekhov exists in his ability to give us just enough of a character or a scene to render it, where he goes too far, as he does here, how well he does it in his other stories is all too clear. This one does feel a little ‘ploddy’, a little tired, a little not-bothered – witness: “The tower’s black shadow stretching over the earth, far into the fields… all this was just like a dream.” Or “He felt annoyed and his only thought was that here, in a country garden on a moonlit night, close to a beautiful, loving, thoughtful girl, he felt the same apathy as on Little Bronny Street: evidently this type of romantic situation had lost its fascination, like that prosaic depravity.” And when one is looking for reasons to dislike… ‘A Visit to Friends’ by Anton Chekhov (1898) Knowing this, it’s rather easy for the reader to take a dislike to it. For some reason Chekhov took a dislike to this story – “rather poor I think” – and refused to include it in his collected works as he was compiling in the final years of his life.
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