Classic Short Story: Chekhov

Hi hazlitt - Bibliomania is a nice looking site at first glance, but its very quirky - and it doesn't allow you to link as we see above. I found the story at another site, hope you don't mind me posting it.

The Literature Network - Chekhov

Thanks Larry

This is one of Chekhov's greatest and most famous stories--along with "The Darling" probably his most anthologized. What is especially beautiful about the story is the gradual growth of feeling by Gurov, transforming what he thought would be a casual fling into a profound love affair. And the ending is a delicately wrought piece of perfection, showing the state of the two lovers as they face their new emotional situation. It has beeen often imitated by lesser writers but never equalled. The secret of Chekhov, to me, is his light touch--his subtlety of psychology and phrasing. This is unique in world literature, certainly in the Russian tradition, where his only real ancestor is Turgenev.

Larry R.

Thanks for your good comment. It is little wonder that the story is often repeated or imitated. Gurov and Anna experienced something that has happened to many others.

Here are the opening three paragraphs:

"IT was said that a new person had appeared on the sea-front: a lady with a little dog. Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, who had by then been a fortnight at Yalta, and so was fairly at home there, had begun to take an interest in new arrivals. Sitting in Verney's pavilion, he saw, walking on the sea-front, a fair-haired young lady of medium height, wearing a béret; a white Pomeranian dog was running behind her.

"And afterwards he met her in the public gardens and in the square several times a day. She was walking alone, always wearing the same béret, and always with the same white dog; no one knew who she was, and every one called her simply "the lady with the dog."

"If she is here alone without a husband or friends, it wouldn't be amiss to make her acquaintance," Gurov reflected.