Thanks for reminding me the details; hmm, usage of archaic versions of names might have been interpreted as a certain degree of showiness as well... Maybe, these were her husband's conclusions regading his wife's personality? Phonetic spelling (at least, in Russian) could be a sign of either low level of literacy (but this, surely, was not the case), or demonstrative neglection of the existing norms...
(Edit) I wrote this post before seeing Streissd's post of 3:15 (or so).
Sozobe, based on Steissd's comment above, it seems probable to me that Dmitri was the accepted pronunciation in Russia at the time. Perhaps his wife perceived that an "i" had been dropped, and she thought herself superior in some way to reinsert the "i" and to make a point of pronouncing it. I have known people like that. I have to believe the answer to the question lies along these lines.
This morning I happened across a passage in an essay by Philip Roth that brought me back to Chekhov. Roth was defending himself against a Rabbi who had denounced him for writing about a jewish adulterer. He comments, "...I seem to be interested in how--and why and when--a man acts counter to what he considers to be his best self." When he spoke of acting counter to his best self, I was thrown back to Gurov's thought that everything is beautiful "everything but our own thoughts and actions, when we loose sight of the higher aims of life, and of our dignity as human beings."
This got me to wondering whether Gurov was just having a general sort of moralizing reverie, or if he was applying this thought to his present situation. If that is the case, which it doubtless is, was he regretting that his situation with his wife had driven him to a moral level below his dignity as a human being? And yet, his present situation had brought him to think in the first place that "...everything in the world is beautiful, really..."
For the most part, Gurov is pretty pragmatic about how he carries on his life with his wife and with his other women, but in this one place he seems to be having a moral struggle; or at least the possibility of a moral struggle seems just below the surface.
What do you all think?
