Lady with a Lapdog

based on a short story by Anton Chekhov English translation by Julia Smeliansky and Ryan McKittrick

adapted and directed by Kama Ginkas

September 18 October 10, 2004 at the Guthrie Lab

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Lady with a Lapdog

based on a short story by Anton Chekhov English translation by Julia Smeliansky and Ryan McKittrick

adapted and directed by Kama Ginkas

This production is sponsored by American Express.

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A Study Guide published by the Guthrie Theater

Editor/Dramaturgy: Jo Holcomb

Research: Jo Holcomb, Meredith Pasmantier

Produced with the support of: Beth Burns, Sheila Livingston, Catherine McGuire, Patricia Vaillancourt

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in the document. Please visit the website for information on this and other recent productions. The study guides can be found in ACT III at www.guthrietheater.org.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE PLAYWRIGHT Chronology of the Life and Works of Anton Chekhov 4 Comments on Chekhovs Work 7 Chekhov in his own words 8 On Kama Ginkas 9

THE PLAY Characters and Synopsis 11 The Original Production 12 Comments on the Short Story, Lady with a Lapdog 12 Comments on the Ginkas Adaptation of the story Lady with a Lapdog for the stage 15 (the short story) Anton Chekhov: Lady With Lapdog 16

ADDITIONAL SOURCES For Further Information 28

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THE PLAYWRIGHT

Chronology of the Life and Works of Anton Chekhov

1860 January 17, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is born in Taganrog, a provincial port on the Sea of Azov (near the Black Sea) in southern Russia. He is the third son of Evgeniya Yakovlevna Morozova and Pavel Yegorovich, a grocer. Two brothers and a sister will follow in the next three years. His serf grandfather had bought his familys freedom in 1841, twenty years before the abolition of serfdom.

1867 Chekhovs deeply religious father sends Anton and his brother Nikolai to a school run by the Greek Orthodox Church.

1868 Anton and Nikolai enroll in Taganrog School for Boys.

1873 Anton is apprenticed to a tailor.

On his first visit to the theater, he sees a performance in Taganrog of the comic opera La Belle Hlne by Jacques Offenbach.

1875 Antons older brothers, Alexander and Nikolai, leave home and move to Moscow.

Anton produces a handwritten magazine, Stammerer, containing his humorous sketches of life in Taganrog.

1876 After Pavel Yegorovichs grocery goes bankrupt, the Chekhov family moves to a small apartment in Moscow. Anton remains in Taganrog to complete high school, supporting himself by tutoring.

1877 Chekhov writes his first play, Fatherlessness.

He makes his first visit to Moscow.

1879 Chekhov pursues medical studies at Moscow University.

He submits satirical items to newspapers and magazines in an attempt to support his family by writing.

1880 Chekhovs first short story is published in the comic weekly Dragonfly. Over the next years he sells hundreds of short, humorous pieces.

1884 Chekhov completes his medical studies and begins work as a doctor in the rural region Voskresensk.

His first collection of short stories, Tales of Melpomene, is published.

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In December he suffers a hemorrhage of the lungs, the first symptom of his tuberculosis.

1885 Chekhov regularly contributes stories to the Petersburg Gazette.

He travels to St. Petersburg. He meets Suvorin, editor of the influential, conservative St. Petersburg newspaper, the New Times.

1886 Chekhov receives a letter from Russian novelist, Dmitri Grigorovich, urging him not to waste his talent on writing trifles. Chekhov takes the advice to heart and subsequently produces the insightful, in-depth literature for which he is most well known.

He publishes serious short fiction in Suvorins paper.

His collection of short stories, Motley Tales, is published.

1887 A short story collection, At Twilight, dedicated to Grigorovich, published by Suvorin, establishes Chekhovs reputation as a writer of importance.

Ivanov, Chekhovs first full-length play, now seldom staged, is produced in Moscow. It receives a mixed audience response.

1888 A collection of short stories is published under the title, Tales.

Chekhov is awarded the Pushkin Prize for literature by the Imperial Academy of Sciences for his short story collections.

Collection of stories, Gloomy People, is published, dedicated to Tchaikovski.

1890 His story, The Grasshopper is published.

1892 Chekhov writes the one-act play The Jubilee, partly based on an earlier story, A Helpless Creature.

1894 Advised by doctors to seek a different climate for his health, he lives for a time in Yalta, where he undergoes treatments for tuberculosis.

1895 Chekhov writes The Seagull at his estate in Melikhovo.

1896 Chekhov suffers a severe hemorrhage of the lungs.

The Seagull is produced in St. Petersburg. It fails, and Chekhov vows never again to write for the stage.

1897 Chekhov is again hospitalized for symptoms of tuberculosis.

Uncle Vanya is published.

1898 Chekhov stops publishing stories in the New Times.

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The Seagull is successfully produced by the Moscow Art Theater. It is the start of a creative association that makes theatrical history. To this day, the theaters logo is a seagull.

He meets Olga Knipper, an actress of the Moscow Art Theater.

His father dies. Chekhov then purchases a house near Yalta. He moves there with his mother and sister.

1899 He writes the short stories, The Lady With the Dog and In the Ravine.

Uncle Vanya is produced by the Moscow Art Theater.

1900 His relationship with Olga Knipper develops into a serious liaison. She visits him in Crimea, meets his mother and sister, and begins spending time with him in Yalta.

1901 In a small, private ceremony, Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper are wed.

Three Sisters is produced at the Moscow Art Theater.

1902 He writes the short story, The Bishop.

1903 His condition steadily worsening, unable to climb the stairs of his Moscow apartment, Chekhov spends much of his time at Yalta, writing very little.

His last short story, The Betrothed, is published in Everybodys Journal.

1904 The Cherry Orchard is produced by the Moscow Art Theater.

In summer, seriously ill, Chekhov and his wife travel to Badenweiler, a German health resort. He dies there of tuberculosis on July 2, at the age of 44. His body is brought back to Russia, and he is buried in the cemetery of the Novodevichy Monastery, next to his father.

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Comments on Chekhovs Work

Russian critics have noted that Chekhovs style, his choice of words and so on, did not reveal any of those special artistic preoccupations that obsessed, for instance, Gogol or Flaubert of Henry James. His dictionary is poor, his combination of words almost trivial - the purple patch, the juicy verb, the hothouse adjective, the crme-de-menthe epithet, brought in on a silver tray, these were foreign to him. ... Thus Chekhov is a good example to give when one tries to explain that a writer may be a perfect artist without being exceptionally vivid in his verbal technique or exceptionally preoccupied with the way his sentences curve. ... The magical part of it is that in spite of his tolerating flaws which a bright beginner would have avoided, in spite of his being quite satisfied with the man-in-the-street among words, the word-in-the-street, so to say, Chekhov managed to convey an mpression of artistic beauty far surpassing that of many writers who thought they knew what rich beautiful prose was.

[Chekhov] is a strange writer: he throws words about as though at random, and yet everything in his writings is alive. And what great understanding! He never has any superfluous details, every one of them is either essential or beautiful.

Chekhov was the first among writers to rely so much upon the undercurrents of suggestion to convey a definite meaning.

Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 1982

Even in his earliest stories, Anton Pavlovich could already make out in the dreary sea of banality its somber absurdities with their tragic overtones. One need only read through his humorous stories attentively to convince oneself how much of the cruel and repulsive the author sorrowfully observed and, with a feeling of shame, concealed behind his droll words and situations ... Nobody understood so clearly and keenly as Anton Chekhov the tragedy of lifes banalities; nobody before him could with such merciless truthtelling depict for people the shameful and painful picture of their life in the dreary chaos of petty bourgeois prosiness.

Reading Anton Chekhovs stories, one feels oneself in a melancholy day of late autumn, when the air is transparent and the outline of naked trees, narrow houses, greyish people, is sharp. Everything is strange, lonely, motionless, helpless. The horizon, blue and empty, melts into the pale sky, and its breath is terribly cold upon the earth, which is covered with frozen mud. The authors mind, like autumn sun, shows up in hard outline the monotonous roads, the crooked streets, the little squalid houses in which tiny, miserable people are stifled by boredom and laziness and fill the houses with an unintelligible, drowsy bustle. There passes before one a long file of men and women, slaves of their love, of their stupidity and idleness, of their greed for the good things of life; there walk the slaves of the dark fear of life; they straggle anxiously along, filling life with incoherent words about the future, feeling that in the present there is no place for them. In front of that dreary, gray crowd of helpless people there passed a great, wise, and observant man: he looked at all these dreary inhabitants of his country, and, with a sad smile, with a tone of gentle but deep reproach, with anguish in his face and in his heart, in a beautiful and sincere voice, he said to them: You live badly, my friends. It is shameful to live like that.

Maxim Gorki, quoted in Reminiscences of Anton Chekhov, B.W. Huebsch, 1921 [Chekhovs writing] is like lace woven by a maid. There used to be such spinster lace-weavers in the past, old maids. They put their whole life, all their dreams of happiness, into the pattern. They dreamed of their beloved in patterns, and they wove all their misty, maidenly love into the lace.

Aleksei Tolstoy, told to Maxim Gorki, 1904

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Chekhovs finality is the finality of irony, of the man who stands a little aside from life and almost caresses its absurdities. His one deep and persistent emotion towards life is bewilderment. He seems to be literally stammering with unanswered questions as to the meaning of these grotesque comedies and tragedies of the human mind, these absurdities and cruelties, passions and pains and exaltations and boredoms of human relationships. And the perpetual and delicious irony, the amazing and refreshing aloofness, the cool precision and the cold realism are the methods by which Chekhov controls his bewilderment and prevents himself overwhelming his reader with a torrent of Whys and Whats.

Leonard S. Woolf, Miscellany: Chekhov, New Statesman, August 11, 1917

Love, it would seem, was the subject which fascinated him above all others, and he was concerned to present it, like all his themes, exactly as he saw it. There was certainly no problem to which he was less likely to pretend to have found a solution.

Ronald Hingley, Chekhovs Last Years: His Approach to Drama, Chekhov: A Biographical and Critical Study, 1966

Chekhov in his own words

An artist must not be the judge of his characters or of what they say, but only an impartial witness. Anton Chekhov, to Alexei Suvorin, Chekhovs friend and editor of the St. Petersburg newspaper, New Times, May, 1888

The artist observes, selects, guesses, combinesall these presuppose questions. If from the very start he had no questions to ask himself, there would be nothing to divine or to select. To deny that artistic creation involves problems, questions and a purpose would be to admit that an artist creates without reflection, without design, under a spell. You are right in demanding that an artist should take a conscious attitude toward his work, but you confuse two conceptions; the solution of a question and the correct posing of a question. Only the latter is obligatory for the artist.

Anton Chekhov, to Suvorin, October, 1888

Fiction is a quiet and sacred thing. The narrative is a legal wife, and the dramatic a showy, noisy, impertinent and tiresome mistress.

Anton Chekhov, to Alexei Plescheyev, a poet and friend to Chekhov, January, 1889

The descriptions of nature are artistic; you are a genuine landscapist. Except for the frequent use of the device of personification (anthropomorphism) when you have the sea breathe, the heavens gaze down, the steppe caress, nature whisper, speak or mourn, etc. - such expressions render your descriptions somewhat monotonous, occasionally oversweet and sometimes indistinct; picturesque and expressive descriptions of nature are attained only through simplicity, by the use of such plain phrases as the sun came out, it grew dark, it rained, etc.

Chekhov in a letter to Maxim Gorky in 1899

In my opinion, after writing a short story one should strike out the beginning and the end. Thats where we men of letters most often lie.

Chekhov in conversation with the writer Ivan Bunin

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On Kama Ginkas

Born in the Jewish ghetto of Kaunas, Lithuania, in May 1941, six weeks before the Nazi invasion of the Baltic states, Ginkas was one of only a handful of the citys children to survive. As a toddler, he was smuggled out and then sheltered in a variety of places, including the home of a dying poet and a Catholic orphanage for retarded children.

A few years after graduating from an arts institute in Leningrad in 1967, he was named artistic director of a regional theater in Krasnovarsk, Russia, where he rankled city bureaucrats with his now-legendary productions of Hamlet and Fahrenheit 451. He and his wife, director Genrietta Yanovskaya, returned to Leningrad, where several of his productions were cut or closed because of pressure from authorities.

His fortunes improved when they moved to Moscow, and Yanovskaya began running the citys New Generation Theater in 1987. His 1988 dramatization of Feodor Dostoevskis Notes From Underground

stirred controversy with its full-frontal nudity. Still, his star was rising. While doing more work in Moscow, he was invited to stage productions in Helsinki.

But it wasnt until the mid-90s, 30 years after he began in the theater, that he really hit his stride. In 18 months, between 1994 and 1996, he directed five shows -- in Russia, Finland, and Germany.

Now hes a cultural icon, a media darling, a highly sought-after teacher of master classes, a director whose productions tour European festivals.

In a 36-year career, hes returned again and again to the works of Dostoevski and Chekhov. Because theyre geniuses, he says. Because they tell us more about life than anyone else.

Most of [Ginkass] adult life has been devoted to making theater in defiance of various forces, from a hostile political climate to the occasional complacency of popular taste, writes John Freedman, theater critic for the Moscow Times and author of several books on Russian theater.

He calls his theater physiological -- meaning he wants to provoke reactions in people that bypass the intellect and shoot straight for the jugular of feeling. He wants you to be moved, squirm, blurt out laughing in the middle of horror.

I dont trust intellect much, he says. Often intellect is just a defense from spontaneous interaction with life.

Catherine Foster, From Russia (to the ART), with Love, Boston Globe, September 7, 2003. To work with a Russian director on Chekhov it doesnt get much better. Unfortunately, [after the audition] I had to go back to Minneapolis. I had a week left of performances of Three Sisters, and it was awful because I had learned so much in that hour with him and it was too late to use anything I gathered. Working with Kama has been an epiphany of sorts for me. Ive never worked with a director so attuned to the nuances of his actors. Hes just intuitive.

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Most plays one sees are well-made plays with a certain arc: exposition, inciting incidents, then a dnouement. What makes Kamas work unique is it goes bing-bing-bing from scene to scene. You have one scene where the audience is laughing, and in a beat they can taste the ashes in their mouth. Ive never been in a production where the arc moves with such violent opposition. As an audience going through it, I cant imagine an emotion that you dont experience in the course of the play.

Stephen Pelinski on working with Ginkas, Boston Phoenix, 2003.

Many of Ginkass productions, which have been staged throughout Russia and Europe, are his own adaptations of prose literature, not straight scripts. This often translates into unconventional narratives that pose an exceptional challenge for an actor, especially when the work is drawn from a writer like Chekhov, whose stories are spun around subtle human complexities.

Liza Weisstuch, Ladys Man, Boston Phoenix, 2003

These kinds of performances cannot be entirely realistic. It is a game. New rules have to be developed, and the audience has to be involved so they can play the game with us. Sometimes the audience doesnt know the rules and we use that fact to provoke them. Provocation is my theatrical language.

Death and love are equal. To love means to live, but it also means to know that death is right behind you.

Kama Ginkas, quoted in Adapting Dostoyevsky? Sure, Add a Few Gags, Ron Jenkins, the New York Times, August 3, 2003.

Death is a central topic in Mr. Ginkass theater, said Anatoly Smeliansky, director of the Moscow Art Theater School, where Mr. Ginkas is a professor of directing. He has the courage to play with death in a way that goes to the roots of Jewish culture as it was expressed in the ghetto and the paintings of Marc Chagall, said Mr. Smeliansky last month during a visit to Cambridge. Kama proposes death as a game.

Jenkins, Adapting Dostoyevsky? Sure, Add a Few Gags, The New York Times, August 3, 2003.

Over the years, Ginkas has evolved a new kind of theatre that evokes in his audience what he calls a physiological response. His goal is to get his audience to react through instincts and emotions before the thought process has a chance to respond. He is able to do this because he is an extraordinarily sensitive observer of human nature and a master of coaxing actors into revealing more about themselves than is usual in traditional theatre. Every production Ginkas stages includes a few gestures, a few brief moments of interaction or a handful of spoken intonations that strike spectators suddenly as revelations about the human condition. For a fleeting moment or two, what is happening on stage doesn't seem like theatre at all, but has the aroma of real life, replete with all its paradoxes, risks and dangers.

John Freedman, American Repertory Theatre

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THE PLAY

Characters and Synopsis

CHARACTERS

Dmitry Gurov Anna Sergeyevna Gentleman Sunbather Gentleman Sunbather

SYNOPSIS

At the fashionable Black Sea resort of Yalta, Dmitry Gurov has an affair with a young, married woman whom he has seen walking her white Pomeranian along the promenade. This lady with a lapdog, Anna Sergeyevna, takes their romance seriously. To Gurov, however, it seems like just another fleeting affair. When Anna goes back to her small provincial town and Gurov returns to his wife and children in Moscow, he expects his memories of her to fade. But he cant get Anna out of his mind. Telling his wife he has business in St. Petersburg, Gurov goes to Annas town. His trip changes both of their lives forever.

ANTON CHEKHOV ON THE GUTHRIE STAGE

1963 Three Sisters 1965 The Cherry Orchard 1969 Uncle Vanya 1983 The Seagull 1984 Three Sisters 1989 Uncle Vanya 1992 The Seagull 1996 The Cherry Orchard 2003 Three Sisters

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The Original Production

This production of Lady with a Lapdog originated at the American Repertory Theatre. For additional production information, please see http://www.amrep.org/lapdog/

Sergey Barkhins costume designs for Lady with a Lapdog

Sergey Barkhin design for American Repertory Theatre production of Lady with a Lapdog

Comments on the Short Story, Lady with a Lapdog

It is all Nietzsche. They are people who do not have any clear philosophy of life which could differentiate between good and evil - they are almost animals.

Tolstoy referring to the characters of Lady with a Lapdog

I read your Lady. Do you know what you are doing? You are killing realism. That form is finished, thats a fact! Nobody can go further down that road than you have done. Nobody can write so simply about ordinary things as you can.

Gorky in a letter to Chekhov

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Dana Gioia literary criticism piece on the short story at

http://www.danagioia.net/essays/echekhov.htm

Now, alone in Yalta, Chekhov writes what was to become the best-known of his love stories, The Lady with the Little Dog, in which a chance love affair takes possession of two people and changes them against their will, and which closes with them far apart and rarely able to meet. Their fervor for each other grows with every new good-bye. If the story seems to evoke aspects of Chekhovs meetings with Olga Knipper, it is transferred to a couple totally unlike them. In The Lady with the Little Dog, Gurov and Anna are both married. He works in a bank in Moscow, Anna lives in a dead provincial town called S, a town which will reappear in The Three Sisters. Each has gone on a stolen holiday to Yalta, a resort notorious for its casual love affairs. Gurov is an experienced forty-year-old amorist who has a stern wife.

Anna is married to a dull provincial civil servant. She is ten years younger than her husband. The opening sentence of the story dryly establishes the inciting spell of holiday gossip.

It was said that a new person had appeared on the sea front: a lady with a little dog. This at once stirs the hunting instinct of the experienced Gurov. He sees her, "the new person," sitting near him in an open-air restaurant. Her dog growls at him and he shakes his finger at it. He has seen at once that she is pretty, nave and "angular" in her gestures. She marvels when he tells her that he has an arts degree and has been trained to be an opera singer, but had given it up to work in a bank. She tells him, in her awkward way, that her husband is some sort of official.

In Yalta the only exciting event of the day is the arrival of the evening steamboat. She says she is expecting a friend. They join the crowd at the harbor and he notices that Anna is pretending to look at the disembarking passengers for her "friend." They wait on the quayside until the crowd has dispersed and dusk creeps up on the couple standing alone. He suggests they go for a drive along the coast. She does not answer. He kisses her and whispers, "Let us go to your room." Silently she agrees. Her room is lit by a single candle and smells of the scent she had bought the day before at a Japanese shop. Gurov thinks, "What encounters one does have in life." He had known "carefree, good-natured women, happy in their love and grateful for happiness, however brief." He had also known women

like his wife who loved insincerely, with idle chatter, affectedly, hysterically, with an expression suggesting that this was neither love nor passion but something more significant. In others he had glimpsed a rapacity, a wanting more from life than it could give, and these were

unreflecting, domineering, unintelligent women... not in their first youth, and when Gurov grew cold to them their beauty excited his hatred, and the lace on their underclothes seemed to him like scales.

We shall not see the seduction. Unlike later novelists, Chekhov never describes the sexual act: Russian manners and especially the censor would not have allowed such scenes. We shall know the seduction has occurred only by the look of consternation on Annas face,

as though someone had suddenly knocked at the door. She had her own special viewa very serious oneof what had happened. She thought of it as her "downfall," it seemed, which was all very strange and inappropriate.

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"Its wrong," she says, and adds the hackneyed words, "You will be the first to despise me now." The nonplussed Gurov cuts himself a slice of a watermelon which is on the table and for a silent half hour "eats without haste." (Yes, we think, that is the point so many novelists have missed: a seduction stuns.) She begins to sob, "God forgive me, its awful," and breaks into banal confessions of guilt, how she had wanted, for once, "to live, to live!" She has been mad and dazed in Yalta and lied when she had told her husband whom she calls a "flunkey"that she was going away because she was ill. Gurov calms her and at last they both begin laughing. They eventually go for a long drive to Oreanda along the beautiful coast, and we hear that her husbands grandfather was a German but her husband is Orthodox Russian oddly close to Olga Knippers origins.

At Oreanda they sit by the shore and listen to the monotonous, conniving, breaking of the sea. One remembers the sea breaking in The Duel. For Gurov it is a symbol of the mystery of an eternity that seems to both enlarge and dwarf us. (In his Notebooks Chekhov had written one of his gnomic phrases: "It seems to me: the sea and myself.") The couple sit a little apart on a bench and are silent. Gurov is thinking:

everything is beautiful in this worldeverything except what we think or do ourselves when we forget the higher aims of existence and our human dignity. True or untrue? Gurov, the experienced seducer, is changing.

The couple part: he to Moscow, she to the town of S. For Gurov the affair seems simply one more conquest, yet he finds Anna haunts him. To relieve the seriousness of the tale, Gurov is seen about to confide what has happened to a man at his club, but the man mishears him and thinks he is talking about the sturgeon they had just eaten. Gurov is surprised and disappointed that he does not dream of Anna. He now looks at other women, thinking for a moment to find her in them. He cannot rid himself of her image. This might be the end of many of Chekhovs earlier love stories but now he wants it to grow, and we shall see Gurov driven to unforgettable pursuit. He is impelled to go to S, and does so, telling his wife that he has to go to St. Petersburg on some errand. There he finds Annas house. It is ominously surrounded by a long gray fence, studded with nails, a symbol of the inaccessible "prison" in which she has had to live since her marriage. The sound of a piano being played suggests she and her husband may be there. He catches sight of her dog being let out into the garden by a housekeeper and he has the impulse to call it, but he is in such fear and confusion that he has forgotten the dogs name. He returns to his hotel and is desperate until he sees a poster saying that The Geisha is opening the following night at the local theateran occasion when she, her husband and all official people are likely to be there. Now the story changes key.

Gurov goes to the theater. There she is, "this little woman, in no way remarkable," clutching the "vulgar lorgnette in her hand," and there also is her tall, obsequious husband, wearing an order on his uniform, and it does indeed look like a waiters number. Gurov sits there through the first act; then at the interval the husband goes out to smoke. Thinking that all eyes in the audience are on him, Gurov goes over to speak to Anna. He can hardly speak, nor can she, and she stares in terror at him. She rushes out of the auditorium and he follows her into the drafty corridor. Their love becomes theater within theater. A cold stale wind seems to blow as she races past vulgar crowds of officials in uniforms "legal, scholastic and civil," past ladies, past fur coats swaying on their pegs as they rush by, down stairs and passages, until at last he catches up with her, breathless, under a balcony. A Chekhovian detail: two bored schoolboys who are smoking cigarettes look down to watch as Gurov takes Anna into his arms and kisses her and she clings to him. There the lovers stand, dazed, almost speechless, in the buzz of chatter and the sound of the meaningless tuning up of the orchestra. She gasps out a promise to find an excuse for coming to Moscow to see him. And so they part and he leaves the theater.

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Remember that we have seen the story through Gurovs eyes and that Chekhovs intention is to show him as a maturing and feeling man arguing with himself about the unexpected situation. The scene requires a momentary point of ironic distraction. It happens that Gurov has to drop his little daughter at her school on the way to his secret rendezvous, and as they walk the child asks her father why the pavements are still slushy after the sleet storm in the night. Gurov tells her kindly: "It is three degrees above zero, and yet it is sleeting. . . . The thaw is only on the surface of the earth; there is quite a different temperature in the upper strata of the atmosphere."

The child chatters on: "And is there no thunder in the winter, Daddy?"

He explains that too. When he has dropped the child at her school he is free to reflect on his two lives, full of stereotyped truths and untruths.

Everything.., in which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden from other people. The real subject of the story is this serious conflict in the minds of the lovers. At the hotel they are in each others arms and their theories vanish. Every two or three months after this they will meet and wrestle with their dilemma.

[They] could not understand why he had a wife and she a husband. They forgave each other for what they were ashamed of in their past, they forgave everything in the present, and felt that this love of theirs had changed them both. .. And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found, and then a new and splendid life would begin. And there Chekhov leaves them. As he once said, it is not the function of art to solve problems but to present them correctly.

V. S. Pritchett

Comments on the Ginkas Adaptation of the story Lady with a Lapdog for the stage

Lady with a Lapdog is a deliberately jarring yet oddly poetic piece that uncovers the emotional dislocation in Chekhovs deceptively simple, unresolved story of a rou brought to suffer and a bored wife brought to grief.

Ginkas, sticking his fingers into the interstices between the words, brings out the emotional frenzy and the abrupt changes of mood that lurk beneath Chekhovs masterfully benign evocation of a summer idyll that burgeons into an obsession.

Carolyn Clay, From review of A.R.T. production in the Boston Phoenix, Puppy love, Ginkas moves in on Chekhovs Lady, 2003.

A.S.: Kama - your adaptation of Lady with a Lapdog is highly unusual, because instead of dispensing with the narrator, youve assigned his text to the actors.

K.G.: I stole that device from stand-up comedians who use it a lot in their sketches and parodies.

A.S.: The technique first appeared in the satirical theatre of the early twentieth century. One of the cabaret theatres that used it was called Theatre of the Distorted Mirror.

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K.G.: You see, because youre a professor, you immediately found historical authorization for my theft! I liked the playfulness of this technique, and realized that through this kind of parody you could achieve an unexpectedly dramatic effect. In the mid-seventies I knew I wanted to apply this device to Chekhovs prose, but in those days I wasnt allowed to stage his short stories. I wasnt allowed to stage much of anything. When the bureaucrats heard that I wanted to work with Chekhovs prose in such a way, they thought, this Jew is going to ridicule the Russian classics! The crucial aspect of this technique is to transfer the narrators voice to the characters. This produces what Brecht called an alienation effect - its purely theatrical, because it eliminates any semblance of naturalism.

Dr. Anatoly Smeliansky, Head of the Moscow Art Theatre School, interviews Kama Ginkas during the rehearsal period for the A.R.T. production, fall 2003.

(the short story) Anton Chekhov: Lady With Lapdog

The text of this short story is from the translation by Constance Fitzgibbon.

I 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 Verneys pavilion, he saw, walking on the sea-front, a fair-haired young lady of medium height, wearing a beret; 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 beret, 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 wouldnt be amiss to make her acquaintance, Gurov reflected.

He was under forty, but he had a daughter already twelve years old, and two sons at school. He had been married young, when he was a student in his second year, and by now his wife seemed half as old again as he. She was a tall, erect woman with dark eyebrows, staid and dignified, and, as she said of herself, intellectual. She read a great deal, used phonetic spelling, called her husband, not Dmitri, but Dimitri, and he secretly considered her unintelligent, narrow, inelegant, was afraid of her, and did not like to be at home. He had begun being unfaithful to her long ago had been unfaithful to her often, and, probably on that account, almost always spoke ill of women, and when they were talked about in his presence, used to call them the lower race.

It seemed to him that he had been so schooled by bitter experience that he might call them what he liked, and yet he could not get on for two days together without the lower race. In the society of men he was bored and not himself, with them he was cold and uncommunicative; but when he was in the company of women he felt free, and knew what to say to them and how to behave; and he was at ease with them even when he was silent. In his appearance, in his character, in his whole nature, there was something attractive and elusive which allured women and disposed them in his favour; he knew that, and some force seemed to draw him, too, to them.

Experience often repeated, truly bitter experience, had taught him long ago that with decent people, especially Moscow people always slow to move and irresolute every intimacy, which at first so agreeably diversifies life and appears a light and charming adventure, inevitably grows into a regular

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problem of extreme intricacy, and in the long run the situation becomes unbearable. But at every fresh meeting with an interesting woman this experience seemed to slip out of his memory, and he was eager for life, and everything seemed simple and amusing.

One evening he was dining in the gardens, and the lady in the beret came up slowly to take the next table. Her expression, her gait, her dress, and the way she did her hair told him that she was a lady, that she was married, that she was in Yalta for the first time and alone, and that she was dull there. The stories told of the immorality in such places as Yalta are to a great extent untrue; he despised them, and knew that such stories were for the most part made up by persons who would themselves have been glad to sin if they had been able; but when the lady sat down at the next table three paces from him, he remembered these tales of easy conquests, of trips to the mountains, and the tempting thought of a swift, fleeting love affair, a romance with an unknown woman, whose name he did not know, suddenly took possession of him.

He beckoned coaxingly to the Pomeranian, and when the dog came up to him he shook his finger at it. The Pomeranian growled: Gurov shook his finger at it again.

The lady looked at him and at once dropped her eyes.

He doesnt bite, she said, and blushed.

May I give him a bone? he asked; and when she nodded he asked courteously, Have you been long in Yalta?

Five days.

And I have already dragged out a fortnight here.

There was a brief silence.

Time goes fast, and yet it is so dull here! she said, not looking at him.

Thats only the fashion to say it is dull here. A provincial will live in Belyov or Zhidra and not be dull, and when he comes here its Oh, the dulness! Oh, the dust! One would think he came from Grenada.

She laughed. Then both continued eating in silence, like strangers, but after dinner they walked side by side; and there sprang up between them the light jesting conversation of people who are free and satisfied, to whom it does not matter where they go or what they talk about. They walked and talked of the strange light on the sea: the water was of a soft warm lilac hue, and there was a golden streak from the moon upon it. They talked of how sultry it was after a hot day. Gurov told her that he came from Moscow, that he had taken his degree in Arts, but had a post in a bank; that he had trained as an opera-singer, but had given it up, that he owned two houses in Moscow. And from her he learnt that she had grown up in Petersburg, but had lived in S since her marriage two years before, that she was staying another month in Yalta, and that her husband, who needed a holiday too, might perhaps come and fetch her. She was not sure whether her husband had a post in a Crown Department or under the Provincial Council and was amused by her own ignorance. And Gurov learnt, too, that she was called Anna Sergeyevna.

Afterwards he thought about her in his room at the hotel thought she would certainly meet him next

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day; it would be sure to happen. As he got into bed he thought how lately she had been a girl at school, doing lessons like his own daughter; he recalled the diffidence, the angularity, that was still manifest in her laugh and her manner of talking with a stranger. This must have been the first time in her life she had been alone in surroundings in which she was followed, looked at, and spoken to merely from a secret motive which she could hardly fail to guess. He recalled her slender, delicate neck, her lovely grey eyes.

Theres something pathetic about her, anyway, he thought, and fell asleep.

II

A week had passed since they had made acquaintance. It was a holiday. It was sultry indoors, while in the street the wind whirled the dust round and round, and blew peoples hats off. It was a thirsty day, and Gurov often went into the pavilion, and pressed Anna Sergeyevna to have syrup and water or an ice. One did not know what to do with oneself.

In the evening when the wind had dropped a little, they went out on the groyne to see the steamer come in. There were a great many people walking about the harbour; they had gathered to welcome some one, bringing bouquets. And two peculiarities of a well-dressed Yalta crowd were very conspicuous: the elderly ladies were dressed like young ones, and there were great numbers of generals.

Owing to the roughness of the sea, the steamer arrived late, after the sun had set, and it was a long time turning about before it reached the groyne. Anna Sergeyevna looked through her lorgnette at the steamer and the passengers as though looking for acquaintances, and when she turned to Gurov her eyes were shining. She talked a great deal and asked disconnected questions, forgetting next moment what she had asked; then she dropped her lorgnette in the crush.

The festive crowd began to disperse; it was too dark to see peoples faces. The wind had completely dropped, but Gurov and Anna Sergeyevna still stood as though waiting to see some one else come from the steamer. Anna Sergeyevna was silent now, and sniffed the flowers without looking at Gurov.

The weather is better this evening, he said. Where shall we go now? Shall we drive somewhere?

She made no answer.

Then he looked at her intently, and all at once put his arm round her and kissed her on the lips, and breathed in the moisture and the fragrance of the flowers; and he immediately looked round him, anxiously wondering whether any one had seen them.

Let us go to your hotel, he said softly. And both walked quickly.

The room was close and smelt of the scent she had bought at the Japanese shop. Gurov looked at her and thought: What different people one meets in the world! From the past he preserved memories of careless, good-natured women, who loved cheerfully and were grateful to him for the happiness he gave them, however brief it might be; and of women like his wife who loved without any genuine feeling, with superfluous phrases, affectedly, hysterically, with an expression that suggested that it was not love nor passion, but something more significant; and of two or three others, very beautiful, cold women, on whose faces he had caught a glimpse of a rapacious expression an obstinate desire to snatch from life more than it could give, and these were capricious, unreflecting, domineering, unintelligent women not

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in their first youth, and when Gurov grew cold to them their beauty excited his hatred, and the lace on their linen seemed to him like scales.

But in this case there was still the diffidence, the angularity of inexperienced youth, an awkward feeling; and there was a sense of consternation as though some one had suddenly knocked at the door. The attitude of Anna Sergeyevna the lady with the dog to what had happened was somehow peculiar, very grave, as though it were her fall so it seemed, and it was strange and inappropriate. Her face dropped and faded, and on both sides of it her long hair hung down mournfully; she mused in a dejected attitude like the woman who was a sinner in an old-fashioned picture.

Its wrong, she said. You will be the first to despise me now.

There was a water-melon on the table. Gurov cut himself a slice and began eating it without haste. There followed at least half an hour of silence.

Anna Sergeyevna was touching; there was about her the purity of a good, simple woman who had seen little of life. The solitary candle burning on the table threw a faint light on her face, yet it was clear that she was very unhappy.

How could I despise you? asked Gurov. You dont know what you are saying.

God forgive me, she said, and her eyes filled with tears. Its awful.

You seem to feel you need to be forgiven.

Forgiven? No. I am a bad, low woman; I despise myself and dont attempt to justify myself. Its not my husband but myself I have deceived. And not only just now; I have been deceiving myself for a long time. My husband may be a good, honest man, but he is a flunkey! I dont know what he does there, what his work is, but I know he is a flunkey! I was twenty when I was married to him. I have been tormented by curiosity; I wanted something better. There must be a different sort of life, I said to myself. I wanted to live! To live, to live! I was fired by curiosity you dont understand it, but, I swear to God, I could not control myself; something happened to me: I could not be restrained. I told my husband I was ill, and came here. And here I have been walking about as though I were dazed, like a mad creature; and now I have become a vulgar, contemptible woman whom any one may despise.

Gurov felt bored already, listening to her. He was irritated by the naive tone, by this remorse, so unexpected and inopportune; but for the tears in her eyes, he might have thought she was jesting or playing a part.

I dont understand, he said softly. What is it you want?

She hid her face on his breast and pressed close to him.

Believe me, believe me, I beseech you ... she said. I love a pure, honest life, and sin is loathsome to me. I dont know what I am doing. Simple people say: The Evil One has beguiled me. And I may say of myself now that the Evil One has beguiled me.

Hush, hush! he muttered.

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He looked at her fixed, scared eyes, kissed her, talked softly and affectionately, and by degrees she was comforted, and her gaiety returned; they both began laughing.

Afterwards when they went out there was not a soul on the sea-front. The town with its cypresses had quite a deathlike air, but the sea still broke noisily on the shore; a single barge was rocking on the waves, and a lantern was blinking sleepily on it.

They found a cab and drove to Oreanda.

I found out your surname in the hall just now: it was written on the board Von Diderits, said Gurov. Is your husband a German?

No; I believe his grandfather was a German, but he is an Orthodox Russian himself.

At Oreanda they sat on a seat not far from the church, looked down at the sea, and were silent. Yalta was hardly visible through the morning mist; white clouds stood motionless on the mountain-tops. The leaves did not stir on the trees, grasshoppers chirruped, and the monotonous hollow sound of the sea rising up from below, spoke of the peace, of the eternal sleep awaiting us. So it must have sounded when there was no Yalta, no Oreanda here; so it sounds now, and it will sound as indifferently and monotonously when we are all no more. And in this constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards perfection. Sitting beside a young woman who in the dawn seemed so lovely, soothed and spellbound in these magical surroundings the sea, mountains, clouds, the open sky Gurov thought how in reality everything is beautiful in this world when one reflects: everything except what we think or do ourselves when we forget our human dignity and the higher aims of our existence.

A man walked up to them probably a keeper looked at them and walked away. And this detail seemed mysterious and beautiful, too. They saw a steamer come from Theodosia, with its lights out in the glow of dawn.

There is dew on the grass, said Anna Sergeyevna, after a silence.

Yes. Its time to go home.

They went back to the town.

Then they met every day at twelve oclock on the sea-front, lunched and dined together, went for walks, admired the sea. She complained that she slept badly, that her heart throbbed violently; asked the same questions, troubled now by jealousy and now by the fear that he did not respect her sufficiently. And often in the square or gardens, when there was no one near them, he suddenly drew her to him and kissed her passionately. Complete idleness, these kisses in broad daylight while he looked round in dread of some ones seeing them, the heat, the smell of the sea, and the continual passing to and fro before him of idle, well-dressed, well-fed people, made a new man of him; he told Anna Sergeyevna how beautiful she was, how fascinating. He was impatiently passionate, he would not move a step away from her, while she was often pensive and continually urged him to confess that he did not respect her, did not love her in the least, and thought of her as nothing but a common woman. Rather late almost every evening they drove somewhere out of town, to Oreanda or to the waterfall; and the expedition was always a success, the scenery invariably impressed them as grand and beautiful.

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They were expecting her husband to come, but a letter came from him, saying that there was something wrong with his eyes, and he entreated his wife to come home as quickly as possible. Anna Sergeyevna made haste to go.

Its a good thing I am going away, she said to Gurov. Its the finger of destiny!

She went by coach and he went with her. They were driving the whole day. When she had got into a compartment of the express, and when the second bell had rung, she said:

Let me look at you once more look at you once again. Thats right.

She did not shed tears, but was so sad that she seemed ill, and her face was quivering.

I shall remember you think of you, she said. God be with you; be happy. Dont remember evil against me. We are parting forever it must be so, for we ought never to have met. Well, God be with you.

The train moved off rapidly, its lights soon vanished from sight, and a minute later there was no sound of it, as though everything had conspired together to end as quickly as possible that sweet delirium, that madness. Left alone on the platform, and gazing into the dark distance, Gurov listened to the chirrup of the grasshoppers and the hum of the telegraph wires, feeling as though he had only just waked up. And he thought, musing, that there had been another episode or adventure in his life, and it, too, was at an end, and nothing was left of it but a memory. He was moved, sad, and conscious of a slight remorse. This young woman whom he would never meet again had not been happy with him; he was genuinely warm and affectionate with her, but yet in his manner, his tone, and his caresses there had been a shade of light irony, the coarse condescension of a happy man who was, besides, almost twice her age. All the time she had called him kind, exceptional, lofty; obviously he had seemed to her different from what he really was, so he had unintentionally deceived her.

Here at the station was already a scent of autumn; it was a cold evening.

Its time for me to go north, thought Gurov as he left the platform. High time!

III

At home in Moscow everything was in its winter routine; the stoves were heated, and in the morning it was still dark when the children were having breakfast and getting ready for school, and the nurse would light the lamp for a short time. The frosts had begun already. When the first snow has fallen, on the first day of sledge-driving it is pleasant to see the white earth, the white roofs, to draw soft, delicious breath, and the season brings back the days of ones youth. The old limes and birches, white with hoar-frost, have a good-natured expression; they are nearer to ones heart than cypresses and palms, and near them one doesnt want to be thinking of the sea and the mountains.

Gurov was Moscow born; he arrived in Moscow on a fine frosty day, and when he put on his fur coat and warm gloves, and walked along Petrovka, and when on Saturday evening he heard the ringing of the bells, his recent trip and the places he had seen lost all charm for him. Little by little he became absorbed in Moscow life, greedily read three newspapers a day, and declared he did not read the Moscow papers on principle! He already felt a longing to go to restaurants, clubs, dinner-parties, anniversary

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celebrations, and he felt flattered at entertaining distinguished lawyers and artists, and at playing cards with a professor at the doctors club. He could already eat a whole plateful of salt fish and cabbage.

In another month, he fancied, the image of Anna Sergeyevna would be shrouded in a mist in his memory, and only from time to time would visit him in his dreams with a touching smile as others did. But more than a month passed, real winter had come, and everything was still clear in his memory as though he had parted with Anna Sergeyevna only the day before. And his memories glowed more and more vividly. When in the evening stillness he heard from his study the voices of his children, preparing their lessons, or when he listened to a song or the organ at the restaurant, or the storm howled in the chimney, suddenly everything would rise up in his memory: what had happened on the groyne, and the early morning with the mist on the mountains, and the steamer coming from Theodosia, and the kisses. He would pace a long time about his room, remembering it all and smiling; then his memories passed into dreams, and in his fancy the past was mingled with what was to come. Anna Sergeyevna did not visit him in dreams, but followed him about everywhere like a shadow and haunted him. When he shut his eyes he saw her as though she were living before him, and she seemed to him lovelier, younger, tenderer than she was; and he imagined himself finer than he had been in Yalta. In the evenings she peeped out at him from the bookcase, from the fireplace, from the corner he heard her breathing, the caressing rustle of her dress. In the street he watched the women, looking for some one like her.

He was tormented by an intense desire to confide his memories to some one. But in his home it was impossible to talk of his love, and he had no one outside; he could not talk to his tenants nor to any one at the bank. And what had he to talk of? Had he been in love, then? Had there been anything beautiful, poetical, or edifying or simply interesting in his relations with Anna Sergeyevna? And there was nothing for him but to talk vaguely of love, of woman, and no one guessed what it meant; only his wife twitched her black eyebrows, and said:

The part of a lady-killer does not suit you at all, Dimitri.

One evening, coming out of the doctors club with an official with whom he had been playing cards, he could not resist saying:

If only you knew what a fascinating woman I made the acquaintance of in Yalta!

The official got into his sledge and was driving away, but turned suddenly and shouted:

Dmitri Dmitritch! What?

You were right this evening: the sturgeon was a bit too strong!

These words, so ordinary, for some reason moved Gurov to indignation, and struck him as degrading and unclean. What savage manners, what people! What senseless nights, what uninteresting, uneventful days! The rage for card-playing, the gluttony, the drunkenness, the continual talk always about the same thing. Useless pursuits and conversations always about the same things absorb the better part of ones time, the better part of ones strength, and in the end there is left a life grovelling and curtailed, worthless and trivial, and there is no escaping or getting away from it just as though one were in a madhouse or a prison.

Gurov did not sleep all night, and was filled with indignation. And he had a headache all next day. And

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the next night he slept badly; he sat up in bed, thinking, or paced up and down his room. He was sick of his children, sick of the bank; he had no desire to go anywhere or to talk of anything.

In the holidays in December he prepared for a journey, and told his wife he was going to Petersburg to do something in the interests of a young friend and he set off for S. What for? He did not very well know himself. He wanted to see Anna Sergeyevna and to talk with her to arrange a meeting, if possible.

He reached S in the morning, and took the best room at the hotel, in which the floor was covered with grey army cloth, and on the table was an inkstand, grey with dust and adorned with a figure on horseback, with its hat in its hand and its head broken off. The hotel porter gave him the necessary information; Von Diderits lived in a house of his own in Old Gontcharny Street it was not far from the hotel: he was rich and lived in good style, and had his own horses; every one in the town knew him. The porter pronounced the name Dridirits.

Gurov went without haste to Old Gontcharny Street and found the house. Just opposite the house stretched a long grey fence adorned with nails.

One would run away from a fence like that, thought Gurov, looking from the fence to the windows of the house and back again.

He considered: to-day was a holiday, and the husband would probably be at home. And in any case it would be tactless to go into the house and upset her. If he were to send her a note it might fall into her husbands hands, and then it might ruin everything. The best thing was to trust to chance. And he kept walking up and down the street by the fence, waiting for the chance. He saw a beggar go in at the gate and dogs fly at him; then an hour later he heard a piano, and the sounds were faint and indistinct. Probably it was Anna Sergeyevna playing. The front door suddenly opened, and an old woman came out, followed by the familiar white Pomeranian. Gurov was on the point of calling to the dog, but his heart began beating violently, and in his excitement he could not remember the dogs name.

He walked up and down, and loathed the grey fence more and more, and by now he thought irritably that Anna Sergeyevna had forgotten him, and was perhaps already amusing herself with some one else, and that that was very natural in a young woman who had nothing to look at from morning till night but that confounded fence. He went back to his hotel room and sat for a long while on the sofa, not knowing what to do, then he had dinner and a long nap.

How stupid and worrying it is! he thought when he woke and looked at the dark windows: it was already evening. Here Ive had a good sleep for some reason. What shall I do in the night?

He sat on the bed, which was covered by a cheap grey blanket, such as one sees in hospitals, and he taunted himself in his vexation:

So much for the lady with the dog so much for the adventure. Youre in a nice fix.

That morning at the station a poster in large letters had caught his eye. The Geisha was to be performed for the first time. He thought of this and went to the theatre.

Its quite possible she may go to the first performance, he thought.

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The theatre was full. As in all provincial theatres, there was a fog above the chandelier, the gallery was noisy and restless; in the front row the local dandies were standing up before the beginning of the performance, with their hands behind them; in the Governors box the Governors daughter, wearing a boa, was sitting in the front seat, while the Governor himself lurked modestly behind the curtain with only his hands visible; the orchestra was a long time tuning up; the stage curtain swayed. All the time the audience were coming in and taking their seats Gurov looked at them eagerly.

Anna Sergeyevna, too, came in. She sat down in the third row, and when Gurov looked at her his heart contracted, and he understood clearly that for him there was in the whole world no creature so near, so precious, and so important to him; she, this little woman, in no way remarkable, lost in a provincial crowd, with a vulgar lorgnette in her hand, filled his whole life now, was his sorrow and his joy, the one happiness that he now desired for himself, and to the sounds of the inferior orchestra, of the wretched provincial violins, he thought how lovely she was. He thought and dreamed.

A young man with small side-whiskers, tall and stooping, came in with Anna Sergeyevna and sat down beside her; he bent his head at every step and seemed to be continually bowing. Most likely this was the husband whom at Yalta, in a rush of bitter feeling, she had called a flunkey. And there really was in his long figure, his side-whiskers, and the small bald patch on his head, something of the flunkeys obsequiousness; his smile was sugary, and in his buttonhole there was some badge of distinction like the number on a waiter.

During the first interval the husband went away to smoke; she remained alone in her stall. Gurov, who was sitting in the stalls, too, went up to her and said in a trembling voice, with a forced smile:

Good-evening.

She glanced at him and turned pale, then glanced again with horror, unable to believe her eyes, and tightly gripped the fan and the lorgnette in her hands, evidently struggling with herself not to faint. Both were silent. She was sitting, he was standing, frightened by her confusion and not venturing to sit down beside her. The violins and the flute began tuning up. He felt suddenly frightened; it seemed as though all the people in the boxes were looking at them. She got up and went quickly to the door; he followed her, and both walked senselessly along passages, and up and down stairs, and figures in legal, scholastic, and civil service uniforms, all wearing badges, flitted before their eyes. They caught glimpses of ladies, of fur coats hanging on pegs; the draughts blew on them, bringing a smell of stale tobacco. And Gurov, whose heart was beating violently, thought:

Oh, heavens! Why are these people here and this orchestra! ...

And at that instant he recalled how when he had seen Anna Sergeyevna off at the station he had thought that everything was over and they would never meet again. But how far they were still from the end!

On the narrow, gloomy staircase over which was written To the Amphitheatre, she stopped.

How you have frightened me! she said, breathing hard, still pale and overwhelmed. Oh, how you have frightened me! I am half dead. Why have you come? Why?

But do understand, Anna, do understand ... he said hastily in a low voice. I entreat you to understand. ...

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She looked at him with dread, with entreaty, with love; she looked at him intently, to keep his features more distinctly in her memory.

I am so unhappy, she went on, not heeding him. I have thought of nothing but you all the time; I live only in the thought of you. And I wanted to forget, to forget you; but why, oh, why, have you come?

On the landing above them two schoolboys were smoking and looking down, but that was nothing to Gurov; he drew Anna Sergeyevna to him, and began kissing her face, her cheeks, and her hands.

What are you doing, what are you doing! she cried in horror, pushing him away. We are mad. Go away to-day; go away at once. . . . I beseech you by all that is sacred, I implore you. . . . There are people coming this way!

Some one was coming up the stairs.

You must go away, Anna Sergeyevna went on in a whisper. Do you hear, Dmitri Dmitritch? I will come and see you in Moscow. I have never been happy; I am miserable now, and I never, never shall be happy, never! Dont make me suffer still more! I swear Ill come to Moscow. But now let us part. My precious, good, dear one, we must part!

She pressed his hand and began rapidly going downstairs, looking round at him, and from her eyes he could see that she really was unhappy. Gurov stood for a little while, listened, then, when all sound had died away, he found his coat and left the theatre.

IV

And Anna Sergeyevna began coming to see him in Moscow. Once in two or three months she left S, telling her husband that she was going to consult a doctor about an internal complaint and her husband believed her, and did not believe her. In Moscow she stayed at the Slaviansky Bazaar hotel, and at once sent a man in a red cap to Gurov. Gurov went to see her, and no one in Moscow knew of it.

Once he was going to see her in this way on a winter morning (the messenger had come the evening before when he was out). With him walked his daughter, whom he wanted to take to school: it was on the way. Snow was falling in big wet flakes.

Its three degrees above freezing-point, and yet it is snowing, said Gurov to his daughter. The thaw is only on the surface of the earth; there is quite a different temperature at a greater height in the atmosphere.

And why are there no thunderstorms in the winter, father?

He explained that, too. He talked, thinking all the while that he was going to see her, and no living soul knew of it, and probably never would know. 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

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race, his presence with his wife at anniversary festivities all that was open. And he judged of others by himself, not believing in what he saw, and always believing that every man had his real, most interesting life under the cover of secrecy and under the cover of night. All personal life rested on secrecy, and possibly it was partly on that account that civilised man was so nervously anxious that personal privacy should be respected.

After leaving his daughter at school, Gurov went on to the Slaviansky Bazaar. He took off his fur coat below, went upstairs, and softly knocked at the door. Anna Sergeyevna, wearing his favourite grey dress, exhausted by the journey and the suspense, had been expecting him since the evening before. She was pale; she looked at him, and did not smile, and he had hardly come in when she fell on his breast. Their kiss was slow and prolonged, as though they had not met for two years.

Well, how are you getting on there? he asked. What news?

Wait; Ill tell you directly. I cant talk.

She could not speak; she was crying. She turned away from him, and pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.

Let her have her cry out. Ill sit down and wait, he thought, and he sat down in an arm-chair.

Then he rang and asked for tea to be brought him, and while he drank his tea she remained standing at the window with her back to him. She was crying from emotion, from the miserable consciousness that their life was so hard for them; they could only meet in secret, hiding themselves from people, like thieves! Was not their life shattered?

Come, do stop! he said.

It was evident to him that this love of theirs would not soon be over, that he could not see the end of it. Anna Sergeyevna grew more and more attached to him. She adored him, and it was unthinkable to say to her that it was bound to have an end some day; besides, she would not have believed it!

He went up to her and took her by the shoulders to say something affectionate and cheering, and at that moment he saw himself in the looking-glass.

His hair was already beginning to turn grey. And it seemed strange to him that he had grown so much older, so much plainer during the last few years. The shoulders on which his hands rested were warm and quivering. He felt compassion for this life, still so warm and lovely, but probably already not far from beginning to fade and wither like his own. Why did she love him so much? He always seemed to women different from what he was, and they loved in him not himself, but the man created by their imagination, whom they had been eagerly seeking all their lives; and afterwards, when they noticed their mistake, they loved him all the same. And not one of them had been happy with him. Time passed, he had made their acquaintance, got on with them, parted, but he had never once loved; it was anything you like, but not love.

And only now when his head was grey he had fallen properly, really in love for the first time in his life.

Anna Sergeyevna and he loved each other like people very close and akin, like husband and wife, like

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tender friends; it seemed to them that fate itself had meant them for one another, and they could not understand why he had a wife and she a husband; and it was as though they were a pair of birds of passage, caught and forced to live in different cages. They forgave each other for what they were ashamed of in their past, they forgave everything in the present, and felt that this love of theirs had changed them both.

In moments of depression in the past he had comforted himself with any arguments that came into his mind, but now he no longer cared for arguments; he felt profound compassion, he wanted to be sincere and tender.

Dont cry, my darling, he said. Youve had your cry; thats enough. Let us talk now, let us think of some plan.

Then they spent a long while taking counsel together, talked of how to avoid the necessity for secrecy, for deception, for living in different towns and not seeing each other for long at a time. How could they be free from this intolerable bondage?

How? How? he asked, clutching his head. How?

And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found, and then a new and splendid life would begin; and it was clear to both of them that they had still a long, long road before them, and that the most complicated and difficult part of it was only just beginning.

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ADDITIONAL SOURCES

For Further Information

BOOKS

Chekhov, Anton. Anton Chekhovs Life and Thought: Selected Letters and Commentary. Translated by Michael Henry Heim, edited by Simon Karlinsky. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1973.

Chekhov, Anton. Dear Writer, Dear Actress. The Love Letters of Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper. Edited and translated by Jean Benedetti. New York: The Ecco Press, 1996.

Chekhov, Anton. Stories. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Bantam Books, 2000.

Eekman, Thomas A., editor. Critical Essays on Anton Chekhov. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1989.

Ginkas, Kama and John Freedman. Provoking Theater: Kama Ginkas Directs. Hanover, New Hampshire: Smith and Kraus, 2003.

Hingley, Ronald. A New Life of Anton Chekhov. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976.

Malcolm, Janet. Reading Chekhov: a critical journey. New York: Random House, 2001.

McConkey, James, editor. Chekhov and Our Age: Responses to Chekhov by American Writers and Scholars. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Center for International Studies, 1984.

Rayfield, Donald. Anton Chekhov: A Life. Evanston, Illinois, 1997.

Simmons, Ernest J. Chekhov: A Biography. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962.

Smith, Virginia Llewellyn. Anton Chekhov and the Lady with the Dog. London: Oxford University Press, 1973

WEBSITES

http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc6.htm A general biography of Anton Chekhov with links to other web sites and bibliographies pertaining to the playwright.

http://www.theatrehistory.com/russian/ Offers links to a variety of books and articles on Chekhov.

http://chekhov2.tripod.com/ 201 Stories by Anton Chekhov. An extensive collection of links to Chekhovs short stories on the web.