Steppe. The story of one trip. Tale (1888)

On a July morning, a shabby chaise leaves the district town of the N province, in which sits the merchant Ivan Ivanovich Kuzmichev, the rector of the N church, Fr. Christopher Syrian ("little long-haired old man") and Kuzmichev's nephew, a boy Yegorushka, nine years old, sent by his mother, Olga Ivanovna, the widow of a college secretary and Kuzmichev's sister, to enter a gymnasium in the big city. Kuzmichev and Fr. Christopher is on his way to sell wool; Yegorushka is captured along the way. He is sad to leave his homeland and part with his mother. He's crying, but oh. Christopher consoles him, saying the usual words that learning is light, and ignorance is darkness. Fr. himself Christopher is educated: “I was not yet fifteen years old, and I already spoke and wrote poetry in Latin as well as in Russian.” He could have made a good church career, but his parents did not give their blessing to further study. Kuzmichev is against unnecessary education and considers sending Yegorushka to the city as a whim of his sister. He could have put Yegorushka to work without training. Kuzmichev and Fr. Christopher is trying to catch up with the convoy and a certain Varlamov, a famous merchant in the district, who is richer than many landowners. They arrive at an inn, whose owner, the Jew Moisei Moiseich, fawns over the guests and even the boy (he gives him a gingerbread intended for his sick son Naum). He is a “little man” for whom Kuzmichev and the priest are real “gentlemen”. In addition to his wife and children, his brother Solomon, a proud man who is offended by the whole world, lives in his house. He burned his inherited money and now turns out to be his brother’s hanger-on, which causes him suffering and a kind of masochistic pleasure. Moses Moiseich scolds him, Fr. Christopher regrets, but Kuzmichev despises. While the guests are drinking tea and counting money, Countess Dranitskaya, a very beautiful, noble, rich woman, arrives at the inn, who, as Kuzmichev says, is “robbed” by some Pole Kazimir Mikhailych: “... young and stupid. There’s wind in my head.” that's how it goes."

We caught up with the convoy. Kuzmichev leaves the boy with the transporters and sets off with Fr. Christopher on business. Gradually, Yegorushka meets new people for him: Pantelei, an Old Believer and a very sedate man who eats separately from everyone else with a cypress spoon with a cross on the handle and drinks water from a lamp; Emelyan, an old and harmless man; Dymov, a young unmarried guy whom his father sends with a convoy so that he does not get spoiled at home; Vasey; former singers who have caught a cold and are suffering from the inability to sing anymore; Kiryukha, an unremarkable man... From their conversations at rest stops, the boy understands that they all lived better before and went to work in the convoy because of need.

A large place in the story is occupied by the description of the steppe, which reaches an artistic apotheosis in the thunderstorm scene, and the conversations of the transporters. Panteley tells scary stories around the fire at night, supposedly from his life in the northern part of Russia, where he worked as a coachman for various merchants and always had adventures with them at inns. Robbers certainly lived there and slaughtered merchants with long knives. Even the boy understands that all these stories are half-invented and, perhaps, not even by Pantelei himself, but for some reason he prefers to tell them rather than real events from his obviously difficult life. In general, as the convoy moves towards the city, the boy seems to become reacquainted with the Russian people, and a lot of things seem strange to him. For example, Vasya has such acute vision that he can see animals and how they behave far from people; he eats a live “bobyrik” (a type of small fish like a gudgeon), while his face takes on a gentle expression. There is something animalistic and “not of this world” about him at the same time. Dymov suffers from excess physical strength. He is “bored”, and out of boredom he does a lot of evil things: for some reason he kills a snake, although this, according to Pantelei, is a great sin, for some reason he offends Emelyan, but then asks for forgiveness, etc. Yegorushka does not love him and is afraid , how slightly afraid he is of all these men who are strangers to him, except for Pantelei.

Approaching the city, they finally meet “that same” Varlamov, who was mentioned so much before and who, by the end of the story, acquired a certain mythological connotation. In fact, he is an elderly merchant, businesslike and domineering. He knows how to deal with both peasants and landowners; very confident in himself and his money. Against his background, Uncle Ivan Ivanovich seems to Yegorushka like a “little man”, just as Moses Moiseich seemed against the background of Kuzmichev himself

On the way, during a thunderstorm, Yegorushka caught a cold and fell ill. Father Christopher is treating him in the city, and his uncle is very dissatisfied that, in addition to all the troubles, care for the arrangement of his nephew is added. They are from Fr. Khristofor profitably sold the wool to the merchant Cherepakhin, and now Kuzmichev regrets that he sold part of the wool at home at a lower price. He thinks only about money and this is very different from Fr. Christopher, who knows how to combine the necessary practicality with thoughts about God and the soul, love for life, knowledge, almost paternal tenderness for the boy, and so on. Of all the characters in the story, he is the most harmonious.

Egorushka is placed with an old friend of his mother, Nastasya Petrovna Toskunova, who signed over a private house to her son-in-law and lives with her little granddaughter Katya in an apartment where “there are a lot of images and flowers.” Kuzmichev will pay her ten rubles a month for the boy’s maintenance. He has already submitted documents to the gymnasium; entrance exams are due soon. Having given Yegorushka a ten-kopeck piece, Kuzmichev and Fr. Christopher is leaving. For some reason the boy feels that... He will never see Christopher again. “Egorushka felt that with these people, everything that had been experienced so far had disappeared for him forever, like smoke; he sank exhausted onto a bench and with bitter tears welcomed the new, unknown life that was now beginning for him... What is -What will this life be like?

Author of the retelling: P. V. Basinsky

Ivanov. Drama (1887 - 1889)

The action takes place in one of the districts of central Russia.

Nikolai Alekseevich Ivanov, a landowner, is sitting in his garden reading a book. Misha Borkin, his distant relative and manager of his estate, returns tipsy from hunting. Seeing Ivanov, he aims a gun at him, laughs at his joke, continues to pester him, demands to give money to pay the workers. Ivanov has no money, he asks to be left alone.

His wife Anna Petrovna, who appeared in the window of the house, is playful: "Nikolai, let's tumble in the hay!" Ivanov angrily replies that it is harmful for her to stand in a draft, and advises her to close the window. Borkin recalls that Lebedev still has to pay interest on the debt. Ivanov is going to go to the Lebedevs to ask for a respite. Borkin recalls that today is the birthday of Lebedev's daughter Sasha. He gives Ivanov a lot of advice on how to get a lot of money - one more adventurous than the other.

Uncle Ivanov, the old Count Shabelsky, and Lvov, a young doctor, appear. Shabelsky, as usual, grumbles. Lvov is serious: Anna Petrovna has consumption, she needs peace, and she is constantly worried about her husband's changed attitude towards her. Lvov reproaches Ivanov for the fact that his behavior kills the patient. Ivanov admits to the doctor that he himself is unable to understand himself, the change that has taken place with him. He married out of passionate love, and his future wife, a Jewess, nee Sarah Abramson, for his sake changed her faith, name, left her father and mother, left wealth. And now five years have passed, she still loves him, but he himself does not feel love, no pity for her, but some kind of emptiness, fatigue. And again he repeats that he does not understand what is happening with his soul. He is thirty-five years old and advises the young doctor not to. to choose extraordinary paths in life, but to build all life according to a template.

To Lvov, Ivanov's confession seems hypocritical; left alone, he calls him Tartuffe, a swindler: oh, he knows why Ivanov goes to the Lebedevs every evening. Shabelsky and Anna Petrovna beg the departing Ivanov not to leave them, to take them with him. The irritated Ivanov agrees to take the Count. He confesses to his wife that at home it is excruciatingly difficult for him, longing - why, he himself does not know, and asks not to hold him back. In vain she tries to caress, reminds him how well they lived before. Ivanov and his uncle leave, the sad Anna Petrovna remains. But when the doctor tries to condemn her husband, she passionately stands up for him. After all, the doctor did not know the former Ivanov: he is a wonderful, strong man who could captivate and lead away.

Unable to bear the loneliness, she is also going to go to where Ivanov is now.

A hall in the Lebedevs' house, guests gathered for Sasha's name day. The mistress of the house, Zinaida Savvishna (Zyuzyushka), out of stinginess, offers only “lace jam” from treats, the old man Lebedev often calls the footman with a glass of vodka. They play cards, carry on empty talk, gossip about Ivanov: he supposedly married his Jewess out of self-interest, but did not receive a penny, which is why he is now unhappy and "became furious." Only Sasha ardently objects to slander: Ivanov's only fault, she says, is that he has a weak character and that he trusts people too much.

Ivanov and Shabelsky appear, then noisy Borkin with fireworks and sparklers. When everyone goes into the garden, Ivanov, continuing his conversation with Sasha, confesses to her: “My conscience hurts day and night, I feel that I am deeply guilty, but I don’t understand what, exactly, is my fault. And then there’s my wife’s illness, lack of money , eternal squabbling, gossip <...> I am dying of shame at the thought that I, a healthy, strong person, have turned into either Hamlet, or Manfred, or superfluous people <...> This outrages my pride , shame oppresses me, and I suffer..."Sasha is sure that she understands Ivanov. He is lonely, he needs a person whom he would love and who would understand him. Love alone can renew it. Ivanov smiles sadly: all he needs is to start a new novel. “No, my good girl, it’s not about the novel.” They go into the garden, and a little later Anna Petrovna and Lvov appear. The doctor talked all the way about his honesty. She is bored by this, she again contrasts Ivanov with him - the way he was recently: cheerful, condescending to others.

When Ivanov and Sasha return a little later, he is confused by her declaration of love for him: “Oh my God, I don’t understand anything... Shurochka, don’t!” But Sasha continues to talk about her love with enthusiasm, and Ivanov bursts into happy laughter: “Does this mean starting life all over again?.. Back to business?” Anna Petrovna sees their kiss as she enters. Ivanov exclaims in horror: “Sarah!”

In Ivanov’s house, Lebedev, Lvov, Borkin - everyone needs to talk to him about their own things, but Ivanov wants to be left alone. Lebedev offers him money secretly from Zyuzushka, but Ivanov takes something completely different: “What’s wrong with me?.. I don’t understand myself.” And then, alone with himself, he remembers: “It’s not even a year since I was healthy and strong, I was cheerful, tireless, hot... And now... I’m tired, I don’t believe it... I don’t expect anything, I don’t regret anything. ..” He does not understand why and why he stopped loving Sarah; Sasha’s love seems to him an abyss. And again: “I don’t understand, I don’t understand, I don’t understand!”

Lvov, calling Ivanov for an explanation, says that he understands his actions and is ready to call things by their true name: Ivanov needs the death of his wife in order to receive the dowry for Sasha Lebedeva. In vain Ivanov urges him not to be so self-confident: “No, doctor, each of us has too many wheels, cogs and valves for us to judge each other by a first impression or by two or three external signs...” Seeing Sasha entering , the doctor says to Ivanov: “Now, I hope, we understand each other perfectly!”

Ivanov is not happy with Sasha’s arrival, in their romance he sees “a common, hackneyed place: he lost heart and lost ground. She appeared, cheerful in spirit, strong, and gave him a helping hand...”. But Sasha really thinks to save Ivanov “Men don’t understand a lot. Every girl would rather like a loser than a lucky man, because everyone is seduced by active love...” Let Ivanov be next to his sick wife for a year, ten - she, Sasha, will not get tired of waiting.

After she leaves, Anna Petrovna enters, offended, and demands an explanation from her husband. Ivanov is ready to admit that he is deeply guilty before her, but when he hears from his wife the same interpretation of his actions: “All this time you have been deceiving me in the most brazen way <...> Dishonest, low man! You owe Lebedev, and now, so that shirk your duty, you want to turn his daughter’s head, deceive her just like me,” - here he cannot stand it. He gasps, asks her to shut up, and finally a terrible, insulting thing escapes him: “Shut up, Jew! <...> So know that you will soon die <...> The doctor told me that you will die soon...” And seeing how his words affected her, she sobbed and grabbed her head: “How guilty I am! God, how guilty I am!”

It's been about a year. During this time, Sarah died, Borkin betrothed the old Shabelsky to a young rich widow. Preparations for the wedding of Ivanov and Sasha are in the Lebedev's house.

Dr. Lvov walks around excited. He is strangled by hatred for Ivanov, he wants to tear off the mask from him and bring him to clean water. Lebedev and Sasha are not very cheerful: both father and daughter confess to each other that in the upcoming wedding "something is not right, not right!" But Sasha is ready to go to the end: "He is a good, unhappy, misunderstood person; I will love him, I will understand, I will put him on his feet. I will fulfill my task."

Unexpectedly for everyone, Ivanov appears. “Before it’s too late, we need to stop this senseless comedy...” he tells Sasha. It was on this morning that he realized that he had finally died, that his boredom, despondency, discontent were incompatible with living life, and his conscience did not allow him to ruin Sasha’s youth. He asks her to help him and this very minute, immediately abandon him. But Sasha rejects his generosity, although he sees that instead of active love, the result is martyrdom. Good-natured Lebedev understands everything in his own way: he offers Ivanov and Sasha the treasured ten thousand. But the bride and groom are stubborn: each says that he will act according to the dictates of his own conscience.

To Lebedev, who does not understand anything, Ivanov explains for the last time: “I was young, ardent, sincere, intelligent; I loved, hated and believed differently from everyone else, I worked and hoped for ten people, fought with mills, banged my head against the walls... And This is how life, with which I fought, takes cruel revenge on me! I've overstrained myself! At thirty years old I already have a hangover <...> tired, torn, broken, without faith, without love, without a goal, like a shadow, I wander among people and don’t know “Who am I, why am I living, what do I want?.. Oh, how my pride is indignant, what rage is strangling me!”

Doctor Lvov manages to shout out his insult: "I declare publicly that you are a scoundrel!" - but Ivanov listens to this coldly and calmly. He made his own judgment. "Youth woke up in me, the former Ivanov spoke!" Taking out a revolver, he runs aside and shoots himself.

Author of the retelling: V. B. Kataev

Boring story. From the Notes of an Old Man Tale (1889)

Professor of Medicine Nikolai Stepanovich is a scientist who has reached the heights of his science, enjoying universal honor and gratitude; his name is known to every literate person in Russia. The bearer of this name, that is, himself, is an old man, terminally ill; according to his own diagnosis, he has no more than six months left to live. In his notes, he tries to understand the situation in which he found himself: he, a famous person, was sentenced to death. He describes the usual course of his present life.

Sleeplessness every night. Household - wife and daughter Lisa, whom he used to love, now only irritate him with their petty everyday worries. The closest collaborators: eccentric and devoted university porter Nikolai, prosector Pyotr Ignatievich, a draft horse and a learned dumbass. The work that used to give Nikolai Stepanovich pleasure, his university lectures, once equal to the works of the poet, now bring him nothing but torment.

Nikolai Stepanovich is not a philosopher or a theologian, all his life the fate of the bone marrow interested him more than the ultimate goal of the universe, his soul does not want to know questions about the darkness beyond the grave. But what pleased his life - peace and happiness in the family, favorite work, self-confidence - gone forever. New thoughts, which he did not know before, poison his last days. It seems to him that life has deceived him, his glorious name, his brilliant past do not alleviate today's pain.

Ordinary visitors of the old professor. A faculty colleague, a negligent student, a dissertation begging for a topic - everyone seems to Nikolai Stepanovich funny, narrow-minded, limited, everyone gives a reason for irritation or mockery. But here is another welcome visitor: familiar steps, the rustle of a dress, a sweet voice...

Katya, the daughter of a deceased fellow ophthalmologist, grew up in the family of Nikolai Stepanovich. By the age of fifteen, she was possessed by a passionate love for the theater. Dreaming of fame and service to art, trusting and carried away, she became a provincial actress, but two years later she became disillusioned with the theater business, with her stage comrades, lost faith in her talent, experienced an unhappy love, attempted suicide, and buried her child. Nikolai Stepanovich, who loved Katya like a daughter, tried to help her with advice, wrote her long but useless letters. Now, after surviving the crash, Katya lives on the remnants of her father's inheritance. She has lost interest in life, lies at home on the couch and reads books, and visits Nikolai Stepanovich once a day. She doesn’t love his wife and Lisa, they reciprocate.

An ordinary family dinner also brings Nikolai Stepanovich nothing but irritation. Present are his wife, Lisa, two or three of her friends from the conservatory, and Alexander Adolfovich Gnekker, a person who inspires sharp antipathy to the professor. An admirer of Liza and a contender for her hand, he visits the house every day, but no one knows what his origin is and on what means he lives. He sells someone's grand pianos somewhere, is familiar with celebrities, judges music with great authority - he took root in art, Nikolai Stepanovich draws a conclusion for himself.

He remembers with longing the old, simple and cheerful family dinners, and gloomily thinks that the inner life of his wife and Lisa has long escaped his observation. They are no longer the same as he knew and loved them before. Why the change occurred - he does not know. After dinner, his wife, as usual, begs him to go to Kharkov, where Gnecker is from, to make inquiries about his parents and condition.

From a feeling of loneliness, from fear of insomnia, Nikolai Stepanovich leaves the house. Where to go? The answer has long been clear to him: to Katya.

Only at Katya's he is warm and comfortable, only she can complain about his condition. Before, he tells her, he had the feeling of a king, he could be condescending, forgiving everyone right and left. But now evil thoughts roam in his head day and night, decent only for slaves. He became excessively strict, demanding, irritable. His whole past life seems to him a beautiful, talented composition, the only thing left is not to spoil the ending, to meet death cheerfully and with a calm soul. "But I ruin the ending..."

Katya has another guest, philologist Mikhail Fedorovich. He is obviously in love with her and does not dare to admit it to her. He entertains with anecdotes from university life, and his slander also irritates Nikolai Stepanovich. He interrupts the talk about the reduction of the new generation, about the lack of ideals among young people with sharp objections. But inwardly he feels that evil, "Arakcheev" thoughts are taking over his being as well. And to the interlocutors, whom he compared with evil toads, he is drawn again every evening.

Summer is coming, the professor and his family live in the country.

At night still insomnia, but during the day instead of work - reading French books. Nikolai Stepanovich knows what creativity is and its main condition: a sense of personal freedom. His judgments about literature, theatre, science are precise and precise. But thoughts of imminent death, now in three or four months, do not leave him. The visitors are the same: doorman, dissector; dinners with the participation of the same Gnekker.

Calls in to give the professor a ride in his chaise, Katya. She understands that her life does not add up, that time and money go aimlessly. "What should I do?" she asks. "What to answer her?" - thinks Nikolai Stepanovich. It's easy to say "work hard" or "give your property to the poor" or "know thyself", but these general and formulaic advice is unlikely to help in this particular case. In the evenings, the same Mikhail Fedorovich, in love and slandering, visits Katya's dacha. And Nikolai Stepanovich, who previously condemned attacks on the university, students, literature, and the theater, is now participating in slander himself.

There are terrible nights with thunder, lightning, rain and wind, which are popularly called sparrow nights. Nikolai Stepanovich also experiences one such night.

He wakes up from the fear of sudden death, unable to control his unaccountable horror. All of a sudden, you hear groans or laughter. His wife comes running, calling him to Lisa's room. She moans from some kind of torment, throws herself on her father's neck: "My dad is good ... I don't know what's wrong with me ... It's hard!" “Help her, help her!” the wife pleads. “Do something!” "What can I do? I can't do anything," the father reflects. “There is some kind of heaviness in the girl’s soul, but I don’t understand anything, I don’t know, and I can only mutter: “Nothing, nothing .. It will pass ... Sleep, sleep ...”

A few hours later he is in his room, still awake, hears a knock on the window. This is Katya. And she has some heavy forebodings that night. She begs Nikolai Stepanovich to take her money from her and go somewhere for treatment. After his refusal, she dejectedly leaves.

Nikolai Stepanovich in Kharkov, where his wife insistently sent. The state of anger and irritation was replaced by a new one: complete indifference. He learns here that nothing is known about Gnekker in the city, but when a telegram arrives from his wife with the message that Gnekker has secretly married Liza, he meets the news with indifference. This frightens him: after all, indifference is paralysis of the soul, premature death.

Morning finds him sitting in bed in a hotel room, busy with the same haunting thoughts. It seems to him that he understood the cause of that weakness that led him on the eve of the end to evil, slavish thoughts, and then to indifference. The fact is that in his thoughts, feelings, judgments there is no general idea, or the god of a living person. "And if this is not there, then it means that there is nothing." If there is nothing in common that would bind everything into one whole, a serious illness, the fear of death, was enough for everything that saw the meaning and joy of life to be torn to pieces. Nikolai Stepanovich finally gives up and decides to sit and silently wait for what will happen.

There is a knock on the door, Katya is standing in front of him. She arrived, she says, just like that, drops a letter from Mikhail Fedorovich. Then, turning pale and clasping his hands, he turns to Nikolai Stepanovich: “For the sake of the true God, tell me quickly, this minute: what should I do? ... After all, you are my father, my only friend! .. You were a teacher! Tell me what to do ?"

Nikolai Stepanovich can hardly stand on his feet, he is confused.

“In all honesty, Katya, I don’t know ... Come on, Katya, have breakfast.”

Having received no answer, she leaves - where, she does not know herself. And he sees her, probably for the last time.

"Farewell, my treasure!"

Author of the retelling: V. B. Kataev

Duel. Tale (1891)

In a town on the Black Sea, two friends are talking while swimming. Ivan Andreyevich Laevsky, a young man of twenty-eight, shares the secrets of his personal life with military doctor Samoylenko. Two years ago, he met with a married woman, they fled from St. Petersburg to the Caucasus, telling themselves that they would start a new working life there. But the town turned out to be boring, people were uninteresting, Laevsky did not know how and did not want to work on the land in the sweat of his brow, and therefore from the first day he felt bankrupt. In his relationship with Nadezhda Fedorovna, he no longer sees anything but a lie, living with her is now beyond his strength. He dreams of running back to the north. But you can’t part with her either: she has no relatives, no money, she doesn’t know how to work. There is another difficulty: the news of the death of her husband came, which means for Laevsky and Nadezhda Fedorovna the opportunity to get married. Good Samoylenko advises his friend to do exactly this.

Everything that Nadezhda Fedorovna says and does seems to Laevsky to be a lie or similar to a lie. At breakfast, he can barely contain his irritation; even the way she swallows milk evokes heavy hatred in him. The desire to quickly sort things out and run away now does not let him go. Laevsky is accustomed to finding explanations and justifications for his life in someone’s theories, in literary types; he compares himself with Onegin and Pechorin, with Anna Karenina, with Hamlet. He is ready either to blame himself for the lack of a guiding idea, to admit that he is a loser and an extra person, or to justify himself to himself. But just as he previously believed in salvation from the emptiness of life in the Caucasus, he now believes that as soon as he leaves Nadezhda Fedorovna and goes to St. Petersburg, he will live a cultured, intelligent, cheerful life.

Samoilenko keeps something like a table d'hôte; the young zoologist von Koren and Pobedov, who has just graduated from the seminary, dine with him. Over dinner the conversation turns to Laevsky. Von Koren mogu", "gives that Laevsky is dangerous to society. If people like him multiply, humanity and civilization are in serious danger. Therefore, for his own benefit, Laevsky should be neutralized. “In the name of saving humanity, we ourselves must take care of the destruction of the frail and worthless,” says the zoologist coldly.

The laughing deacon laughs, but the stunned Samoylenko can only say: "If people are drowned and hanged, then to hell with your civilization, to hell with humanity! To hell!"

On Sunday morning Nadezhda Feodorovna goes swimming in the most festive mood. She likes herself, she is sure that all the men she meets admire her. She feels guilty before Laevsky. During these two years, she incurred debts in Achmianov’s shop for three hundred rubles and still did not intend to say about it. In addition, she has already hosted police bailiff Kirilin twice. But Nadezhda Fedorovna happily thinks that her soul did not participate in her betrayal, she continues to love Laevsky, and everything is already broken with Kirilin. In the bathhouse, she talks with the elderly lady Marya Konstantinovna Bityugova and learns that in the evening the local society is having a picnic on the banks of a mountain river. On the way to the picnic, von Koren tells the deacon about her plans to go on an expedition along the coast of the Pacific and Arctic oceans; Laevsky, riding in another carriage, scolds the Caucasian landscapes. He constantly feels von Koren's dislike for himself and regrets going on the picnic. The company stops at the mountain dukhan of the Tatar Kerbalai.

Nadezhda Fyodorovna is in a playful mood, she wants to laugh, tease, flirt. But the persecution of Kirilin and the advice of the young Achmianov to beware of that darken her joy. Laevsky, tired of the picnic and von Koren's undisguised hatred, takes out his irritation on Nadezhda Fyodorovna and calls her a cocotte. On the way back, von Koren admits to Samoylenko that his hand would not tremble if the state or society had instructed him to destroy Laevsky.

At home, after a picnic, Laevsky informs Nadezhda Fyodorovna about the death of her husband and, feeling at home as in a prison, goes to Samoylenko. He begs his friend to help, lend him three hundred rubles, promises to arrange everything with Nadezhda Fyodorovna, to make peace with his mother. Samoylenko offers to reconcile with von Koren, but Laevsky says that this is impossible. Maybe he would have extended his hand to him, but von Koren would have turned away with contempt. After all, this is a firm, despotic nature. And his ideals are despotic. People for him are puppies and nonentities, too small to be the goal of his life. He works, goes on an expedition, breaks his neck there, not in the name of love for his neighbor, but in the name of such abstractions as humanity, future generations, an ideal breed of people ... He would order to shoot anyone who goes beyond the circle of our narrow conservative morality, and all this in the name of improving the human race... Despots have always been illusionists. With enthusiasm, Laevsky says that he clearly sees his shortcomings and is aware of them. This will help him to resurrect and become a different person, and he is passionately waiting for this rebirth and renewal.

Three days after the picnic, an excited Marya Konstantinovna comes to Nadezhda Fedorovna and invites her to be her matchmaker. But a wedding with Laevsky, Nadezhda Fyodorovna feels, is now impossible. She cannot tell Marya Konstantinovna everything: how confused her relationship with Kirilin, with the young Achmianov. From all the experiences she starts a strong fever.

Laevsky feels guilty before Nadezhda Fyodorovna. But the thought of leaving next Saturday so possessed him that he asked Samoylenko, who came to visit the patient, only if he could get money. But there is no money yet. Samoilenko decides to ask von Koren for a hundred rubles. He, after a dispute, agrees to give money for Laevsky, but only on the condition that he leaves not alone, but together with Nadezhda Fyodorovna.

The next day, Thursday, while visiting Marya Konstantinovna, Samoylenko told Laevsky about the condition set by von Koren. The guests, including von Koren, play mail. Laevsky, automatically participating in the game, thinks about how much he has to and still has to lie, what a mountain of lies prevents him from starting a new life. In order to skip it at once, and not lie in parts, you need to decide on some kind of drastic measure, but he feels that this is impossible for him. A malicious note, apparently sent by von Koren, causes him a hysterical fit. Having come to his senses, in the evening, as usual, he leaves to play cards.

On the way from the guests to the house, Nadezhda Fyodorovna is pursued by Kirilin. He threatens her with a scandal if she does not give him a date today. Nadezhda Fyodorovna is disgusted with him, she begs to let her go, but in the end she gives in. Behind them, unnoticed, young Achmianov is watching.

The next day, Laevsky goes to Samoylenko to take money from him, since it is shameful and impossible to remain in the city after a tantrum. He finds only von Koren. A short conversation follows; Laevsky understands that he knows about his plans. He keenly feels that the zoologist hates him, despises and mocks him, and that he is his most bitter and implacable enemy. When Samoilenko arrives, Laevsky, in a nervous fit, accuses him of not being able to keep other people's secrets, and insults von Koren. Von Koren seemed to be waiting for this attack, he challenges Laevsky to a duel. Samoylenko unsuccessfully tries to reconcile them.

On the evening before the duel, Laevsky is first possessed by hatred for von Koren, then, over wine and cards, he becomes careless, then anxiety seizes him. When young Achmianov takes him to some house and there he sees Kirilin, and next to him Nadezhda Fedorovna, all feelings seem to disappear from his soul.

Von Koren that evening on the embankment talks with the deacon about the different understanding of the teachings of Christ. What is love for one's neighbor? In the elimination of everything that in one way or another harms people and threatens them with danger in the present or future, the zoologist believes. Humanity is in danger from the morally and physically abnormal, and they must be rendered harmless, that is, destroyed. But where are the criteria for distinguishing, because mistakes are possible? asks the deacon. There is nothing to be afraid of getting your feet wet when a flood threatens, the zoologist replies.

On the night before the duel, Laevsky listens to the thunderstorm outside the window, goes over his past in his memory, sees only lies in it, feels guilty for the fall of Nadezhda Fyodorovna and is ready to beg her forgiveness. If it were possible to return the past, he would find God and justice, but this is just as impossible as returning a sunken star back to heaven. Before leaving for the duel, he goes to Nadezhda Fyodorovna's bedroom. She looks with horror at Laevsky, but he, having embraced her, understands that this unfortunate, vicious woman is for him the only close, dear and irreplaceable person. Sitting in a carriage, he wants to return home alive.

The deacon, leaving early in the morning to see the duel, ponders why Laevsky and von Koren can hate each other and fight duels? Wouldn't it be better for them to go down lower and direct hatred and anger to where whole streets are groaning from gross ignorance, greed, reproaches, impurity ... Sitting in a strip of corn, he sees opponents and seconds arrive. Two green rays stretch out from behind the mountains, the sun rises. No one knows exactly the rules of the duel, they recall the descriptions of duels by Lermontov, Turgenev ... Laevsky shoots first; fearing that the bullet would not hit von Koren, he makes a shot in the air. Von Koren aims the muzzle of the pistol straight at Laevsky's face. "He will kill him!" - the desperate cry of the deacon makes him miss.

Three months pass. On the day of his departure for the expedition, von Koren, accompanied by Samoylenko and the deacon, goes to the pier. Passing by Laevsky's house, they talk about the change that has taken place with him. He married Nadezhda Fyodorovna, and works from morning to evening to pay his debts... Deciding to enter the house, von Koren holds out his hand to Laevsky. He has not changed his beliefs, but admits that he was wrong about his former adversary. Nobody knows the real truth, he says. Yes, no one knows the truth, agrees Laevsky.

He watches how the boat with von Koren overcomes the waves, and thinks: it's the same in life ... In search of the truth, people take two steps forward, one step back ... And who knows? Perhaps they will swim to the real truth ...

Author of the retelling: V. B. Kataev

Jumper. Story (1891, publ. 1892)

Osip Ivanovich Dymov, a titular adviser and doctor of thirty-one years, serves in two hospitals at the same time: as a resident and as a dissector. From nine o'clock in the morning until noon he receives patients, then goes to autopsy the corpses. But his income is barely enough to cover the expenses of his wife, Olga Ivanovna, twenty-two years old, obsessed with talents and celebrities in the artistic and artistic community, whom she receives in the house every day. Her passion for people of art is also fueled by the fact that she herself sings a little, sculpts, draws and has, as her friends say, an underdeveloped talent in all of them at once. Among the guests of the house, the landscape and animal painter Ryabovsky stands out - “a blond young man, about twenty-five, who had success at exhibitions and sold his last painting for five hundred rubles” (which is equal to the annual income from Dymov’s private practice).

Dymov loves his wife. They met when he treated her father, on duty at night near him. She loves him too. There is "something" in Dymovo, she tells her friends: "How much self-sacrifice, sincere participation!" "... there is something strong, powerful, bearish in him," she tells the guests, as if explaining why she, an artistic nature, married such a "very ordinary and unremarkable person." Dymov (she does not call her husband except by his last name, often adding: "Let me shake your honest hand!" - which betrays an echo of Turgenev's "emancipe" in her) finds herself in the position of either a husband or a servant. That's what she calls him: "My dear maître d'!" Dymov prepares snacks, rushes to get clothes for his wife, who spends the summer at the dacha with friends. One scene is the height of Dymov's male humiliation: having arrived at his wife's dacha after a hard day and brought snacks with him, dreaming of having dinner and rest, he immediately sets off by train back at night, because Olga intends to take part in the telegrapher's wedding the next day and not can do without a decent hat, dress, flowers, gloves.

Olga Ivanovna, together with the artists, spends the rest of the summer on the Volga. Dymov remains to work and send money to his wife. On the ship, Ryabovsky confesses his love to Olga, she becomes his mistress. He tries not to think about Dymov. "Indeed: what is Dymov? why Dymov? what does she care about Dymov?" But soon Olga bored Ryabovsky; he gladly sends her to her husband when she gets bored with life in the village - in a dirty hut on the banks of the Volga. Ryabovsky - Chekhov's type of "bored" artist. He is talented but lazy. Sometimes it seems to him that he has reached the limit of his creative possibilities, but sometimes he works without rest and then he creates something significant. He is able to live only by creativity, and women do not mean much to him.

Dymov meets his wife with joy. She does not dare to confess in connection with Ryabovsky. But Ryabovsky arrives, and their romance continues languidly, causing boredom in him, boredom and jealousy in her. Dymov begins to guess about the betrayal, worries, but does not show it and works more than before. One day he says that he has defended his dissertation and he may be offered a privatdocentre in general pathology. It can be seen from his face that "if Olga Ivanovna had shared his joy and triumph with him, he would have forgiven her everything <...> but she did not understand what the privatdocentura and general pathology meant, and besides, she was afraid to be late to the theater and said nothing. Dymov's colleague Korostelev appears in the house, "a little shorn man with a rumpled face"; Dymov spends all his free time with him in scientific conversations incomprehensible to his wife.

Relations with Ryabovsky come to a standstill. One day, in his workshop, Olga Ivanovna finds a woman, obviously his mistress, and decides to break up with him. At this time, the husband becomes infected with diphtheria, sucking out films from a sick boy, which he, as a doctor, is not obliged to do. Korostelev takes care of him. A local luminary, Dr. Shrek, is invited to the patient, but he cannot help: Dymov is hopeless. Olga Ivanovna finally understands the falsity and meanness of her relationship with her husband, curses the past, and prays to God for help. Korostelev tells her about Dymov's death, cries, accuses Olga Ivanovna of having killed her husband. A great scientist could grow up from him, but the lack of time and home peace did not allow him to become what he rightfully should be. Olga Ivanovna understands that she was the cause of her husband's death, forcing him to engage in private practice and provide her with an idle life. She understands that in the pursuit of celebrities "missed" a true talent. She runs to Dymov's body, cries, calls him, realizing that she was late.

The story ends with Korostelev's simple words, emphasizing the senselessness of the situation: "But what is there to ask? You go to the church gatehouse and ask where the almshouses live. They will wash the body and clean it - they will do everything that is needed."

Author of the retelling: P. V. Basinsky

Ward No. 6. Tale (1892)

Ward No. 6 for the mentally ill is located in a small hospital wing in a county town. There "it stinks of sour cabbage, wick, bugs and ammonia, and this stink at first gives you the impression that you are entering a menagerie." There are five people in the room. The first is "a thin tradesman with a shiny red mustache and tear-stained eyes." He, apparently, is ill with consumption and is sad and sighs all day long. The second is Moiseyka, a merry little fool who "got crazy about twenty years ago, when his hat workshop burned down." He alone is allowed to leave the ward and go to the city to beg, but everything that he brings is taken away by the watchman Nikita (he is one of those people who adore order in everything, and therefore beats the sick mercilessly). Moiseika loves to serve everyone. In this he imitates the third inhabitant, the only one "of the noble" - the former bailiff Ivan Dmitrievich Gromov. He is from the family of a wealthy official, who from a certain moment began to be haunted by misfortunes. First, the eldest son, Sergei, died. Then he himself was put on trial for forgery and embezzlement, and soon died in the prison hospital. The youngest son Ivan was left with his mother without funds. He studied hard and got a job. But suddenly he turned out to be sick with persecution mania and ended up in ward No. 6. The fourth occupant is "a fat, almost round man with a dull, completely senseless face." He seems to have lost the ability to think and feel; he doesn't react even when Nikita beats him brutally. The fifth and final occupant is "a thin blond man with a kind but somewhat sly face". He has delusions of grandeur, but of a strange quality. From time to time he tells his neighbors that he has received a "Stanislav of the second degree with a star" or some very rare order like the Swedish "Polar Star", but he speaks about it modestly, as if surprised himself.

After describing the patients, the author introduces us to Dr. Andrey Efimych Ragin. In his early youth, he dreamed of being a priest, but his father, a doctor of medicine and a surgeon, forced him to become a physician. His appearance is "heavy, rude, muzhik", but his manners are soft, insinuating, and his voice is thin. When he took office, the "charitable institution" was in a terrible state. Terrible poverty, unsanitary conditions. Ragin was indifferent to this. He is a smart and honest person, but he does not have the will and faith in his right to change life for the better. At first he worked very hard, but soon got bored and realized that in such conditions it was pointless to treat patients. "Besides, why prevent people from dying, if death is the normal and legal end of everyone?" From these arguments, Ragin abandoned his affairs and began to go to the hospital not every day. He developed his own way of life. After a little work, more for show, he goes home and reads. Every half an hour he drinks a glass of vodka and eats a pickled cucumber or a pickled apple. Then he has lunch and drinks beer. By evening, the postmaster Mikhail Averyanych, a former rich but ruined landowner, usually comes. He respects the doctor, and despises other townsfolk. The doctor and the postmaster have meaningless conversations and complain about their fate. When the guest leaves, Ragin continues to read. He reads everything, giving half of his salary for books, but loves philosophy and history most of all. Reading makes him happy.

Once Ragin decided to visit Ward No. 6. There he met Gromov, talked with him and soon became involved in these conversations, often visited Gromov and found strange pleasure in talking with him. They are arguing. The doctor takes the position of the Greek Stoics and preaches contempt for life's suffering, while Gromov dreams of ending suffering, calling the doctor's philosophy laziness and "sleepy madness." Nevertheless, they are drawn to each other, and this does not go unnoticed by the rest. Soon the hospital begins to gossip about visits to the doctor. Then he is invited for an explanation to the city government. This also happens because he has a competitor, assistant Yevgeny Fedorych Khobotov, an envious person who dreams of taking Ragin's place. Formally, the conversation is about the improvement of the hospital, but in fact, officials are trying to find out if the doctor has gone crazy. Ragin understands this and gets angry.

On the same day, the postmaster invites him to go together to unwind in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Warsaw, and Ragin understands that this is also connected with rumors about his mental illness. Finally, he is directly offered to "rest", that is, to resign. He accepts this indifferently and goes with Mikhail Averyanych to Moscow. On the way, the postmaster bores him with his talk, greed, gluttony; he loses Ragin's money at cards, and they return home before reaching Warsaw.

At home, everyone again begins to bother Ragin with his imaginary madness. Finally, he could not stand it and drove Khobotov and the postmaster out of his apartment. He becomes ashamed and goes to apologize to the postmaster. He persuades the doctor to go to the hospital. In the end, he is placed there by cunning: Khobotov invites him to Ward No. 6, allegedly for a consultation, then allegedly leaves for a stethoscope and does not return. The doctor becomes "sick". At first, he tries to somehow get out of the ward, Nikita does not let him in, he and Gromov start a riot, and Nikita hits Ragin in the face. The doctor understands that he will never leave the room. This plunges him into a state of complete hopelessness, and soon he dies of apoplexy. Only Mikhail Averyanych and Daryushka, his former servant, were at the funeral.

Author of the retelling: P. V. Basinsky

Black monk. Story (1893, publ. 1894)

Andrey Vasilyevich Kovrin, Master, falls ill with a nerve disorder. On the advice of a doctor friend, he decides to go to the countryside. This decision coincides with an invitation to visit from her childhood friend Tanya Pesotskaya, who lives with her father, Yegor Semenych, in the Borisovka estate. April. Description of the huge crumbling house of the Pesotskys with an old park in the English style. Yegor Semenych is a passionate gardener who devoted his life to his garden and does not know to whom before his death to transfer his farm. On the night when Kovrin arrives, Yegor Semenych and Tanya sleep alternately: they watch the workers who save the trees from frost. Kovrin and Tanya go to the garden and reminisce about their childhood. It is easy to guess from the conversation that Tanya is not indifferent to Kovrin and that she is bored with her father, who does not want to know anything but the garden, and turned her into a humble assistant. Kovrin also likes Tanya, he suggests that he can seriously get carried away, but this thought rather amuses than seriously occupies him.

In the village he leads the same nervous life as in the city: he reads a lot, writes, sleeps little, often smokes and drinks wine. He is extremely impressionable. One day he tells Tanya a legend that he either heard, read, or saw in a dream. A thousand years ago, a black-clad monk walked through the desert in Syria or Arabia. Several miles away, the fishermen saw another black monk - a mirage - moving across the surface of the lake. Then he was seen in Africa, in Spain, in India, even in the Far North... Finally, he left the confines of the earth’s atmosphere and is now wandering in the Universe, he may be seen on Mars or on some star of the Southern Cross. The meaning of the legend is that a thousand years after his first appearance, the monk must appear on earth again, and now that time has come... After a conversation with Tanya, Kovrin goes into the garden and suddenly sees a black monk emerging from a whirlwind from earth to sky. He flies past Kovrin; it seems to him that the monk is smiling at him affectionately and slyly. Without trying to explain the strange phenomenon, Kovrin returns to the house. He is overcome with merriment. He sings, dances, and everyone finds that he has a special, inspired face.

In the evening of the same day Yegor Semenych comes to Kovrin's room. He starts a conversation, from which it is clear that he dreams of marrying Tanya to Kovrin .. in order to be sure of the future of his household. "If you and Tanya had a son, then I would have made a gardener out of him." Tanya and her father often quarrel. Consoling Tanya, Kovrin one day realizes that he has no closer people than she and Yegor Semenych in the whole world. Soon a black monk visits him again, and a conversation takes place between them, in which the monk admits that he exists only in Kovrin's imagination. "You are one of those few who are justly called the chosen ones of God. You serve the eternal truth." All this is very pleasant to listen to Kovrina, but he fears that he is mentally ill. To this, the monk retorts that all brilliant people are sick. "My friend, only ordinary, herd people are healthy and normal." Joyfully excited Kovrin meets Tanya and declares his love for her.

Preparations are underway for the wedding. Kovrin works hard, not noticing the hustle and bustle. He is happy. Once or twice a week he meets with a black monk and has long conversations. He was convinced of his own genius. After the wedding, Tanya and Kovrin move to the city. One night, Kovrin is again visited by a black monk, they are talking. Tanya finds her husband talking to an invisible interlocutor. She is frightened, as is Yegor Semenovich, who is visiting their house. Tanya persuades Kovrin to be treated, he agrees in fear. He realizes that he has gone mad.

Kovrin was treated and almost recovered. Together with Tanya, she spends the summer with her father-in-law in the village. Works little, does not drink wine and does not smoke. He's bored. He quarrels with Tanya and reproaches her for forcing him to be treated. "I went crazy, I had delusions of grandeur, but I was cheerful, cheerful and even happy, I was interesting and original..."

He receives an independent department. But on the day of the first lecture he informs by telegram that he will not read due to illness. His throat is bleeding. He no longer lives with Tanya, but with another woman, two years older than him - Varvara Nikolaevna, who takes care of him like a child. They travel to Crimea and stop in Sevastopol along the way. While still at home, an hour before departure, he received a letter from Tanya, but reads it only in Sevastopol. Tanya informs about the death of her father, blames him for this death and curses him. He is overcome by “anxiety similar to fear.” He clearly understands that he is mediocre. He goes out onto the balcony and sees a black monk. “Why didn’t you believe me?” he asked reproachfully, looking affectionately at Kovrin. “If you had believed me then that you were a genius, then you would not have spent these two years so sadly and meagerly.” Kovrin again believes that he is God’s chosen one, a genius, not noticing that blood is coming from his throat. He calls Tanya, falls and dies: “a blissful smile froze on his face.”

Author of the retelling: P. V. Basinsky

Literature teacher. Story (1889 - 1894)

A teacher of Russian language and literature in a small provincial town, Sergei Vasilievich Nikitin, is in love with the daughter of a local landowner, Masha Shelestova, eighteen years old, who "the family has not yet lost the habit of considering small" and therefore they call her Manya and Manyusey, and when the circus visited the city, which she diligently attended, they began to call her Marie Godefroy. She is a passionate horsewoman, like her father; often with her sister and guests (mostly officers from the regiment located in the city), she goes out to ride, picking up a special horse for Nikitin, since he is an unimportant rider. Her sister Varya, twenty-three years old, is much more beautiful than Manyusya. She is smart, educated and, as it were, takes the place of her deceased mother in the house. She calls herself an old maid - which means, the author notes, "she was sure that she would marry." In the Shelestovs' house, they have views of one of the frequent guests, staff captain Polyansky, hoping that he will soon make an offer to Varya. Varya is an avid debater. Nikitin irritates her the most. She argues with him on every subject and to his objections she replies: "That's old!" or "It's flat!" This has something in common with her father, who, as usual, scolds everyone behind their backs and repeats at the same time: "This is rudeness!"

Nikitin's main torment is his youthful appearance. Nobody believes that he is twenty-six years old; His students don't respect him, and he doesn't like them himself. School is boring. He shares an apartment with a teacher of geography and history, Ippolit Ippolitich Ryzhitsky, a most boring person, "with a rude and unintelligent face, like that of a craftsman, but good-natured." Ryzhitsky constantly says platitudes: “Now it’s May, soon it will be real summer. And summer is not like winter. death, in delirium, he repeats: "The Volga flows into the Caspian Sea ... Horses eat oats and hay ..."

In love with Manya, Nikitin loves everything in the Shelestovs' house. He does not notice the vulgarity of their lives. “The only thing he didn’t like was the abundance of dogs and cats and the Egyptian pigeons, which moaned dejectedly in a large cage on the terrace,” however, here Nikitin assures himself that they moan “because they don’t know how to express their joy otherwise.” As they get to know the hero, the reader understands that Nikitin is already infected with provincial laziness. For example, one of the guests finds out that the language teacher did not read Lessing. He feels awkward and gives himself the floor to read, but forgets about it. All his thoughts are occupied by Manya. Finally, he declares his love and goes to ask for the hand of Mani from his father. The father does not mind, but "like a man" advises Nikitin to wait: "It's only the peasants who marry early, but there, you know, rudeness, and why are you? What a pleasure it is to put on shackles at such a young age?"

The wedding took place. Her description is in Nikitin's diary, written in an enthusiastic tone. Everything is fine: a young wife, their inherited house, minor household chores, etc. It would seem that the hero is happy. Life with Manya reminds him of "shepherd's idylls." But somehow, during a great post, after returning home after playing cards, he speaks with his wife and learns that Polyansky has transferred to another city. Manya thinks that he acted "badly" by not making the expected proposal to Varya, and these words strike Nikitin unpleasantly. "So," he asked, restraining himself, "if I went to your house, I certainly had to marry you?" "Of course. You yourself understand this very well."

Nikitin feels trapped. He sees that he did not decide his fate, but some dull, extraneous force determined his life. The beginning of spring contrastsly emphasizes the feeling of hopelessness that has taken possession of Nikitin. Behind the wall, Varya and Shelestov, who came to visit, are having lunch. Varya complains of a headache, and the old man goes on and on about “how unreliable young people today are and how little gentlemanliness they have.”

“This is rudeness!” he said. “So I will tell him directly: this is rudeness, gracious sovereign!”

Nikitin dreams of fleeing to Moscow and writes in his diary: "Where am I, my God?! I am surrounded by vulgarity and vulgarity ... There is nothing more terrible, more insulting, more dreary than vulgarity. Run away from here, run away today, otherwise I will go crazy!"

Author of the retelling: P. V. Basinsky

Gull. Comedy (1895 - 1896)

The action takes place in the estate of Peter Nikolaevich Sorin. His sister, Irina Nikolaevna Arkadina, is an actress, visiting his estate with her son, Konstantin Gavrilovich Treplev, and with Boris Alekseevich Trigorin, a novelist, quite famous, although he is not yet forty. They speak of him as a smart, simple, somewhat melancholic and very decent person. As for his literary activity, then, according to Treplev, it is "cute, talented <...> but <...> after Tolstoy or Zola you don't want to read Trigorin."

Konstantin Treplev himself is also trying to write. Considering modern theater a prejudice, he is looking for new forms of theatrical action. Those gathered in the estate are preparing to watch a play staged by the author among natural scenery. The only role to play in it should be Nina Mikhailovna Zarechnaya, a young girl, the daughter of wealthy landowners, with whom Konstantin is in love. Nina's parents are categorically against her passion for the theater, and therefore she must come to the estate secretly.

Konstantin is sure that his mother is against staging the play and, having not yet seen it, passionately hates her, since the novelist, whom she loves, may like Nina Zarechnaya. It also seems to him that his mother does not love him, because his age - and he is twenty-five years old - reminds her of his own years. In addition, Konstantin is haunted by the fact that his mother is a famous actress. He thinks that since he, like his father, is now deceased, a Kiev bourgeois, he is tolerated in the company of famous artists and writers only because of his mother. He also suffers because his mother lives openly with Trigorin and her name constantly appears on the pages of newspapers, that she is stingy, superstitious and jealous of someone else's success.

While waiting for Zarechnaya, he tells his uncle about all this. Sorin himself loves the theater and writers very much and admits to Treplev that he himself once wanted to become a writer, but it did not work out. Instead, he served twenty-eight years in the judiciary.

Among those waiting for the performance are also Ilya Afanasyevich Shamraev, a retired lieutenant, Sorin's manager; his wife - Polina Andreevna and his daughter Masha; Evgeny Sergeevich Dorn, doctor; Semen Semenovich Medvedenko, teacher. Medvedenko is unrequitedly in love with Masha, but Masha does not reciprocate, not only because they are different people and do not understand each other. Masha loves Konstantin Treplev.

Finally Zarechnaya arrives. She managed to escape from the house only for half an hour, and therefore everyone hastily begins to gather in the garden. There are no scenery on the stage: only the curtain, the first stage and the second stage. But there is a magnificent view of the lake. The full moon is above the horizon and is reflected in the water. Nina Zarechnaya, all in white, sitting on a large stone, reads a text in the spirit of decadent literature, which Arkadina immediately notes. Throughout the reading, the audience is constantly talking, despite Treplev's remarks. Soon he gets tired of it, and he, having lost his temper, stops the performance and leaves. Masha hurries after him to find him and calm him down. Meanwhile, Arkadina introduces Trigorin to Nina, and after a short conversation, Nina leaves for home.

Nobody liked the play except Masha and Dorn. He wants to say more nice things to Treplev, which he does. Masha confesses to Dorn that she loves Treplev and asks for advice, but Dorn cannot advise her.

Several days pass. The action shifts to the croquet court. The father and stepmother of Nina Zarechnaya left for Tver for three days, and this gave her the opportunity to come to the estate of Sorina, Arkadina and Polina Andreevna are going to the city, but Shamraev refuses to provide them with horses, citing the fact that all the horses in the field are harvesting rye. There is a small quarrel, Arkadina almost leaves for Moscow. On the way to the house, Polina Andreevna almost confesses her love to Dorn. Their meeting with Nina at the very house makes it clear to her that Dorn does not love her, but Zarechnaya.

Nina walks around the garden and is surprised that the life of famous actors and writers is exactly the same as the life of ordinary people, with their everyday quarrels, skirmishes, tears and joys, with their troubles. Treplev brings her a dead seagull and compares this bird with himself. Nina tells him that she almost ceased to understand him, since he began to express his thoughts and feelings with symbols. Konstantin tries to explain himself, but, seeing Trigorin appearing, he quickly leaves.

Nina and Trigorin remain alone. Trigorin is constantly writing down something in his notebook. Nina admires the world in which, according to her, Trigorin and Arkadina live, she admires enthusiastically and believes that their life is filled with happiness and miracles. Trigorin, on the contrary, paints his life as a painful existence. Seeing a seagull killed by Treplev, Trigorin writes a new story in a book for a short story about a young girl who looks like a seagull. "A man came by chance, saw her, and from nothing to do, destroyed her."

A week passes. In the dining room of Sorin's house, Masha confesses to Trigorin that she loves Treplev and, in order to tear this love out of her heart, marries Medvedenko, although she does not love him. Trigorin is going to leave for Moscow with Arkadina. Irina Nikolaevna is leaving because of her son, who shot himself and is now going to challenge Trigorin to a duel. Nina Zarechnaya is also going to leave, because she dreams of becoming an actress. She comes to say goodbye (primarily to Trigorin). Nina gives him a medallion containing lines from his book. Having opened the book in the right place, he reads: “If you ever need my life, then come and take it.” Trigorin wants to follow Nina, because it seems to him that this is the very feeling that he has been looking for all his life. Having learned about this, Irina Arkadina begs on her knees not to leave her. However, having agreed verbally, Trigorin agrees with Nina about a secret meeting on the way to Moscow.

Two years pass. Sorin is already sixty-two years old, he is very sick, but also full of a thirst for life. Medvedenko and Masha are married, they have a child, but there is no happiness in their marriage. Both her husband and child are disgusting to Masha, and Medvedenko himself suffers greatly from this.

Treplev tells Dorn, who is interested in Nina Zarechnaya, her fate. She ran away from home and made friends with Trigorin. They had a child, but soon died. Trigorin had already fallen out of love with her and again returned to Arkadina. On stage, Nina seemed to be getting even worse. She played a lot, but very "rudely, tastelessly, with howls." She wrote letters to Treplev, but never complained. She signed the letters Chaika. Her parents do not want to know her and do not let her even close to the house. Now she is in the city. And she promised to come. Treplev is sure that he will not come.

However, he is wrong. Nina appears quite unexpectedly. Konstantin once again confesses his love and fidelity to her. He is ready to forgive her everything and devote his whole life to her. Nina does not accept his sacrifices. She still loves Trigorin, which Treplev admits to. She leaves for the provinces to play in the theater and invites Treplev to look at her acting when she becomes a great actress.

Treplev, after her departure, tears up all his manuscripts and throws them under the table, then goes into the next room. Arkadina, Trigorin, Dorn and others gather in the room he left. They are going to play and sing. A shot is fired. Dorn, saying that it was obviously his test tube that burst, leaves to the noise. Returning, he takes Trigorin aside and asks him to take Irina Nikolaevna somewhere, because her son, Konstantin Gavrilovich, shot himself.

Author of the retelling: Yu. V. Polezhaeva

House with mezzanine. The Artist's Story (1896)

The narrator (the narration is in the first person) recalls how six or seven years ago he lived on the estate of Belokurov in one of the districts of the T-th province. The owner "was up very early, walked around in a coat, drank beer in the evenings and kept complaining to me that he did not find sympathy anywhere and in anyone." The narrator is an artist, but in the summer he became so lazy that he wrote almost nothing. "Sometimes I left the house and wandered somewhere until late in the evening." So he wandered into an unfamiliar estate. Near the gate stood two girls: one "older, thin, pale, very beautiful" and the second - "young - she was seventeen or eighteen years old, no more - also thin and pale, with a big mouth and big eyes." For some reason, both faces looked familiar. He came back feeling like he had a good dream.

Soon a carriage appeared in Belokurov's estate, in which one of the girls, the eldest, was sitting. She came with a signature sheet to ask for money for the fire victims. Having signed in the list, the narrator was invited to visit, in the words of the girl, "how the admirers of his talent live." Belokurov said that her name is Lydia Volchaninova, she lives in the village of Shelkovka with her mother and sister. Her father once occupied a prominent position in Moscow and died in the rank of Privy Councilor. Despite good means, the Volchaninovs lived in the country without a break, Lida worked as a teacher, receiving twenty-five rubles a month.

On one of the holidays they went to the Volchaninovs. Mother and daughters were at home. "Mother, Ekaterina Pavlovna, once, apparently, beautiful, now damp beyond her years, sick with shortness of breath, sad, absent-minded, tried to keep me talking about painting." Lida told Belokurov that the chairman of the council, Balagan, "distributed all the posts in the county to his nephews and sons-in-law and does what he wants." "Young people should make a strong party out of themselves," she said, "but you see what kind of youth we have. Shame on you, Pyotr Petrovich!" The younger sister Zhenya (Miss, because in childhood she called that "Miss", her governess) seemed like a child. During dinner, Belokurov, gesticulating, knocked over a gravy boat with his sleeve, but no one except the narrator seemed to notice this. When they returned, Belokurov said: “A good upbringing is not that you don’t spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you don’t notice if someone else does it. <...> Yes, a wonderful, intelligent family. .."

The narrator began to visit the Volchaninovs. He liked Misya, she also sympathized with him. "We walked together, picked cherries for jam, rode in a boat <...> Or I wrote a sketch, and she stood nearby and looked with admiration." He was especially attracted by the fact that in the eyes of a young provincial woman he looked like a talented artist, a famous person. Linda disliked him. She despised idleness and considered herself a laboring person. She did not like his landscapes because they did not show the needs of the people. In turn, Lida did not like him. Once he started a dispute with her and said that her charitable work with the peasants was not only not beneficial, but also harmful. “You come to their aid with hospitals and schools, but by doing so you do not free them from their fetters, but, on the contrary, enslave them even more, because by introducing new prejudices into their lives, you increase the number of their needs, not to mention the fact that what kind of books they should pay the zemstvo and, therefore, bend their backs more strongly. Lidin's authority was indisputable. Mother and sister respected, but also feared her, who took over the "male" leadership of the family.

Finally, the narrator confessed his love to Zhenya in the evening, when she accompanied him to the gates of the estate. She reciprocated, but immediately ran to tell her mother and sister everything. “We have no secrets from each other...” When the next day he came to the Volchaninovs, Lida dryly announced that Ekaterina Pavlovna and Zhenya had gone to her aunt, in the Penza province, and then, probably, to go abroad. On the way back, a boy caught up with him with a note from Misyus: “I told my sister everything, and she demands that I break up with you... I was unable to upset her with my disobedience. God will give you happiness, forgive me. If you They knew how my mother and I were crying bitterly!” He never saw the Volchaninovs again. Once, on the way to Crimea, he met Belokurov in the carriage, and he said that Lida still lives in Shelkovka and teaches children. She managed to rally around her a “strong party” of young people, and at the last zemstvo elections they “drove” Balagin. “About Zhenya, Belokurov only said that she did not live at home and was unknown where.” Gradually, the narrator begins to forget about the “house with a mezzanine”, about the Volchaninovs, and only in moments of loneliness does he remember them and: “... little by little, for some reason, it begins to seem to me that they are also remembering me, they are waiting for me and that we Let's meet... Missyus, where are you?"

Author of the retelling: P. V. Basinsky

My life. A Countryman's Tale (1896)

The story is told in the first person. The narrator, named Misail Poloznev, lives in a provincial town with his architect father and sister Cleopatra. Their mother died. The father raised his children in strictness and, when they became adults, continues to demand complete obedience. He succeeds in this with Cleopatra, but Misail gets out of submission. He changes one job after another, not being able to get along with his bosses and not wanting to do boring clerical work. He cannot and does not want to dissolve in the boredom and vulgarity of provincial life. Dreams about real business. This angers the father and frightens the sister. The hero often attends amateur performances in the rich landowner house of the Azhogins. The local community gathers, two girls come: the daughter of an engineer, Masha Dolzhnikova, and Anyuta Blagovo, the daughter of a fellow chairman of the court. Anyuta is secretly in love with Misail. Through her father, she helps him get a job with the engineer Dolzhikov on the construction of the railway. Dolzhikov is an arrogant, stupid person and also quite a boor. While talking, he seems to constantly forget that in front of him is the son of a city architect, humiliating him like an ordinary unemployed man. Having assumed the position of telegraph operator, Misail meets Ivan Cheprakov, the son of the general’s wife, a childhood friend. He is a drunken man who does not understand the meaning of his work and does nothing all day long. By the way, they remember that Misail was nicknamed in childhood - “Little Benefit”.

All together: Dolzhikov, Azhogin, Misail’s father, Cheprakov - they present a picture of a provincial intelligentsia, decayed, stealing, and having lost the rudiments of education. Misail sees all this and cannot come to terms with it. He is drawn to ordinary people, workers and men. He goes to work as a painter under the contractor Andrei Ivanov (in the city they called him Radish and they said that this was his real name). This is a strange man, a bit of a philosopher. His favorite phrase: “Aphids eat grass, rust eats iron, and lies eat the soul.” As soon as Misail became a worker, the “noble” part of the city turned away from him. Even Anyuta Blagovo told him not to greet her in front of everyone. Father curses son Now Misail lives in the city suburb with his nanny Karpovna and her adopted son, the butcher Prokofy. The latter is like Misail in reverse. He is one of the men, but he tends to be “noble”. He says this: “I can be lenient with you, mother... In this earthly life I will feed you in your old age in the vale, and when you die, I will bury you at my own expense.” Misail and Prokofy do not like each other, but the painters treat Misail with respect: they like that he does not drink or smoke and leads a sedate life.

Misail is often visited by Anyuta’s sister and brother, Doctor Vladimir Blagovo. He is in love with Cleopatra and she loves him. But he is married, they meet secretly. There are conversations between the doctor and Misail about the meaning of existence, about progress, etc. Misail thinks that every person is obliged to engage in physical labor, no one has the right to enjoy the fruits of someone else’s labor. Tolstoy's ideas creep into his words. The doctor is a fan of European progress and an opponent of personal self-improvement. At the same time, he is a tired and lying man, living a double life.

Someone sometimes sends Misail tea, lemons, cookies and fried hazel grouse, probably to ease the burden of life for him. (Later it turns out that Anyuta Blagovo did this.) Finally, the “nobles” come to terms with his action, even begin to openly respect him. Masha Dolzhikova comes to him and complains of boredom, calls him “the most interesting person in the city” and asks him to visit their house. When visiting, everyone asks to tell you about painters; it is clear that the life of ordinary people seems to be something exotic, unknown. And again debates about the meaning of life, about progress. Unlike “society,” Misail’s father cannot forgive him for leaving home. He turns to the governor with a request to influence his son, who, in his opinion, is discrediting the honor of the nobleman. The governor cannot do anything and only finds himself in an awkward position by calling Misail for a conversation.

In the life of the hero again a serious change. Masha Dolzhikova and he are in love with each other and become husband and wife. They settle in the Dubechnya estate, which the engineer Dolzhikov bought from the general's wife Cheprakova, and enthusiastically begin to engage in agriculture. This work captivates Misail. At first, Masha also likes her. She subscribes to books on agriculture, builds a school in the village and tries to establish contact with the peasants. But she doesn't do it well. The men try to deceive them, drink, work reluctantly and do not hesitate to be rude to Masha: "I would go and drive!" They clearly take Misail and Masha for fools and fake owners. Masha very quickly became disillusioned with the peasants and village life. Misail looks deeper. He sees that with all the depravity in the peasants, spiritual purity has been preserved. They want justice and are angry that they have to work for idle people. The fact that they work every day and do not have time for boredom is their advantage over the "noble". But Masha does not want to understand this. It turns out that she did not love Misail so much as she wanted freedom and independence. She is a bird of a different flight. One day she leaves and never comes back. Misail receives a letter in which she writes that she is going to America with her father and asking for a divorce. Misail is having a hard time; with the loss of Masha, everything bright in his life seems to end and gray everyday life begins, just "life" begins without hopes and ideals.

"Life" is complicated by the fact that sister Misail left her father and lives with her brother. She is pregnant by the doctor and is ill with consumption. Misail asks his father to take care of her, but he drives his son away and does not want to forgive his daughter. Prokofy, the nanny's son, also demands that Misail and his pregnant sister leave his house, for - "for such a vale, people will not praise us or you." And here is Radish - he pities Misail and his sister and condemns the doctor: "Your honor, there will be no kingdom of heaven for you!" The doctor jokingly retorts: "What to do, someone must be in hell."

The last chapter of the story is a kind of epilogue. The narrator "aged, became silent, severe"; he works as a contractor instead of Radish. There is no father in the house. His wife lives abroad. The sister died leaving a daughter. Together with the little Misail, on holidays, he goes to his sister's grave and sometimes meets Anyuta Blagovo there. She apparently still loves Misail and still hides it. Caressing the little daughter of Cleopatra, Misail's niece, she gives vent to her feelings, but as soon as they enter the city, she becomes strict and cold, as if there was nothing between her and the girl.

Author of the retelling: P. V. Basinsky

Uncle Ivan. Scenes from village life. Play (1897)

Cloudy autumn day. In the garden, on an alley under an old poplar, a table is set for tea. At the samovar - the old nanny Marina. "Eat, father," she offers tea to Dr. Astrov. “I don’t want something,” he replies.

Telegin appears, an impoverished landowner nicknamed Waffle, who lives on the estate in the position of taking root: "The weather is charming, the birds sing, we all live in peace and harmony - what else do we need?" But there is no agreement and peace in the estate. "It's not safe in this house," Elena Andreevna, the wife of Professor Serebryakov, who came to the estate, will say twice.

These fragmentary replicas, outwardly not addressed to each other, enter, echoing each other, into a dialogic dispute and highlight the meaning of the tense drama experienced by the characters in the play.

Astrov earned money during the ten years he lived in the district. “I don’t want anything, I don’t need anything, I don’t love anyone,” he complains to the nanny. Voinitsky has changed, broken. Previously, while managing the estate, he did not know a free moment. And now? “I <...> have become worse because I have become lazy, do nothing and just grumble like an old horseradish...”

Voinitsky does not hide his envy of the retired professor, especially his success with women. Voinitsky's mother, Maria Vasilievna, simply adores her son-in-law, the husband of her late daughter. Voinitsky despises Serebryakov’s academic pursuits: “A man <...> reads and writes about art, understanding absolutely nothing about art.” Finally, he hates Serebryakov, although his hatred may seem very biased: after all, he fell in love with his beautiful wife. And Elena Andreevna reasonably reprimands Voinitsky: “There’s nothing to hate Alexander for, he’s just like everyone else.”

Then Voinitsky exposes the deeper and, as it seems to him, irresistible reasons for his intolerant, irreconcilable attitude towards the ex-professor - he considers himself cruelly deceived: “I adored this professor... I worked for him like an ox... I was proud of him and his science, I lived and breathed him! God, and now? ...he's nothing! A soap bubble!"

An atmosphere of intolerance, hatred, and enmity thickens around Serebryakov. He annoys Astrov, and even his wife can hardly stand him. Everyone somehow listened to the diagnosis of the disease that struck both the heroes of the play and all their contemporaries: “... the world is perishing not from robbers, not from fires, but from hatred, enmity, from all these petty squabbles.” They, including Elena Andreevna herself, somehow forgot that Serebryakov is “the same as everyone else” and, like everyone else, can count on leniency, on a merciful attitude towards himself, especially since he suffers from gout, suffers from insomnia, is afraid of death. “Do I really,” he asks his wife, “don’t I have the right to a peaceful old age, to people’s attention to me?” Yes, you have to be merciful, says Sonya, Serebryakov’s daughter from his first marriage. But only the old nanny will hear this call and show genuine, sincere sympathy for Serebryakov: “What, father? Does it hurt? <...> You want someone to feel sorry for the old and the small, but no one feels sorry for the old. (Kisses Serebryakov in the shoulder.) Let's go, father, to bed... Let's go, little light... I'll give you some linden tea, I'll warm your feet... I'll pray to God for you..."

But one old nanny could not and did not, of course, defuse the oppressive atmosphere fraught with disaster. The conflict knot is so tightly tied that a climactic explosion occurs. Serebryakov gathers everyone in the living room to propose for discussion a “measure” he has come up with: sell the low-income estate, convert the proceeds into interest-bearing securities, which would make it possible to purchase a dacha in Finland.

Voinitsky is indignant: Serebryakov allows himself to dispose of the estate, which actually and legally belongs to Sonya; he did not think about the fate of Voinitsky, who managed the estate for twenty years, receiving beggarly money for it; I didn’t even think about the fate of Maria Vasilievna, who was so selflessly devoted to the professor!

Outraged, enraged, Voinitsky shoots Serebryakov, shoots twice and misses both times.

Frightened by the mortal danger that only accidentally passed him, Serebryakov decides to return to Kharkov. He leaves for his small estate, Astrov, in order, as before, to treat the peasants, to take care of the garden and the forest nursery. Love intrigues fade. Elena Andreevna lacks the courage to respond to Astrov's passion for her. When parting, she, however, admits that she was carried away by the doctor, but "a little". She hugs him "impulsively", but with an eye. And Sonya is finally convinced that Astrov will not be able to love her, so ugly.

Life on the estate returns to normal. “We’ll live again as it was, in the old way,” the nanny dreams. The conflict between Voinitsky and Serebryakov remains without consequences. “You will carefully receive what you received,” Professor Voinitsky reassures. “Everything will be as before.” And before Astrov and Serebryakov had time to leave, Sonya hurries Voinitsky: “Well, Uncle Vanya, let’s do something.” The lamp is lit, the inkwell is filled, Sonya flips through the office book, Uncle Vanya writes one invoice, then another: “On the second of February, twenty pounds of lean butter...” The nanny sits in a chair and knits, Maria Vasilievna plunges into reading another brochure...

It would seem that the old nanny’s expectations came true: everything became as before. But the play is structured in such a way that it constantly - in both big and small ways - deceives the expectations of both its heroes and readers. You expect, for example, music from Elena Andreevna, a graduate of the conservatory (“I want to play... I haven’t played for a long time. I’ll play and cry...”), and Wafer plays the guitar... The characters are arranged like this, the course plot events take such a direction, dialogues and remarks are welded together with such semantic, often subtextual roll calls, that the traditional question “Who is to blame?” is pushed to the periphery from the proscenium, giving way to the question “What is to blame?”. It seems to Voinitsky that Serebryakov ruined his life. He hopes to start a "new life." But Astrov dispels this “elevating deception”: “Our situation, yours and mine, is hopeless. <...> In the entire district there were only two decent, intelligent people: me and you. For some ten years, life was philistine, life was despicable sucked us in; with its rotten fumes it poisoned our blood, and we became as vulgar as everyone else.”

At the end of the play, however, Voinitsky and Sonya dream about the future, but Sonya’s final monologue emanates hopeless sadness and a feeling of a life lived aimlessly: “We, Uncle Vanya, will live. <...> we will patiently endure the trials that fate will send us ; <...> we will humbly die and there, beyond the grave, we will say that we suffered, that we cried, that we were bitter, and God will take pity on us. <...> We will hear the angels, we will see the whole sky in diamonds... We'll rest! (The watchman knocks. Telegin plays quietly; Maria Vasilievna writes in the margins of the brochure; Marina knits a stocking.) We'll rest! (The curtain slowly lowers.)"

Author of the retelling: V. A. Bogdanov

Ionych. Story (1898)

Zemsky doctor Dmitry Ionovich Startsev comes to work in the provincial town of S., where he soon meets the Turkins. All members of this hospitable family are famous for their talents: the witty Ivan Petrovich Turkin puts on amateur performances, his wife Vera Iosifovna writes stories and novels, and her daughter Ekaterina Ivanovna plays the piano and is going to study at the conservatory. The family makes the most favorable impression on Startsev.

Having renewed their acquaintance a year later, he falls in love with Kotik, as Ekaterina Ivanovna’s family calls her. Having called the girl into the garden, Startsev tries to declare his love and unexpectedly receives a note from Kotik, where he is given a date at the cemetery. Startsev is almost sure that this is a joke, and nevertheless at night he goes to the cemetery and waits for Ekaterina Ivanovna for several hours to no avail, indulging in romantic dreams. The next day, dressed in someone else’s tailcoat, Startsev goes to propose to Ekaterina Ivanovna and is refused, because, as Kotik explains, “to become a wife - oh no, sorry! A person should strive for a higher, brilliant goal, and family life would bind me forever ".

Startsev did not expect refusal, and now his pride is wounded. The doctor cannot believe that all his dreams, yearnings and hopes have led him to such a silly end. However, upon learning that Ekaterina Ivanovna left for Moscow to enter the conservatory, Startsev calms down, and his life returns to its usual track.

Four more years pass. Startsev has a lot of practice and a lot of work. He has grown fat and is reluctant to walk, preferring to ride a troika with bells. During all this time, he visited the Turkins no more than twice, but he did not make new acquaintances either, since the townsfolk annoy him with their conversations, views on life, and even their appearance.

Soon Startsev receives a letter from Vera Iosifovna and Kotik and, after some thought, goes to visit the Turkins. Obviously, their meeting made a much stronger impression on Ekaterina Ivanovna than on Startsev, who, remembering his former love, feels awkward.

As on his first visit, Vera Iosifovna reads her novel aloud, and Ekaterina Ivanovna plays the piano noisily and for a long time, but Startsev feels only irritation. In the garden, where Kotik invites Startsev, the girl talks about how excitedly she expected this meeting, and Startsev becomes sad and sorry for the past. He talks about his gray monotonous life, a life without impressions, without thoughts. But Kotik objects that Startsev has a noble goal in life - his work as a zemstvo doctor. Speaking about herself, she admits that she lost faith in her talent as a pianist and that Startsev, serving the people, helping the sufferers, seems to her an ideal, exalted person. However, for Startsev, such an assessment of his merits does not cause any spiritual uplift. Leaving the Turkins' house, he feels relieved that he did not marry Ekaterina Ivanovna in his time, and thinks that if the most talented people in the whole city are so mediocre, then what should the city be like. He leaves the letter from Kotik unanswered and never visits the Turkins again.

As time goes by, Startsev grows even fatter, becomes rude and irritable. He got rich, has a huge practice, but greed does not allow him to leave the Zemstvo place. In the city, his name is already simply Ionych. Startsev's life is boring, nothing interests him, he is lonely. And Kotik, whose love was Startsev's only joy, has grown old, often gets sick and plays the piano for four hours every day.

Author of the retelling: O. A. Petrenko

Man in a case. Story (1898)

End of the 19th century Countryside in Russia. The village of Mironositskoye. Veterinarian Ivan Ivanovich Chimsha-Gimalaysky and the Burkin gymnasium teacher, after hunting all day, settle down for the night in the headman’s barn. Burkin tells Ivan Ivanovich the story of the Greek teacher Belikov, with whom he taught in the same gymnasium.

Belikov was known for the fact that "even in good weather he went out in galoshes and with an umbrella, and certainly in a warm coat with wadding." Watches, umbrella, Belikov's penknife were packed in cases. He wore dark glasses, and at home he locked himself with all the locks. Belikov sought to create a "case" for himself that would protect him from "external influences." Only circulars were clear to him, in which something was forbidden. Any deviation from the norm caused confusion in him. With his "case" considerations, he oppressed not only the gymnasium, but the whole city. But once a strange story happened to Belikov: he almost got married.

It happened that a new teacher of history and geography was appointed to the gymnasium, Mikhail Savvich Kovalenko, a young, cheerful man, from crests. With him came his sister Varenka, about thirty years old. She was pretty, tall, ruddy, cheerful, and sang and danced endlessly. Varenka charmed everyone in the gymnasium, and even Belikov. It was then that the teachers came up with the idea of ​​marrying Belikov and Varenka. Belikov began to be convinced of the need to marry. Varenka began to show him "obvious favor", and he went for a walk with her and kept repeating that "marriage is a serious thing."

Belikov often visited Kovalenki and in the end would have made an offer to Varenka, if not for one case. Some mischievous person drew a caricature of Belikov, where he was depicted with an umbrella on his arm with Varenka. Copies of the picture were sent to all teachers. This made a very heavy impression on Belikov.

Soon Belikov met Kovalenok riding bicycles on the street. He was extremely indignant at this sight, since, according to his concepts, it was not proper for a gymnasium teacher and a woman to ride a bicycle. The next day, Belikov went to Kovalenki "to relieve his soul." Varenka was not at home. Her brother, being a freedom-loving man, disliked Belikov from the first day. Unable to endure his teachings about cycling, Kovalenko simply lowered Belikov down the stairs. At that moment, Varenka was just entering the entrance with two acquaintances. Seeing Belikov rolling down the stairs, she laughed out loud. The thought that the whole city would know about what had happened made Belikov so horrified that he went home, went to bed, and died a month later.

When he lay in the coffin, his expression was happy. It seemed that he had achieved his ideal, “they put him in a case from which he would never come out. Belikov was buried with a pleasant feeling of liberation. ".

Burkin finishes the story. Thinking about what he heard, Ivan Ivanovich says: "But is it that we live in a city in close quarters, write unnecessary papers, play vint - isn't this a case?"

Author of the retelling: E. A. Zhuravleva

Gooseberry. Story (1898)

Ivan Ivanovich and Burkin are walking across the field. You can see the village of Mironositskoye in the distance. It starts to rain, and they decide to visit their friend, the landowner Pavel Konstantinovich Alekhin, whose estate is located nearby in the village of Sofyino. Alekhine, "a man of about forty, tall, stout with long hair, looking more like a professor or an artist than a landowner," greets guests on the threshold of the barn, in which a winnowing machine makes noise. His clothes are dirty and his face is black with dust. He welcomes the guests and invites them to go to the bath. After washing and changing clothes, Ivan Ivanovich, Burkin and Alekhin go to the house, where, over a cup of tea with jam, Ivan Ivanovich tells the story of his brother Nikolai Ivanovich.

The brothers spent their childhood in the wild, on the estate of their father, who himself was a cantonist, but served as an officer and left the children a hereditary nobility. After the death of their father, their estate was sued for debts. From the age of nineteen, Nikolai sat in the state chamber, but he yearned terribly there and kept dreaming of buying himself a small estate. Ivan Ivanovich himself never sympathized with his brother's desire "to lock himself up for life in his own estate." Nikolai, on the other hand, simply could not think of anything else. He kept imagining a future estate where gooseberries were bound to grow. Nikolai saved money, was malnourished, married without love to an ugly but rich widow. He kept his wife starving, and put her money in his name in the bank. His wife could not bear such a life and soon died, and Nikolai, without any remorse, bought himself an estate, ordered twenty gooseberry bushes, planted them and lived as a landowner.

When Ivan Ivanovich came to visit his brother, he was unpleasantly struck by how he had sank, grown old and flabby. He became a real gentleman, ate a lot, sued neighboring factories and spoke in the tone of a minister phrases like: "Education is necessary, but for the people it is premature." Nikolay regaled his brother with gooseberries, and it was evident from him that he was pleased with his fate and himself.

At the sight of this happy man, Ivan Ivanovich "was seized by a feeling close to despair." All the night he spent at the estate, he thought about how many people in the world suffer, go crazy, drink, how many children die of malnutrition. And how many other people live "happily", "eat during the day, sleep at night, talk their nonsense, get married, grow old, complacently drag their dead to the cemetery." He thought that “someone with a hammer” should stand behind the door of every happy person and remind him with a knock that there are unfortunate people, that sooner or later trouble will befall him, and “no one will see or hear him, as he is now not sees and does not hear others. Ivan Ivanovich, finishing his story, says that there is no happiness, and if there is a meaning in life, then it is not in happiness, but in "doing good."

Neither Burkin nor Alekhine are satisfied with Ivan Ivanovich's story. Alekhine does not delve into whether his words are fair. It was not about cereals, not about hay, but about something that was not directly related to his life. But he is happy and wants the guests to continue the conversation. However, it is late, the owner and guests go to bed.

Author of the retelling: E. A. Zhuravleva

About love. Story (1898)

Ivan Ivanovich and Burkin spend the night at Alekhine's estate. In the morning, at breakfast, Alekhine tells the guests the story of his love.

He settled in Sofyin after graduating from the university. The estate had large debts, since Alekhine's father spent a lot of money to educate his son. Alekhin decided that he would not leave the estate and would work until he paid off the debt. Soon he was elected to the honorary justice of the peace. To participate in the sessions of the district court, he had to be in the city, which amused him a little.

In court, Alekhine met a friend of the chairman, Dmitry Luganovich, a man of about forty, kind, simple, who reasoned with “boring sanity.” One spring, Luganovich invited Alekhine to his place for lunch. There Alekhine first saw Luganovich's wife Anna Alekseevna, who at that time was no more than twenty-two years old. She was a “beautiful, kind, intelligent” woman, and Alekhine immediately felt a “close being” in her. Alekhine’s next meeting with Anna Alekseevna took place in the fall at the theater. Alekhine was again fascinated by her beauty and again felt the same closeness. The Luganovichis again invited him to their place, and he began to visit them on every visit to the city. They took a great part in Alekhine, they were worried that he, an educated man, instead of studying science or literature, lived in the village and worked a lot, and gave him gifts. Alekhine was unhappy, he constantly thought about Anna Alekseevna and tried to understand why she married an uninteresting man, much older than her, agreed to have children from him, and why he himself did not take Luganovich’s place.

Arriving in the city, Alekhin noticed in the eyes of Anna Alekseevna that she was waiting for him. However, they did not confess their love to each other. Alekhin thought that he could hardly give Anna Alekseevna much if she agreed to follow him. She, apparently, was thinking about her husband and children, and also did not know if she could bring happiness to Alekhine. They often went to the theater together, God knows what they said about them in the city, but all this was not true. In recent years, Anna Alekseevna had a feeling of dissatisfaction with life, sometimes she did not want to see either her husband or children. In the presence of strangers, she began to feel irritation against Alekhine. Anna Alekseevna began to be treated for a nerve disorder.

Soon Luganovich was appointed chairman of one of the western provinces. There was a separation. It was decided that at the end of August Anna Alekseevna would go to the Crimea, as her doctors had ordered, and Luganovich would go with the children to her destination. When Anna Alekseevna was being seen off at the station, Alekhin ran into her compartment to give her one of the baskets she had left on the platform. Their eyes met, their spiritual strength left them, he hugged her, she clung to him and cried for a long time on his chest, and he kissed her face and hands. Alekhin confessed his love to her. He understood how petty was that which prevented them from loving, he realized that when you love, "then in your reasoning about this love you need to start from the highest, from more important than happiness or unhappiness, sin or virtue in their current sense, or no need to argue at all." Alekhin and Anna Alekseevna parted forever.

Author of the retelling: E. A. Zhuravleva

Darling. Story (1899)

Olga Semyonovna Plemyannikova, the daughter of a retired collegiate assessor, enjoys universal sympathy: those around her are attracted by the good nature and naivety radiated by the quiet, rosy-cheeked young lady. Many acquaintances call her nothing more than "darling".

Olga Semyonovna has a constant need to love someone. Ivan Petrovich Kukin, an entrepreneur and owner of the Tivoli Pleasure Garden, becomes her next affection. Due to constant rains, the audience does not attend performances, and Kukin suffers continuous losses, which causes compassion in Olenka, and then love for Ivan Petrovich, despite the fact that he is small, thin and speaks in a liquid tenor.

After the wedding, Olenka gets a job with her husband in the theater. She tells her acquaintances that this is the only place where one can become educated and humane, but an ignorant public needs a farce.

In Lent, Kukin leaves for Moscow to recruit a troupe, and soon Olenka receives a telegram with the following content: "Ivan Petrovich died suddenly today, we are suddenly waiting for orders, funeral Tuesday."

Olga Semyonovna is very much worried about his death and wears deep mourning. Three months later, having passionately fallen in love with Vasily Andreevich Pustovalov, Olenka marries again. Pustovalov manages the timber warehouse of the merchant Babakaev, and Olenka works in his office, writing out invoices and releasing goods. It seems to her that the forest is the most important and necessary thing in life, and that she has been selling timber for a long time. Olenka shares all the thoughts of her husband and sits at home with him on holidays. To the advice of acquaintances to go to the theater or to the circus, she sedately replies that working people are not up to trifles, and there is nothing good in theaters.

Olga Semyonovna lives very well with her husband; Every time Pustovalov leaves for the Mogilev province for the forest, she gets bored and cries, finding solace in conversations with the veterinarian Smirnin, her lodger. Smirnin separated from his wife, convicting her of treason, and sends forty rubles every month to support his son. Olenka feels sorry for Smirnin; she advises the veterinarian to make peace with his wife for the sake of the boy. After six years of a happy marriage, Pustovalov dies, and Olenka is left alone again. She only goes to church or to her husband’s grave. The seclusion lasts six months, and then Olenka meets with a veterinarian. In the mornings they drink tea together in the garden and Smirnin reads the newspaper aloud. And Olenka, having met a lady she knows at the post office, talks about the lack of proper veterinary supervision in the city.

Happiness does not last long: the regiment in which the veterinarian serves is transferred almost to Siberia, and Olenka is left completely alone.

Years go by. Olenka is getting old; Friends lose interest in her. She does not think about anything and she no longer has any opinions. Among the thoughts and in the heart of Olenka is the same emptiness as in the yard. She dreams of love that would take over her whole being and give her thoughts.

Unexpectedly, the veterinarian Smirnin returns to Olenka. He reconciled with his wife, retired and decided to stay in the city, especially since the time had come to send his son Sasha to the gymnasium.

With the arrival of Smirnin's family, Olenka comes to life again. The veterinarian's wife soon leaves for her sister in Kharkov, Smirnin himself is constantly away, and Olenka takes Sasha to his wing. Maternal feelings awaken in her, and the boy becomes Olenka's new affection. She tells everyone she knows about the advantages of a classical education over a real one and about how difficult it has become to study at a gymnasium.

Olenka blossomed again and rejuvenated; acquaintances, meeting her on the street, experience, as before, pleasure and call Olga Semyonovna darling.

Author of the retelling: O. A. Petrenko

Lady with a dog. Story (1899)

Dmitry Dmitrievich Gurov, under forty years old, a Muscovite, a philologist by training, but working in a bank, is vacationing in Yalta. In Moscow, he has an unloved wife, whom he often cheats on, a twelve-year-old daughter, and two high school-age sons. In his appearance and character there is “something attractive, elusive, which attracted women to him, attracted them...”. He himself despises women, considers them a “lower race” and at the same time cannot do without them and is constantly looking for love affairs, having a lot of experience in this. On the embankment he meets a young lady. She is “a short blonde, wearing a beret; a white Spitz was running behind her.” Vacationers call her “the lady with the dog.” Gurov decides that it would be nice to start an affair with her, and meets her during lunch in the city garden. Their conversation begins in the usual way: “Time passes quickly, and yet it’s so boring here!” she said, without looking at him. “It’s just customary to say that it’s boring here. The average person lives somewhere in Belev or Zhizdra - and he’s not bored, but comes here: “Oh, how boring! oh, dust!" You'd think he came from Grenada!" She laughed...

Anna Sergeevna was born in St. Petersburg, but came from the city of S., where she has been living for two years already, being married to an official named von Diederitz (his grandfather was a German, and he himself is Orthodox). She is not interested in her husband's work, she cannot even remember the name of his place of service. Apparently, she does not love her husband and is unhappy in her life. "There is something pathetic about her after all," notes Gurov. Their romance begins a week after they met. She experiences her fall painfully, believing that Gurov will not be the first to respect her. He doesn't know what to say. She ardently swears that she always wanted a clean and honest life, that sin is disgusting to her. Gurov tries to calm her down, cheer her up, portrays a passion, which, most likely, he does not experience. Their romance flows smoothly and does not seem to threaten either of them. Waiting for the husband to come. But instead, he asks in a letter to return his wife. Gurov escorts her on horseback to the station; when they part, she does not cry, but looks sad and sick. He is also "touched, sad," experiencing "slight remorse." After Anna Sergeevna's departure, he decides to return home.

Moscow life captivates Gurov. He loves Moscow, its clubs, dinners in restaurants, where he alone “could eat a whole portion of selyanka in a frying pan.” It would seem that he is forgetting about the Yalta novel, but suddenly, for some reason unknown to him, the image of Anna Sergeevna begins to excite him again: “He heard her breathing, the gentle rustle of her clothes. On the street, he followed the women with his eyes, looking for someone like her... "Love awakens in him, and it is all the more difficult for him to bear it because he has no one to share his feelings with. Finally, Gurov decides to go to the city of S. He rents a hotel room, finds out from the doorman where the von Diederits live, but since he cannot directly pay them a visit, he lies in wait for Anna Sergeevna in the theater. There she sees her husband, in whom there is “something lackey-modest” and who fully corresponds to the provincial boredom and vulgarity of the city of S. Anna Sergeevna is frightened by the meeting, begs Gurov to leave and promises to come to him herself. She lies to her husband that she is going to consult about a woman’s illness, and once every two or three months she meets with Gurov in Moscow at the Slavic Bazaar hotel.

At the end, their meeting is described - not the first and, apparently, not the last. She's crying. He orders tea and thinks: “Well, let her cry...” Then he comes up to her and takes her by the shoulders. In the mirror he sees that his head is beginning to turn grey, that he has grown old and ugly in recent years. He understands that he and she made some fatal mistake in life, he and she were not happy and only now, when old age is close, did they truly know love. They are close to each other like husband and wife; their meeting is the most important thing in their lives.

"And it seemed that a little more - and the solution would be found, and then a new, wonderful life would begin; and it was clear to both that the end was still far, far away and that the most difficult and difficult was just beginning."

Author of the retelling: P. V. Basinsky

In the ravine. Tale (1899, published 1900)

The village of Ukleevo is known for the fact that “at the wake of the manufacturer Kostyukov, the old deacon saw grainy caviar among the snacks and began to eat it greedily; they pushed him, pulled his sleeve, but he seemed to be stiff with pleasure: he did not feel anything and only ate. and there were four pounds in the jar." Since then, they said about the village: "This is the same place where the deacon ate all the caviar at the funeral." There are four factories in the village - three cotton and one leather, which employ about four hundred workers. The tannery infected the river and the meadow, the peasant cattle suffered from diseases, and the factory was ordered to close, but it works in secret, and the bailiff and the county doctor receive bribes for this.

There are two "decent houses" in the village; Grigory Petrovich Tsybukin, a tradesman, lives in one. For the sake of appearance, he keeps a grocery store, and earns on the sale of vodka, cattle, grain, stolen goods and "whatever he needs." He buys wood, gives money at interest, "in general, the old man ... resourceful." Two sons: the eldest Anisim serves in the city in the detective department; the younger Stepan helps his father, but there is little help from him - he is in poor health and deaf. Help comes from his wife Aksinya, a beautiful and slender woman who keeps pace everywhere and in everything: “old Tsybukin looked at her cheerfully, his eyes lit up, and at that time he regretted that it was not her eldest son who was married to her, but her younger, deaf who obviously knows little about female beauty."

Tsybukin widows, "but a year after the wedding of his son, he could not stand it and got married himself." With a bride named Varvara Nikolaevna, he was lucky. She is a prominent, beautiful and very religious woman. Helps the poor, pilgrims. One day Stepan noticed that she took two octopuses of tea from the shop without asking, and reported to his father. The old man did not get angry and, in front of everyone, told Varvara that she could take whatever she wanted. In his eyes, his wife, as it were, atones for his sins, although Tsybukin himself is not religious, does not like beggars and angrily shouts at them: "God forbid!"

Anisim is rarely at home, but often sends gifts and letters with, for example, phrases: “Dear father and mother, I am sending you a pound of flower tea to satisfy your physical needs.” His character combines ignorance, rudeness, cynicism and sentimentality, and the desire to appear educated. Tsybukin adores the eldest and is proud that he “went into academics.” Varvara does not like that Anisim is unmarried, although he is twenty-eight years old. She sees this as a disorder, a violation of the correct, as she understands it, course of things. They decide to marry Anisim. He agrees calmly and without enthusiasm; however, he seems to be pleased that they found a beautiful bride for him too. He himself is unprepossessing, but he says: “Well, I’m not crooked either. Our Tsybukin family, I must say, are all beautiful.” The bride's name is Lipa. A very poor girl, for whom entering the Tsybukins’ house, from any point of view, is a gift of fate, for she is taken without a dowry. She is terribly afraid and at the shows she looks as if she wanted to say: “Do with me what you want: I believe you.” Her mother Praskovya is even more timid and answers everyone: “What are you, have mercy, sir... You have a lot of satisfied, sir."

Anisim arrives three days before the wedding and brings everyone as a gift silver rubles and fifty dollars, the main charm of which is that all the coins are brand new. On the way he obviously drank and with an air of importance tells how at some commemoration he drank grape wine and ate sauce, and dinner cost two and a half a person. "Which men are our countrymen, and for them, too, two and a half. They didn't eat anything. Somehow the man understands the sauce!" Old Tsybukin does not believe that dinner can cost so much, and looks adoringly at his son.

Detailed description of the wedding. They eat and drink a lot of bad wine and disgusting English bitters, made from “I don't know what”. Anisim quickly gets drunk and boasts of a city friend named Samorodov, calling him "a special person." He boasts that by appearance he can recognize any thief. A woman screams in the yard: "Our blood sucked, Herods, there is no death for you!" Noise, mess. Drunk Anisim is pushed into the room where Lipa is being undressed, and the door is locked. Five days later, Anisim leaves for the city. He speaks with Varvara, and she complains that they do not live like a god, that everything is built on deceit. Anisim replies: "Who is assigned to what, mother <...> After all, there is no God anyway, mother. Why take it apart!" He says that everyone steals and does not believe in God: the foreman, and the clerk, and the sexton. “And if they go to church and observe fasts, it’s so that people don’t speak badly about them, and in case that, perhaps, there really will be a Last Judgment.” Saying goodbye, Anisim says that Samorodov has implicated him in some dark business: "I will be rich or perish." At the station, Tsybukin asks his son to stay "at home, in business", but he refuses.

It turns out that Anisim's coins are counterfeit. He did them with Samorodov and is now going on trial. This shocks the old man. He mixed the fake coins with the real ones, he can't tell them apart. And although he himself cheated all his life, making counterfeit money does not fit into his consciousness and gradually drives him crazy. The son is condemned to hard labor, despite the efforts of the old man. Aksinya begins to run everything in the house. She hates Lipa and the child she gave birth to, realizing that in the future the main inheritance will go to them. In front of Lipa, she scalds the baby with boiling water, and he, after a short torment, dies. Lipa runs away from home and meets strangers along the way; one of them says in consolation: "Life is long, there will be both good and bad, everything will be. Great Mother Russia!" When Lipa comes home, the old man says to her: “Oh, Lipa ... your granddaughter didn’t save you ...” She turns out to be guilty, not Aksinya, whom the old man is afraid of. Lipa goes to her mother. Aksinya finally becomes the head of the house, although formally the old man is considered the owner. She enters into a share with the Khrymin merchant brothers - together they open a tavern at the station, turn frauds, walk, have fun. Stepan is given a gold watch. Old Tsybukin sinks so much that he does not remember food, he does not eat anything for days when they forget to feed him. In the evenings, he stands on the street with the peasants, listens to their conversations - and one day, following them, he meets Lipa and Praskovya. They bow to him, but he is silent, tears trembling in his eyes. It looks like he hasn't eaten in a long time. Lipa gives him a porridge pie. "He took it and began to eat <...> Lipa and Praskovya went on and crossed themselves for a long time."

Author of the retelling: P. V. Basinsky

Three sisters. Drama (1901)

The action takes place in a provincial town, in the house of the Prozorovs.

Irina, the youngest of the three Prozorov sisters, is twenty years old. "It's sunny and cheerful outside," and a table is laid in the hall, guests are waiting - officers of the artillery battery stationed in the city and its new commander, Lieutenant Colonel Vershinin. Everyone is full of joyful expectations and hopes. Irina: “I don’t know why my soul is so light! .. It’s like I’m on sails, there is a wide blue sky above me and big white birds are flying around.” The Prozorovs are scheduled to move to Moscow in the fall. The sisters have no doubt that their brother Andrei will go to university and eventually become a professor. Kulygin, the teacher of the gymnasium, the husband of one of the sisters, Masha, is benevolent. Chebutykin, a military doctor who once madly loved the late mother of the Prozorovs, lends himself to the general joyful mood. "My bird is white," he kisses Irina touched. Lieutenant Baron Tuzenbach enthusiastically speaks about the future: "The time has come <...> a healthy, strong storm is being prepared, which <...> will blow away laziness, indifference, prejudice to work, rotten boredom from our society." Vershinin is just as optimistic. With his appearance, Masha's "merehlyundia" passes. The atmosphere of unconstrained cheerfulness is not disturbed by the appearance of Natasha, although she herself is terribly embarrassed by a large society. Andrei proposes to her: "Oh, youth, wonderful, beautiful youth! <...> I feel so good, my soul is full of love, delight ... My dear, good, pure, be my wife!"

But already in the second act, major notes are replaced by minor ones. Andrey does not find a place for himself out of boredom. He, who dreamed of a professorship in Moscow, is not at all attracted by the position of secretary of the zemstvo council, and in the city he feels "alien and lonely." Masha is finally disappointed in her husband, who once seemed to her "terribly learned, smart and important", and among his fellow teachers she simply suffers. Irina is not satisfied with her work on the telegraph: “What I wanted so much, what I dreamed about, that’s what it doesn’t have. Work without poetry, without thoughts ...” Olga returns from the gymnasium tired, with a headache. Not in the spirit of Vershinin. He still continues to assure that "everything on earth must change little by little," but then he adds: "And how I would like to prove to you that there is no happiness, should not be and will not be for us ... We must only to work and work..." In Chebutykin's puns, with which he amuses those around him, hidden pain breaks through: "No matter how you philosophize, loneliness is a terrible thing..."

Natasha, gradually taking over the whole house, escorts the guests who were waiting for the mummers. "Philistine!" - Masha says to Irina in her hearts.

Three years have passed. If the first act was played out at noon, and it was “sunny, cheerful” outside, then the remarks for the third act “warn” about completely different - gloomy, sad - events: “Behind the scenes, the alarm is sounded on the occasion of a fire that started a long time ago. open door you can see the window, red from the glow. The Prozorovs' house is full of people fleeing the fire.

Irina sobs: "Where? Where has everything gone? <...> and life is leaving and will never return, we will never, never go to Moscow ... I am in despair, I am in despair!" Masha thinks in alarm: "Somehow we will live our lives, what will become of us?" Andrey cries: "When I got married, I thought that we would be happy ... everyone is happy ... But my God ..." Tuzenbach, perhaps even more disappointed: "What was I like then (three years ago. - In B.) I dreamed of a happy life! Where is it? In a drinking bout Chebutykin: “My head is empty, my soul is cold. Maybe I’m not a person, but I just pretend that I have arms and legs ... and a head; maybe I don’t exist at all, but it only seems to me that I walk, eat, sleep. (Crying.)". And the more stubbornly Kulagin repeats: "I am satisfied, I am satisfied, I am satisfied," the more obvious it becomes that everyone is broken, unhappy.

And finally, the last action. Autumn is coming. Masha, walking along the alley, looks up: "And migratory birds are already flying ..." The artillery brigade leaves the city: it is being transferred to another place, either to Poland, or to Chita. The officers come to say goodbye to the Prozorovs. Fedotik, taking a photo for memory, remarks: "... silence and calm will come in the city." Tuzenbach adds: "And terrible boredom." Andrey speaks out even more categorically: "The city will become empty. It is as if they will cover it with a cap."

Masha breaks up with Vershinin, whom she fell in love with so passionately: "Unsuccessful life ... I don't need anything now ..." Olga, becoming the head of the gymnasium, understands: "It means not to be in Moscow." Irina decided - "if I am not destined to be in Moscow, then so be it" - to accept the offer of Tuzenbach, who retired: "The baron and I are getting married tomorrow, tomorrow we are leaving for a brick one, and the day after tomorrow I am already at school, a new life.<...> And all of a sudden, it was as if wings had grown in my soul, I cheered up, it became much easier and again I wanted to work, work ... " Chebutykin in emotion: "Fly, my dears, fly with God!"

He blesses Andrei in his own way for the “flight”: “You know, put on your hat, take a stick in your hands and go... leave and go, go without looking back. And the further you go, the better.” But even the best things are not destined to come true. the modest hopes of the characters in the play. Solyony, in love with Irina, provokes a quarrel with the baron and kills him in a duel. Broken Andrey does not have enough strength to follow Chebutykin’s advice and pick up the “staff”: “Why do we, having barely begun to live, become boring, gray, uninteresting, lazy, indifferent, useless, unhappy?..”

The battery leaves the city. A military march sounds. Olga: “The music plays so cheerfully, cheerfully, and you want to live! <...> and, it seems, a little more, and we will find out why we live, why we suffer... If only we knew! (Music plays more and more quietly .)If only I knew, if only I knew!” (A curtain.)

The heroes of the play are not free migratory birds, they are imprisoned in a strong social "cage", and the personal destinies of everyone who has fallen into it are subject to the laws by which the whole country lives, which is experiencing general trouble. Not "who", but "what?" dominates man. This main culprit of misfortunes and failures in the play has several names - "vulgarity", "baseness", "sinful life" ... The face of this "vulgarity" looks especially visible and unsightly in Andrey's thoughts: "Our city has existed for two hundred years, in it has a hundred thousand inhabitants, and not a single one that would not be like the others ... <...> They only eat, drink, sleep, then die ... others will be born, and they also eat, drink, sleep, and, so as not to become stupefied with boredom, diversify their lives with nasty gossip, vodka, cards, litigation ... "

Author of the retelling: V. A. Bogdanov

Bishop. Story (1902)

On Palm Sunday, at the beginning of April, the Right Reverend Peter serves the all-night vigil. The church is full of people, the monastic choir is singing. The bishop has been unwell for three days; he feels heaviness and fatigue. As if in a dream or in delirium, it seems to him as if his mother, whom he had not seen for nine years, approached him in the crowd. And for some reason tears streamed down his face. Near him, someone else began to cry, then another and another, and little by little the church was filled with a general quiet cry. After the service, he returns home to the Pankratievsky Monastery. A quiet, thoughtful moon, a beautiful ringing of bells, the breath of spring in the soft cold air. And I wanted to think that it would always be like this.

At home, he learns that his mother has indeed arrived, and laughs with joy. Prayers for the coming sleep interfere with his thoughts about his mother, memories of childhood, when he (then his name was Pavlusha), the son of a deacon in a poor village, went to the procession without a hat, barefoot, with naive faith, with a naive smile, infinitely happy .

He has a fever. He talks to Father Sisoy, a hieromonk, who is always dissatisfied with something: "I don't like it!" - the usual words of Sisoya.

The next day, after the services, he receives dear guests, his mother and niece Katya, a girl of eight years old. It is noticeable to the Reverend that his mother, despite her affectionateness, is embarrassed by him, speaks respectfully and timidly. In the evening he lies in bed, covered warmly. Now he remembers how he lived abroad for eight years, served in a church on the shores of the warm sea. A blind beggar at his window sang about love, and he yearned for his homeland.

Bishop Peter receives petitioners. And now, when he is unwell, he is struck by the emptiness, the pettiness of everything that was asked for, he is angry with underdevelopment, timidity. Abroad, he must have lost the habit of Russian life, it is not easy for him. For all the time he has been here, not a single person has spoken to him sincerely, simply, like a human being, even the old mother, it seems, is no longer the same, not at all the same!

In the evening the monks sang harmoniously, with inspiration. His Grace sat in the altar during the service, tears streaming down his face. He thought that he had achieved everything that was available to a person in his position, he believed, but still not everything was clear, something else was missing, he did not want to die; and it still seemed that he did not have something of the most important, which he had once vaguely dreamed of, and in the present he is worried about the same hope for the future that he had in childhood, and at the academy, and abroad.

On Thursday - mass in the cathedral, return home on a warm sunny day. The mother is still timid and respectful. Only by the unusually kind eyes, timid, concerned look, one could guess that this was the mother. In the evening in the cathedral there is a reading of the twelve gospels, and during the service the Reverend, as always, feels active, cheerful, happy, but by the end of the service his legs were completely numb and the fear that he was about to fall began to bother him. At home, he quietly admits to Sisoy: “What kind of bishop am I?.. All this is pressing me... pressing me.”

The next morning he began bleeding from the intestines: typhoid fever. The old mother no longer remembered that he was a bishop, and kissed him, haggard, thinner, like a child, and for the first time called Pavlusha, son. And he could no longer utter a word, and it seemed to him that he, already a simple, ordinary person, was walking across the field, now he was free, like a bird, he could go anywhere!

The bishop died on Saturday morning, and the next day was Easter - with a joyful ringing, general joy - as it always was, as it will, in all likelihood, be in the future.

A month later, a new bishop was appointed, no one remembered the old one, and then they completely forgot. And only the old woman, the mother of the deceased, when she went out to the pasture in the evening in her remote town to meet a cow, told other women that she had a son who was a bishop, and at the same time she spoke timidly, fearing that they would not believe her...

And in fact, not everyone believed her.

Author of the retelling: V. B. Kataev

The Cherry Orchard. Comedy (1904)

The estate of the landowner Lyubov Andreevna Ranevskaya. Spring, cherry trees bloom. But the beautiful garden is soon to be sold for debts. For the past five years, Ranevskaya and her seventeen-year-old daughter Anya have lived abroad. Ranevskaya's brother Leonid Andreevich Gaev and her adopted daughter, twenty-four-year-old Varya, remained on the estate. Ranevskaya's affairs are bad, there are almost no funds left. Lyubov Andreevna always littered with money. Her husband died six years ago from alcoholism. Ranevskaya fell in love with another person, got along with him. But soon her little son Grisha died tragically by drowning in the river. Lyubov Andreevna, unable to bear her grief, fled abroad. The lover followed her. When he fell ill, Ranevskaya had to settle him in her dacha near Menton and take care of him for three years. And then, when he had to sell the dacha for debts and move to Paris, he robbed and abandoned Ranevskaya.

Gaev and Varya meet Lyubov Andreevna and Anya at the station. At home, the maid Dunyasha and the familiar merchant Yermolai Alekseevich Lopakhin are waiting for them. Lopakhin's father was a serf of the Ranevskys, he himself became rich, but he says about himself that he remained "a peasant a peasant." The clerk Epikhodov arrives, a man with whom something constantly happens and who is called "thirty-three misfortunes."

Finally, the carriages arrive. The house is filled with people, everyone is pleasantly excited. Everyone talks about their own. Lyubov Andreevna looks at the rooms and through tears of joy recalls the past. The maid Dunyasha is impatient to tell the young lady that Epikhodov proposed to her. Anya herself advises Varya to marry Lopakhin, and Varya dreams of marrying Anya off as a rich man. The governess Charlotte Ivanovna, a strange and eccentric person, boasts about her amazing dog, the neighbor landowner Simeonov-Pishik asks for a loan. He hears almost nothing and the old faithful servant Firs mutters all the time.

Lopakhin reminds Ranevskaya that the estate should soon be sold at auction, the only way out is to break the land into plots and lease them to summer residents. Lopakhin's proposal surprises Ranevskaya: how can you cut down her favorite wonderful cherry orchard! Lopakhin wants to stay longer with Ranevskaya, whom he loves "more than his own", but it's time for him to leave. Gaev delivers a welcoming speech to the hundred-year-old "respected" cabinet, but then, embarrassed, again begins to senselessly utter his favorite billiard words.

Ranevskaya did not immediately recognize Petya Trofimov: so he changed, became uglier, the “dear student” turned into an “eternal student”. Lyubov Andreevna cries, remembering her little drowned son Grisha, whose teacher was Trofimov.

Gaev, left alone with Varya, tries to talk about business. There is a rich aunt in Yaroslavl, who, however, does not like them: after all, Lyubov Andreevna did not marry a nobleman, and she did not behave "very virtuously." Gaev loves his sister, but still calls her "vicious", which causes Ani's displeasure. Gaev continues to build projects: his sister will ask Lopakhin for money, Anya will go to Yaroslavl - in a word, they will not allow the estate to be sold, Gaev even swears about it. The grouchy Firs finally takes the master, like a child, to sleep. Anya is calm and happy: her uncle will arrange everything.

Lopakhin does not cease to persuade Ranevskaya and Gaev to accept his plan. The three of them had lunch in the city and, returning, stopped in a field near the chapel. Just here, on the same bench, Epikhodov tried to explain himself to Dunyasha, but she had already preferred the young cynical footman Yasha to him. Ranevskaya and Gaev do not seem to hear Lopakhin and talk about completely different things. So without convincing "frivolous, unbusinesslike, strange" people of anything, Lopakhin wants to leave. Ranevskaya asks him to stay: "it's still more fun with him."

Anya, Varya and Petya Trofimov arrive. Ranevskaya starts talking about a "proud man." According to Trofimov, there is no point in pride: a rude, unhappy person should not admire himself, but work. Petya condemns the intelligentsia, who are incapable of work, those people who philosophize importantly, and treat peasants like animals. Lopakhin enters the conversation: he just works "from morning to evening", dealing with big capital, but he is becoming more and more convinced that there are few decent people around. Lopakhin does not finish, Ranevskaya interrupts him. In general, everyone here does not want and does not know how to listen to each other. There is silence, in which the distant, sad sound of a broken string is heard.

Soon everyone disperses. Left alone, Anya and Trofimov are happy to have the opportunity to talk together, without Varya. Trofimov convinces Anya that one must be "above love", that the main thing is freedom: "all Russia is our garden", but in order to live in the present, one must first redeem the past with suffering and labor. Happiness is near: if not they, then others will definitely see it.

Comes the twenty-second of August, the day of trading. It is on this evening, quite inopportunely, that a ball is being held in the estate, a Jewish orchestra is invited. Once upon a time generals and barons danced here, and now, as Firs complains, both the postal clerk and the head of the station "are not willing to go." Charlotte Ivanovna entertains guests with her tricks. Ranevskaya anxiously awaits the return of her brother. The Yaroslavl aunt nevertheless sent fifteen thousand, but they are not enough to buy the estate.

Petya Trofimov "reassures" Ranevskaya: it's not about the garden, it's been over for a long time, we need to face the truth. Lyubov Andreevna asks not to condemn her, to feel sorry for her: after all, without a cherry orchard, her life loses its meaning. Every day Ranevskaya receives telegrams from Paris. At first she tore them up right away, then - after reading them first, now she doesn't vomit anymore. "That wild man", whom she loves after all, begs her to come. Petya condemns Ranevskaya for her love for "a petty scoundrel, a nonentity." Angry Ranevskaya, unable to restrain herself, takes revenge on Trofimov, calling him "a funny eccentric", "a freak", "clean": "You must love yourself ... you must fall in love!" Petya tries to leave in horror, but then stays, dancing with Ranevskaya, who asked for his forgiveness.

Finally, the embarrassed, joyful Lopakhin and the tired Gaev appear, who, without saying anything, immediately goes to his room. The Cherry Orchard was sold and Lopakhin bought it. The "new landowner" is happy: he managed to outbid the rich Deriganov at the auction, giving ninety thousand in excess of the debt. Lopakhin picks up the keys thrown on the floor by the proud Varya. Let the music play, let everyone see how Yermolai Lopakhin "suffices the cherry orchard with an ax"!

Anya comforts her crying mother: the garden has been sold, but there is a whole life ahead. There will be a new garden, more luxurious than this, "quiet deep joy" awaits them ...

The house is empty. Its inhabitants, having said goodbye to each other, disperse. Lopakhin is going to Kharkov for the winter, Trofimov returns to Moscow, to the university. Lopakhin and Petya exchange barbs. Although Trofimov calls Lopakhin a "predatory beast" necessary "in the sense of metabolism," he still loves in him "a tender, subtle soul." Lopakhin offers Trofimov money for the journey. He refuses: over the "free man", "in the forefront going" to "higher happiness", no one should have power.

Ranevskaya and Gaev even cheered up after the sale of the cherry orchard. Previously, they were worried, suffering, but now they have calmed down. Ranevskaya is going to live in Paris for the time being on the money sent by her aunt. Anya is inspired: a new life begins - she will finish the gymnasium, she will work, read books, "a new wonderful world" will open before her. Simeonov-Pishchik suddenly appears out of breath and, instead of asking for money, on the contrary, distributes debts. It turned out that the British found white clay on his land.

Everyone settled down differently. Gaev says that now he is a bank servant. Lopakhin promises to find a new job for Charlotte, Varya got a job as a housekeeper to the Ragulins, Epikhodov, hired by Lopakhin, remains on the estate, Firs must be sent to the hospital. But nevertheless, Gaev sadly says: "Everyone is leaving us ... we suddenly became unnecessary."

Between Varya and Lopakhin, an explanation must finally occur. For a long time, Varya has been teased by "Madame Lopakhina." Varya likes Yermolai Alekseevich, but she herself cannot propose. Lopakhin, who also speaks well of Vara, agrees to "put an end immediately" to this matter. But when Ranevskaya arranges their meeting, Lopakhin, without deciding, leaves Varia, using the very first pretext.

"It's time to go! On the road!" - with these words, they leave the house, locking all the doors. All that remains is old Firs, whom everyone seemed to take care of, but whom they forgot to send to the hospital. Firs, sighing that Leonid Andreevich went in a coat, and not in a fur coat, lies down to rest and lies motionless. The same sound of a broken string is heard. "There is silence, and only one can hear how far in the garden they knock on wood with an ax."

Author of the retelling: E. V. Novikova

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