Quotations from Anton Chekhov

 

QUOTATIONS FROM ANTON CHEKHOV

- Говорят: в конце концов правда восторжествует, но это неправда.

They say that in the end of all ends the truth will reign supreme; but that’s not true.

 

- Всё знают и всё понимают только дураки да шарлатаны.

Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand everything.

 

- Никто не хочет любить в нас обыкновенного человека.

Nobody wants to love in us the ordinary, everyday guy.

 

- Если тебе изменила жена, радуйся, что она изменила тебе, а не отечеству.

If your wife has betrayed you, rejoice: that she betrayed you, and not the fatherland.

 

- Если бы все люди сговорились и стали вдруг искренни, то всё бы у них пошло к чёрту прахом.

If all people came to an agreement to become suddenly sincere, then everything about them would fly off to the devil in fluff and flinders.

 

- Университет развивает все способности, в том числе - глупость.

The university fosters all sorts of capabilities, including stupidity.

 

- Кто не может взять лаской, тот не возьмёт и строгостью.

If you cannot succeed by being gentle, then you’ll never succeed by being stern.

 

- Дело не в пессимизме и не в оптимизме, а в том, что у девяноста девяти из ста нет ума.

It has nothing to do with pessimism or optimism; it’s just that ninety-nine out of a hundred persons have no brains.

 

- Замечательный день сегодня. То ли чай пойти выпить, то ли повеситься.

Today is a wonderful day. Either go drink tea, or go hang yourself.

 

- «Циник» — слово греческое, в переводе на твой язык значащее: свинья, желающая, чтобы весь свет знал, что она свинья.

“Cynic” is a Greek word; translated into your language it means a pig, who wants the whole world to know that he’s a pig.

 

- На боль я отвечаю криком и слезами, на подлость — негодованием, на мерзость — отвращением. По-моему, это, собственно, и называется жизнью.

 I respond to pain with cries and tears, to meanness with indignation, to nastiness with disgust. In my opinion that response, in fact, is what is called life.

 

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CHEKHOV ON LITERATURE

Critics are like gadflies that prevent horses from ploughing. The horse works, with all its muscles drawn tight like the strings of a double-bass, and a fly settles on its flanks, tickling and buzzing. What does the fly buzz about? It hardly knows itself—simply because it is restless and wants to announce, “See here, I too am living on the earth. Look, I can buzz!” . . . For twenty-five years I’ve read what critics write about my works, and I don’t recall a single remark of value, not one word of valuable advice.”

On Gogol

His ‘Carriage’ alone is worth two hundred thousand rubles. Nothing but sheer delight. He is the greatest of writers.

On Tolstoy and Turgenev

When you think of Anna Karenina, all of Turgenev’s heroines with their seductive shoulders fly away to the devil.

Why write that a person gets into a submarine and goes to the North Pole to seek some reconciliation with humanity, while at the same time the woman he loves hurls herself from a belfry with a theatrical shriek? All this is untrue and does not happen in real life. You must write simply—about how Pyotr Semyonovich was married to Maria Ivanovna, that’s all.

Deprecation of Emotional Self-Indulgence

If you want to describe unhappy people in such as way as to move your readers’ compassion, you are only likely to succeed if you remain cold and dispassionate yourself, thus providing a background against which the sorrows of your characters can stand out in greater relief. Weep and suffer with your characters as much as you like, so long as you conceal this from the reader, for fiction can strike home only if it is objective.

You remember how huntsmen wound an elk. The elk looks at them with human eyes, and no one can bring himself to kill her. Not a bad subject but dangerous because it is difficult to avoid sentimentality—you must write it like a report, without pathetic phrases, and begin like this: “On such and such a date huntsmen in the Daraganov Forest wounded a young elk . . .” If you shed a tear you will rob the subject of its austerity and of everything in it worthy of attention.

Advice to Gorky

When you read your proofs strike out wherever you can the qualifications of nouns and verbs. You have so many qualifications that it is hard for the reader to make things out, and he grows tired. It’s easy to understand when I write, “The man sat on the grass,” because it’s clear and does not hinder attention. Conversely, it’s hard to understand and wearisome for the brain if I write, “A tall, narrow-chested man of medium stature, with a ginger-colored beard, sat down on the green grass, which was already trampled by passers-by, sat down noiselessly, timidly, glancing about him fearfully.” That does not settle down straightaway in the brain; fiction must settle down immediately, in a split second.

Frequent comparison of nature with human beings—when the sea breathes, the sky peers, the steppe snuggles up, when nature whispers, speaks, grieves and so on—such comparisons make description a bit monotonous, at times cloying, and at times obscure. Color and expressiveness in descriptions of nature are achieved only by simplicity, by simple phrases, such as, “The sun set, it grew dark, it rained.”