Anton Pavlovich Chekhov: 52 books

EFIMOVNA. [To NAZAROVNA] Give the old man a nudge dear! Can’t get any answer out of him. NAZAROVNA. [Lifting the corner of a cloth covering off SAVVA’S face] Are you alive or are you dead, you holy man? SAVVA. Why should I be dead? I’m alive, mother! [Raises himself on his elbow] Cover up my feet,...

In PROSOROV'S house. A sitting-room with pillars; behind is seen a large dining-room. It is midday, the sun is shining brightly outside. In the dining-room the table is being laid for lunch. OLGA, in the regulation blue dress of a teacher at a girl's high school, is walking about correcting exercise...

A drawing-room in POPOVA’S house. POPOVA is in deep mourning and has her eyes fixed on a photograph. LUKA is haranguing her. LUKA. It isn’t right, madam… . You’re just destroying yourself. The maid and the cook have gone off fruit picking, every living being is rejoicing, even the cat understands...

Sergey Kapitonlch Akhineyev, the teacher of calligraphy, gave his daughter Natalya in marriage to the teacher of history and geography, Ivan Petrovich Loshadinikh. The wedding feast went on swimmingly. They sang, played, and danced in the parlor. Waiters, hired for the occasion from the club, bustled...

The scene is laid in one of the rooms of Andronov’s Restaurant A brilliantly illuminated room. A large table, laid for supper. Waiters in dress-jackets are fussing round the table. An orchestra behind the scene is playing the music of the last figure of a quadrille.

Translation of Diadia Vania

The Sea-Gull

Swan Song

Ivanoff

THE evening service was being celebrated on the eve of Palm Sunday in the Old Petrovsky Convent. When they began distributing the palm it was close upon ten o'clock, the candles were burning dimly, the wicks wanted snuffing; it was all in a sort of mist. In the twilight of the church the crowd seemed...

SCENE: A well-furnished reception-room in MRS. POPOV’S home. MRS. POPOV is discovered in deep mourning, sitting upon a sofa, gazing steadfastly at a photograph. LUKA is also present. LUKA: It isn’t right, ma’am. You’re wearing yourself out! The maid and the cook have gone looking for berries;...

The highroad was dry, a lovely April sun was shining warmly, but the snow was still lying in the ditches and in the woods. Winter, dark, long, and spiteful, was hardly over; spring had come all of a sudden. But neither the warmth nor the languid transparent woods, warmed by the breath of spring, nor...

GRACEFULLY swaying in the saddle, a young man wearing the snow-white tunic of an officer rode into the great yard of the vodka distillery belonging to the heirs of M. E. Rothstein. The sun smiled carelessly on the lieutenant’s little stars, on the white trunks of the birch-trees, on the heaps of broken...

The Seagull is generally considered to be the first of his four major plays. It dramatises the romantic and artistic conflicts between four characters: the famous middlebrow story writer Boris Trigorin, the ingenue Nina, the fading actress Irina Arkadina, and her son the symbolist playwright Konstantin...