Duel

by Anton Chekhov, Constance Garnett (Translator), Aleksandar Hemon (Introduction)

Overview

About This Book

"Hate you!" Laevsky said quietly, breathing heavily. "I've hated you a long time!"

This new translation of the literary masterpiece— which combines a beautiful romance with high suspense— is here presented for the first time as a stand-alone volume.

One of Chekhov’s most important lengthy works, this remarkable story gives a startling twist to his classic, ongoing study of bourgeois romance when he sets it on a collision course with a decaying, Czarist concept of honor. It ends in the ultimate Chekhovian observation: that fate is often ludicrous.

This Is A Melville House “HybridBook”

HybridBooks are a union of print and electronic media: Purchasers of this print edition also receive Illuminations—additional illustrated material that expand the world of Chekhov’s novella through text and illustrations—at no additional charge. 
 
To obtain the Illuminations for The Duel by Anton Chekhov, simply scan the QR code (or follow a url) found at the back of the print book, which leads to a page where you can download a file for your preferred electronic reading device.

"Illuminations" contains writings by Mikhail Lermontov - Ivan Goncharov - Alexander Pushkin - Herbert Spencer - Friedrich Nietzsche - Jack London - Thomas Paine - Francis Bacon - Charles McKay – And a guide to the game of vint.
 
Full-color illustrations include: William Hogarth - James Joseph Tissot - Jan Steen - The Shahnameh and more.
 
Also Included: “Against The Duel: Writing In Protest of Dueling”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307432155
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/08/2019
Series:	Modern Library Classics
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	407 KB

About the Author

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) became one of the world’s leading writers for a series of stories, novellas and plays that are now recognized as masterpieces, including novellas such as My Life and plays such as The Cherry Orchard.

Margarita Shalina is a poet, critic, and essayist, whose work has included the literal translation of Uncle Vanya for playwright Annie Baker's off-Broadway production.

Read an Excerpt

The Duel

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By Anton Chekhov, Margarita Shalina

Melville House

Copyright © 2011 Anton Chekhov
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-935554-50-9

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“Laevsky played, drank wine and thought that the duel was basically foolish and pointless, as it does not resolve the question, but only complicates it further, however such things are unavoidable at times.”—Anton Chekhov, The Duel
(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Duel by Anton Chekhov, Margarita Shalina. Copyright © 2011 Anton Chekhov. Excerpted by permission of Melville House.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Reading Group Guide

1. Like much of Russian literature from the nineteenth century, The Duel deals explicitly with ideas and ideologies and how they function in the “real world” depicted in the novel. Chekhov’s story plots the conflict between two protagonists who espouse antithetical worldviews: Von Koren and his Social Darwinism, in which only the fittest should survive, and Laevsky and his “Hamletism” (“My indecision reminds of Hamlet”), that is, his tendency to blame his own hypocrisy and moral turpitude on the corrupting influences of his time and civilization. Identify and discuss some of the passages in which the two characters discuss their own and, more important, each other’s worldviews. In what ways do these two protagonists embody their self-professed beliefs?

2. What makes The Duel interesting is that neither of the two main characters prevails: Laevsky proves himself wrong, discovering that he is actually capable of modest and useful work, and is reconciled to Nadezhda Fyodorovna. Von Koren’s belief in the irredeemableness of “socially inferior” personalities is disproved, and the scientist willingly apologizes to his former enemy, admitting that he had wrongly judged him. If the worldviews of the two main characters fail, who, then, is right in the story? Whose views prevail? What is the moral of this explicitly moral, fable-like story?

3. Chekhov was notoriously self-effacing. At least on an initial reading his stories can seem, as the critic Ernest J. Simmons put it, “gentle, penetrating, unifying and poetic,” which is an indirect and perhaps over-nice way of saying that there is little of the gutsy philosophizing for which Russian literature is justly famous. Furthering the impression of his indifference, Chekhov said relatively little about his own views in his letters or diary. Probably his most famous pronouncement on the public’s perception of him as a thinker was penned in 1889, about a year before he began working on The Duel:

I should like to be a free artist and nothing more, and I regret that God has not given me the power to be one. I hate lying and violence in all their forms. . . . Pharisaism, stupidity and despotism reign not in merchants’ houses and prisons alone. I see them in science, in literature, in the younger generation. . . . That is why I have no preference either for gendarmes, or for butchers, or for scientists, or for writers, or for the younger generation. I regard trade-marks and labels as a superstition. My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom–freedom from violence and lying, whatever forms they may take. This is the programme I would follow if I were a great artist.*

How does Chekhov’s artistic “programme” comment on the message of The Duel, and vice versa?

4. When The Duel begins, Laevsky is complaining to Somoylenko that he has fallen out of love with his mistress, Nadezhda Fyodorovna. Chekhov paints a penetrating portrait of seemingly irreconcilable mutual isolation between the two, and as the story progresses, and Laevsky discovers Nadezhda Fyodorovna’s unfaithfulness, the grounds for their isolation seem to grow. Yet, by the end of the novel the two have reconciled. What exactly causes Laevsky’s change of heart? How convincing is the reconciliation?

5. The deacon–despite his frivolousness–plays a pivotal and serious role in The Duel, namely, preventing Von Koren from killing Laevsky. While sitting in the bushes and watching the unfolding duel, the deacon mutters “Moles,” a reference to an earlier conversation he had had with Von Koren. Reread the conversation (in chapter XVI) between the two, and discuss why the deacon recalls it while watching the duelists. What sort of person is the deacon? In what ways does he differ from Von Koren and Laevsky? Why is he always giggling?

*The letter is to A. N. Pleshcheyev, dated October 1889. Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends, trans. Constance Garnett. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1920.

Editorial Reviews

[A] bracingly comic story—available in a series of duel-themed novellas reprinted by Melville House."
—New Yorker

“I would save it from a burning house before everything else I've ever read."
—David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas

From the Publisher