Story by A.P. Chekhov's "Ionych" was published in the "Monthly Literary Supplements" to the magazine "Niva" in the same year, 1898, in which it was written. This work cannot be attributed to a specific topic. It simultaneously talks about the development of man and the degradation of his soul. On the one hand, Ionych becomes a significant person in the city, he is wealthy and has special authority, but, on the other hand, material wealth negatively affects the spiritual development of the hero. Depending on what question the reader asks himself when reading this story, it can be attributed to a social theme (what role did society play in the development of Ionych’s character?), psychology (can a person resist society?) or philosophy (why does the hero choose such life path, does not continue to struggle?).
From the author's notebooks and diaries, literary scholars were able to recreate the writer's original intention, which had both differences and similarities with the published text. What is the author's original thought? What changes did his idea undergo during the process? How radically different is it from the source material? What happened and what happened?
Initially, Chekhov wanted to write a story centered on the Filimonov family. It is not difficult to understand that this is a kind of prototype of the future Turkins. In the final edition, the main features of the members of this family were preserved. What is the difference then? It lies in the fact that at first there was no main character in the story, that is, Ionych himself. What does this change? At first glance, the theme of the story does not change: the spiritual poverty of the Filimonov (Turkin) family. But the appearance of Startsev in the work entails a change in the main idea of the work. If initially we were talking about the mental poverty of one particular family, then in the final version the Turkins are shown to be the best in the city, which makes you think about what the rest of the residents are like, and how the society of these people changed the life of the main character.
Meaning of the name
When you start reading Chekhov's story, you assume that the focus of his attention will be on the Turkin family: a detailed description of each of its members is given with their character and habits. Only later does the reader realize that the title is connected with the main character. Ionych is Dmitry’s patronymic. In its rough sound, the author conveys the essence of the metamorphosis that the doctor underwent. People use their patronymics to familiarly address those they know, but they don’t really respect them. Usually they talk about a person like this behind his back, wanting to emphasize their short acquaintance with him or even belittle him. All the inhabitants of the city intuitively understood that the promising young man had become one of them, a tradesman and everyman who had become isolated in the routine of days, had become flabby and had lost his purpose. If earlier he was respected, then by the end he became an ordinary resident of a county town, gray and faceless.
Ionych is Dmitry Ionovich Startsev. The chosen title focuses on the hero's nickname, which is given to him at the end of the story. This is precisely the meaning of the work. Having chosen this title for the story, Chekhov poses the question to the reader: “How did the zemstvo doctor Startsev turn into Ionych?” Only that reader can be said to have understood the essence of the work and was able to find the answer to this question in the text.
Genre, composition, direction
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is known as the author of plays and short prose. His work “Ionych” is a realistic story. A striking feature of this direction and the main theme of “Ionych” are the social problems raised by the author. Also, belonging to realism is evidenced by an objective description and the presence of typical characters.
In a work, everything always follows one goal - the embodiment of the author’s thoughts. The composition follows this. This story by Chekhov consists of five chapters. Thus, the third chapter is the golden ratio. It turns out to be a turning point for the main character. In it, Startsev proposes to Kitty and is rejected. From this moment the hero's spiritual fall begins.
The essence
This is a story about a zemstvo doctor who walked, practiced and believed in love, but in a few years he turned into an “idol”, owning his own three, a plump man in the street, whose favorite pastimes were games and counting money.
The author talks about how, in the absence of the possibility of development and the desire for self-improvement, a person quickly gets used to a new, simpler pace of life - degradation. Having started with ambitious plans and good intentions, the hero lowers the bar and simplifies life, becoming an ordinary tradesman with a banal set of values: gambling, personal enrichment, a good reputation. Chekhov also reflects on the reasons for this transformation. Kotik had a strong influence on Startsev. Perhaps, if she had not treated her lover Dmitry Startsev so cruelly, if she had not mocked his love, then everything would have turned out differently. But these are just guesses and assumptions...
The main characters and their characteristics
- Turkins- “the most educated family.” They live on the main street of the provincial town of S.. All family members have static characters. Turkin Ivan Petrovich loves to joke and tell jokes. He speaks his own language to entertain guests. His wife, Vera Iosifovna, writes romance novels and reads them to guests in the evenings. Turkin's daughter, Ekaterina Ivanovna, or Kotik, as her family affectionately calls her, plays the piano. She even wanted to enter the conservatory, but nothing worked out. In the Turkins’ house there is also a footman, Pava, who, to lift the mood of the guests, theatrically cries out: “Die, unfortunate one!”
- Dmitry Ionovich Startsev- a talented doctor who went to work in city C after studying. This is an educated, sensitive and shy young man who tends to idealize everything. He does not live in the city itself, but several miles away from it. He falls in love with Katerina, proposes, but is refused. Gradually he changes, becoming irritable, callous and indifferent to everything. When describing this hero, an important feature is the degradation of his character throughout the work. She is shown through several constant details: the method of transportation (on foot, a pair, and then a trio of horses with bells), obesity, attitude towards society and love of money. The appearance of the hero is a clear reflection of the impoverishment of his soul.
Topics and issues
- Vulgarity in “Ionych”- one of the main topics. Startsev, getting used to life in the city, only silently played, drank, ate and counted money at home; he became far from his former ideals. His life goals dropped to daily routine worries and the desire to accumulate capital. The hero’s internal degradation is emphasized by his external changes: “Startsev has gained even more weight, has become obese, is breathing heavily and is already walking with his head thrown back.”
- City life. The description of life and morals in the city, and, in particular, the Turkin family, is associated with raising the topic of people’s mental poverty. How are the townspeople presented to us? How do they while away their leisure time? The main character himself speaks about this. Ionych talks about his pastime to Ekaterina Ivanovna. From his words about a typical day, we can clearly imagine how the residents spent their free time from work. Everything is monotonous, “life passes dullly, without impressions, without thoughts”: a club, playing cards, alcohol.
- Love. One can only speculate about what would have happened if Kotik agreed to marry Startsev. This did not happen, and the hero himself was happy about it at his last meeting with Ekaterina Ivanovna. Based on this, we can say that everything in his soul died away, and even such a strong feeling as love could not awaken him to life. But if you look at it differently, then Ekaterina Ivanovna cannot be called an unusual girl capable of awakening a great feeling. At the end of the story, Ionych, already taught by life, understands this.
Idea
Despite the presence of several themes in the story, the focus is on one issue - the relationship between man and society. No one will argue that by the end of the novel Startsev becomes as colorless a commoner as any citizen of the city. When comparing the portrait of the hero presented at the beginning of the book with Startsev’s lifestyle and appearance at the end, the impoverishment of his soul and the disappearance of high aspirations become obvious. If earlier his plans included a calling, expressed in an interest in medicine, then by the end it became clear that Dmitry had not fulfilled his destiny. According to Chekhov, it is passionate, conscious work that purifies and elevates us, pulling people out of the vanity and vulgarity of the world of things, everyday life and routine. Losing his love for his life’s work, being lazy and mingling with a crowd of worthless onlookers, Startsev betrays his dream and loses himself.
The author emphasizes the vulgarity of the hero with the help of details. This impression is also strengthened by the presence of Startsev’s double – the coachman Panteleimon. Complementing the characteristics and descriptions of Dmitry Ionych and the changes in his lifestyle, this helps to create a complete picture in the reader’s imagination.
Criticism
Your opinion about A.P.’s story Chekhov's “Ionych” was expressed by many literary scholars, writers and critics. It is quite difficult to generalize, since it is not unambiguous. Dmitry Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky, a literary critic and linguist who was one of the first to write his review, in “Etudes on Chekhov’s Work” noted the unusual character of the hero: he does not oppose society, but succumbs to its influence.
Writers such as Kireev and Solzhenitsyn were more impressed by the episode of the characters' explanation in the cemetery, rather than by the main storyline. In connection with this scene, in their opinion, the story raises the theme of a person’s attitude towards death.
There are also negative reviews of this work, which emphasize the simplicity of the images of the heroes, their lack of openness and detail. There are no less positive reviews about this story. The words of R.I. Sementkovsky reflect their general thought:
Interesting? Save it on your wall!Read the last works of Mr. Chekhov, and you will be horrified by the picture of the modern generation that he painted with his characteristic skill.
4. GRAIN AND PLANT
We can say that the rough entry for “Rothschild’s Violin” is the seed of a future story. The sketch (“The undertaker’s wife is dying...”) already anticipates the motifs that will be included in the final text: the death of Jacob’s wife, her “measurement” taken during her lifetime, a record of expenses for the coffin, a memory of a willow tree, a child with blond hair. hair.
However, in the sketch, as we have seen, everything is centered around the death of the undertaker's wife; and in the story the center of gravity shifts to the undertaker’s thoughts about a life that was “wasted in vain, not for a sniff of tobacco.”
Chekhov's notebooks are a garden where he slowly grows his plans, his perennial plants... Gardener of plans - sounds poetic. But - not entirely accurate.
From a grain of wheat comes wheat. From the very beginning, grain is doomed to recreate itself, its variety, its characteristics. The plant, in today's language, is programmed in the grain.
That is why it is not entirely correct to call a rough note the grain of a story - there is a different relationship between the draft and the final text. Here something completely different can grow from a grain of wheat.
If all the properties of the creative grain were prepared, what then would be the process of imaginative thinking? Is it simply that the writer reveals something hidden that was inherent from the very beginning? And thinking in images only means realizing what is given?
Here is one of the few articles about notebooks.
Author - I. Bityugova. Her article ( I. Bityugova. Notebooks are a creative laboratory. On Sat. "Great artist". Rostov-on-Don, Rostov prince. publishing house, 1960.) - a serious work, although with some inaccuracies in the explanation of the draft notes. We are interested in one thing here: how the relationship between the idea and the work is interpreted.
I. Bityugova gives a sketch of the story “Ionych”. “The Filimonovs are a talented family, that’s what they say all over the city. He, an official, plays on stage, sings, shows tricks, jokes (“Hello, please”), she writes liberal stories, imitates - “I’m in love with you... oh, my husband will see!” - she says this to everyone in front of her husband. Boy in the front: die, unfortunate thing! For the first time, in fact, all this in a boring gray city seemed funny and talented. The second time too. After 3 years I went for the 3rd time, the boy already had a mustache, and again: “I’m in love with you... oh, my husband will see!”, again the same imitation: “die, unfortunate one,” and when I left from the Filimonovs, it seemed to me that there were no more boring and untalented people in the world” (I, 85, 7).
We have before us the same type of entry as for the story “Rothschild’s Violin.” Not a detail note, a detail, but a record of the plot, an attempt to capture the work from beginning to end. At first glance, all the main motives of “Ionych” are already outlined here. I. Bityugova says something like this:
“The story has already been written almost entirely in outline; all that remains is to supplement it with external events.
The orderliness of the work on creating a work, an example of which is the story “Ionych,” testifies to the existence of a fully formed plan before the start of work” (p. 215).
Further, the author writes that in other cases the plan changed, without noticing that the work on the story “Ionych” was not at all so “harmonious”. In general, the expression “harmonious work on creating a work” is not very successful. In fact, this work turns out to be much more contradictory, unpredictable, fraught with surprises. And it consists not only in the fact that the artist supplements the outline with external events.
The work of the writer's thought, the movement of the image, occurs both in the form of additions and shifts, rethinking, the sublation of one image by another, sometimes by an anti-image. In the definition of “harmonious work” the resistance of the material is smoothed out.
The point is that not only is a full text formed from a working note, but “education” itself is carried out in the form of transforming what was previously planned ( In some writers' testimonies about their work, this point seems to be omitted. “...At the starting point,” says playwright V. Rozov, “like in a grain, everything lies, the entire development of the play. Just as a small seed contains a sprout, a flower, and a fruit, so the whole play lies at the starting point. And no matter how small the point is, only known to you, the entire development of your play will grow from it" (V. Rozov. The process of creation (the article is a recording of the author's conversations). "Literature Issues", 1968, No. 8, p. 92 ). It is difficult, of course, to enter into an argument with a writer about his own work. Indeed, the work is hidden in the original “grain” - the whole point, however, is how it comes out from there, it is deduced. This process itself is sometimes depicted more directly and unilinearly than it is in reality.).
The writer strives with a summary note to embrace the entire work in its anticipated integrity. But the initial outline does not cover everything. A rough sketch is both a “grain” and only a starting point; it cannot be immediately and ultimately grasping. The final text not only embodies and implements what was planned, but also - in the process of implementation - often challenges the preparation.
Let’s read the sketch “Filimonov’s talented family...” again. Let’s not run our eyes, don’t slide “diagonally”, but read carefully, line by line - Chekhov’s text, his notebooks in particular, are generally not suitable for quick reading. Brevity, the sister of talent, is designed for increased attention and sensitivity of the reader. In essence, brevity is trust. Chekhov teaches not only how to write in a new way, but also how to read.
The Filimonovs are a family that seemed funny and interesting against the backdrop of the “boring gray city.” After the third visit, the hero already thinks that there are no more boring and untalented people in the world.
The Filimonovs (in the story - the Turkins) highlight the boredom of the city with their playful banality. They are the symbol and personification of this gray boredom. This is the main idea of the sketch.
But - not a story.
Let's see how the outlines of a work are outlined in notebooks.
Here is one of the first entries:
“Boy footman: die unhappy!” (I, 83, 4). This character will then be included in the summary note (I, 85, 7),
“Hello, please.
What complete Roman law do you have” (I, 84, 1).
This is from the repertoire of Filimonov the owner (in the story - Ivan Petrovich Turkin).
And, finally, that synopsis note in which “almost the entire” story is captured (“it remains to be supplemented with external events”).
But in reality, all the above notes are connected only with one side of the story - they do not contain the image of Ionych himself. A hero unknown to us tells about the Filimonovs. He has little in common with Ionych, except perhaps his indignation at the Filimonovs.
Another group of notes is associated with the image of Ionych - the story appears at the intersection of these two lines. In 1897, Chekhov wrote in his notebook: “A serious, baggy doctor fell in love with a girl who dances very well, and in order to please her, he began to learn the mazurka” (I, 72, 3).
This note did not come close to the image of Ionych. L. M. Dolotova, commenting on the story for the new Complete Works and Letters of Chekhov in 30 volumes, first drew attention to the fact that in the “baggy doctor” some features of Doctor Dmitry Ionych Startsev are foreseen. Let us recall that in Chapter III, Ionych comes to the Turkins to ask for Ekaterina Ivanovna’s hand in marriage. He appears at the wrong time - “She was going to the club for a dance party” (IX, 294). Then he also goes to the club - “Dressed in someone else’s tailcoat and a stiff white tie, which kept bristling and wanted to slide off the collar...”.
In the note, the whole contradiction, the paradox of the situation is that the “serious baggy” doctor, having fallen in love, “began to learn the mazurka.” In the story this contradiction deepens.
The second note related to Ionych: “The credit papers smelled of blubber” (I, 76, 14) ( Wed. also with a note about credit papers, an episode in “The Steppe”: Yegorushka looks at a pile of money - “He looked at it indifferently and felt only the disgusting smell of rotten apples and kerosene coming from the pile” (VII, 42).). This detail - the money earned by the doctor - has a long history.
In works about Chekhov it has been noted more than once that the image of Ionych is to a certain extent anticipated by the image of Toporkov from the story “Belated Flowers” (1882). Toporkov looks at the pieces of paper lying on his table, remembers his youth, full of labor and hardship: “Did he really walk that labor road only for five-ruble notes and ladies?” (I, 468). These five-ruble notes become a symbol of his life, devoid of a great goal. At the end of the story, the hero is resurrected in soul for a moment, but then returns to his former life: “he treats ladies and saves five-ruble notes” (I, 469).
The entry about credit papers goes back to a story separated from the time of work on Ionych by about 15 years. We have already seen the longevity of Chekhov's creative memory.
This detail (“The credit papers smelled of blubber”) is not just included in the text of the story - it unfolds into a picture description:
“He had another pastime, which he got involved in imperceptibly, little by little, in the evenings, taking out of his pockets pieces of paper obtained by practice, and, it happened, pieces of paper - yellow and green, which smelled of perfume, and vinegar, and incense , and blubber, - seventy rubles worth were stuffed into all pockets” (IX, 298).
At the decisive moment of his conversation with Ekaterina Ivanovna - four years after her refusal, when suddenly something like love began to warm up in his soul again - at that moment “Startsev remembered the pieces of paper that he took out of his pockets in the evenings with such pleasure, and the light in my soul went out” (IX, 301).
The detail - “the credit papers smelled of blubber” not only goes back to the past, to “Belated Flowers”, but also turns out to be an important, supporting detail in the development of the plot of the story “Ionych”, in the biography of the soul of the main character.
And the last entry for the story, made in 1898, was obviously not long before Chekhov began writing it:
Manuscript of the story "Ionych"
“Ionych. Obese. In the evenings he has dinner at the club at a large table, and when the topic of the Turkins comes up, he asks: “Which Turkins are you talking about?” About those whose daughter plays the piano.
He practices very much in the city, but does not give up the zemstvo either: greed has overcome” (III, 31, 3).
Before us are two rows of entries: one about the Filimonovs, the other about Ionych.
The entries in the first row go in one direction, they are stable and unchanging: “Die, unfortunate one!”, “What complete Roman law do you have.”
The records of the second are modified: first the “baggy doctor”, then the credit papers, and finally, “greed overcame” completely.
The creative history of the story “Ionych” is not the addition of external events to the summary, but a significant shift in emphasis, a shift in the center of gravity: the main thing in the story is not the Filimonov-Turkins, but Ionych himself ( The draft notes and the final text of the story are compared by V.V. Golubkov in his book “The Mastery of A.P. Chekhov.” M., Uchpedgiz, pp. 105-107.).
The internal logic of the sketch in the notebook is approximately this: what kind of boring gray city is this if the intricate vulgar Filimonovs are the most talented family.
In the story there is a different course of development of figurative thought and a different relationship between the hero and the environment. The plot of “Ionych” is the story of his gradual spiritual dullness and hardening. And here’s what’s important: the more Ionych sinks, the more decisively he scolds the city, the inhabitants, and the environment.
Four years passed after his unsuccessful matchmaking - “He gained weight, grew fat and was reluctant to walk, as he suffered from shortness of breath” (IX, 297). And along with this “disapproval,” his anger against the city’s residents intensifies:
“Startsev visited different houses and met many people, but did not get close to anyone. The inhabitants irritated him with their conversations, views on life, and even their appearance. Experience taught him little by little that while you play cards with an ordinary person or have a snack with him, then he is a peaceful, good-natured and not even stupid person, but as soon as you talk to him about something inedible, for example, about politics or science, how he gets into a dead end or develops such a philosophy, stupid and evil, that all that remains is to wave his hand and move away” (IX, 297-298).
Ionych waved his hand at the people around him, at everything except the credit papers.
D. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky, one of the most thoughtful researchers of Chekhov of the pre-revolutionary era, wrote that the meaning of the story “Ionych” is not at all reduced to the notorious “environment is stuck”: “in Chekhov see the matter is presented, so to speak, inverted: the “hero” is completely does not come out to fight the environment, the very thought of fighting does not even occur to him; but he ends up with the fact that all his relations to society are an involuntary, unintentional expression of some semblance of a “struggle” with it, or better, not a struggle, but only a protest, and, moreover, one that in no way can be subsumed under the stereotyped the idea of a “fresh” person with lofty feelings and noble aspirations, speaking out against the vulgarity and rudeness of the morals of the “environment” (D. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky. Our writers ( Literary essays and characteristics). I, A.P. Chekhov, “Magazine for everyone”, 1899, No. 3, p. 260.).
“On the one hand, we sympathize with Startsev and are ready to admit that he has reason to despise the inhabitants of the city of S. But on the other hand, we come to the conclusion that probably some (and perhaps many) of those whom he despises , may be in other respects much better than him, and that, strictly speaking, he does not have the moral right to treat people with undisguised contempt just because they are “average” and routine people, that nature has not endowed them with the kind of mind that him" ( Ibid., p. 267.).
Chekhov wrote about “that essence that decides the fate of every story” (XV, 265). The essence of “Ionych” is the relationship between the hero and the environment, the doctor and the Filimonov-Turkin family, which personifies the entire city.
We know the stories of Chekhov's contemporaries, where the spiritual and mental dullness and hardening of the hero are associated with capitulation to the swamp of philistinism. Such a scheme is not applicable to the story “Ionych”. The more angry and embittered the doctor becomes with his patients, interlocutors, and card partners, the more he moves away - and not only from the environment, but also from himself, his former self, capable of loving, feeling, living.
In the excerpt from the notebook (“Filimonov’s talented family”), the last words: “When I left the Filimonovs, it seemed to me that there were no more boring and untalented people in the world” - these words of the character-narrator are the result that clarifies the essence of the Filimonov family.
In the story, Ionych seems to think and feel the same thing:
“All this irritated Startsev. Sitting in the carriage and looking at the dark house and garden that had once been so sweet and dear to him, he remembered everything at once - the novels of Vera Iosifovna, and the noisy play of Kotik, and the wit of Ivan Petrovich, and the tragic pose of Pava, and thought, that if the most talented people in the whole city are so mediocre, then what kind of city should it be” (IX, 301-302).
However, the paradox of the story is that the merciless sentence that Ionych mentally pronounces to the Turkins and, through them, to the entire city, also turns into a sentence to himself. And he breaks up not only with Katerina Ivanovna and Kotik, but with love, with the opportunity to love. Starting from the Turkins, he sinks much lower than the Turkins. And in essence, he loses any right to judge them.
Let's compare the final words about Ionych and the Turkins.
“A few more years have passed. Startsev has gained even more weight, has become obese, is breathing heavily and is already walking with his head thrown back. When he, plump, red, rides on a troika with bells, and Panteleimon, also plump and red, with a fleshy nape, sits on the box, stretching forward straight, like wooden, arms, and shouts to those he meets, “Keep it right!” impressive, and it seems that it is not a man who is riding, but a pagan god” (IX, 302).
“Not a person” - this is the result of Ionych. The resemblance to Panteleimon, as if we were talking about some special bred breed, and the seemingly casually mentioned “straight, like wooden arms”, and described further, a few paragraphs later, Ionych’s strange voice, thin and sharp (his throat was swollen with fat ), - everything sums it up: Ionych has ceased to be a man. By the end of the story, he exhausts himself. And his description ends with the words: “That’s all that can be said about him” (IX, 303).
And here is the last image of the story, dedicated to the Turkin family.
“And the Turkins? Ivan Petrovich has not aged, has not changed at all, and still makes jokes and tells jokes; Vera Iosifovna still reads her novels willingly, with heartfelt simplicity. And Kitty plays the piano every day, for four hours. She has noticeably aged, swears, and every autumn she leaves with her mother for the Crimea. Seeing them off at the station, Ivan Petrovich, when the train starts moving, wipes away his tears and shouts:
Goodbye please!
And waves his handkerchief” (IX, 303).
Of course, the words about reading Vera Iosifovna’s novels: “with heartfelt simplicity” are restrainedly ironic, and the phrase: “still sharpens everything” also carries not simple information, but also a hidden mocking intonation. The Turkins have not changed, they are still the same pretentious and banal people; but - people. But Ionych is not a person.
Katerina Ivanovna “praises” - that’s what you can say about a person. And Ionych’s “throat is swollen with fat” - it’s more natural to say about a capon that is fattened for slaughter.
The final words of the story are especially rich in intonation - about Ivan Petrovich, who, parting at the station, “wipes away his tears and shouts:
This is not just a reminder - for the last time - of Turkin's vulgar playfulness, his hackneyed humor. He cries, saying goodbye to his family, he loves them, albeit in his own way, but he is capable of love and therefore is immeasurably higher than Ionych.
This is why D. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky is right when he says that the inhabitants of the city in other respects may be better than the protagonist of the story; and I. Bityugova is wrong, who did not see the huge distance between the draft of the story and the final text.
Let's return again to one of the original notes:
“Hello, please.
What complete Roman law do you have” (I, 84, 1) - and is comparable to the last words of the story:
“... wipes away his tears and shouts:
Goodbye please! And waves his handkerchief.”
What was intended as a sign of vulgar-playful wit, humor for hire, was filled with new meaning, emotionally complicated and enriched.
The plant bore fruits that were not indicated in the grain.
Chekhov said:
“Living, truthful images create thought, but thought does not create an image” ( She cites these words, spoken in a conversation with L. Avilova, in the memoirs of “A. P. Chekhov in my life." Very controversial in their general concept, these memoirs provide a lot of interesting material in particulars. (A.P. Chekhov in the memoirs of his contemporaries. M., GIHL, 1960, p. 203).).
The creative history of a work is not a direct development of thought, but a living and conflictual development. It often occurs in the form of “rethinking the concept” and “transforming the image.”
Notebooks help to imagine the path from a workpiece to a work, full of unexpected turns, shifts, departures from a previously planned creative route.
Four years have passed. Startsev already had a lot of practice in the city. Every morning he hurriedly received patients in his home in Dyalizh, then left to visit the city’s patients, leaving not in a pair, but in a troika with bells, and returning home late at night. He gained weight, grew fat and was reluctant to walk, as he suffered from shortness of breath. And Panteleimon also gained weight, and the more he grew in width, the sadder he sighed and complained about his bitter fate: the ride had overcome him!
Startsev visited different houses and met many people, but did not get close to anyone. The inhabitants irritated him with their conversations, views on life, and even their appearance. Experience taught him little by little that while you play cards with an ordinary person or have a snack with him, then he is a peaceful, good-natured and not even stupid person, but as soon as you talk to him about something inedible, for example, about politics or science, how he gets into a dead end or develops such a philosophy, stupid and evil, that all he can do is wave his hand and walk away. When Startsev tried to talk even with a liberal man in the street, for example, that humanity, thank God, is moving forward and that over time it will do without passports and without the death penalty, the man in the street looked at him sideways and incredulously and asked: “So, Then anyone can stab anyone on the street?” And when Startsev in society, over dinner or tea, spoke about the need to work, that one cannot live without work, then everyone took this as a reproach and began to get angry and argue annoyingly. Despite all this, the townsfolk did nothing, absolutely nothing, and were not interested in anything, and it was impossible to figure out what to talk about with them.
And Startsev avoided conversations, but only had a snack and played vint, and when he found a family holiday in some house and he was invited to eat, he sat down and ate in silence, looking at his plate; and everything that was said at that time was uninteresting, unfair, stupid, he felt irritated, worried, but remained silent, and because he was always sternly silent and looked at his plate, he was nicknamed in the city “the inflated Pole,” although he I've never been Pole.
He avoided such entertainment as theater and concerts, but he played vint every evening, for three hours, with pleasure. He had another pastime, which he got involved in unnoticed, little by little, in the evenings, taking out of his pockets pieces of paper obtained by practice, and, it happened, pieces of paper - yellow and green, which smelled of perfume, and vinegar, and incense, and blubber—seventy rubles worth were stuffed into all the pockets; and when several hundred were collected, he took them to the Mutual Credit Society and deposited them into a current account.
In all four years after Ekaterina Ivanovna’s departure, he visited the Turkins only twice, at the invitation of Vera Iosifovna, who was still being treated for migraines. Every summer Ekaterina Ivanovna came to visit her parents, but he never saw her; somehow it didn't happen.
But now four years have passed. One quiet, warm morning a letter was brought to the hospital. Vera Iosifovna wrote to Dmitry Ionych that she missed him very much, and asked him to definitely come to her and ease her suffering, and by the way, today is her birthday. At the bottom there was a note: “I also join my mother’s request. TO."
Startsev thought and went to the Turkins in the evening.
Oh, hello please! - Ivan Petrovich met him, smiling with only his eyes. -Bonjourte.
Vera Iosifovna, already very old, with white hair, shook Startsev’s hand, sighed in a mannered manner and said:
You, doctor, don’t want to look after me, you never visit us, I’m already too old for you. But a young woman has arrived, perhaps she will be happier.
And Kotik? She lost weight, became pale, became more beautiful and slimmer; but it was Ekaterina Ivanovna, and not Kotik; there was no longer the former freshness and expression of childish naivety. There was something new in both her gaze and manners - timid and guilty, as if here, in the Turkins’ house, she no longer felt at home.
Long time no see! - she said, giving Startsev her hand, and it was clear that her heart was beating anxiously; and looking intently, curiously into his face, she continued: “How plump you have become!” You are tanned, matured, but in general you have changed little.
And now he liked her, liked her very much, but something was already missing from her, or something was superfluous - he himself could not say what exactly, but something was already preventing him from feeling as before. He didn’t like her paleness, her new expression, her weak smile, her voice, and a little later he didn’t like the dress, the chair in which she was sitting, he didn’t like something about the past when he almost married her. He remembered his love, the dreams and hopes that worried him four years ago, and he felt embarrassed.
We drank tea with sweet pie. Then Vera Iosifovna read a novel aloud, read about something that never happens in life, and Startsev listened, looked at her gray, beautiful head and waited for her to finish.
“The mediocre person,” he thought, “is not the one who does not know how to write stories, but the one who writes them and does not know how to hide it.”
Not bad,” said Ivan Petrovich. Then Ekaterina Ivanovna played the piano noisily and for a long time, and when she finished, they thanked her for a long time and admired her.
“It’s good that I didn’t marry her,” Startsev thought.
She looked at him and, apparently, expected him to invite her to go to the garden, but he was silent.
Let’s talk,” she said, approaching him. “How do you live?” What do you have? How? “I’ve been thinking about you all these days,” she continued nervously, “I wanted to send you a letter, I wanted to go to you in Dyalizh myself, and I had already decided to go, but then I changed my mind - God knows how you feel about me now.” I was so excited to see you today. For God's sake, let's go to the garden. They went into the garden and sat there on a bench under an old maple tree, just like four years ago. It was dark.
How are you doing? - asked Ekaterina Ivanovna.
It’s okay, we live little by little,” Startsev answered.
And I couldn't think of anything else. We were silent.
“I’m worried,” said Ekaterina Ivanovna and covered her face with her hands, “but don’t pay attention. I feel so good at home, I’m so glad to see everyone and I can’t get used to it. So many memories! It seemed to me that we would talk to you incessantly until the morning.
Now he saw her face close up, her sparkling eyes, and here, in the darkness, she seemed younger than in the room, and it was even as if her former childish expression had returned to her. And in fact, she looked at him with naive curiosity, as if she wanted to take a closer look and understand the man who once loved her so ardently, with such tenderness and so unhappily; her eyes thanked him for this love. And he remembered everything that happened, all the smallest details, how he wandered through the cemetery, how later in the morning, tired, he returned to his home, and he suddenly felt sad and sorry for the past. A fire lit up in my soul.
Do you remember how I accompanied you to the club for the evening? - he said. -It was raining then, it was dark...
The fire kept flaring up in my soul, and I already wanted to talk, complain about life...
Eh! - he said with a sigh. - You’re asking how I’m doing. How are we doing here? No way. We get old, we get fatter, we get worse. Day and night - a day away, life passes dimly, without impressions, without thoughts... During the day there is profit, and in the evening there is a club, a society of gamblers, alcoholics, wheezing people, whom I cannot stand. What's good?
But you have a job, a noble goal in life. You loved talking about your hospital. I was kind of strange then, I imagined myself to be a great pianist. Now all the young ladies play the piano, and I also played like everyone else, and there was nothing special about me; I am as much a pianist as my mother is a writer. And of course, I didn’t understand you then, but then, in Moscow, I often thought about you. I only thought about you. What a joy it is to be a zemstvo doctor, to help the suffering, to serve the people. What happiness! - Ekaterina Ivanovna repeated with enthusiasm. - When I thought about you in Moscow, you seemed to me so ideal, sublime...
Startsev remembered the pieces of paper that he took out of his pockets with such pleasure in the evenings, and the light in his soul went out.
He stood up to walk towards the house. She took his arm.
“You are the best person I have ever known in my life,” she continued. - We will see each other and talk, won’t we? Promise me. I’m not a pianist, I’m no longer mistaken about myself and I won’t play or talk about music in front of you.
When they entered the house and Startsev saw her face in the evening light and her sad, grateful, searching eyes turned to him, he felt uneasy and thought again:
“It’s good that I didn’t get married then.”
He began to say goodbye.
“You have no Roman right to leave without dinner,” said Ivan Petrovich, seeing him off. “This is very perpendicular on your part.” “Come on, picture it!” he said, turning to Pava in the hall.
Pava, no longer a boy, but a young man with a mustache, struck a pose, raised his hand and said in a tragic voice:
Die, unfortunate one!
All this irritated Startsev. Sitting in the carriage and looking at the dark house and garden that had once been so sweet and dear to him, he remembered everything at once - the novels of Vera Iosifovna, and the noisy play of Kotik, and the wit of Ivan Petrovich, and the tragic pose of Pava, and thought, that if the most talented people in the whole city are so untalented, then what must the city be like?
Three days later, Pava brought a letter from Ekaterina Ivanovna.
“You are not coming to us. Why? - she wrote. -I'm afraid that you have changed towards us; I'm afraid and I'm scared just thinking about it. Reassure me, come and tell me that everything is fine.
I need to talk to you. Your E.T.”
He read this letter, thought and said to Pava:
Tell me, my dear, that I can’t go today, I’m very busy. I’ll come, say so, in three days. But three days passed, a week passed, and he still did not go. Once, driving past the Turkins’ house, he remembered that he should stop by at least for a minute, but he thought about it and... didn’t stop by.
And he never visited the Turkins again.
Several more years passed. Startsev has gained even more weight, has become obese, is breathing heavily and is already walking with his head thrown back.
When he, plump, red, rides on a troika with bells, and Panteleimon, also plump and red, with a fleshy nape, sits on the box, stretching forward his straight, like wooden arms, and shouts to those he meets, “Keep it up!”, then the picture is impressive, and it seems that it is not a man who is riding, but a pagan god. He has a huge practice in the city; ceremony goes into this house and, passing through all the rooms, not paying attention to the undressed women and children who look at him with amazement and fear, pokes all the doors with a stick and says:
Is this an office? Is this a bedroom? What's going on here?
And at the same time he breathes heavily and wipes sweat from his forehead.
He has a lot of trouble, but still he does not give up his zemstvo position; greed has overcome, I want to keep up both here and there. In Dyalizh and in the city they call him simply Ionych. - “Where is Ionych going?” or: “Should I invite Ionych to the consultation?”
Probably because his throat was swollen with fat, his voice changed, becoming thin and harsh. His character also changed: he became heavy and irritable. When receiving patients, he usually gets angry, impatiently knocks his stick on the floor and shouts in his unpleasant voice:
Please answer only questions! Don't talk!
He's lonely. His life is boring, nothing interests him.
During the entire time he lived in Dyalizh, love for Kotik was his only joy and, probably, his last. In the evenings he plays vint at the club and then sits alone at a large table and has dinner. The footman Ivan, the oldest and most respectable, serves him, they serve him Lafite No. 17, and everyone - the elders of the club, the cook, and the footman - knows what he likes and what he doesn’t like, they try their best to please him, otherwise, what the heck, he’ll suddenly get angry and start banging his stick on the floor.
While dining, he occasionally turns around and intervenes in some conversation:
What are you talking about? A? Whom?
And when, it happens, at some table next door the conversation comes up about the Turkins, he asks:
Which Turkins are you talking about? Is this about the ones where the daughter plays the piano?
That's all that can be said about him.
And the Turkins? Ivan Petrovich has not aged, has not changed at all, and still makes jokes and tells jokes; Vera Iosifovna still reads her novels to guests willingly, with heartfelt simplicity. And Kitty plays the piano every day, for four hours. She has noticeably aged, swears, and every autumn she leaves with her mother for the Crimea. Seeing them off at the station, Ivan Petrovich, when the train starts moving, wipes away his tears and shouts:
Goodbye please!
I
When in the provincial town of S., visitors complained about the boredom and monotony of life, the local residents, as if making excuses, said that, on the contrary, S. is very good, that S. has a library, a theater, a club, there are balls, that, finally, there are smart, interesting, pleasant families with whom you can make acquaintances. And they pointed to the Turkin family as the most educated and talented.
This family lived on the main street, near the governor, in their own house. Turkin himself, Ivan Petrovich, a plump, handsome brunette with sideburns, staged amateur performances for charitable purposes, himself played old generals and at the same time coughed very funny. He knew a lot of jokes, charades, sayings, he loved to joke and joke, and he always had such an expression that it was impossible to understand whether he was joking or speaking seriously. His wife, Vera Iosifovna, a thin, pretty lady in a pince-nez, wrote stories and novels and willingly read them aloud to her guests. The daughter, Ekaterina Ivanovna, a young girl, played the piano. In a word, each member of the family had some kind of talent. The Turkins received guests cordially and showed them their talents cheerfully, with heartfelt simplicity. Their large stone house was spacious and cool in summer, half of the windows looked out onto an old shady garden, where nightingales sang in the spring; when guests were sitting in the house, there was a clatter of knives in the kitchen, there was a smell of fried onions in the yard - and this every time foreshadowed a rich and tasty dinner.
And Doctor Startsev, Dmitry Ionych, when he had just been appointed zemstvo doctor and settled in Dyalizh, nine miles from S., was also told that he, as an intelligent person, needed to get to know the Turkins. One winter he was introduced to Ivan Petrovich on the street; we talked about the weather, about the theater, about cholera, and an invitation followed. In the spring, on a holiday - it was the Ascension - after receiving the sick, Startsev went to the city to have a little fun and, by the way, buy himself something. He walked slowly (he didn’t have his own horses yet), and chanted all the time:
When I had not yet drunk tears from the cup of existence...
In the city he had lunch, walked in the garden, then somehow Ivan Petrovich’s invitation came to his mind, and he decided to go to the Turkins, to see what kind of people they were.
“Hello, please,” said Ivan Petrovich, meeting him on the porch. - I am very, very glad to see such a pleasant guest. Come on, I'll introduce you to my missus. “I tell him, Verochka,” he continued, introducing the doctor to his wife, “I tell him that he has no Roman right to sit in his hospital, he must give his leisure time to society. Isn't it true, darling?
“Sit here,” Vera Iosifovna said, seating the guest next to her. - You can look after me. My husband is jealous, this is Othello, but we will try to behave in such a way that he will not notice anything.
Oh, you chick, a spoiled girl... - Ivan Petrovich muttered tenderly and kissed her on the forehead. “You are very welcome,” he turned again to the guest, “my missus wrote a great novel and today she will read it aloud.”
Zhanchik,” Vera Iosifovna said to her husband, “dites que l’on nous donne du thé.”
Startseva was introduced to Ekaterina Ivanovna, an eighteen-year-old girl, very similar to her mother, just as thin and pretty. Her expression was still childish and her waist was thin and delicate; and virgin, already developed breasts, beautiful, healthy, spoke of spring, real spring. Then they drank tea with jam, honey, sweets and very tasty cookies that melted in the mouth. As evening approached, little by little the guests arrived, and Ivan Petrovich turned his laughing eyes to each of them and said:
Hello please.
Then everyone sat in the living room, with very serious faces, and Vera Iosifovna read her novel. She began like this: “The frost was getting stronger...” The windows were wide open, one could hear the clatter of knives in the kitchen, and the smell of fried onions could be heard... It was peaceful in the soft, deep armchairs, the lights flickered so tenderly in the twilight of the living room; and now, on a summer evening, when voices, laughter and lilacs were sipped from the street, it was difficult to understand how the frost grew stronger and how the setting sun illuminated the snowy plain and the traveler walking alone along the road with its cold rays; Vera Iosifovna read about how the young, beautiful countess set up schools, hospitals, libraries in her village and how she fell in love with a traveling artist - she read about things that never happen in life, and yet it was pleasant, comfortable to listen to, and such good, peaceful thoughts kept coming into my head - I didn’t want to get up.
Not bad... - Ivan Petrovich said quietly.
And one of the guests, listening and carrying his thoughts somewhere very, very far away, said barely audible:
An hour passed, then another. In the city garden next door, an orchestra played and a choir of singers sang. When Vera Iosifovna closed her notebook, they were silent for about five minutes and listened to “Luchinushka,” which the choir sang, and this song conveyed what was not in the novel and what happens in life.
Do you publish your works in magazines? - Startsev asked Vera Iosifovna.
No,” she answered, “I don’t publish anywhere.” I’ll write it and hide it in my closet. Why print? - she explained. - After all, we have the means.
And for some reason everyone sighed.
And now, Kotik, play something,” Ivan Petrovich said to his daughter.
They lifted the lid of the piano and revealed the sheet music that was already lying at the ready. Ekaterina Ivanovna sat down and hit the keys with both hands; and then immediately struck again with all her might, and again, and again; her shoulders and chest were shaking, she stubbornly hit everything in one place, and it seemed that she would not stop until she hammered the key inside the piano. The living room was filled with thunder; everything thundered: the floor, the ceiling, and the furniture... Ekaterina Ivanovna played a difficult passage, interesting precisely because of its difficulty, long and monotonous, and Startsev, listening, pictured to himself how stones were falling from a high mountain, falling and still falling, and he wanted them to stop falling out as soon as possible, and at the same time, he really liked Ekaterina Ivanovna, pink with tension, strong, energetic, with a curl of hair falling on her forehead. After the winter spent in Dyalizh, among the sick and the peasants, sitting in the living room, looking at this young, graceful and, probably, pure creature and listening to these noisy, annoying, but still cultural sounds - it was so pleasant, so new... .
Well, Kotik, today you played like never before,” said Ivan Petrovich with tears in his eyes when his daughter finished and stood up. - Die, Denis, you can’t write better.
Everyone surrounded her, congratulated her, were amazed, assured her that they had not heard such music for a long time, and she listened in silence, smiling slightly, and triumph was written all over her figure.
Wonderful! perfect!
Wonderful! - Startsev said, succumbing to the general enthusiasm. - Where did you study music? - he asked Ekaterina Ivanovna. - At the conservatory?
No, I’m just getting ready to go to the conservatory, but for now I studied here, with Madame Zavlovskaya
Have you completed your course at the local gymnasium?
Oh no! - Vera Iosifovna answered for her. - We invited teachers to our homes, but in the gymnasium or institute, you must admit, there could be bad influences; While a girl is growing up, she should be under the influence of her mother alone.
But still, I’ll go to the conservatory,” said Ekaterina Ivanovna.
No, Kitty loves his mother. The cat will not upset mom and dad.
No, I'll go! I'll go! - said Ekaterina Ivanovna, jokingly and capriciously, and stamped her foot.
And at dinner Ivan Petrovich showed his talents. He, laughing with only his eyes, told jokes, made jokes, suggested funny problems and solved them himself, and all the time spoke in his extraordinary language, developed by long exercises in wit and, obviously, which had long become a habit: Bolshinsky, not bad, thank you...
But that was not all. When the guests, well-fed and satisfied, crowded in the hallway, sorting out their coats and canes, the footman Pavlusha, or, as he was called here, Pava, a boy of about fourteen, with a cropped hair, and full cheeks, was fussing around them.
Come on, Pava, picture it! - Ivan Petrovich told him.
Pava struck a pose, raised his hand and said in a tragic tone:
Die, unfortunate one!
And everyone started laughing.
“Interesting,” Startsev thought, going out into the street.
He went to a restaurant and drank beer, then went on foot to his home in Dyalizh. He walked and sang all the way:
Vera Iosifovna had long suffered from migraines, but recently, when Kotik was frightened every day that she would go to the conservatory, the attacks began to recur more and more often. All the city doctors visited the Turkins; Finally it was the zemstvo's turn. Vera Iosifovna wrote him a touching letter, in which she asked him to come and ease her suffering. Startsev arrived and after that he began to visit the Turkins often, very often... He actually helped Vera Iosifovna a little, and she already told all the guests that he was an extraordinary, amazing doctor. But he went to the Turkins not for the sake of her migraine...
Holiday. Ekaterina Ivanovna finished her long, tedious exercises on the piano. Then they sat for a long time in the dining room and drank tea, and Ivan Petrovich told something funny. But here comes the call; I had to go to the hall to meet some guest; Startsev took advantage of the moment of confusion and said to Ekaterina Ivanovna in a whisper, greatly worried:
For God's sake, I beg you, don't torment me, let's go to the garden!
She shrugged her shoulders, as if perplexed and not understanding what he needed from her, but she got up and walked.
“You play the piano for three, four hours,” he said, following her, “then you sit with your mother, and there is no way to talk to you.” Give me at least a quarter of an hour, I beg you.
Autumn was approaching, and in the old garden it was quiet, sad, and dark leaves lay on the alleys. It was already getting dark early.
“I haven’t seen you for a whole week,” Startsev continued, “and if you only knew what suffering this is!” Let's sit down. Listen to me.
Both had a favorite place in the garden: a bench under an old wide maple tree. And now they sat down on this bench.
What do you want? - Ekaterina Ivanovna asked dryly, in a businesslike tone.
I haven't seen you for a whole week, I haven't heard from you for so long. I crave, I crave your voice. Speak.
She delighted him with her freshness, the naive expression of her eyes and cheeks. Even in the way her dress sat on her, he saw something unusually sweet, touching in its simplicity and naive grace. And at the same time, despite this naivety, she seemed to him very smart and developed beyond her years. With her he could talk about literature, about art, about anything, he could complain to her about life, about people, although during a serious conversation, it happened that she would suddenly start laughing inappropriately or run into the house. She, like almost all of her girls, read a lot (in general, in S. they read very little, and in the local library they said that if it weren’t for the girls and young Jews, then at least close the library); Startsev liked this endlessly; he excitedly asked her every time what she had read about in recent days, and, fascinated, listened when she talked.
What did you read this week while we weren't seeing each other? - he asked now. - Speak, please.
I read Pisemsky.
“Today, at eleven o’clock in the evening,” Startsev read, “be at the cemetery near the Demetti monument.”
“Well, this is not smart at all,” he thought, coming to his senses. - What does this have to do with the cemetery? For what?"
It was clear: Kitty was fooling around. Who, in fact, would seriously think of making a date at night, far outside the city, in a cemetery, when it can easily be arranged on the street, in a city garden? And is it fitting for him, a zemstvo doctor, an intelligent, respectable man, to sigh, receive notes, wander around cemeteries, do stupid things that even schoolchildren now laugh at? Where will this novel lead? What will your comrades say when they find out? This is what Startsev thought as he wandered around the tables in the club, and at half past ten he suddenly took off and went to the cemetery.
He already had his own pair of horses and a coachman Panteleimon in a velvet vest. The moon was shining. It was quiet, warm, but warm like autumn. In the suburbs, near the slaughterhouses, dogs were howling. Startsev left the horses on the edge of the city, in one of the alleys, and he himself went to the cemetery on foot. “Everyone has their own oddities,” he thought. - The cat is also strange and - who knows? “Perhaps she’s not joking, she’ll come,” and he gave himself up to this weak, empty hope, and it intoxicated him.
He walked across the field for half a mile. The cemetery was marked in the distance by a dark stripe, like a forest or a large garden. A fence made of white stone and a gate appeared... In the moonlight, one could read on the gate: “The hour is coming at the same time...” Startsev entered the gate, and the first thing he saw was white crosses and monuments on both sides of the wide alleys and black shadows from them and from poplars; and all around you could see white and black in the distance, and sleepy trees bent their branches over the white. It seemed that it was brighter here than in the field; maple leaves, like paws, stood out sharply on the yellow sand of the alleys and on the slabs, and the inscriptions on the monuments were clear. At first, Startsev was struck by what he was now seeing for the first time in his life and what he would probably never see again: a world unlike anything else - a world where the moonlight was so good and soft, as if his cradle was here. where there is no life, no and no, but in every dark poplar, in every grave the presence of a secret is felt, promising a quiet, beautiful, eternal life. The slabs and wilted flowers, along with the autumn scent of leaves, exude forgiveness, sadness and peace.
There is silence all around; the stars looked down from the sky in deep humility, and Startsev’s steps rang out so sharply and inappropriately. And only when the clock began to strike in the church and he imagined himself dead, buried here forever, it seemed to him that someone was looking at him, and for a minute he thought that this was not peace and silence, but the dull melancholy of nothingness, suppressed despair...
Monument to Demetti in the form of a chapel, with an angel at the top; Once upon a time there was an Italian opera in S., one of the singers died, she was buried and this monument was erected. No one in the city remembered her anymore, but the lamp above the entrance reflected the moonlight and seemed to be burning.
There was no one. And who would come here at midnight? But Startsev waited, and, as if the moonlight was fueling passion in him, he waited passionately and pictured kisses and hugs in his imagination. He sat near the monument for half an hour, then walked along the side alleys, hat in hand, waiting and thinking about how many women and girls were buried here, in these graves, who were beautiful, charming, who loved, who burned with passion at night, giving in to affection. How, in essence, Mother Nature plays bad jokes on man, how offensive it is to realize this! Startsev thought so, and at the same time he wanted to shout that he wanted it, that he was waiting for love at any cost; in front of him were no longer pieces of marble, but beautiful bodies; he saw forms that were bashfully hiding in the shade of trees, he felt warmth, and this languor became painful...
And it was as if a curtain had fallen, the moon went under the clouds, and suddenly everything around became dark. Startsev barely found the gate - it was already dark, like an autumn night - then he wandered around for an hour and a half, looking for the lane where he had left his horses.
“I’m tired, I can barely stand on my feet,” he told Panteleimon.
And, sitting down with pleasure in the carriage, he thought:
“Oh, there’s no need to gain weight!”
The next day in the evening he went to the Turkins to propose. But this turned out to be inconvenient, since Ekaterina Ivanovna was being combed by a hairdresser in her room. She was going to a club for a dance party.
I had to sit in the dining room for a long time again and drink tea. Ivan Petrovich, seeing that the guest was thoughtful and bored, took notes from his vest pocket and read a funny letter from the German manager about how all the denials on the estate had deteriorated and shyness had collapsed.
“And they must give a lot of dowry,” thought Startsev, listening absentmindedly.
After a sleepless night, he was in a state of stupor, as if he had been drugged with something sweet and soporific; my soul was foggy, but joyful, warm, and at the same time in my head some cold, heavy piece reasoned:
"Well? - he thought. - Let it go".
“Besides, if you marry her,” the piece continued, “her relatives will force you to quit your zemstvo service and live in the city.”
"Well? - he thought. - In the city, so in the city. They’ll give you a dowry, we’ll set things up...”
Finally, Ekaterina Ivanovna came in in a ball gown, low neckline, pretty, clean, and Startsev fell in love and was so delighted that he could not utter a single word, but just looked at her and laughed.
She began to say goodbye, and he - there was no need for him to stay here - stood up, saying that it was time for him to go home: the sick were waiting.
There’s nothing to do,” said Ivan Petrovich, “go, by the way, you’ll give Kitty a ride to the club.”
It was pouring rain outside, it was very dark, and only by Panteleimon’s hoarse cough could one guess where the horses were. They lifted the top of the stroller.
“I’m walking on the carpet, you’re walking while you’re lying,” said Ivan Petrovich, putting his daughter in the stroller, “he’s walking while he’s lying... Touch!” Goodbye please!
Go.
“And yesterday I was at the cemetery,” Startsev began. - How ungenerous and merciless of you...
Have you been to the cemetery?
Yes, I was there and waited for you until almost two o'clock. I suffered...
And suffer if you don't understand jokes.
Ekaterina Ivanovna, pleased that she had played such a cunning joke on her lover and that she was loved so much, began to laugh and suddenly screamed in fright, because at that very moment the horses were turning sharply into the club gates and the carriage tilted. Startsev hugged Ekaterina Ivanovna around the waist; She, frightened, pressed herself against him, and he could not resist and passionately kissed her on the lips, on the chin and hugged her tighter.
“That’s enough,” she said dryly.
And a moment later she was no longer in the carriage, and a policeman near the illuminated entrance of the club shouted in a disgusting voice at Panteleimon:
Startsev went home, but soon returned. Dressed in someone else's tailcoat and a stiff white tie, which somehow kept bristling and wanted to slide off his collar, he sat at midnight in the club in the living room and said to Ekaterina Ivanovna with enthusiasm:
Oh, how little those who have never loved know! It seems to me that no one has yet described love correctly, and it is hardly possible to describe this tender, joyful, painful feeling, and whoever has experienced it at least once will not convey it in words. Why prefaces, descriptions? Why unnecessary eloquence? My love is limitless... Please, I beg you,” Startsev finally said, “be my wife!”
“Dmitry Ionych,” said Ekaterina Ivanovna with a very serious expression, after thinking. - Dmitry Ionych, I am very grateful to you for the honor, I respect you, but... - she stood up and continued standing, - but, excuse me, I cannot be your wife. Let's talk seriously. Dmitry Ionych, you know, most of all in life I love art, I madly love, adore music, I have dedicated my whole life to it. I want to be an artist, I want fame, success, freedom, and you want me to continue living in this city, to continue this empty, useless life, which has become unbearable for me. To become a wife - oh no, sorry! A person should strive for a higher, brilliant goal, and family life would bind me forever. Dmitry Ionych (she smiled a little, because, having said “Dmitry Ionych”, she remembered “Alexey Feofilaktych”), Dmitry Ionych, you are a kind, noble, intelligent person, you are the best ... - tears welled up in her eyes, - I sympathize with you with all my heart, but... but you will understand...
And, in order not to cry, she turned away and left the living room.
Startsev’s heart stopped beating restlessly. Coming out of the club onto the street, he first of all tore off his stiff tie and sighed deeply. He was a little ashamed and his pride was offended - he did not expect a refusal - and he could not believe that all his dreams, yearnings and hopes had led him to such a stupid end, as if in a small play at an amateur performance. And he felt sorry for his feeling, for this love of his, so sorry that it seemed he would have burst into tears or would have hit Panteleimon’s broad back with all his might with his umbrella.
For three days things were falling out of his hands, he did not eat or sleep, but when rumors reached him that Ekaterina Ivanovna had gone to Moscow to enter the conservatory, he calmed down and began to live as before.
Then, sometimes remembering how he wandered through the cemetery or how he drove throughout the city and looked for a tailcoat, he lazily stretched and said:
What a hassle, though!
Four years have passed. Startsev already had a lot of practice in the city. Every morning he hurriedly received patients in his home in Dyalizh, then left to visit the city’s patients, leaving not in a pair, but in a troika with bells, and returning home late at night. He gained weight, grew fat and was reluctant to walk, as he suffered from shortness of breath. And Panteleimon also gained weight, and the more he grew in width, the sadder he sighed and complained about his bitter fate: the ride had overcome him!
Startsev visited different houses and met many people, but did not get close to anyone. The inhabitants irritated him with their conversations, views on life, and even their appearance. Experience taught him little by little that while you play cards with an ordinary person or have a snack with him, then he is a peaceful, good-natured and not even stupid person, but as soon as you talk to him about something inedible, for example, about politics or science, how he gets into a dead end or develops such a philosophy, stupid and evil, that all he can do is wave his hand and walk away. When Startsev tried to talk even with a liberal man in the street, for example, that humanity, thank God, is moving forward and that over time it will do without passports and without the death penalty, the man in the street looked at him sideways and incredulously and asked: “So, Then anyone can stab anyone on the street?” And when Startsev in society, over dinner or tea, spoke about the need to work, that one cannot live without work, then everyone took this as a reproach and began to get angry and argue annoyingly. Despite all this, the townsfolk did nothing, absolutely nothing, and were not interested in anything, and it was impossible to figure out what to talk about with them. And Startsev avoided conversations, but only had a snack and played vint, and when he found a family holiday in some house and he was invited to eat, he sat down and ate in silence, looking at his plate; and everything that was said at that time was uninteresting, unfair, stupid, he felt irritated, worried, but remained silent, and because he was always sternly silent and looked at his plate, he was nicknamed in the city “the inflated Pole,” although he I've never been Pole.
He avoided such entertainment as theater and concerts, but he played vint every evening, for three hours, with pleasure. He had another pastime, which he got involved in unnoticed, little by little, in the evenings, taking out from his pockets pieces of paper obtained by practice, and, it happened, pieces of paper - yellow and green, which smelled of perfume, and vinegar, and incense, and blubber - seventy rubles worth were stuffed into all pockets; and when several hundred were collected, he took them to the Mutual Credit Society and deposited them into a current account.
In all four years after Ekaterina Ivanovna’s departure, he visited the Turkins only twice, at the invitation of Vera Iosifovna, who was still being treated for migraines. Every summer Ekaterina Ivanovna came to visit her parents, but he never saw her; somehow it didn't happen.
But now four years have passed. One quiet, warm morning a letter was brought to the hospital. Vera Iosifovna wrote to Dmitry Ionych that she missed him very much, and asked him to definitely come to her and ease her suffering, and by the way, today is her birthday. At the bottom there was a note: “I also join my mother’s request. TO."
Startsev thought and went to the Turkins in the evening.
Oh, hello please! - Ivan Petrovich met him, smiling with only his eyes. - Bonjourte.
Vera Iosifovna, already very old, with white hair, shook Startsev’s hand, sighed in a mannered manner and said:
You, doctor, don’t want to look after me, you never visit us, I’m already too old for you. But a young woman has arrived, perhaps she will be happier.
And Kotik? She lost weight, became pale, became more beautiful and slimmer; but it was Ekaterina Ivanovna, and not Kotik; there was no longer the former freshness and expression of childish naivety. There was something new in both her gaze and manners - timid and guilty, as if here, in the Turkins’ house, she no longer felt at home.
Long time no see! - she said, giving Startsev her hand, and it was clear that her heart was beating anxiously; and looking intently, curiously into his face, she continued: “How plump you have become!” You are tanned, matured, but in general you have changed little.
And now he liked her, liked her very much, but something was already missing from her, or something was superfluous - he himself could not say what exactly, but something was already preventing him from feeling as before. He didn’t like her paleness, her new expression, her weak smile, her voice, and a little later he didn’t like the dress, the chair in which she was sitting, he didn’t like something about the past when he almost married her. He remembered his love, the dreams and hopes that worried him four years ago, and he felt embarrassed.
We drank tea with sweet pie. Then Vera Iosifovna read a novel aloud, read about something that never happens in life, and Startsev listened, looked at her gray, beautiful head and waited for her to finish.
“The mediocre person,” he thought, “is not the one who does not know how to write stories, but the one who writes them and does not know how to hide it.”
Not bad,” said Ivan Petrovich.
Then Ekaterina Ivanovna played the piano noisily and for a long time, and when she finished, they thanked her for a long time and admired her.
“It’s good that I didn’t marry her,” Startsev thought.
She looked at him and, apparently, expected him to invite her to go to the garden, but he was silent.
Let’s talk,” she said, approaching him. - How do you live? What do you have? How? “I’ve been thinking about you all these days,” she continued nervously, “I wanted to send you a letter, I wanted to go to you in Dyalizh myself, and I had already decided to go, but then I changed my mind - God knows how you feel about me now.” I was so excited to see you today. For God's sake, let's go to the garden.
They went into the garden and sat there on a bench under an old maple tree, just like four years ago. It was dark.
How are you doing? - asked Ekaterina Ivanovna.
It’s okay, we live little by little,” Startsev answered.
And I couldn't think of anything else. We were silent.
“I’m worried,” said Ekaterina Ivanovna and covered her face with her hands, “but don’t pay attention. I feel so good at home, I’m so glad to see everyone and I can’t get used to it. So many memories! It seemed to me that we would talk to you incessantly until the morning.
Now he saw her face close up, her sparkling eyes, and here, in the darkness, she seemed younger than in the room, and it was even as if her former childish expression had returned to her. And in fact, she looked at him with naive curiosity, as if she wanted to take a closer look and understand the man who once loved her so ardently, with such tenderness and so unhappily; her eyes thanked him for this love. And he remembered everything that happened, all the smallest details, how he wandered through the cemetery, how later in the morning, tired, he returned to his home, and he suddenly felt sad and sorry for the past. A fire lit up in my soul.
Do you remember how I accompanied you to the club for the evening? - he said. - It was raining then, it was dark...
The fire kept flaring up in my soul, and I already wanted to talk, complain about life...
Eh! - he said with a sigh. - You’re asking how I’m doing. How are we doing here? No way. We get old, we get fatter, we get worse. Day and night - a day away, life passes dimly, without impressions, without thoughts... During the day there is profit, and in the evening there is a club, a society of gamblers, alcoholics, wheezing people, whom I cannot stand. What's good?
But you have a job, a noble goal in life. You loved talking about your hospital. I was kind of strange then, I imagined myself to be a great pianist. Now all the young ladies play the piano, and I also played like everyone else, and there was nothing special about me; I am as much a pianist as my mother is a writer. And of course, I didn’t understand you then, but then, in Moscow, I often thought about you. I only thought about you. What a joy it is to be a zemstvo doctor, to help the suffering, to serve the people. What happiness! - Ekaterina Ivanovna repeated with enthusiasm. - When I thought about you in Moscow, you seemed to me so ideal, sublime...
Startsev remembered the pieces of paper that he took out of his pockets with such pleasure in the evenings, and the light in his soul went out.
He stood up to walk towards the house. She took his arm.
“You are the best person I have ever known in my life,” she continued. - We will see each other and talk, won’t we? Promise me. I’m not a pianist, I’m no longer mistaken about myself and I won’t play or talk about music in front of you.
When they entered the house and Startsev saw her face in the evening light and her sad, grateful, searching eyes turned to him, he felt uneasy and thought again:
“It’s good that I didn’t get married then.”
He began to say goodbye.
“You have no Roman right to leave without dinner,” said Ivan Petrovich, seeing him off. - This is very perpendicular on your part. Come on, picture it! - he said, turning to Pava in the hall.
Pava, no longer a boy, but a young man with a mustache, struck a pose, raised his hand and said in a tragic voice:
Die, unfortunate one!
All this irritated Startsev. Sitting in the carriage and looking at the dark house and garden that had once been so sweet and dear to him, he remembered everything at once - the novels of Vera Iosifovna, and the noisy play of Kotik, and the wit of Ivan Petrovich, and the tragic pose of Pava, and thought, that if the most talented people in the whole city are so untalented, then what must the city be like?
Three days later, Pava brought a letter from Ekaterina Ivanovna.
“You are not coming to us. Why? - she wrote. - I'm afraid that you have changed towards us; I'm afraid and I'm scared just thinking about it. Reassure me, come and tell me that everything is fine.
I need to talk to you.
Your E.T.”
He read this letter, thought and said to Pava:
Tell me, my dear, that I can’t come today, I’m very busy. I’ll come, say so, in three days.
But three days passed, a week passed, and he still did not go. Once, driving past the Turkins’ house, he remembered that he should stop by at least for a minute, but he thought about it and... didn’t stop by.
And he never visited the Turkins again.
Several more years passed. Startsev has gained even more weight, has become obese, is breathing heavily and is already walking with his head thrown back. When he, plump, red, rides on a troika with bells, and Panteleimon, also plump and red, with a fleshy nape, sits on the box, stretching forward his straight, like wooden arms, and shouts to those he meets, “Keep it up!”, then the picture is impressive, and it seems that it is not a man who is riding, but a pagan god. He has a huge practice in the city; ceremony goes into this house and, passing through all the rooms, not paying attention to the undressed women and children who look at him with amazement and fear, pokes all the doors with a stick and says:
Is this an office? Is this a bedroom? What's going on here?
And at the same time he breathes heavily and wipes sweat from his forehead.
He has a lot of trouble, but still he does not give up his zemstvo position; greed has overcome, I want to keep up both here and there. In Dyalizh and in the city they call him simply Ionych. - “Where is Ionych going?” or: “Should I invite Ionych to the consultation?”
Probably because his throat was swollen with fat, his voice changed, becoming thin and harsh. His character also changed: he became heavy and irritable. When receiving patients, he usually gets angry, impatiently bangs his stick on the floor and shouts in his unpleasant voice:
Please answer only questions! Don't talk!
He's lonely. His life is boring, nothing interests him.
During the entire time he lived in Dyalizh, love for Kotik was his only joy and, probably, his last. In the evenings he plays vint at the club and then sits alone at a large table and has dinner. The footman Ivan, the oldest and most respectable, serves him, they serve him Lafite No. 17, and everyone - the elders of the club, the cook, and the footman - knows what he likes and what he doesn’t like, they try their best to please him, otherwise, what the heck, he’ll suddenly get angry and start banging his stick on the floor.
While dining, he occasionally turns around and intervenes in some conversation:
What are you talking about? A? Whom?
And when, it happens, at some table next door the conversation comes up about the Turkins, he asks:
Which Turkins are you talking about? Is this about the ones where the daughter plays the piano?
That's all that can be said about him.
And the Turkins? Ivan Petrovich has not aged, has not changed at all, and still makes jokes and tells jokes; Vera Iosifovna still reads her novels to guests willingly, with heartfelt simplicity. And Kitty plays the piano every day, for four hours. She has noticeably aged, swears, and every autumn she leaves with her mother for the Crimea. Seeing them off at the station, Ivan Petrovich, when the train starts moving, wipes away his tears and shouts:
Goodbye please!
And waves his handkerchief.
The basis of the plot of the story “Ionych” is the story of the degradation of the soul, the loss of humanity by man. At the beginning of the story, Dmitry Ionych Startsev is friendly, open to everything bright and good. His perception of the Turkins is a mirror of himself, young, kind-hearted, delicate. Everything in him and around him spoke “of spring, real spring.” However, in just four years, he turns into a flabby, selfish, irritable person, whose favorite pastime is counting money. Chekhov uses signal details dispersed throughout the text. For example, at the beginning of the story “Ionych” about Startsev it is said that he walked on foot, he did not yet have his own horses, then a pair appears, and then a troika with bells. These details are given unobtrusively, but their repetition makes the reader think not only about the “external” movement of Startsev, but also about the movement of his soul, in which the energy of life and youth is fading more and more; it is no coincidence that at the end of the story there appears a comparison of Ionych with the “pagan God." Every detail marks a new stage in Startsev’s spiritual degradation, for whom the world of things becomes more significant than spiritual life.
“He walked slowly (he didn’t have his own horses yet), and hummed all the time...” “Having walked nine miles and then gone to bed, he did not feel the slightest fatigue, but on the contrary, it seemed to him that he would gladly walk another twenty miles,” “he wanted to scream that he wanted, that he longed for love no matter what.” no matter what!” - “For three days things fell out of his hands, he did not eat, did not sleep, but when the rumor reached him that Ekaterina Ivanovna had left for Moscow, he calmed down and began to live as before.” - Four years have passed. Startsev already had a lot of practice in the city. Every morning he hurriedly received the sick at his place in Dyalizh, then he left not in a pair, but in a troika with bells,” “he gained weight, grew fat and was reluctant to walk.” “He remembered his love, the dreams and hopes that worried him four years ago - and he felt embarrassed,” “It’s good that I didn’t marry her,” “Startsev remembered the pieces of paper that he took out of his pockets with such pleasure, and the light in my soul went out.” - “Several more years have passed. Startsev has gained even more weight, has become obese, is breathing heavily and is already walking with his head thrown back. When he, plump, red, rides a troika with bells, it seems that it is not a man who is riding, but a pagan god,” “He is alone. His life is boring, nothing interests him.”
The first reason for this transformation is passive resistance to vulgarity, the inability to defend one’s personality in the conditions of philistine, plant life. Having received Kotik’s refusal, Startsev withdraws into himself, his communication with people is limited to playing cards, for which the city dubbed him “the inflated Pole.” However, vulgarity is militant, so Elders, who despised the townsfolk, sinks much lower, everything that was young in him, capable of love, fades away, gradually he even loses his human appearance.
The second reason is Startsev’s internal readiness for such a transformation. He initially had the features of “Belikovism”. Belikov’s “no matter what happens” can be heard in the reasoning of Startsev, who goes on a date with Kotik at night. “And they must give a lot of dowry,” Startsev thinks in a moment of rapture and emotional excitement. And what can be said about love that subsided “in three days”? The “light” of love in Startsev’s life turned out to be too weak.
The third reason, perhaps the main one, is the whole life of the city of S., similar to thousands of Russian cities. This is a city where “only young girls and Jews” visit the library, where the most talented people are absolutely untalented, where their favorite pastime is playing vint. In such a world, everything that was strong, passionate, young in Startsev could not help but fade away.
