‘He was just trying to earn a few kopecks’: how newly translated stories reveal Chekhov’s silly side
Few writers are as universally admired as Chekhov.As Booker winner George Saunders puts it, “Chekhov – shall I be blunt? – is the greatest short story writer who ever lived.” Novelists from Ann Patchett to Zadie Smith cite him as an inspiration.His plays The Seagull, Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard still pack out theatres internationally.In the past year alone, Andrew Scott wowed audiences in his one-man Vanya for London’s National Theatre and Cate Blanchett took on the role of Arkadina in The Seagull at the Barbican.
But how much did you know about his silly side?Anton Chekhov: Earliest Stories offers the first comprehensive translation in English of the stories, novellas and humoresques that the Russian author wrote in the early 1880s.And it is supremely juvenile in the best way.The reason many of these stories are now appearing in translation for the first time is because, explains editor Rosamund Bartlett, they have never been regarded by commercial publishers as “worthy” of Chekhov’s reputation.They are too childishly comical.During the translation process, she says, “we would just collapse in fits of giggles”.
Bartlett, the author of acclaimed biographies of Chekhov and Tolstoy, and her co-editor Elena Michajlowska, a UK-based Russian film-maker, run the Anton Chekhov Foundation, a charity whose starry patrons include Ralph Fiennes, Tom Stoppard and Kenneth Branagh.The foundation was originally set up to preserve Chekhov’s White Dacha in Yalta.When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 this work was no longer possible, so instead they came up with the “crazy, idealistic idea” of sourcing 80 volunteer translators across the globe – from school students to retired academics – to translate these previously unseen stories.Written by Chekhov between the ages of 20 and 22, they are full of experimental wordplay, nonsense names and onomatopoeiac idiocy, from the village of Eaten-Pancakes (“Bliny-S’edeny”) in the opening story, Letter to a Learned Neighbour, to railway stations called Crash, Bang, Wallop, Run for Your Life and Swindler Town in On the Train, and a character called Second Lieutenant Zyumbumbunchikov in Before the Wedding (it means nothing, but say it aloud and it’s genius).These 58 stories, written under numerous pseudonyms, are little known, even among experts, says Bartlett.
“Chekhov is better known as a writer of stories in Russia than of plays, and these stories remind us that he began as a humorist,” she says.“Not all of them are funny, or even intended to make us laugh, but a great many are totally frivolous – as one would expect from a 20-year-old medical student just trying to earn a few kopecks writing for comic journals.”Chekhov’s father had recently been declared bankrupt, so he was paying for his own education while also supporting the rest of his family.He wanted to conserve his real name for publication in respected scientific journals.Within a few years, however, it had become evident that – whether he liked it or not – he was a writer and his writing was worth taking seriously.
By the mid 1880s, he had formulated the now legendary idea that medicine would be his “lawful wedded wife” and writing his mistress.(“When I’ve had enough of one, I can go and spend the night with the other.”)Chekhov was never a fan of his own work, whether prose or plays.He was modest about even his most famous and beloved short stories The Lady With the Dog (about a love affair in Yalta), Ward No 6 (about a doctor who is sick of his profession) and The Darling (about a woman who is ludicrously co-dependent, long before the term was invented).After a disastrous first outing of The Seagull in 1896 he was so mortified that he fled the theatre: “I shall never either write plays or have them acted.
” (The play was staged by Konstantin Stanislavski in 1898 to great acclaim.) In 1888, he wrote to his editor that he doubted any of his stories would “survive in people’s memory for even a decade”.His doubts never made him less prolific.In 1884 alone – the year he graduated as a doctor – he published more than 100 stories.By the time he died in 1904 of tuberculosis at the age of 44, that number had climbed to more than 500.
This collection is published at a fragile cultural moment.Ukrainian writers including Oksana Zabuzhko, Olesya Khromeychuk and Oleksandr Mykhed have argued for a critical re-evaluation of Russian literature – and for more space for Ukrainian voices and culture.“The revulsion many Ukrainians feel now for Russian literature due to the war is understandable,” says Bartlett.“But even those who repudiate it often make an exception for Chekhov, for good reason.”Crucially, Chekhov does not belong to Putin’s Russia, she says.
“He was never an imperialist, he couldn’t stand the jingoism of a writer like Dostoevsky, and the country is not littered with statues of him.Chekhov was a quarter Ukrainian himself, and grew up in Taganrog, a town historically part of Ukraine.During his childhood he and his brothers used to stage amateur productions of plays in Ukrainian – the language was part of his birthright.Chekhov occasionally used Ukrainian sayings, and we have highlighted them and explained their meaning in the annotations.”Bartlett suggests that it shouldn’t be a case of reading “either/or”: “Increasing our familiarity with Ukrainian writers should not have to exclude the possibility of discovering new works by Chekhov.
We need to keep reading, and read more,” Zyumbumbunchikov can’t be a bad place to start,Anton Chekhov: Earliest Stories: Stories, Novellas, Humoresques, 1880–1882, edited by Rosamund Bartlett and Elena Michajlowska, is published by Cherry Orchard,
Nigel Farage urged to root out Reform links to Russia after jailing of Nathan Gill
Nigel Farage is facing calls to investigate and root out links between Reform UK and Russia after one of his party’s former senior politicians was jailed for 10 years for accepting bribes from a pro-Kremlin agent.Keir Starmer said Farage had questions to answer about how this happened in his party. Nathan Gill, a former leader of Reform UK in Wales, admitted taking payments to make statements in favour of Russia.The sentencing came at the end of a damaging week for Farage in which the Guardian revealed accusations that he engaged in racist chants and comments while at school more than 40 years ago, which he denies.Reform UK remains about 10 points ahead in opinion polls, but Labour believes the party is vulnerable to criticism that Farage and his allies have been too pro-Russia, with the Gill case proving that a paid pro-Kremlin propagandist was allowed to rise to become a senior leader
Starmer rebuffs renewed talk of Andy Burnham leadership challenge
Keir Starmer has attempted to dampen the latest round of speculation about his leadership, insisting that one of his potential rivals, Andy Burnham, is doing a “really good job as mayor of Manchester” and warning colleagues not to waste their time briefing against each other.The prime minister gave his backing to Burnham on Thursday night as he travelled to the G20 summit in Johannesburg, after the Greater Manchester mayor repeatedly failed to rule out challenging Starmer for his party’s leadership during interviews on Thursday.Burnham’s comments reignited speculation over the prime minister’s future, with his party languishing in the polls and days away from a tax-raising budget that could define the rest of his term in office.Starmer said: “Andy’s doing a really good job as mayor in Manchester and we work very closely together.”He added: “Only two days after Labour party conference we were in Manchester together in the aftermath of the terrible attack on the synagogue there
Farage’s views on Russia likely to be further tested after jailing of Nathan Gill
The discovery of a pro-Russian asset, Nathan Gill, at the heart of a British political party reads like the plot of a John Le Carré novel.Russia was long known to have been trying to interfere in foreign politics with online bots and cyber-disinformation over the past decade.However, the Nathan Gill case is now a concrete example of a pro-Russian agent enlisting and paying a Brexit-friendly party politician to spread the propaganda of Moscow and against Ukraine in Europe.In the 1960s, it tended more to be Labour and far-left politicians who were largely the subject of Soviet attempts to plant agents in the west. In modern times, it is no surprise that the parties Gill represented were Ukip, the Brexit party, and briefly Reform UK
Starmer accuses ‘spineless’ Farage of failure to tackle racism in Reform party
Nigel Farage has been accused of being “spineless” by the prime minister and a “coward” by Dulwich college contemporaries over his response to allegations of racism.Keir Starmer said the Reform UK leader had “questions to answer” about alleged comments and chants as a teenager that include songs about the Holocaust, and accusations of bullying towards minority ethnic schoolboys.He added that Farage had a “track record” when it came to racism, pointing to his failure to discipline his fellow Reform MP Sarah Pochin after she complained about the number of black and brown people she saw in adverts.Speaking to reporters on the way to the G20 summit in Johannesburg, Starmer said: “He needs to explain the comments, or alleged comments that were made, and he needs to do that as soon as possible. He hasn’t got a good track record in relation to this because Sarah Pochin, his MP, made some clearly racist comments and Nigel Farage has done absolutely nothing about it
UK politics: Reeves ‘not even sure what the popular path is’ on the budget – as it happened
The UK cannot continue to “muddle through” and must take “a different path” on the economy, the chancellor has said.Ahead of her second budget on 26 November, Rachel Reeves told the Times that the country could not continue on its current trajectory. But she admitted she was “not even sure any more what the popular path is” amid calls for a wealth tax from some politicians and heavy tax and spending cuts from others.In the interview published on Friday, Reeves said:I’m not even sure any more what the popular path is.There are lots of people who say cut taxes and the economy will grow, but what spending would they cut? Borrowing is too high, but you can’t cut it overnight
Reform UK’s former Wales leader jailed for taking bribes for pro-Russia speeches
Reform UK’s former leader in Wales Nathan Gill has been jailed for 10 and a half years for taking bribes to make statements in favour of Russia when he was an MEP.Gill, a key member of the Ukip and Brexit party groups led by Nigel Farage in the European parliament, had pleaded guilty to eight counts of bribery between 6 December 2018 and 18 July 2019.Police believe Gill received the equivalent of at least £30,000 and could have got even more from Oleg Voloshyn, a former Ukrainian MP and alleged Russian asset. He remains under investigation but is now believed to be in Moscow.Immediately after Gill was jailed, the defence minister Al Carns called on Farage’s party to launch a thorough investigation to guarantee that pro-Russia links were rooted out of Reform
Xania Monet’s music is the stuff of nightmares. Thankfully her AI ‘clankers’ will be limited to this cultural moment | Van Badham
French authorities investigate alleged Holocaust denial posts on Elon Musk’s Grok AI
‘We excel at every phase of AI’: Nvidia CEO quells Wall Street fears of AI bubble amid market selloff
Nvidia earnings: Wall Street sighs with relief after AI wave doesn’t crash
Uber hit with legal demands to halt use of AI-driven pay systems
Facebook and Instagram to start kicking Australian teenagers off platforms as social media ban looms