"Perhaps the universe is suspended on the tooth of some monster..."
From the Notebooks of Anton Checkov (1892-1904)...
For today’s edition of Dead Wood, (dug up from the gold mines of the Public Domain,) I’d like to share some of the notes from Anton Checkov’s notebook. I was so pleased to find this particular gem on Project Gutenberg, not just because Checkov is witty and strange and wonderful in these snippets, but also because this is how I keep notes too! Stray thoughts, overheard conversations, a particularly nice image. Everything you see and hear each day is raw material for writing, and you can never count on yourself to remember.
Once you’ve read through these excerpts, I highly recommend going to straight to the source and reading the rest. After you get past the initial recitation of parties in Paris and visits to Tolstoy, his mind really starts cooking… TM
ANTON CHEKHOV’S NOTE-BOOKS
(1892-1904)
Mankind has conceived history as a series of battles; hitherto it has considered fighting as the main thing in life.
Solomon made a great mistake when he asked for wisdom.[1]
[Footnote 1: Among Chekhov’s papers the following monologue was found, written in his own hand:
Solomon (alone): Oh! how dark is life! No night, when I was a child, so terrified me by its darkness as does my invisible existence. Lord, to David my father thou gavest only the gift of harmonizing words and sounds, to sing and praise thee on strings, to lament sweetly, to make people weep or admire beauty; but why hast thou given me a meditative, sleepless, hungry mind? Like an insect born of the dust, I hide in darkness; and in fear and despair, all shaking and shivering, I see and hear in everything an invisible mystery. Why this morning? Why does the sun come out from behind the temple and gild the palm tree? Why this beauty of women? Where does the bird hurry, what is the meaning of its flight, if it and its young and the place to which it hastens will, like myself, turn to dust? It were better I had never been born or were a stone, to which God has given neither eyes nor thoughts. In order to tire out my body by nightfall, all day yesterday, like a mere workman I carried marble to the temple; but now the night has come and I cannot sleep … I’ll go and lie down. Phorses told me that if one imagines a flock of sheep running and fixes one’s attention upon it, the mind gets confused and one falls asleep, I’ll do it …(exit).]
Ordinary hypocrites pretend to be doves; political and literary hypocrites pretend to be eagles. But don’t be disconcerted by their aquiline appearance. They are not eagles, but rats or dogs.
Those who are more stupid and more dirty than we are called the people. The administration classifies the population into taxpayers and non-taxpayers. But neither classification will do; we are all the people and all the best we are doing is the people’s work.
If the Prince of Monaco has a roulette table, surely convicts may play at cards.
Iv. (Chekhov’s brother Ivan) could philosophize about love, but he could not love.
Aliosha: “My mind, mother, is weakened by illness and I am now like a child: now I pray to God, now I cry, now I am happy.”
Why did Hamlet trouble about ghosts after death, when life itself is haunted by ghosts so much more terrible?
Daughter: “Felt boots are not the correct thing.”
Father: “Yes they are clumsy, I’ll have to get leather ones.” The father fell ill and his deportation to Siberia was postponed.
Daughter: “You are not at all ill, father. Look, you have your coat and boots on….”
Father: “I long to be exiled to Siberia. One could sit somewhere by the Yenissey or Obi river and fish, and on the ferry there would be nice little convicts, emigrants…. Here I hate everything: this lilac tree in front of the window, these gravel paths….”
A bedroom. The light of the moon shines so brightly through the window that even the buttons on his night shirt are visible.
A nice man would feel ashamed even before a dog….
A certain Councillor of State, looking at a beautiful landscape, said:
“What a marvelous function of nature!”
From the note-book of an old dog: “People don’t eat slops and bones which the cooks throw away. Fools!”
He had nothing in his soul except recollections of his schooldays.
The French say: “Laid comme un chenille”—as ugly as a caterpillar.
The children growing up talked at meals about religion and laughed at fasts, monks, etc. The old mother at first lost her temper, then, evidently getting used to it, only smiled, but at last she told the children that they had convinced her, that she is now of their opinion. The children felt awkward and could not imagine what their old mother would do without her religion.
The dog walked in the street and was ashamed of its crooked legs.
That sudden and ill-timed love-affair may be compared to this: you take boys somewhere for a walk; the walk is jolly and interesting—and suddenly one of them gorges himself with oil paint.
The character in the play says to every one: “You’ve got worms.” He cures his daughter of the worms, and she turns yellow.
A scholar, without talent, a blockhead, worked for twenty-four years and produced nothing good, gave the world only scholars as untalented and as narrow-minded as himself. At night he secretly bound books—that was his true vocation: in that he was an artist and felt the joy of it. There came to him a bookbinder, who loved learning and studied secretly at night.
But perhaps the universe is suspended on the tooth of some monster.
Keep to the right, you of the yellow eye!
A pregnant woman with short arms and a long neck, like a kangaroo.
To demand that the woman one loves should be pure is egotistical: to look for that in a woman which I have not got myself is not love, but worship, since one ought to love one’s equals.
The so-called pure childlike joy of life is animal joy.
A schoolboy treats a lady to dinner in a restaurant. He has only one rouble, twenty kopecks. The bill comes to four roubles thirty kopecks. He has no money and begins to cry. The proprietor boxes his ears. He was talking to the lady about Abyssinia.
A man, who, to judge from his appearance, loves nothing but sausages and sauerkraut.
I highly recommend clicking here to read more from Checkov’s Notebooks on Project Gutenberg…
DEAD WOOD provides excerpts from the years before ideas became “content”. Some editions are serious and thought-provoking. Some are ludicrous or silly. Some are chosen just because they happened to strike us as particularly interesting.
If you have an excerpt of “Dead Wood” you’d like to suggest, email Juke at tonyajuke@gmail.com
If you enjoyed this post, hit the ♡ to let us know.
If it gave you any thoughts, please leave a comment.
If you think others would enjoy it, hit re-stack or share:
If you’d like to read more:
And if you’d like to help create more Juke, upgrade to a paid subscription (same button above). Otherwise, you can always help with a one-time donation via Paypal or Venmo.
Bravo….you had me at the title