WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2026
...Chekhov concocted this tale: The creepy monsters who creep and crawl have been crawling all over the modern American discourse.
Can a large modern nation hope to survive in such desperate need of true, sustaining values? Can some such nation hope to survive with the standard assembly of soul-damaged creeps sent out on that "cable news" channel?
We'd expected to post this afternoon about this latest astounding behavior by the flailing American president. But instead, we'll offer Constance Garnett's influential early translation of Chekhov's spectacularly beautiful story, The Lady with the Lapdog.
Here on this campus, we prefer the David Magarshack translation for Penguin Classics. But we offer this start to the story as a tribute to the Redford character in The Horse Whisperer, and as a tribute to the way Terry and Edie create a world of better values in the undercard to On the Waterfront.
The American songbook asks this question: Who will glove your hand? In this famous scene, Terry answers that question.
Chekhov's story starts as shown:
The Lady with the Dog
(Constance Garnett translation)
It was said that a new person had appeared on the sea-front: a lady with a little dog. Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, who had by then been a fortnight at Yalta, and so was fairly at home there, had begun to take an interest in new arrivals. Sitting in Verney's pavilion, he saw, walking on the sea-front, a fair-haired young lady of medium height, wearing a béret; a white Pomeranian dog was running behind her.
And afterwards he met her in the public gardens and in the square several times a day. She was walking alone, always wearing the same béret, and always with the same white dog; no one knew who she was, and every one called her simply "the lady with the dog."
"If she is here alone without a husband or friends, it wouldn't be amiss to make her acquaintance," Gurov reflected.
He was under forty, but he had a daughter already twelve years old, and two sons at school. He had been married young, when he was a student in his second year, and by now his wife seemed half as old again as he. She was a tall, erect woman with dark eyebrows, staid and dignified, and, as she said of herself, intellectual. She read a great deal, used phonetic spelling, called her husband, not Dmitri, but Dimitri, and he secretly considered her unintelligent, narrow, inelegant, was afraid of her, and did not like to be at home. He had begun being unfaithful to her long ago—had been unfaithful to her often, and, probably on that account, he almost always spoke ill of women, and when they were talked about in his presence, used to call them "the lower race."
It seemed to him that he had been so schooled by bitter experience that he might call them what he liked, and yet he could not get on for two days together without "the lower race." In the society of men he was bored and not himself, with them he was cold and uncommunicative; but when he was in the company of women he felt free, and knew what to say to them and how to behave; and he was at ease with them even when he was silent. In his appearance, in his character, in his whole nature, there was something attractive and elusive which allured women and disposed them in his favour; he knew that, and some force seemed to draw him, too, to them.
Experience often repeated, truly bitter experience, had taught him long ago that with decent people, especially Moscow people—always slow to move and irresolute—every intimacy, which at first so agreeably diversifies life and appears a light and charming adventure, inevitably grows into a regular problem of extreme intricacy, and in the long run the situation becomes unbearable. But at every fresh meeting with an interesting woman this experience seemed to slip out of his memory, and he was eager for life, and everything seemed simple and amusing.
One evening he was dining in the gardens, and the lady in the béret came up slowly to take the next table...
The beauty of where this story goes is truly a thing to see.
In its time, this story was considered revolutionary for its ending—for the ending which didn't provide an ending. Virginia Woolf wrote about the unusual ending. Nabokov called Chekhov's story one of the greatest ever written.
We've loved this story for years.
If we expect to survive as a nation, we have to remove the misogynist creeps from the American discourse. We also have to ask the question we've asked many times here at this site, the question about the trusted Blue American elites who refuse to report or discuss the misogyny crawling all over the Fox News Channel.
"We don't have a person to waste (Bill Clinton)." Nor do we have a whole gender,
The Magarshack translation: Writing for Penguin Classics, David Magarshack translated the opening in the manner shown:
Lady with Lapdog
(David Marshack translation)
The appearance on the front of a new arrival—a lady with a lapdog—became the topic of general conversation...[S]he was fair, not very tall, and she wore a toque; behind her trotted a white Pomeranian.
[...]
And so one afternoon, while he was having dinner at a restaurant in the park, the woman in the toque walked in unhurriedly and took a seat at the table next to him...
We have to drive the creeps from the American discourse. They deserve to get help after that.
