Revising the story, he deleted a line that seemed too definitive: “I had gone to settle something, but not a single one of life’s questions can have a special solution in each separate case you must say and do what you think – that is the solution to all questions.” Lines like this survived the red pen in other stories he wrote, but they never appear as conclusions. Science and Technical Research and DevelopmentĬhekhov works to sustain this uncertainty and plunges us into it too.Infrastructure Management - Transport, Utilities.Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives.Information and Communications Technology.HR, Training and Organisational Development.Health - Medical and Nursing Management.Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance.

But when he rides around the pond the figure turns out to be no more than a rotten post, the remnant of some old shed. Remembering a story about a seminarian who was beaten to death nearby, he wonders if this is his ghost. He thinks he sees a man across the water, standing motionless. But walking the overgrown pathways of his less familiar stories can help give a fresh sense of why his storytelling has been so influential, and remains compelling in its own right.Ĭonsider the last page of “Neighbours”, from 1892, in which Pyotr Mikhailych, a young man who “already had all the makings of an old bachelor landowner”, sits miserably beside a pond as the moon rises. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s new translation of 52 Chekhov stories doesn’t include many of his most famous works (their versions of those can be found in a collection from 2000, only available in the UK as an e-book). What has been unclear before? Why is it just now becoming clear? What’s happened? Most of all – what now?” The quote might not belong to Anton Chekhov at all (no one has ever found the story it’s from), but Carver’s description of its effect, its ability to stage a revelation and in the same moment open a field of greater mystery, absolutely does. I love their simple clarity, and the hint of revelation that’s implied. For Carver, these words are “filled with wonder and possibility. One had “this fragment of a story by Chekhov: ‘… and suddenly everything became clear to him’”. In a 1981 essay, Raymond Carver described some of the quotations taped to the wall around his desk.

Chekhov writer