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Terror
The story of a man afraid of life, of being a civil servant in Petersburg, of being a farmer, of being a man married with a sweet life and charming children. A man deeply frightened of life.
Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1892
16 people want to read
About the author
Anton Chekhov
5,890 books9,758 followersDramas, such as
The Seagull
(1896, revised 1898), and including "A Dreary Story" (1889) of Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, also Chekov, concern the inability of humans to communicate.
Born ( Антон Павлович Чехов ) in the small southern seaport of Taganrog, the son of a grocer. His grandfather, a serf, bought his own freedom and that of his three sons in 1841. He also taught to read. A cloth merchant fathered Yevgenia Morozova, his mother.
"When I think back on my childhood," Chekhov recalled, "it all seems quite gloomy to me." Tyranny of his father, religious fanaticism, and long nights in the store, open from five in the morning till midnight, shadowed his early years. He attended a school for Greek boys in Taganrog from 1867 to 1868 and then Taganrog grammar school. Bankruptcy of his father compelled the family to move to Moscow. At the age of 16 years in 1876, independent Chekhov for some time alone in his native town supported through private tutoring.
In 1879, Chekhov left grammar school and entered the university medical school at Moscow. In the school, he began to publish hundreds of short comics to support his mother, sisters and brothers. Nicholas Leikin published him at this period and owned Oskolki (splinters), the journal of Saint Petersburg. His subjected silly social situations, marital problems, and farcical encounters among husbands, wives, mistresses, and lust; even after his marriage, Chekhov, the shy author, knew not much of whims of young women.
Nenunzhaya pobeda , first novel of Chekhov, set in 1882 in Hungary, parodied the novels of the popular Mór Jókai. People also mocked ideological optimism of Jókai as a politician.
Chekhov graduated in 1884 and practiced medicine. He worked from 1885 in Peterburskaia gazeta.
In 1886, Chekhov met H.S. Suvorin, who invited him, a regular contributor, to work for Novoe vremya, the daily paper of Saint Petersburg. He gained a wide fame before 1886. He authored The Shooting Party , his second full-length novel, later translated into English. Agatha Christie used its characters and atmosphere in later her mystery novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd . First book of Chekhov in 1886 succeeded, and he gradually committed full time. The refusal of the author to join the ranks of social critics arose the wrath of liberal and radical intelligentsia, who criticized him for dealing with serious social and moral questions but avoiding giving answers. Such leaders as Leo Tolstoy and Nikolai Leskov, however, defended him. "I'm not a liberal, or a conservative, or a gradualist, or a monk, or an indifferentist. I should like to be a free artist and that's all..." Chekhov said in 1888.
The failure of The Wood Demon , play in 1889, and problems with novel made Chekhov to withdraw from literature for a period. In 1890, he traveled across Siberia to Sakhalin, remote prison island. He conducted a detailed census of ten thousand convicts and settlers, condemned to live on that harsh island. Chekhov expected to use the results of his research for his doctoral dissertation. Hard conditions on the island probably also weakened his own physical condition. From this journey came his famous travel book.
Chekhov practiced medicine until 1892. During these years, Chechov developed his concept of the dispassionate, non-judgmental author. He outlined his program in a letter to his brother Aleksandr: "1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality; flee the stereotype; 6. compassion." Because he objected that the paper conducted against Alfred Dreyfus, his friendship with Suvorin ended
Born ( Антон Павлович Чехов ) in the small southern seaport of Taganrog, the son of a grocer. His grandfather, a serf, bought his own freedom and that of his three sons in 1841. He also taught to read. A cloth merchant fathered Yevgenia Morozova, his mother.
"When I think back on my childhood," Chekhov recalled, "it all seems quite gloomy to me." Tyranny of his father, religious fanaticism, and long nights in the store, open from five in the morning till midnight, shadowed his early years. He attended a school for Greek boys in Taganrog from 1867 to 1868 and then Taganrog grammar school. Bankruptcy of his father compelled the family to move to Moscow. At the age of 16 years in 1876, independent Chekhov for some time alone in his native town supported through private tutoring.
In 1879, Chekhov left grammar school and entered the university medical school at Moscow. In the school, he began to publish hundreds of short comics to support his mother, sisters and brothers. Nicholas Leikin published him at this period and owned Oskolki (splinters), the journal of Saint Petersburg. His subjected silly social situations, marital problems, and farcical encounters among husbands, wives, mistresses, and lust; even after his marriage, Chekhov, the shy author, knew not much of whims of young women.
Nenunzhaya pobeda , first novel of Chekhov, set in 1882 in Hungary, parodied the novels of the popular Mór Jókai. People also mocked ideological optimism of Jókai as a politician.
Chekhov graduated in 1884 and practiced medicine. He worked from 1885 in Peterburskaia gazeta.
In 1886, Chekhov met H.S. Suvorin, who invited him, a regular contributor, to work for Novoe vremya, the daily paper of Saint Petersburg. He gained a wide fame before 1886. He authored The Shooting Party , his second full-length novel, later translated into English. Agatha Christie used its characters and atmosphere in later her mystery novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd . First book of Chekhov in 1886 succeeded, and he gradually committed full time. The refusal of the author to join the ranks of social critics arose the wrath of liberal and radical intelligentsia, who criticized him for dealing with serious social and moral questions but avoiding giving answers. Such leaders as Leo Tolstoy and Nikolai Leskov, however, defended him. "I'm not a liberal, or a conservative, or a gradualist, or a monk, or an indifferentist. I should like to be a free artist and that's all..." Chekhov said in 1888.
The failure of The Wood Demon , play in 1889, and problems with novel made Chekhov to withdraw from literature for a period. In 1890, he traveled across Siberia to Sakhalin, remote prison island. He conducted a detailed census of ten thousand convicts and settlers, condemned to live on that harsh island. Chekhov expected to use the results of his research for his doctoral dissertation. Hard conditions on the island probably also weakened his own physical condition. From this journey came his famous travel book.
Chekhov practiced medicine until 1892. During these years, Chechov developed his concept of the dispassionate, non-judgmental author. He outlined his program in a letter to his brother Aleksandr: "1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality; flee the stereotype; 6. compassion." Because he objected that the paper conducted against Alfred Dreyfus, his friendship with Suvorin ended
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 10, 2015
“I am afraid of everything. I am not by nature a profound thinker, and I take little interest in such questions as the life beyond the grave, the destiny of humanity, and, in fact, I am rarely carried away to the heights. What chiefly frightens me is the common routine of life from which none of us can escape. I am incapable of distinguishing what is true and what is false in my actions, and they worry me. I recognize that education and the conditions of life have imprisoned me in a narrow circle of falsity, that my whole life is nothing else than a daily effort to deceive myself and other people, and to avoid noticing it; and I am frightened at the thought that to the day of my death I shall not escape from this falsity. To-day I do something and tomorrow I do not understand why I did it. I entered the service in Petersburg and took fright; I came here to work on the land, and here, too, I am frightened. . . . I see that we know very little and so make mistakes every day. We are unjust, we slander one another and spoil each other’s lives, we waste all our powers on trash which we do not need and which hinders us from living; and that frightens me, because I don’t understand why and for whom it is necessary. I don’t understand men, my dear fellow, and I am afraid of them. It frightens me to look at the peasants, and I don’t know for what higher objects they are suffering and what they are living for. If life is an enjoyment, then they are unnecessary, superfluous people; if the object and meaning of life is to be found in poverty and unending, hopeless ignorance, I can’t understand for whom and what this torture is necessary. "
September 27, 2025
The Kiss, Terror and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov
10 out of 10
Terror
"Reading Chekhov was just like the angels singing to me" -- Eudora Welty, 1977…indeed, unless one is reading Terror and the very name does not suggest angels singing – unless of course we are talking fallen angels, or Rebel Angels as in Azazel, Beelzebub – and for this reader, this narrative brought forth many truths, anxieties, une angoisse terrible, and made him think of a variety of incidents, clashes taking place at home – in other words, spoiler alert or/and disclaimer, this note might be about anything except the Chekhov Terror and I might not even get to The Kiss, though I intend to – given the propensity to digress and worse, talk of anything but the subject in question- incidentally, coming back from the end of this soliloquy, I must say that the tangent was not so off the object after all, in that I will not write about the infuriating wife, as I thought at the beginning of this nonsense- let me just give the synopsis of The Kiss…well, why we are at it, perhaps try my hand at both…in The Kiss, one woman has planned an intimate meeting and by accident, the one she kisses in the dark is not the man she had in mind, all with some serious consequences, for the Accidental Tourist, while in Terror, we have a tale of a man that is infatuated – with love we have to make extremely cautious, I mean when using the word, as indicated by Thomas Mann – with the wife of his friend and while he tries to resist the temptation for quite some time, following some revelations, the restrictions do not vanish, but there is a different light on the whole ménage a trois…
The narrator of Terror has a complicated relationship with Dmitri Petrovitch Silin- He was an intelligent, kind-hearted, genuine man, and not a bore, but I remember that when he confided to me his most treasured secrets and spoke of our relation to each other as friendship, it disturbed me unpleasantly, and I was conscious of awkwardness…in his affection for me there was something inappropriate, tiresome, and I should have greatly preferred commonplace friendly relations…’ but this is more complex because of the attraction that the story teller feels for the wife and the awkwardness it brings to the surface.
When he is alone with the spouse, the anxiety, desires, feeling of guilty and probably the sheer Terror that is in the title and hangs over the three people involved in this ménage a trois make him act strangely and thus the wife, Marya Sergeyevna, tells her guest that he is evidently bored without the husband present and later on she would remark that at least the visitor would feel much better in the company of Dmitri Petrovitch, while she is always without solace and joy…when the two friends talk, we will understand that Dmitri Petrovitch had asked Marya Sergeyevna to marry six times, only to be refused and eventually have her say ‘I will be faithful to you, though I do not love you and I will marry you’…
With time, Dmitri Petrovich has become very unhappy with the marital arrangements ‘Prince Hamlet did not kill himself because he was afraid of the visions that might haunt his dreams after death…I like that famous soliloquy of his, but, to be candid, it never touched my soul…I will confess to you as a friend that in moments of depression I have sometimes pictured to myself the hour of my death’ and he continues with a fabulous speech…
“I am afraid of everything. I am not by nature a profound thinker, and I take little interest in such questions as the life beyond the grave, the destiny of humanity, and, in fact, I am rarely carried away to the heights. What chiefly frightens me is the common routine of life from which none of us can escape. I am incapable of distinguishing what is true and what is false in my actions, and they worry me. I recognize that education and the conditions of life have imprisoned me in a narrow circle of falsity, that my whole life is nothing else than a daily effort to deceive myself and other people, and to avoid noticing it; and I am frightened at the thought that to the day of my death I shall not escape from this falsity. To-day I do something and to-morrow I do not understand why I did it. I entered the service in Petersburg and took fright; I came here to work on the land, and here, too, I am frightened. . . . I see that we know very little and so make mistakes every day. We are unjust, we slander one another and spoil each other’s lives, we waste all our powers on trash which we do not need and which hinders us from living; and that frightens me, because I don’t understand why and for whom it is necessary. I don’t understand men, my dear fellow, and I am afraid of them. It frightens me to look at the peasants, and I don’t know for what higher objects they are suffering and what they are living for. If life is an enjoyment, then they are unnecessary, superfluous people; if the object and meaning of life is to be found in poverty and unending, hopeless ignorance, I can’t understand for whom and what this torture is necessary. I understand no one and nothing. Kindly try to understand this specimen, for instance…’
There is so much in these confessions, anxieties, doubts that we could argue they represent universal issues, they go to the core of the Chekhov literature, but also art and humanity in general, asking metaphysical, but also simple questions, expressing a common Terror that we all have of…well, everything as the scared Dmitri Petrovich says, pointing eventually to a fellow called Forty Martyrs, who is a drunkard and outré personage, difficult to comprehend – the reference to the routine is striking – a luminary of positive psychology, Stefan Klein, indicates among the few secrets he ends with his divine book, The Science of Happiness, the need for Change, we should include different things in our routine, if it is only a different itinerary on the way back from work http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/10/t... and to be naughty, we could include the Coolidge Effect just for fun and you can google it to smile or laugh when finding about it
The notion of falsity in our life could not ring more true in the age of Qanon, conspiracy theories that have billions buy into all sorts of nonsense, from the idea that the pandemic is false, to the concept that leaders like Putin, Xi, Kim of NK, Bolsanaro and so many others are genuine, moral, decent, good people and the under signed is also trapped in a vicious circle, where he has to defend some evident statements and live under assault from a consort that would rather approve of all those who live in this gated community – and other places – no matter how much they embezzled, stole from the public purse to become rich…they and others like them are so much better than yours truly that it blows the mind away…returning to Terror, the wife of the grieving Dmitri Petrovich had been in love with his friend for a long time and though she had promised to be faithful – but what does that mean, when she had also confessed she had not loved him and refused his proposal of marriage five times – the friend of the wife will have carnal relations and what is more, or should we say worse, the friend returns for a cap and finds about it…
10 out of 10
Terror
"Reading Chekhov was just like the angels singing to me" -- Eudora Welty, 1977…indeed, unless one is reading Terror and the very name does not suggest angels singing – unless of course we are talking fallen angels, or Rebel Angels as in Azazel, Beelzebub – and for this reader, this narrative brought forth many truths, anxieties, une angoisse terrible, and made him think of a variety of incidents, clashes taking place at home – in other words, spoiler alert or/and disclaimer, this note might be about anything except the Chekhov Terror and I might not even get to The Kiss, though I intend to – given the propensity to digress and worse, talk of anything but the subject in question- incidentally, coming back from the end of this soliloquy, I must say that the tangent was not so off the object after all, in that I will not write about the infuriating wife, as I thought at the beginning of this nonsense- let me just give the synopsis of The Kiss…well, why we are at it, perhaps try my hand at both…in The Kiss, one woman has planned an intimate meeting and by accident, the one she kisses in the dark is not the man she had in mind, all with some serious consequences, for the Accidental Tourist, while in Terror, we have a tale of a man that is infatuated – with love we have to make extremely cautious, I mean when using the word, as indicated by Thomas Mann – with the wife of his friend and while he tries to resist the temptation for quite some time, following some revelations, the restrictions do not vanish, but there is a different light on the whole ménage a trois…
The narrator of Terror has a complicated relationship with Dmitri Petrovitch Silin- He was an intelligent, kind-hearted, genuine man, and not a bore, but I remember that when he confided to me his most treasured secrets and spoke of our relation to each other as friendship, it disturbed me unpleasantly, and I was conscious of awkwardness…in his affection for me there was something inappropriate, tiresome, and I should have greatly preferred commonplace friendly relations…’ but this is more complex because of the attraction that the story teller feels for the wife and the awkwardness it brings to the surface.
When he is alone with the spouse, the anxiety, desires, feeling of guilty and probably the sheer Terror that is in the title and hangs over the three people involved in this ménage a trois make him act strangely and thus the wife, Marya Sergeyevna, tells her guest that he is evidently bored without the husband present and later on she would remark that at least the visitor would feel much better in the company of Dmitri Petrovitch, while she is always without solace and joy…when the two friends talk, we will understand that Dmitri Petrovitch had asked Marya Sergeyevna to marry six times, only to be refused and eventually have her say ‘I will be faithful to you, though I do not love you and I will marry you’…
With time, Dmitri Petrovich has become very unhappy with the marital arrangements ‘Prince Hamlet did not kill himself because he was afraid of the visions that might haunt his dreams after death…I like that famous soliloquy of his, but, to be candid, it never touched my soul…I will confess to you as a friend that in moments of depression I have sometimes pictured to myself the hour of my death’ and he continues with a fabulous speech…
“I am afraid of everything. I am not by nature a profound thinker, and I take little interest in such questions as the life beyond the grave, the destiny of humanity, and, in fact, I am rarely carried away to the heights. What chiefly frightens me is the common routine of life from which none of us can escape. I am incapable of distinguishing what is true and what is false in my actions, and they worry me. I recognize that education and the conditions of life have imprisoned me in a narrow circle of falsity, that my whole life is nothing else than a daily effort to deceive myself and other people, and to avoid noticing it; and I am frightened at the thought that to the day of my death I shall not escape from this falsity. To-day I do something and to-morrow I do not understand why I did it. I entered the service in Petersburg and took fright; I came here to work on the land, and here, too, I am frightened. . . . I see that we know very little and so make mistakes every day. We are unjust, we slander one another and spoil each other’s lives, we waste all our powers on trash which we do not need and which hinders us from living; and that frightens me, because I don’t understand why and for whom it is necessary. I don’t understand men, my dear fellow, and I am afraid of them. It frightens me to look at the peasants, and I don’t know for what higher objects they are suffering and what they are living for. If life is an enjoyment, then they are unnecessary, superfluous people; if the object and meaning of life is to be found in poverty and unending, hopeless ignorance, I can’t understand for whom and what this torture is necessary. I understand no one and nothing. Kindly try to understand this specimen, for instance…’
There is so much in these confessions, anxieties, doubts that we could argue they represent universal issues, they go to the core of the Chekhov literature, but also art and humanity in general, asking metaphysical, but also simple questions, expressing a common Terror that we all have of…well, everything as the scared Dmitri Petrovich says, pointing eventually to a fellow called Forty Martyrs, who is a drunkard and outré personage, difficult to comprehend – the reference to the routine is striking – a luminary of positive psychology, Stefan Klein, indicates among the few secrets he ends with his divine book, The Science of Happiness, the need for Change, we should include different things in our routine, if it is only a different itinerary on the way back from work http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/10/t... and to be naughty, we could include the Coolidge Effect just for fun and you can google it to smile or laugh when finding about it
The notion of falsity in our life could not ring more true in the age of Qanon, conspiracy theories that have billions buy into all sorts of nonsense, from the idea that the pandemic is false, to the concept that leaders like Putin, Xi, Kim of NK, Bolsanaro and so many others are genuine, moral, decent, good people and the under signed is also trapped in a vicious circle, where he has to defend some evident statements and live under assault from a consort that would rather approve of all those who live in this gated community – and other places – no matter how much they embezzled, stole from the public purse to become rich…they and others like them are so much better than yours truly that it blows the mind away…returning to Terror, the wife of the grieving Dmitri Petrovich had been in love with his friend for a long time and though she had promised to be faithful – but what does that mean, when she had also confessed she had not loved him and refused his proposal of marriage five times – the friend of the wife will have carnal relations and what is more, or should we say worse, the friend returns for a cap and finds about it…
March 31, 2017
Сюжет с ужасно неприятной ситуацией...
И уверен, что единой оценки ситуации тут дать невозможно. Но тем не менее Антон Павлович Чехов очень точно подобрал название. А что касается английского перевода названия рассказа, то считаю его уж слишком радикальным.
И уверен, что единой оценки ситуации тут дать невозможно. Но тем не менее Антон Павлович Чехов очень точно подобрал название. А что касается английского перевода названия рассказа, то считаю его уж слишком радикальным.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews