Dear Publisher:⁠— You have asked me to furnish you with data concerning my life and literary activities. Permit me to repeat what I have already told my French publishers in answer to a similar reques...

The great-grandfather of the Krasoffs, known by the manor-house servants under the nickname of “The Gipsy,” was hunted with wolfhounds by Cavalry Captain Durnovo. The Gipsy had lured his lord-and-mast...

The great-grandfather of the Krasoffs, known by the manor-house servants under the nickname of “The Gipsy,” was hunted with wolfhounds by Cavalry Captain Durnovo. The Gipsy had lured his lord-and-mast...

By the time Tikhon Hitch was about forty years of age his beard resembled silver with patterns of black enamel. But he was handsome and tall, with a fine figure, as before. He was austere and swarthy ...

The abandonment of his hope of having children and the closing of the dram-shops by the government were great events. Tikhon visibly aged when there no longer remained any doubt that he was not to bec...

During the Fast of St. Peter Tikhon Ilitch spent four days in the town at the Fair and got still more out of tune, thanks to his worries, the heat, and sleepless nights. Ordinarily he set out for the ...

On a hot, sunny morning Tikhon Ilitch started homeward through the big Old Town. First he drove through the town and the bazaar, past the cathedral, across the shallow little river, which reeked with ...

No one ever drove on the highway which ran past the cemetery and lost itself among the rolling fields. Now and then some light-footed tramp straggled along it⁠—some young fellow in a faded pink shirt ...

From that Fast of St. Peter, that memorable trip to the Fair, Tikhon Ilitch began to drink frequently⁠—not to the point of downright drunkenness, but to the stage at which his face became passably red...

His living-rooms, the kitchen, the shop, and the granary, where formerly his liquor-trade had been carried on, constituted a single mass under one iron roof. On three sides the straw-thatched sheds of...

But the “order” came, at last. One Sunday a rumour began to circulate in Durnovka that the village assembly had worked out a plan for an attack upon the manor. With maliciously merry eyes, a feeling o...

Rodka, a tall, thin, sullen young fellow from Ulianovka, had gone two years previously to live with Fedot, the brother of Yakoff; he had married, and had buried Fedot, who had died from over-drinking ...

Accident came to the rescue of Tikhon Ilitch. Quite unexpectedly he became reconciled to his brother, and persuaded him to undertake the management of Durnovka. He had learned from an acquaintance in ...

Nevertheless, after establishing his brother at Durnovka he set about singing that song with more gusto than ever. Before placing Durnovka in his brother’s hands, he had picked a quarrel with Rodka ov...

The samovar had long since grown cold, the candle had guttered down, smoke hung over the room in a dull blue cloud, the slop-basin was filled to the very brim with soggy, reeking cigarette butts. The ...

He was immersed to the throat in business⁠—as usual⁠—and he had no one to help him. Nastasya Petrovna was of very little assistance. Tikhon Ilitch never hired any labourers except “summer-workers” who...

During the night the rain poured down again, and it was so dark you could not see your hand before your face. Tikhon Ilitch slept badly and gritted his teeth in torture. He had a chill⁠—evidently he h...

In the tiny anteroom he pushed aside with his foot a heavy, dirty horsecloth which lay across the threshold and went to one corner, where, over a stool surmounted by a pewter basin, a brass washstand ...

The faces gazed out in complete immobility from their shell-work frames. Here was a scene which had never taken place and could not take place: In the field, amid the thick-growing rye, lay two person...

He began to feel drowsy, thanks to the vodka, what he had eaten, and his incoherent thoughts. Without undressing, merely pulling his muddy boots off by the simple expedient of rubbing one foot against...

It was growing dark, the thick layers of clouds were turning blue and cold, and there was a touch of winter in the air. The mud was congealing. Having got rid of Makarka, Tikhon Ilitch stamped his fro...

Mechanically Tikhon Ilitch threw his greatcoat on over his jacket, thrust his feet into overshoes, and went out on the porch. On emerging he inhaled a deep breath of fresh air in the bluish early wint...

The railway station was permeated with the odours of wet sheepskin coats, the samovar, cheap tobacco, and kerosene. The smoke was so dense that it gripped one’s throat; the lamps hardly shone through ...

They rambled about the stable with a lantern, illuminating the coagulated manure, the straw scattered all about, the mangers, the posts; casting immense shadows, waking up the fowls on the roosts unde...

Almost all his life long Kuzma had dreamed of writing, of obtaining an education. Verses did not count. He had dallied with verses as a mere child. He longed to narrate how he had come to naught; to d...

Almost all his life long Kuzma had dreamed of writing, of obtaining an education. Verses did not count. He had dallied with verses as a mere child. He longed to narrate how he had come to naught; to d...

Abandoning the shop counter, and having sold off what their mother had left, they had begun to trade⁠—had gone out among the Little Russians, and to Voronezh. They were frequently in their native town...

Kuzma crossed himself with a grand flourish when, at last, he escaped from that slavery. But he was already nearly thirty years of age; his hair was noticeably grey; he had become more sober, more ser...

But since that time twelve more barren years had elapsed. He had plied the trade of horse-dealer in Voronezh; then, when the woman with whom he had been living died of puerperal fever, he had carried ...

In the spring, several months before the reconciliation with Tikhon, Kuzma heard that a garden in the village of Kazakoff, in his native district, was to be leased, and he hastened thither. It was a r...

In former days conversation in the railway carriages had turned exclusively on the rain and the drought, on the fact that “God fixes the price for grain.” Now, the sheets of newspapers rustled in the ...

He alighted at the fourth station and hired a conveyance. At first the peasant drivers demanded seven rubles⁠—it was twelve versts to Kazakovo⁠—then they came down to five and a half. At last one of t...

The small forest which lay blue against the horizon consisted of two long ravines thickly overgrown with oak-trees. It was known by the name of Portotchka. Near this Portotchka Kuzma was overtaken by ...

Kuzma spent the evening and the night in the garden, in the old bathhouse. The superintendent, on arriving from the fields on horseback, had remarked angrily that the garden had been “leased long ago,...

There, breathing with his whistling breath, he lighted the lamp, and the hut assumed a cosy air. Then he fished out spoons from some niche close under the roof, threw them on the table, and shouted: “...

He had passed the summer waiting for a place. That night, in the orchard at Kazakovo, it became clear to him that his dreams of orchards were foolish. On his return to the town, after carefully thinki...

The estate at Durnovka was arranged after the plan of a farm. In fact, it had originally borne precisely that title. Durnovo had owned several estates and had occupied the chief of them, the one at Zu...

The estate at Durnovka was arranged after the plan of a farm. In fact, it had originally borne precisely that title. Durnovo had owned several estates and had occupied the chief of them, the one at Zu...

Opposite the house, with their rear to Durnovka, to the wide ravine, stood the storehouses. From the porch, half of the village was visible, and beyond the storehouses the pond and a part of the promo...

The promontory and Durnovka lived in a state of perpetual enmity and mutual disdain, as adjoining villages always do. The promontory dwellers regarded the Durnovka folk in the light of bandits and beg...

The village was deserted. Many had gone away to work on the clover. Trifon had died in mid-August, at Assumption-tide⁠—he had choked himself, as he broke the fast, on a bit of raw ham. At the beginnin...

Syery was being wasted, in vain, this year also. He had sat at home all winter long, with careworn countenance, without light, cold and hungry. During the Great Fast (Lent), he had managed somehow or ...

“Well, that was a fine tale!” Kuzma meditated within himself, for a long time after that evening. And the weather turned bad, to boot. He did not feel like writing; his melancholy increased in strengt...

The long, snowy winter set in. The plain, gleaming palely white beneath a bluish lowering sky, appeared broader, more spacious, and even more deserted than ever. The cottages, sheds, bushes, grain-ric...

The most unpleasant thing in the morning was⁠—washing oneself. A frosty atmosphere was brought into the anteroom with the straw; ice that was like broken glass floated in the washbasin. Kuzma sometime...

During the Christmas holidays Ivanushka, from Basovka, dropped in to see Kuzma. He was an old-fashioned peasant who had grown foolish from old age, although once on a time he had been renowned for his...

Kuzma lay in his bed for almost a month, because of Ivanushka. On Epiphany morning people declared that a bird would freeze stiff as it flew, and Kuzma did not even possess felt boots. Nevertheless, h...

One day he awakened very late and, feeling neither weakness nor trembling in his legs, sat up to drink his tea. The day was overcast, warm, and much snow had fallen. Syery passed the window, making on...

Tikhon Ilitch was at home. In a Russian shirt of cotton print, huge and powerful, swarthy of countenance, with white beard and grey frowning brows, he was sitting with the samovar and brewing himself ...

During those days snow fell, and they were only waiting for that snow at Syery’s farmstead, so that the road might be in order for the celebration of the wedding. On the twelfth of February, towards e...

After he had dined he smoked and looked out of the window. It had grown dark. He knew that in the servants’ wing they were already baking the twisted buns of rye flour⁠—the “ceremonial patties.” They ...

When morning came the blizzard was still raging. In that grey whirling tempest neither Durnovka nor the windmill on the promontory was visible. Once in a while it grew brighter, once in a while the li...

A verst is two-thirds of a mile. ↩ This muddling of “Emir of Bukhara” is only one example of the ignorant combinations and locutions used by the peasant characters. ↩ A play on words, “tar” in the sec...