“to be inactive, means to listen to, involuntarily, what they are saying and to see what they are doing. The one who is busy to work, he can hear and see little.”
Anton Chekhov’s Note-Books
Contemporary Taboo
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About Lack of Logic
“People love talking of their diseases, although they are the most uninteresting things in their lives.”
“Love, friendship, respect do not unite people as much as common hatred for something.”
“A man and woman marry because both of them don’t know what to do with themselves.”
“A radical lady, who crosses herself at night, is secretly full of prejudice and superstition, hears that in order to be happy one should boil a black cat by night. She steals a cat and tries to boil it.”
“He learnt Swedish in order to study Ibsen, spent a lot of time and trouble, and suddenly realized that Ibsen is not important. He could not conceive what use he could now make of the Swedish language.”
Anton Chekhov’s Note-Books
Starlings
“Starling nest is near every hut; on the fence or in the birch tree, and so low that you can reach it with hand. Starlings here are pleased with common love and even cats do not touch them.”
“Across Siberia” by Anton Chekhov
What a charming idyll!
But my mistress, if you want to have cherry preserves, think about a bird net to keep starlings off cherry trees.
About Fugitives
A man, unfortunately, often perceives the surrounding in which he is fated to live, as the prison. So he is escaping from this imprisonment.
Prisoners of Sakhalin Island also were breaking free.
“It is happening that fugitives, not knowing where the north is, start circulating, and go back to that place which they left.”
“Sakhalin Island” by Anton Chekhov
It works very similarly to the ones who are run away from their own reality. They are losing direction and coming back to the previous place. They are wasting a lot of things on the way. The prisoners of Sakhalin Island did not know where the north was. The prisoners of the life do not know their own direction and therefore they do not manage to get the result they want. A good or a truth, or a faith can be this direction. Every factor which creates good energy can be this direction. So, in order to run away from one’s imprisonment, one should make only these choices which are close to God.
About Lie
“To get rid of heavy work or corporal punishment, and get yourself a piece of bread and a pinch of tea, salt, tobacco, exiled resorts to deception, as experience has shown him that fraud is the most correct and reliable means in the struggle for the existence.”
“Sakhalin Island” by Anton Chekhov
But what if someone doesn’t want to lie or doesn’t know how to tell a lie?
Saying
“Every ugly thing sooner or later is flowing to the top, it becomes naked.”
“Sakhalin Island” by Anton Chekhov
About Children
“(…) in spite of all colonization considerations, the proximity of children to parents has moral support for exiles; and keeps more alive than anything else, reminds them of their native Russian village. In addition, the care for children saves the exiled woman from idleness; (…)”
“(…) the most useful, the most necessary and most pleasant people on the island – these are children, and the exiles are well aware of this and appreciate them. In the rough, morally worn out Sakhalin family children bring the element of tenderness, purity, humility and joy. Despite their innocence, most of all in the world they love their vicious mother and thug-father. And if the exile, deprived of love in a prison, become emotional at the sight of the affectionate dog, what price should be love of a child for him.”
“(…) now I will add that children often constitute the only thing that still attaches the exiled men and women to a life, saves from despair, from the final fall.”
“Sakhalin Island” by Anton Chekhov
An old people’s home is a creation much worse than Sakhalin Island. There are no children in it. The behaviour of humans in old people’s homes is repulsive, not on account of the old age but lack of relation with children.
