Anton Chekhov - a man in a case. Anton Chekhov - man in a case Man in a case complete work

Man in a case

At the very edge of the village of Mironositsky, in the barn of the elder Prokofy, the belated hunters settled down for the night. There were only two of them: the veterinarian Ivan Ivanovich and the gymnasium teacher Burkin. Ivan Ivanovich had a rather strange double surname- Chimsha-Himalayan, which did not suit him at all, and throughout the entire province they called him simply by his first name and patronymic; he lived near the city at a horse farm and now came to hunt to breathe clean air. The gymnasium teacher Burkin visited Counts P. every summer and in this area had long been his own man.

We didn't sleep. Ivan Ivanovich, a tall, thin old man with a long mustache, was sitting outside at the entrance and smoking a pipe; the moon illuminated him. Burkin lay inside on the hay, and he was not visible in the darkness.

They told different stories. Among other things, they said that the headman’s wife, Mavra, a healthy and not stupid woman, had never been anywhere further than her native village in her entire life, had never seen either the city or railway, and in the last ten years I kept sitting behind the stove and only went out at night.

What's surprising here! - said Burkin. - There are quite a few people in this world who are lonely by nature, who, like a shell cancer or a snail, try to retreat into their shell. Perhaps this is a phenomenon of atavism, a return to the time when the ancestor of man was not yet a social animal and lived alone in his den, or maybe this is just one of the varieties human character, - who knows? I am not a natural scientist and it is not my place to touch upon such issues; I just want to say that people like Mavra are not a rare occurrence. Well, it’s not far to look, two months ago a certain Belikov, a Greek language teacher, my friend, died in our city. You've heard about him, of course. He was remarkable in that he always, even in very good weather, went out in galoshes and with an umbrella, and certainly in a warm coat with cotton wool. And he had an umbrella in a case, and a watch in a gray suede case, and when he took out a penknife to sharpen a pencil, his knife was also in a case; and his face, it seemed, was also in a cover, since he kept hiding it in his raised collar. He wore sunglasses, sweatshirt, stuffed his ears with cotton wool, and when he got on the cab, he ordered the top to be raised. In a word, this man had a constant and irresistible desire to surround himself with a shell, to create for himself, so to speak, a case that would seclude him and protect him from external influences. Reality irritated him, frightened him, kept him in constant anxiety, and, perhaps, in order to justify this timidity of his, his aversion to the present, he always praised the past and what never happened; and the ancient languages ​​that he taught were for him, in essence, the same galoshes and an umbrella where he hid from real life.

Oh, how sonorous, how beautiful Greek! - he said with a sweet expression; and, as if to prove his words, narrowing his eye and raising his finger, he said: “Anthropos!”

And Belikov also tried to hide his thought in a case. The only things that were clear to him were circulars and newspaper articles in which something was prohibited. When a circular forbade students from going out after nine o'clock in the evening, or some article prohibited carnal love, then this was clear and definite to him; prohibited - that's it. In permission and permission there was always hidden for him an element of doubt, something unsaid and vague. When a drama club, or a reading room, or a tea house was allowed in the city, he shook his head and said quietly:

It is, of course, so and so, all this is wonderful, but no matter what happens.

All kinds of violations, evasions, deviations from the rules made him despondent, although, it would seem, why should he care? If one of his comrades was late for a prayer service, or heard rumors about some mischief among schoolchildren, or saw a classy lady late at night with an officer, then he was very worried and kept saying as if something would not happen. And at the pedagogical councils, he simply oppressed us with his caution, suspiciousness and his purely case-based considerations about the fact that in men's and women's gymnasiums young people behave badly, are very noisy in the classrooms - oh, as if it didn’t reach the authorities, oh , as if something would not happen - and that if Petrov were excluded from the second class, and Egorov from the fourth, then it would be very good. So what? With your sighs, your whining, your dark glasses on the pale, small face, - you know, with a small face like a ferret, - he crushed us all, and we gave in, lowered Petrov and Egorov’s point for behavior, put them under arrest and in the end expelled both Petrov and Egorov. He had a strange habit of walking around our apartments. He will come to the teacher, sit down and be silent, as if he is looking out for something. He’ll sit there silently for an hour or two and leave. He called this “maintaining good relations with comrades,” and, obviously, coming to us and sitting was difficult for him, and he came to us only because he considered it his comradely duty. We teachers were afraid of him. And even the director was afraid. Come on, our teachers are thoughtful people, deeply decent, brought up on Turgenev and Shchedrin, but this little man, who always wore galoshes and an umbrella, held the entire gymnasium in his hands for fifteen years! What about high school? The whole city! Our ladies didn’t give home performances on Saturdays, they were afraid that he might find out; and the clergy were embarrassed to eat meat and play cards in his presence. Under the influence of people like Belikov, over the last ten to fifteen years people in our city have become afraid of everything. They are afraid to speak loudly, send letters, make new acquaintances, read books, are afraid to help the poor, teach them to read and write...

Ivan Ivanovich, wanting to say something, coughed, but first he lit his pipe, looked at the moon and then said deliberately:

Yes. Thinking, decent people read Shchedrin, Turgenev, various Bokleys and so on, but they obeyed, endured... That’s what it is.

Belikov lived in the same house where I lived,” Burkin continued, “on the same floor, door opposite door, we often saw each other, and I knew his home life. And at home it’s the same story: robe, cap, shutters, latches, a whole series all sorts of prohibitions, restrictions, and - oh, no matter what happens! It is harmful to eat fast food, but it is impossible to eat fast food, because, perhaps, they will say that Belikov does not fast, and he ate pike perch in cow butter - the food is not fast, but it cannot be said that it is fast. He did not keep female servants out of fear that they would think badly of him, but kept the cook Afanasy, an old man of about sixty, drunk and half-witted, who had once served as an orderly and knew how to cook somehow. This Afanasy usually stood at the door, arms crossed, and always muttered the same thing, with a deep sigh:

There are a lot of them now divorced!

Belikov's bedroom was small, like a box, the bed had a curtain. When he went to bed, he covered his head; it was hot, stuffy, closed doors the wind knocked, the stove hummed; sighs were heard from the kitchen, ominous sighs...

And he was scared under the blanket. He was afraid that something might not happen, that Afanasy might stab him, that thieves might get in, and then he had anxious dreams all night, and in the morning, when we went to the gymnasium together, he was bored, pale, and it was clear that the crowded gymnasium to which he was going was terrible, disgusting to his whole being, and it was hard for him, a lonely man by nature, to walk next to me.

They make a lot of noise in our classes,” he said, as if trying to find an explanation for his difficult feeling. - It doesn't look like anything.

And this Greek teacher, this man in a case, you can imagine, almost got married.

Ivan Ivanovich quickly looked back into the barn and said:

Yes, I almost got married, oddly enough. They appointed us a new history and geography teacher, a certain Kovalenko, Mikhail Savvich, from the crests. He came not alone, but with his sister Varenka. He is young, tall, dark, with huge hands, and you can see from his face that he speaks in a bass voice, and in fact, his voice is like from a barrel: boo-boo-boo... And she is no longer young, about thirty, but also tall and slender , black-browed, red-cheeked - in a word, not a girl, but marmalade, and so broken, noisy, she keeps singing Little Russian romances and laughing. As soon as he bursts into loud laughter: ha-ha-ha! I remember our first, thorough acquaintance with Kovalenki took place at the director’s name day. Among the stern, intensely boring teachers who go to name days as a duty, we suddenly see

At the very edge of the village of Mironositsky, in the barn of the elder Prokofy, the belated hunters settled down for the night. There were only two of them: the veterinarian Ivan Ivanovich and the gymnasium teacher Burkin. Ivan Ivanovich had a rather strange, double surname - Chimsha-Himalaysky, which did not suit him at all, and throughout the entire province they called him simply by his first and patronymic; he lived near the city at a horse farm and now came to hunt to breathe clean air. The gymnasium teacher Burkin visited Counts P. every summer and in this area had long been his own man.

We didn't sleep. Ivan Ivanovich, a tall, thin old man with a long mustache, was sitting outside at the entrance and smoking a pipe; the moon illuminated him. Burkin lay inside on the hay, and he was not visible in the darkness.

They told different stories. Among other things, they said that the headman’s wife, Mavra, a healthy and not stupid woman, had never been anywhere further than her native village in her entire life, had never seen either a city or a railway, and in the last ten years she had always sat at the stove and I only went out at night.

What's surprising here! - said Burkin. - There are quite a few people in this world who are lonely by nature, who, like a shell crab or a snail, try to retreat into their shell. Perhaps this is a phenomenon of atavism, a return to the time when the ancestor of man was not yet a social animal and lived alone in his den, or maybe this is just one of the varieties of human character - who knows? I am not a natural scientist and it is not my place to touch upon such issues; I just want to say that people like Mavra are not a rare occurrence. Well, it’s not far to look, two months ago a certain Belikov, a teacher of the Greek language, my friend, died in our city. You've heard about him, of course. He was remarkable in that he always, even in very good weather, went out in galoshes and with an umbrella and certainly in a warm coat with cotton wool. And he had an umbrella in a case, and a watch in a gray suede case, and when he took out a penknife to sharpen a pencil, his knife was also in a case; and his face, it seemed, was also in a cover, since he kept hiding it in his raised collar. He wore dark glasses, a sweatshirt, stuffed his ears with cotton wool, and when he got on the cab, he ordered the top to be raised. In a word, this man had a constant and irresistible desire to surround himself with a shell, to create for himself, so to speak, a case that would seclude him and protect him from external influences. Reality irritated him, frightened him, kept him in constant anxiety, and, perhaps, in order to justify this timidity of his, his aversion to the present, he always praised the past and what never happened; and the ancient languages ​​that he taught were for him, in essence, the same galoshes and umbrella where he hid from real life.

Oh, how sonorous, how beautiful the Greek language is! - he said with a sweet expression; and, as if to prove his words, narrowing his eye and raising his finger, he said: “Anthropos!”

And Belikov also tried to hide his thought in a case. The only things that were clear to him were circulars and newspaper articles in which something was prohibited. When a circular forbade students from going out after nine o'clock in the evening, or some article prohibited carnal love, then this was clear and definite to him; prohibited - that's it. In permission and permission there was always hidden for him an element of doubt, something unsaid and vague. When a drama club, or a reading room, or a tea house was allowed in the city, he shook his head and said quietly:

It is, of course, so and so, all this is wonderful, but no matter what happens.

All kinds of violations, evasions, deviations from the rules made him despondent, although, it would seem, why should he care? If one of his comrades was late for a prayer service, or heard rumors about some mischief among schoolchildren, or saw a classy lady late at night with an officer, then he was very worried and kept saying as if something would not happen. And at the pedagogical councils, he simply oppressed us with his caution, suspiciousness and his purely case-based considerations about the fact that in men's and women's gymnasiums young people behave badly, are very noisy in the classrooms - oh, as if it didn’t reach the authorities, oh , as if something would not happen - and that if Petrov were excluded from the second class, and Egorov from the fourth, then it would be very good. So what? With his sighs, his whining, his dark glasses on his pale, small face - you know, his small face, like a ferret's - he crushed us all, and we gave in, reduced Petrov and Egorov's score for behavior, put them under arrest and in the end both Petrov and Egorov were excluded. He had a strange habit of walking around our apartments. He will come to the teacher, sit down and be silent, as if he is looking out for something. He’ll sit there silently for an hour or two and leave. He called this “maintaining good relations with comrades,” and, obviously, coming to us and sitting was difficult for him, and he came to us only because he considered it his comradely duty. We teachers were afraid of him. And even the director was afraid. Come on, our teachers are thoughtful people, deeply decent, brought up on Turgenev and Shchedrin, but this little man, who always wore galoshes and an umbrella, held the entire gymnasium in his hands for fifteen years! What about high school? The whole city! Our ladies didn’t give home performances on Saturdays, they were afraid that he might find out; and the clergy were embarrassed to eat meat and play cards in his presence. Under the influence of people like Belikov, over the last ten to fifteen years people in our city have become afraid of everything. They are afraid to speak loudly, send letters, make new acquaintances, read books, are afraid to help the poor, teach them to read and write...

Ivan Ivanovich, wanting to say something, coughed, but first he lit his pipe, looked at the moon and then said deliberately:

Yes. Thinking, decent people read Shchedrin, Turgenev, various Bokleys and so on, but they obeyed, endured... That’s what it is.

Man in a case

At the very edge of the village of Mironositsky, in the barn of the elder Prokofy, the belated hunters settled down for the night. There were only two of them: the veterinarian Ivan Ivanovich and the gymnasium teacher Burkin. Ivan Ivanovich had a rather strange, double surname - Chimsha-Himalaysky, which did not suit him at all, and throughout the entire province they called him simply by his first and patronymic; he lived near the city at a horse farm and now came to hunt to breathe clean air. The gymnasium teacher Burkin visited Counts P. every summer and in this area had long been his own man.

We didn't sleep. Ivan Ivanovich, a tall, thin old man with a long mustache, was sitting outside at the entrance and smoking a pipe; the moon illuminated him. Burkin lay inside on the hay, and he was not visible in the darkness.

They told different stories. Among other things, they said that the headman’s wife, Mavra, a healthy and not stupid woman, had never been anywhere further than her native village in her entire life, had never seen either a city or a railway, and in the last ten years she had always sat at the stove and I only went out at night.

What's surprising here! - said Burkin. - There are quite a few people in this world who are lonely by nature, who, like a shell crab or a snail, try to retreat into their shell. Perhaps this is a phenomenon of atavism, a return to the time when the ancestor of man was not yet a social animal and lived alone in his den, or maybe this is just one of the varieties of human character - who knows? I am not a natural scientist and it is not my place to touch upon such issues; I just want to say that people like Mavra are not a rare occurrence. Well, it’s not far to look, two months ago a certain Belikov, a teacher of the Greek language, my friend, died in our city. You've heard about him, of course. He was remarkable in that he always, even in very good weather, went out in galoshes and with an umbrella and certainly in a warm coat with cotton wool. And he had an umbrella in a case, and a watch in a gray suede case, and when he took out a penknife to sharpen a pencil, his knife was also in a case; and his face, it seemed, was also in a cover, since he kept hiding it in his raised collar. He wore dark glasses, a sweatshirt, stuffed his ears with cotton wool, and when he got on the cab, he ordered the top to be raised. In a word, this man had a constant and irresistible desire to surround himself with a shell, to create for himself, so to speak, a case that would seclude him and protect him from external influences. Reality irritated him, frightened him, kept him in constant anxiety, and, perhaps, in order to justify this timidity of his, his aversion to the present, he always praised the past and what never happened; and the ancient languages ​​that he taught were for him, in essence, the same galoshes and umbrella where he hid from real life.

Oh, how sonorous, how beautiful the Greek language is! - he said with a sweet expression; and, as if to prove his words, narrowing his eye and raising his finger, he said: “Anthropos!”

And Belikov also tried to hide his thought in a case. The only things that were clear to him were circulars and newspaper articles in which something was prohibited. When a circular forbade students from going out after nine o'clock in the evening, or some article prohibited carnal love, then this was clear and definite to him; prohibited - that's it. In permission and permission there was always hidden for him an element of doubt, something unsaid and vague. When a drama club, or a reading room, or a tea house was allowed in the city, he shook his head and said quietly:

It is, of course, so and so, all this is wonderful, but no matter what happens.

All kinds of violations, evasions, deviations from the rules made him despondent, although, it would seem, why should he care? If one of his comrades was late for a prayer service, or heard rumors about some mischief among schoolchildren, or saw a classy lady late at night with an officer, then he was very worried and kept saying as if something would not happen. And at the pedagogical councils, he simply oppressed us with his caution, suspiciousness and his purely case-based considerations about the fact that in men's and women's gymnasiums young people behave badly, are very noisy in the classrooms - oh, as if it didn’t reach the authorities, oh , as if something would not happen - and that if Petrov were excluded from the second class, and Egorov from the fourth, then it would be very good. So what? With his sighs, his whining, his dark glasses on his pale, small face - you know, his small face, like a ferret's - he crushed us all, and we gave in, reduced Petrov and Egorov's score for behavior, put them under arrest and in the end both Petrov and Egorov were excluded. He had a strange habit of walking around our apartments. He will come to the teacher, sit down and be silent, as if he is looking out for something. He’ll sit there silently for an hour or two and leave. He called this “maintaining good relations with comrades,” and, obviously, coming to us and sitting was difficult for him, and he came to us only because he considered it his comradely duty. We teachers were afraid of him. And even the director was afraid. Come on, our teachers are thoughtful people, deeply decent, brought up on Turgenev and Shchedrin, but this little man, who always wore galoshes and an umbrella, held the entire gymnasium in his hands for fifteen years! What about high school? The whole city! Our ladies didn’t give home performances on Saturdays, they were afraid that he might find out; and the clergy were embarrassed to eat meat and play cards in his presence. Under the influence of people like Belikov, over the last ten to fifteen years people in our city have become afraid of everything. They are afraid to speak loudly, send letters, make new acquaintances, read books, are afraid to help the poor, teach them to read and write...

Ivan Ivanovich, wanting to say something, coughed, but first he lit his pipe, looked at the moon and then said deliberately:

Yes. Thinking, decent people read Shchedrin, Turgenev, various Bokleys and so on, but they obeyed, endured... That’s what it is.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Man in a case

At the very edge of the village of Mironositsky, in the barn of the elder Prokofy, the belated hunters settled down for the night. There were only two of them: the veterinarian Ivan Ivanovich and the gymnasium teacher Burkin. Ivan Ivanovich had a rather strange, double surname - Chimsha-Himalaysky, which did not suit him at all, and throughout the entire province they called him simply by his first and patronymic; he lived near the city at a horse farm and now came to hunt to breathe clean air. The gymnasium teacher Burkin visited Counts P. every summer and in this area had long been his own man.

We didn't sleep. Ivan Ivanovich, a tall, thin old man with a long mustache, was sitting outside at the entrance and smoking a pipe; the moon illuminated him. Burkin lay inside on the hay, and he was not visible in the darkness.

They told different stories. Among other things, they said that the headman’s wife, Mavra, a healthy and not stupid woman, had never been anywhere further than her native village in her entire life, had never seen either a city or a railway, and in the last ten years she had always sat at the stove and I only went out at night.

What's surprising here! - said Burkin. - There are quite a few people in this world who are lonely by nature, who, like a shell crab or a snail, try to retreat into their shell. Perhaps this is a phenomenon of atavism, a return to the time when the ancestor of man was not yet a social animal and lived alone in his den, or maybe this is just one of the varieties of human character - who knows? I am not a natural scientist and it is not my place to touch upon such issues; I just want to say that people like Mavra are not a rare occurrence. Well, it’s not far to look, two months ago a certain Belikov, a teacher of the Greek language, my friend, died in our city. You've heard about him, of course. He was remarkable in that he always, even in very good weather, went out in galoshes and with an umbrella and certainly in a warm coat with cotton wool. And he had an umbrella in a case, and a watch in a gray suede case, and when he took out a penknife to sharpen a pencil, his knife was also in a case; and his face, it seemed, was also in a cover, since he kept hiding it in his raised collar. He wore dark glasses, a sweatshirt, stuffed his ears with cotton wool, and when he got on the cab, he ordered the top to be raised. In a word, this man had a constant and irresistible desire to surround himself with a shell, to create for himself, so to speak, a case that would seclude him and protect him from external influences. Reality irritated him, frightened him, kept him in constant anxiety, and, perhaps, in order to justify this timidity of his, his aversion to the present, he always praised the past and what never happened; and the ancient languages ​​that he taught were for him, in essence, the same galoshes and umbrella where he hid from real life.

Oh, how sonorous, how beautiful the Greek language is! - he said with a sweet expression; and, as if to prove his words, narrowing his eye and raising his finger, he said: “Anthropos!”

And Belikov also tried to hide his thought in a case. The only things that were clear to him were circulars and newspaper articles in which something was prohibited. When a circular forbade students from going out after nine o'clock in the evening, or some article prohibited carnal love, then this was clear and definite to him; prohibited - that's it. In permission and permission there was always hidden for him an element of doubt, something unsaid and vague. When a drama club, or a reading room, or a tea house was allowed in the city, he shook his head and said quietly:

It is, of course, so and so, all this is wonderful, but no matter what happens.

All kinds of violations, evasions, deviations from the rules made him despondent, although, it would seem, why should he care? If one of his comrades was late for a prayer service, or heard rumors about some mischief among schoolchildren, or saw a classy lady late at night with an officer, then he was very worried and kept saying as if something would not happen. And at the pedagogical councils, he simply oppressed us with his caution, suspiciousness and his purely case-based considerations about the fact that in men's and women's gymnasiums young people behave badly, are very noisy in the classrooms - oh, as if it didn’t reach the authorities, oh , as if something would not happen - and that if Petrov were excluded from the second class, and Egorov from the fourth, then it would be very good. So what? With his sighs, his whining, his dark glasses on his pale, small face - you know, his small face, like a ferret's - he crushed us all, and we gave in, reduced Petrov and Egorov's score for behavior, put them under arrest and in the end both Petrov and Egorov were excluded. He had a strange habit of walking around our apartments. He will come to the teacher, sit down and be silent, as if he is looking out for something. He’ll sit there silently for an hour or two and leave. He called this “maintaining good relations with comrades,” and, obviously, coming to us and sitting was difficult for him, and he came to us only because he considered it his comradely duty. We teachers were afraid of him. And even the director was afraid. Come on, our teachers are thoughtful people, deeply decent, brought up on Turgenev and Shchedrin, but this little man, who always wore galoshes and an umbrella, held the entire gymnasium in his hands for fifteen years! What about high school? The whole city! Our ladies didn’t give home performances on Saturdays, they were afraid that he might find out; and the clergy were embarrassed to eat meat and play cards in his presence. Under the influence of people like Belikov, over the last ten to fifteen years people in our city have become afraid of everything. They are afraid to speak loudly, send letters, make new acquaintances, read books, are afraid to help the poor, teach them to read and write...

Ivan Ivanovich, wanting to say something, coughed, but first he lit his pipe, looked at the moon and then said deliberately:

Yes. Thinking, decent people read Shchedrin, Turgenev, various Bokleys and so on, but they obeyed, endured... That’s what it is.