The Thammasat University Library has newly acquired a book that should be useful for students interested in literature, Russia, history, European culture, and related fields.

Fifty-Two Stories is by Anton Chekhov, a Russian playwright and short-story writer who lived in the 1800s.

The TU Library collection also includes other books by and about Chekhov.

Chekhov has long been appreciated in Thailand.

Kulap Saipradit, better known by the pen name Siburapha, a newspaper editor, novelist, and human rights activist, translated In Exile, a short story by Anton Chekhov, as Khao Thuk Bangkhap Hai Pen Khun Chon.

In Exile addresses a number of themes that were important in Russia of his time, such as how thinkers propose ideas for improving society, but no nothing otherwise to make them become a reality.

Chekhov also objected to the belief among most Russians that all events are determined in advance, so nothing can be done to prevent them.

This approach to life, Chekhov believed, explained why he saw so many alcoholics in Russia.

Another Thai writer who admired Chekhov was Song Thepasit, also a literary critic.

Song put Chekhov among the best examples of modern literature in the West.

A century ago, he noted that European literature permitted common people to be heroes or protagonists of fiction.

He singled out Chekhov’s short stories for praise, as exemplary reader matter for Thais.

Song argued that modern literature, like works by Chekhov, should focus on the inner life of people to find the meaning of life, which may otherwise by unclear.

Here are some thoughts by Chekhov from books, some of which are in the TU Library collection:

When a person is born, he can embark on only one of three roads of life: if you go right, the wolves will eat you; if you go left, you’ll eat the wolves; if you go straight, you’ll eat yourself.

• Fatherlessness or Platonov, Act I, sc. xiv (1878)

Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.

• Misfortune (1886)

Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.

• On the Road (1886)

Not everyone knows when to be silent and when to go. It not infrequently happens that even diplomatic persons of good worldly breeding fail to observe that their presence is arousing a feeling akin to hatred in their exhausted or busy host, and that this feeling is being concealed with an effort and disguised with a lie.

• The Letter (1887)

One can prove or refute anything at all with words. Soon people will perfect language technology to such an extent that they’ll be proving with mathematical precision that twice two is seven.

• Lights (1888)

 If you can’t distinguish people from lap-dogs, you shouldn’t undertake philanthropic work.

• The Princess (1889)

It’s even pleasant to be sick when you know that there are people who await your recovery as they might await a holiday.

• The Story of an Unknown Man or An Anonymous Story, ch. 15 (1893)

Good breeding doesn’t mean that you won’t spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you won’t notice when someone else does.

• The House with the Mezzanine (1896)

While you’re playing cards with a regular guy or having a bite to eat with him, he seems a peaceable, good-humoured and not entirely dense person. But just begin a conversation with him about something inedible, politics or science, for instance, and he ends up in a deadend or starts in on such an obtuse and base philosophy that you can only wave your hand and leave.

• Ionych (1898)

People who live alone always have something on their minds that they would willingly share.

• About Love (1898)

In order to cultivate yourself and to drop no lower than the level of the milieu in which you have landed, it is not enough to read [The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens] and memorize a monologue from [Goethe’s] Faust. You need to work continually day and night, to read ceaselessly, to study, to exercise your will… Each hour is precious.

• Letter to his brother, N.P. Chekhov (March 1886)

Writers are as jealous as pigeons.

• Letter to I.L. Leontev (February 4, 1888)

Happiness does not await us all. One needn’t be a prophet to say that there will be more grief and pain than serenity and money. That is why we must hang on to one another.

• Letter to K.S. Barantsevich (March 3, 1888)

A tree is beautiful, but what’s more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples’ character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe…. What a terrible future!

• Letter to A.S. Suvorin (October 18, 1888)

He who doesn’t know how to be a servant should never be allowed to be a master; the interests of public life are alien to anyone who is unable to enjoy others’ successes, and such a person should never be entrusted with public affairs.

• Letter to A.N. Pleshcheev (October 25, 1888)

Without a knowledge of languages you feel as if you don’t have a passport.

• Letter to A.S. Suvorin (November 1889)

I divide all literary works into two categories: Those I like and those I don’t like. No other criterion exists for me.

• Letter to I.L. Leontev (March 22, 1890)

And some observations about Chekhov:

I do love Chekhov dearly. I fail, however, to rationalize my feeling for him: I can easily do so in regard to the greater artist, Tolstoy, with the flash of this or that unforgettable passage […], but when I imagine Chekhov with the same detachment all I can make out is a medley of dreadful prosaisms, ready-made epithets, repetitions, doctors, unconvincing vamps, and so forth; yet it is his works which I would take on a trip to another planet.

• Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions (1973)

The short stories of Anton Chekhov. Each is an entire entity, a small universe. Classically written, very strong, and it lives in your mind for a long time after you read it, so it gives us a kind of insight, and I like Chekhov’s endings—they are open, and they leave the reader with something like uneasiness, they’re like containers for the readers’ projections. They are perfect.

• Olga Tokarczuk

What writers influenced me as a young man? Chekhov! As a dramatist? Chekhov! As a story writer? Chekhov!

• Tennessee Williams

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)