Grigory Ivanovitch is an experienced doctor who, while doing his rounds at the hospital, is so upset with his incompetent assistant for being drunk on duty that he utterly loses his temper and strikes the fellow. The consequences of this act on the life of the hospital and on the career of the doctor and the assistant, and the play of forces at work in the hospital organisation and in the judicial system – for there are judicial consequences – are the marrow of this story with a strong (…)
Articles les plus récents
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"An Unpleasantness" by Anton Chekhov (1888)
10 February 2023, by Anton Chekhov -
"Immensee" by Theodor Sturm (1849)
5 February 2023, by Theodor SturmAn elderly man meditates on the great love of his life, a young girl who had promised to follow him around the world but who had married one of his oldest friends while he was away from her pursuing his university studies.
Delicately told in the light, poetical and nature-loving style of one of the most gifted and prolific German writers of his time, the distinguished jurist, poet, novelist and story-writer Theodor Sturm (1817-1888).
(11,300 words)
Translated by C. W. Bell, M. A.
an (…) -
"Scarlet Fever" by Stefan Zweig (1908)
31 January 2023, by Stefan ZweigA young medical student comes to Vienna and has enormous difficulties adjusting to life in the big city, not only because he’s still under-developed, immature and shy but also because he’s quite overwhelmed by the force of the extroverted and quite domineering older student in the next room in his dwelling, not to speak of the latter’s outspoken and somewhat aggressive girlfriend. But one day the landlady comes to him in tears pleading for his help as a medical student to save her young (…)
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A selection of Chekhov’s captions to humorous drawings
10 January 2023, by Anton ChekhovDuring his medical studies in the Moscow State Medical University between 1879 and 1884, Chekhov regularly contributed captions to humorous drawings in various literary publications.
You will find below a selection of works from this interesting and little-known aspect of the master’s literary activity.. The magazine Shards (Осколки) (1861-1916) TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. FROM THE THEATER WORLD 2. AT A PARTY 3. POETIC DREAMS 4. THREE DRAWINGS 5. IN THE SCIENTIFIC WORLD 6. A WOMAN’S (…) -
"Cards at Dawn" (Spiel im Morgengrauen), aka "Night Games", by Arthur Schnitzler (1926)
21 December 2022, by Arthur SchnitzlerA young officer in Vienna decides to help a former comrade in need by risking his meagre funds in a card game with fellow officers and a selection of respectable local citizens. A decision that leads inexorably to drama and downfall culminating in a final existential crisis that plunges him into the very depths of his soul and a final understanding of just what kind of a man he really is.
Clearly although not specifically set in the years prior to the outbreak of World War I, this (…) -
"A Visit With Friends" by Anton Chekhov (1898)
5 December 2022, by Anton ChekhovPodgorin, a thirty-year-old lawyer, receives a mail from Tatyana and Varya, two young women of his age with whom he’d been very close ten years previously, asking him to come for a visit to Tatyana’s family home where she lives with husband and two young children and her young sister Nadezhda. He feels obliged to go, knowing that the husband is a wastrel and a profligate and that they probably have financial problems. Which turns out to be very much the case, as they are bankrupt, the estate (…)
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"The Sea Wolf" (1904) by Jack London
22 November 2022, by Jack LondonThis extraordinary tale of high seas and high emotions starts off calmly enough when the thirty-something, well-read and rather wealthy narrator embarks on a modern steam-driven ferry-boat in the Bay of San Francisco and muses on the efficient division of labour in modern society, whereby well-trained men can efficiently operate such magnificent and complex machines for the benefit of people like him in all security. But then a fog comes up, things do not at all follow the modern-comforts (…)
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"The Stone Heart " by E. T. A. Hoffmann (1817)
14 November 2022, by E. T. A. HoffmannThe Court Counsellor Reutlinger organizes an elaborate festival on his grounds every three years to which everyone in the area, young and old, is invited – on the condition that they put on the clothes and accoutrements of the year 1760, a particularly important moment in the Counsellor’s life, as he explains to a distinguished lady of his own age some forty years afterwards as they stroll through his grounds among the revelry – and resolves a lifelong dilemma in doing so.
A charming tale (…) -
"Gambler’s Luck" by E. T. A. Hoffmann (1820)
7 November 2022, by E. T. A. HoffmannA powerful moral fable about the addictive and devastating fascination for gambling that has wreaked so much havoc in so many lives throughout time, by one of the leading spirts of the German Romanic movement.
(12,000 words)
an e-book, with the original texts in an annex, is available for downloading below.
The original texts can also be seen here. GAMBLER’S LUCK
Pyrmont had a larger concourse of visitors than ever in the summer of 18—. The number of rich and illustrious strangers (…) -
"Mozart’s Journey From Vienna to Prague" by Eduard Mörike (1855)
31 October 2022, by Eduard MörikeA particularly charming and renowned (in German-speaking countries) fictional account, by one of the major German poets of the 19th century, of the encounters and adventures and (brilliant) conversations of the great composer on the way from Vienna to Prague where his new opera Don Giovanni was about to be premiered.
(18,900 words)
Translated into English by Florence Leonard in 1897.
An e-book, with the original text in an annex, is available for downloading below.
The original text (…)