The Grasshopper (Chekhov)

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The Grasshopper by Anton Chekhov , translated by Jessie Senior Coulson

A short story about Olga Ivanovna's marrage to Dymov. First published on 5th and 12th of January 1892 in the St Petersburg weekly 'The North'. The title is Попрыгунья (Poprygun'ia) in Russian, and this is sometimes translated as The Butterfly, or The Dragonfly in English, due to the word попрыгунья being used for a variety of animals in Russia in the 19th century. The modern word in Russian for grasshopper is кузнечик. Translated by Jessie Coulson, for the Oxford University Press.

[edit] One

All Olga Ivanovna's friends and acquaintances were at her wedding.

"Look at him; isn't it true that there is something about him?" she said to her friends with a nod towards her husband, as though she wanted to explain why she was marrying a simple, very ordinary, and in no way remarkable man.

Her husband, Osip Stepanych Dymov, was a doctor, and only of the rank of titular counsellor. He was on the staff of two hospitals; in one a ward-surgeon and in the other a dissecting demonstrator. Every day from nine to twelve he saw patients and was busy in his ward, and after twelve o'clock he went by tram to the other hospital, where he dissected. His private practice was a very small one, not worth more than five hundred roubles a year. That was all. What more could be said about him? Meanwhile, Olga Ivanovna and her friends and acquaintances were not quite ordinary people. Every one of them was remarkable in some way, and more or less famous; already had made a name a reputation and was looked upon as a celebrity; or if not yet a celebrity, gave brilliant promise of becoming one. There was an actor from the Dramatic Theatre, who was a great talent of established reputation as well as an elegant, intelligent, and modest man, and an excellent reciter who was teaching Olga Ivanovna to recite; there was a singer from the opera, a good-natured, fat man who assured Olga Ivanovna, with a sigh, that she was ruining herself, that if she would take herself in hand and not be lazy she might make a remarkable singer; then there were several artists, and chief among them Ryabovsky, a very handsome fair-haired young man of twenty-five who painted genre pieces, animal studies, and landscapes, was successful at exhibitions, and had sold his last picture for five hundred roubles. He put the finishing touches to Olga Ivanovna's sketches, and used to say she might achieve something. Then a cellist, whose instrument used to sob, and who openly declared that of all the ladies of his acquaintances the only one who could accompany him was Olga Ivanovna; then there was a literary man, young but already well known, who had written stories, novels, and plays. Who else? Why, Vasily Vasilyich, a gentleman landowner, amateur illustrator and vignettist, with a great feeling for the old Russian style, the old ballad and epic. On paper, on china, and on smoked plates, he produced literary marvels. In the midst of this free artistic company, spoiled by fortune, though refined and modest, who recalled the existence of doctors only in times of illness, and to whom the name Dymov sounded in no way different from the peasant names such as Sidorov or Tarasov - in the midst of this company Dymov seemed strange, superfluous, and small, though he was tall and broad-shouldered. He looked as though he were wearing somebody else's coat, and his beard was like a shopman's. Though if he had been a writer or an artist, they would have said that his beard reminded them of Zola.

The actor said to Olga Ivanovna that with her flaxen hair and in her wedding-dress she looked very much like a graceful cherry-tree when it is covered all over with delicate white blossoms in spring.

"Oh, let me tell you", said Olga Ivanovna, taking his arm, 'how it all happened so suddenly. Listen, listen!...I must tell you that my father was on the sae staff at the hospital as Dymov. When my poor father was taken ill, Dymov watched for days and nights on end at his bedside. Such self-sacrifice! Listen Ryabovsky! You, my writer, listen; it is very interesting! Come nearer. Such self-sacrifice, such genuine sympathy! I sat up with my father, and did not sleep for nights, either. And all at once - the princess who won the hero's heart - my Dymov fell head over ears in love. Really, fate is so strange at times! Well, after my father's death he came to see me sometimes, met me in the street, and one fine evening, all of a sudden he proposed...like a bolt out of the blue...I lay awake all night, crying, and fell hellishly in love myself. And here, as you see, I am his wife. There really is something strong, powerful, bearlike about him, isn't there? Now his face is turned three-quarters towards us in a bad light, but when he turns round look at his forehead. Ryabovsky, what do you say to that forehead? Dymov, we are talking about you!" she called to her husband. "Come here; hold out your honest hand to Ryabovsky...That's right, be friends.'

Dymov, with a naïve and good-natured smile, held his hand to Ryabovsky, and said:

"Very glad to meet you. There was a Ryabovsky in my year at the medical school. Was he a relation of yours?"

[edit] Two

Olga Ivanovna was twenty-two, Dymov was thirty-one. They got on splendidly together when they were married. Olga Ivanovna hung all her drawing-room walls with her own and other people's sketches, in frames and without frames, and near the piano and furnuture arranged picturesque corners with chinese parasols, easls, daggers, busts, photographs, and rags of many colours...In the dinning-room she prepared the walls with peasant woodcuts, hung up bast shoes and sickles, stood a scyth and rake in one corner, and so achived a dinning-room in the Russian stlye. In her bedroom she draped the ceiling and the walls with dark cloths to make it like a cavern, hung a Venetian lantern over the beds, and at the door set a figure with a halberd. And everyone thought that the young couple had a very charming little home.

When she got up at eleven o'clock every morning, Olga Ivanovna played the piano or, if it were a sunny day, painted something in oils. Then between twelve and one she drove to her dressmaker's/ As Dymov and she had very little money, barely enough to make ends meat, she and her dressmaker had to use great guile to enable her to appear constantly in new dresses and cause a sensation with them. Very often out of an old dyed dress, out of bits of tulle, lace, plush, and silk, costing nothing, perfect marvels were created, something bewitching - not a dress, but a dream. From the dressmaker of Olga Ivanovna usually drove to some actress of her acquaintance to hear the latest theatrical gossip, and incidentally try and get hold of tickets for the first night of some new play or for a benifit performance. From the actress's she had to go to some artist's studio or to some exhibition or to see some celebrity - either to pay a visit or to issue an invitation or simply have a chat. And everywhere she met with a cheerful and friendly welcome, and was assured that she was good, sweet, and special...Those of whom she called great and famous recived her as one of themselves, as an equal, and predicted with one voice that, with her talents, taste, and intelligence, she would do great things. if she concentrated herself. She sang, she played the piano, she painted oils, she sculpted, she took part in amateur theatricals; and all this not just anyhow, but always with talent, whether she made lanterns for an illumination or dressed up or tied somebodies cravat - everything she did was exceptionally graceful, artistic, and charming. But her talents showed themselves in nothing so clearly as in her faculty for quickly becoming acquainted and on intimate terms with celebrated people. No sooner did anyone become ever so little celebrated, and set people talking about him, than she make his acquaintance, got on friendly terms the same day, and invited him to her house. Every new acquanitance she made was a veritable feast-day for her. She adored celebrated people, was proud of them, dreamed of them every night. She craved for them, and could never satisfy her craving. The old ones departed and were forgotten, new ones came to replace them, but to these, too, she soon grew accustomed or was disappointed in them, and began eagerly looking for fresh great men, finding them, and seeking for them again. What for?

Between four and five she dined at home with her husband. His simplicity, good sense, and kind-heartedness moved and delighted her. She was constantly jumping up, impulsively hugging his head and showering kisses upon it.

"You are a clever, noble person, Dymov," she used to say, "but you have one very serious defect. You take absolutely no interest in art. You don't believe in music or painting."

"I don't understand them," he would say meekly. "I have spent all my life working at natural science and medicine, and I have never had time to take interest in the arts."

"But, you know, that's awful Dymov!"

"Why so? You're friends don't know anything of science or medicine, but you don't reproach them for that. Everyone had his own line. I don't understand landscapes and operas, but the way I look at it is that if one set of sensible people devote their whole lives to them, and other sensible people pay immense sums of them, they must be of use. I don't understand them, but not understanding is not the same as disbelief."

"Let me shake your honest hand!"

After dinner, Olga Ivanovna would drive off to see her friends, then to a theatre or to a concert, and she returned home after midnight. So it was every day.

On Wednesdays she had 'At Homes'. At these 'At Homes' the hostess and her guests did not play cards and did not dance, but entertained themselves with various arts. The actor from the Dramaric Theatre recited, a singer sang, artists sketched in the albums of which Olga Ivanovna had a great number, the cellist played, and the hostess herself sketched, sculpted, sang and played accompaniments. In the intervals between the recitations, music, and singing, they talked and argued about literature, the theatre, and painting. There were no ladies present, for Olga Ivanovna cnsidered all ladies wearisome and vulgar except for actressess and her own dressmaker. Not one of these entertainments passed without the hosstess shuddering at every ring at the bell, and saying, with a triumphant expression, "It is he," meaning by "he", of course, some new celebrity she had invited.

This work published before January 1, 1923 is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.