Lights (Chekhov)
Short summary
A railway construction site in rural Russia, late 19th century. The narrator, lost at night, sought shelter in a hut where he met an engineer named Ananyev and a student named Von Schtenberg. After sharing wine and conversation, they stepped outside to investigate a barking dog. Looking at distant lights along the railway embankment, the student compared them to ancient Philistine camps, prompting a philosophical debate about youth and pessimism.
Ananyev criticized the student's nihilistic views and began telling a story from his youth. Eight years earlier, while traveling through his hometown, he met Kisotchka, a woman he had loved as a schoolboy. Now married to a Greek-Russian businessman, she showed Ananyev around, admiring his success. Though he initially planned to seduce her, her earnest admiration made him doubt his chances. That night, after her husband returned home with an officer, Kisotchka found Ananyev in a summerhouse, crying that she could no longer bear her life.
Despite his philosophical detachment, Ananyev walked her toward town. Near her mother's house, overcome by her admiration, he declared his love and forcibly took her to his hotel. She became his mistress, speaking passionately of divorce and a future together, while he quickly grew bored with her earnestness. The next morning, he secretly fled town by train.
In the twilight of the railway carriage the image of Kisotchka rose before me, haunted me and I recognised clearly that I had committed a crime as bad as murder. My conscience tormented me.
Detailed summary
Division into chapters is editorial.
The dog barking and the three mens conversation
Outside a hut on a railway construction site, a dog was barking excitedly. Ananyev the engineer, his assistant Von Schtenberg, and the narrator went outside to investigate. They found no one there, just Azorka, the black house-dog, who approached them diffidently, wagging his tail.
Ananyev explained to the narrator that Azorka was a remarkably nervous dog who couldn't endure solitude and often suffered from nightmares. The dog seemed to understand their conversation, turning his head upward and grinning plaintively as if to apologize for his behavior.
Observing the railway construction and the nighttime landscape
It was an August night, and the narrator found himself in unfamiliar surroundings along a railway line still under construction. The high, half-finished embankment, mounds of sand and clay, and the mud huts where workers lived created a chaotic landscape that seemed to belong to the times of primordial disorder.
The three men climbed up the embankment and looked down at the earth. In the distance, they could see a series of lights stretching along the railway line to the horizon. The stillness of the night, combined with the monotonous song of the telegraph wire and the mysterious lights, created an atmosphere of secrecy and melancholy.
Ananyev, intoxicated by wine and in a sentimental mood, admired the embankment and the lights, speaking enthusiastically about their work building the railway and how it would lead to future progress. The student, Von Schtenberg, remained silent and thoughtful, eventually comparing the endless lights to ancient biblical camps of the Amalekites or Philistines.
Those lights remind the Baron of the Amalekites, but it seems to me that they are like the thoughts of man... stretch in a straight line towards some goal in the midst of the darkness and, without shedding light on anything, vanish...
Ananyevs warning about the dangers of nihilistic philosophy
The student's philosophical musings about transience and the insignificance of human existence troubled Ananyev. He admonished Von Schtenberg, saying that such thoughts were inappropriate for a young person at the beginning of life. According to Ananyev, these lofty ideas about the aimlessness of life and inevitability of death were only suitable for old age, when they came as the product of years of inner struggle and experience.
I hate those ideas with all my heart! I was infected by them myself in my youth, I have not quite got rid of them even now, and I tell you—perhaps because I am stupid—they did me nothing but harm.
When they returned to the hut, the engineer took out more bottles of wine and continued his lecture to the student. The narrator, feeling tired, sat on the engineer's bedstead and observed his new acquaintances. He had met them only that night when he got lost on horseback and knocked on their hut for shelter.
I was dreaming that immediately after our walk we should wish each other good night and go to bed, but my dream was not quickly realised. When we had returned to the hut the engineer put away the empty bottles...
Ananyev continued to warn the student about the dangers of nihilistic philosophy. He argued that beginning one's intellectual life with thoughts about life's meaninglessness was like starting at the end rather than the beginning. Such thinking, he claimed, paralyzed the will to live and act, making it impossible to engage meaningfully with science, art, or even basic moral questions.
One who knows that life is aimless and death inevitable is not interested in the struggle against nature or the conception of sin: whether you struggle or whether you don't, you will die and rot just the same...
Ananyevs reunion with Kisotchka and their reminiscence
To illustrate his point about the harmful effects of nihilistic philosophy, Ananyev began to tell a story from his own life. Eight years earlier, after leaving university, he had stopped in his hometown of N—— on his way to the Caucasus. While visiting a park called the Quarantine, he encountered a young woman who recognized him, though he did not immediately recognize her.
The woman turned out to be Natalya Stepanovna, nicknamed Kisotchka, whom Ananyev had been in love with during his high school days. She had changed considerably in the intervening years. Once a thin, ethereal high school girl who resembled a kitten, she was now a more robust married woman with an expression of motherliness and resignation on her face.
Kisotchka was delighted to learn that Ananyev had become an engineer and spoke admiringly of how well all his classmates had turned out. They reminisced about their school days, with Kisotchka recalling how Ananyev had once wanted to challenge another boy to a duel over her.
She revealed that two years after high school, she had married a half-Greek, half-Russian man who worked in a bank or insurance society and also traded in corn. They walked along the seashore, talking mostly about Ananyev's life and career. As evening approached, Kisotchka invited him to her home for tea, mentioning that her husband was usually in town and only came home at night.
At her villa, Ananyev observed that Kisotchka and her husband seemed to be financially comfortable. He noticed an arithmetic book open on the table and learned that Kisotchka, having nothing to do and feeling bored, sometimes worked on sums to remind herself of her school days. She also mentioned that she had lost a baby boy who had lived only a week.
Seduction and betrayal: Ananyevs moral failure
As they continued talking, Ananyev attempted to shift their conversation to a more frivolous tone. He brought up the topic of local women who had run away from their husbands, hoping to steer the conversation in a flirtatious direction. However, Kisotchka responded seriously, explaining that educated women in the town often had no choice but to marry unsuitable men due to the lack of cultured potential husbands.
She spoke of her cousin Sonya who had run away with an actor, saying she couldn't condemn such actions because circumstances were sometimes too strong for anyone to resist. Kisotchka explained that life was stifling for girls and married women in their town, and that those who laughed at her cousin would understand if they could see into her soul.
While they were talking, Kisotchka's husband returned home with a young officer. The two men passed by the room where Ananyev and Kisotchka were sitting, glancing at them indifferently. Ananyev noticed that Kisotchka seemed troubled by her husband's arrival, and he decided to leave.
As Kisotchka saw him to the door, she said goodbye with a gentle, mournful smile, suggesting they would likely never see each other again. Outside, Ananyev found no cab and faced a three-mile walk in the dark. After shouting for a cab without success, he returned to the park and sat in the summerhouse, feeling vexed and ashamed that he had stayed so long at Kisotchka's.
While sitting in the summerhouse, Ananyev heard someone approaching. It was Kisotchka, crying and saying she could no longer bear her life. She asked Ananyev to take her to her mother's house in town. Though initially reluctant due to the lack of transportation, Ananyev agreed to accompany her.
As they walked through the dark night, passing a deserted flour mill and a cemetery, Kisotchka suddenly changed her mind and decided to return home. However, when they reached the town, near the hotel where Ananyev was staying, she broke down in tears, praising him and other educated men for being "splendid." Moved by the moment and his own desires, Ananyev began making romantic advances, kissing her and making promises.
The train journey and Ananyevs moral crisis
Ananyev described how he took Kisotchka to his hotel room, where she became his mistress. For her, this was a life-changing event, and she immediately began making plans for them to go to the Caucasus together and eventually get married after she obtained a divorce. She spoke confidently about her husband giving her a divorce since everyone knew he was living with another woman.
However, Ananyev quickly grew weary of her enthusiasm. What had been a casual affair for him was for her a complete revolution in her life. He was troubled by how easily she had succumbed to him and by her exaggeration of love's importance. Most of all, he was vexed at himself for getting entangled with a woman he would have to deceive.
The next morning, Ananyev secretly fled the town, leaving instructions for his luggage to be taken to the station for the evening train. Throughout the day, he was tormented by anxiety, fearing a confrontation with Kisotchka. Even after boarding the train, his uneasiness persisted as he imagined her searching for him desperately through the town.
And when I lashed my horse and galloped along the line, and when a little later I saw nothing before me but the endless gloomy plain and the cold overcast sky, I recalled the questions which were discussed in the night.
During the train journey, Ananyev's conscience began to torment him. He realized he had committed a terrible moral crime against Kisotchka. His philosophical arguments about life's meaninglessness provided no comfort, and he experienced what he described as genuine thinking for the first time in his life.
I realised that I was not a thinker, not a philosopher, but simply a dilettante. God had given me a strong healthy Russian brain with promise of talent. And, only fancy, here was that brain at twenty-six, undisciplined...
Through this painful experience, Ananyev came to understand that his nihilistic ideas were not the product of genuine philosophical thought but of dilettantism. He recognized that he had neither true convictions nor a moral standard, and that his intellectual processes were rudimentary. This realization eventually led him back to N—— to beg Kisotchka's forgiveness.
I realised and appreciated my abnormality and utter ignorance, thanks to a misfortune. My normal thinking dates from the day when I began again from the A, B, C, when my conscience sent me flying back to N...
The students skeptical response to Ananyevs story
When Ananyev finished his story, the student responded with indifference, saying "That's the sort of thing that happens." He seemed unmoved by the engineer's moral tale. Only when Ananyev began repeating his earlier arguments about the dangers of nihilistic philosophy did the student show irritation, getting up from the table and preparing for bed.
The student challenged Ananyev's logic, questioning why ideas that were supposedly harmful for the young should be acceptable for the old. He argued that if these ideas were poisonous, they would be equally poisonous for everyone, regardless of age or experience.
Ananyev defended his position, explaining that older thinkers came to pessimism through deep study and personal experience, not casually as dilettantes did. He also argued that the pessimism of genuine thinkers was based on love for humanity rather than egoism. To illustrate his point, he told an anecdote about a forester named Ivan Alexandritch who was moved to tears by the thought that skilled railway workers would someday die.
Morning reflections: Theres no understanding anything in this world
The student remained unconvinced, declaring that nothing could be proven by words and that he believed only in God. He then turned to the wall, ending the conversation. Before going to bed, the engineer and the narrator stepped outside the hut once more to look at the lights.
The next morning, the narrator was awakened by barking and loud voices. A peasant had arrived with cauldrons from someone named Nikitin, causing a dispute about where they should be delivered. As the narrator prepared to leave, he reflected on the previous night's conversation but found no answers to the questions that had been discussed.
As he rode away across the gloomy plain under the overcast sky, the narrator felt that there was no understanding anything in this world.