Love (Chekhov)
Short summary
A young man fell in love with a nineteen-year-old girl named Sasha. He wrote her a poetic love letter, which she answered with a brief, misspelled note inviting him to her house. Preferring privacy, he suggested meeting in a park instead. After their romantic rendezvous, he brought Sasha to his bachelor quarters where he spoke passionately about their future together.
While he discussed grand plans, Sasha showed little interest in his ideas, instead examining his possessions, asking about where she would put her books, and requesting he collect old stamps for her. Soon they became officially engaged. The engagement period proved tedious for the narrator, as Sasha and her family were constantly preoccupied with preparing her trousseau, leaving little time for meaningful interaction.
After they married, the narrator reflected on the differences between them. He compared Sasha to a boy of similar age, noting the intellectual gap.
The boy would have knowledge and convictions and some intelligence... But I forgive that difference just as the low forehead and moving lips are forgiven. I remember in my old Lovelace days I have cast off women for a stain on their stockings... and now I forgive everything.
Despite her shortcomings, he found himself forgiving all her habits that would have previously annoyed him. He concluded that this forgiveness stemmed from his love for her, though he couldn't explain the love itself.
Detailed summary
Division into chapters is editorial.
The initial love letter and Sashas response
The narrator began writing a passionate love letter to Sasha, a nineteen-year-old girl with whom he had fallen in love. He started the letter five times, scratching out pages and rewriting them, not to make the letter more elaborate but to prolong the pleasant process of writing while thinking of his beloved. Between the lines, he envisioned Sasha's image and felt as though happy spirits were writing alongside him.
The narrator recalled the moment he realized he was in love. After saying goodbye to Sasha, he had been admiring her figure when he suddenly saw her big eyes through the trellis of the little gate. In that instant, he knew he was in love and that everything between them was already decided.
When I saw through the trellis two big eyes, I suddenly, as though by inspiration, knew that I was in love, that it was all settled between us, and fully decided already, that I had nothing left to do but to carry out certain formalities.
After finishing his letter, the narrator took it to the post in the early morning. Near the postbox, he saw a house porter in a sheepskin coat, neither fully asleep nor awake. The narrator felt such joy at mailing his love letter that he nearly kissed the postbox, considering the postal service "the greatest of blessings."
The next day at noon, Sasha's maid delivered her response: "I am delited be sure to come to us to day please I shall expect you. Your S." The letter lacked punctuation and contained a misspelling, but these imperfections only endeared Sasha to the narrator. However, he was dissatisfied with the content, as he didn't want to visit her house where her family would prevent them from being alone. Instead, he suggested meeting in a park, which Sasha readily accepted.
The secret meeting in the park
Between four and five in the afternoon, the narrator went to the furthest, most overgrown part of the park for their rendezvous. Though they could have met somewhere more accessible, Sasha had chosen this remote location to enhance the romantic mystery of their meeting. When he approached her, she was standing with her back to him, wearing a simple cotton dress with a light cape and a white veil covering her face.
During their meeting, the narrator realized that Sasha was more interested in the romantic atmosphere than in him personally. She seemed absorbed in the mysterious setting, his kisses, the silence of the trees, and his vows, rather than in their actual conversation. He wondered if she would have been equally happy with any other man in his place, making it difficult to determine if her love was genuine.
From what I remember now, I was not so much the essential point of the rendezvous as a detail of it. Sasha was not so much absorbed in the interview itself as in its romantic mysteriousness, my kisses, the silence of the gloomy trees, my vows...
Sasha in the narrators apartment
After their park meeting, the narrator took Sasha to his bachelor apartment. Having his beloved in his home affected him like wine and music, inspiring him to speak confidently about their future together. He made grand plans and projects, talking about achieving high ranks despite not yet having reached even lower positions. While men in love often speak such nonsense, women in love typically listen with reverence, blinded by their feelings.
However, the narrator soon noticed that Sasha was distracted. She didn't understand or care about his plans for their future except for their external aspects. Instead of engaging with his ideas, she was interested in practical details: which room would be hers, what wallpaper she would have, and why he had an upright piano instead of a grand piano.
Sasha listened to me with attention, but I soon detected an absentminded expression on her face, she did not understand me. The future of which I talked interested her only in its external aspect and I was wasting time in displaying my plans and projects before her.
Sasha examined all the small items on his table, sniffed his bottles, peeled stamps off envelopes, and asked him to collect old stamps for her. She found a nut by the window, cracked it noisily, and asked why he didn't put labels on his books. When the narrator asked what books she had, Sasha merely replied, "All sorts," after thinking for a moment. He realized that if he had asked about her thoughts, convictions, or aims, she would have given the same vague answer.
The tedious engagement period
After escorting Sasha home, the narrator became officially engaged to her. Based on his experience, he found being engaged extremely tedious, worse than being either married or single. An engaged man, he observed, was neither one thing nor the other, having left one side of the river without reaching the other.
If the reader will allow me to judge merely from my personal experience, I maintain that to be engaged is very dreary, far more so than to be a husband or nothing at all. An engaged man is neither one thing nor the other, he has left one side of the river and not reached the other.
Whenever the narrator had free time, he rushed to see his fiancée, carrying many hopes and intentions. However, each visit disappointed him. He always found Sasha's family busy with her trousseau, sewing linens and clothes. Despite working for two months, they produced less than a hundred roubles' worth of items. The house smelled of irons and candle grease, with bugles crunching underfoot.
Instead of spending time with Sasha, the narrator was relegated to the dining room to converse with Pimenovna, one of her poor relations. Sasha would occasionally rush by with a thimble or wool, promising to return shortly but never doing so. When he wanted to go for walks with her, he often found her already dressed to go shopping with her mother for more wedding supplies. He found these shopping trips excruciatingly dull, especially when Sasha haggled over prices only to leave without buying anything.
The reality of married life
After their marriage, the narrator described an evening scene that illustrated their new reality. He was sitting in his study reading when he asked Sasha to find the corkscrew for his beer. She jumped up, rummaged through papers in a disorderly way, dropped the matches, and then sat down without finding it. After several minutes, he asked again, and she resumed her search, making rustling noises that irritated him like the sound of knives being sharpened. Finally, he got up and found the corkscrew himself.
Sasha then began telling him something at length. When he suggested she read instead, she took up a book and sat facing him, moving her lips as she read. Looking at her forehead and moving lips, the narrator reflected on the difference between her and an educated boy of the same age, noting that a boy would have knowledge, convictions, and intelligence.
Nevertheless, the narrator forgave all of Sasha's shortcomings - her noisy eating, her inefficiency in finding things, her slovenliness, and her endless talking about trivial matters. He forgave these flaws almost unconsciously, as if they were his own mistakes. Things that would have repelled him in the past now inspired tenderness and even rapture. He attributed this forgiveness to his love for Sasha, though he admitted he couldn't explain the love itself.
The explanation of this forgiveness of everything lies in my love for Sasha, but what is the explanation of the love itself, I really don't know.