This week I’ve finally managed to read one of few books, that I’ve bought ages ago, but never got around to read until now. It is a short story and I’ve managed to read it at lunch time…Anton Chekhov, The Kiss…First of all it was rather strange experience to read Russian author in English. Actually, it’s just happened that I haven’t read this particular story before, so I didn’t know what it was about. The translation seemed to be pretty accurate (I’ve found and re-read it in Russian afterwards)…But I must say: if you’d change the characters to Joe Blog, etc and take off the book cover with the author's name, I wouldn’t guess that it is a classical Russian novel…Strange that it never occurred to me how much the language can affect the perception of the work of art…even when the words seem to say the same thing, there is still something else, that cannot be translated…The story felt foreign to me...Just another observation that surprised me yet again…
Anyway, the story itself is about average "Joe Blog", who has been kissed accidentally and by mistake…that’s basically all what the plot is. And a long description of his feelings about it…going from being confused, then - intrigued, then he builds the whole life-time dream based on that kiss in the dark by the stranger…he formed the image of the girl who had kissed him, the image that he wanted her to have…
He pictured her and his happiness as he pleased, and put no rein on his imagination…The days flowed by, one very much like another. All those days [he] felt, thought, and behaved as though he were in love. Every morning when his orderly handed him water to wash with, and he sluiced his head with cold water, he thought there was something warm and delightful in his life…
Eventually he’s so used to the thought that longs to find this real woman…and surely, such things as dreams don’t happen in real life, so he never found who was his mysterious woman… Now that he expected nothing, the incident of the kiss, his impatience, his vague hopes and disappointment, presented themselves in a clear light. It no longer seemed to him strange that …he would never see the girl who had accidentally kissed him instead of some one else; on the contrary, it would have been strange if he had seen her. . . And turning his eyes from the water and looking at the sky, he remembered again how fate in the person of an unknown woman had by chance caressed him, he remembered his summer dreams and fancies, and his life struck him as extraordinarily meagre, poverty-stricken, and colourless. . .
So in the end he just gives up...literally stops dreaming and returns to being average Joe Blog again…sad story indeed…yet somehow touching…
Anyway, the story itself is about average "Joe Blog", who has been kissed accidentally and by mistake…that’s basically all what the plot is. And a long description of his feelings about it…going from being confused, then - intrigued, then he builds the whole life-time dream based on that kiss in the dark by the stranger…he formed the image of the girl who had kissed him, the image that he wanted her to have…
He pictured her and his happiness as he pleased, and put no rein on his imagination…The days flowed by, one very much like another. All those days [he] felt, thought, and behaved as though he were in love. Every morning when his orderly handed him water to wash with, and he sluiced his head with cold water, he thought there was something warm and delightful in his life…
Eventually he’s so used to the thought that longs to find this real woman…and surely, such things as dreams don’t happen in real life, so he never found who was his mysterious woman… Now that he expected nothing, the incident of the kiss, his impatience, his vague hopes and disappointment, presented themselves in a clear light. It no longer seemed to him strange that …he would never see the girl who had accidentally kissed him instead of some one else; on the contrary, it would have been strange if he had seen her. . . And turning his eyes from the water and looking at the sky, he remembered again how fate in the person of an unknown woman had by chance caressed him, he remembered his summer dreams and fancies, and his life struck him as extraordinarily meagre, poverty-stricken, and colourless. . .
So in the end he just gives up...literally stops dreaming and returns to being average Joe Blog again…sad story indeed…yet somehow touching…