Fears (Chekhov)
Fears ( Russian Страхи , Strachi ) is a short story by Russian writer Anton Chekhov , in the daily newspaper on 16 June 1886 Peterburgskaja Gazeta published.
content
During his life the anonymous narrator had only three states of anxiety worth mentioning. At the sight of the light in a church window, a single goods wagon and a dog.
On a July evening after a thunderstorm he drove to the post office for newspapers and stopped on the way there after sunset in front of the east side of a village he knew. A little flame shone from one of the church windows on the bell tower. It couldn't be the reflection of a light from outside. He knew the belfry was full of beams, dust, and spiders; no light sources. The young fellow accompanied by the narrator was also afraid of the inexplicable appearance. The narrator gave the horse the whip. A good hour later on the way back, everything on that tower remained dark.
On the way home from a rendezvous, the narrator was walking along the railway line before dawn. Then a single freight car overtook him out of the dark on a semicircular arc at high speed. Out of sheer fear, the overtaken ran off and only slowed down - out of breath - at the station guard's house. The station attendant had the explanation: The last wagon must have torn itself away from the freight train on the incline.
And when the narrator went home from Schnepfenstrich once in early spring , an unknown Newfoundland dog chased him at dusk . The persecuted man, who knew all the landowners' dogs in the area, suddenly could no longer bear the stubborn look from the strange dog's eyes. And again - as with the light from the bell tower and the freight car - he had to flee headlong. An old friend was waiting for the narrator at home. He got lost on the carriage ride through the forest and lost his faithful dog.
Used edition
- Gerhard Dick (Hrsg.), Wolf Düwel (Hrsg.): Anton Chekhov: Collected works in individual volumes : Ängste. P. 553–560 in: Gerhard Dick (Ed.): Anton Chekhov: From the rain to the eaves. Short stories. Translated from Russian by Ada Knipper and Gerhard Dick. With a foreword by Wolf Düwel. 630 pages. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1964 (1st edition)
Web links
- The text
- Wikisource: Страхи (Чехов) (Russian)
- online in FEB (Russian)
- Chekhov Bibliography, Entry Stories No. 401 (Russian)
- Reference to first appearance in the Laboratory of Fantastics (Russian)