The Lady With the Dog

The Lady With the Dog

by Anton Chekhov (1860 - 1904)

"IT was said that a new person had appeared on the sea-front: a lady with a little dog. Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, who had by then been a fortnight at Yalta, and so was fairly at home there, had begun to take an interest in new arrivals. Sitting in Verney's pavilion, he saw, walking on the sea-front, a fair-haired young lady of medium height, wearing a béret; a white Pomeranian dog was running behind her.

And afterwards he met her in the public gardens and in the square several times a day. She was walking alone, always wearing the same béret, and always with the same white dog; no one knew who she was, and every one called her simply "the lady with the dog."

watch scenes from a film adaptation of the short story, directed by Iosif Kheifits.

In this clip, George Malko (Chekhov translator) and Carlson explain why Iosif Kheifits's film adaptation of "The Lady with the Dog" is considered a "classic" adaptation. Malko provides an in-depth examination of the process and challenges of translating and adapting literature.

Listen to the  audiobook.


Another adaptation of the story is Dark Eyes  a 1987 Italian and Russian language film which tells the story of a 19th-century married Italian who falls in love with a married Russian woman. It stars Marcello Mastroianni and Yelena Safonova.
Watch scenes: (1) , 
 (2) ,
 (3)

 

" Anton Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Chekhov practiced as a doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress." Chekhov had at first written stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. His originality consists in an early use of the stream-of-consciousness technique, later adopted by James Joyce and other modernists, combined with a disavowal of the moral finality of traditional story structure. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them. This is a collection of 7 of his insightful short stories about the human condition and include, beside the title story, A Doctor's Visit; An Upheaval; Ionitch; and The Husband which are best known. (Summary by Wikipedia and Phil Chenevert)"