Talent

"Talent" is a short story by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov that explores the theme of artistic aspiration and the complexities of creativity. The narrative centers around a young actor who possesses genuine talent but struggles with self-doubt and the pressures of performance. Through the protagonist's experiences, Chekhov examines the nature of talent, the challenges faced by artists, and the often harsh realities of the theatrical world. The story blends humor and poignancy, highlighting the tension between personal ambition and societal expectations. Chekhov's keen observations and rich characterizations invite readers to reflect on the essence of true artistic expression.

								
AN artist called Yegor Savvitch, who was spending his summer holidays at
the house of an officer's widow, was sitting on his bed, given up to the
depression of morning. It was beginning to look like autumn out of
doors. Heavy, clumsy clouds covered the sky in thick layers; there was a
cold, piercing wind, and with a plaintive wail the trees were all
bending on one side. He could see the yellow leaves whirling round in
the air and on the earth. Farewell, summer! This melancholy of nature is
beautiful and poetical in its own way, when it is looked at with the
eyes of an artist, but Yegor Savvitch was in no humour to see beauty. He
was devoured by ennui and his only consolation was the thought that by
to-morrow he would not be there. The bed, the chairs, the tables, the
floor, were all heaped up with cushions, crumpled bed-clothes, boxes.
The floor had not been swept, the cotton curtains had been taken down
from the windows. Next day he was moving, to town.

His landlady, the widow, was out. She had gone off somewhere to hire
horses and carts to move next day to town. Profiting by the absence of
her severe mamma, her daughter Katya, aged twenty, had for a long time
been sitting in the young man's room. Next day the painter was going
away, and she had a great deal to say to him. She kept talking, talking,
and yet she felt that she had not said a tenth of what she wanted to
say. With her eyes full of tears, she gazed at his shaggy head, gazed at
it with rapture and sadness. And Yegor Savvitch was shaggy to a hideous
extent, so that he looked like a wild animal. His hair hung down to his
shoulder-blades, his beard grew from his neck, from his nostrils, from
his ears; his eyes were lost under his thick overhanging brows. It was
all so thick, so matted, that if a fly or a beetle had been caught in
his hair, it would never have found its way out of this enchanted
thicket. Yegor Savvitch listened to Katya, yawning. He was tired. When
Katya began whimpering, he looked severely at her from his overhanging
eyebrows, frowned, and said in a heavy, deep bass:

"I cannot marry."

"Why not?" Katya asked softly.

"Because for a painter, and in fact any man who lives for art, marriage
is out of the question. An artist must be free."

"But in what way should I hinder you, Yegor Savvitch?"

"I am not speaking of myself, I am speaking in general. . . . Famous
authors and painters have never married."

"And you, too, will be famous--I understand that perfectly. But put
yourself in my place. I am afraid of my mother. She is stern and
irritable. When she knows that you won't marry me, and that it's all
nothing . . . she'll begin to give it to me. Oh, how wretched I am! And
you haven't paid for your rooms, either! . . . ."

"Damn her! I'll pay."

Yegor Savvitch got up and began walking to and fro.

"I ought to be abroad!" he said. And the artist told her that nothing
was easier than to go abroad. One need do nothing but paint a picture
and sell it.

"Of course!" Katya assented. "Why haven't you painted one in the
summer?"

"Do you suppose I can work in a barn like this?" the artist said ill-
humouredly. "And where should I get models?"

Some one banged the door viciously in the storey below. Katya, who was
expecting her mother's return from minute to minute, jumped up and ran
away. The artist was left alone. For a long time he walked to and fro,
threading his way between the chairs and the piles of untidy objects of
all sorts. He heard the widow rattling the crockery and loudly abusing
the peasants who had asked her two roubles for each cart. In his disgust
Yegor Savvitch stopped before the cupboard and stared for a long while,
frowning at the decanter of vodka.

"Ah, blast you!" he heard the widow railing at Katya. "Damnation take
you!"

The artist drank a glass of vodka, and the dark cloud in his soul
gradually disappeared, and he felt as though all his inside was smiling
within him. He began dreaming. . . . His fancy pictured how he would
become great. He could not imagine his future works but he could see
distinctly how the papers would talk of him, how the shops would sell
his photographs, with what envy his friends would look after him. He
tried to picture himself in a magnificent drawing-room surrounded by
pretty and adoring women; but the picture was misty, vague, as he had
never in his life seen a drawing-room. The pretty and adoring women were
not a success either, for, except Katya, he knew no adoring woman, not
even one respectable girl. People who know nothing about life usually
picture life from books, but Yegor Savvitch knew no books either. He had
tried to read Gogol, but had fallen asleep on the second page.

"It won't burn, drat the thing!" the widow bawled down below, as she set
the samovar. "Katya, give me some charcoal!"

The dreamy artist felt a longing to share his hopes and dreams with some
one. He went downstairs into the kitchen, where the stout widow and
Katya were busy about a dirty stove in the midst of charcoal fumes from
the samovar. There he sat down on a bench close to a big pot and began:

"It's a fine thing to be an artist! I can go just where I like, do what
I like. One has not to work in an office or in the fields. I've no
superiors or officers over me. . . . I'm my own superior. And with all
that I'm doing good to humanity!"

And after dinner he composed himself for a "rest." He usually slept till
the twilight of evening. But this time soon after dinner he felt that
some one was pulling at his leg. Some one kept laughing and shouting his
name. He opened his eyes and saw his friend Ukleikin, the landscape
painter, who had been away all the summer in the Kostroma district.

"Bah!" he cried, delighted. "What do I see?"

There followed handshakes, questions.

"Well, have you brought anything? I suppose you've knocked off hundreds
of sketches?" said Yegor Savvitch, watching Ukleikin taking his
belongings out of his trunk.

"H'm! . . . Yes. I have done something. And how are you getting on? Have
you been painting anything?"

Yegor Savvitch dived behind the bed, and crimson in the face, extracted
a canvas in a frame covered with dust and spider webs.

"See here. . . . A girl at the window after parting from her betrothed.
In three sittings. Not nearly finished yet."

The picture represented Katya faintly outlined sitting at an open
window, from which could be seen a garden and lilac distance. Ukleikin
did not like the picture.

"H'm! . . . There is air and . . . and there is expression," he said.
"There's a feeling of distance, but . . . but that bush is screaming . .
. screaming horribly!"

The decanter was brought on to the scene.

Towards evening Kostyliov, also a promising beginner, an historical
painter, came in to see Yegor Savvitch. He was a friend staying at the

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