: Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Fjodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Maxim Gorky, Andre
: Classical Russian Short Stories
: Books on Demand
: 9783748130871
: 1
: CHF 2.60
:
: Erzählende Literatur
: English
: 208
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: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
Conceive the joy of a lover of nature who, leaving the art galleries, wanders out among the trees and wild flowers and birds that the pictures of the galleries have sentimentalised. It is some such joy that the man who truly loves the noblest in letters feels when tasting for the first time the simple delights of Russian literature. French and English and German authors, too, occasionally, offer works of lofty, simple naturalness; but the very keynote to the whole of Russian literature is simplicity, naturalness, veraciousness. Another essentially Russian trait is the quite unaffected conception that the lowly are on a plane of equality with the so-called upper classes. When the Englishman Dickens wrote with his profound pity and understanding of the poor, there was yet a bit; of remoteness, perhaps, even, a bit of caricature, in his treatment of them. He showed their sufferings to the rest of the world with a"Behold how the other half lives!" The Russian writes of the poor, as it were, from within, as one of them, with no eye to theatrical effect upon the well-to-do. There is no insistence upon peculiar virtues or vices. The poor are portrayed just as they are, as human beings like the rest of us. A democratic spirit is reflected, breathing a broad humanity, a true universality, an unstudied generosity that proceed not from the intellectual conviction that to understand all is to forgive all, but from an instinctive feeling that no man has the right to set himself up as a judge over another, that one can only observe and record.

THE QUEEN OF SPADES


BY ALEXSANDR S. PUSHKIN


I


There was a card party at the rooms of Narumov of the Horse Guards. The long winter night passed away imperceptibly, and it was five o'clock in the morning before the company sat down to supper. Those who had won, ate with a good appetite; the others sat staring absently at their empty plates. When the champagne appeared, however, the conversation became more animated, and all took a part in it.


"And how did you fare, Surin?" asked the host.


"Oh, I lost, as usual. I must confess that I am unlucky: I play mirandole, I always keep cool, I never allow anything to put me out, and yet I always lose!"


"And you did not once allow yourself to be tempted to back the red?…
Your firmness astonishes me."
"But what do you think of Hermann?" said one of the guests, pointing to a young Engineer:"he has never had a card in his hand in his life, he has never in, his life laid a wager, and yet he sits here till five o'clock in the morning watching our play."


"Play interests me very much," said Hermann:"but I am not in the position to sacrifice the necessary in the hope of winning the superfluous."


"Hermann is a German: he is economical—that is all!" observed Tomsky."But if there is one person that I cannot understand, it is my grandmother, the Countess Anna Fedotovna."


"How so?" inquired the guests.


"I cannot understand," continued Tomsky,"how it is that my grandmother does not punt."


"What is there remarkable about an old lady of eighty not punting?" said Narumov.


"Then you do not know the reason why?"


"No, really; haven't the faintest idea."


"Oh! then listen. About sixty years ago, my grandmother went to Paris, where she created quite a sensation. People used to run after her to catch a glimpse of the 'Muscovite Venus.' Richelieu made love to her, and my grandmother maintains that he almost blew out his brains in consequence of her cruelty. At that time ladies used to play at faro. On one occasion at the Court, she lost a very considerable sum to the Duke of Orleans. On returning home, my grandmother removed the patches from her face, took off her hoops, informed my grandfather of her loss at the gaming-table, and ordered him to pay the money. My deceased grand