The Duel

“Samoylenko was moved to pity, and probably because Laevsky reminded him of a helpless child, he asked: ‘Is your mother living?’”

This line is an example of Chekhov’s use of psychological realism, wherein a character’s speech is motivated by unspoken thoughts of which even they are not aware. In suggesting that Laevsky possibly “reminded [Samoylenko] of a helpless child,” the narrator suggests a motive for Samoylenko’s subsequent questions regarding Laevsky’s mother.

“One could only there—not here—be honest, intelligent, lofty and pure.”

Laevsky dreams that he will become the person he wants to be merely by virtue of the place he chooses to live—an example of how Laevsky attempts to avoid taking responsibility for his own circumstances.

“He was perhaps very clever, talented, remarkably honest; perhaps if the sea and the mountains had not closed him in on all sides, he might have become an excellent Zemstvo leader, a statesman, an orator, a political writer, a saint. Who knows?”

The extent of Laevsky’s delusion reveals itself in this example of free indirect discourse, a style of narration that represents the perspective of a character within the third-person narration. The list demands especially careful attention: Zemstvo leader, statesman, orator, political writer, saint. In naming all of these rather grandiose professions, Laevsky reveals the depths of his romantic and self-deluding tendencies.

“When with a preoccupied face she touched the jelly with a spoon and then began languidly eating it, sipping milk, and he heard her swallowing, he was possessed by such an overwhelming aversion that it made his head tingle.”

Citing the famous scenes of marital discord from Tolstoy and Flaubert, Chekhov deftly moves between an objective description and a subjective reaction, including details (the jelly, a spoon, sipping) that are specific enough to make Laevsky’s subjective revulsion convincing.

“When he had finished the album, Von Koren took a pistol from the whatnot [etazherka, or a bookshelf for bric-a-brac], and screwing up his left eye, took deliberate aim at the portrait of Prince Vorontsov, or stood still at the looking-glass and gazed a long time at his swarthy face, his big forehead, and his black hair, which curled like a negro’s, and his shirt of dull-coloured cotton with big flowers on it like a Persian rug, and the broad leather belt he wore instead of a waistcoat.”

Flipping through the annals of Russian history in two gestures—both in looking at Samoylenko’s album, a place where visitors write their names, and in playfully taking aim at a portrait of a famous Russian general who had helped win the imperial consequent of the Caucauses—Von Koren places himself at the next stage of Russian history. Doing so, he admires himself in the looking glass, giving readers a description of his outer appearance through the perspective of himself. In his own way “exotic” looking, at least from the perspective of ethnic Russians, Von Koren is probably Jewish, given the antisemitic insult hurled indirectly at him by Laevsky (202).

“Alas! His sufferings were so great that he had to leave the university and spend two years at home doing nothing.”

A humorous quote putting Laevsky’s torments in perspective, this line refers to a cultural debate over the elitism of education in the earlier part of the 19th century. The passage also emphasizes Laevsky’s passivity and inability to face consequences: “doing nothing” is his usual course of action instead of taking accountability.

“But as soon as you speak of male and female—for instance, of the fact that the female spider, after fertilization, devours the male—his eyes glow with curiosity, his face brightness, and the man revives.”

Von Koren’s adept insight into Laevsky’s character uses natural imagery to indirectly criticize Laevsky’s fixation on romance and sexual conquests. Von Koren is suggesting that natural history and biology only attract Laevsky’s interest when they appear to touch on a topic that reflects Laevsky’s own habitual preoccupations, further underlining the shallowness of Laevsky’s behavior.

“‘What are you saying!’ said Samoylenko in horror. ‘With pepper, with pepper!’ he cried in a voice of despair, seeing that the deacon was eating stuffed aubergines without pepper.”

Beginning on a dramatic key with a response to Von Koren’s admission that he would find the murder of Laevsky perfectly acceptable, this quote shifts to a very different kind of worry—namely, a petty care about food. The shift is indicative of Chekhov’s humor, and once again represents the intrusion of the ordinary and the mundane into a moment of tension.

“Samoylenko grew drowsy; the sultry heat, the stillness and the delicious after-dinner languor, which quickly pervaded all his limbs, made him feel heavy and sleepy; his arms dropped at his sides, his eyes grew small, his head sank on his breast.”

This quote shows the environment acting upon Samoylenko and nearly reversing his thoughts and feelings, which had previously been agitated by Von Koren’s criticisms of Laevsky. Chekhov is demonstrating how bodily effects, from the heat to digestion, act upon the minds of human beings and can change their very ideas.

“He was silent about it, she thought, because he was angry with her for being silent about it.”

Perfectly fitting in its context, this statement of absurdity highlights the insight of Chekhov’s psychological prose. It also suggests the misunderstanding and miscommunication that lies at the heart of the novella’s conflicts and is brought to light through this style of narration.

“Remembering this, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna flushed crimson, and looked round at the cook as though she might overhear her thoughts.”

Another instance of Chekhov’s use of psychology, this quote shows how characters are constantly in dialogue with their social surroundings, failing to perceive the boundaries between their inner thoughts and outer actions in ways that suggest the omniscient narrative’s own flexible movement between the two.

“The sound of the sea told her she must love; the darkness of the evening—the same; the mountains—the same.”

Nadyezhda Fyodorovna’s perspective lends a romantic tonality to this line, although is the narrator’s (another instance of free indirect discourse). The fact that she seeks specific answers from the natural world speaks to the lesson that she will have to learn and that is central to the novella, namely, that she must search inward to find the solution to her own behavior, instead of projecting her own fantasies outward onto the natural world.

“And something at the bottom of her soul dimly and obscurely whispered to her that she was a petty, common, miserable, worthless woman….”

The guilt and self-blame that Nadyezhda Fyodorovna feels in this passage reflects her spiraling sense of self-worth in the face of societal judgment and unwanted sexual pressure from men. In contrast to her self-confidence earlier in the novella, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna is now struggling to retain any sense of her own value.

“Laevsky knew that Von Koren did not like him, and so was afraid of him, and felt in his presence as though everyone were constrained and someone were standing behind his back.”

In this line, Laevsky’s feelings of confinement are clarified, via the figure of Von Koren. Laevsky needs Von Koren and his hatred in order to begin reaching a more critical perspective on himself.

“‘The passengers are asleep in their cabins…’ thought Laevsky, and he envied the peace of mind of other people.”

Another instance of psychological prose, this line shows how characters like Laevsky who isolate themselves from common humanity labor under the delusion that everyone else is peaceful, and only he is tormented.

“‘The air I breathe, this wine, love, life in fact—for all that, I have given nothing in exchange so far but lying, idleness, and cowardice. Till now I have deceived myself and other people; I have been miserable about it, and my misery was cheap and common.’”

This crucial moment of awakening marks Laevsky’s conversion. His ordinary life, signaled by the wine and the air, are seen to be gifts that he has not properly seen as such. He also accepts his own faults: the “lying, idleness, and cowardice” that he is now prepared to confront and reject.

“Now when by his blunt refusal the doctor had crudely hinted at this deception, he began to understand that he would need deception not only in the remote future, but today, and tomorrow, and in a month’s time, and perhaps up to the very end of his life.”

Another key moment in Laevsky’s transformation—and another instance of his need for other people’s insight into him as a way to gain insight into himself—this quote elaborates Laevsky’s own growing understanding of the extent to which deception compounds on itself: One lie begets another. His attempted abandonment of Nadyezhda Fyodorovna would not be a one-time event, but an ongoing nightmare of deceit.

“At supper he drank some wine and, from time to time, with an abrupt sigh rubbed his side as though to suggest that he still felt the pain. And no one, except Nadyezdha Fyodorovna, believed him, and he saw that.”

This poignant moment affords sympathy to Laevsky, who has been humiliated by hysterics and seeks to cover up his episode with the pretense of a physical ailment. The fact that only Nadyezhda Fyodorovna believes him is a subtle signal of her actual, if in some ways buried, care for Laevsky, which is shrouded in guilt just as his care is for her.

“And it seemed to her that all the evil memories in her head had taken shape and were walking beside her in the darkness, breathing heavily, while she, like a fly that had fallen into an inkpot, was crawling painfully along the pavement and smirching Laevsky’s side and arm with blackness.”

Nadyezhda Fyodorovna’s own experiences are a parallel to Laevsky’s night of torment, and are prefaced by a stanza from one of Pushkin’s poems about viewing one’s own past on a scroll that one cannot erase. Here, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna’s thoughts about her past take the form of a nameless beast. Externalized from her, her regrets weigh her down, becoming a metaphorical inkpot in which she, the fly, has fallen. If she was once pure, she is now unrecognizable, covered in ink as if covered in sin. What is more, she now sees herself as “smirching” Laevsky and tainting him with her guilt.

“Nadyezhda Fyodorovna listened to the even splash of the sea, looked at the sky studded with stars, and longed to make haste and end it all, and get away from the cursed sensation of life, with its sea, stars, men, fever.”

In this passage, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna contemplates suicide—another literary allusion to Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Cornered by her debts and the pressures of unwanted affairs, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna longs for release. The sea, in particular, highlights the rhythmic endlessness of the life process in its constant churning.

“It was not fear at the thought of death, because while he was dining and playing cards, he had for some reason a confident belief that the duel would end in nothing; it was dread at the thought of something unknown which was to happen next morning for the first time in his life, and dread of the coming night…”

This passage contains a foreshadowing that nothing fatal will happen in the duel. It also gives insight into the true climax of the novella as “something unknown”—that is, Laevsky’s eventual inner revelation that he must change his life and his outlook, embracing the demands of his ordinary life.

“All his life he had planted not one tree in his own garden, nor grown one blade of grass; and living among the living, he had not saved one fly; he had done nothing but destroy and ruin, and lie, lie…”

Laevsky’s past sins are cast in organic metaphors, where sin is the destruction of organic life and virtue is its maintenance. Laevsky here realizes that he has failed to nurture anything—or anybody—due to his habitual selfishness and tendency toward deceit. This passage marks a moment of self-confrontation, in which Laevsky finally accepts responsibility for his circumstances.

“As before, nothing could be seen, and in the darkness one could hear the languid, drowsy drone of the sea. One could hear the infinitely faraway, inconceivable time when God moved above chaos.”

The surprising second line breaks through from the objective and realistic nature of the narrator’s descriptions into a more poetic and subjective view. The drone of the sea—a metaphor for the all-too-ordinary life that Laevsky and Nadyezhda Fyodorovna will have to learn to accept—is here cast in a broad perspective, not just involving the majestic nature world, but God before the act of creation.