Tag Archives: Anton Chekhov

‘Library Notes’ (2)

Posted on July 3, 2026 by Patrick Miles

This children’s book of 79 lines of poetry was stuck on its side behind the Brodsky section of my library (six books published between 1967 and 1993). I’d completely forgotten its existence — although it was clearly inscribed by me … Continue reading →

Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary, Uncategorized | Tagged Alexander Pushkin, Anton Chekhov, ballads, censorship, children's literature, comments, Constantine Cafavy, Edward Lear, fairytales, Joseph Brodsky, Kornei Chukovskii, Leningrad, Lewis Carroll, Metropol Hotel, nonsense poetry, nursery rhymes, The Little Tugboat, USSR, Viktor Tauber, Z. Arshakuni | Leave a comment

The diary of a writer-publisher: 39

Posted on June 19, 2026 by Patrick Miles

20 May 2026 A thirty-five minute phone call from Tamara Harvey, who is directing the RSC production of The Cherry Orchard, which plays at Stratford from 10 July to 29 August. Tamara wanted to check pronunciation of the Russian names in … Continue reading →

Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary | Tagged Amazon, Anton Chekhov, Crimea, Kenneth Branagh, King Charles III, Lopakhin, Meldrewism, patronymics, Ranyevskaya, Richard Eyre, RSC, Russian names, Russo-Ukrainian War, Tamara Harvey, telecons, The Cherry Orchard, The Tempest, The White Bow/Ghoune, Trofimov, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin | Leave a comment

‘Library Notes’ (1)

Posted on June 13, 2026 by Patrick Miles

We have just finished cataloguing my Russian library for the American bibliophile who is interested in it. We started on 7 January and in the process I have handled over a thousand books…lingering over some as I went. The bibliophile … Continue reading →

Posted in Personal commentary | Tagged A.F. Pisemsky, Age of Realism, Aleksei Pisemskii, Aleksei Suvorin, Anton Chekhov, comments, detective stories, folklore, klikusha, leshii, Library Notes, N. Totubalin, peasants, rape, reading, realism, Russian library, Russian literature, short stories, wood demons | Leave a comment

The diary of a writer-publisher: 38

Posted on May 21, 2026 by Patrick Miles

21 April 2026 A one-to-one meeting in the RSC theatre at Stratford with Tamara Harvey, Co-Artistic Director. In October I had printed out from the RSC website the two-page publicity for her production of The Cherry Orchard in the Swan Theatre … Continue reading →

Posted in Personal commentary | Tagged Anton Chekhov, Cambridge University, Goat1, Goat2, Gonville & Caius College, Helen Hunt, impostors, J.H. Prynne, Kenneth Branagh, Laura Wade, Mikhail Kuz'min, Moscow Patriarchate, NT, Peter Hall, Roman Catholic Church, RSC, Tamara Harvey, The Cherry Orchard, The Goathead Press, The Times, The White Bow/Ghoune | 1 Comment

The diary of a writer-publisher: 35

Posted on December 1, 2025 by Patrick Miles

13 October 2025 There were a number of letters in The Times earlier this month describing butterflies that the authors had witnessed turning up at funerals and even settling on the coffin. The point was that people found it mysterious and strangely … Continue reading →

Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary | Tagged affectionate forms, Amazon, animism, Anton Chekhov, Badenweiler, butterflies, Coalition of the Willing, defeatism, diminutive forms, Donald Trump, economic sanctions, EU, funerals, John Polkinghorne, Joseph Brodsky, moths, Ol'ga Knipper, peace process, publication dates, quails, Roger Boyes, Russia, Rustem Umerov, seagulls, second presence, Steve Witkoff, The Goathead Press, The Seagull, The Times, The White Bow/Ghoune, translation, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Washington, What Can We Hope For? | Leave a comment

Source?

Posted on May 12, 2025 by Patrick Miles

Can anyone identify the text below? If so, please leave the answer in a Comment, explaining how you arrived at it! A free copy of George Calderon: Edwardian Genius or Anton Chekhov: A Short Life will be yours if you … Continue reading →

Posted in Personal commentary | Tagged anger management, Anton Chekhov, Celts, comments, confrontation, English, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, George Orwell, insults, interpersonal relations, literary executors, literary sources, manners, marital problems, national character, patience, Peter Squire, rudeness, Scots, stress, The Establishment, translation | 5 Comments

In Memoriam Keith Dewhurst

Posted on March 31, 2025 by Patrick Miles

KEITH DEWHURST 24 December 1931 – 11 January 2025 The English language talks of ‘the quick and the dead’. Occasionally Keith would start a sentence with ‘When I am dead…’, but I assured him he never would be, because all … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Anton Chekhov, Autumnia, Bobby Charlton, Dancing Bear, David Attenborough, David Copperfield, feminism, football, In memoriam, Jimmy Murphy, Karl Marx, Keith Dewhurst, Little Emily, Richard II, starlings, The History of Polly Bowler, theatre, theatre agents, Venice 3, Ventnor, William Shakespeare | Leave a comment

Guest Post by John Pym: A Soviet film of ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’

Posted on February 17, 2025 by Patrick Miles

Nineteen-sixty – with the first movies of the French ‘New Wave’ about to burst upon the cinemagoing world – proved a golden year for the Cannes film festival. The jury included the leading Russian director Grigori Kozintsev and the iconoclastic … Continue reading →

Posted in Personal commentary | Tagged Ala Chostakova, Aleksey Batalov, Andrei Moskvin, Anna Sergeyevna, Anton Chekhov, Ben-Hur, black and white films, Cannes Film Fetsival, colourisation, comments, Dmitri Gurov, dogs, expressionism, George Calderon, Georges Simenon, Grigori Kozintsev, Harvey Pitcher, Henry Miller, Iosif Kheifits, Iya Savvina, John Pym, Josef Heifitz, Joseph Stalin, Kittie Calderon, Klimbim Colour, La Dolce Vita, Lady with a Little Dog, Lenfilm, naturalism, New Wave, Pomeranian dogs, Robert Vas, Soviet films, symbolism, The Lady with the Little Dog, Yalta | 5 Comments

From the diary of a writer-publisher: 31

Posted on January 16, 2025 by Patrick Miles

20 December 2024 Yet another pair of new M&S cords on which the button hole in the fly flap is too small for the button it is meant to go over! What has gone wrong at M&S about this? Have … Continue reading →

Posted in Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary | Tagged ageing, Anton Chekhov, Archbishop of Canterbury, birds, Bishop of Newcastle, Bishop of York, Charles Moore, child abuse, Church of England, comments, ethics, evangelical movement, fly flaps, forgiveness, glossolalia, Harvey Pitcher, Jesus Christ, John Polkinghorne, Justin Welby, Lady with a Little Dog, Marks & Spencer, mistletoe, morality, paedophilia, pike, pike fishing, Police, prayer in tongues, proactivity, propensity to act, repentance, safeguarding, sexual abuse, Ted Hughes, the pandemic, translation, trousers, wildlife | Leave a comment

‘Lady with a Little Dog’ (Concluded)

Posted on January 1, 2025 by Patrick Miles

IV And Anna Sergeyevna began coming to see him in Moscow. Every two or three months she would leave S., telling her husband she was going to consult a professor about her female complaint – and her husband believed her … Continue reading →

Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary | Tagged Anna Sergeevna, Anton Chekhov, Dmitrii Gurov, endings, hotels, Lady with a Little Dog, love, love affairs, love stories, Moscow, open endings, short stories, Slavyansky Bazaar | Leave a comment

‘Lady with a Little Dog’ (Continued)

Posted on December 19, 2024 by Patrick Miles

III Back home in Moscow, everything already felt like winter: the stoves had been lit, and when the children were getting ready for school and drinking tea in the morning, it was dark and Nanny lit the lamp for a … Continue reading →

Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary | Tagged Anna Sergeevna, Anton Chekhov, Dmitrii Gurov, Harvey Pitcher, Lady with a Little Dog, love, love stories, Moscow, Pomeranian dogs, provincial life, Saratov, short stories, sturgeon, translation, von Diederitz, Yalta | Leave a comment

‘Lady with a Little Dog’ translated by Harvey Pitcher

Posted on December 9, 2024 by Patrick Miles

I Word went round that a newcomer had turned up on the Promenade: a lady with a little dog. Dmitrii Dmitrich Gurov had already spent a fortnight in Yalta and become used to its ways, and he too had begun … Continue reading →

Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Modern parallels | Tagged Anna Sergeevna, Anton Chekhov, Dmitrii Gurov, Harvey Pitcher, Lady with a Little Dog, love, love stories, Oreanda, Pomeranian dogs, sex, short stories, translation, von Diederitz, Yalta | Leave a comment

‘The world’s best short story’: A new translation

Posted on November 25, 2024 by Patrick Miles

Long-term followers of Calderonia may recall my post five years ago devoted to Harvey Pitcher, in a series called ‘Inestimable Russianists’. I quoted Harvey saying at the time (he was then in his eighty-third year) that he was just putting … Continue reading →

Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary | Tagged agapē, Aleksandr Chudakov, Anton Chekhov, comments, Derwent May, eros, falling in love, Harvey Pitcher, Inestimable Russianists, Lady with a Little Dog, love, Moscow, Russian literature, Saratov, seduction, short stories, Søren Kierkegaard, translation, translators, women, Yalta | Leave a comment

Ukrainian journal

Posted on August 1, 2024 by Patrick Miles

27 June 2024 A Russian opposition group called the Congress of People’s Deputies, consisting of over sixty exiled politicians who were once MPs in the State Duma, has met this week in Warsaw to discuss their plan to overthrow the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Adolf Hitler, Anton Chekhov, assassinations, Buiurnuz, comments, Congress of People's Deputies, conventional forces, Crimea, Donald Trump, Evgeniia Berkovich, Freedom of Russia Legion, Gallipoli, genocide, Ivan Krastev, Keir Starmer, Koktebel', Kyiv, Kyrylo Budanov, NATO, nuclear war, Populism, Reinhard Heydrich, Russia, Sergei Shoigu, terrorism, The Crimean War, The People's Will Party, Ukraine, Valerii Gerasimov, Viktor Erofeev, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Yalta | Leave a comment

From the diary of a writer-publisher: 27

Posted on February 5, 2024 by Patrick Miles

16 January 2024 I translated a few poems as a teenager and student (Rilke, Brecht, Hölderlin, Pushkin, Tiutchev, Mayakovsky, Yevtushenko, Brodsky), but bothered to see only a couple published. The fact was, I didn’t take verse translation very seriously. I … Continue reading →

Posted in Personal commentary | Tagged afterlife, Alcaic metre, Alexander Pushkin, Anton Chekhov, appeasement, BASEES Conference, Belarus, Belorussia, Bertolt Brecht, Brest, British Rail, Christian era, death, Diotima, Estonia, Fedor Tiutchev, Flavinus Stone, Friedrich Hölderlin, Henry Vaughan, Hexham, Hexham Abbey, Joseph Brodsky, Jürgen-Joachim von Sandrart, Kaliningrad, Latvia, Leonid Brezhnev, Lithuania, memorials, Munich Agreement, NATO, Old Cambridge Tales, poetry, pronunciation, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rightmove, Russia, Sam&Sam, security messages, St Wilfrid, Susette Gontard, Suwalki Gap, train travel, translation, Ukraine, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vladimir Putin, Winston Churchill, Yevgeny Yevtushenko | Leave a comment

From the diary of a writer-publisher: 26

Posted on December 5, 2023 by Patrick Miles

7 November 2023 Ukraine must win. There is no alternative, because Putin will never offer a true peace, only a breather before making another attempt to destroy Ukraine as a sovereign state then torture, murder, deport and imprison its people. … Continue reading →