Empty case

The story of A.P. Chekhov "An empty case" was written in 1886, first published in 1886 in the newspaper " New Time " No. 3793 dated September 20 in the section "Subbotniki" signed An. Chekhov, in 1887, published in the collection " At Twilight ", was included in the publication of Adolf Marx .

During Chekhov's life, the story was translated into Hungarian and Serbo-Croatian.

Criticism appreciated the story. K. K. Arseniev wrote about the story “An empty case” as follows: “Because of a hunting adventure, the outlines of the figure of a seedy prince and a woman hopelessly in love with him peep out” ^[1] .

The critic A.F. Bychkov ranked the story “Empty Case” as Chekhov's “less successful” work. He considered the story "stretched."

A. Aleksandrov wrote about Chekhov’s work: “In the story“ An empty case “he managed to consider and show with amazing art the extremely nice features in the Russian“ seedy prince ”, who was not otherwise called in the county as“ a shining bastard ”and which, meanwhile, he didn’t want to “lie only once in his life” in order to “put a million in his pocket”. ”

A. S. Glinka attributed Chekhov's story to works containing “an image of how reality laughs at human happiness” ^[2] .

• Narrator.
• Sergei Ivanovich, prince, a tall single brunette with a long mustache.
• Nadezhda Lvovna Kandurina, owner of the forest.
• Grontovsky, the chief clerk Kandurina.

The story is written in the first person. One summer, a storyteller with a prince he knew went to Shabelsky Bor to shoot grouse. In the forest, they met a stranger (the chief clerk of Grontovsky) with mushrooms, who warned oncoming people that it was forbidden to hunt here. The owner of the forest, Nadezhda Lvovna, forbade hunting. Grontowski said that his task was only to warn the hunters.

The hunters decided to visit the mistress of the forest. There were rumors about the mistress that she had been in love with Prince Sergei Ivanovich, who was traveling with a storyteller. According to gossip, the prince did not reciprocate, since Hope was not beautiful; according to other rumors, the landlady’s father invited the prince to marry her, and the prince decided that they were going to buy him with his title and quarreled with his father Nadezhda. After that, Nadezhda Lvovna married the poor Kandurin.

Having met with Nadezhda Lvovna, the narrator found that she really was ugly. The hunters named the purpose of the parish. The landlady liked the right to allow and prohibit hunting, but she resolutely refused to come to hunt - "either everyone, or nobody." Then the narrator said that the prince had come with him. From this message, Nadezhda Lvovna Kandurina started and wondered. Then she said that it would be unfair to allow hunting only to those who came. Persuasion and even shooting a bird by a prince did not pity her. Nadezhda Lvovna said goodbye and left.

A maid called out at the hunters' exit and gave a note from the hostess with the text: “Hunters are allowed to give this hunter. N. K. "

• s: Empty case (Chekhov)
• Chekhov A.P. An empty case // Chekhov A.P. Complete Works and Letters: In 30 vols. Works: In 18 vol. / Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Institute of World Lite. them. A. M. Gorky. - M .: Nauka, 1974-1982.

• Chekhov A.P. An empty case . Original Russian text.