Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Black Monk (Translated)
    Unavailable
    The Black Monk (Translated)
    Unavailable
    The Black Monk (Translated)
    Ebook64 pages

    The Black Monk (Translated)

    By Anton Chekhov

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Listen to the audiobook instead

    About this ebook

    Doctors and kind relations will succeed in stupefying mankind, in making mediocrity pass for genius and in bringing civilisation to ruin.' Kovrin is a gifted man, well educated. Following advice of his doctor he decides to leave his busy city lifestyle and travels to recover his health in a beautiful family country estate. There he meets this mystical and prophetic Black Monk, a character from an ancient legend, which he thought was nothing more than a hallucination. The Black Monk ignites intellectual stimulation, greatly improves Kovrin's mental faculties for a while, and engages him in discussions about eternal life, truth, philosophy, and even fame. What the Monk says to him flatters, not his vanity, but his whole soul, his whole being. Kovrin begins to experience moments of greatness with each Black Monk encounter. Then his doctors and kind relations succeed in curing his illness and a terrible accident happens.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherInteractive Media
    Release dateMar 6, 2018
    ISBN9781787244696
    Author

    Anton Chekhov

    Anton Chekhov was born in 1860 in Southern Russia and moved to Moscow to study medicine. Whilst at university he sold short stories and sketches to magazines to raise money to support his family. His success and acclaim grew as both a writer of fiction and of plays whilst he continued to practice medicine. Ill health forced him to move from his country estate near Moscow to Yalta where he wrote some of his most famous work, and it was there that he married actress Olga Knipper. He died from tuberculosis in 1904.

    Read more from Anton Chekhov

    Related to The Black Monk (Translated)

    Titles in the series (23)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Classics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Jenny Agutter

      Jun 24, 2022

      Jenny Agutter
      14 min read

    • Article

      Stephen Fry Actor, Writer And Presenter

      Mar 19, 2020

      Stephen Fry’s well-documented journey from comedy actor to national treasure, by way of best-selling author, ahead-of-the-curve technophile, film director and television presenter, means he needs little introduction. He has teamed-up with composer De

      3 min read

    • Article

      Solving Riddles, Reading Poems

      Nov 28, 2017

      Solving Riddles, Reading Poems
      6 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2020

      We went to visit our brother.They had a special, blue roomfor the purpose of waiting.A counselor came over andcalled my sweater “too provocative.”Nora started laughingand then I started laughingand then our brother came outand told us about the squir

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Parsonage in New Hope

      Dec 4, 2023

      A Parsonage in New Hope
      12 min read

    • Article

      Jan Morris

      Jun 15, 2018

      I have always rather envied the poet Ovid, who was banished from Rome by the emperor Augustus, you may remember, to a remote place called Tomis on the shores of the Black Sea. There he died, ten years later, and his exile has gone into legend and int

      17 min read

    • Article

      Flood The World With Beauty

      Nov 1, 2019

      A big literary conference is probably not the best place for a poet dealing with a mental breakdown. But there I was at AWP, skittishly perusing tables at the book fair, under the garish lights of the Minneapolis Convention Center. For two years, par

      8 min read

    • Article

      There’s No Place Like Home

      Aug 17, 2022

      NÍL aon tinteán mar do thinteán fhéin,’ Rose says (it means: ‘There is no fireplace like your own’) every time we turn in through our gates and catch a glimpse of the house at the end of the drive. We have been leading such a peripatetic existence of

      2 min read

    • Article

      Stop Hating on Adjectives!

      Jun 12, 2019

      A common admonition in creative writing pedagogy is, “Cut as many adjectives as possible.” I propose that this rule springs from mere prejudice. The post Stop Hating on Adjectives! appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      Chinese Rhymes

      Mar 28, 2018

      Everybody who cares anything for old poetry in English knows how it feels—knows how awful it feels—when a poem is rhyming away and then suddenly the rhyme goes off the rails for a second because English pronunciation has changed since the time the po

      6 min read

    • Article

      A Final Walk With Olds

      Oct 2, 2023

      A Final Walk With Olds
      6 min read

    • Article

      Too Much, Magic Bus

      Dec 9, 2019

      Too Much, Magic Bus
      8 min read

    • Article

      A Transcendentalist at Work

      Dec 2, 2019

      A Transcendentalist at Work
      9 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Mar 1, 2022

      I met the Bishop on the roadand much said he—same old porridgeI heard as a child, my little bodya “foul sty.” “Love has pitched his mansion.” MaybeLove pitched her silken tent.Love has raised its dwelling inthe place of reproduction, which can be fit

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Sweetness Of Nature

      Aug 12, 2020

      The Sweetness Of Nature
      4 min read

    • Article

      Maxim Osipov

      Mar 9, 2021

      Vnukovo is the smallest, most intimate of Moscow’s airports, and when your flight arrives—especially if it arrives on Saturday at eleven at night—you don’t expect to see much of a crowd. Stamps in the passport, baggage claim—quick and easy. “Where ar

      14 min read

    • Article

      Across The Whited Fields

      Oct 13, 2019

      In a twilight streeta small girl laughing. The red and yellow flowersprofuse, inhale the air. We want to hold your name,Polly, dancing in the rain Polly, skipping down the street.Sometimes the world bequeaths then takes away the one to whomou

      14 min read

    • Article

      Six Poems

      Feb 28, 2023

      Dear C, At first Virgil’s poem is quite dull; equivocalnames of products at The Container Store: Elfa White Medium Drawer, Mesh NarrowRolling Cart (Medium Solution), Narrow Classic Mesh Box and the number of pirouetting starseach product attained. An

      5 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Nov 1, 2018

      Our house in the 100-year flood plainflooded. They say thatfor another 800 years a hurricanelike this will not come. My internetis down and my smart phone hurts my thumbsarthritic. I’m running out of data.All my books are in boxes. Please referto my

      3 min read

    • Article

      Great Hymns Abide With Me

      Jan 10, 2024

      I was chatting to my Iranian fishmonger the other day about the oral tradition in poetry. His grandfather had lived in a small village, with no electricity or running water, and only dust roads. Being one of the only literate people in the community,

      3 min read

    • Article

      No Words

      Apr 16, 2019

      No Words
      4 min read

    Reviews for The Black Monk (Translated)

    3.5/5

    29 ratings4 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      I enjoyed these two stories even though the backdrop is depressing. Both are philosophical and I believe they would be made better if read for a book club or class and discussed. In The Black Monk, my question is, is he crazy?In Peasants, the question is, do situations people are placed in cause them to be unhappy with their lives or is it the individual who ultimately has control of their happiness with outside forces being minimal in that respect.
    • 4/5
      These two stories are both weightier and more serious affairs than the author's many vignettes of Russian life in his Selected Short Stories. The title story is rather ambiguous and I am not sure if the author is making a specifically anti-religious point (the monk as the instrument of the protagonist's fall in life) or showing simply a generally cynical and pessimistic outlook on life. The protagonist dies of consumption, as did the author. Peasants is a vivid depiction of grinding poverty, starkly unlike the humorous peasant characters in the author's other story vignettes. This culminates in the death of the main character and a horrible line "Far from having any fear of death, Marya was only sorry that it was such a long time coming, and was glad when any of her children died".
    • 4/5
      I was intrigued by this, not just as a skillful handling of one man's descent into madness, but the lack of bias in the author's treatment of the situation. Who should we sympathise with? Tanya and her father, long suffering by standers and "victims" of Audrey's behaviour? Or Audrey himself, whose thoroughly delusional yet relatively benign behaviour causes little serious harm and keeps him happy. The drive by Tanya and her father to bring him back to "normality", destroying his genius in the process, seems cruel from his point of view. Their view of his odd behaviour seems understandable from theirs...The quote that stands out for me is when the Black Monk talks of genius and madness: "Nowadays scientists say genius is akin to madness". I suspect the urge t come down on the side of one or the other is futile-and not what Chekhov was wanting for his readers. I think it is more the genius/madness that exists in humanity, which can be delusional, difficult and sometimes damaging, but which is more damaging when "cured". I'm a newbie to Chekhov so I need to read more to make sense of him.
    • 2/5
      This is one of those stories that appeals to something, which I haven't a clue because I lack the intellectual tools. I read it on Daily Lit.