About Love by Anton Chekhov (Audiobook)

"About Love" (Russian: О любви, romanized: O lyubvi) is an 1898 short story by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. The third and final part of the Little Trilogy, started by "The Man in the Case" and continued by "Gooseberries". It was first published in the August 1898 (No. 8) issue of Russkaya Mysl, and later included into Volume XII of the second, 1903 edition of the Collected Works by A.P. Chekhov, published by Adolf Marks. It is now in the public domain world-wide.
There were numerous entries in Chekhov's notebooks related to the story, the earliest of them going back to as far as 1895, long before the story was apparently conceived. He wrote the story in June and July 1898, while staying at his country house in Melikhovo. It was supposed to be sent to Russkaya Mysl for this magazine's August issue along with "Gooseberries", and in the notebooks the two plotlines are often intertwined.
The story begins with the love affair between the cook of the house, Nikanor and servant (beautiful woman) Pelageya. Nikanor, who is a drunkard, often verbally abuses and even beats his lover Pelageya when he is drunk. So Pelageya only wants to live with him without getting married. On the other hand, Nikanor doesn’t want to be with her without getting married.
Originally Chekhov was not going to end the cycle with "About Love" and hoped to write at least one more story for it. But by the end of July the mental strain started to take its toll, and feelings of tiredness and dissatisfaction had overcome him. "I am sick of writing and do not know what to do," he confessed in the 27 July letter to Lydia Avilova. The same feelings were expressed in his 30 July letter to brother Alexander.
In a matter of days things got back to normal, but next month he had to go to Crimea for health reasons. "I feel like a fish out of water and all but stopped working. This imposed idleness and the resorts-visiting is worse than any bacilli," he complained in the 21 September letter to the Mayor of Taganrog (and his one-time classmate) Pavel Yordanov whom at the time he regularly corresponded with.
In November he resumed working, although not on the cycle, but on the two stories, "A Doctor's Visit" and "On Official Duty", unrelated to it. "Is there a chance you'd return to those stories, narrated by Ivan Ivanovich and Burkin?" Viktor Goltsev enquired in a December 1898 letter. Whether he received an answer or not, is unknown, but nothing else followed, and a proposed cycle remained but a "little trilogy".
Lydia Avilova, Chekhov's protégé and regular correspondent, who first met him in 1889, insisted that the "About Love" told the story of the secret relationship she'd had with its author. Her whole book of memoirs, A.P. Chekhov in My Life (А. П. Чехов в моей жизни, finished in 1939, published posthumously, in 1947), was based upon the premise that the two "had had a secret love affair which lasted a decade and nobody was aware of." She claimed that they discussed the story in their correspondence, and Chekhov even signed one of his letters "Alyuokhin". If there was such a letter, it failed to survive.
Avilova's memoirs caused controversy. Maria Chekhova was among those who expressed strong reservations. "These memoirs are lively and exciting, and many of the things she states in them are undoubtedly true... Lydia Alexeyevna seems to be totally truthful, when she writes about her own feelings to Anton Pavlovich... When it comes to his own feeling towards her, things start to look a bit too 'subjective'," she wrote in her book From Distant Past.[7]
Ivan Bunin never doubted that Avilova's claims were true. He wrote: "Avilova's memories, brilliant, highly emotional, written masterfully and with great tact, became a revelation to me. I knew well Lydia Alexeyevna, a gifted woman with a rare sense of humour, who was also a very honest and shy person... Never did I suspect though, that they had this sort of relationship."
The narrative takes up where "Gooseberries" left off.