Love and Other Stories — Anton Checkov

This was more or less how I began my love letter to Sasha a girl of nineteen with whom I had fallen in love I began it five times and as often tore up the sheets scratched out whole pages and copied it all over again I spent as long over the letter as if it had been a no vel I had to write to order And it was not because I tried to make it longer more elaborate and more fer vent but because I wanted endlessly to prolong the process of this writing when one sits in the stillness of one s study and communes with one s own day dre ams while the spring night looks in at one s window Between the lines I saw a beloved image and it seemed to me that there were sitting at the same table writing with me spirits as naïvely happy as foolish and as blissfully smiling as I I wrote continually loo king at my hand which still ached deliciously where hers had lately pressed it and if I turned my eyes away I had a vision of the green trellis of the little gate Through that trellis Sasha gazed at me after I had said goodbye to her When I was saying good bye to Sasha I was thinking of nothing and was simply admiring her figure as ever y decent man admires a pretty woman when I saw through the trellis two big eyes I suddenly as though by inspiration knew that I was in love that it was all settled between us and fully decided already that I had nothing left to do but to carr y out certain formalities

This was more or less how I began my love letter to Sasha a girl of nineteen with whom I had fallen in love I began it five times and as often tore up the sheets scratched out whole pages and copied it all over again I spent as long over the letter as if it had been a no vel I had to write to order And it was not because I tried to make it longer more elaborate and more fer vent but because I wanted endlessly to prolong the process of this writing when one sits in the stillness of one s study and communes with one s own day dre ams while the spring night looks in at one s window Between the lines I saw a beloved image and it seemed to me that there were sitting at the same table writing with me spirits as naïvely happy as foolish and as blissfully smiling as I I wrote continually loo king at my hand which still ached deliciously where hers had lately pressed it and if I turned my eyes away I had a vision of the green trellis of the little gate Through that trellis Sasha gazed at me after I had said goodbye to her When I was saying good bye to Sasha I was thinking of nothing and was simply admiring her figure as ever y decent man admires a pretty woman when I saw through the trellis two big eyes I suddenly as though by inspiration knew that I was in love that it was all settled between us and fully decided already that I had nothing left to do but to carr y out certain formalities Tanıtım Bülteninden