Oli kello kahdeksan aamulla — se aika, jolloin upseerit, virkamiehet ja matkustavaiset tavallisesti kuuman, tukahduttavan yön jälkeen uivat meressä ja sitten tulivat paviljonkiin juomaan kahvia tai teetä. Ivan Andreitsh Lajevski, laihahko, vaaleaverinen, kahdeksankolmatta ikäinen nuorimies, rahaministeriön virkamieslakini päässä ja tohvelit jalassa, tapasi uimaan mennessä rannalla kosolta tuttavia ja niiden joukossa ystävänsä, sotilaslääkäri Samoilenkon.

I am giving it 5 stars (how do you like them apples, Anton Palych?) because if I gave it 4, it would be due to the optimistic and humanistic ending, and I do not want to be a guy who underestimates literature on such grounds.
Also, because it is perfect on every level and may fall short only of other chekhovs.

Usually when I read Chekhov I feel ashamed, because of all those qualities that I inevitably find in myself and that Chekhov treats with such surliness and cruelty in his characters. And then a small and wrinkly, evil Chekhovoid stays perched on my shoulder, pecking on my ear and making sly remarks on my behaviour as seen from that height. But the Chekhovoid from this book is benign and silent, he may occasionally scratch my neck, but he never says a word of reproach. ( )

"The Duel is Beckett with great hats." - Mary Bing, screenwriter.
"The Duel" (1891) was a novella that Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) wrote concurrently with the first parts of his non-fiction accounts of penal colony conditions on "Sakhalin Island" (1891-1895). I read the recent translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky where only the one novella was published as a tie-in edition to the 2010 feature film version directed by Dover Kosashvili with a screenplay by Mary Bing. Mary Bing's foreword in this edition provides a great entry point to reading the work. " ...take heart, Chekhov loves life. The Duel is Beckett with great hats. And naked women, and guns that go off, and an absolution that extends to its audience. May we have the grace to take it."

Introducing the idea of Chekhov as a forerunner of Beckett's humour may not be to everyone's taste, but it certainly agreed with me. I would have found some of these characters hard to put up with for long otherwise, but felt more of a degree of empathy when human weakness and foibles had a degree of humour to them. The main character, named Laevsky, comes across as a n'er do well, a slacker civil servant who drinks and gambles away his money at cards and schemes to leave his lover Nadya, who had previously left her husband for him. The antagonist is a zoologist named Von Koren who looks on Laevsky as a waste of space that should be eliminated to allow evolution and life to proceed properly. Laevsky starts having nervous attacks that are signs of a complete breakdown to come and he hotheadedly provokes Von Koren to challenge him to a duel. Meanwhile their friends, a doctor and a deacon bemusedly look on. Nadya has her own little plots afoot as she has admirers in the seaside town than Laevsky doesn't even know about. It all resolves with pistols at dawn. ( )