The Duel by Aleksandr Kuprin (notion reading list .TXT) 📕
Description
At the young age of twenty-two Sublieutenant Romashov has become an officer, but he’s already disillusioned with army life in the middle of nowhere, and the brutish and blood-thirsty natures of his commanders and peers. The only thing keeping him from outright depression is his growing infatuation with the wife of a fellow officer; an infatuation which, half-returned, leads inevitably towards the titular subject.
The Duel is regarded as the highlight of Kuprin’s bibliography and was praised by famous Russian authors of the period including Chekhov, Gorky, Bunin and Tolstoy. It was published in 1905 in the middle of the failure of the Russian army in the Russo-Japanese war and widespread social unrest. Kuprin himself had military experience as a lieutenant, which shines through in the novel’s vivid depictions of the minutiae of officer life. The Duel was later adapted for both film and television in Russia. This edition is based on the 1916 translation.
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- Author: Aleksandr Kuprin
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She suddenly covered her face with her handkerchief, and burst into tears of self-pity and wounded pride.
Nikoläiev sprang from his chair and hastened, troubled and distracted, to his wife; but Shurochka had already succeeded in regaining her self-control and took her handkerchief away from her face. There were no tears in her eyes now, but the glint of wrath and passion had not yet died out of them.
“It is all right, Volodya. Dear, it is nothing.” She pushed him nervously away. Immediately afterwards she turned with a little laugh to Romashov, and whilst she was again snatching the thread from him, she said to him coquettishly: “Answer me candidly, you clumsy thing, am I pretty or not? Remember, though, it is the height of impoliteness not to pay a woman the compliment she wants.”
“Shurochka, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!” exclaimed Nikoläiev reprovingly, from his seat at the writing-table.
Romashov smiled with a martyr’s air of resignation. Suddenly he replied, in a melancholy and quavering voice—
“You are very beautiful.”
Shurochka looked at him roguishly from her half-closed eyes, and a turbulent curl got loose and fell over her forehead.
“Romochka, how funny you are!” she twittered in a rather thin, girlish voice. The sublieutenant blushed and thought according to his wont—
“And his heart was cruelly lacerated.”
Nobody said a word. Shurochka went on diligently crocheting. Vladimir Yefimovich, who was bravely struggling with a German translation, now and then mumbled out some German words. One heard the flame softly sputtering and fizzing in the lamp, which displayed a great yellow silk shade in the form of a tent. Romochka had again managed to possess himself of the crochet-cotton, which, almost without thinking about it, he softly and caressingly drew through the young woman’s fingers, and it afforded him a delightful pleasure to feel how Shurochka unconsciously resisted his mischievous little pulls. It seemed to him as if mysterious, magnetic currents, now and again, rushed backwards and forwards through the delicate white threads.
Whilst he was steadily gazing at her bent head, he whispered to himself, without moving his lips, as if he were carrying on a tender and impassioned conversation—
“How boldly you said to me, ‘Am I pretty?’ Ah, you are most beautiful! Here I sit looking at you. What happiness! Now listen. I am going to tell you how you look—how lovely you are. But listen carefully. Thy face is as dark as the night, yet pale. It is a face full of passion. Thy lips are red and warm and good to kiss, and thine eyes surrounded by a light yellowish shadow. When thy glance is directed straight before thee, the white of thine eyes acquires a bluish shade, and amidst it all there beams on me a great dark blue mysteriously gleaming pupil. A brunette thou art not; but thou recallest something of the gipsy. But thy hair is silky and soft, and braided at the back in a knot so neat and simple that one finds a difficulty in refraining from stroking it. You little ethereal creature, I could lift you like a little child in my arms; but you are supple and strong, your bosom is as firm as a young girl’s, and in all thy being there is something quick, passionate, compelling. A good way down on your left ear sits a charming little birthmark that is like the hardly distinguishable scar after a ring has been removed. What charm—”
“Have you read in the newspapers about the duel between two officers?” asked Shurochka suddenly.
Romashov started as he awoke from his dreams, but he found it hard to remove his gaze from her.
“No, I’ve not read about it, but I have heard talk of it. What about it?”
“As usual, of course, you read nothing. Truly, Yuri Alexeitch, you are deteriorating. In my opinion the proceedings were ridiculous. I quite understand that duels between officers are as necessary as they are proper.”
Shurochka pressed her crochet to her bosom with a gesture of conviction.
“But why all this unnecessary and stupid cruelty? Just listen. A lieutenant had insulted another officer. The insult was gross, and the Court of Honour considered a duel necessary. Now, there would have been nothing to say about it, unless the conditions themselves of the duel had been so fixed that the latter resembled an ordinary execution: fifteen paces distance, and the fight to last till one of the duellists was hors de combat. This is only on a par with ordinary slaughter, is it not? But hear what followed. On the duelling-ground stood all the officers of the regiment, many of them with ladies; nay, they had even put a photographer behind the bushes! How disgusting! The unfortunate sublieutenant or ensign—as Volodya usually says—a man of your youthful age, moreover the party insulted, and not the one who offered the insult—received, after the third shot, a fearful wound in the stomach, and died some hours afterwards in great torture. By his deathbed stood his aged mother and sister, who kept house for him. Now tell me why a duel should be turned into such a disgusting spectacle. Of course the immediate consequence” (Shurochka almost shrieked these words) “was that all those sentimental opponents
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