Prospero’s Isle

Most recent articles

• 

  "The Colonel’s Ideas" by Guy de Maupassant (1884)

  15 April, by Guy de Maupassant

  Colonel Laporte propounds his views on the Frenchman’s overwhelming not to say obsessive interest in the female half of humanity, and illustrates his declaration with the story of how his detachment in the recent Franco-Prussian War managed against all odds to survive after rescuing a young woman and her father who were fleeing from marauding Prussian troops.
  A dramatic tale recounted in an engaging, almost light-hearted spirit that’s hard to resist.
  (2,000 words)
  Translated by (…)

• 

  "The Legend of Mont-Saint-Michel" by Guy de Maupassant (1882)

  13 April, by Guy de Maupassant

  During his visit of the famous abbey a Norman peasant explains to the narrator the local version of the historic combat between Saint Michael and the Devil around the famous abbey.
  This story was first published in the daily newspaper Gil Blas under the pen-name Maufrigneuse on December 19, 1882, and then in the anthology of Maupassant stories Clair de lune published in 1884.
  (1,600 words)
  It has been translated specially for this site.
  The original French text can be seen below.
  I (…)

• 

  "Marroca" - Maupassant’s torrid account of love under the African sun (1882)

  9 April, by Guy de Maupassant

  The narrator, who’s sojourning in Algeria and suffering heavily from the heat and the absence of female companionship, writes to a friend who wants to know what the ladies are like in those parts.
  The letter is an account of his steamy affair with the (very) passionate wife of a citizen in the town on the coast where he he’d rented a house.
  Marroca was first published in the daily newspaper Gil Blas on March 2, 1882 under the pen-name Maufrigneuse, and then in the anthology Mademoiselle (…)

• 

  "Volodya" by Anton Chekhov (1887)

  5 April, by Anton Chekhov

  Volodya is a frail seventeen-year-old student thinking about the critical exam the following day that could result in his expulsion from school, about his inferior social position at the house of the Shumihins where he and his mother are guests, and about the attractiveness of the Shumihins’ thirty-year-old married cousin. This is the account of the quite catastrophic results (for Volodya) of that encounter.
  Volodya) (Russian title: Володя) was first published in the daily newspaper (…)

• 

  "The Examining Magistrate" by Anton Chekhov (1887)

  3 April, by Anton Chekhov

  An examining magistrate tells a doctor while they are driving to an inquest that “there is a great deal that is enigmatic and obscure in nature; and even in everyday life one must often come upon phenomena which are absolutely incapable of explanation.” When the skeptical doctor declares that there’s no effect without a cause and that if there’s a death there must be a reason for it, the magistrate proceeds to tell him of a woman who had for months predicted the exact date upon which she (…)

• 

  "An Adventure (a driver’s story)" by Anton Chekhov (1887)

  1 April, by Anton Chekhov

  A cab-driver tells a passenger the story of how his father had fallen victim to robbers after bragging in a café that he was taking five hundred roubles of rent-money to town. He’d been accosted by thieves afterwards, but not before confiding the money to his little daughter, who’d fled through the surrounding woods. She lost her way though, and finally came to a cabin where a woman gave her shelter; but unfortunately it was the home of the chief of the robbers and the woman gave them the (…)

• 

  "The Tenant" by Anton Chekhov (1886)

  30 March, by Anton Chekhov

  Brykovich rushes out of his flat late at night fed up with the bossiness of his wife, the owner of the lodging house where they live. He encounters the musician Khalyavkin, who’s behind with his rent and is unsuccessfully trying to get his key into his lock after a night out with fellow artists, and starts berating him for being in arrears. An argument begins that evolves into a very Russian discussion involving life’s troubles, sausages, tea and vodka that lasts until dawn and is the start (…)

• 

  "Women Make Trouble" by Anton Chekhov (1886)

  28 March, by Anton Chekhov

  The magistrate Popikov is woken up early by Ivan, an unkempt peasant who’d been summoned to appear before him at 11 a.m. to testify in an affair of assault. The judge decides to hear him anyway, and the man in his confused and semi-illiterate manner recounts the affair that had started when he’d pulled a boy’s ears for throwing stones at ducks in a pond, much to the violent disapproval of the accused man, a certain (inebriated) Drykhunov who was passing by and who’d ended up by inviting Ivan (…)

• 

  "The Wolf" by Anton Chekhov (1886)

  26 March, by Anton Chekhov

  Nilov is a big, very powerful man who was attacked by a probably-rabid wolf when out for a walk at night while staying with a friend during a hunting expedition.
  Nilov manages to survive, but his subsequent anguish at the thought of having contacted rabies and his desperate efforts to find a cure for the dreaded disease constitute the meat of this short but rather powerful story of a mortal conflict between man and beast and its consequences.
  Initially published in the daily newspaper (…)

• 

  "Mari d’elle" by Anton Chekhov (1885)

  24 March, by Anton Chekhov

  An opera singer unsuccessfully confronts her parasitical husband who has been profiting from her fame and wealth ever since she defied him to take up her artistic career.
  A resounding declaration in favour of feminine emancipation, only marred somewhat by the basic vileness of the male partner in this fruitless and endless confrontation.
  The title “Mari d’elle” is a direct tranposition of the original Russian title in the Latin alphabet, signifying “Her Husband”.
  It was first published (…)