Chekhov had started working on this play by 1886, and this version is from 1902.
This Bengali adaptation of the play, which runs under fifteen minutes, is famous in India.
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On the
Harmful Effects of Tobacco
A monologue for the stage in one act
Delivered by Ivan Ivanovich Nyukhin,
husband of a wife who keeps a music school and a boarding school for girls.
By Anton
Chekhov, as translated by Dr. Avrahm Yarmolinsky in “The Unknown Chekhov”
The stage represents a rostrum in a
provincial club.
Nyukhin
(sporting Dundreary whiskers, his upper lip shaven, and wearing an old,
threadbare frock coat; enters majestically, bows, and pulls down his
waistcoat). Ladies and, as it were,
gentlemen (Combs his whiskers). It was
suggested to my wife that I deliver a popular lecture here in the interests of
charity. Well, so let us have a
lecture—it is all one to me. Of course,
I am not a professor and learned degrees are not in my line, nevertheless for
the past thirty years I have been working untiringly and, I might even say, at
the sacrifice of my health and so forth, on problems of a strictly scientific
nature. I engage in meditation and
sometimes, think of it, I even write learned papers, that is not exactly
learned, but, pardon the expression, very nearly learned. Among other things I recently composed an
enormous article entitled: “On the harmfulness
of certain insects.” My daughters liked
it very much, particularly the section on bedbugs, but I read it over and tore
it up. For, write what you may, you
cannot dispense with Persian powder. We
have bugs even in the piano. … As the subject of my lecture today I have
chosen, so to speak, the injury that tobacco inflicts on mankind. I myself smoke, but my wife has ordered me to
lecture today on the harmful effects of tobacco, and therefore there is no help
for it. If it must be tobacco, it
must—it’s all one to me. As for you,
gentlemen, I suggest that you treat my present lecture with due seriousness, or
something untoward may occur. But anyone
who shrinks from a dry scientific lecture, who doesn’t care for it, need not
listen—he may leave (pulls down his waistcoat).
I particularly crave the attention of Messrs. the physicians here
present, who may obtain much useful information from my lecture, since tobacco,
aside from its injurious effects, is also employed in medicine. Thus, for instance, if you place a fly in a
snuffbox, it will expire, probably from nervous prostration. In the main, tobacco is a plant. … When
I deliver a lecture, I usually wink my right eye, but pay no attention to
it: it is due to agitation. Generally speaking, I am a very nervous man,
and I started to wink my eye on September 13, 1889, on the very day my wife
gave birth, as it were, to her fourth daughter, Varvara. All my daughters were born on the
thirteenth. However (glances at his
watch), as the time at our disposal is short, don’t let us stray from the
subject of the lecture. … I must tell you that my wife keeps a music
school and a private boarding school, that is: not exactly a boarding school
but something of that description.
Between ourselves, my wife likes to complain of straitened
circumstances, yet she has something salted away, about forty or fifty
thousand, while I haven’t a kopeck to bless myself with, not a groat—but what’s
the use of talking about it! At the
boarding school I am in charge of the housekeeping. I buy the provisions, look after the
servants, keep the accounts, stitch the exercise books together, exterminate
bedbugs, walk my wife’s lapdog, catch mice.
… Last night it was my duty to
issue butter and eggs to the cook, because we were going to have pancakes. Well, in a word, today when the pancakes had
already been fried, my wife came into the kitchen to say that three pupils
would not be able to eat their pancakes because they had swollen glands. Thus it turned out that we had fried several
pancakes too many. What would you have
us do with them? At first my wife
ordered them taken to the cellar, but then she thought and thought, and
said: “You eat these pancakes yourself,
you dummy.” When she is in a bad humor
she addresses me thus: “dummy,” “viper,” or “Satan.” Now, what kind of Satan am I? She is always in a bad humor. And you couldn’t say that I ate the
pancakes—I swallowed them without chewing them, because I’m always hungry. Yesterday, for example, she gave me no dinner. “No use feeding you, dummy that you are,” she
said. However (looks at his watch), we
have been carried away and have strayed somewhat from our theme. Let us proceed. Though, of course, you would rather listen to
a love song, now, or some symphony or other, or an aria. (Breaks into song): ‘In the heat of battle we shall not blink an
eye …’ I don’t recall where that comes from.
… Incidentally, I forgot to tell
you that at my wife’s music school, in addition to being in charge of the
housekeeping, I teach mathematics, physics, chemistry, geography, history,
solfeggio, literature, and so forth. For
dancing, singing, and drawing my wife charges extra, though I am also the one
who teaches dancing and singing. Our
music school is located at Five Dog Lane, No. 13. Probably my life is a failure because the
number of the house that we live in is 13.
Besides, my daughters were born on the thirteenth, and our house has
thirteen windows. … But what’s the use of talking? My wife can be seen at home at any time for
an interview, and the prospectus of the school may be had from the porter at 30
kopecks a copy. (Produces several copies
from his pocket). I can let you have
some, if you like. Thirty kopecks a
copy! Anyone wants a copy? (Pause).
No one? Well, I’ll make it 20
kopecks! (Pause). How annoying!
Yes, house no. 13! Nothing
suceeds with me, I’ve grown old, stupid.
… Here I am delivering a lecture,
outwardly I am cheerful, but privately I long to cry out at the top of my voice
or fly to the ends of the earth. And
there’s no one to complain to, I could burst into tears. You will say: daughters … But what are daughters? I talk to them, but all they do is laugh
… My wife has seven daughters … No, I am sorry, six, I believe. (Quickly) Seven! The eldest, Anna, is twenty-seven, the
youngest, seventeen. Gentlemen! (Looks round). I am wretched, I have turned into a fool, a
nonentity, but actually you see before you the happiest of fathers. Actually, that’s how it ought to be, and I
daren’t say it is not. If you only
knew! I have lived with my wife for
thirty-three years, and I can say that those were the best years of my life, that
is, not the best, but just generally speaking.
They have swept by, in a word, as one happy moment; strictly speaking, a
curse on them. (Looks round). I believe she hasn’t come yet, she isn’t
here, and I may say what I please. I am
in terror of her … in terror when she looks at me. Well, as I was saying: my daughters are so slow about getting
married, probably because they are bashful and also because men never see
them. My wife doesn’t want to give
evening parties, she never invites anyone to dinner, she is a very stingy,
ill-tempered, quarrelsome lady, and that is why no one ever comes to the house,
but … I can tell you confidentially
(comes close to the footlights). My
wife’s daughters may be seen on high holidays in the home of their aunt,
Natalya Semyonovna, the same that suffers from rheumatism and wears a yellow
dress with black dots as if cockroaches were crawling all over her. Refreshments are served there, too. And when my wife isn’t on the scene, one can
… (raises his fist to his lips). I must
tell you that I get drunk on one glass, and then I have such a wonderful
feeling, and at the same time I am so sad, I can’t tell you how awfully sad;
for some reason I recall my youth, and for some reason I am seized with a
desire to run away, oh, if you knew how I long to do it! (Enthusiastically). To run away, to throw everything over and run
away without looking back … Where
to? No matter where … only to run from
this cheap, trashy, vulgar life that has turned me into a pitiful old fool, a
pitiful old idiot, to run away from that stupid, petty, mean, mean, mean
skinflint, my wife, who has tormented me for thirty-three years, to run away
from the music, the kitchen, my wife’s money, from all this pettiness, all
these vulgarities … and to come to a halt somewhere far, far away, in the
fields, and to stand there like a tree, a post, a scarecrow in a kitchen
garden, under the wide sky, and all night long watch the bright, still moon
hanging overhead, and forget, forget …
Oh, how I long not to remember anything!
How I long to tear off this vile old frock coat that I wore at my
wedding thirty years ago … (tears off his frock coat) in which I constantly
give lectures in the interests of charity …
Take that! (Tramples on the frock
coat). Take that! I am old, poor, pitiful, like this waistcoat
with its shabby, threadbare back … (Turns round to show its back). I want nothing! I’m better than this, superior to this, I was
once young, intelligent, I was a university student, I dreamed, I considered
myself a human being … Now I want
nothing. Nothing but rest … rest! (Glancing aside, quickly dons the frock
coat). My wife is standing in the
wings. She has come and she’s waiting
for me there. (Looks at his watch). Time is up …
If she asks you, please, I beg you, tell her that the lecture was … that
the booby, that is me, behaved with dignity.
(Glances aside, clears his throat).
She is looking in my direction.
(Raising his voice). Starting
from the premise that tobacco contains a terrible poison, of which I have just
spoken, one should on no account indulge in smoking, and I allow myself to
hope, as it were, that my lecture on the harmful effects of tobacco will be of
help. That is all I had to say. Dixi et
animam levavi! (Bows, and stalks out
majestically).
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