This is a brilliant story about a romantic, shallow young man, Shamohin, who is lovesick for his beautiful neighbor, the cold and manipulative (and equally shallow) Ariadne. Shamohin trails pathetically after Ariadne and her lover to Italy, and even lends them money that neither he nor his father can afford to give away.
Having longed for her for years, he finally wins her over. But he soon sees her for what she is: manipulative and disloyal. And yet he feels trapped in the relationship and expects he will have to marry her for the sake of propriety. Heartsick and disappointed in love, he conceives a sort of philosophy of the sexes, a cynical, self-serving feminism that argues that women must work and exist on the same plane as men, else they devolve into helpless, repellent femininity.
The tale has a twist at the end that is quite satisfying.
Two notes about the construction of the story: First, it is framed as a reminiscence by the great author himself — or someone very like him. The narrator briefly explains that he met Shamohin on a steamer to Odessa, and en route Shamohin tells his tale. This allows for the narration to unfold in Shamohin’s words and bitter viewpoint, making it easier for the reader to look upon him with clearer eyes. He’s somewhat repellent, although not entirely unsympathetic. The distancing of the first person through an interlocutor gives the reader a little space and perspective — brilliant.
Second, Chekhov manages to conjure the sense of a huge amount of time passing in the briefest of spaces. The sense of elapsed time is remarkable. It’s quite a trick to tell a short(ish) story that takes place over years and years but that does not feel rushed or sketchy.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
“Ariadne” has some interesting parallels to another long story, “Lights.” Both stories are first-person narratives nested within other first person narratives, and in both cases, there is a bit of meta-writing going on, as the initial narrator in “Ariadne,” like Chekhov, is a famous writer, while in “Lights,” the initial narrator, like Chekhov, is a doctor. Both stories detail failed love affairs, and both unfold, in part, in decadent, warm-weather resort towns. But “Ariadne,” possibly because it was written seven years later, is a much more mature and well-wrought story than “Lights,” which is pretty lumpy.
A Chekhov Circus 