It is believed that writing a novel is more difficult and honorable than a story or story. There are many reasons for this, for example, volume and a large number of storylines. But there is one creator of stories that everyone admires: both novelists and colleagues. Speech, of course, about A.P. Chekhov. The Russian classic wrote many masterpieces, but I want to single out one especially and devote a real article to him: Chekhov's “Black Monk” (a summary of the story) will appear before the reader in all its glory.
Chapter one. Arrival of Andrei Vasilievich Kovrin to Borisovka
Since the story has a fairly large volume by the standards of Chekhov, he is in no hurry with action. In the first chapter, the classic unobtrusively and gently, as he knows how, introduces the reader to the main characters of the composition: Andrei Vasilievich Kovrin (master, specialist in philosophy), Egor Semenovich Pesotsky (prominent gardener, former guardian and teacher of the master) Tanya Pesotskaya (daughter Egor Semenych and childhood friend A.V. Kovrin).
Andrei Vasilievich fell ill with a nervous disease, and he was advised to improve his health in nature. And where to find a home better than your favorite mentor and mentor? Nowhere to find this! Therefore, the master went first to his historical homeland - to Kovrinka, and then to Borisovka to his guardian. It was at a time when nature changed anger to mercy, that is, winter to spring. Kovrin stayed at home for 3 weeks in early April, and then, after waiting for warm days, he went to visit a teacher and childhood friend. Everything was chic in the haven of loved ones: the house, and the trees, and the charm of the awakening spring of life
The first chapter leaves a light aroma of a garden that sheds its winter nap, and Chekhov's “Black Monk” (a summary of which we unfold) moves on.
Chapter Two The appearance of the black monk
A.V. Kovrin was very strange resting in the house of his patron: he read a lot, wrote, listened to music. In other words, the hero did not relax his nerves, but to the extreme they excited and strained them. The psyche of Kovrin was probably influenced by the stream of endless incessant tricks that happened in the Pesotsky’s house almost every evening. They played the violin, sang. In a word, they did everything that relies on such events.
Once, on one of these home holidays, the hero carried Tanya to the balcony and told her the legend of the black monk. Its essence is that 1,000 years ago a black monk walked through the desert, then people saw the same monk far from that desert. But the most interesting is not this, but that the first monk was real, and the second - a mirage or a ghost. And the latter began to produce doubles, and black monks began to be seen all over the world. According to legend, according to Kovrin, the next appearance of a black monk is about to happen.
The legend Tanya did not like, and she began to worry about Andrei. Kovrin let his childhood friend go to the guests, and he decided to check himself. It's an amazing thing, but on a walk he met a black monk, just like in a legend. He slipped past the hero in a black whirlwind, but Kovrin nevertheless examined him well: a gray head, black eyebrows and clothes, like eyebrows. The monk did not touch the Earth. Andrei Vasilievich understood: the legend does not lie!
Returning home, Kovrin, of course, wanted to tell everything to the mentor and his daughter, but stopped in time, because they could have thought that he was crazy, so Andrei Vasilyevich decided to disguise himself as a jovial guy to hide his secret. He sang and danced louder and better that night.
Chapter Three Ordeals of the gardener and insight Kovrin
After the end of the reception, Kovrin rises to his room and wants to recall the image of a black monk, but they interfere with him. First, Tanya comes and asks her father to read wonderful articles on gardening and convince him to write more often. Then Yegor Semenych himself is knocking on the master. He talks about the garden, that it is very important to love the business that he is busy with. He shares with the hero of the story “The Black Monk” by Chekhov (a brief summary of which we are considering) and his fears: what will happen to him when Yegor Semenych is gone, in which hands does his beloved garden fall? And the elderly person offers quite expectedly “to establish some kind of romance” to Kovrin and Tanya. True, leaving, Yegor Semenych nevertheless says: "All this is nonsense, whim and dreaming is empty."
Kovrin, after he was left alone, is taken for the articles of his mentor and sees in them only vulgarity. Then he thinks about his vision for a walk, and then the thought flashes in his head: “What if I'm insane, and all these are just my hallucinations?” The master drives this thought away from himself and calms down: “Even if so, then I do no harm to anyone or concern with my fantasies.”
This is how the third chapter of The Black Monk (story) ends intriguingly. A.P. Chekhov (a brief summary, hopefully this shows) famously twists the plot, leaving both the reader and the hero at a crossroads: is Kovrin healthy or mentally ill? We will definitely find out.
Chapter Four Kovrin wakes up feelings for Tanya
It all started with a scandal. Father cursed with his daughter. Tanya dared to make remarks to her father about how he conducts business, here it went and went: tears on one side, screams on the other. A quarrel happened in the morning. As a result, Tanya locked herself in her room and cried non-stop, and her father first looked peppy, and then he himself was blown away: he became gloomy and gloomy. The brawlers had no appetite, and they did not dine.
At first, Kovrin tried not to pay attention, and then he nevertheless left his room and went to Tanya’s apartments. The girl complained to him for a long time about his father, and the main character of the story “The Black Monk” by Chekhov (whose summary is more and more intriguing) felt how he penetrates the thin, sickly girl with the most sincere love and realizes that he is not the other, more balanced and less touchy. could love.
And dad and daughter, of course, made peace. Everything was fine with them. It took quite a bit of afternoon.
This is the fourth chapter of the work “The Black Monk” by Chekhov in summary.
Chapter Five The second appearance of the black monk. Declarations of love Kovrina
The second coming of the black monk was mixed. On the one hand, Kovrin found himself a best friend who expressed his innermost thoughts, and on the other, the monk confirmed fears about Andrei Vasilyevich’s mental illness .
And all this of him (the monk) turned out as if in passing, as if by chance. For example, he said that it was people like the master who were “the salt of the earth” (F. Nietzsche). It is they who bring the “kingdom of eternal truth” approaching. Kovrin also asked about eternal life, to which the monk, speaking in the innermost thoughts of the hero of the work “The Black Monk” by Chekhov (the equator has already been summarized), said that there is eternal life, and it consists in eternal knowledge.
In other words, the cunning monk draws the paradise of any philosopher. The world wanderer admits that he is a figment of Kovrin’s imagination, but this monk does not see any difficulty, because the disease is a friend of genius, and “only gregarious people are absolutely mentally healthy.” Then, of course, the monk disappeared, he is still a mirage.
In general, if the reader allows us to speak aside, then this entire chapter is designed in a strictly Nietzschean spirit.
At the exit from the park, Andrei meets Tanya and declares her love. Her turn of events is overwhelming and almost physically disfiguring (remember her extreme nervousness), but Kovrin does not care at all, he basks in the electric light of euphoria, everything is extremely beautiful for him.
Chapter Six Nervousness. The black monk is already a constant interlocutor of Kovrin
This chapter could be called so, because all the heroes placed in a brief retelling of the work “The Black Monk” are experiencing extreme tension of both feelings and nerves. The master continued to write his essays and talk with the black monk several times a week. Now, creativity has acquired a special meaning for him, because he received the title of “Chosen One”. He wrote to lovers even better, and the work came out even more beautifully, as it seemed to him.
Mentor and his future father-in-law worked a lot, the garden required special attention. Tanya cried incessantly for almost every reason. And like any girl who was too impressionable, during preparations for the wedding, different thoughts visited her and she fell into polar states. Tanya was tormented by horror, then she fell into euphoria.
Chapter Seven. The evidence of madness A.V. Kovrina
S. King in the Ballad on a Flexible Pool wrote that when one person does not walk under the stairs and is terribly superstitious - this is nothing, it is perceived normally, but if everyone starts to avoid the stairs, and this becomes noticeable, then there will be an era of madness. This is what happened to Kovrin - his craziness became apparent.
One night, he had insomnia (to admit, the man hadn’t slept at all lately recently), he read a French novel, then mentally evoked the image of a black monk in his imagination, and he arose in the space of the hero’s bedroom. Two old friends began to talk about something terribly tricky. During this lesson, Andrei unexpectedly woke up Tanya. She was afraid that her husband was talking with an empty chair. Her concern passed on to him. Kovrin's father-in-law came out from his room, visiting them, and in the morning the relatives went to the doctor. Andrei Vasilievich began to undergo medical procedures.
Chapter Eight. About the benefits and harms of the disease for life
And finally, A.P. Chekhov approaches the main problem of the work. Which is better - a creative illness or infertile health, a sick genius or a healthy mediocrity?
A whole year has already passed since the events when the hero first appeared in Borisovka after a long break. Summer again. Again the house of Yegor Semenych.
The carpet in this chapter is reborn. After treatment, he became evil, withdrawn and hating the whole human race, and most of all - his wife and her father. All his speeches are aimed at protecting his painful condition. Among other things, he says the following: “Yes, I had megalomania, I saw mirages and ghosts, but to whom did I interfere? But I was happy, calm and peaceful. ” Then there are references to the Buddha, Christ and Mohammed, and the hero asks, what would happen to them if their relatives would deal with them? From his speech, which is not without brilliance, it turns out that relatives are a real evil, they fabricate mediocrity and help the mouth of civilization. It seems that Nietzsche stands above these lines of the Russian classic and praises Chekhov for them.
For the rest, nothing interesting happens in the chapter, except for the obvious: the relationship between Kovrin, Tanya and her father is collapsing. Tanya in this unspoken, silent war joins her father, and Andrei Vasilievich remains in psychological isolation.
The last chapter. The Return of the Black Monk and the End of Kovrin
Chekhov A.P. always wrote wonderful prose. The "Black Monk" (a summary of the chapters we describe) is nearing its finale.
Two more years passed. Tanya and her father remained for Kovrin in the past. He already lived with another woman and in all respects obeyed her. He was even given a pulpit, but the illness that killed his mother also got close to him - blood was coming from his throat. Doctors said that it wasn’t dangerous, only peace was needed.
His new wife, Varvara Nikolaevna, probably, at the insistence of the doctors, decided to take Kovrin to the Crimea for treatment and calm her nerves. He almost came to his senses. Resigned to the fact that he is not a genius. Travelers arrived in Sevastopol. They wanted to rest first at the hotel a day or two before going to Yalta.
Kovrin received a letter from Tanya just before his departure. He opened it only in the late evening, when Varvara Nikolaevna had already laid down. In it, the ex-wife wrote that her father had died, the garden was gone, and she blamed the master for this and wished her husband to die soon as punishment for his sins before her.
The hero tore the letter so that it could not be glued. Andrei Vasilievich began to work in order to suppress the anxiety that had come upon him. I read my sketches (but not those that I wrote during my illness; that “imperishable legacy” Kovrin irrevocably destroyed). Then the former mentally ill patient tried to throw pieces of the letter out the window, but could not. Parts of Tanya’s angry work just scattered across the windowsill. The master went to the balcony. He was seized with concern. In the distance, he saw a whirlwind - a harbinger of a black monk, and after a second he was already in the room. The monk chided brotherly, fatherly Andrey Vasilyevich for his disbelief in his destiny, but Kovrin could no longer speak - he was bleeding profusely from his throat. The monk continued to whisper something in his ear when his weakened physical shell let Andrei Vasilievich go wandering around other worlds, and possibly enjoy eternal knowledge.
In the morning, Varvara Nikolaevna found her husband dead and with a blissful smile on her face.
This concludes the brief retelling of the content of “The Black Monk”. Chekhov, of course, would not have endorsed such a long “brief retelling” of his work, but there are few geniuses like him in the world. We hope that our article will encourage the reader to get acquainted with the full version of this creation, which is fantastic in its writing.