place
Bay of Bengal
also: Бенгальский залив
The large bay of the northeastern Indian Ocean crossed by Chekhov during his sea voyage home from Sakhalin via the tropics, remembered here for its fine sunsets and invoked in his comic theological musing about the kingdom of heaven.
Reading notes
- To A. S. Suvorin, 17 December 1890. Moscow. §9 If in the kingdom of heaven the sun sets as beautifully as it does in the Bay of Bengal, then, I dare assure you, the kingdom of heaven is a very good thing
The punchline of the theological riff begun at section 7: Chekhov measures the value of eternal paradise against the one criterion that actually moved him on his voyage home -- a fine sunset over open water. The comic blasphemy (treating the kingdom of heaven as a proposition to be evaluated by its scenery, like a resort) is translated straight, without softening or added distancing language, per the corpus's no-softening policy for Chekhov's own irreverent voice.