work
Eger (The Huntsman)
"The Huntsman"
also: Егерь, The Huntsman, Yeger
A short story by Chekhov (1885) about the huntsman Yegor Vlasych and his abandoned wife Pelageya, singled out for praise in Grigorovich's letter; Chekhov tells Grigorovich here that he wrote it, like all his early stories, in a single sitting -- in this case in a bathing hut -- without any of the sustained labor he now recognizes the gift deserves.
Reading notes
- To D. V. Grigorovich, 28 March 1886. Moscow. §4 "The Huntsman," which you liked, I wrote in a bathing hut!
The anecdote of composing "The Huntsman" in a bathing hut (kupalnya) became one of the most repeated details of Chekhov's early career, cited by biographers as emblematic of both his facility and the haste Grigorovich was urging him to abandon. The story itself -- about a huntsman who has effectively abandoned his wife -- is now considered one of the strongest of Chekhov's pre-1886 stories and is often read as an early sign of the mature Chekhov style: understated, unresolved, psychologically exact.