# Parasitism Creates Prosperity. On the nobility of the Rzeczpospolita and of the Russia (Anton Chekhov's story "The Horse and the Affectionate Doe"). An essay

de Overwood Henry

Parasitism Creates Prosperity. On the nobility of the Rzeczpospolita and of the Russia (Anton Chekhov's story "The Horse and the Affectionate Doe"). An essay.


The main characters of Anton Chekhov's story "The Horse and the Affectionate Doe" are a reporter-journalist and his wife (a "housewife" [without a house]). The husband and his wife live in Moscow (in a some flophouse).


The most appealing character in this story is the reporter's wife. She is devoted to her family and her husband, and nothing can change that: not a living in brutal conditions, not her husband's many negative traits, not the death of her children.


She is educated, she has influential relatives, and she is capable of reasoning.


What does she see as a way out of the brutal living conditions? She will write a letter to her uncle in the city of Tula (the town near Moscow), and the uncle will arrange a job, a position for her husband; the job with a good salary and with short working hours. There, in the provinces, they will lead a simple, quiet, and pleasant life.


Her husband, a reporter (journalist), is also an educated person.


He exploits no one, except his own talent. And he lives by expense of his talent, by his own abilities. Nothing is known about his (influential) relatives. He is near the notion "self-made man."


He is a man of a free profession, living not on a salary from a position obtained through patronage, but on the income from his own (newspaper's) work.


The story was written at the end of the 19th century, in 1885. A reporter is a person of the 20th century; people of this type became the foundation of the modern Western society.


In the Russian Empire (late 19th century), the person described by the Anton Chekhov's work, - this reporter, - he suffers from alcoholism, his life is ruining by poverty, and he lives in the brutal conditions.


Why doesn't he die? The Chekhov's story is, to a certain extent, fantastical. It seems that the only thing keeping the reporter above a surface is his implausibly perfect wife.


What does this reporter see - as his future, as his prospects?


"Wait, Katyusha, they'll invite me to cover the news section at "Chicken Blindness", then we'll live differently. I'll rent a room [at a hotel - for a permanent residence] after this."


Some readers will recognize Vladimir Gilyarovsky in this reporter.


Vladimir Gilyarovsky (if Chekhov really based the story's character on Gilyarovsky) may have been positively influenced by Anton Chekhov's story.


If Vladimir Gilyarovsky was taken as the prototype of the reporter (journalist) in Anton Chekhov's story, then - readers can find the answer (the response) to this Chekhov's story in the biographical essay "Uncle Gilyai" (written by Mikhail Chekhov - Anton Pavlovich Chekhov's younger brother).


Great literature works wonders on the humans, which this literature describes. If these people are able to read.


October 23, 2025, 06:12 (6:12 AM)


Translation from Russian into English: October 23, 2025, 07:47

Владимир Владимирович Залесский " Паразитизм создает благополучие. О дворянстве посполитном и русском. (Рассказ А.П. Чехова "Конь и трепетная лань"). Очерк. "


{3742. Паразитизм создает благополучие. О дворянстве посполитном и русском. (Рассказ А.П. Чехова "Конь и трепетная лань"). Очерк. - 23 октября 2025 г.

MMMDCCXIII. Parasitism Creates Prosperity. On the nobility of the Rzeczpospolita and of the Russia (Anton Chekhov's story "The Horse and the Affectionate Doe"). An essay. - October 23, 2025.


Vladimir Zalessky Internet-bibliotheca. Интернет-библиотека Владимира Залесского}