A Study Guide for Anton Chekhov's "The Kiss"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Anton Chekhov's "The Kiss," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jul 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535837729

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The Kiss

Anton Chekhov

1887

Introduction

Anton Chekhov's story The Kiss (Potseluy in Russian) was first published in 1887. It first appeared in English in a translation by R. E. C. Long in 1908 in The Kiss and Other Stories. Chekhov is considered one of the masters of the short story, and he had a huge influence on the development of the genre over the course of the twentieth century. The Kiss is one of his most famous tales. Like many of Chekhov's stories, the emphasis is not on plot or action but more on character, feeling, and mood. At a social gathering at the home of an army general, a shy, unattractive army officer finds himself momentarily alone in a dark room, where he is kissed on the cheek by an unknown woman who thinks he is someone else. The incident ignites in the officer a lot of intense romantic daydreams, setting him up to come back to earth with a jolt.

The story can be found in The Kiss and Other Stories, translated by Ronald Wilks and published in 1982, and in The Essential Tales of Chekhov, translated by Constance Garnett and published in 2000. This entry uses the version in The Portable Chekhov (1968). The story also can be found online, as made available by Project Gutenberg of Australia at http://gutenberg.ne-t.au/ebooks07/0700881.txt and at Cornell University's e-book and text archive at http://archive.org/details/cu31924026700827 (in the Long translation).

Author Biography

The renowned Russian playwright and short-story writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on January 17, 1860, in the port city of Taganrog, in southern Russia. He was the third of six children born to Pavel Egorovich Chekhov and Evgenia Iakovlevna Morozova. Chekhov's grandfather had been a serf; his father was a merchant who owned a general store, where Chekhov and his older brothers worked when they were children. In 1876, his father's business failed, and his father moved the family to Moscow, leaving Anton behind to finish school in Taganrog.

In 1879, Chekhov moved to Moscow and began medical studies at Moscow University. He published his first short story, in a comic journal, in 1880. In 1884, he graduated and began to practice as