Bought at the Rossiya Mall, Erevan
At first, this short novel seems to be all about artillery officers with a wide palette of personalities : Lobytko has an ability to sniff a woman out from miles away. Merzlyakov religiously reads the European Herald. Ryabovich is a shy man, hit by psychic blindness, who surrendered to sadness.
But over the years this realization had become something of a habit and as he watched his friends dance or talk out loud he no longer envied them but was filled with sadness
The Kiss, Anton Chekhov
But The Kiss is much more than that. The unexpected kiss, given by mistake is one of those beautiful moments in life, but that are equally cruel. You don’t feel that kiss as much you hear its sound, for It confuses the senses and the whole of you.
These extraordinary moments are a bright chink in a dark room, they bring hope : hope to be… ordinary. One holds them so dear that they make for a big memory, whereas they can be narrated in very few words. They are ordinary. Ordinary to most. They are an accidental caress of fate, visions, dreams, but they are unfinished symphonies, cruel mockeries that bring you back to the absurdity and futility of life :
And the whole world, the whole life, struck Ryabovich as a meaningless, futile joke. He remembered how fate had accidentally caressed him.
The Kiss, Anton. Chekhov
One must be careful not to bring fate’s wrath down on our own head.