Tales from Gorky |
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Tales From Gorky: Translated From the Russian With a Biographical Notice of ... Maksim Gorky No preview available - 2018 |
Common terms and phrases
arms asked Astrakhan bast shoes began beneath biscuits blue Bolés bread brother Chelkash clouds cold comrade cough cried dark devil dull earth Efimushka everything exclaimed eyes face father feel feet fell felt fire Gabriel gazed give grey ground hand head hobbledehoy Hopeful horse inquired Jig-Leg khokhli khokhol kitten kopeck Kuban laughed legs listened live looked master merry Moscow moustaches muzhik never night night's lodging Nikolaiev oars Perekop Petersburg pleasant prisoner Promtov Pskov Pyeshkov rain rolling stone roubles rustic seemed Semenich shoulders sighed silence sitting skiff smile Smolensk softly soldier sort Sotsky soul sound Starosta steppe stood student suddenly suppose talk Tanya teeth tell Teresa There's thing thou town trembled tremulous turned versts village voice Volgan wall warm waves whispered whistling whole words wretched Zazubrina
Popular passages
Page 187 - I want to send a letter home, that's what it is," she said; her voice was beseeching, soft, timid. "Deuce take you!" I thought; but up I jumped, sat down at my table, took a sheet of paper, and said: "Come here, sit down, and dictate!" She came, sat down very gingerly on a chair, and looked at me with a guilty look. "Well, to whom do you want to write?" "To Boleslav Kashput, at the town of Svieptziana, on the Warsaw Road
Page 187 - How d'ye do, Mr. Student!" and her stupid laugh would still further intensify my loathing of her. I should have liked to have changed my quarters in order to have avoided such encounters and greetings ; but my little chamber was a nice one, and there was such a wide view from the window, and it was always so quiet in the street below — so I endured. And one morning I was sprawling on my couch, trying to find some sort of excuse for not attending my class, when -the door opened, and the bass voice...
Page 69 - I asked, crouching down on my heels quite close to her. She gave a little scream and was quickly on her legs again. Now that she stood there staring at me, with her wide-open grey eyes full of terror, I perceived that it was a girl of my own age, with a very pleasant face embellished unfortunately by three large blue marks. This spoilt her, although these blue marks had been distributed with a remarkable sense of proportion, one at a time, and all...
Page 69 - ... honour of cold and hunger, when suddenly, as I was carefully searching for something to eat behind one of the empty crates, I perceived behind it, crouching on the ground, a figure in woman's clothes dank with the rain and clinging fast to her stooping shoulders. Standing over her, I watched to see what she was doing. It appeared that she was digging a trench in the sand with her hands — digging away under one of the crates. "Why are you doing that?
Page 190 - Listen to me," I said. Now, whenever I come to this point in my story, I always feel horribly awkward and idiotic. Well, well! " Listen to me," I said. She leaped from her seat, came towards me with flashing eyes, and laying her hands on my shoulders, began to whisper, or rather to hum in her peculiar bass voice : " Look you, now ! It's like this. There's no Boles...
Page 192 - Alas ! alas ! But what if he doesn't ? He doesn't exist, but he might ! I write to him, and it looks as if he did exist. And Teresa — that's me, and he replies to me, and then I write to him again " I understood at last. And I felt so sick, so miserable, so ashamed, somehow. Alongside of me, not three yards away, lived a human creature who had nobody in the world to treat her kindly, affectionately, and this human being had invented a friend for herself ! "Look, now! you wrote me a letter to Boles,...
Page 189 - Perhaps, sir, your shirts or your trousers may want a little mending?" I felt that this mastodon in petticoats had made me grow quite red with shame, and I told her pretty sharply that I had no need whatever of her services. She departed. A week or two passed away. It was evening. I was sitting at my window whistling and thinking of some expedient for enabling me to get away from myself. I was bored; the weather was dirty. I didn't want to go out, and out of sheer ennui I began a course of self-analysis...
Page 76 - You scoundrel, you!' And he gave me a thorough hiding. He kicked me and dragged me by the hair. But that was nothing to what came after. He spoiled everything I had on — left me just as I am now! How could I appear before my mistress? He spoiled everything . . . my dress and my jacket too — it was quite a new one; I gave a fiver for it ... and tore my kerchief from my head. . . . Oh, Lord! What will become of me now?
Page 79 - I had got so far as to recognise that I had an exclusive right to exist, that I had the necessary greatness to deserve to live my life, and that I was fully competent to play a great historical part therein. And a woman was now warming me with her body, a wretched, battered, hunted creature, who had no place and no value in life, and whom I had never thought of helping till she helped me herself, and whom I really would not have known how to help in any way even if the thought of it had occurred...