Happy Birthday, Anton!

Today in 1860 Антон Павлович Чехов (Anton Pavlovich Chekhov) was born - on what was 19 January by the calendar Russia was using at the time. He was a doctor throughout his life, and probably contracted the tuberculosis that killed him while practicing medicine in the labor camps of Siberia - not as a prisoner, but as a volunteer medic, a logical conclusion to a career that began with free clinics and sliding-scale fees for Russia's working poor and included building schools and a fire station.

But if, as he said once to Alexei Suvorin, medicine was his lawful wife, literature was his mistress, and he wrote four classic plays (Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, The Seagull, and The Cherry Orchard) and helped invent the short story - his masterpiece "The Lady with the Dog" was written in Yalta, where he'd gone to battle his tuberculosis. In May 1904 he became so ill that he went to a German health spa, where he died two months later.

Here's the text of a Rachmaninoff* lied usually called "Let us rest" ("My otdokhnjom" , op. 26 no. 3 (1906)) with text from Uncle Vanya:

Мы отдохнём!
Мы услышим ангелов,
Мы увидим всё небо в алмазах,
Мы увидим, как всё зло земное,
Все наши страдания потонут в милосердии,
Которое наполнит собою весь мир,
И наша жизнь станет тихою,
нежною, сладкою, как ласка.
Я верую, верую...
Мы отдохнём... Мы отдохнём.

We shall find peace.
We shall hear the angels,
We shall see the sky sparling with diamonds.
We shall see all the evils of this life,
all our own sufferings, vanish in the flood of mercy
which will fill the whole world.
And then our life will be calm,
and gentle, sweet as a caress.
I believe that, I do believe it.
[Poor, poor Uncle Vanya, you're crying. There's been no happiness in your life, but wait, Uncle Vanya, wait.]
We shall find peace. We shall find peace.
( - tr. Ronald Hingley)

(We will rest!
We will hear angels,
We will see the whole sky in diamonds,
We will see how all earthly evil,
All our sufferings will drown in mercy
Which will itself fill the whole world,
And our life will become quiet,
and gentle, sweet like a caress.
I believe, I do believe...
We will rest... we will rest.)

(Mwy otdokhnyom!
Mwy uslysheem angelov,
Mwy uvideem vsyo nebo v almazakh,
Mwy uvideem, kak vsyo zlo zemnoye,
Vsye nashi stradaniya potonoot v miliserdii,
Kotoroye napolneet soboyu vess mir,
Ee nasha zheezn stanyet teekhoyu,
nezhnoyu, sladkoyu, kak laska.
Ya veruyu, veruyu...
Mwy otdokhyom... Mwy otdokhnyom.)

* among the vagaries of transliteration is this: not only do Chekhov and Tchaikovsky start with the same letter in Russian (Ч = Ch) but the 'ch' in Rachmaninoff (Рахманинов) is the same as the 'kh' in Chekhov (Х = kh), and the 'ff' is the same as the 'v' (в = v/ff/w) (yes, w, as in Gamow (Гамов)). Isn't transliteration fun?