About the product
The story “The Black Monk” by Chekhov was written in 1893. The work describes changes in the mental state of a person prone to delusions of grandeur. Irrepressible pride, transformed into the image of a mysterious black monk, ultimately became the cause of the collapse of the protagonist’s family and his death.
For a reading diary and preparation for a literature lesson, we recommend reading online a summary of “The Black Monk” chapter by chapter. You can test your knowledge using a test on our website.
Summary
Chapter 1
Master Andrei Vasilyevich Kovrin “was tired and upset his nerves,” and a doctor he knew advised him to go to the village for the spring and summer. It was fitting that there was a letter from Tanya Pesotskaya, the daughter of an old acquaintance, with an invitation to stay in Borisovka.
Kovrin visited his native Kovrinka, and then went to Borisovka, to his guardian and teacher, the gardener Yegor Semyonich Pesotsky, known throughout Russia. The most impressive place on the Pesotsky estate was, of course, the garden in which the owner conducted his experiments in plant selection. From early morning until late evening, “people with wheelbarrows, hoes, and watering cans swarmed here like ants.”
Pesotsky’s great assistant was his daughter Tatyana. Immediately upon arrival, Kovrin spent the whole night with the girl in the garden - frosts were expected, and fires were lit everywhere to save the plants. The young people talked a lot about the past and future life. It seemed to Kovrin that he might well fall in love with Tatyana.
Chapter 2
Even in the village, Kovrin slept little and worked hard. One evening, when the Pesotskys had guests, he told Tatyana an old legend, the main character of which was a black monk.
According to an ancient legend, a thousand years ago “somewhere in Syria or Arabia” a monk appeared, dressed all in black. Soon, this monk began to form mirages that spread throughout the world - the black monk “was seen in Africa, then in Spain, then in India, then in the Far North.” Having left the atmosphere, the ghost set off to wander the Universe. But one of these days the black monk must visit the Earth again.
Kovrin went for a walk alone across the field. Suddenly, “a monk in black clothes, with a gray head and black eyebrows, crossing his arms over his chest,” rushed past him. Convinced of the veracity of the legend, Kovrin returned to the house in high spirits.
Chapter 3
When the guests left, Pesotsky started a frank conversation with Kovrin. He admitted that he was worried about the future, and that after his death the garden “won’t last even one month.” Tatyana could not fully take care of the garden, especially if she got married.
Pesotsky was very afraid that a stranger would become the owner of his brainchild, and expressed hope that Kovrin would become Tatyana’s husband. He expressed this “directly, without affectation, like an honest man,” because he loved Kovrin as his son and dreamed of such a husband for his only daughter.
Chapter 4
One day Yegor Semyonich and Tatyana quarreled about something. They had not spoken to each other for a whole day, and “the languor of the owners was reflected in the whole house, even on the people who worked in the garden.” Feeling very awkward, Kovrin decided to act as a peacemaker and gently convinced Tatyana that both were wrong. Consoling the crying Tanya, he “thought that, except for this girl and her father, in the whole world you won’t find people who would love him as their own, as their own.”
After some time, Kovrin noticed how Tatyana and her father were walking in the park and talking peacefully, as if nothing had happened.
Chapter 5
Kovrin went for a walk in the park and in the evening twilight he noticed an already familiar black monk. He spoke to him, and the monk replied that he was a ghost, a product of the master's excited imagination.
Kovrin noticed that the old man was looking at him with admiration, and the monk admitted that the master was “one of those few who are rightly called God’s chosen ones.” Kovrin began to discuss with the elder questions about the meaning of life. When the vision disappeared, he laughed joyfully - “the little that the black monk told him flattered not his pride, but his whole soul, his whole being.”
Returning to the house, Kovrin confessed his love to Tatyana and proposed to her.
Chapter 6
Having learned about the upcoming wedding, Pesotsky was very happy. No one had any free time: fruits began to ripen in the garden, and everyone was busy from morning to evening. In addition, preparations for the wedding were in full swing, and there was a lot of fuss “with the dowry, to which the Pesotskys attached considerable importance.”
Krivin still worked hard and regularly saw the black monk. Communication with him inspired Kovrin and made him believe in his own exclusivity.
After the Assumption Fast, they celebrated a wedding, which “at the insistent request of Yegor Semyonich, was celebrated “with a bang,” that is, with a senseless revelry that lasted two days.”
Chapter 7
After the wedding, the newlyweds moved to Moscow, and Tatyana slept poorly “from being unaccustomed to living in the city.” One night, Kovrin again began to communicate with the monk: he “spoke, turning to the chair, gesticulated and laughed: his eyes sparkled and there was something strange in his laughter.”
In this form, Tatyana woke up and found him very scared. She had long noticed that her husband’s soul was “upset by something.” Kovrin found the courage to admit that he was indeed unwell. Barely waiting for the morning, he went to the doctor.
Chapter 8
In the summer, Kovrin moved to the village again. By that time, he “had already recovered, stopped seeing the black monk, and all he had to do was strengthen his physical strength.” However, Kovrin’s behavior and his attitude in life changed dramatically - the man became lethargic, irritable, and apathetic.
After a walk through the field where a year ago he first met a black monk, Kovrin accused his father-in-law and wife of ruining his life. If earlier the master was haunted by delusions of grandeur, now he has become a pitiful mediocrity, and the former joy of life has been replaced by boredom and despondency.
Tatyana was surprised by the changes that happened to her husband. Quarrels and mutual reproaches began to arise more and more often between spouses.
Chapter 9
“Kovrin received an independent department,” but was never able to start lectures due to a serious illness. His throat was bleeding, but the doctors convinced him that the illness was not particularly serious, and he just needed to not worry and monitor his well-being.
By that time, Kovrin no longer lived with Tatyana, but with another woman, Varvara Nikolaevna, who “looked after him like a child.” She invited her lover to go to Crimea so that he could improve his health.
Kovrin received a letter from Tanya and printed it only in Sevastopol. He sincerely considered his marriage to Tatyana a big mistake and felt absolutely no remorse for taking out “his spiritual emptiness, boredom, loneliness and dissatisfaction with life” on an innocent person for two years. Kovrin remembered the disgusting scene: in a fit of irritation, he told Tanya that her father had persuaded him to marry her. Yegor Semyonich accidentally heard this and, from extreme indignation and despair, could not utter a word. Tanya, “looking at her father, screamed in a tearing voice and fainted.”
In the letter, Tanya said that her father had died and the garden had been given to strangers. She admitted that with all her heart she hated Kovrin, who became the source of all her troubles and suffering, and wished him a quick death.
The letter excited Kovrin, and he, wanting to calm his frayed nerves, sat down to work. However, the usual monotonous work could not distract him from annoying thoughts. Going out onto the balcony, Kovrin saw “a black high pillar, like a whirlwind or tornado,” from which a familiar monk emerged. He reminded the master that he was “God’s chosen one and a genius.”
Kovrin started bleeding from his throat. He remembered “his wonderful science, his youth, courage, joy, the call of life, which was so beautiful.” Kovrin died with a happy smile on his lips.
Online reading of the book The Black Monk The Black Monk
I
Andrei Vasilich Kovrin, master, was tired and upset his nerves. He was not treated, but somehow casually, over a bottle of wine, he talked with a doctor friend, and he advised him to spend the spring and summer in the village. By the way, a long letter arrived from Tanya Pesotskaya, who asked him to come to Borisovka and stay. And he decided that he really needed to go for a ride.
First - this was in April - he went to his ancestral Kovrinka, and here he lived in solitude for three weeks; then, waiting for a good road, he went on horseback to his former guardian and teacher Pesotsky, a well-known gardener in Russia. From Kovrinka to Borisovka, where the Pesotskys lived, it was considered no more than seventy miles, and riding along the soft spring road in a comfortable spring carriage was a true pleasure.
Pesotsky’s house was huge, with columns, with lions on which the plaster was peeling, and with a tailed footman at the entrance. The old park, gloomy and austere, laid out in the English style, stretched for almost a mile from the house to the river and here ended in a steep, steep clayey bank on which pine trees grew with exposed roots that looked like shaggy paws; Below, the water glistened unsociablely, waders rushed about with plaintive squeaks, and there was always such a mood here that you could at least sit down and write a ballad. But near the house itself, in the courtyard and in the orchard, which together with the nurseries occupied about thirty acres, it was fun and cheerful even in bad weather. Kovrin had never seen such amazing roses, lilies, camellias, such tulips of all kinds of colors, from bright white to soot black, in general such a wealth of flowers as Pesotsky’s had anywhere else. Spring was just at the beginning, and the real luxury of flower beds was still hidden in the greenhouses, but what was blooming along the alleys and here and there in the flower beds was enough for you to walk through the garden and feel yourself in the kingdom of delicate colors, especially in the early hours, when dew sparkled on every petal.
What was a decorative part of the garden and what Pesotsky himself contemptuously called trifles, once upon a time in childhood produced a fairy-tale impression on Kovrin. What kind of quirks, exquisite deformities and mockeries of nature were there! There were trellises made of fruit trees, a pear tree in the shape of a pyramidal poplar, spherical oaks and linden trees, an umbrella made of an apple tree, arches, monograms, candelabra, and even 1862 made of plums - a number that meant the year when Pesotsky first took up gardening. There were also beautiful slender trees with straight and strong trunks, like palm trees, and only by looking closely could you recognize gooseberries or currants in these trees. But what made the garden most fun and gave it a lively look was the constant movement. From early morning until evening, people with wheelbarrows, hoes, watering cans swarmed around trees, bushes, alleys and flower beds like ants...
Kovrin arrived at the Pesotskys in the evening, at ten o’clock. He found Tanya and her father, Yegor Semenych, in great anxiety. The clear, starry sky and the thermometer predicted frost by morning, but meanwhile the gardener Ivan Karlych had left for the city and there was no one to rely on. At dinner they talked only about the matinee and it was decided that Tanya would not go to bed and in the first hour would walk around the garden and see if everything was in order, and Yegor Semenych would get up at three o’clock or even earlier.
Kovrin sat with Tanya all evening and after midnight went with her to the garden. It was cold. There was already a strong smell of burning in the yard. In a large orchard, which was called commercial and brought Yegor Semyonich several thousand in net income annually, black, thick, acrid smoke spread across the ground and, enveloping the trees, saved these thousands from frost. The trees here stood in a checkerboard pattern, their rows were straight and regular, like ranks of soldiers, and this strict pedantic correctness and the fact that all the trees were the same height and had exactly the same crowns and trunks made the picture monotonous and even boring. Kovrin and Tanya walked along the rows where fires made of dung, straw and all sorts of garbage were smoldering, and occasionally they met workers who wandered in the smoke like shadows. Only cherries, plums and some varieties of apple trees were blooming, but the entire garden was buried in smoke, and only near the nurseries Kovrin breathed deeply.
“When I was a child, I sneezed here from the smoke,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, “but I still don’t understand how the smoke can save you from the frost.”
“Smoke replaces clouds when they are not there...” Tanya answered.
—What are clouds for?
— There are no matinees in cloudy and cloudy weather.
- That's how it is!
He laughed and took her hand. Her wide, very serious, chilled face with thin black eyebrows, the raised collar of her coat, which prevented her from freely moving her head, and all of her, thin, slender, in a dress picked up from the dew, touched him.
- Lord, she's already an adult! - he said. “When I left here for the last time, five years ago, you were still just a child. You were so skinny, long-legged, bare-haired, wore a short dress, and I teased you with a heron... What does time do!
- Yes, five years! - Tanya sighed. — A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. Tell me, Andryusha, in all honesty,” she spoke vividly, looking into his face, “have you lost the habit of us?” However, what am I asking? You are a man, you are already living your own interesting life, you are great... Alienation is so natural! But be that as it may, Andryusha, I want you to consider us yours. We have the right to this.
- I think so, Tanya.
- Honestly?
- Yes, honestly.
— Today you were surprised that we have so many of your photographs. Because you know, my father adores you. Sometimes it seems to me that he loves you more than me. He's proud of you. You are a scientist, an extraordinary person, you have made a brilliant career for yourself, and he is sure that you turned out this way because he raised you. I don't stop him from thinking that way. Let be.
Dawn had already begun, and this was especially noticeable by the distinctness with which the clouds of smoke and the crowns of trees began to stand out in the air. The nightingales sang, and the cry of quails was heard from the fields.
“However, it’s time to sleep,” Tanya said. - Yes, and it’s cold. “She took him by the arm. — Thank you, Andryusha, for coming. We have uninteresting friends, and even those are few. We only have a garden, a garden, a garden - and nothing more. Standard, half-standard,” she laughed, “aport, ranet, boletus, budding, copulation... All, our whole life went into the garden, I never even dream of anything except apple trees and pears. Of course, this is good and useful, but sometimes you want something else for variety. I remember when you used to come to us on vacation or just like that, the house became somehow fresher and brighter, as if the covers had been taken off the chandelier and the furniture. I was a girl then and still understood.
She spoke for a long time and with great feeling. For some reason it suddenly occurred to him that during the summer he could become attached to this small, weak, talkative creature, get carried away and fall in love - in the situation of both of them, this is so possible and natural! This thought touched and made him laugh; he bent down to the sweet, concerned face and sang quietly:
Onegin, I won’t hide it,
I love Tatyana madly...
When they arrived home, Yegor Semenych had already gotten up. Kovrin did not want to sleep, he got into conversation with the old man and returned with him to the garden. Yegor Semenych was tall, broad in the shoulders, with a large belly and suffered from shortness of breath, but he always walked so quickly that it was difficult to keep up with him. He looked extremely preoccupied, he was always in a hurry to get somewhere and with such an expression as if if he were even one minute late, everything would be ruined!
“Here, brother, is the story...” he began, stopping to take a breath. “As you can see, there is frost on the surface of the earth, but raise a thermometer on a stick two fathoms above the ground, it’s warm there... Why is this so?”
“Really, I don’t know,” Kovrin said and laughed.
- Hm... You can’t know everything, of course... No matter how vast your mind is, you can’t fit everything in there. You're talking more about philosophy, aren't you?
- Yes. I read psychology and study philosophy in general.
- And won’t you get bored?
“On the contrary, that’s all I live for.”
“Well, God willing...” said Yegor Semenych, thoughtfully stroking his gray sideburns. - God willing... I’m very happy for you... glad, brother...
But suddenly he listened and, making a terrible face, ran to the side and soon disappeared behind the trees, in clouds of smoke.
- Who tied the horse to the apple tree? — his desperate, soul-tearing cry was heard. - What kind of scoundrel and rascal dared to tie a horse to an apple tree? My God, my God! They spoiled it, froze it over, desecrated it, messed it up! The garden is gone! The garden is dead! My God!
When he returned to Kovrin, his face was exhausted and insulted.
- Well, what can you do with these anathema people? - he said in a crying voice, throwing up his hands. “Styopka was hauling manure at night and tied his horse to an apple tree!” The scoundrel wrapped the reins so tightly that the bark was frayed in three places. What! I tell him, but he is a pusher with a pusher and just bats his eyes! Hanging is not enough!
Having calmed down, he hugged Kovrin and kissed him on the cheek.
“Well, God forbid... God forbid...” he muttered. - I'm very glad that you came. Incredibly glad...Thank you.
Then, with the same fast gait and with a concerned face, he walked around the entire garden and showed his former pupil all the greenhouses, greenhouses, dirt sheds and his two apiaries, which he called the miracle of our century.
While they were walking, the sun rose and brightly illuminated the garden. It became warm. Anticipating a clear, cheerful, long day, Kovrin remembered that it was only the beginning of May and that there was still a whole summer ahead, just as clear, cheerful, long, and suddenly a joyful young feeling stirred in his chest, which he had experienced in childhood, when ran around this garden. And he himself hugged the old man and kissed him tenderly. Both, touched, went into the house and began drinking tea from antique porcelain cups, with cream, with rich, rich pretzels - and these little things again reminded Kovrin of his childhood and youth. The beautiful present and the impressions of the past that awoke in it merged together; they made my soul feel tight, but good.
He waited until Tanya woke up, drank coffee with her, took a walk, then went to his room and sat down to work. He read carefully, took notes, and occasionally raised his eyes to look at the open windows or at the fresh flowers, still wet with dew, standing in vases on the table, and again lowered his eyes to the book, and it seemed to him that every vein in him was trembling and plays for fun.
