The Duel

The Duel is one of Chekhov's longest works, skirting the edge between novel and novella. Like many of Chekhov's works, it was first published as a serial.Laevsky is a womanizing drunkard, a slave to life's vices. His wantonness clashes with the moralistic zoologist Von Koren, who grows to despise Laevsky. Their mutual enmity culminates in a duel-though neither they, nor their friends, really want it to happen.

The Duel (Russian: Дуэль, romanized: Duél') is a novella by Anton Chekhov originally published in 1891; it was adapted for the screen by Iosif Kheifits in 1973 (as The Bad Good Man, starring Vladimir Vysotsky) and by Dover Kosashvili in 2010 (as The Duel).

Publication

"The Duel" was first serialized in Aleksey Suvorin's newspaper Novoye Vremya from October-November 1891, after which Suvorin edited the novella and published it as a separate edition. The book enjoyed nine re-issues during the 1890s. Chekhov included "The Duel" in Volume 6 of his Collected Works, published by Adolf Marks in 1899-1901.^[1][2]

Background

Chekhov started writing the novella in January 1891. According to Mikhail Chekhov, while working upon it Chekhov regularly met with the zoologist and writer Vladimir Wagner. The two had lengthy discussions, one of which was on the subject of the then-popular concept of "the right of the strong one", which formed the basis of the philosophy of the main character of the work, Nikolai Vassilitch von Koren, for whom Wagner apparently served as a template.