The Bet (short story)
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| "The Bet" | |
|---|---|
| Short story by Anton Chekhov | |
| Original title | Пари |
| Country | Russian Empire |
| Language | Russian |
| Publication | |
| Published in | Novoye Vremya |
| Publisher | Adolf Marks (1901) |
| Publication date | January 16, 1889 |
"The Bet" (Russian: "Пари", romanized: Pari) is an 1889 short story by Anton Chekhov about a banker and a young lawyer who make a bet with each other following a conversation about whether the death penalty is better or worse than life in prison. The banker wagers that the lawyer cannot remain in solitary confinement voluntarily for a period of fifteen years.
On 17 December 1888 Nikolai Khudekov, editor of the Peterburgskaya Gazeta, asked Chekhov to write a story for the newspaper. Learning that Chekhov's "The Cobbler and the Devil" was to be published on 25 December, Alexey Suvorin, the Novoye Vremya's editor, took offense. Promising to produce a similar kind of fable for Suvorin before New Year's Eve, Chekhov began writing 22 December and on the 30th sent the story by post.[1]
Divided into three parts, it appeared in the 1 January 1889, No. 4613 issue of Novoye Vremya, titled "Fairytale" (Сказка). With a new title, "The Bet", revised and cut with part 3 of the original text now gone, it was included in Volume 4 of Chekhov's Collected Works, published in 1899–1901 by Adolf Marks.[2] Chekhov explained the reason for the omission in 1903: "As I was reading the proofs, I came to dislike the end, it occurred to me that it was too cold and cruel."[3]
