The Kiss
Complete textDuring an artillery brigade's stop in a village, the shy officer Ryabovitch attends a gathering at a local house. A brief mistaken encounter in a dark room gives him an experience he turns over privately, imagining possibilities far larger than the event itself.
Continue readingAbout The Kiss
The contrast between a fleeting physical moment and its long inward aftermath gives the story its scale. Ryabovitch's efforts to reconstruct another person's identity reveal his longing more clearly than they reveal her. Military routine continues around him, indifferent to an occurrence that has reorganized his private sense of possibility.
Reading focus
Follow the distance between what Ryabovitch actually experiences and the future he begins to imagine from it.
This reading edition contains 7,448 words in 1 original section. Read the text online with adjustable type and three colour themes, or keep a printable PDF.
Author: Anton Chekhov. Language: English. Reading edition: 28 October 2026.
Opening excerpt
AT eight o’clock on the evening of the twentieth of May all the six batteries of the N—— Reserve Artillery Brigade halted for the night in the village of Myestetchki on their way to camp. When the general commotion was at its height, while some officers were busily occupied around the guns, while others, gathered together in the square near the church enclosure, were listening to the quartermasters, a man in civilian dress, riding a strange horse, came into sight round the church. The little dun-coloured horse with a good neck and a short tail came, moving not straight forward, but as it were sideways, with a sort of dance step, as though it were being lashed about the legs. When he reached…
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This edition contains the complete English literary text, with 1 section and 7,448 words. This reading edition preserves the checked English text and its section order. No study notes have been added.
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