Jedan lik kojeg je Čehov smestio u svoju priču Na putovanju, izgovara ovakve reči u slavu Žene:
“But I tell you that woman always has been and always will be the slave of man. She is a soft and tender wax out of which man has always been able to fashion whatever he had a mind to. Good god! For a man’s penny passion she will cut off her hair, desert her family, and die in exile. There is not one feminine principle among all those for which she has sacrificed herself. She is a defenceless, devoted slave. I have measured no skulls, but I say this from grievous, bitter experience. The proudest, the most independent of women, if I can but succeed in communicating my passion to her, will follow me unreasoningly, unquestioningly, doing all I desire. Out of a nun I once made a nihilist who, I heard later, shot a policeman. In all my wanderings my wife never left me for an instant, and, like a weathercock, changed her with each of my changing passions.
”It is a noble, an exalted bondage! In that bondage lies the loftiest significance of woman’s existence. Of all the terrible absurdities that filled my brain during my intercourse with women, my memory has retained, like a filter, not theories nor wise words nor philosophy, but that extraordinary submission, that wonderful compassion, that universal forgiveness.
”This – this magnanimous toleration, this faithfulness unto death, this poetry of hearth – The meaning of life lies in this uncomplaining martyrdom, in this all-pardoning love that brings light and warmth into the chaos of life –
”Take my mother! I have poisoned her existence; I have dishonoured her name; I have harmed her much as her bitterest enemy could have done – and what is her answer? My brothers give her pennies for holy wafers and Te Deums, and she strangles her religious sentiments and sends them in secret to her worthless Gregory. Those little coins are far stronger to teach and ennoble the soul than all the theories and wise sayings and three thousand five hundred species. I could cite to you a thousand examples. “
Citiram ih u engleskom prevodu, da se vidi kako ne gube svoj sjaj u tuđem jeziku. Univerzalna misao u odori globalne lepote ne gubi svoju dopadljivost pukim aktom iskazivanja Drugom Čoveku.
