He got up and sat on the edge of the bedstead with his back to the window. “It’s better not to sleep at all,” he decided. There was a cold damp draught from the window, however; without getting up he drew the blanket over him and wrapped himself in it. He was not thinking of anything and did not want to think. But one image rose after another, incoherent scraps of thought without beginning or end passed through his mind. He sank into drowsiness. Perhaps the cold, or the dampness, or the dark, or the wind that howled under the window and tossed the trees roused a sort of persistent craving for the fantastic. He kept dwelling on images of flowers, he fancied a charming flower garden, a bright, warm, almost hot day, a holiday—Trinity day. A fine, sumptuous country cottage in the English taste overgrown with fragrant flowers, with flower beds going round the house; the porch, wreathed in climbers, was surrounded with beds of roses. A light, cool staircase, carpeted with rich rugs, was decorated with rare plants in china pots. He noticed particularly in the windows nosegays of tender, white, heavily fragrant narcissus bending over their bright, green, thick long stalks. He was reluctant to move away from them, but he went up the stairs and came into a large, high drawing-room and again everywhere—at the windows, the doors on to the balcony, and on the balcony itself—were flowers. The floors were strewn with freshly-cut fragrant hay, the windows were open, a fresh, cool, light air came into the room. The birds were chirruping under the window, and in the middle of the room, on a table covered with a white satin shroud, stood a coffin. The coffin was covered with white silk and edged with a thick white frill; wreaths of flowers surrounded it on all sides. Among the flowers lay a girl in a white muslin dress, with her arms crossed and pressed on her bosom, as though carved out of marble. But her loose fair hair was wet; there was a wreath of roses on her head. The stern and already rigid profile of her face looked as though chiselled of marble too, and the smile on her pale lips was full of an immense unchildish misery and sorrowful appeal. Svidrigaïlov knew that girl; there was no holy image, no burning candle beside the coffin; no sound of prayers: the girl had drowned herself. She was only fourteen, but her heart was broken. And she had destroyed herself, crushed by an insult that had appalled and amazed that childish soul, had smirched that angel purity with unmerited disgrace and torn from her a last scream of despair, unheeded and brutally disregarded, on a dark night in the cold and wet while the wind howled

Category: short story

  • Top Twelve Online Literary Journals image of tag icon

    [[  THIS IS THE 2008 LIST. GO TO THE UPDATED 2015 LIST. ]] Here are the top twelve online literary journals, at least according to the number of Million Writers Award nominations each journal has received in the last five years. Eclectica (31 nominations) Pindeldyboz (26) Agni (16) Strange Horizons (16) Word Riot (16) Narrative […]

    June 4, 2008

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  • Literary Rejections and Slush Pile Wars image of tag icon

    There’s been a flurry of discussion in the blogosphere lately about what an editor should and should not say about submissions. LROD started with some complaints about VQR editor Ted Genoways, then Howard Junker of ZYZZYVA condemns Ted Genoways, and Ted Genoways responds, and Will Entrekin takes issue with the editor of Fence, the editor […]

    May 22, 2008

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  • The iTunes of Short Stories image of tag icon

    One Story’s blog, Save the Short Story, alerted me to newest short story podcasting site, Sniplits. The idea behind the name, I believe, is that while listening to audio books in the car doesn’t allow you enough continuity to enter the dream-like experience of the novel, a snippet of literature — such as a short […]

    May 17, 2008

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  • Slush Pile Dispatches image of tag icon

    So a long time ago, back when a different journal was being published at USC, someone accepted a poem for the literary journal from a prisoner. Just some incarcerated guy that mailed in a typewritten poem. While it seems a kind of noble and liberating idea (giving some locked-up men a voice!), it actually was […]

    May 15, 2008

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  • Nam Le: “The Boat” image of tag icon

    So Nam Le’s short story collection “The Boat” comes out today, and after reading it over the past month, it seems he’s going to give Chris Adrian competition for best debut of 2008 (yes, I know Adrian’s published before, but “A Better Angel” is his first collection). Le’s got geographical range, that’s for sure, both […]

    May 13, 2008

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  • Three Short Story Links image of tag icon

    Although I missed the initial salvo of reports about the short story panel at PEN World Voices Festival, it’s worth checking out this summary from Stingy Kids, (and also Chekhov’s Mistress) to find out: – the pro-short-story state of Korea and how that’s changing to encourage novels instead – how an unrecognized Annie Proulx rose […]

    May 12, 2008

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  • Frank O’Connor Short Story Award image of tag icon

    The 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the heftiest cash prize in the literary world for the short form (35,000 euros), has announced its longlist. Thirty-nine authors from around the globe are nominated. Only one Canadian was up (no, it wasn’t Alice Munro) as opposed to fourteen British writers (!). But the nice thing […]

    May 6, 2008

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  • Stephen Corey on Genre Numbers image of tag icon

    Stephen Corey, editor of the Georgia Review, wrote a piece for the May/June Poets & Writers. Here’s an excerpt in which he quantifies the shifts he’s seen with nonfiction, poetry, and short stories: Well, more people are sending out and publishing what they now call (forgive us, Father Montaigne) “creative nonfiction.” In the mid-1980s we […]

    April 24, 2008

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  • Cynthia Ozick: Dictation image of tag icon

    Cynthia Ozick has a new collection of short stories — or at least a novella accompanied by three stories, so a quartet of stories would be more accurate. “Dictation” came out in mid-March, but we’ve not seen the type of coverage I’d expect, except for the faithful Complete Review and some coverage given by Bookforum. […]

    April 17, 2008

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  • The Podcasts Are Marching On Again, Hurrah; Hurrah image of tag icon

    Over at Pinky’s Paperhaus there’s a post about a new development with the Short Story Review — they’re going to start podcasting short stories in September of 2008, and are already reading submissions. It’s a new journal, with only two issues out, but now fifty-two stories a year will be podcasted, selected from the jaws […]

    April 11, 2008

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