Please forgive my ignorance, but I don't understand (probably because of my lack of knowledge wrt Chekhov and Dostoevsky), yet I want to. At the risk of giving

Please forgive my ignorance, but I don't understand (probably because of my lack of knowledge wrt Chekhov and Dostoevsky), yet I want to. At the risk of giving away the joke, could you explain your point to me?