Quote Originally Posted by rockzmom
This part I did atually watch more than once! I was trying to understand it as I felt there must be something missing in the translation into English or I was not understanding the scene. I was thinking, "Is there a hidden meaning in the sturgeon?" And then I thought that the friend was trying to tell Gurov, in his own way, to forget about Anna. That it was was a form of symbolism. The sturgeon being bad and the idea of him thinking about the summer romance being bad.
Since I find this question very important, let me please completely clear it up. All the more so because I didn't understand if the opinion you described in your quote above was your final opinion. If so, I strongly want to explain you the episode better.

No, the "friend" (I actually don't think we should call that man Gurov's friend) is not trying to tell Gurov, in his own way, to forget about Anna. Not at all. He simply doesn't hear Gurov. I don't mean that he doesn't hear him physically, that he's deaf. No, but he just in no way can perceive Gurov's words. He's completely merged into banality of life, when a person lives like an animal, and only drinks, eats, plays cards, spends evenings in clubs, visits formal dinner parties, and actually has forgotten how to think and feel long ago. A conversation with him about love, or something else like poetry, history, literature is just impossible. Gurov is surrounded with such people in his life. Actually, he himself recently was almost like that. But he is younger than that acquaintance, and a story happened in his life that woke him up. Actually, not only Gurov, and not only in the XIXth century, but also we, nowadays can be surrounded with people in a varying degree like this Gurov's acquaintance.

In fact, Gurov was trying to talk to that man about Anna because he has nobody to talk about her! And at once, that's the only subject he'd like to talk about.