The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov

THE SELECTED LETTERS OF

ANTON CHEKHOV

THE

SELECTED LETTERS OF

ANTON CHEKHOV

EDITED BY LILLIAN HELLMAN TRANSLATED BY SIDONIE LEDERER

NEW YORK

FARRAR, STRAUS AND COMPANY

©

First printing, 1955

Copyright 1955 by Lillian Hellman

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book in any form

Library of Congress catalog card number 55-5563

Manufactured in the United States of America American Book-Stratford Press, Inc., New York

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

For the most part the translator has used the excellent and definitive text of the new edition of Chekhov's works, in twenty volumes, published in the USSR from 1944 to 1951, of which volumes 13 through 20 are devoted to his letters. These eight volumes contain 4,200 communications (mostly letters, plus a few postcards and telegrams), a number of which are pub- lished here for the first time in English, along with many pre- viously known letters that contain passages not previously printed.

In a few letters appearing in the Soviet edition, certain pas- sages found in earlier editions have been deleted; in such cases the translator has, of course, used the older edition and has restored the omitted words. On the whole, however, the new Soviet edition returns to the letters much that older texts had left out. \Vhere brackets occur, they contain explanatory re- marks on the part of the editor, or indicate by [. . .] omissions common to both old and new texts. Sometimes, from their con- text, it is plain that these brackets refer to deletions of "four letter" words; at other times it is not possible to determine whether words, sentences or even paragraphs have been sup- pressed.

CONTENTS

Translator's Note v

Introduction by Lillian Hellman

Biographical Notes XXIX

The Selected Letters

1885-1890

3

1890-1897

87

1897-1904

201

Index 327

INTRODUCTION

When I was young we used to play a game called what-famous- writer-would-you-most-like-to-have-dinner-with? and a lot of our choices seem surprising to me now, though we stuck pretty close to serious writers as a rule and had sense enough to limit our visiting time to the dinner table. Maybe we knew even then that writers are often difficult people and a Tolstoy—on too big a scale—might become tiresome, and a Dickens unpleasant, and a Stendhal—with his nervous posturing—hard to stand, and a Proust too special, and a Dostoevski too complex. You can argue that greatness and simplicity often go hand in hand, but simple people can be difficult too and by and large the quality of a man's work seems to have little to do with the pleasure of his company. There are exceptions to this—thank God—and Anton Chekhov seems to have been one of them. I'd like to think I had picked him for dinner back in those young days. Or, better still, for many, many dinners.

Chekhov was a pleasant man, witty and wise and tolerant and kind, with nothing wishywashy in his kindness nor self righteous in his tolerance, and his wit was not ill-humored. He would have seen through you, of course, as he did through everybody, but being seen through doesn't hurt too much if it's done with affection. He was neurotic, but unlike most neurotic men he had few crotchets and no nuisance irritabilities, nor pride, nor side, nor aimless vanity, was unlikely to mistake scorched potatoes for high tragedy, didn't boast, had fine manners and was generous and gay. It is true that he complained a lot about his ailments and his lack of money, but if you had laughed at him he would have laughed with you. Such a nature is rare at all times, but it is particularly remarkable in a period when maudlin soul-searching was the intellectual fashion. Chekhov lived in the time that gave us our comic-strip picture of the Russian. 'Vhile many of his contemporaries were jabbering out the dark days and boozing away the white nights, turning revolutionary for Christmas and police spy for Easter, attacking too loudly here and worshiping too loudly there, wasting youth and talent in futile revolt against anything and everything with little thought and no selection, Anton Chekhov was a man of balance, a man of sense.

This is probably the most important thing to know about Chekhov. He was a man of sense, of common sense, in a place and time where only the bourgeoisie were proud of having com- mon sense, and they, of course, for the wrong reasons. To them the words meant the sense to conform, the sense to concur, the sense to reject all other ways of thinking as inferior or comic or dangerous. This wasn't Chekhov's kind of common sense— he tried to see things as they were and to deal with them as he saw them—but it was the kind of common sense that most nineteenth century intellectuals were in revolt against, and in revolting they did a lot of good. In Russia they helped get rid of serfdom and in America of slavery, in England they were changing life and laws and in France they were coping with a more difficult enemy than their eighteenth century parents had had to face. They were valuable men and fools; heroes and clowns; for every five sincere competent idealists there were five incompetent sick children. Together, good and bad, they floun- dered through the heavy seas they themselves had helped stir up, sometimes trying to meet new waves with a new twist of the body, sometimes deciding the waves had become too dangerous and it was time to make for shore. Conscience was their only guide and conscience is not a scientific instrument, at least not in the hands of intellectuals who are inclined to think their own consciences superior to others. The high-minded are often ad- mirable people but they are too often messy and noisy and confused, and this was their big day: a day of noble acts and silly high jinks, all at once, in the same group, in the same man.

The winds and waters of the nineteenth century social hurri- cane blew especially high in Russia and the scenery had gone hog wild. There was the magnificent side where the cliffs rose straight to Tolstoy and there were ugly places where men lay preaching gibberish to each other in the mud. Men screamed men down in Moscow and St. Petersburg with anti-Orthodox reason that sounded very like Orthodox prayers. Students were in an uproar, society in a dither, dandies contradicted each other in French so elegant that it would not have been understood in the Boulevard St. Germain. Priests led their villages in angry revolt, rich young men gave their property to the poor, men threw bombs in the belief that murder solved tyranny. The reaction was as violent as the uproar: universities cruelly pun- ished their students, the government sent even the mildest protestants into exile and penal colonies.

It is not easy to understand nineteenth century Russia. Few of us know the language or have roots in it. Nor do many of us know much Russian history, and our schools teach us very little. There were few good observers or critics or historians; and few casual travelers, like a grandmother who might have visited Florence or Athens, or been born in Frankfort or Dublin, and lived to tell us a little of what she saw. Even late in the century —a period close to us everywhere else in the \Vestern world— Russian life and Russian thought seemed to spring from sources more mysterious than seventeenth century England or France or Italy. Hamlet is closer to us than Papa Karamazov. \Ve walk through the doors of Elsinore, but we have to be shoved into the Karamazov house, even though the doors were put into place by a man no older than our own grandfather. The agony of Othello could be our agony, but the agony of Raskolnikov is not ours and we give ourselves over to it with an effort. The space between America-Europe and Russia has always been wide. It is probably no wider now than it was seventy-five years ago.

The histories of \Vestem Europe and Russia have seldom run parallel: similar things don't seem to have happened at the same time. Our society in the last half of the nineteenth century had finished with its revolutions and was entering upon the fattest and smuggest period of modern times. It was a secure and neat world for the \Vestern middle and upper classes and they settled back to enjoy it. In many places the social and cultural standards were high, in many places the breeding and the manners were good, and sometimes even taste. There were new standards of living for large numbers of people, and science was making life easier. But this was not true in Russia. Royal money and trad- ing money were there in great quantities, and sugar money and cotton money, but Russian culture, great as it had been in many places, was spotty now, and the ancient culture of Kiev was almost as unknown to St. Petersburg as it was to us. Great feudal landlords and princes and upper-class sons were learning the refinements of the \Vest—they admired and envied them at the same time that they patriotically rejected them—but they were mixing the good things up and tossing them about. No sooner had the aristocracy learned to play a pretty waltz than the new merchant gentry bought the piano from under them. Fine linens were sent off to Holland to be cleaned, but the owner of the linen forgot to bathe. \Vine was \Vestern-fashionable, but all- night vodka was still preferred. It was not enough to be reli- gious, it was necessary to be priest-ridden. Intellectuals bewailed the lot of the peasant, and cried over the filth of his village, his house, his life, and they cried so hard that they couldn't see the cockroaches above their own beds. There was no ordinary youth- ful mooning about life: there were great inner storms that left men broken or dead, or just too tired. "There's hardly a single Russian landowner or University man who doesn't brag about his past. The present is always worse than the past. \Vhy? Be- cause Russian excitability quickly gives way to fatigue . . .

before he has left his school bench, a man picks up a load he can't carry, takes up schools, the peasant and rational agricul- ture . . . makes speeches, writes to ministers, battles with evil, applauds good, falls in love not simply or any old way ... it must be a blue stocking or a neurotic or a Jewess or even a prostitute, whom he rescues. . . . He's hardly reached the age of thirty or thirty-five when he starts feeling fatigue and boredom." So Chekhov wrote of his Ivan in Ivanov and it was so accurate a picture of the Russian estate gentleman that the play has been called a "medical tragedy." (It is not a tragedy. It is not even a good play, but it is a remarkable picture of upper-class nine- teenth century society).

In some strange way—in whatever manner it is that unrest and excitement communicate themselves from one layer of society to another, so that what is felt in one place is mysteri- ously transmitted to another two thousand miles away—a whole people were on the go. But it is doubtful that the unrest started with the intellectual or the educated rich. It is more likely that the liberalism of nineteenth century Russia came sweeping, in- coherent and unformed, from beIow. Perhaps the Russian in- tellectual whirled in so many directions just because the pressure did come from a direction that was strange to him and from a class that was seldom his own class. Whatever the cause, men were thinking in the light and acting in the dark. But the con- fusion worked a kind of catharsis, and from it came a few artists of the very first rank, and many of the second rank, and the second rank in art is a high rank indeed.

Chekhov wrote: "A reasoned life without a definite outlook is not a life, but a burden and a horror." This was a strange idea for the day it was written and "a reasoned life" were words that had not been heard for a long time. But they are the key words to Chekhov's life and work. They would not have been surprising words from a man of Bernard Shaw's background, but they are startling from a nineteenth century Russian in-

tellectual, born in the middle of social uproar. Chekhov was out of line with his time and his country. It is true that he kept the almost religious kindness of most Russians, the forgiving nature that so often comes with oppression and poverty, the humor of a people who are used to trouble. But he brought to these inherited gifts a toughness of mind and spirit that was new to his world and his time. 'Ve can account for some of the forces that made the man, and give them names.

Chekhov's birth certificate reads: "January i7th, 1860 born and January 27th baptized, boy Antonius. His parents: the Taganrog merchant of the third guild Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov and his lawful wife Evgenia Yakovlevna, both of the Orthodox faith . . . ." Merchant of the third guild was a fancy way of saying that Pavel Chekhov owned a miserable grocery store which he had been able to buy after marrying Evgenia Morozov. (Morozov is a common name in Russia and Anton Chekhov's mother was no relation to the fabulously rich Moscow merchant family.) Pavel's father had been a serf who, by terrible labor and deprivation, had bought the freedom of his family in 1841, twenty years before the abolition of serfdom, in a period when such families found their new freedom almost as hard as their old slavery.

Six children were born to Pavel and Evgenia, of whom Anton was the third. Life was hard, money was short, and Pavel Chekhov was a man far more devoted to Orthodox ritual and church music than he was to his family or to his business. He was more than a devout Christian: he was a fanatic whose ambition was to have the finest family choir in Taganrog. Anton and his brothers worked long hours in the store after school and were then made to serve in the choir. The Greek Orthodox Church has a strange ritual, long services often occur late at night or very early in the morning, and this meant that the boys led a weary life of too little sleep and too much prayer. It was not unusual for the Chekhov boys to rise at three in the morning to be hustled off to an unheated church in the miserable cold

of a Russian winter. Pavel was, indeed, a strange fellow: a good ikon painter, a good violinist, a genial host, and a man of terrifying temper who believed in the whip when he couldn't drive his children fast enough without it. He was also a schle- miel, which is not true of most terrifying men, and it was prob- ably the schlemiel side of his nature that made it possible to live around him at all. Evgenia Chekhova was a kind woman who did her best to alter the iron discipline of the household and to stand between the children and their father. Many biog- raphers have accepted a conventional picture of a sweet, un- educated and simple woman. Evgenia must have been more than that, although she does not come clear. And her relationship with Anton must have been more complex than Anton realized, or, realizing, than he was willing to talk or write about. Anton was devoted to her—or so it seems. Most certainly he was always very good to her. But there are many contradictions in the story of Evgenia and Anton Chehkov. A loving son, long after he is able to live alone, stays on with his family and, almost at the end of his life, plans a house with an eye to pleasing his mother. And yet when he does marry—an important step in his life because he waited so long to take it—he does not consult her, or even tell her of the ceremony until after it is over. What- ever the relationship was between Anton and Evgenia Chekhova —and we do not know much about it—it does not bear the sometimes ugly signs of over-devoted son to over-devoted mother.

Other pieces of the Chekhov family record are missing. Evgenia Chekhova is not the only member of Anton's family who does not come out clearly in his letters or reminiscences. The formal history of the Chekhov brothers and sister is there, but somehow they are not there as people. They lived close to Anton, but they are less close to us than many of the char- acters in his stories and plays. Perhaps he accepted his family without any of that romanticism that makes so many creative people either hate their background with a hate that is destruc- tive, or cling to their parents and their past with a love so little different from hate that its destructiveness is only of another nature.

By 1876, Pavel Chekhov, merchant of the third guild, was bankrupt and lost his grocery store for good. There was nothing more to hope for in Taganrog and so he decided to move his family to Moscow. The family picked up and pushed on, leav- ing Anton behind to earn his own way through school by tutor- ing other boys. He was lonely and he was very poor, but life was better without Pavel and choir practice. Now there was time for fishing and bathing and an occasional cheap ticket to the local theatre, and sometimes there were nice visits to his grandfather who was the overseer of a large country estate. Pavel's father was as vigorous and cheerful a man as his son was mean and narrow: he was a good fellow for a boy to spend time with. These three years of being entirely on his own were important years to Anton Chekhov. He came out of them a young man equipped to deal with a tough world, and unfright- ened by it.

In 1879 he left Taganrog to join his family and to enter the University of Moscow as a medical student. He arrived in Moscow knowing, of course, that things had not gone well with his father, and that his family had, as always, been having a tough time. But he was shocked to find that they were living in a filthy basement in the brothel section of the city. City poverty had made its usual ugly marks on lower middle-class provincial people. Pavel, the menacing figure of Anton's child- hood, was not even living in the family basement. He had a thirty-ruble-a-month job and he mushed out his lonely life on the other side of town. Anton's older brothers, Alexander and Nikolai, were interesting and talented young men. In revolt, perhaps, against the misery in which they lived, they were, by the time of Anton's arrival, involved in the shabbiest, talkiest, hardest-drinking side of Moscow Bohemia. Chekhov's lifelong contempt for wasters and boasters, his occasional bitter preachi-

ness to his brothers, came from this period of watching Alex- ander and Nikolai and their friends. He felt affection for his brothers, he was good to them all his life, but it was here he took their measure and there was never, unfortunately, any need to alter it.

The money for Chekhov's university scholarship went to pay the family debts. Supporting himself through medical school would have been hard enough, but it was now obvious that the whole family had to be supported, and he sat dowra to do it. In 1880 his first piece for a humorous magazine was accepted. In the next seven years Chekhov wrote more than four hundred short stories, sketches, novels, one-act plays, fillers, jokes, law reports, picture captions, one-line puns and half-page tales. The days were medical school, the nights were work, and work that had to be done in an apartment filled with a large family, noisy neighbors and casual guests. It was not easy then, as it is not easy now, to earn a living as a free lance writer. Chekhov was pushed around and cheated by editors, made to beg for the few rubles they owed him. He had to pay ten visits to one editor to collect three rubles, and another editor offered him a pair of pants in exchange for a short story. Hack literary work is very hard work, and the study of medicine is very hard work, but hack literary work, the study of medicine, and the support of a large family can be killing. Men who take on such burdens are never the men who write easy checks for the family food and rent and think their responsibility finished. Men like Chekhov take on as well the moral and spiritual burdens of the people around them, and those are the heavy burdens and take the largest due. Chekhov, from his days as a student, became the father of his family and remained their father for the rest of his life. In time, with success, the burdens became easicr, but this period, this very young man period, in which terrible work had to be done against terrible odds, deprived him forever of much that he wanted:

"A young man, the son of a serf, who had worked in a shop, been a choir boy . .. was brought up to defer to rank, to kiss the hands of priests and to submit to other people's ideas; who was thankful for every bite of food, was often beaten ... who fought, tormented animals, liked to have dinner with his rich relations; who played the hypocrite before God and man without needing to do so ... this young man squeezed the slave out of himself, drop by drop, and woke up one fine morning to realize that it was not the blood of a slave, but real human blood, that ran through his veins." Again, in contrasting his background with Tolstoy's and Turgenev's, he wrote: "They receive as a gift what we lower-class writers buy with our youth." He bought it high: he had his first hemorrhage at the age of twenty-four.

And at twenty-four he graduated from the medical college of Moscow University. He says that he thought of medicine as his wife and literature as his mistre^, but that could not have been so because hc acted the other way round. By the time he gradu- ated, he was earning money as a \vriter and he was a fairly well known name to Moscow magazines. He did work in a hospital the first summer after he left the university, but after that we hear less and less of medicine and nothing of the practice of medicine as we know it. It is doubtful if he ever amounted to much as a doctor although many times throughout his life he speaks of treating his neighbors or the peasants or prescribing for his friends. But one suspects that it wasn't much more than a well-trained pharmacist might have done. His relations with medicine were courtesy relations: he acted toward medicine as if it were a famous and distinguished cousin, a kind of hero he didn't get to see as often as he would have liked.

But the study of medicine was of great importance to Chekhov and perhaps that is what he meant when he spoke of medicine as his wife. Chekhov is a special kind of creative artist, a \\TI"iter who finds no conflict between the imagination and the scien- tific fact, who sees the one as part of the other in a dependent and happy brotherhood. He said: "Science and letters should go hand in hand. Anatomy and elegant letters have the same enemy—the devil. ... In Goethe the naturalist lived in harmony with the poet." Of course many writers think they feel that way but literary people often resent science as if science were a gruff Philistine intruder in a meeting of cultured men, an aggressive guest who says the things that nobody wants to hear. In Chekhov science not only lived in harmony with literature, but it was the very point of the writer, the taking-off place, the color of the eye, the meat, the marrow, the blood. It is every- where in Chekhov's work and in his life: in his dislike of theorizing, his impatience with metaphysical or religious gen- eralizations, his dislike of 4 a.m. philosophy. (He rejected high- sounding emptiness even when it came from a man he loved and respected: he said of a new Tolstoy theory, "To hell with the philosophy of the great of this world.") It is in his contempt for self-deception and hypocrisy: "You hold that I am intel- ligent. Yes, I am intelligent in that I . . . don't lie to myself and don't cover my own emptiness with other people's intel- lectual rags." He was intelligent, he believed in intelligence, and intelligence for Chekhov meant that you called a spade a spade: laziness was simply not working; too much drink was drunkenness; whoring had nothing to do with love; health was when you felt good and brocaded words could not cover empti- ness or pretensions or waste. He was determined to see life as it was.

Was he this kind of a man because he was a doctor? Or had he become a doctor because he was this kind of a man? It doesn't matter. We only need to know that as a writer he was a good doctor, a sort of family physician to his characters. An honest physician tries hard to make a correct diagnosis: his whole being depends upon his ability to recognize the symptoms and name the disease. Such men are not necessarily more dedicated to the truth than the rest of us but their profession requires that they bear it more closely in mind. Chekhov bore it close.

There is no work of Chekhov's that better illustrates his determination to see things as they are than the short story, "A

Tiresome Tale." A famous and distinguished scientist, knowing that he is soon to die, takes a long last look at his family, his pupils, his assistants. He had lived in the hope of leaving some- thing behind: it is now clear to him that his career has been a waste and all his official medals cannot cover the waste. "A Tire- some Tale" is not only a wonderful short story but, coming in 1889, it was a clear, fresh statement of life. The story has in it most of Chekhov, good and bad. Dr. Stepanovich is a new figure in Russian literature: a man who must see the world for what it is, without tears, without turmoil, because he believes that only truth can bring hope for the future. But Katya, the roman- tic young actress of the story, is a literary throwback. She seeks the answer to the meaning of life in the same tiresome way that so many like her have sought it before. Katya is, of course, Nina in The Seagull. The characters in "A Tiresome Tale" appear over and over again in the stories and plays. It has been said that while Chekhov was sorry for the Ninas of the world, he was also making fun of them, and never meant their troubles to be mistaken for lofty tragedy. That is true, but it is more likely that writers who walk fast always have twigs from dead wood on their clothes, always have old stones, like Katya, in their shoes. But the twigs and the stones are of no importance to the creative artist: it's the length and speed of his journey that counts. He has very little time, no matter how fast he runs, and he cannot stop along the way to sort out the good mer- chandise from the bad, the old from the new, as if he were a peddler.

In Chekhov, the conflicts and contradictions of the old with the ncw have led to an unusual number of opinions about the man himself and to many different interpretations of his plays. People see in him what they wish to see, even if they have to ignore his words; or, more frequently, they ignore the dates on which the words were written. Some critics see Chekhov as a political radical, a man who desired the overthrow of a rotting society. Other critics see him as a non-political man, an observer of the scene, a writer who presented the problem but refused to give the answer. Still others see a man who, far from criticiz- ing anything or anybody, was only saddened by a world that destroyed the delicate and punished the finely made. None of these points of view is the truth, although each has in it some- thing of the truth. But the truth about Chekhov, if you keep prejudiced hands off, is not hard to find. The words are there and they are dated.

Chekhov, like all men who grow, sometimes changed his mind. He had grown up in a time of social unrest. He was a student when student riots broke out all over the land and he saw many of the boys he knew carted off to jail or banished to Siberia. His school was rigidly controlled by the Czar's repre- sentatives and his writing was rigidly censored by the Czar's literary bureaucrats. It was a time of revolt and feelings ran high on both sides. Chekhov took little part in the revolt—of that there can be no question—and many Russian intellectuals criticized him for what he didn't do or say. But he went his own way, he took his own method. In a time when it was dangerous to hint that Russia was not the most blessed of lands he was sharply critical, in his stories, of the society around him. He condemned the rotten life of the peasant, the filth and squalor of village life, the meanness of the bureaucracy, the empty pretensions of the landed gentry, the lack of any true spiritual guidance from the church, the cruelty and degradation that were implicit in poverty. He needed no political party, no group, no platform to dictate these themes. As a young man he felt the needle of his more radical friends, and he answered them: "I should like to be a free artist and that is all. ... I consider a label or a trademark to be a prejudice." But when, two years later, a Moscow magazine took him too literally and called him a "writer without principles," he got into one of the few angry passions of his life. The letter to Lavrov, the editor of the mag- azine, has a kind of illogic, and a pettish, defensive quality which is unlike Chekhov. Magarshack, in his good book,

Chekhov the Dramatist, says: "This letter is important in that it reveals the inner conflict that was going on in Chekhov's mind at that particular time. Indeed, his defense against Lav- rov's criticism is rather lame, and the fury of the letter must be ascribed to his own realization of its lameness. Chekhov defends himself against an accusation which obviously hurt him to the quick . . . and he advanced the curious plea that he was really a doctor and not a writer at all, and that even as a writer he had so far got along excellently with his friends/' Lavrov's charge struck something painful. The youthful "I should like to be a free artist" was no longer true, but he didn't know how to say so. The desire to be a free artist was always to be with him, but the "that is all" period was over forever. At the age of thirty-two he wrote to Suvorin that the Russian artist lacked something. "\Vriters who are immortal or just plain good . . . have one very important trait in common: they are going some- where and they call you with them. . . . Some of them, accord- ing to how great they are, have aims that concern their own times more cIosely, such as the abolition of serfdom, the libera- tion of their country, politics, beauty, or simply vodka. Others have more remote aims, such as God, life beyond the grave, human happiness and so on. (In) the best of them . . . every line is permeated, as with juice, by a consciousness of an aim, you feel in addition to life as it is, also life as it should be. . . . But what about us? \Ve have neither near nor remote aims and our souls are as flat and bare as a billiard table. \Ve have no politics, we do not believe in revolution, we deny the existence of God. . . . But he who wants nothing, hopes for nothing and fears nothing cannot be an artist."

These two letters are so far apart in feeling because the times had changed. Now, in the i8go's, the intellectuals were disillu- sioned and resigned. Chekhov disliked these men and disap- proved of their cowardice and their callous social irresponsi- bility. He was growing older and his requirements for himself and for others hung on a higher peg, and were of a different nature. (It is not a disgrace in Europe to grow older, and the

European artist need not cling to the ideas and ideals of his youth.) Truth was still the goal, but now Chekhov knew it could be bare and impotent standing by itself. He had found out that the writer must not only find the truth but he must wrap it up and take it somewhere. Chekhov, like most natural writers, never knew how he got it there, nor why, nor what made him take it in a given direction. Nor did he ever bother to find out. But somewhere he was taking his own kind of truth, and the somewhere was increasingly good.

There can be no doubt, on the evidence, that Chekhov was a man of deep social ideals and an uncommon sense of social responsibility. This has been true of almost every good writer who ever lived and it does not matter that the ideal sometimes seems to be a denial of ideal, or that it springs from hate, or has roots in snobbishness, or insanity, or alcohol, or just plain meanness. What comes out in the work is all that matters. The great work of art has always had what Chekhov called the aim, the ideal, and none of us coming after the artist has the right to define or limit his ideal by imposing upon him the moral and political standards of our time. We have the right to find in books what we need to find, but certainly we have no right to refashion the writer's beliefs to suit our own. This happens too often with us, and is a form of vanity.

If Chekhov had written only short stories or novels or poetry the opinions of his critics and his interpreters wouldn't matter very much. The printed work would be there and nobody could stand between it and us unless we allowed them to. It would be interesting to know that Mr. X. from Moscow disagreed with Mr. Y. from New York, but, in the end, the biographer, the critic, the teacher, and those who write such introductions as this, cannot do permanent harm to a printed work.

But this is not true of plays. People do read plays, but not very much, and most of us judge them by what we see on the stage. If the literary world has a handful of interpreters who mistake themselves for the author, the theatrical world has only a handful who do not mistake themselves for the playwright. '\Ve all need to see ourselves as a little more important than we are, but people in the theatre need to see themselves as a lot more important than anybody else.

Stanislavski, a great director, is probably most responsible for the frequent misinterpretations of the Chekhov plays. '\Ve have taken his prompt scripts for the Moscow Art Theatre produc- tions and used them as our bible, adding our own misinter- pretations, of course, until now we seldom see a Chekhov play that is pure Chekhov. Most of us, therefore, do not know the plays. We know only something that we call "Chekhovian," and by that we mean a stage filled with sweet, soupy, frustrated people, created by a man who wept for their fate. This inter- pretation holds very little of the truth: it is based on the com- mon assumption that the writer shares the viewpoint of those he writes about. One forgives the dinner-party ladies and gen- tlemen who say, "You must think people terribly evil or you wouldn't write about villains," or, "I am sure you are an aw- fully nice person because you write about such nice people," but it is hard to forgive the serious critic or reader, or the teacher, or Stanislavski, or the followers of Stanislavski, for this kind of foolishness.

Chekhov fought long and hard against this interpretation of his plays. He lost the battle and he knew it, but, fortunately, he could not have known that it would still be lost fifty years later. Stanislavski was a theatre king by divine right, his actors chil- dren of the line, and it is always hard to convince royalty. Chekhov did argue over the plays, but he was a sick man and he was living in Yalta, far away from the theatre world of Moscow and St. Petersburg. He admired the Moscow Art Theatre and felt close to it, though he was critical of it, and sometimes sharp and bitter. He was tied to Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko by affection and gratitude but Chekhov acted like a father who is forced to sit in impotent disapproval of his child's adopted home lest if he take the child away a new set of foster parents might prove worse than the old.

Stanislavski was a man of intelligence and great ability, and one can wonder why he did not present the plays as Chekhov wished them to be presented. The answer is simple: Stanislav- ski's interpretation had made the plays popular. What Stanis- lavski put upon the stage was what the public wanted, or at least what the avant-garde section of the public wanted. It was their mood, the state of their disillusioned lives, their lack of hope, their tragic reading of life that was responsible for the popular conception of Chekhov as a playwright. Chekhovian came to mean something drear and wintry, a world filled with puff-ball people lying on a dusty table waiting for a wind to roll them off.

It has been forgotten that Chekhov said The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard were comedies. Trigorin, in The Seagull, has been interpreted in many ways, but he has almost never been played as he was intended: a third-rate writer, a man who was neither good nor bad, an aging and disappointed fellow who floundered around hoping that the next small selfish act would bring him pleasure. Nina is usually played with a certain high- minded foolishness, a virgin with her head in the air, too simple to understand the worldliness of the man who seduces her. Certainly Chekhov meant her to be a sweet and charming young woman, but the head that was in the air was not meant to be too bright, and it was filled with nonsense. She is a sad, lost, hopeless girl whose punishment springs from her owra second- rate standards of life. She could never have been intended as the tragic figure that actresses and directors prefer.

And it is so with The Cherry Orchard. One of Chekhov's favorite themes is the need that shallow people have for emo- tional fancy dress, their desire to deck out ordinary trouble in gaudy colors, and to teeter around life like children in their mother's high-heeled shoes. Chekhov makes it very clear that the lovable fools in The Cherry Orchard are not even worth the trees that are the symbol of their end. But the play is usually presented as a drama of delicate, charming, improvident aris- tocrats pushed around by a vulgar, new-risen bourgeoisie. (Chekhov took great pains to point out that Lophakin was not a vulgar man and should not be played like a lout.) Mme. Ranevskaya is a woman who has dribbled away her life on trifles. Chekhov pitied her and liked her—it still seems to be news to most people that writers end up liking all their charac- ters—but he was making fun of her. In real life it is possible to like a foolish woman, but this viewpoint is frowned upon in the theatre: it allows for no bravura, gets no sympathy for the actress, and is complex because foolishness is complex. It is thus easier, in such cases, to ignore the author's aim, or to change it. The Cherry Orchard is sharp comedy. Nowhere else does Chekhov say so clearly that the world these people made for themselves would have to end in a whimper.

He foresaw the end of their world, but he had the artist- scientist hope for a better world. He says so over and over again. It is doubtful, however, that he would have liked or would have fitted into the social revolution that was so shortly to follow him. It is one thing to know what is wrong with the old order, it is another to be comfortable in the new. But hu- man personality is extraordinarily complex and is dependent upon so many factors and grows from so many different roots that one such guess is as worthless as the next. And the roots from which Chekhov grew were very special: his place of birth, his education, his family, his religion, his sexual nature, the whole niveau of his life was very different from ours.

Then, too, Chekhov was not a simple man and much of his life is still not known to us and much of what is known is not understood. He was a nineteenth century man and he shared with the intellectuals of his time and his country a kind of Christian ideal of life, although he divorced the ideal from the church he was born into. Human life was of very great impor- tance to these men: they were, in the deepest sense, reformers, and they wished to reform not from busybody zeal, but from their anguish that the individual human being cease to suffer hunger and disease. It was easy for such men to become senti- mentalists, and many of them did. Chekhov was a sweet man, a generous man, a tolerant man, and he gave pity where it was due, but he was a tough, unsentimental man with a tough mind, and thus he had tough tools to write with.

His friend Tolstoy, comparing him to Shakespeare, said: "Chekhov doesn't have the real nerve of a dramatist." In the end, Tolstoy is probably right, although the comparison is harsh and hasn't much point.

But then I am not a critic of writers, nor do I wish to be. Chekhov said: "When people talk to me of what is artistic or inartistic . . . I am at my wit's end. I divide all productions into two categories: those I like and those I don't like." I like Chekhov, I like these letters, and I hope you will, too.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

SHOLOM ALEICHEM (1859-1916) was the pseudonym of Solomon Rabinowitz, a humorous writer who emigrated to the United States in 1906.

MARIA ANDREYEVA ( ? -1953) was an actress in the Moscow Art Theatre. She played Irina in the first performances of "The Three Sisters."

LYDIA AVILOVA (1865-1943) was a writer. The nature of her relationship to Chekhov is unknown. They were probably in love, and Chekhov's friends believed that one of his reasons for going to Sakhalin was to break off with Avilova. In 1947 her memoirs were published in the Soviet Union, and were trans- lated into English as "Chekhov in My Life."

FYODOR BATUSHKOV (1857-1920) was a teacher and an author- ity on Western European literature, and editor of several maga- zines to which Chekhov contributed. After Chekhov's death, Batushkov wrote his memoirs of Chekhov and a great number of critical articles on the stories and plays.

PYOTR BYKOV (1843-1930) was a magazine writer.

ALEXANDER CHEKHOV (1855-1913) was the oldest of Chekhov's brothers. He studied mathematics and physics at i\Ioscow Univer- sity and, while still a student, began writing humorous pieces for magazines and newspapers. He started out as a brilliant and talented young man and ended as a hack writer. Chekhov's letters to Alexander were often written in a kind of teasing, insulting tone, but he had great affection for Alexander and often used him as a business agent.

EVGENIA CHEKHOVA (1835-1919), Chekhov's mother, was born Morozova. It is almost impossible to find any reliable material on her family. Her grandfather was a serf who managed to buy his own freedom and the freedom of her father, Yakov. They were peddlers and small merchants who eventually settled in Taganrog.

IVAN CHEKHOV (1861-1922), the fourth Chekhov brother, was a teacher. He taught for many years in Moscow at a city school. He was a hard-working, conscientious man.

MARIA CHEKHOVA (1863- ) was Chekhov's only sister. The family managed, somehow, to find enough money to give her a good education. She became a teacher of history and geography in a private school for girls. She was deeply devoted to Anton and was closer to him than any other member of the family. Her whole life was given over to him and, after his death, she became his literary executor and editor.

MIKHAIL CHEKHOV (1865-1936) was Chekhov's youngest brother. He translated Upton Sinclair and Jack London into Russian.

NIKOLAI CHEKHOV (1858-1889), the second Chekhov brother, was a gifted artist. During the 1880's Nikolai did a great deal of work for humorous magazines, often in illustration of Anton's sketches and stories. He died of tuberculosis.

OLGA HERMANOVNA CHEKHOVA (no dates) was the wife of Mikhail.

ALEXANDER ERTEL (1855-1908), a writer, was a good friend of Chekhov's. As a young man he had been banished from St. Peters- burg for revolutionary activities.

MAXIM GORKI (1868-1936) was born in Nizhni-Novgorod as Alexei Pyeshkov. His famous autobiography opens with a de- scription of his mother preparing the body of his father for the burial services. Gorki went to work when he was nine years old and, for the next fifteen years, travelled around southern Russia taking any job he could get and educating himself with books borrowed from everywhere. In 1895 a St. Petersburg magazine published one of his short stories: fame and success came fast. \Vithin two years he became a great literary figire, not only in Russia, but in Europe as well. His early romantic stories of hoboes and tramps made Gorki a hero to the working class; his persecution by the Czarist police made him an idol to most of

Russia. After the failure of the 1905 revolution, in which he played an active part, Gorki left the country and continued his political activities from Capri. In 1917, although he had not previousIy been a member of the party, he gave his support to Lenin and the Bolsheviks. After the revolution he became a kind of cultural arbiter for the new regime. His best known books and plays are "Twenty-six Men and a Girl," "Mother," "The Lower Depths," and "Yegor Bulichev." Gorki's reminiscences of ToIstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev are wonderfuI records of the three men.

DMITRI GRIGOROVICH (1822-1899) was a popular and re- spected Russian novelist. Chekhov dedicated his collected stories, "In the Twilight," to Grigorovich in 1887. In 1889, Chekhov re- ceived the Pushkin Prize for Literature largely through Grigoro- vich's efforts.

MARIA KISELEVA ( ? -1922) was a member of a distinguished family and the wife of a rich and cultured country gentleman. In the 188o's the Chekhov's rented a cottage on the Kiselev estate. Chekhov and the Kiselevs were close friends, but many years later Chekhov said that Mme. Kiselev had become old and reac- tionary and that he was sick of her.

OLGA KNIPPER (1870- ) came from an Alsatian family of German background who had settled in Russia. Her father died young and her mother earned a living as a music teacher. Knip- per grew up on the fringes of the cultural high-life of Moscow. She was a talented young actress with the Moscow Art Theatre when Chekhov fell in love with her. She was known as the unoffi- cial hostess of his house in Yalta long before their m^iage in 1901. In 1904 she played Madame Ranevskaya in "The Cherry Or- chard"; in 1943, at the 30oth anniversary performance of the play, she was still at it.

ANATOLI KONI (1844-1927) was a liberal lawyer, public official, and an old admirer of Chekhov's.

VLADIMIR KOROLENKO (1853-1921) was a popular novelist. He was a left wing liberal who defended the peasant against the land- owner and took a courageous stand against anti-Semitism. He and Chekhov were elected honorary academicians in 1900, but in 1902 they both resigned in protest over the Academy's refusal of Gorki.

Gorki's reminiscences contain a warm and channnning picture of Korolenko.

PYOTR KURKIN (1858-1934) was a doctor and an old friend of Chekhov's.

VUKOL L-\VROV (1852-1912) was one of the editors of a high- brow magazine, "Russian Thought." He called Chekhov an "un- principled" \\Titer and Chekhov answered with a famous, angry letter. But, a few years later, they patched up the fight and be- c^e good friends.

NIKOUI LEIKIN (1841-1906) was a writer who lived in St. Peters- burg. He was the editor of the humorous magazine, "Fragments."

IVAN LEONTIEV (1856-1911) was a play>mght and novelist who used the pen name of Shcheglov.

MARIA LILINA (Mme. Alexeyeva) (1866-1923), Stanislavski's wife, was a talented actress of the Moscow Art Theatre.

MARL-\ MALKIEL (no dates) was the daughter of a rich Moscow f^ily. She and her sister were close friends of Maria Chekhova's and she was a frequent guest at Melikhovo.

ADOLF MARX (1838-1904) was a prominent publisher in St. Petersburg. He put out the first complete edition of Chekho-'s works. He was also the publisher of Turgenev, Dostoyevski and Korolenko.

MIKHAIL MENSHIKOV (1859-1919) was a sailor who became a journalist and editor of "This \Veek." He started out in life as a liberal and ended up as a reactionary. He \\TOte constantly to Chekhov, but Chekhov in the last three years of his life ne\er answered the letters.

VICTOR MIROLUBOV (MIROV) (1860-1939) was the editor and publisher of a popular monthly, "E,"erybody's Magazine."

LYDL\ mMIZIKOVA (1870-1937) was a good friend of Chekhov's sister. She was an interesting and attractive young woman who was in love with Chekhov. Chekhov liked her and liked to flirt with her, but there is no evidence that he loved her.

VLADIMIR NEMIROVICH-DANCHENKO (1858-1943) was a well known novelist and play>Hight long before he and Stanis- lavski founded the Moscow Art Theatre. He was a brilliant and

highly cultivated man and, although his name has never been as famous as Stanislavski's, it is possible that he most deserves credit for the high quality of the plays produced by the theatre. It was he who recognized the talents of Chekhov as a playwright and it was he who insisted upon the production of "The Seagull." After the revolution, while the Moscow Art Theatre was making a European tour, Nemirovich-Danchenko established a famous musical studio where he developed a new style for the production of opera and operetta. In 1942, shortly before his death, he re- ceived a Stalin award for "Kremlin Chimes," a play about Lenin. The Chekhov-Nemirovich-Danchenko friendship went back to the 188o's, when they were both grinding out a living as writers of jokes and humorous pieces. Chekhov was always closer to Nemirovich-Danchenko than he was to Stanislavski and, over the years, they wrote many letters to each other. Unfortunately, much of the correspondence has been lost or destroyed.

IVAN ORLOV (1851-1917) was a doctor. He and Chekhov became friends in the Melikhovo period.

ALEXEI PLESHCHEYEV (1825-1893) was a poet and essayist. He was an early admirer of Chekhov's. He started out as a radical, inherited a fortune and moved to Paris.

GRIGORI ROSSOLIMO (1860-1928), a fellow student of Chekhov's at medical school, was a neuropathologist who taught at Moscow University. Chekhov had great respect for him as a scientist and great affection for him as a man.

PYOTR SERGEYENKO (1854-1930) is best known for his book on Tolstoy. He went to school with Chekhov in Taganrog.

ELENA SHAVROVA (1874-1937), Mme. Just, was a writer and an actress. She met Chekhov at a picnic in 1889 and asked him to read a story she had written. Chekhov sent the story to Suvorin, who printed it in "New Times."

VASILI SOBOLEVSKI (1846-1913) was the author of a number of articles on finance, economics and dipIomacy. His common-Iaw wife was the millionaire patroness of the arts, Varvara Morozova.

KONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKI (1863-1938) was born Konstan- tin AIexeyev. (The Russians were great name changers.) His father, and his father's friends, were the rich upper class Mus- covites who were rapidly taking over the prerogatives of the

Russian aristocracy. The Alexeyevs were theatre and opera patrons—one grandmother had been the famous French actress, Varley—and Stanislavski made his first appearance at the age of three in family theatricals. He organized his brothers and sisters into an acting group of rather extraordinary standards: when, for e.vample, they planned to produce "The l\Iikado," Japanese acro- bats were invited to live on the family estate and give instruction in military drill, Japanese dancing, proper use of the fan, etc. Stanislavski was deeply influenced, as was most of Europe, by the Meiningen court theatre and, shortly after the Russian tour of that great company, he and Nemirovich-Danchenko founded the Moscow Art Theatre "... against bathos, overacting ... the star system ... the farcical repertoire which was ... the Russian stage." The brilliance of the Moscow Art Theatre's productions of Chekhov, Tolstoy, Gorki, Shakespeare, Ibsen and Hauptmann changed the modern theatre. The revolution they brought about in acting, stage lighting, stage music and stage designing is the proof that Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko were the two great theatre men of modern times. On the night of the Kazanski Square massacre in St. Petersburg, Stanislavski was playing Dr. Stockman in "The Enemy of the People." He was so convincing an actor that when he reached the famous line, "You can't put on a new coat when you go out to fight for freedom and truth," the entire audience rose from their seats and rushed upon the stage to thank him for his bravery.

LEOPOLD (LEV) SULErJiTSKI (1872-1916) was an artist and writer. He was thrown out of the Academy for revolutionary speeches. He was sent to an insane asylum for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the Czar, and was then exiled to Central Asia. He organized, with Tolstoy, the emigration of the Dukho- bors to Canada.

ALEXEI SUVORIN (1834-1912) was the editor of the powerful, conservative, St. Petersburg newspaper, "New Times." He was an interesting, worldly man, a close friend of Chekhov's, although Chekhov never seemed to have any illusions about Suvorin's love of money and power. The friendship broke up in a fight over Zola and the Dreyfus case.

ANNA SUVORINA (no dates), Suvorin's second wife, was a lively and imaginative woman. She wrote a book about Chekhov.

MODEST TCHAIKOVSKI (1850-1916), brother of the composer, wrote librettos. He was a great admirer of Chekhov's and called himself a "Chekhist."

JOASAPH TIKHOMIROV ( ? -1908) was an actor in the Moscow Art Theatre.

VLADIMIR TIKHONOV (1857-1914) was a dramatist, fiction writer, and editor of several literary magazines.

ALEXANDER VISHNEVSKI (1863-1943) was an actor in the Mos- cow Art Theatre. He was a schoolmate of Chekhov's in the early Taganrog days.

VLADIMIR YAKOVENKO (1857-1933) was a distinguished psy- chiatrist. He and Chekhov were very much interested in local government councils (zemstvos).

YEVGRAF YEGOROV (no dates) was the leader of a community in the Nizhni-Novgorod district.

THE SELECTED LETTERS OF

ANTON CHEKHOV

1885-1890

This collection of letters begins in 1885 when Chekhov was twenty-five years old. His literary output was already enormous and while the early work cannot be compared with what came later, many of the early stories are very good and all of them are interesting comments on Russian life.

Chekhov had been doing every kind of grubby literary work to support his family. He had even been writing a kind of gos- sip column. But in 1885 he began to move away from hack work. He gave up the pseudonym of Antosha Chekhonte with which he had signed the early humorous stories and came forth as Anton Chekhov, a modest and earnest young man who was about to take his first steps as a serious writer.

St. Petersburg was the cultural center of Russia—Moscow was the merchants' city—and to be published in St. Petersburg was of great importance to a young writer. Chekhov was already known to the St. Petersburg magazines by his humorous stories, but now the serious stories began to be commented on and

r O

praised. Chekhov, on his first visit to St. Petersburg in 1885, was surprised to find himself the literary toast of the town. It was on this visit that Alexei Suvorin, editor of the powerful, con- servative, pro-government New Times, invited Chekhov to be- come a regular contributor. The newspaper was important, the pay was better than Chekhov had ever had before and his new friend, Suvorin, was a man of great prestige and influence.

The year 1885 marked other changes in his life. Financially, things were a little easier and his social life was pleasanter. He liked his friends, the Kiselevs, and when they offered to rent him a small house on their beautiful estate at Babkino he jumped at the chance. The Kiselevs were cultured people and they kept open house for the most interesting intellectuals in Russia. The summer guests came and went through days and evenings of charming picnics and brilliant talk and excellent music. Life on the Kiselev estate was on a far higher level than Chekhov had ever known before and he flourished in it.

The years 1885 to i8go were probably the most important of Chekhov's life. They do not include his most important work, but they lay the pattern for everything that was to come. It was in these years that the stones of the character were set into place, the design of the man took shape. The future was in these years, the good and the bad of it. The first signs of tuberculosis appeared, he became a serious writer and a serious man, and he became famous. The extravagant early praise of the critics and the literary public turned, as it usually does, into extrav- agant attack. Now they said that he had no philosophy, that he reported life without interpreting it. A critic of great impor- tance, Mikhailovsky, accused him of aimlessness. His connec- tion with Suvorin and the reactionary, anti-Semitic New Tim.es was looked upon with suspicion and distaste.

But nobody had taken the measure of the man as well as the man himself. Chekhov looked at his work with clarity and humility. He was on his way to himself, so to speak, and because he knew he would find himself, he was not to be hurried or pushed or bullied. True, the charge of aimlessness bit deep and he turned this way and that, smarting under it.

One of the ways he turned—and then turned back again— was toward Tolstoyism. Chekhov was never a member of the Tolstoy inner circle and even in his most enthusiastic period he disliked the ascetic side of Tolstoy's teachings, but many of the stories written at this time are under the influence of the Mas- ter: the vanity-of-earthly-goods theme in "The Bet," and the non-resistance-to-evil theme in "The Meeting." These were also the years of his first full-length play. The short plays, the vaude- villes, were already popular—they showed the great instinctive knowledge he had for theatre technique—but Ivanov was his first attempt at a large work for the stage. Much of Ivanov is interesting, particularly the first half of the play, but most of it is muddled and overstated and repetitive. It was written by a man. who thought clearly, but the play is without clarity. Chekhov discovered—his later plays show how well he learned from the mistakes of Ivanov—that characters in a play cannot be written as if they were characters in a story or a novel. He learned, too, that writing for the stage is primarily the tech- nique of paring down.

The Chekhov controversy, the Chekhov legend, roughly dates from Ivanov. "For a long time," Bunin wrote many years later, "nobody called Chekhov anything but a 'gloomy' writer . . . a man who looked at everything with hopelessness and indiffer- ence. . . . Now they've gone to the opposite extreme . . . they've been going on about Chekhov's 'tenderness and wa^th,' 'Chekhov's love of humanity. . . .' All this makes intolerable reading. What would he have felt if he had read about his 'tenderness'? This is a word which one must use very rarely and very carefully about Chekhov." And Hingley in his biography makes it simple: he says that those who are pessimists think Chekhov is a pessimist and those who are optimists think he is an optimist.

I do not understand the pessimist theory. I know of no writer who ever made it more clear that he believed in the future. There is every difference between sadness and despair. Chekhov was often sad but basically he was a gay and cheerful man, calm, pleasant, full of fun. He liked pretty women, he liked wine and a party, he kept open house for his friends, he enjoyed music and fishing and bathing and gardening and money and fame. He took the good with the bad.

In 1889 Chekhov's brother, Nikolai, died of tuberculosis. Chekhov was deeply depressed by his brother's death and his great short story, "A Tiresome Tale," was written immediately aften,ard. Then, as if to break with the past, he began to pre- pare for a long and dangerous journey.

To NIKOLAI LEIKIN

October /2, /885, Moscow

Dear Nikolai Alexandrovich,

Your letter found me in my new apartment. It is near the Moscow River and in real country: clean, quiet, cheap and— dullish. The massacre of the latest issue of "Fragments"¹ struck me like a bolt from the blue. On the one hand I regret all the work I put in, on the other hand, I feel a kind of frustration and disgust. Of course, you are right: it is better to tone down gradually and eat humble pie than to imperil the future of the magazine by getting on your high horse. One must wait and be patient. But I think you will ha,e to tone down continually. What is permitted today will be subjected to the censorship of the committee tomorrow, and the time is near at hand when even the rank of "merchant" will constitute forbidden fruit. Yes indeed, literature supplies a thin crust of bread, and you did a clever thing in being born before me, when both breath- ing and \\Titing were easier. . . .

You ad, ise me to take the trip to St. Pete . . . and you tell me that St. Pete is not China. I myself know that it isn't, and, as you are aware, have long realized the usefulness of such a journey, but what am I to do? Living as I do in a large family

1 The censor came down hea,ily on this issue of Fragments, tossing out, among other pieces, two sketches by Chekhov. Leikin was told that he must stop pub- lishing satirical articles or the magazine "ould be banned from the newsstands.

group I can never expect to have a ten-ruble note to spare, and even the most uncomfortable and beggarly trip would stand me a minimum of fifty rubles. Where can I get that kind of money? I just can't squeeze it out of my family and I ought not. If I were to cut down on food, I would pine away from pangs of conscience. I had earlier hoped it would be possible to snatch enough for the trip out of the payment received from the "St. Petersburg Gazette"; now it turns out that in starting work for this paper I will not earn a bit more than I had pre- viously, and that I will be giving the aforementioned gazette all that I formerly gave to "Diversion," "Alarm Clock" and the others. Allah alone knows how hard it is to maintain my equi- librium, and how easy to slip and lose my balance. Just let me earn twenty or thirty rubles less during the coming month and my balance, it seems to me, will go to the devil and I'll find myself in a mess. Financially I am terribly timid, and as a result of this financial, totally uncommercial cowardice I avoid loans and advances. It is not hard to move me to action. If I had any money I would fly continually from city to city.

I received payment from the "St. Petersburg Gazette" two weeks after I sent the bill.

If you are in Moscow in October, I will manage to pull my- self together and leave with you. Money for the Petersburg trip will turn up somehow, and for the return trip I can get funds (earned) from Khudekov.

It is not possible for me to write more than I do at present, for medicine is not like the bar: if you don't practice you cool off. Accordingly, my literary earnings are a constant quantity; they can diminish but not increase.

. . . Tuesday evenings we have parties with girls, music, sing- ing and literature. I want to take our poet out into the world, or he'll sour on it.

Yours, A. Chekhov

To DMITRI GRIGOROVICH

March 28, /886, Moscow

Your letter, my kind, warmly loved bearer of good tidings, struck me like a bolt of lightning. I was deeply moved, almost to tears, and now feel it has left a deep imprint on my soul. May God bestow the same kind serenity upon your old age as you have lavished on my youth. I can really find neither words nor deeds to thank you. You know how ordinary people look upon such a member of the elite as you; you may therefore judge what your letter means to me. It means more than any diploma, and for a beginning writer it is a reward both for now and the future. I am in a daze, as it were. I lack the ability to judge whether I deserve this high award or not. I can only repeat that it has overwhelmed me.

If I do have a gift to be respected, I can confess to you who have a pure heart that I have hitherto not given it any respect. I felt I had some talent, but had fallen into the habit of con- sidering it trifling. Reasons of a purely external character suffice to render one unjust, extremely distrustful and suspicious to- ward oneself. And, as I now recollect, I have had plenty of such reasons. All my intimates have always referred condescend- ingly to my writing and have kept advising me in friendly fashion not to change a genuine profession for mere scribbling. I have hundreds of friends in Moscow, among them a score of writers, and I cannot recall one who would read me or consider me a talented writer. There is a so-called "literary circle" in Moscow; talents and mediocrities of all ages and kinds gather together once a week in the private room of a restaurant and give their tongues a good workout. If I were to go there and read just a short excerpt from your letter, they would laugh in my face. During the five years of my roving from paper to paper I have adopted this general view of my own literary insig- nificance, have quickly got used to regarding my own labors condescendingly, and consider writing a minor matter. That is the first reason. The second is that I am a physician and have been sucked into medicine up to my neck, so that the saying about hunting two rabbits at one time never could have wor- ried anybody more than it worries me.

I am writing all of this in an attempt to justify, in some small degree, my faults. Hitherto my attitude toward my liter- ary work has been extremely frivolous, negligent, and casual. I don't recall a single story upon which I have spent more than twenty-five hours; I wrote "The Huntsman," which you liked, in a bath house! I have composed my stories as reporters write their accounts of fires, mechanically, half unconsciously, with no concern either for the reader or myself. In doing so I tried in every possible way not to expend on the story those images and scenes which I held dear and which, God knows why, I have set aside and carefully hidden away.

The first impulse toward self-criticism carne from Suvorin's kind, and as far as I can judge, sincere letter. I began gathering my energies to write something purposeful, but I still had no faith in my own power to guide myself.

But then your unexpected, undreamed-of letter arrived. For- give me the comparison, but it affected me like a governor's order to leave town in twenty-four hours! i.e., I suddenly felt an impelling obligation to make haste and tear myself free as soon as I could from the rut I was in.

I am in agreement with you on all points. The cynicisms which you point out to me I myself felt when I saw "The Witch" in print. They would not have been there had I taken three or four days to write this story, instead of one.

I am going to stop doing work that must be done in a hurry, but not just yet. There is no possibility of my getting out of the routine I have been following. I am not averse to going hungry, an experience I have already had, but this is not a matter con- cerning me alone. I give to writing my leisure hours—two or three during the day and a small part of the night, i.e., hours suited only for minor efforts. In the summer, when I have more spare time and living costs are lower, I shall take up serious work.

I cannot put my real name on the book because it is too late: the cover design is ready and the book printed. Even be- fore you said so, many Petersburgers advised me not to hurt the book with a pen name, but I paid no attention, probably out of vanity. I do not like my little book at all. It is a hotch- potch, a disordcrly ragbag of feeble essays written at the univer- sity, slashed by the censors and editors of humorous publica- tions. I believe many people will be disappointed after they read it. Had I known that people were reading me and that you were following my career I would not have had the book pub- lished.

All hope is for the future. I am still only 26. Perhaps I shall manage to accomplish something, although time does run out fast.

Excuse my long letter and do not hold it against a man for daring to indulge himself for the first time in his life in such a delight as writing to Grigorovich.

Please send me your photograph, if possible. I have been so flattered and stimulated by your letter that I seem to want to write you not a sheet, but a whole ream. God grant you health and happiness. Please believe in the sincerity of your deeply respectful and grateful

A. Chekhov

To NIKOLAI CHEKHOV

March /886, Moscow

Dear young Zabelin¹

I hear that remarks passed by Schechtel and me have offended you. . . . The capacity for taking offense is a quality confined to elevated minds, yet if Ivanenko, Misha, Nelly and I are fit

I Zabelin was a Zvenigorod landowner. He was an alcoholic. Chekhov used him as the character Bortsov in On the High Road (1885) .

subjects for laughter, why can't we make fun of you? It wouldn't be fair otherwise. . . . However, if you aren't joking and really think you've been insulted, I hasten to beg your pardon.

People make fun of what is funny, or of what they don't understand. Choose your own interpretation.

The second is more flattering, but alas! you are no riddle to me. It isn't hard to understand a person with whom one has shared the sweet delights of childhood . . . Latin classes and, last but not least, life together in Moscow. Besides, your life happens to be so uncomplicated psychologically that it would even be comprehensible to simple souls who had never so much as seen the inside of a seminary. Out of respect for you I shall be frank. You are angry and insulted . . . but not because of my gibes. . . . The fact of the matter is that you yourself, as a fundamentally decent person, feel you are living a lie; and he who has a guilty feeling always seeks justification outside of himself. The drunkard attributes everything to some tragedy in his life, Putyata blames it on the censor, the individual running away from Yakimanki out of sheer lechery pleads the coldness of his quarters, the sneering attitude of his acquaint- ances and so on. . . . If I were now to cast my family upon the mercy of fate, I would try to find justification for my act in my mother's character, my blood-spitting and so forth. That is natural and excusable. Such is the quality of human nature. I know that you sense the falsity of your position, for otherwise I would not have called you a decent person. Were that decency to depart, the matter would stand differently, for then you would make your peace with yourself and cease to be aware of the falsity. . . .

Besides being no mystery to me, it is true, too, that some- times you are rather barbarously funny. You are just a plain human being, and all of us humans are puzzles only when we are stupid, and funny for forty-eight weeks of the year. Am I right?

You have often complained that you are "not understood."

Not even Goethe or Newton did that. . . . It was only Christ who complained, and then he did not allude to himself person- ally, but rather to his teachings. You are easy enough to under- stand. . . . Others are not to blame if you do not understand yourself. . . .

I assure you, as your brother and as one who has close ties with you, that I understand and sympathize with all my heart. ... I know all your good qualities as well as my own five fingers, I value those qualities and regard them with the very deepest respect. If you want proof that I understand you, I can even enumerate them. In my estimation you are good to a fault, generous, not an egoist; you will share your last kopek with others, you are sincere; you are free from envy and hatred, open-hearted, have pity on men and beasts, are not malicious or spiteful, are trusting. . . . You have been gifted from above with something most others lack: you have talent. That talent sets you above millions of people, for here on earth there is only one artist to every two million men. . . . That talent puts you on a plane apart, and even if you were a toad or a tarantula you would still be respected, for all is forgiven to talent.

You have only one failing. But in it lies the source of your false position, your misery, and even of your intestinal catarrh. That failing is your utter lack of culture. Do excuse me—but veritas magis amicitiae. . . . For life imposes certain condi- tions . . . . To feel at ease among intelligent folk, not to be out of place in such company, and not to feel this atmosphere to be a burden upon oneself, one must be cultured in a particular way. . . . Your talent has thrust you into this charmed circle, you belong to it, but . . . you are impelled away from it and find yourself forced to waver between these cultured people and your neighbors. The vulgar flesh cries out in you, that flesh raised on the birch rod, in the beer cellar, on free meals. . . . To overcome this background is difficult—terribly difficult.

In my opinion people of culture must meet the following requisites:

They respect the human personality and are therefore always forbearing, gentle, courteous and compliant. . . . They don't rise up in arms over a misplaced hammer or a lost rubber band; they do not consider they are conferring a favor upon the person they may be living with, and when they leave that person they don't say, "You're impossible to get along with!" They will overlook noise, and cold, and overdone meat, and witticisms, and the presence of strangers in their houses. . . .

They sympathize not only with beggars and stray cats; they are also sick at heart with what is not visible to the naked eye. Thus, for instance, if Peter knows his father and mother are haggard with care and do not sleep nights because they see him so seldom (and then, only in a drunken state), Peter will spurn the vodka bottle and hasten to them. They themselves do not sleep nights because they want to ... pay for their brother's upkeep at college and keep their mother properly clothed.

They respect the property of others and therefore pay their debts.

They are sincere and fear untruth like the very devil. They will not lie even in small matters. A lie is insulting to the one who hears it and cheapens the speaker in the latter's eyes. They do not pose, they behave on the street as they would at home and do not throw dust in the eyes of their humbler brethren. . . . They are not garrulous and don't intrude their confidences where they are not sought. . . . Out of respect for people's ears they are more often silent than not.

They do not make fools of themselves in order to arouse sympathy. They do not play upon the heartstrings of people so that these will have pity and make a fuss over them. They don't say, "I am misunderstood!" or "I've made a mess of every- thing!" because all this is striving after cheap effect, vulgar, stale, false. . . .

They are not vain. They don't traffic in such imitation diamonds as pursuing acquaintance with celebrities . . . listen- ing to the raptures of a casual spectator at the Salon, earning notoriety in the taverns of the town. . . . If they accomplish a kopek's worth of good work they don't make a hundred rubles' worth of fuss over it and don't boast they can get into places from which others are excluded. . . . The truly gifted always remain in obscurity amongst the crowd and shun as much as possible the display of their talents. . . . Even Krylov² said that an empty barrel makes more noise than a full one. . . .

If they have talent, they regard it with respect. To it they will sacrifice their repose, women, wine and vanity . . . . They are proud of that talent. Because of it they won't go on drunken sprees with superintendents of low-class buildings and with Skvortsov's guests, for they are aware that they aren't called upon to associate with them, but rather to influence them to a higher cultural level. Besides, they are fastidious . . . .

8. They develop an aesthetic sense. They cannot bring them- selves to go to sleep in their clothes, to look with indifference upon bugs crawling from cracks in the wall, to breathe foul air, or step upon a floor covered with spit, or feed themselves off a kerosene stove. They try as best they can to subdue and ennoble the sexual instinct. . . . Truly cultured people don't cheapen themselves. \Vhat they need from a woman is not just pleasure in bed, not horse sweat . . . not the kind of cleverness that con- sists in pretending to be pregnant and in constant lying. . . . Artists in particular require from their women companions freshness, elegance, humanity; not a whore, but a woman who can be a mother. . . . They don't swill vodka all the time, or sniff cupboards—because they realize they are not pigs. They drink only when they are free, on some special occasion . . . for they need to have mens sana in corpore sano.

And so on. Such are cultured people. To educate yourself not to fall below the level of your environment, it is not enough to have read the "Pickwick Papers" or to have memorized the monologue from Faust . . . .

2 Krylov was the famous writer of fables.

What you need is constant work, day and night, eternal read- ing, study, will power. . . . Every hour is precious.

. . . You must spurn this way of life once and for all, tear yourself away with a wrench. . . . Come to us, smash the vodka decanter and lie down with a book. . . . Turgenev, if you will, whom you haven't read. . . .

. . . you must rid yourself of vanity, for you are no longer a child. You are getting close to thirty. Time to make a change!

I'm expecting you—so are we all.

Yours, A. Chekhov

To MARIA KISELEVA

September 2/, /886, Moscow

. . . To begin with, thank you very much for the passages copied out of "Russian Thought." I kept thinking as I read: "I thank thee, God, that the great writers have not yet been translated in Mother Russia!" Yes indeed, our homeland is still rich on its own. From your letter to my sister I see that you too are trying to be a celebrity. (I am speaking of St. Pete and the samples of mythology stories I have seen.) Good Lord, literature is not a fisĥ, and so I am not envious.

By the way, being an eminent author is not so great a delight. For one thing, it's a gloomy life. Work from morning to night, and not much sense to it. ... Money—as scarce as hen's teeth. I don't know how things are with Zola and Schedrin,¹ but my place is smoky and cold. I get cigarettes, as before, only on holi- days. And impossible cigarettes! They are tough and damp, like little sausages. Before smoking I turn up the lamp wick, dry the cigarette over it and only then light it; while the lamp sputters and reeks, the cigarette cracks and darkens, and I scorch my fingers. . . . you feel that death might be a welcome release.

1 Schedrin was a famous satirist.

Let me repeat, money is scarcer than poetic talent. My receipts don't start coming in until the first of October and in the mean- time I stand at the church doors and beg for alms. I work, ex- pressing myself in Sergey's words, terr-rr-ibly hard—honest to God cross my heart—very hard! I'm writing a play for Korsh (hm!), a long story for "Russian Thought," tales for "New Times," the "St. Petersburg Gazette," "Fragments," "The Alarm Clock" and similar organs of the press. I write a great deal and at great length, but I run around in circles, starting one thing before I've finished another. . . . Since I've begun, I haven't allowed my doctor's shingle to be put up, but just the same I've got to continue my practice! Br-r-r!

I'm scared of typhus!

I am never quite well and little by little am turning into a mummified insect. If I die before you, be so good as to give the cupboard to my direct descendants, who will be putting their dentures on its shelves.

I'm quite the rage now, but, judging from the critical glances of the lady cashier in "The Alarm Clock" office, my clothes are not of the latest cut and are not spotless. I don't travel by cab, but on the trolley cars.

However, the writing business has its good points too. First, according to the latest information, my book is not going badly; second, I'll be getting some money in October; third, I am al- ready beginning to reap some laurels: people point me out in restaurants, pursue me just the least little bit and treat me to sandwiches. Korsh nabbed me in his theatre and then and there handed me a season pass. . . . Belousov, the tailor, bought my book, is reading it aloud at home and prophesies a brilliant future for me. \Vhen medical colleagues meet me they heave a sigh, turn the conversation to literature and assure me that medicine disgusts them, etc.

As to the question you put to my sister about my having married: the reply is no, and I'm proud of it. I am above mar- riage! The widow Khludova² has arrived in Moscow. Save me,

Seraphim of Heaven! . . .

A few days ago I was at the Hermitage and ate oysters for the first time. Not very good. If you were to omit the Chablis and lemon, they'd be absolutely revolting. The end of this letter

is in sight Another six or seven months and—spring!

Time to get the fishing tackle ready. Farewell, and believe the hypocritical A. Ch. when he says he is devoted heart and soul to your whole family.

had barely finished this paragraph when the bell tinkled and

beheld the genius Levitan. Cocky hat, clothing of a dandy, thin as a rail. He went to see Aida twice, Rusalka once, ordered some picture frames, almost sold some sketches.... Says life is nothing but anguish and more anguish.

God knows what I would give to be in Babkino for a couple of days, says he, probably forgetting how bored he was the last few days there.

A. Chekhov

To MARIA KISELEVA

January 14, 1887, Moscow

Dear Maria Vladimirovna,

Your "Larka" is very nice; it has some roughness, but its con- ciseness and masculine style redeem it entirely. Since I don't want to set myself up as sole judge of your literary child, I am sending it to Suvorin, an extremely understanding person. I will send you his opinion in due course. And now permit me to dig into your criticism of me. Even your praise of my "On the Road" has not appeased the wrath I feel as an author, and I hasten to avenge myself for "Mire." Be careful and hold fast to your chair so as not to fall into a faint. Well, here goes.

Every critical article, even an unjustifiably abusive one, is customarily met with a silent nod—that is literary etiquette.

Khludova was a wealthy widow.

Answering is not admissible and those who do so are properly reproached for inordinate vanity. But since your criticism is, as you said, a sort of "conversation in the evening at Babkino, on the porch, or the terrace of the main house, with Ma-Pa,¹ your dog Counterfeiter and Levitan present." And because you pass over the story's literary aspects and because you carry the ques- tion onto general ground, I am therefore not sinning against etiquette if I allow myself to continue our conversation.

Let me say first of all that I, even as you, do not like literature of the kind we are discussing. As a reader and a man on the street, I am inclined to shy away from it, but if you ask my honest and sincere opinion, I will tell you that the question of its right to exist is still a moot one and not decided by anyone. Neither you, nor I, nor all the world's critics have any reliable data on which to base their right to reject such literature. I do not know who is right: Homer, Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, the ancient classical writers generally, who were not afraid of bur- rowing in the "manure pile," but who were morally better balanced than we; or our contemporary writers, who are strait- laced on paper but coldly cynical in their souls and lives. I don't know who it is that has bad taste: the Greeks maybe, who were not ashamed to sing of love as it really exists in all the beauty of nature, or the readers of Gaboriau, Marlitt and Pierre Bobo.² Like questions concerning non-resistance to evil, free will and so on, this one can only be decided in the future. \Ve can only make mention of it, but we can't settle it because it is outside the limits of our sphere of competence. Quoting chapter and verse from Turgenev and Tolstoy, who avoided the "ma- nure pile," does not clarify this question. Their fastidiousness does not demonstrate anything, for certainly even before their time there was a generation of writers who considered as beneath

Ma-Pa was a nickname of Maria Padovna, Chekhov's sister. He usually called her Masha.

Gaboriau, French writer of crime stores; Marlitt, pen-name of a German writer of popular novels; Bobo, nickname for Boborykin, Russian playwright and novelist.

their notice not only "male and female scoundrels" but even descriptions of peasants or officials lower in rank than the head of a small department. Yes indeed, a single period, no matter how fruitful, does not give us the right to draw a conclusion in favor of one or another trend. Talk about the degenerating in- fluence of that trend does not resolve the question either. Every- thing in this world is relative and approximate. There are peo- ple who can be corrupted even by children's literature, who with particular pleasure skim through the Psalms and Proverbs on the lookout for piquant passages; there are also some who, the more they acquaint themselves with the sordidness of life, become all the cleaner. Publicists, jurists and physicians, ab- sorbed in all the secrets of human frailty, are not regarded as immoral; and very often realistic writers are more moral than highly placed ecclesiastics. Yes, and in the last analysis no sort of literature can surpass real life in its cynicism; you cannot intoxicate with one glassful a person who has already drunk his way through a whole barrel.

2. It is true that the world teems with "scoundrels—male and female." Human nature is imperfect and it would there- fore be strange to observe only the righteous in this world. Cer- tainly, to believe that literature bears the responsibility for digging up the "pearls" from the heap of muck would mean rejecting literature itself. Literature is called artistic when it depicts life as it actually is. Its aim is absolute and honest truth. To constrict its function to such a specialty as digging for "pearls" is as fatal for it as if you wcre to require Levitan to draw a tree and omit the dirty bark and yellowing foliage. I agree that the "pearl" theory is a good thing, but surely a man of letters is not a pastry cook, nor an expert on cosmetics, nor an entertainer; he is a responsible person, under contract to his conscience and the consciousness of his duty; being in for a penny he has to be in for a pound, and no matter how distress- ing he finds it, he is in duty bound to battle with his fastidious- ness and soil his imagination with the grime of life. He is like any ordinary reporter. What would you say if a reporter, out of a feeling of squeamishness or from the desire to give pleasure to his readers, would describe only honest city administrators, high-minded matrons and virtuous railroad magnates?

To chemists there is nothing unclean in this world. A man of letters should be as objective as a chemist; he has to renounce ordinary subjectivity and realize that manure piles play a very respectable role in a landscape and that evil passions are as in- herent in life as good ones.

Literary men are the children of their age, and so like all the rest of the lot must subordinate themselves to external con- ditions of living together. They must be absolutely decent. That is all we have the right to require from the realists. However, you have nothing to say against the presentation and form of "Mire." Accordingly, I must have been decent.

I confess that I rarely commune with my conscience when I write. This can be explained by habit and the triviality of my efforts. And that is why I don't take myself into consideration when I express this or that opinion on literature.

You write: "Were I the editor, I would have returned the article to you for your own good." Then why don't you go further? Why don't you hold responsible the editors who print such stories? Why not sternly take to task the Government Press Administration for not banning immoral papers?

Sad would be the fate of literature (whether serious or trivial) if it were delivered over to the mercy of personal views. That's first. Second, there is no police body which could consider itself competent on matters of literature. I agree that one cannot get along without restraint and the big stick, for sharpers will crawl even into literature, but no matter how you try, you can devise no better police for literature than criticism and the consciences of the authors themselves. People have been trying to invent some such thing since the creation of the world, but no one has yet discovered anything better.

Here you would wish me to suffer a loss of 115 rubles and have the editor humiliate me. Others, among them your father, are ecstatic over the story. Still others send Suvorin abusive letters, slandering the paper, me, etc., in every possible way. Who is right? Who is the real judge?

6. Further you write, "Leave the writing of such stuff to poor- spirited and unfortunate scribblers like . . ." May Allah forgive you if you wrote those lines in earnest! A condescendingly scornful tone toward little people merely because they are little does no honor to the human heart. In literature the low ranks are as indispensable as they are in the army--one's good sense says so, and the heart should repeat it even more emphatically.

Ooof! I have been wearying you with my fiddle-faddle. If I had known my criticism would have reached such length I would not have started the letter. Please forgive! . . .

Have you read my "On the Road?" "\Vell, how do you like my courage? I am writing of "intellectual" things and am un- daunted. In St. Pete it produced a resounding furore. Somewhat earlier I had treated of "non-resistance to evil" and had also astounded the reading public. Compliments have been heaped on me in the New Year's numbers of all the papers and in the December number of "Russian Wealth," which publishes Leo Tolstoy, there is an article by Obolenski (32 pages) entitled "Chekhov and Korolenko." The fellow is in raptures over me and argues that I am more of an artist than Korolenko. He is undoubtedly lying, but nevertheless I am beginning to feel that I possess one distinction: I am the sole person not being printed in the serious journals and writing journalistic trash who has gained the attention of the lop-eared critics. This is the only instance on record of such a case. The "Observer" scolded me —and did they get it! At the end of 1886 I felt like a bone that had been thrown to the dog. . . .

I have written a play on four sheets of paper.³ It will run for

' 3 "The play was Swan Song.

15 or 20 minutes. The smallest drama in existence . . . . It is being published in "The Season" and will therefore be avail- able everywhere. On the whole, little things are much better to write than big ones: there is very little pretension and sure suc- cess . . . what more does one need? I wrote my drama in an hour and five minutes. I started another, but didn't finish, for I had no time. . . .

Best regards to all. You will of course forgive me for writing you such a long letter. My pen has run away with me. . . .

Devotedly and respectfully, A. Chekhov

To ALEXANDER CHEKHOV

February 3 or 4, 1887, Moscow

My worthy friend,

Since you are a rentier and belong to the idle gilded youth of St. Pete, I find it desirable to give you a bit of work. See here, I need 20 (twenty) copies of Pushkin's works, Suvorin edition. They are absolutely unobtainable in Moscow—the edition was sold out in no time.

If you can intercede for me and buy the abovementioned copies from your benefactor and protector (whom you should respect, as you do me) , and send them via the conductor of the express train (with a letter) , let me know at once and I'll send the money. Do what you can, for the Pushkin is needed urgently.

You are not our oldest brother, but a rascal: why didn't you restrain your younger brothers from taking such a shameful step as subscribing to the "Sun"? I hope it gives you a good burn!

I haven't seen Nikolai. You're the one who corresponds with him, so please write and tell him to send or bring my new black trousers.

We are all well and send regards. Mother is dying to know whether your Kokosha has begun to talk. With greetings to all,

Your talented brother, A. Chekhov

To DMITRI GRIGOROVICH

February 12,1887, Moscow

I have just read "Karelin's Dream" and am now seriously concerned with the question as to what extent the dream you portray is a dream. It seems to me, too, that the action of the brain and the general feeling of a person asleep are rendered with marvelous artistry and physiological fidelity. Of course, a dream is a subjective phenomenon and its inner aspect can be observed only in oneself, but since the process of dreaming is the same for all people, it seems to me that every reader must measure Karelin by his own yardstick, and every critic must of necessity be subjective. I am judging on the basis of my own dreams, which are frequent.

To begin with, the feeling of cold you convey is wonderfully subtle. When my blanket falls off at night, in my dreams I begin seeing enormous slippery boulders, cold autumnal water, bleak, barren shores—all this is vague, misty, without a patch of blue in the sky; I am dejected and melancholy, as if I had gone astray or been deserted, and I gaze upon the stones and feel a sort of compulsion to cross a deep river; at this time I see little rowboats pulling huge barges, floating logs, rafts and such. All of this is endlessly grim, raw and depressing. Then as I run from the shore, I encounter on my way the crumbling gates of a cemetery, funeral processions, my high school teacher. . . . And all this time I am utterly pervaded with that peculiar night- marish cold which is impossible in reality and experienced only by sleepers. This all comes to mind very distinctly when one reads the first page of "Karelin," and particularly the top half of the fifth page, where you mention the cold and loneliness of the grave.

I believe that if I had been born and brought up in St. Peters- burg I would certainly dream of the banks of the Neva, Senate Square and the massive masonry.

When I feel cold in my dream, I always see people. I hap- pened to read the critic in the "St. Petersburg Reports," who scolds you for having portrayed a would-be cabinet officer, thus impairing the generally elevated tone of the story. I do not agree. It is not the people who spoil the tone, but the way you characterize them, which interrupts the picture of sleep in some places. The people one meets in dreams are bound to be un- pleasant. During the sensation of cold, for example, I always dream of the good-looking and learned ecclesiastic who in- sulted my mother when I was a little boy; I dream of evil, per- sistently intriguing, maliciously smiling, vulgar people whom one never sees in one's waking hours. Laughter at the windows of a railway coach is a characteristic symptom of a Karelin night- mare. \Vhen you feel the pressure of an evil will during your dream and the inevitable ruin caused by some power over whom you have no control, there is always something like this kind of laughter. ... I also dream of those I love, but usually they are suffering along with me.

\Vhen my body gets accustomed to the cold, or when some- one in the family covers me up, the sensation of cold, loneliness and oppressive evil gradually vanishes. Along with the warmth I begin to feel as though I were treading on soft carpets or on green grass, I see the sun, women and children. The pictures change continually, more sharply than in real life, though, so that when I wake up it is hard to recollect the shifting from one picture to another. . . . This brusqueness comes through very well in your story and strengthens the impression of dreaming.

A natural phenomenon you have noted is also thrust force- fully before one's eyes: dreamers express their spiritual moods impulsively, in acute form, child-fashion. How true to life this is! People dreaming weep and cry out oftener than they do when they are awake.

I ask your pardon, Dmitri Vasilyevich, but I liked your story so much that I was prepared to run along for a dozen pages, although I am perfectly aware that I cannot tell you anything new, valuable or to the point. For fear of boring you and talk- ing nonsense I am restraining myself and cutting my words short. Let me only say that I think your story is magnificent. The reading public finds it "misty," but for the writing man, who savors every line, such mists are more limpid than holy water. Despite all my efforts I could detect only two spotty places, both unimportant, and even these by dint of straining the interpretation: ( 1) the descriptions of the characters break up the picture of sleep and give the impression of explanatory notes of the sort which learned horticulturists tack on to trees in gardens, thus spoiling the landscape; (2) at the beginning of the story the feeling of cold is somewhat blunted for the reader and becomes monotonous through frequent repetition of the word "cold."

I can find nothing more, and acknowledge that when I feel an urgent need for refreshing little images in my literary work, "Karelin's Dream" provides a glittering example. That is why I could not restrain myself and had the temerity of imparting some of my impressions and thoughts to you.

Forgive the length of this letter and please accept the sincere good wishes of your devoted

A. Chekhov

To MARIA CHEKHOVA

April 7-19, i88j, Taganrog. Gentle readers and devout listeners,

I am continuing with some trepidation, observing chrono- logical order.

2nd of April. Traveling from Moscow to Serpukhov was dull. ... I arrived in Serpukhov at seven. The Oka is nice and clean. . . .

At eleven I arrived in Tula, that pearl of cities. . . . In Tula schnapps-trinken, a mild bun, and schlafen. I slept twisted into a pretzel . . . with my boot tops next to my nose. Nice weather. . . .

At twelve o'clock, Kursk. There was an hour's wait, a glass of vodka, a wash in the gent's room and some cabbage soup. Change of trains. The coach is full to bursting. Immediately after Kursk I strike up acquaintances: a Kharkov country gentleman, playful, like Yasha K[orneyev], a lady who was operated on in St. Petersburg, a Tomsk police officer, a Little Russian officer and a general wearing the insignia of a provost marshal. \Ve settle social problems. The general thinks in a sane, terse and liberal manner; the police officer is a type of old, hard-drinking hussar sinner, homesick for his sweethearts—he puts on airs like a governor: before uttering a word, he keep his mouth open for a long time, and having pronounced the word he gives a long whine like a dog: e-e-e-e. The lady injects her- self with morphine and sends the men out for ice at every station . . . .

Little burial mounds, water towers, buildings, all familiar and memorable. At the lunch counter a plate of unsually deli- cious and luscious sorrel soup. Then a stroll along the platform. Young ladies. At the last window of the second storey of the station building sits a young lady (or a young matron, for all I know) in a white blouse, languid and lovely. I look at her, she at me. I put on my glasses, she hers. . . . O wondrous vision! I contracted catarrh of the heart and travelled on. The weather is diabolically, shockingly fine. Little Russians, oxen, kites, white cottages, the southern rivulets, branch lines of the Donets rail- road with one telegraph wire, daughters of country gentlemen and lease-holders, rust-colored dogs, greenery—all this flashes by like a vision . . . . Hot. The inspector becomes wearisome. The meat patties and pirojki are only half disposed of and are begin- ning to acquire a slight sour odor. I thrust them under some- body else's seat with the remainder of the vodka.

Five o'clock. The sea is in sight. There it is, the Rostov line, twisting beautifully; there is the jail, the poorhouse, the country boys, the freight cars. . . . Belov's hotel, St. Michael's Church with its clumsy architecture. ... I am in Taganrog. I am "meeted" by Yegorushka,! a mighty young lad, dressed to kill: a hat, gloves costing one ruble fifty, a cane and all the rest. I don't recognize him, but he recognizes me. He hires a carriage and off we go. An impression as of Herculaneum and Pompeii: no people, but instead of mummies, sleepy local yokels and pumpkinheads. . . . \Ve finally reach the house.

Why, it's—it's—Antoshichka!

Da-a-rr-rr-11-ing!

Next to the house is a bench resembling the box that toilet soap comes in. The porch is in the last stages of decay. Of the front door only one quality has remained—an exemplary clean- liness. Uncle is just as he was, but has grayed considerably. As always he is kind, mild and sincere. Ludmila Pavlovna is so "aw- ful glad" she plumb forgot to sprinkle the expensive tea into the pot and generally finds she has to make excuses and prattle when there is no need. She looks me over suspiciously: am I passing judgment? But still she is happy to make me welcome and at home. Yegorushka is a good lad and very proper accord- ing to Taganrog standards. He acts the dandy and likes to look at himself in the mirror. Bought himself a lady's gold watch for twenty-five rubles and goes out with nice young girls. . . . Vladimirchik² • • • is gentle and reserved, and is evidently a fine type of lad. He is preparing himself for the church, is entering a theological school and aspires to the career of metropolitan. . . . Sasha is unchanged. And Lelia is hardly distinguishable from Sasha. \Vhat is immediately apparent is the unusual gentle- ness of the children toward their parents and in their relations

Yegorushka was Chckhov's cousin.

Vladimirchik, Sasha, Lclia wcrc young cousins.

with one another. . . . The rooms themselves are as they always have been: very bad prints and Coates and Clarke's posters tacked up everywhere. There is as little taste in their glaring pretensions to luxury and refinement as there is daintiness in a muddy boot. Crowding, heat, insufficient table space, and a lack of all conveniences. Irina, Volodya and Lelia sleep in one room; Uncle, Ludmila Pavlovna and Sasha in another. Yegor sleeps on a trunk in the vestibule; they probably don't have supper on purpose for fear that the extra heat might blow up the house. Hot air emanates both from the kitchen and from the stoves, which are still heated despite the warm weather. The toilet is miles off, beside a fence, and since occasionally rascally prank- sters lurk thereabouts, going at night is more dangerous to life and limb than taking poison. There are no tables, if you do not count card tables and little round ones set up merely as orna- ments. There aren't any cuspidors, nor a decent washbasin. The napkins are gray, Irinushka is flabby and slovenly . . . in a word, it's enough to drive a man wild! I don't like Taganrog manners, can't bear them, and, I think, would run to the ends of the earth to avoid them.

Selivanov's house is empty and deserted. Looking at it de- presses me and I wouldn't have it at any price. How could we have lived in it, I wonder? . . .

At night I am home again. Uncle arrays himself in the uni- form he wears as a church beadle. I help him put on his big medal, which he had never once worn previously. Laughter. 'Ve walk to St. Michael's. It is dark and there are no cabs. Walking along the streets you catch glimpses of the local yokels and dock- workers, roaming from church to church. Many people carry lanterns. Mitrofan's church is illuminated very effectively, with crosses from top to bottom. Loboda's home with its brightly lit windows stands out sharply in the shadows.

'Ve reach the church. Gray, ordinary and drab. Little candles stuck in the windows are the extent of the display of illumina- tions. The avuncular countenance is lit with a most beatific smile—which takes the place of electric lighting. The church decorations are nothing to go wild about, and remind one of the Voskresensk church. \Ve sell candles. Yegor, as a dandy and liberal, does not do so, but stands to one side and regards every- one with an indifferent eye. But Vladimirchik feels in his element.

The procession of the cross. Two foolish individuals walk ahead, waving fiery torches, which reek and sprinkle the cele- brants with sparks. The congregation is pleased. In the vestibule of the temple stand the founders, benefactors and worshippers of the said edifice, with uncle at their head, and with icons in their hands await the return of the procession. Vladimirchik sits on top of the wardrobe where the vestments are kept, sprinkling incense into the brazier. There is so much smoke you can scarcely breathe. But now the priests and icon bearers enter. The moment of triumphant silence is at hand. All glances are turned toward Father Vasili.

"Pappy, shall I sprinkle in some more?" suddenly pipes Vladimirchik from aloft.

Matins begin. I pick up Yegor and we go to the cathedral together. There are no cabs and so we are obliged to go on foot. In the cathedral all is seemly, decorous and exultant. The choir is magnificent. The voices are glorious, though the discipline is good for nothing. . . .

We walk home from the cathedral. My legs ache and are numb. \Ve break our fast in Irinusha's room: excellent Easter cake [kulich], abominable salami, gray napkins, closeness and the smell of children's clothing. Uncle is breaking his at Father Vassily's. After eating my fill and drinking some of our good local wine, I lie down and fall asleep to the sound of the "blah- blah-blah" of the women.

In the morning the invasion of priests and singers gets under way. I go to the Agalis'. Paulina Ivanovna is in a happy mood. Lipochka didn't come near me because her jealous husband won't let her. Nikolai Agali is a healthy idiot who is forever taking exams, doesn't pass them and hopes to attend Zurich University. Stupid. From the Agalis' I went to Mme. Savelyev's on Kontorskaya St., where she lives in the creaking wing of a decrepit house. In two tiny rooms are two virginal couches and a cradle . . . . Eugenia Jasonovna is living apart from her hus- band. She has two children and has become terribly ugly and like a bag of bones. From all appearances she is unhappy. Her Mitya is in the service in a Cossack village somewhere in the Caucasus and lives a bachelor's life. An unmitigated swine. . . .

Threading my way through the New Bazaar, I become aware of how dirty, drab, empty, lazy and illiterate is Taganrog. There isn't a single grammatical signboard and there is even a "Rushian Inn"; the streets are deserted; the dumb faces of the dock- workers are smugly satisfied; the dandies are arrayed in long overcoats and caps. Novostroyenka is decked out in olive-colored dresses; cavaliers, young ]eddies, peeling plaster, universal lazi- ness, satisfaction with a futile present and an uncertain future —all this thrust before the eyes is so disheartening that even Moscow with its grime and typhus seems attractive . . . .

"I say, old man, how about coming over to my place?" asks one of the local clowns who pops in on me. "I always read your weekly articles. My old man is quite a type! Co11e on and look him over. I bet you forgot I'm married! I've got a little girl now. Ye gods, how you've changed!" and so on.

After dinner (soup with hard rice and chicken) I go over to Khodakovski's. Mr. K. doesn't live badly at all, although not on the luxurious scale he used to maintain when we knew him. His fair Manya is a fat, well-cooked Polish lump of flesh, agree- able in profile but unpleasant in full face. Bags under the eyes and intensified activity of the sebaceous glands. Obviously up to tricks. Later I learned that this past season she all but ran off with an actor and even sold her rings, earrings and so on. Of course, this is all being told you in confidence. I would say it's the fashion here in Taganrog to run off with actors. Many are they who find their wives and daughters missing. . . .

On my way home from Loboda's I meet Mme. Savelyeva and her daughter. The daughter takes right after her daddy; giggles a lot and is already a good talker. When I helped her put on an overshoe which had fallen off, as a token of gratitude she looked at me languidly and said, "Do come and spend the night with us."

At home I found Father John Yakimovski, an obese, over- stuffed priest who graciously deigned to interest himself in my medical career and, to Uncle's great satisfaction, condescend- ingly expressed himself, "It's very nice for parents to have such good children."

A reverend deacon who was present also deigned to interest himself in me and said that their choir at St. Michael's (a rabble of hungry jackals headed by a hard-drinking choir- master) was considered the best in town. I agreed with him, although I knew that Father John and the deacon don't under- stand a damned thing about singing. A little country deacon sat at a respectable distance and cast longing glances at the preserves and wine with which the priest and reverend deacon were regaling themselves. . . .

I sleep on a couch in the living room. The couch has not grown any bigger, is still as short as it used to be, and so, getting into bed, I had to poke my feet indecently into the air or put them down on the floor. It brings to mind Procrustes and his bed. I cover myself with a pink quilt, stiff and stuffy, which be- comes intolerably obnoxious at night when the stoves lit by Irina make their presence felt. A Yakov Andreyevich³ is a fond but unattainable dream. Only two persons permit themselves this luxury in Taganrog: the mayor and Alferaki. All the rest must either pee in bed or take a trip to God's outdoors.

6th of April. I awaken at 5 a.m. The sky is clouded, and a cold, disagreeable wind, reminiscent of Moscow, is blowing. I am weary. I wait for the cathedral chimes and go to late mass. It is lovely, dignified and thrilling in the cathedral. The choir

3 Chekhov's name for a chamber pot.

sings well, not like tradespeople and Philistines, while the listeners consist wholly of young ladies in olive dresses and chocolate jackets. There are many pretty ones, so many that I am sorry I am not Mishka, who needs pretty faces so badly. The majority of the local girls are well built, have splendid profiles and are not averse to making a little amour. Of cavaliers there are none, if you don't take into account the Greek brokers and shady local sparks, and for that reason officers and male new- comers here live in clover.

From the cathedral to Yeremeyev's. I find his wife at home, a very nice little lady. Yeremeyev has set himself up not half bad, in Moscow style, and looking at his huge apartment, I cannot believe Alexander's statement that it is not possible to live decently in Taganrog. A flock of visitors, including all the local aristocrats—insignificant, cheap little people, amongst whom, however, one can make a tolerable selection. . . . At 3 o'clock Yeremeyev comes home, drunk as a lord. He is ecstatic over my arrival, and swears eternal friendship; I was never on very good terms with him but he swears he has only two true friends in the world: Korobov and me. \Ve sit down to eat and split a bottle. A very decent dinner: good soup without hard rice, and broilers. Despite the cold wind we visit Quarantine after dinner. There are many summer cottages in this section, cheap and comfortable; they can be rented for next year, but I am taken aback by the abundance of places: wherever you have so many of them, you are bound to have lots of people and noise. . . . Many people advise me to drive out five miles from Taganrog to Meeus, where there are more summer cottages. I'll write you if I do

7th, 8th, gth and ioth of April. The most boring days pos- sible, cold and overcast. I "have to go" continually every day. I run outside day and night. The nights are pure torture: pitch darkness, wind, hard-to-open, creaking doors, groping through dark yards, a suspicious quietness, no newspaper in the toilet. . . . Every night I am constrained to swear at myself for volun- tarily accepting torture, for having left Moscow for the land of . . . pitch darkness, and toilets next to fences. The constant feel- ing of uncomfortable camping out, accompanied by the ceaseless "blah-blah-blah," "you don't eat much, you should eat more," "but you forgot to use the good tea . . ." Only one consolation: Yeremeyev and his wife and their comfortable apartment. Fate has had mercy on me: I haven't run into Anisim Vasilich and not once yet have I been forced to talk politics. IЈ I meet him I'll pop a bullet through my head.

I've "got to go" and so I rarely leave the house. It isn't pos- sible to leave here right now, for it's coldish, and anyway I would like to have a look at the procession through the ceme- tery. The igth and 2oth I shall be having a big time as best man at a wedding in N ovocherkassk, while before and after those dates I'll be at Kravtsov's, where the daily discomforts are a thousand times more comfortable than the Taganrog com- forts.

iith of April. A drunken party at Yeremeyev's, then a trip in gay company to the cemetery and Quarantine. . . .

I have been making the acquaintance of young girls every day, i.e., the young girls visit Yeremeyev's to have a look at what kind of bird this writer Chekhov is. Most oЈ them are not bad-look- ing or stupid, but I am indifferent, for I have intestinal catarrh, which stifles all tender emotions. . . .

Father Pavel is as always the somewhat soiled dandy and never will say die; he informs on everyone, swears and finds fault. . . .

Pokrovski is an archdeacon. He is cock of the roost on his own dungheap. Comports himself like a bishop. His mamma cheats at cards and doesn't pay up when she loses.

ijth of April. Alas! the bitter cup has not passed me by: yesterday that small potato, the asinine police officer Anisim Vasilich stopped in. He spoke with a strong local accent, but as loudly and shrilly as hundreds of local yokels together are not in a condition to do.

"Wa-al, for the Lord's sake, I been telling your friend here where I live, so why ain't ya dropped in to see me? My little boy Firs, he's been sailin' all over the ocean. Has that brother Nikolai of yours finished that picture of his? He been showing them at these here exhibitions, ain't he?"

He told us that the police chief had made him give his word of honor that he wouldn't scribble for the newspapers, that the head of the entire police department had promised to send him beyond the Urals in twenty-four hours if he dared write even one line, etc. Further he discoursed on the weather, Socialists, Italy, immorality, marmots, spoke ceaselessly, with modulations and interjections and so loud that I almost had a fit, and I edged him out into the yard. He sat there until evening: to get rid of him I went to the park, and he after me; from the park I dashed to Yeremeyev's—he following. I didn't find Yeremeyev in, so I went home with the police scum in tow, etc. He prom- ised to call for me today and accompany me to the cemetery . . . .

My intestinal catarrh continues to carry me from the room to the grassy spot and back again. My head cold is gone and in its place a new ailment has put in its appearance—phlebitis of the left shin. Three or four inches of the vein are as hard as a slate pencil, and it aches. My infirmities are endless! In me is being fulfilled what was written in Holy Scripture, that in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children. But my children are not Yegor, nor Vladimirchik, but tales and stories, which I cannot even think about now. \Vriting is repugnant to me.

Two of my stories are appearing in the "Petersburg Gazette," i.e., 65-70 rubles' worth. Sometime this April I'll be sending another, so you'll be receiving 100 rubles from the "Petersburg Gazette." As for "New Times," I can't tell you anything yet.

Father Vasili is dangerously ill. . . .

Loboda's business is very slow; Uncle's sales amount to a few kopeks apiece, and e\en those don't come easily. The choristers and church workers who get their wages from him are under some sort of obligation to buy merchandise in his shop . . . .

On Tuesday I was at the cemetery procession. This procession is so original that it merits a special description and for that reason I won't describe it now but put it off for another time. On Wednesday I should have been on my way but the phlebitis in my leg prevented my leaving. From Wednesday to Saturday I gadded about in the park, the club, and with the young ladies. Regardless of the tedium and boredom of life in Taganrog, it absorbs one remarkably and is not hard to get used to. During all the time I spent in Taganrog I could praise only the follow- ing: the wonderfully delicious ring rolls at the market, the local wine, fresh caviar, the excellent cabmen and Uncle's genu- ine hospitality. All the rest is inferior and unenviable. The local girls, true, are not bad-looking, but you have to get used to them. They are awkward in their movements, frivolous in their relations with men, run away from home with actors, giggle loudly, are oversexed, whistle like men, drink wine, and so on. Amongst them there are even cynics, like the fair-haired Manya Khodakovskaya. This individual makes fun not only of the living but of the dead as well. When I took her for a stroll in the cemetery she kept on laughing at the dead and their epitaphs, at the priests, deacons, etc.

What I detest about Taganrog is the way they keep their shutters closed. However, in the morning, when the shutters are opened and the sunlight bursts into the room, one's soul becomes joyful again.

On Saturday I traveled further. At Morskaya Station the air was wonderful and the very best caviar seventy kopeks a pound. In Rostov there was a two hours' wait; in Novocherkassk twenty hours to wait. I spent the night with an acquaintance. Come to think of it, I've spent nights in every damned place imaginable: on beds with bedbugs, on sofas, on couches, on trunks . . . . Last night I slept in a long and narrow room on a divan under a mirror. ... I am now in Novocherkassk. I have just lunched: caviar, butter, divine "Chimpagne" and luscious meat cro- quettes with scallions.

The young lady for whom I am being best man has postponed her wedding until Friday. On Thursday I have to be in Novo- cherkassk again, and today at four I am on my way. . . . In the meantime, goodbye.

A. Ch.

I'm off tomorrow morning. To MARIA CHEKHOVA

April 25, /887, Cherkassk

.. . Yesterday and the day before that the wedding took place, a real Cossack affair, with music, old women bleating like goats and scandalous carousing. One gets such a mass of diverse im- pressions that it is impossible to give them to you in a letter, so I will put off any descriptions until I get back to Moscow. The bride is sixteen. The couple got married in the local cathedral. I was best man in somebody else's frock coat, with the very widest of trousers and without studs. Such a best man would be a laughing stock in Moscow, but out here I made more of an impression than anybody.

I saw lots of rich prospective brides. An enormous choice, but I was so drunk all the time that I took bottles for girls, and girls for bottles. Owing to my drunken condition, probably, the local girls found I was witty and "sarcastical." The girls here are absolute sheep: if one gets up to leave a room, the others follow after. The boldest and "smartest" of them, who wanted to show that she was not unaware of subtle niceties of behavior and the social graces, kept tapping me on the arm with her fan and say- ing, "You bad boy!" though she kept on darting timid glances at me all the time. I taught her to repeat to the local cavaliers, "How naive you are!" [with a Ukrainian accent].

The bridal pair, probably because of the force of local custom, kept exchanging resounding kisses every minute, their lips producing a minor explosion each time, as the air compressed; my own mouth acquired a taste as of oversweet raisins, and a spasm afflicted my left calf. My phlebitis in the left leg got worse what with all the kissing.

I cannot tell you how much fresh caviar I ate and how much liquor I drank. I don't know what kept me from bursting wide open....

My intestinal catarrh left me the moment I left Uncle's. Evi- dently the odor of sanctity has a weakening effect on my in- sides.

Yesterday I sent the "Petersburg Gazette" a story. If you have no money by the fifteenth of May, you can get my fee from them without waiting until the end of the month by sending a bill for the two stories. It's dreadfully hard for me to write. . . .I have many themes in mind for "New Times" but the heat is such that even letter writing is a chore.

My money is coming to an end, and I have to live like a pimp. Wherever I go I live on other people's money and am begin- ning to resemble a Nizhni-Novgorod swindler who retains his sleekness even while sponging on others. . . .

Goodbye. I hope you're all well.

The cherry and apricot trees are in bloom.

A. Chekhov

To MARIA CHEKHOVA

May ii, i88j, Taganrog

. . . It is a superb morning. Because of the holiday (6th of May) the cathedral bells are pealing. I meet people on their way from mass, and see police officers, justices of the peace, military men and other ranks of the heavenly hierarchy issuing from the church. For two kopeks I buy some sunflower seeds and for six rubles hire a rubber-tired carriage to take me to Holy Mts. and back (2 days later). I leave town through some lanes literally submerged in the green of cherry, apricot and apple trees. The birds sing indefatigably. The passing Ukrainians, probably tak- ing me for Turgenev, doff their caps; my coachman, Grigori

Polenichka, keeps jumping down from his seat to adjust the harness or flick the whip at the little boys running behind us. . . . A file of pilgrims stretches along the road. The mountains and hills are pale in color, and the horizon a bluish white; the rye stands high, oak forests nit past—and the only things lacking are crocodiles and rattlesnakes.

I reach Holy Mts. at twelve. The place is unique and re- markably beautiful; the monastery lies on the bank of the Donets River, at the foot of an enormous white rock on which, huddled together and suspended one above another are gardens, oaks and century-old pines. It is as if the trees cannot find enough room on the cliff and some power thrusts them higher and higher. The pines literally hang in the air and look as though they will topple over. The cuckoos and nightingales never hush night or day.

The monks, extremely agreeable people, gave me an ex- tremely disagreeable room with a mattress as flat as a pancake. I spent two nights there and came away with a mass of impres- sions. During my sojourn, because of St. Nicholas Day, about fifteen thousand pilgrims thronged there, of whom nine-tenths were old women. If I had known there were so many old ladies in the world I would have shot myself a long time ago. Con- cerning the monks and my contact with them, the medical treatment I gave them and the old ladies, I will inform you in the pages of "New Times," and when we meet. The services are never-ending: at twelve midnight the bells ring for matins, at five a.m. for early mass, at nine for late mass, at three for the song of praise, at five for vespers, at six for canons. Before each service the pealing of bells may be heard in the corridors, and a scurrying monk exclaims in the voice of a creditor begging his debtor to pay him at least a measly five kopeks on the ruble: "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us! Time for matins!"

Remaining in one's room is awkward, so you get up and go out. I found a favored haunt on the banks of the Donets and sat out all the services there.

I bought Aunty Feodosia Yakovlevna an icon.

The monastic food was offered free to all the i5,ooo: soup with dried fish and thin gruel. Both dishes, as well as the rye bread, were delicious.

The chimes are wonderful. The choir is bad. I took part in the procession of the cross on boats.

I am cutting short my description of Holy Mts. as it can't all be put down at one time, and only makes a hash.

On the return journey there was a six-hour wait at the station. I felt dejected. I saw Sozia Khodakovskaya in one of the coaches; she daubs and paints herself all the colors of the rainbow and looks like a mangy alley-cat.

Then followed a whole night in the third-class coach of an odious, broken-down, dragging freight and passenger train. I was all in.

Now I am in Taganrog. Once again "blah-blah-blah . . ." is with me, again the exiguous couch, Coates' pictures, the stink- ing water in the washbasin. . . .

A sign on the main street proclaims: "Artesial fruit sodas sold." In other words, the dunce had heard the word "arti- ficial" but hadn't heard it right and so put it down as "artesial."

To ALEXANDER CHEKHOV

November 20, 1887, Moscow

'Vell, the first night[1] is over. . . . I'll describe everything in order. To start with, Korsh promised ten rehearsals and gave me only four, and of those only two could properly be called rehearsals, since the other two were in the nature of tourna- ments where the lady and gentlemen actors practiced the art of controversy and abuse. Only Davidov and Glama knew their parts, while the rest followed the prompter and their inner con- victions.

Act One. I sit behind the scenes in a little box resembling a police cell. The family is in an upper tier box and on edge. Contrary to expectations I myself am cool and feel no agitation. The actors are atremble, tense, and cross themselves. Curtain. Enter the benefit performer. Lack of assurance, the way he for- gets his lines and the wreath brought in and presented to him combine to make the play unrecognizable to me from the very first words. Kiselevski, on whom I had placed great hopes, did not pronounce one phrase as he should have. Literally: not one. He just spoke his own lines. Despite this and the stage man- ager's blunders the first act went off successfully. Lots of curtain calls.

Act Two. A mass of people on the stage. Guests. They don't know their lines, mix everything up, and talk nonsense. Every word cuts like a knife thrust in the back. But—oh l\Iuse!—This act was also a success. Everybody was called out, me too, twice. General congratulations all around.

Act Three. Not badly done. Enormous success. I am called before the curtain three times, with Davidov shaking my hand and Glama, in the style of Manilov, pressing my other hand to her heart. A triumph of talent and virtue.

Act Four. Scene One. Doesn't go badly. Curtain calls. Next a very, very long, wearisome intermission. The audience, which is unaccustomed to getting up and going to the refreshment bar

1 The first night of Ivanov.

between scenes, mutters. The curtain rises. Beautiful: in the archway, a supper table (the wedding). The orchestra plays flourishes. Out come the best men: they are drunk, and so, you see, they have to clown and kick up their heels. The side show and tavern atmosphere fills me with horror. At this point Kisel- evski enters: this is a poetic interlude which grips the soul, but my Kiselevski does not know his part, is drunk as a sailor and something distressing and odious happens to the short, poetic dialogue. The audience is bewildered. At the end the hero dies because he cannot endure the insult hurled at him. The cooling and exhausted audience cannot make head or tail out of this death (which the actors had wrested out of me; I have another version). The actors and I are called before the curtain. During one of the curtain calls frank hissing can be heard, stifled in applause and the stamping of feet.

On the whole, I feel a sense of weariness and irritation. Dis- gusting, although the play had a solid success (denied by Kiche- yev and Co.[2]).

The theatre people say they have never seen such turmoil, such general applause and hissing, and never had they ever had occasion to listen to such hot words as they heard that night. And there had never before been an occasion at Korsh's when the author had been called before the curtain after the second act.

The second performance is on the twenty-third, with the other version and with changes: I am taking out a couple of the actors in the wedding scene.

Details when we meet.

Your

A. Chekhov

Tell Burenin that after the play I snapped right back into my routine and sat myself down to my weekly piece.

To ALEXANDER CHEKHOV

November 24, /887, Moscow

Well, dearest Gooseyev,

The dust has finally settled, and the clouds dispersed, and once again I sit at my desk composing stories with my mind at ease. You cannot imagine what went on! Heaven only knows what meaning they read into my poor little trashy playi (I sent one print to Maslov). I already wrote you that the first perform- ance stirred up such excitement in the audience and behind the scenes as the prompter, who has worked in the theatre for thirty-two years, had never before witnessed. They shouted, raised Cain, clapped and hissed: in the refreshment bar they almost came to blows, while in the gallery the students wanted to chuck out somebody and the police escorted two people to the street. The place was in an uproar. Sister was on the verge of fainting. Dyukovski, who got palpitations of the heart, ran out of the theatre, while Kiselev for no good reason clutched his head in his hands and cried out in all sincerity, "Now what am I going to do?"

The actors were nel\lously tense. Everything I have written to you and Maslov about their playing and their attitude to- ward their parts should of course go no further than my letters. A great deal may be explained and excused. It seems that the little daughter of the actress who played the lead was close to death—what could acting mean to her?

The day after the performance Pyotr Kicheyev's review in the "Moscow News" called my play brashly cynical, immoral trash. It was praised in "Moscow Reports."

The second performance came off not too badly, although with surprises. Instead of the actress with the sick daughter, another one went on (without rehearsal). Again there were curtain calls after the third act (twice) and the fourth, but this time without the hissing.

There you have it. My "Ivanov" is on again on \Vednesday.

1 Ivanov.

Now everything has calmed down and is back to normal. \Ve have marked the nineteenth of November with a red letter and will celebrate it every year with a spree, for the said day will certainly be memorable to the family.

More I won't write about the play. If you want to have some understanding of it, ask Maslov to let you read his copy. A reading won't throw any light on the commotion I've described; you won't find anything in particular. Nikolai, Schechtel and Levitan, i.e., artists—assure me that on the stage the play is so original as to make it strange to look upon. In reading it, though, you won't notice anything of the sort.

See here, if anybody on "New Times" wants to scold the actors who took part in the play, do ask them to refrain from censure. At the second performance they were splendid.

\Vell, sir, I'll be off to St. Pete in a few days. I'll try to make it by the first of December. In any case we'll celebrate the birth- day of your eldest together. \Varn him there will be no cake.

Congratulations on your promotion. If you are indeed the secretary, insert a notice that " 'Ivanov' was given a second per- formance on November 23 at the Korsh Theatre. The actors, especially Davidov, Kiselevski, Gradov-Sokolov and Kosheva, had to take numerous curtain calls. The author was called out after the third and fourth acts." Something like that. If you put this note in they'll give my play an extra performance and I'll get an extra 50 or 100 rubles. If you find it inexpedient to insert a notice of that kind, don't do so.

\Vhat's wrong with Anna Ivanovna? Allah Keriml The St. Petersburg climate is not for her.

I received the 40 rubles—thanks.

Have I wearied you? It seems to me I acted like a psychopath during all of November. . . .

Keep well and forgive my psychopathy. I won't do it again. Today I am normal. .

Yours,

Schiller Shakespearovich Goethe [ 43]

To ALEXEI PLESHCHEYEV

February 9, /888, Moscow

. . . In return for your promise to print "The Steppe" in its entirety and to send me your magazine, I am replying with an offer to treat you to some of the very finest Don wine when we take our trip on the Volga next summer. Unfortunately Koro- lenko is no drinker; and on such a journey, when the moon gleams and the crocodiles gaze forth at you from the water, not knowing how to drink is as uncomfortable as not being able to read. \Vine and music have always served me as a most effi- cient corkscrew. \Vhen, during my travels, I have felt stopped up, in the head or in the heart, one little glass of wine would be enough to send me soaring aloft, a free soul.

So Korolenko will be with me tomorrow; he is a good soul. It's a pity the censor hacked at his "Along the Way." An artistic but obviously bald thing (not the censor, but "Along the Way"). But why did he send it to a censored magazine? Secondly, why did he entitle it a Christmas story?

I must get busy at once with some minor work, but am itch- ing to undertake something big again. If you only knew what a subject for a novel I've got in my noodle! What marvelous women! What funerals, and what weddings! If I had the money I'd be off for the Crimea, sit myself under a cypress and write a novel in one or two months. I have 48 pages done already, imagine! However, I'm lying: if I had any money, I would em- bark upon such a mad whirl that all my novels would be shot to hell.

After writing the first part of this novel, if you allow me I will send it to you for reading, but not to the "Northern Herald," as it won't do for a publication which is subject to censorship. I am insatiable. I love crowds of people in my productions, and for that reason my novel will be a long one. Besides, I love the people I portray and find them attractive, and I like to fool around with attractive people for as long as I can . . . .

You write that you liked Dymov.i • • • Life creates such na- tures as this arrogant Dymov—not to be heretics or hoboes, nor to lead settled lives, but as out-and-out revolutionists. . . . There will never be a revolution in Russia, and Dymov will wind up by drinking himself to death or landing in prison. He is a superfluous man. . . .

Tomorrow I am having a high time at the wedding of a tailor who writes verse not too badly and has mended a jacket of mine out of respect for my talent (honoris causa). I have wearied you with my nonsense, and so I shall stop. Keep well. I hope your creditors will vanish into Never-Never land. . . . An importunate breed, worse than mosquitoes.

Yours in spirit,

A. Chekhov

To MIKHAIL CHEKHOV

March 15, 1888, St. Petersburg

... I reached here safely but had a miserable trip, thanks to Leikin, the prattler. He kept me from reading, eating and sleeping. . . . The wretch kept boasting continually and pester- ing me with questions. I would just begin to drowse when he would nudge me and ask, "Did you know that my 'Bride of Christ' has been translated into Italian?"

I have been stopping at the Moscow Hotel, but am moving today to the "New Times" building, where Mme. Suvorina has offered me two rooms complete with grand piano and couch in an alcove. Taking up residence with the Suvorins will cramp my style a lot.

The biscuits have been given to Alexander. His family is in good health, well nourished and cleanly dressed. He does not touch liquor, which surprised me quite a bit.

It is cold and snowy. Wherever I go people talk about my

1 Dymov is a character in "The Steppe." "The Steppe." I visited the Pleshcheyevs, Shcheglovs and some others and tonight I am going to Polonski's.

I have moved to my new diggings. Grand piano, harmonium, the couch in the alcove, a valet named Vasili, a bed, fireplace, an elegant desk—these are my conveniences. As for the incon- veniences, you can't begin to count them. To begin with the least of them, there's not the remotest chance of my appearing home half drunk and with a lady guest. . . .

Before dinner—a lengthy conversation with Mme. S. on how she detests the human race, and that she bought herself a jacket today for 120 rubles.

After dinner, talk about migraine headaches, while the kid- dies stare at me goggle-eyed, waiting for me to say something real clever. That's because they consider me a genius, as the author of "Kashtanka." . . .

From dinner to teatime I indulge in pacing back and forth in the Suvorin study, plus philosophy; the spouse injects her- self into the conversation, but inappropriately, putting on a bass voice or yapping like a dog.

Tea. There is medical talk at the table. Finally I am free, and sit in my study in blessed silence. Tomorrow I am running away for the whole day: am going to Pleshcheyev's, Sabashni- kov's "Messenger," Polonski's and Palkin's, and will return late at night worn to a frazzle. By the way: I have a special toilet and a separate exit—without it one might as well lie down and die. My Vasili is dressed more decently than I and has a well-bred physiognomy; it feels a bit strange to have him walking around me reverently on tiptoe and trying to anticipate my every wish.

On the whole, being a literary man has its inconveniences.

I am sleepy, but mine hosts retire at three. They don't have late supper and I'm too lazy to go to the Palkins.

I have the honor to send my compliments to all.

I'm too lazy to write, and there is too much going on anyway.

Votre a tous

A. Chekhov

To ALEXANDER CHEKHOV¹

April 26, /888, Moscow

Mr. Goosekov!

This is an answer to your last letter. Before all else I invite you to compose yourself and reflect upon the roots of things. Secondly, may I inform you of the following:

You can settle your children in Moscow, but only under the one condition that you guarantee before whomever or whatever you choose that neither cowardice, nor deluge, nor fire, nor sword, nor even pestilence, will prevent you from being punc- tual, i.e., from dispatching a definite number of rubles at a definite date each month. The substance of the matter lies in money. Neither Grandfather's piety nor Grandmother's good- ness, neither Daddy's tender feelings nor the generosity of the uncles—nothing can take its fAace. Bear the above words in mind, as I do every moment. If you feel that the proposed con- dition is within your power to fulfill, read on.

Fifty rubles a month is enough. Less is impossible. The chil- dren will come under the sway of one of the grandmas, but which of them? . . . My place is crowded and there is positively no room for children. I pay 750 rubles for the apartment. If I were to add two rooms to accommodate the children, nurse, and juvenile paraphernalia, the apartment would cost goo. However, we would be crowded no matter how spacious the apartment might be. You know my place has a multitude of adults living under one roof only because we cannot separate, in view of cer- tain incomprehensible circumstances. With me are Mother, Sister, Mishka² (who won't leave until he is graduated), Niko- lai, drunk and half undressed, who does nothing whatever and has been abandoned by his objet, Auntie, and Alyosha³ (the last two only use the apartment). Add to this that Ivan is around

Alexander Chekhov's wife was dying and he had writtcn Lo ask if he could send his children to Moscow.

Mishka was the son of a family friend who was attending thc University of Moscow.

Alyosha was Alexei Doljenko, a cousin.

from three in the afternoon until late at night and on all holi- days, and that Papa comes evenings. They are all nice people, jolly but egoistic, pretentious, unusually talkative, prone to stamping their feet, impecunious. My head is in a whirl. . . . If you were to add two more beds for the children and a nurse, I would have to pour wax into my ears and put on dark glasses. . . . If I had a wife and children I would gladly take unto myself even a dozen youngsters, but with my present family, which is weighed down by abnormal communal life, which is noisy, financially irresponsible and held together unna- turally I cannot decide to take on any more people, let alone those who require educating and setting on their feet. More- over, my little family group is southward bound at the begin- ning of May. To drag children there and back would be incon- venient and expensive.

The children can live with Auntie Feodosia Yakovlevna. I've already spoken to her on the subject, informed her of your motives and mine, and she has gladly consented. Alexei is a good man, and he too will probably have nothing against it.

Living with her will offer the children a number of comforts: (1) a quiet atmosphere, (2) the good will of their hosts, (3) the absence of annoyances, such as music, guests, and pious folks looking down their noses at the fruits of your irregular marriage and so on.

For fifty rubles Auntie will give the children lodging, food, servants and my medical care (apartment—eighteen to twenty- five rubles; Alex's fuel; nursemaid—five to six rubles, the rest to go for victuals and emergencies). Stipulations: the children must be brought from St. Pete by you or a servant; there is nobody here to call for them. An apartment must be found by the first of September. Until then the youngsters will stay with Auntie in my apartment (so twenty-five rubles a month will be enough for you to send until then) .

My head is killing me; this letter is probably written incoher- ently. If such is the case, it's a pity. Generally speaking my head is in a bad state. I think you will understand me, i.e., you may not understand me and what goes on inside of me, but you will understand the reasons and considerations. VVrite to me, not to Auntie. \Vhen we have reached an understanding you may write to her, otherwise there will be many unnecessary conversations. Conversations have been driving me frantic. Keep well and as cheerful as you can.

Your A. Chekhov. Tear up this letter. On the whole, get into the habit of tear- ing up letters, otherwise you will have them thrown around all over the apartment.

Come to see us in the south this summer. It doesn't cost much.

To IVAN LEONTIEV [SHCHEGLOV]

May r888, Moscow

Dear Alba,

. . . Pleshcheyev is arriving sometime after the tenth. How about your making the trip? Yes, you! In any event, I'll wait for you all summer. Perhaps you'll make up your mind to come. By the by, I won't expect you in June, when I'll be traveling. If you do come, bring along three pounds of good pork bologna, the very best (I'll pay you back) .

. . . I sent a story to the "Northcrn Herald" and am slightly ashamed of it. Very dull and dripping with fancy philosophy. I hated to do it, but had to, for we run through money like water. Tomorrow I am finishing a story for "New Times." All summer I'll be writing only small things.

I had a letter from Lehman: he informs that "we" (i.e., all of you St. Petersburgers) "have agreed to carry announcements of one anothcr's works in our books," invites me to concur in this proposal and warns that "only those persons more or less in solidarity with us" can be included in this elite. In reply I sent my consent and inquired as to how he knew who was or was

To IVAN LEONTIEV [sHCHEGLOv] [/888]

not in solidarity with me. How smug all of you are in St. Pete! Dont tell me you aren't all oppressed by such words as solidar- ity, the unity of young writers, community of interest, and so on? Solidarity and such stuff I understand on the stock ex- change, in politics, in religious affairs (of a sect), etc., but soli- darity in young literary men is impossible and unnecessary. 'Ve cannot think and feel the same way, our aims are various or nonexistent, we know one another slightly or not at all, and so there isn't anything to which this solidarity might fasten itself securely. Is there any need for it? No. To lend a helping hand to one's colleague, to respect his personality and labors, not to gossip about him or emy him, not to lie or play the hypocrite before him—to act thus you've got to be not so much the young literary figure as just a plain human being. Let us be ordinary people, let us adopt the same attitude toward all and then an artificially \Hought solidarity is not needed. This persistent striving to set up the private, professional, solid little group that you people want, would only mean unconscious spying on one another and suspicion and control; and without meaning to, we would turn ourselves into something like a Jesuit society. I am not in solidarity with you, dear Jan, but I promise you to the death full freedom as a writer; i.e., you can \mte where and how you like ... change your convictions and tendencies a thou- sand times, and so forth and so on, but my human relations with you will not change one iota, and I'll always print an- nouncements of your books in mine. I can promise the same to all my other colleagues, and would wish the same for myself. To my way of thinking these are the most normal relations. It is only thus that we can ha,e mutual respect and even friendship, and compassion in life's bitter moments.

However, I have let my tongue run away with me. God keep you!

Your A. Chekhov

To ALEXEI SUVORIN

May jo, 1888, Sumy

Lintvareva's summer place ... I am living on the banks of the Psel in the wing of an old feudal country home. I hired the place sight unseen, hoping for the best, and thus far have not regretted it. The river is wide, deep, teeming with islands, fish and crayfish, the banks are beautiful and there is much greenery. But its chief virtue is its sense of spaciousness, which is such that it seems to me my hundred rubles have given me the right to live amidst a limitless expanse. Nature and life hereabouts are of a pattern that editors are rejecting as old-fashioned, let alone the nightin- gales, which sing day and night, the distant barking of dogs. the old neglected gardens, the tightly boarded, very sad and poetic country places, where dwell the souls of beautiful women, the venerable, doddering feudal retainers and the young girls athirst for the most conventional type of love; not far from here we even have such a worn-out device of romance as a watermill (sixteen wheels), along with a miller and his daughter who keeps sitting at her window, obviously waiting for something to happen. Everything I see and hear about me seems like the an- cient tales and fairy stories I have known for so long. The only novelty is the presence of a mysterious bird—the water-bittern —that hides amongst the reeds in the distance and day and night utters a cry that is a cross between a blow on an empty barrel and the bellowing of a cow locked in a bam. Every Little Russian claims to have seen this bird during his lifetime, but each describes it differently, so actually no one has seen it. There is another novelty, too, but a superficial one, and maybe not so new, either.

Every day I row my boat to the mill, while evenings I make for the islands with fishermen fans from the Kharitonenko works to catch fish. The talk is interesting. \Vhitsunday Eve all the addicts are spending the night on the island to fish the night through: me too. There are some superb types.

My landlords have proved to be very fine, hospitable people. It is a family worth studying, and consists of six persons. The old mother is a very kind, rather faded and long-suffering woman; she reads Schopenhauer and goes to church to hear the Song of Praise, conscientiously cons every issue of the "Herald of Europe" and "Northern Herald," is acquainted with writers I never dreamed existed; considers it noteworthy that the artist Makovski once lived in the wing of her house and that now it houses a young man of letters; in conversing with Pleshcheyev feels a sacred tremor throughout her body and rejoices every instant that she has been "found worthy" to behold the great poet.

Her oldest daughter, a woman physician, is the pride of the whole household, and a saint, as the peasants call her, a truly unusual figure. She has a tumor on the brain which has ren- dered her completely blind; she suffers from epilepsy and con- stant headaches. She knows what awaits her, and speaks of her imminent death stoically in astounding cold blood. In my prac- tice I have become accustomed to see people near death and have always had a sort of queer feeling when those about to die speak, smile, or cry in my presence, but here, when I see this blind figure on the terrace laughing, joking or listening to my "In the Twilight" being read to her, I always have a queer feeling not about this good lady doctor's dying, but about our own unawareness of approaching death, and writing "In the Twilight" as though we would never die.

The second daughter is also a woman doctor and an old maid, a quiet, shy, infinitely good, tender and homely being. Sick people are an absolute torment to her, and she is practi- cally psychotic in her anxiety about them. At consultations we never agree: I am the messenger of cheer where she sees death, and I double the doses she gives. \Vhere death is indeed obvious and inevitable my lady doctor's reaction is quite undoctorlike. One day I took over the sick from her at the medical clinic; a young Little Russian woman appeared with a malignant tumor of the glands on her cheek and at the nape of her neck. The affliction had spread to so many areas that any treatment would have been futile. And because this farm woman now felt no pain, but would die six months hence in frightful torment, the lady doctor looked at her with such a guilty expression that she seemed to be apologizing for her own health, ashamed of the helplessness of medical science. She attends to the housekeeping conscientiously and understands it in all its smallest details. She even knows horses. For example, when the side horse won't pull or starts getting restless, she will advise the coachman how to take care of the matter. She dearly loves family life, which it has not been her fate to enjoy, and dreams of it, I think; on nights when there are games and songs in the big house, she strides up and down along the dark avenue of trees quickly and nervously like a caged animal. I don't believe she would ever harm a fly, and to my mind never has been or will be happy for a single minute.

The third daughter, who was graduated from the college in Bestuzhevka, is a young girl of masculine frame, strong, bony as a shad, well muscled, tanned and vociferous . . . . She laughs so loud you can hear her half a mile off. A super-Ukrainimaniac. She has built a school on the estate at her own expense and teaches little Little Russians Krylov's fables translated into Little Russian. . . . She hasn't cut her hair, wears a corset and a bustle, busies herself with domestic duties, loves to sing and roar with laughter and doesn't deny herself the most conven- tional sort of love, despite her having read Marx; but it's scarcely likely she'll get married, she is so homely.

The oldest son is a quiet, modest, bright, unlucky and hard- working young person, unpretentious and apparently satisfied with what life has given him. He does not boast of his being expelled for political activity during his fourth year at the university.! He says little, loves domestic life and the earth and

1 Undergraduate political activity, always radical, was considered, in those days, a mark of intellectual and moral distinction.

lives peaceably with his Little Russian neighbors.

The second son is a young man and a fanatic on the subject of Tchaikovski's genius. A pianist. He aspires to the Tolstoyan life. . . .

Pleshcheyev is my guest now. People regard him as a demi- god, envy the great good fortune of some bumpkin who hap- pens to attract his attention, bring him Howers, invite him everywhere and so on. Young Vata, a boarding school girl from Poltava who is visiting our landlady, is paying particular court to him. He "listens and eats" and smokes cigars which give his worshipers a headache. He is stiff in his movements and senilely indolent, but this does not deter the fair sex from taking boat- rides with him, bearing him off to neighboring estates and sing- ing him romantic ballads. He cuts the same figure here as he does in St. Petersburg, i.e., an icon which is worshipped because it happens to be old and once hung in the company of miracle- working icons. Personally I regard him as a receptacle full of traditions, interesting memoirs and platitudes, but at the same time a very kind, warm, sincere person . . . .

What you write about "The Lights" is perfectly true. Nikolai and Masha are overemphasized, but what can I do? Unaccus- tomcd as I am to writing lengthily I become overanxious; when I do, the thought that my talc is disproportionately long always scarcs mc and I attempt to writc as tersely as I can. Kisochka's last scene with the engineer seemed to me an insignificant detail encumbering the story, and so I threw it out, substituting Nikolai and Masha for it.

You write that the talk about pessimism and Kisochka's story in no way develop or solve the problem of pessimism. It seems to me that it is not up to writers to solve such quesiions as God, pessimism and so on. The job of the writer is to depict only who, how and under what circumstances people have spoken or thought about God or pessimism. The artist should not be a judge of his characters or of what they say, but only an objec- tive observer. I heard a confused, indecisive talk by two Rus- sians on pessimism and so must convey this conversation in the same form in which I heard it, but it is up to the jury, i.e., the readers, to give it an evaluation. My job is only to be talented, i.e., to be able to throw light upon some figures and speak their language. Shcheglov-Leontiev finds fault with me for having ended my story with the sentence: "You can't appraise anything in this world!" In his opinion the artist-psychologist must anal- yze—that's why he's a psychologist. But I don't agree with him. It is high time for writing folk, especially artists, to admit you can't appraise anything in this world, as Socrates did in his day, and Voltaire. The crowd thinks it knows and understands every- thing: and the more stupid it is, the broader seems to be its scope. If the artist, in whom the crowd believes, dares to declare that he does not understand what he sees, that alone comprises deep knowledge in the domain of thought and a good step ahead. .. .

What a letter I've concocted! I must end. Give my regards to Anna Ivanovna, Nastya and Borya. . . . Goodbye, keep well, and may God be good to you.

Your sincerely devoted

A. Chekhov

To ALEXEI PLESHCHEYEV

October 4, /888, Moscow ... I would be glad to read what Merejkowski^l has to say. In the meantime, goodbye for now. \Vrite me once you have read my story. You won't like it, but I am not afraid of you, nor of Anna Mikhailovna. Those I am afraid of are the ones who look for tendencies between the lines and want to put me down definitely as a liberal or conservative. I am not a liberal and not a conservative, not an evolutionist, nor a monk, nor indifferent

1 Merejkowski, the author of The Life of Leonardo Da Vinci, in 1888 wrote an article, "An Old Question on New Talent," about Chekhov"s short stories.

to the world. I would like to be a free artist—and that is all— and regret that God has not given me the strength to be one. I hate lies and coercion in all their aspects. . . . Pharisaism, stupidity and idle whim reign not only in the homes of the merchant class and within prison walls; I see them in science, in literature, amongst young people. I cannot therefore nurture any particularly warm feelings toward policemen, butchers, savants, writers, or youth. I consider trademarks or labels to be prejudices.

My holy of holies are the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom—free- dom from force and falsity, in whatever form these last may be expressed. This is the program I would maintain, were I a great artist.

However, I've run on too much as it is. Keep well,

Yours, A. Chekhov

To ALEXEI SUVORIN

October 27, Moscow

... I sometimes preach heresies, but have never once gone as far as the absolute negation of problems in art. In talks with the writing fraternity I always insist it is not the business of the artist to solve narrowly specialized questions. It is bad for an artist to tackle what he does not understand. For special problems we have specialists: it is their business to judge the community, the fate of capitalism, the evil of drunkenness, boots, female maladies . . . . The artist, though, must pass judg- ment only on what he understands; his circle is as limited as that of any other specialist—this I repeat and on this I always insist. Only one who has never written and has had no business with images can say there are no problems in his sphere, only answers. The artist observes, chooses, guesses, combines—these acts in themselves presuppose a problem; if he has not put this problem to himself from the very beginning, then there will be nothing to guess and no choice to make. To be more concise, let me finish with psychiatry; if one denies problem and purpose in creative work, then one must concede that the artist is creating undesignedly, without intention, temporarily de- ranged; and therefore, if some author were to boast to me that he had written a story without a previously considered inten- tion, guided by inspiration, I would call him insane.

You are right to require a conscious attitude from the artist toward his work, but you mix up two ideas: the solution of the problem and a conect presentation of the problem. Only the latter is obligatory for the artist. In "Anna Karenina" and "Onegin" not a single problem is solved, but they satisfy you completely just because all their problems are correctly pre- sented. The court is obliged to submit the case fairly, but let the jury do the deciding, each according to its own judg- ment. . . .

Tomorrow my "Bear" is on at Korsh's theatre. I have written another one-act play; two male parts, one female.

You write that the hero of my "The Party" is a figure which it would be well for me to develop further. Good Lord, surely I am not an unfeeling brute, I understand that. I know that I deface and even murder my characters, and that good material perishes needlessly . ... I would gladly have sat half a year over "The Party." And that is speaking the truth. I love to relax at my ease, and see no delight in hasty bursting into print. Gladly, with pleasure, with feeling and with deliberation would I describe all of my hero. I would depict his spirit while his wife was giving birth, his trial, his miserable state of mind after he was exonerated, I would portray the midwife and doctor drinking tea at night, I would describe the rain. This would afford me only pleasure, because I love to fool around and fuss. But what am I to do? I begin the story on the tenth of September with the thought that it must be completed by the fifth of October, which is the deadline; if I put it off, I'll be tricking the publisher and will remain without money. I write the beginning serenely, let myself go, but in the middle I have already begun cowering and fearing lest my story turn out to be long; I have to remember that the "Northern Herald" hasn't much money and that I am one of its expensive contributors. My start, therefore, is full of promise, as though I were begin- ning a novel; the middle section is difficult and broken up, while the end, as in a short short story, is like fireworks. In writing, therefore, one is bound to concentrate first of all upon the story's framework; from the mass of greater and lesser fig- ures you pick one particular person—the husband or wife— place him in the foreground, draw him in and underscore him alone, then you throw the others about the background like loose change, and the result is not unlike the vault of heaven: one big moon and around it a mass of very small stars. The moon, however, cannot come through successfully, because it can only be interpreted properly when the other stars are under- stood; and the stars in the meantime have not been clearly explained. So what emerges is not literature, but something on the order of the sewing of Trishkin's coat. What shall I do? I simply don't know. I put my trust in all-healing time.

If I may again speak of my conscience, well then, I haven't yet begun my literary career, despite the receipt of a prize. Subjects for five big stories and two novels swarm in my head. One of the novels was conceived a long time ago, so that several in the cast of characters have grown old without ever having been put down on paper. There is a regular army of people in my brain begging to be summoned forth and only waiting for the word to be given. All I have written hitherto is trash in comparison with what I would like to write and what I would write exultantly. It's all the same to me whether I write "The Party" or "The Lights" or a one-act comedy, or a letter to a friend—it is all tedious, mechanical, faded; I feel aggrieved against the critic who, let us say, attributes some significance to "The Lights," for it seems to me that I am misleading him, as I have misled many people with my immoderately serious or merry face. I am not pleased that I am successful; the subjects that sit in my head are vexatiously jealous of those already on paper; it is insulting that the trash is already on view while the good stuff lies about in the storehouse, like discarded books. Of course, there is much in this lamentation of mine that is exaggerated, much that only seems so to me, but there is some portion of truth, and a big one. What do I call good? Those images which seem best to me, which I love and jealously guard so as not to waste and trample them down on account of some "The Party," written to meet a deadline. . . . If my love is mis- taken, then I am not right, but surely it is possible that it may not be mistaken! I am either a fool and a presumptuous person or I am actually an organism capable of being a good writer; all that now issues from my pen does not please me and causes me weariness, but all that sits in my head interests me, touches and stirs me. Wherefore I conclude that nobody knows the secret of doing the right thing but me. It is very likely that everyone who writes reasons thus. However, the devil himself would break his neck on questions such as these.

In determining what kind of person I should be and what I should do money will not heljj. An extra thousand rubles does not solve the problem, while a hundred thousand is a pipe dream. Moreover, when I have money (perhaps this is from want of habit, I don't know) I become extremely heedless and lazy; the world is my oyster then. I need solitude and time.

Forgive mc for forcing my personality on you. My pen has run away with me. Somehow I cannot work now.

Thanks for placing my little articles. For the love of God, don't stand on ceremony with them; abridge, lengthen, alter, throw out or do with them what you will. I give you, as Korsh says, carte blanche. I will be happy if my articles do not usurp somebody else's place . . . .

Tell me what Anna Ivanovna's eye disease is called in Latin. I will let you know how senous it is. If she was prescribed atropin it is serious, though not categorically so. And what is wrong with Nastya? If you are thinking of curing your boredom in Moscow, a journey will prove fruitless: there is frightful tedium here. Many literary men have been arrested, among them, too, old busybody Goltsev, author of the "Ninth Sym- phony." V. S. Mamyshev, who visited me today, is interceding for one of them.

Greetings to all your family.

Your A. Chekhov A mosquito is flying about in my room. How did he ever get here? Thank you for the striking ads of my books.

To ALEXEI SUVORIN

November 3, 1888, Moscow

Greetings, Alexei Sergeyevich,

I am now arraying myself in a frock coat to attend the open- ing evening of the "Society of Arts and Literature" to which I have been specially invited. There's going to be a formal ball. 'Vhat the aims and resources of this society are, who constitutes the membership and so on, I don't know. ... I have not been elected to membership, and am very glad of it since contribut- ing twenty-five rubles for the right to be bored is far from my desire. . . .

In the "Northern Herald" for November there is an article devoted to yours truly by Merejkowski, the poet. A long one. I recommend its conclusion to your attention. It is character- istic. Merejkowski is still very young and a student—I believe he is a naturalist. People who have mastered the wisdom of the scientific method and who therefore know how to reason scien- tifically are subject to a number of irresistible temptations. Archimedes wanted to turn the earth upside down, and nowa- days the hotheads want to embrace the scientifically unembrace- able, to discover physical laws for the creative impulse, to bring to light a general law and formulae which the artist feels and follows instinctively in composing music, painting landscapes, writing novels and so on. These formulae probably exist in na- ture. We know that there is A, B, C, do, re, mi, fa and sol in nature, there is the curve, the straight line, the circle, the square, green, red and blue . . . we know that these factors in some particular combination produce a melody or verse or a picture, just as simple chemical bodies in some particular com- bination produce wood, or stone, or the sea, but the only thing we know is that there is a combination, and that the working of this combination is unknown to us. Those who have assimi- lated the scientific method are deeply aware that there is some- thing in common between the piece of music and the tree, that both are created as a result of equally true and simple laws. So the question arises: what are these laws? . . . Reasoning scientifically is always a good idea, but the trouble is that this scientific reasoning on the subject of creative power is in the end certain to degenerate into looking for "cells" or "centres" which control the creative impulse; then some ponderous Ger- man will discover these cellules somewhere in the occipital lobes, another countryman of his will dissent, a third will con- cur, and the Russian will skim through an article on cells and dash off an essay for the "Northern Herald"; the "Herald of Europe" will set to work picking this essay to pieces, and for about three years after that an epidemic of nonsense will hover in the Russian air which will provide earnings and popularity for the dunces, and inspire nothing but annoyance in intelligent people.

For those whom the scientific method has wearied, to whom God has given the rare gift of reasoning scientifically, there is, in my opinion, a single way out, and that is the philosophy of creative power. You can heap together all the best that has been created by artists throughout the centuries, and, utilizing the scientific method, extract from them the qualities they have in common with one another and which condition their value. That common quality will be the criterion. The works called immortal have a great deal in common; if you omit from each of them this common quality, the work loses its value and de- light. In other words, this common quality is indispensable, and constitutes the condition sine qua non of every work with pretensions to immortality.

For the younger generation, writing criticism is more useful than composing poems. Merejkowski writes smoothly and youth- fully, but on every page he quavers, makes reservations and ad- vances concessions—this is a sign that he himself has not clari- fied the question in his own mind. . . . He calls me a poet, my stories are novellas, my heroes—ill-starred, that is to say, he has nothing new to offer. It is about time he discarded these victims of fate, superfluous people and so on, and thought up something of his own. Merejkowski calls my monk, the com- poser of the "Song of Praise," an unfortunate. But in what re- spect was he a failure? God grant that all may live as he: he believed in God, was well fed and could write creatively. . . . Dividing people into successes and failures means looking upon human nature from the narrow, preconceived point of view. . . . Are you a failure or not? Am I? Napoleon? Your servant Vasili? \Vhere is the criterion? One must be God to be able to distin- guish successes from failures and not make mistakes. . . . I'm going to the ball.

I have returned. The aim of the society is "unity." A learned German taught a cat, a mouse, a hawk and a sparrow to eat out of one plate . . . . Deathly boredom reigned. People sauntered through the rooms and made believe they weren't bored. A young lady sang. Lenski read my story (one of the listeners re- marked: "A rather weak story!" and Levinski had the stupidity and cruelty to interrupt him with, "And here is the author him- self! Allow me to introduce him," while the listener almost sank into the floor in embarrassment), people danced, ate a bad supper, were held up for tips by the flunkies. If actors, artists and men of letters really constitute the best part of society, what a pity it is! A fine type of society it must be with an elite so poor in desires, intentions, taste, beautiful women, and initia- tive. A Japanese stuffed animal had been placed in the foyer, a Chinese parasol thrust into a corner, a rug hung over the ban- isters, and this they consider artistic. They have a Chinese para- sol, but no newspapers. If an artist decorates his apartment with nothing more than a stuffed mummy, a halberd, escutcheons, and fans on the wall, if all of this is not unplanned, but care- fully thought out and emphasized, he is not an artist, but a pompous monkey.

I had a letter from Leikin today. He writes that he paid you a visit. He is a genial and harmless person, but a bourgeois to the marrow of his bones. If he goes anywhere or says anything it is always with an ulterior motive. Every one of his words is seriously pondered and every one of your words, no matter how casually pronounced, he puts into his pipe for a smoking in the full assurance that he, Leikin, must do things this way; if he doesn't his books won't sell, his enemies will triumph, his friends will desert him and his credit union won't re-elect him to its board of directors. The fox constantly fears for his skin, and so does he. A subtle diplomat! . . .

There is confusion at Korsh's. A steam coffeepot burst and scalded Rybchinskaya's face. . . . There is nobody here to per- form, no one follows orders, everybody shouts and quarrels. Evidently the spectacular costume play will be a horrible flop ... though I would like to have them present "The Seducer of Seville."¹ • • • We must strive with all our power to see to it that the stage passes out of the hands of the grocers and into literary hands, otherwise the theatre is lost.

The coffeepot killed my "Bear." Rybchinskaya is ill and there's no one to play her part.

All our folks ask to be remembered. My hearty regards to Anna Ivanovna, Nastya and Borya.

Yours, A. Chekhov

¹ By Maslov-Bejetski.

One-act comedies can be published in the summer; winter is not snitable, though. I'm going to compose a one-acter every month during the summer season, but must deny myself this pleasure in the winter.

Please enter me as a member of the Literary Society. . . . I'll attend the meetings when I arrive.

To ALEXEI SUVORIN

November 20-25, r888, Moscow

. . . You write that authors are God's elect. I won't bother disputing. Shcheglov calls me the Potemkin of literature, and so it is not for me to speak of the thorny path, disappointments and so on. I don't know whether I have ever suffered more than shoemakers, mathematicians or train conductors; I don't know who it is that prophesies through my lips, God or somebody worse. I allow myself to mention only one little unpleasantness I have experienced with which you, too, are undoubtedly familiar. This is it. Both of us like ordinary people; we, on the other hand, are liked because people regard us as extraordinary. I am invited everywhere, for example am wined and dined like a general at a wedding; my sister is aggrieved because she is invited everywhere as the writer's sister.

Nobody wants to like what is ordinary in us. The conse- quence is that were we tomorrow to appear like ordinary mor- tals in the eyes of our good acquantances, people would stop liking us and only pity us. This is very bad. And it's bad because what people like in us is often what we ourselves do not like or respect in ourselves. It is too bad that I was right when I wrote "The First-Class Passenger," wherein my engineer and professor discourse on glory.

I am going to the farm. The devil with them! You have Feodosia.

Incidentally, as to Feodosia and the Tatars. Although the Tatars' land was stolen from them, nobody is concerned with their welfare. Schools for the Tatars are badly needed. Write an article saying that the ministry should assign the money wasted on sausage-like Derpt University, which is full of useless Germans, to schools for Tatars, who are of use to Russia. I my- self would write on the subject but don't know how.

Leikin sent me a very amusing one-act comedy that he has written. This man is the only one of his kind.

Be well and happy.

Your A. Chekhov

To ALEXEI SUVORIN

December 23, 1888, Moscow

Dear Alexei Sergeyevich,

... I have read your play again. In it there is a great deal that is good and original which has not previously appeared in dramatic literature, and much that is not good (for example, the language). Its merits and defects constitute a capital from which we could derive much profit, if we had any criticism. But this capital will lie about unproductively to no purpose until it becomes obsolete and goes out of print. There is no criticism. Tatischev, who follows the beaten path, the donkey Mikhnevich and the indifferent Burenin—comprise the entire Russian critical battery. And it is not worth the trouble to write for this battery, just as it is no use thrusting flowers at the nose of somebody who has a head cold. There are moments when I positively lose heart. For whom and what do I write? For the public? But I don't see it and don't believe in it any more than I do in spirits: it is uncultured and badly educated, while its best elements are not conscientious or sincere toward us. I cannot figure out whether or not I am needed by this public. Burenin says that I am not and that I occupy myself with trifles, but the Academy has awarded me a prize—the devil himself wouldn't be able to make head or tail of the rights of the matter. Do I write for money? But I never have any, and from chronic lack of it I am almost indifferent in my attitude toward it. I work for money sluggishly. Do I write for praise? But praise only irritates me. The literary society, the students, Yevreinova, Pleshcheyev, the young girls and so on extolled my "Nervous Breakdown" to the skies, but it was only Grigorovich who remarked upon my description of the first snowfall. Etc., etc. Had we any criticism, I would know that I provide material to work with—good or bad, it doesn't matter—and that to peo- ple devoting themselves to the study of life I am as necessary as a star to an astronomer. Then I would work painstakingly, and would know wherefore I was working. As it is now, you, I, Muravlin and the rest resemble maniacs writing books and plays for their own satisfaction. One's own personal satisfaction is, of course, a fine thing: one senses it during the writing process, but what of it? But ... I must call a halt. . . .

l\Iany races, religions, languages and cultures have vanished without a trace—vanished because there were no historians and biologists. Just so a mass of lives and works of art is vanishing before our eyes, owing to the complete absence of criticism. People may say there is nothing for our critics to do, that all our contemporary works are meaningless and inferior. But that is a narrow view. Life must be observed not only on the plus side, but also on the minus. The conviction in itself that the eighties have not produced a single worthwhile writer may serve as material for five volumes. . . .

My "Bear" is going into a second edition. And you say I am not a superb dramatist. I have cooked up a one-act comedy entitled "Thunder and Lightning" for Savina, Davidov and the other ministers of culture. One night during a thunderstorm I have the district doctor Davidov pay a call upon the maiden Savina. Davidov has a toothache, and Savina has an odious disposition. Interesting conversations, interrupted by the thun- der. At the end I marry them off. \Vhen I write myself out I'm going to turn to composing one-acters and making my living off them. I believe I could write about a hundred a year. Sub- jects for one-act plays sprout out of me like oil from Baku soil. Why can't I give my oil-bearing plot of ground to Shcheglov?

I sent Khudekov a story for a hundred rubles which I ask you not to read. I'm ashamed of it. Last night I sat down to write a tale for "New Times," but some dame appeared and bore me off to Pluschikha to see Palmin the poet, who in a state of drunk- enness fell and fractured his forehead. I fooled around with this drunken character for a good one-and-a-half to two hours, wore myself out, stank of iodoform, got into a bad temper and re- turned home tired to death. Today it would be too late to do the story. On the whole I lead a tedious life and am beginning to feel hatred from time to time, something that has never hap- pened to me before. Long, silly conversations, guests, people asking for help, to the tune of one-, two- and three-ruble con- tributions, money spent on cabs to visit patients who don't pay me a kopek—in short, everything is in such a muddle that one feels like running out of the house. People get loans and don't repay them, take away my books, have no regard for my time. . . . All I lack is an unhappy love affair. . . .

You will get this letter on the first day of Christmas, and may I wish you a merry one. Have a good rest. My sister sends her compliments to you, Anna Ivanovna and the children. I also salute you most humbly and remain your bored

A. Chekhov

To ALEXEI SUVORIN

December 26, /888, l\1oscow . . . You write that one should work not for criticism but for the public, and that it's too soon for me to complain. It is pleasant to think that one works for the public, of course, but how do I know that I am actually doing so? What with its scantiness and some other qualities, I myself do not feel any satisfaction in my work; the public, though (I did not call it ignoble), is unscrupulous and insincere in its attitude toward us; you will never hear the truth from it and so you can't figure out whether or not it needs me. It may be early for me to com- plain, but never too early to ask myself whether I am engaged in serious business or nonsense. Criticism is silent, the public lies and my own instinct tells me I am busying myself with trash. Do I complain? I don't recall the tone of my letter, but if I did so, I complained not on my own behalf but for all our writing fraternity, whom I pity infinitely.

All week I have been as mean as a son of a bitch. Hemorr- hoids accompanied by itching and bleeding, visitors, Palmin and his fractured skull, tedium. On the first evening of the holiday I hovered over a sick man who died before my eyes. On the whole, there have been plenty of morbid motifs. Spite- fulness is a type of pusillanimity. I confess it and curse myself. Above all I am vexed with myself for letting you into the secrets of my melancholy, very uninteresting and shameful for one of my years, which the poets have exalted as a time of bloom.

I will try to do a story for you by the New Year, and soon after the first will send "The Princess."

You should print one-act plays in the summertime only, not in winter.

You wish me to turn Sasha loose at all costs. But surely "Ivanov" can hardly be put on in that form. If it can be done, then by all means I will do as you wish, but please excuse me if I give it to her properly, the nasty creature! (You say that women love out of compassion and marry out of compassion. And how about men? I don't care to have realistic novelists slander women, but I don't like it either when people like Yuzhin lift womankind onto their shoulders and attempt to show that even when she is worse than a man, the man is nevertheless a scoundrel and the woman an angel. Both men and women are a dime a dozen, except that man is more intel- ligent and just.)

. . . My painter continues in the same condition.

In the autumn I am moving to Petersburg and am taking

my mother and sister along. I have to do some serious work . . . .

Don't be angry with me and forgive my melancholy, which I don't find attractive either. It has been evoked in me by cir- cumstances over which I had no control.

Read me a moral lecture and don't apologize. If you knew how often I read moral lectures to young people in my letters! I have even made a habit of it. I have long, redundant, over- fancy phrases, while you have short ones. Yours come out better .

. . . Goodbye. My greetings to Anna Ivanovna and all your family.

Heartily yours,

A. Chekhov

To ALEXEI SUVORIN

December 30, 1888, Moscow . . . The producer considers Ivanov¹ a superfluous man in the Turgenev tradition; and Savina asks why Ivanov is a scoundrel. You write: "You have to endow Ivanov with some sort of quality which will make it apparent why he has two women hanging onto him and why he is a scoundrel, and why the doc- tor is a great man." IE you three people have understood me in this fashion, it means that my play is no good. My wit and reason have probably deserted me and I have not put down on paper what I have wished to write. If Ivanov emerges as a rogue or superfluous man, and the doctor as a great person, Sara's and Sasha's love for Ivanov is incomprehensible, obviously my play hasn't been properly realized and there can be no question of producing it.

I Ivanov. The main character of this play is a well-educated, liberal, humane man who, in spite of his excellent intentions, brings ruin on himself and those who love him. His wife, a Jewess, has given up her family and her fortune to marry him and, as the play opens, she is dying. Ivanov is in love with Sasha, a young girl who lives in the neighborhood. As Chekhov says, Sasha "is a woman who loves men in the period of their decline," and she loves the romantic chance to redeem a lost man. But he is a lost man, and in the end of the play he commits suicide.

This is how I understand my characters. Ivanov, an upper- class gentleman and a university man, was not remarkable in any way; he had an easily excitable nature, was fervent, with a strong bent for distractions, and honest and straightforward, like the majority of the educated upper class. He has been liv- ing in his country home and serving in the district council. What he has been doing and how he has been behaving, what has engrossed and fascinated him, is evident from these follow- ing words of his, addressed to the doctor (Act I, scene 5), "Don't marry a Jewess, or a psychopath, or a bluestocking . . . don't battle alone against thousands, don't tilt against windmills, don't knock your head against a wall . . . and may God save you from all kinds of scientific farming, progressive schools, im- passioned talk. ..." That's his past. Sara, who was witness to his scientific farming and other such ventures, speaks of him to the doctor: "He is a remarkable man, Doctor, and I am sorry you did not know him as he was two or three years ago. Now he is depressed and silent, he doesn't do anything, but . . . what a charmer he was then!" (Act I, scene 7). His past was admirable, as is the case with the majority of Russian intellec- tuals. There is scarcely a Russian gentleman or university grad- uate who could not boast of his past. The present is always worse than the past; and why? Because our excitability has one specific quality: it quickly gives way to exhaustion. A man who has hardly clambered off the school bench, rashly takes on a burden beyond his powers, simultaneously takes up schools, peasants, scientific farming and the "Herald of Europe," makes speeches, writes to the minister, struggles with evil, applauds the good, does not fall in love simply and any old way, but in- evitably with either bluestockings or psychopaths . . . or even prostitutes whom he tries to save from their fate, and so on and so forth. But hardly has he reached the age of thirty or thirty- five when he begins to feel weariness and ennui. He hasn't even cultivated decent moustaches but he says in a tone of authority, "Don't get married, old man. You'd better trust my experience." Or, "After all, in essence what is liberalism?" . . . Such is the tone of these prematurely exhausted people. Fur- ther, sighing very positively, he advises, "Don't marry thus and so (see one of the passages above), but choose something run-of- the-mill, grayish, without bright colors, without extra flour- ishes. . . . On the whole, try to plan a quiet life for yourself. The grayer, the more monotonous the background, the better. . . . But the life I have been leading, how wearing it has been!— how wearing!"

Though he feels physical weariness and boredom, he does not understand what the trouble is and what has happened. In terror he says to the doctor (Act I, scene 3), "You tell me she is dying, but I don't feel any love, or pity, but a sort of loneliness and weariness. If you just judge me as a stranger, you would probably think this horrible. I myself do not understand what is happening to me."

When narrow and unconscientious people find themselves in such a situation, they usually place the blame on their environ- ment, or enter the ranks of the unwanted and unneeded Ham- lets, and then their minds are at rest. . . . But Ivanov, who is straightforward, openly declares to the doctor and audience that he does not understand himself. "I don't understand, don't understand . . ." That he really does not understand himself is apparent from the long monologue in Act III, where, speaking directly to the audience, he confesses to it, and even weeps!

The change taking place within him outrages his integrity. He seeks reasons from within and doesn't find them; he begins to seek outside of himself and finds only an undefined feeling of guilt. This feeling is Russian. If someone dies in a Russian's house, or falls sick, or if somebody owes him money, or if he wants to make a loan—the Russian always feels a sense of guilt. Ivanov is continually discoursing on some fault or other that he has, and every jolt increases the sense of guilt. In Act I he says, "Probably I am terribly guilty, but my thoughts have be- come confused, my soul is shackled with a kind of indolence, and I am not in a strong enough state to understand myself. . . . " In Act II he says to Sasha, "Day and night my conscience aches, I feel I am profoundly to blame, but I do not under- stand where I have done anything wrong."

To exhaustion, boredom and the sense of guilt add still an- other enemy. That is solitude. \Vere Ivanov a government official, an actor, a priest or professor, he would get used to his situation. But he lives on an estate in the country, in a rural district. The people there are either drunkards or card players, or such as the doctor. They are not concerned with his feelings and with the changes occurring within him. He is lonely. The long winters, the long evenings, the empty garden, the empty rooms, the morose count, the ailing wife . . . There is nowhere to go. Hence he is continually tormented by the question of what to do with himself.

Now for the fifth enemy. Ivanov is tired, doesn't understand himself, but life is not concerned with these things. It sets its legitimate demands before him and he—like it or not—must solve the problems. The sick wife is a problem. It should be plain from the monologue in Act III and from the contents of the last two acts how he resolves these problems. Such people as Ivanov do not settle questions, they are crushed by them. They are at their wit's end, throw up their hands, their nerves are on edge, they complain, commit stupidities and in the last analysis, in giving way to their loose, flabby nerves, the ground slips from under their feet and they join the ranks of the "broken" and "misunderstood."

Disillusion, apathy, nervousness and exhaustion are the in- evitable consequences of inordinate excitability, and this char- acteristic is inherent in our young people to an extreme degree. Take literature. Take the present day. . . . Socialism is one aspect of excitability. .. Where is liberalism? Even Mikhailovski says there is nothing worth fighting for. And what do all these

Russian enthusiasms come to? The war has wearied, Bulgaria has degenerated into a joke. . . .

This weariness (and Dr. Bertenson will corroborate it) doesn't only express itself in grumbling or in the sensation of boredom. You cannot chart the life of a tired man this way [here Chekhov drew a gently undulating line], for it is very uneven. All these tired people don't lose their capacity for emotional stimulation, but they aren't able to remain at that pitch for any length of time; rather an ever greater apathy follows every state of ex- citement: Graphically you can represent it this way [here Chekhov drew an undulating line interrupted by peaks and valleys]:

As you can see, the depressed condition doesn't show up as a gradual drop, but follows a rather different course. ^faen Sasha declares her love, Ivanov cries in ecstasy, "A new life!" but by next morning his belief in this life is as sincere as his belief in fairies (monologue in Act III) ; when his wife's words outrage him, he is beside himself and in a fit of nerves he flings a cruel insult at her. People call him a scoundrel. Either this will prove fatal to his crumbling brain or else will arouse him to fresh heights and he is done for.

So as not to weary you to a state of exhaustion, I'll transfer my attention to Dr. Lvov. He is a type of honest, straight- forward, ardent but narrow and strait-laced person. Clever peo- ple refer to his kind like this: "He may be stupid, but he's got a good heart." Anything that resembles breadth of view or spon- taneity of feeling is foreign to Lvov. He is a stereotype in- carnate, a walking tendency. He looks out of his narrow frame on every phenomenon and face, and judges everything precon- ceivedly. He idolizes the man who exclaims, "Make way for honest toil!" and anyone who does not echo these sentiments is a rascal and a kulak. There is no middle way. He was educated on the novels of Mikhailov;² he has seen "new people" on the stage, i.e., kulaks and children of the age depicted by the new

2 Mikhailov was the author of social-political novels.

playwrights, "moneygrubbers". . . . He has turned all of this over in his mind and done it so forcibly that when he reads "Rudin" he is bound to ask himself, "Is Rudin a scoundrel or isn't he?" Literature and the stage have so educated him that he applies this question to every person he meets in life or litera- ture. . . .

He arrived in the country district already convinced. He could immediately discern that all the well-to-do peasants were kulaks, and that Ivanov, whom he couldn't figure out, was a knave. The man's wife is ill and he visits a rich woman neigh- bor—isn't he a villain? He is obviously killing his wife in order to marry the rich woman.

Lvov is honest, direct, and hits straight from the shoulder, whatever the consequences. If necessary he would throw a bomb under a carriage, punch an official in the puss, call a man a scoundrel to his face. He stops at nothing. He never feels pangs of conscience—he is an "honest toiler" with a mission, and is out to battle with "the powers of darkness."

We need people like him and for the most part they are lik- able. It is dishonest as well as pointless to portray them in caricature, merely to heighten the dramatic interest. True, a caricature is sharper and therefore easier to understand, but it is better to blur the portrait than to overdo it.

. . . Now as to the women. \Vhy do they love him? Sara loves Ivanov because he is a good man, ardent, brilliant and quite as fervent a talker as Lvov (Act I, scene 7). She loves him as long as he is high-spirited and attractive; but when his personality becomes shrouded in gloom and loses its distinctive quality, she can no longer understand him and at the end of the third act she unburdens herself directly and sharply.

Sasha is a maiden poured from the newest mold. She is cul- ti\atcd, intelligent, honest and so on. Among the blind the one-eyed is king, and that is why she makes much of the thirty- five-year-old Ivanov. He is the best person she knows. She knew him when she was small and observed his activities at close range at a period when he was not yet exhausted. He is a friend of her father's.

She is the type of female whom males do not conquer with the brilliance of their plumage, nor with their suppleness, nor with their courage, but with their laments, whimpers and recitals of failure. This is a woman who loves men in the period of their decline. Ivanov hardly had time to become disheartened before the young lady was Johnny-on-the-spot. She was only waiting for this moment. Goodness, she has such a noble, sacred prob- lem! She will raise the fallen, get him up onto his feet, give him happiness. . . . It is not Ivanov she loves, but this prob- lem. . . . Sasha struggles with Ivanov a whole year but he just will not rise from the dead and keeps sinking lower.