YALTA,
January 3, 1899.
… Apparently you have misunderstood me a little. I did not write to you of coarseness of style, but only of the incongruity of foreign, not genuinely Russian, or rarely used words. In other authors such words as, for instance, “fatalistically,” pass unnoticed, but your things are musical, harmonious, and every crude touch jars fearfully. Of course it is a question of taste, and perhaps this is only a sign of excessive fastidiousness in me, or the conservatism of a man who has adopted definite habits for himself long ago. I am resigned to “a
collegiate assessor
,” and “a
captain
of the second
rank
” in descriptions, but “
flirt
” and “
champion
” when they occur in descriptions excite repulsion in me.
Are you self-educated? In your stories you are completely an artist and at the same time an “educated” man in the truest sense.
Nothing is less characteristic of you than coarseness, you are clever and subtle and delicate in your feelings. Your best things are “In the Steppe,” and “On the Raft,” – did I write to you about that? They are splendid things, masterpieces, they show the artist who has passed through a very good school. I don’t think that I am mistaken. The only defect is the lack of restraint, the lack of grace. When a man spends the least possible number of movements over some definite action, that is grace. One is conscious of superfluity in your expenditure.
The descriptions of nature are the work of an artist; you are a real landscape painter. Only the frequent personification (anthropomorphism) when the sea breathes, the sky gazes, the steppe barks, nature whispers, speaks, mourns, and so on – such metaphors make your descriptions somewhat monotonous, sometimes sweetish, sometimes not clear; beauty and expressiveness in nature are attained only by simplicity, by such simple phrases as “The sun set,” “It was dark,” “It began to rain,” and so on – and that simplicity is characteristic of you in the highest degree, more so perhaps than of any other writer…
TO A. S. SUVORIN
YALTA, January 17, 1899.
… I have been reading Tolstoy’s son’s story: “The Folly of the Mir.” The construction of the story is poor, indeed it would have been better to write it simply as an article, but the thought is treated with justice and passion. I am against the Commune myself. There is sense in the Commune when one has to deal with external enemies who make frequent invasions, and with wild animals; but now it is a crowd artificially held together, like a crowd of convicts. They will tell us Russia is an agricultural country. That is so, but the Commune has nothing to do with that, at any rate at the present time. The commune exists by husbandry, but once husbandry begins to pass into scientific agriculture the commune begins to crack at every seam, as the commune and culture are not compatible ideas. Our national drunkenness and profound ignorance are, by the way, sins of the commune system…
TO HIS BROTHER MIHAIL
YALTA, February 6, 1899.
… Being bored, I am reading “The Book of my Life” by Bishop Porfiry. This passage about war occurs in it:
“Standing armies in time of peace are locusts devouring the people’s bread and leaving a vile stench in society, while in time of war they are artificial fighting machines, and when they grow and develop, farewell to freedom, security, and national glory! … They are the lawless defenders of unjust and partial laws, of privilege and of tyranny.” …
That was written in the forties…
TO I. I. ORLOV
YALTA, February 22, 1899.
… In your letter there is a text from Scripture. To your complaint in regard to the tutor and failures of all sorts I will reply by another text: “Put not thy trust in princes nor in any sons of man” … and I recall another expression in regard to the sons of man, those in particular who so annoy you: they are the sons of their age.
Not the tutor but the whole educated class – that is to blame, my dear sir. While the young men and women are students they are a good honest set, they are our hope, they are the future of Russia, but no sooner do those students enter upon independent life and become grown up than our hope and the future of Russia vanishes in smoke, and all that is left in the filter is doctors owning house property, hungry government clerks, and thieving engineers. Remember that Katkov, Pobyedonostsev, Vishnegradsky, were nurselings of the Universities, that they were our Professors – not military despots, but professors, luminaries… I don’t believe in our educated class, which is hypocritical, false, hysterical, badly educated and indolent. I don’t believe in it even when it’s suffering and complaining, for its oppressors come from its own entrails. I believe in individual people, I see salvation in individual personalities scattered here and there all over Russia – educated people or peasants – they have strength though they are few. No prophet is honoured in his own country, but the individual personalities of whom I am speaking play an unnoticed part in society, they are not domineering, but their work can be seen; anyway, science is advancing and advancing, social self-consciousness is growing, moral questions begin to take an uneasy character, and so on, and so on-and all this is being done in spite of the prosecutors, the engineers, and the tutors, in spite of the intellectual class en masse and in spite of everything…
TO MADAME AVILOV
YALTA, March 9, 1899.
I shall not be at the writers’ congress. In the autumn I shall be in the Crimea or abroad – that is, of course, if I am alive and free. I am going to spend the whole summer on my own place in the Serpuhov district.
By the way, in what district of the Tula province have you bought your estate? For the first two years after buying an estate one has a hard time, at moments it is very bad indeed, but by degrees one is led to Nirvana, by sweet habit. I bought an estate and mortgaged it, I had a very hard time the first years (famine, cholera). Afterwards everything went well, and now it is pleasant to remember that I have somewhere near the Oka a nook of my own. I live in peace with the peasants, they never steal anything from me, and when I walk through the village the old women smile and cross themselves. I use the formal address to all except children, and never shout at them; but what has done most to build up our good relations is medicine. You will be happy on your estate, only please don’t listen to anyone’s advice and gloomy prognostications, and don’t at first be disappointed, or form an opinion about the peasants. The peasants behave sullenly and not genuinely to all new-comers, and especially so in the Tula province. There is indeed a saying: “He’s a good man though he is from Tula.”
So here’s something like a sermon for you, you see, madam. Are you satisfied?
Do you know L. N. Tolstoy? Will your estate be far from Tolstoy’s? If it is near I shall envy you. I like Tolstoy very much.
Speaking of new writers, you throw Melshin in with a whole lot. That’s not right. Melshin stands apart. He is a great and unappreciated writer, an intelligent, powerful writer, though perhaps he will not write more than he has written already. Kuprin I have not read at all. Gorky I like, but of late he has taken to writing rubbish, revolting rubbish, so that I shall soon give up reading him. “Humble People” is good, though one could have done without Buhvostov, whose presence brings into the story an element of strain, of tiresomeness and even falsity. Korolenko is a delightful writer. He is loved – and with good reason. Apart from all the rest there is sobriety and purity in him.
You ask whether I am sorry for Suvorin. Of course I am. He is paying heavily for his mistakes. But I’m not at all sorry for those who are surrounding him…
TO GORKY
MOSCOW, April 25, 1899.
… The day before yesterday I was at L. N. Tolstoy’s; he praised you very highly and said that you were “a remarkable writer.” He likes your “The Fair” and “In the Steppe” and does not like “Malva.” He said: “You can invent anything you like, but you can’t invent psychology, and in Gorky one comes across just psychological inventions: he describes what he has never felt.” So much for you! I said that when you were next in Moscow we would go together to see him.
When will you be in Moscow? On Thursday there will be a private performance – for me – of “The Seagull.” If you come to Moscow I will give you a seat…
From Petersburg I get painful letters, as it were from the damned, and it’s painful to me as I don’t know what to answer, how to behave. Yes, life when it is not a psychological invention is a difficult business…
TO O. L. KNIPPER
YALTA, September 30, 1899.
At your command I hasten to answer your letter in which you ask me about Astrov’s last scene with Elena.
You write that Astrov addresses Elena in that scene like the most ardent lover, “clutches at his feeling like a drowning man at a straw.”
But that’s not right, not right at all! Astrov likes Elena, she attracts him by her beauty; but in the last act he knows already that nothing will come of it, and he talks to her in that scene in the same tone as of the heat in Africa, and kisses her quite casually, to pass the time. If Astrov takes that scene violently, the whole mood of the fourth act – quiet and despondent – is lost…
TO G. I. ROSSOLIMO
YALTA, October 11, 1899.
… Autobiography? I have a disease – Auto-biographophobia. To read any sort of details about myself, and still more to write them for print, is a veritable torture to me. On a separate sheet I send a few facts, very bald, but I can do no more…
I, A. P. Chekhov, was born on the 17th of January, 1860, at Taganrog. I was educated first in the Greek School near the church of Tsar Constantine; then in the Taganrog high school. In 1879 I entered the Moscow University in the Faculty of Medicine. I had at the time only a slight idea of the Faculties in general, and chose the Faculty of Medicine I don’t remember on what grounds, but did not regret my choice afterwards. I began in my first year to publish stories in the weekly journals and newspapers, and these literary pursuits had, early in the eighties, acquired a permanent professional character. In 1888 I took the Pushkin prize. In 1890 I travelled to the Island of Sahalin, to write afterwards a book upon our penal colony and prisons there. Not counting reviews, feuilletons, paragraphs, and all that I have written from day to day for the newspapers, which it would be difficult now to seek out and collect, I have, during my twenty years of literary work, published more than three hundred signatures of print, of tales, and novels. I have also written plays for the stage.
I have no doubt that the study of medicine has had an important influence on my literary work; it has considerably enlarged the sphere of my observation, has enriched me with knowledge the true value of which for me as a writer can only be understood by one who is himself a doctor. It has also had a guiding influence, and it is probably due to my close association with medicine that I have succeeded in avoiding many mistakes.
Familiarity with the natural sciences and with scientific method has always kept me on my guard, and I have always tried where it was possible to be consistent with the facts of science, and where it was impossible I have preferred not to write at all. I may observe in passing that the conditions of artistic creation do not always admit of complete harmony with the facts of science. It is impossible to represent upon the stage a death from poisoning exactly as it takes place in reality. But harmony with the facts of science must be felt even under those conditions – i.e., it must be clear to the reader or spectator that this is only due to the conditions of art, and that he has to do with a writer who understands.
I do not belong to the class of literary men who take up a sceptical attitude towards science; and to the class of those who rush into everything with only their own imagination to go upon, I should not like to belong…
TO O. L. KNIPPER
YALTA, October 30, 1899.
… You ask whether I shall be excited, but you see I only heard properly that “Uncle Vanya” was to be given on the twenty-sixth from your letter which I got on the twenty-seventh. The telegrams began coming on the evening of the twenty-seventh when I was in bed. They send them on to me by telephone. I woke up every time and ran with bare feet to the telephone, and got very much chilled; then I had scarcely dozed off when the bell rang again and again. It’s the first time that my own fame has kept me awake. The next evening when I went to bed I put my slippers and dressing-gown beside my bed, but there were no more telegrams.
The telegrams were full of nothing but the number of calls and the brilliant success, but there was a subtle, almost elusive something in them from which I could conclude that the state of mind of all of you was not exactly of the very best. The newspapers I have got to-day confirm my conjectures.
Yes, dear actress, ordinary medium success is not enough now for all you artistic players: you want an uproar, big guns, dynamite. You have been spoiled at last, deafened by constant talk about successes, full and not full houses: you are already poisoned with that drug, and in another two or three years you will be good for nothing! So much for you!
How are you getting on? How are you feeling? I am still in the same place, and am still the same; I am working and planting trees.
But visitors have come, I can’t go on writing. Visitors have been sitting here for more than an hour. They have asked for tea. They have sent for the samovar. Oh, how dreary!
Don’t forget me, and don’t let your friendship for me die away, so that we may go away together somewhere again this summer. Good-bye for the present. We shall most likely not meet before April. If you would all come in the spring to Yalta, would act here and rest – that would be wonderfully artistic. A visitor will take this letter and drop it into the post-box…
P.S. – Dear actress, write for the sake of all that’s holy, I am so dull and depressed. I might be in prison and I rage and rage…
YALTA,
November 1, 1899.
I understand your mood, dear actress, I understand it very well; but yet in your place I would not be so desperately upset. Both the part of Anna and the play itself are not worth wasting so much feeling and nerves over. It is an old play. It is already out of date, and there are a great many defects in it; if more than half the performers have not fallen into the right tone, then naturally it is the fault of the play. That’s one thing, and the second is, you must once and for all give up being worried about successes and failures. Don’t let that concern you. It’s your duty to go on working steadily day by day, quite quietly, to be prepared for mistakes which are inevitable, for failures – in short, to do your job as actress and let other people count the calls before the curtain. To write or to act, and to be conscious at the time that one is not doing the right thing – that is so usual, and for beginners so profitable!
The third thing is that the director has telegraphed that the second performance went magnificently, that everyone played splendidly, and that he was completely satisfied…
TO GORKY
YALTA, January 2, 1900.
PRECIOUS ALEXEY MAXIMOVITCH,
I wish you a happy New Year! How are you getting on? How are you feeling? When are you coming to Yalta? Write fully. I have received the photograph, it is very good; many thanks for it.
Thank you, too, for the trouble you have taken in regard to our committee for assisting invalids coming here. Send any money there is or will be to me, or to the executive of the Benevolent Society, no matter which.
My story (i.e., “In the Ravine”) has already been sent off to
Zhizn
. Did I tell you that I liked your story “An Orphan” extremely, and sent it to Moscow to first-rate readers? There is a certain Professor Foht in the Medical Faculty in Moscow who reads Slyeptsov capitally. I don’t know a better reader. So I have sent your “Orphan” to him. Did I tell you how much I liked a story in your third volume, “My Travelling Companion”? There is the same strength in it as “In the Steppe.” If I were you, I would take the best things out of your three volumes and republish them in one volume at a rouble – and that would be something really remarkable for vigour and harmony. As it is, everything seems shaken up together in the three volumes; there are no weak things, but it leaves an impression as though the three volumes were not the work of one author but of seven.
Scribble me a line or two.
TO O. L. KNIPPER
YALTA, January 2, 1900.
My greetings, dear actress! Are you angry that I haven’t written for so long? I used to write often, but you didn’t get my letters because our common acquaintance intercepted them in the post.
I wish you all happiness in the New Year. I really do wish you happiness and bow down to your little feet. Be happy, wealthy, healthy, and gay.
We are getting on pretty well, we eat a great deal, chatter a great deal, laugh a great deal, and often talk of you. Masha will tell you when she goes back to Moscow how we spent Christmas.
I have not congratulated you on the success of “Lonely Lives.” I still dream that you will all come to Yalta, that I shall see “Lonely Lives” on the stage, and congratulate you really from my heart. I wrote to Meierhold, and urged him in my letter not to be too violent in the part of a nervous man. The immense majority of people are nervous, you know: the greater number suffer, and a small proportion feel acute pain; but where – in streets and in houses – do you see people tearing about, leaping up, and clutching at their heads? Suffering ought to be expressed as it is expressed in life – that is, not by the arms and legs, but by the tone and expression; not by gesticulation, but by grace. Subtle emotions of the soul in educated people must be subtly expressed in an external way. You will say – stage conditions. No conditions allow falsity.
My sister tells me that you played “Anna” exquisitely. Ah, if only the Art Theatre would come to Yalta!
Novoye Vremya
highly praised your company. There is a change of tactics in that quarter; evidently they are going to praise you all even in Lent. My story, a very queer one, will be in the February number of
Zhizn
. There are a great number of characters, there is scenery too, there’s a crescent moon, there’s a bittern that cries far, far away: “Boo-oo! boo-oo!” like a cow shut up in a shed. There’s everything in it.
Levitan is wit