NICE, February 23, 1898.
...Novoye Vremyahas behaved simply abominably about the Zola case. The old man and I have exchanged letters on the subject (in a tone of great moderation, however), and have both dropped the subject.
I don’t want to write and I don’t want his letters, in which he keeps justifying the tactlessness of his paper by saying he loves the military: I don’t want them because I have been thoroughly sick of it all for a long time past. I love the military too, but I would not if I had a newspaper allow thecactusesto print Zola’s novelfor nothingin the Supplement, while they pour dirty water over this same Zola in the paper—and what for? For what not one of the cactuses has ever known—for a noble impulse and moral purity. And in any case to abuse Zola when he is on his trial—that is unworthy of literature....
YALTA, October 26, 1898.
... I am buying a piece of land in Yalta and am going to build so as to have a place in which to spend the winters. The prospect of continual wandering with hotel rooms, hotel porters, chance cooking, and so on, and so on, alarms my imagination. Mother will spend the winter with me. There is no winter here; it’s the end of October, but the roses and other flowers are blooming freely, the trees are green and it is warm.
There is a great deal of water. Nothing will be needed apart from the house, no outbuildings of any sort; it will all be under one roof. The coal, wood and everything will be in the basement. The hens lay the whole year round, and no special house is needed for them, an enclosure is enough. Close by there is a baker’s shop and the bazaar, so that it will be very cosy for Mother and very convenient. By the way, there are chanterelles and boletuses to be gathered all the autumn, and that will be an amusement for Mother. I am not doing the building myself, the architect is doing it all. The houses will be ready by April. The grounds, for a town house, are considerable. There will be a garden and flowerbeds, and a vegetable garden. The railway will come to Yalta next year....
As for getting married, upon which you are so urgent—what am I to say to you? To marry is interesting only for love; to marry a girl simply because she is nice is like buying something one does not want at the bazaar solely because it is of good quality.
The most important screw in family life is love, sexual attraction, one flesh, all the rest is dreary and cannot be reckoned upon, however cleverly we make our calculations. So the point is not in the girl’s being nice but in her being loved; putting it off as you see counts for little....
My “Uncle Vanya” is being done all over the province, and everywhere with success. So one never knows where one will gain and where one will lose; I had not reckoned on that play at all....
YALTA, December 3, 1898.
Your last letter has given me great pleasure. I thank you with all my heart. “Uncle Vanya” was written long, long ago; I have never seen it on the stage. Of late years it has often been produced at provincial theatres. I feel cold about my plays as a rule; I gave up the theatre long ago, and feel no desire now to write for the stage.
You ask what is my opinion of your stories. My opinion? The talent is unmistakable and it is a real, great talent. For instance, in the story “In the Steppe” it is expressed with extraordinary vigour, and I actually felt a pang of envy that it was not I who had written it. You are an artist, a clever man, you feel superbly, you are plastic—that is, when you describe a thing you see it and you touch it with your hands. That is real art. There is my opinion for you, and I am very glad I can express it to you. I am, I repeat, very glad, and if we could meet and talk for an hour or two you would be convinced of my high appreciation of you and of the hopes I am building on your gifts.
Shall I speak now of defects? But that is not so easy. To speak of the defects of a talent is like speaking of the defects of a great tree growing in the garden; what is chiefly in question, you see, is not the tree itself but the tastes of the man who is looking at it. Is not that so?
I will begin by saying that to my mind you have not enough restraint. You are like a spectator at the theatre who expresses his transports with so little restraint that he prevents himself and other people from listening. This lack of restraint is particularly felt in the descriptions of nature with which you interrupt your dialogues; when one reads those descriptions one wishes they were more compact, shorter, put into two or three lines. The frequent mention of tenderness, whispering, velvetiness, and so on, give those descriptions a rhetorical and monotonous character—and they make one feel cold and almost exhaust one. The lack of restraint is felt also in the descriptions of women (“Malva,” “On the Raft”) and love scenes. It is not vigour, not breadth of touch, but just lack of restraint. Then there is the frequent use of words quite unsuitable in stories of your type. “Accompaniment,” “disc,” “harmony,” such words spoil the effect. You often talk of waves. There is a strained feeling and a sort of circumspection in your descriptions of educated people; that is not because you have not observed educated people sufficiently, you know them, but you don’t seem to know from what side to approach them.
How old are you? I don’t know you, I don’t know where you came from or who you are, but it seems to me that while you are still young you ought to leave Nizhni and spend two or three years rubbing shoulders with literature and literary people; not to learn to crow like the rest of us and to sharpen your wits, but to take the final plunge head first into literature and to grow to love it. Besides, the provinces age a man early. Korolenko, Potapenko, Mamin, Ertel, are first-rate men; you would perhaps at first feel their company rather boring, but in a year or two you would grow used to them and appreciate them as they deserve, and their society would more than repay you for the disagreeableness and inconvenience of life in the capital....
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 “acollegiate assessor,” and “acaptainof the secondrank” 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....
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....
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....
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....
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. [Footnote: Melihovo.]
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....
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, [Footnote: From Suvorin.] 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....
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....
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....
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....
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 [Footnote: In Hauptmann’s “Lonely Lives.”] 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....
YALTA, January 2, 1900.
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 toZhizn. 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.
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, [Footnote: An actor at the Art Theatre at that time playing Johannes in Hauptmann’s “Lonely Lives.”] 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 Vremyahighly 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 ofZhizn. 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 with us. Over my fireplace he has painted a moonlight night in the hayfield, cocks of hay, forest in the distance, a moon reigning on high above it all.
Well, the best of health to you, dear, wonderful actress. I have been pining for you.
And when are you going to send me your photograph? What treachery!
YALTA, January 8, 1900.
... My health is not so bad. I feel better than I did last year, but yet the doctors won’t let me leave Yalta. I am as tired and sick of this charming town as of a disagreeable wife. It’s curing me of tuberculosis, but it’s making me ten years older. If I go to Nice it won’t be before February. I am writing a little; not long ago I sent a long story toZhizn. Money is short, all I have received so far from Marks for the plays is gone by now....
If Prince Baryatinsky is to be judged by his paper, I must own I was unjust to him, for I imagined him very different from what he is. They will shut up his paper, of course, but he will long maintain his reputation as a good journalist. You ask me why theSyeverny Kurieris successful? Because our society is exhausted, hatred has turned it as rank and rotten as grass in a bog, and it has a longing for something fresh, free, light—a desperate longing.
I often see the academician Kondakov here. We talk of the Pushkin section of belles-lettres. As Kondakov will take part in the elections of future academicians, I am trying to hypnotize him, and suggest that they should elect Barantsevitch and Mihailovsky. The former is broken down and worn out. He is unquestionably a literary man, is poverty-stricken in his old age.... An income and rest would be the very thing for him. The latter—that is Mihailovsky—would make a good foundation for the new section, and his election would satisfy three-quarters of the brotherhood. But my hypnotism failed, my efforts came to nothing. The supplementary clauses to the statute are like Tolstoy’s After-word to the Kreutzer Sonata. The academicians have done all they can to protect themselves from literary men, whose society shocks them as the society of the Russian academicians shocked the Germans. Literary men can only be honorary academicians, and that means nothing—it is just the same as being an honorary citizen of the town of Vyazma or Tcherepovets, there is no salary and no vote attached. A clever way out of it! The professors will be elected real academicians, and those of the writers will be elected honorary academicians who do not live in Petersburg, and so cannot be present at the sittings and abuse the professors.
I hear the muezzin calling in the minaret. The Turks are very religious; it’s their fast now, they eat nothing the whole day. They have no religious ladies, that element which makes religion shallow as the sand does the Volga.
You do well to print the martyrology of Russian towns avoided by the extortionate railway contractors. Here is what the famous author Chekhov wrote on the subject in his story “My Life.” [Footnote: Appended to the letter was a printed cutting.] Railway contractors are revengeful people; refuse them a trifle, and they will punish you for it all your life—and it’s their tradition.
Thanks for your letter, thanks for your indulgence.
YALTA, January 18, 1900.
Thank you for your letter. I have long been wanting to write to you, but have never had time, under the load of business and official correspondence. Yesterday was the 17th of January—my name-day, and the day of my election to the Academy. What a lot of telegrams! And what a lot of letters still to come! And I must answer all of them, or posterity will accuse me of not knowing the laws of good manners.
There is news, but I won’t tell you it now (no time), but later on. I am not very well. I was ailing all yesterday. I press your hand heartily. Keep well.
YALTA, January 19, 1900.
In November I wrote a story [Footnote: “In the Ravine.”] fully intending to send it toRusskiya Vyedomosti, but the story lengthened out beyond the sixteen pages, and I had to send it elsewhere. Then Elpatyevsky and I decided to send you a telegram on New Year’s Eve, but there was such a rush and a whirl that we let the right moment slip, and now I send you my New Year wishes. Forgive me my many transgressions. You know how deeply I love and respect you, and if the intervals in our correspondence are prolonged it’s merely external causes that are to blame.
I am alive and almost well. I am often ill, but not for long at a time; and I haven’t once been kept in bed this winter, I keep about though I am ill. I am working harder than I did last year, and I am more bored. It’s bad being without Russia in every way.... All the evergreen trees look as though they were made of tin, and one gets no joy out of them. And one sees nothing interesting, as one has no taste for the local life.
Elpatyevsky and Kondakov are here. The former has run up a huge house for himself which towers above all Yalta; the latter is going to Petersburg to take his seat in the Academy—and is glad to go. Elpatyevsky is cheerful and hearty, always in good spirits, goes out in all weathers, in a summer overcoat; Kondakov is irritably sarcastic, and goes about in a fur coat. Both often come and see me and we speak of you.
V. A. wrote that she had bought a piece of land in Tuapse. Oy-oy! but the boredom there is awful, you know. There are Tchetchentsi and scorpions, and worst of all there are no roads, and there won’t be any for a long time. Of all warm places in Russia the best are on the south coast of the Crimea, there is no doubt of that, whatever they may say about the natural beauties of the Caucasus. I have been lately to Gurzufa, near Pushkin’s rock, and admired the view, although it rained and although I am sick to death of views. In the Crimea it is snugger and nearer to Russia. Let V. A. sell her place in Tuapse or make a present of it to someone, and I will find her a bit of the sea-front with bathing, and a bay, in the Crimea.
When you are in Vosdvizhenka give my respects and greetings to Varvara Alexyevna, Varya, Natasha, and Glyeb. I can fancy how Glyeb and Natasha have grown. Now if only you would all come here for Easter, I could have a look at you all. Don’t forget me, please, and don’t be angry with me. I send you my warmest good wishes. I press your hand heartily and embrace you.
YALTA, January 21, 1900.
... I send you in a registered parcel what I have that seems suitable for children—two stories of the life of a dog. And I think I have nothing else of the sort. I don’t know how to write for children; I write for them once in ten years, and so-called children’s books I don’t like and don’t believe in. Children ought only to be given what is suitable also for grown-up people. Andersen, “The Frigate Pallada,” Gogol, are easily read by children and also by grown-up people. Books should not be written for children, but one ought to know how to choose from what has been written for grown-up people—that is, from real works of art. To be able to select among drugs, and to administer them in suitable doses, is more direct and consistent than trying to invent a special remedy for the patient because he is a child. Forgive the medical comparison. It’s in keeping with the moment, perhaps, as for the last four days I have been occupied with medicine, doctoring my mother and myself. Influenza no doubt. Fever and headache.
If I write anything, I will let you know in due time, but anything I write can only be published by one man—Marks! For anything published by anyone else I have to pay a fine of 5,000 roubles (per signature)....
YALTA, January 22, 1900.
On January 17th I had telegrams from your mother and your brother, from your uncle Alexandr Ivanovitch (signed Uncle Sasha), and from N. N. Sokolovsky. Be so good as to give them my warm thanks and the expression of my sincere feeling for them.
Why don’t you write?—what has happened? Or are you already so fascinated? ... Well, there is no help for it. God be with you!
I am told that in May you will be in Yalta. If that is settled, why shouldn’t you make inquiries beforehand about the theatre? The theatre here is let on lease, and you could not get hold of it without negotiating with the tenant, Novikov the actor. If you commission me to do so I would perhaps talk to him about it.
The 17th, my name-day and the day of my election to the Academy, passed dingily and gloomily, as I was unwell. Now I am better, but my mother is ailing. And these little troubles completely took away all taste and inclination for a name-day or election to the Academy, and they, too, have hindered me from writing to you and answering your telegram at the proper time.
Mother is getting better now.
I see the Sredins at times. They come to see us, and I go to them very, very rarely, but still I do go....
So, then, you are not writing to me and not intending to write very soon either.... X. is to blame for all that. I understand you!
I kiss your little hand.
YALTA, January 24, 1900.
Roche asks me to send him the passages from “Peasants” which were cut out by the Censor, but there were no such passages. There is one chapter which has not appeared in the magazine, nor in the book. It was a conversation of the peasants about religion and government. But there is no need to send that chapter to Paris, as indeed there was no need to translate “Peasants” into French at all.
I thank you most sincerely for the photograph; Ryepin’s illustration is an honour I had not expected or dreamed of. It will be very pleasant to have the original; tell Ilya Efimovitch [Footnote: Ryepin, who was, at the request of Roche, the French translator, illustrating the French edition of Chekhov’s “Peasants.”] that I shall expect it with impatience, and that he cannot change his mind now, as I have already bequeathed the original to the town of Taganrog—in which, by the way, I was born.
In your letter you speak of Gorky: how do you like Gorky? I don’t like everything he writes, but there are things I like very, very much, and to my mind there is not a shadow of doubt that Gorky is made of the dough of which artists are made. He is the real thing. He’s a fine man, clever, thinking, and thoughtful. But there is a lot of unnecessary ballast upon him and in him—for example, his provincialism....
Thanks very much for your letter, for remembering me. I am dull here, I am sick of it, and I have a feeling as though I have been thrown overboard. And the weather’s bad too, and I am not well. I still go on coughing. All good wishes.
YALTA, January 28, 1900.
... I can’t make out what Tolstoy’s illness is. Tcherinov has sent me no answer, and from what I read in the papers and what you write me now I can draw no conclusion. Ulcers in the stomach and intestines would give different indications: they are not present, or there have been a few bleeding wounds caused by gall-stones which have passed and lacerated the walls. There is no cancer either. It would have shown itself first in the appetite, in the general condition, and above all the face would have betrayed cancer if he had had it. The most likely thing is that L. N. is in good health (apart from the gall-stones), and will live another twenty years. His illness frightened me, and kept me on tenter-hooks. I am afraid of Tolstoy’s death. If he were to die there would be a big empty place in my life. To begin with, because I have never loved any man as much as him. I am not a believing man, but of all beliefs I consider his the nearest and most akin to me. Secondly, while Tolstoy is in literature it is easy and pleasant to be a literary man; even recognizing that one has done nothing and never will do anything is not so dreadful, since Tolstoy will do enough for all. His work is the justification of the enthusiasms and expectations built upon literature. Thirdly, Tolstoy takes a firm stand, he has an immense authority, and so long as he is alive, bad tastes in literature, vulgarity of every kind, insolent and lachrymose, all the bristling, exasperated vanities will be in the far background, in the shade. Nothing but his moral authority is capable of maintaining a certain elevation in the moods and tendencies of literature so called. Without him they would be a flock without a shepherd, or a hotch-potch, in which it would be difficult to discriminate anything.
To finish with Tolstoy, I have something to say about “Resurrection,” which I have read not piecemeal, in parts, but as a whole, at one go. It is a remarkable artistic production. The least interesting part is all that is said of Nehludov’s relations with Katusha; and the most interesting the princes, the generals, the aunts, the peasants, the convicts, the warders. The scene in the house of the General in command of the Peter-Paul Fortress, the spiritualist, I read with a throbbing heart—it is so good! And Madame Kortchagin in the easy chair; and the peasant, the husband of Fedosya! The peasant calls his grandmother “an artful one.” That’s just what Tolstoy’s pen is—an artful one. There’s no end to the novel, what there is you can’t call an end. To write and write, and then to throw the whole weight of it on a text from the Gospel, that is quite in the theological style. To settle it all by a text from the Gospel is as arbitrary as dividing the convicts into five classes. Why into five and not into ten? He must make us believe in the Gospel, in its being the truth, and then settle it all by texts.
... They write about Tolstoy as old women talk about a crazy saint, all sorts of unctuous nonsense; it’s a mistake for him to talk to those people....
They have elected Tolstoy [Footnote: An honorary Academician.]—against the grain. According to notions there, he is a Nihilist. Anyway, that’s what he was called by a lady, the wife of an actual privy councillor, and I heartily congratulate him upon it....