Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends
collaborated with Glinka in writing “Ruslan and Liudmila.” He was a friend
of Pushkin, but has never read him. He has not read a single book in his
life. When it is suggested to him that he should read something he answers,
“Why should I read when I have opinions of my own?” I spent a whole day in
his house and had dinner there. The dinner was fearfully long, with endless
toasts. By the way, at that dinner I was introduced to the lady doctor,
wife of the well-known professor. She is a fat, bulky piece of flesh. If
she were undressed and painted green she would look just like a frog. After
talking to her I mentally scratched her off the list of women doctors....
* * * * *
TO HIS BROTHER MIHAIL.
July 28, 1888.
On the Seas Black, Caspian, and of Life.
... A wretched little cargo steamer, _Dir_, is racing full steam from
Suhum to Poti. It is about midnight. The little cabin--the only one in the
steamer--is insufferably hot and stuffy. There is a smell of burning, of
rope, of fish and of the sea. One hears the engine going “Boom-boom-boom.”
... There are devils creaking up aloft and under the floor. The darkness is
swaying in the cabin and the bed rocks up and down.... One’s stomach’s
whole attention is concentrated on the bed, and, as though to find its
level, it rolls the Seltzer water I had drunk right up to my throat and
then lets it down to my heels. Not to be sick over my clothes in the dark I
hastily put on my things and go out.... It is dark. My feet stumble against
some invisible iron bars, a rope; wherever you step there are barrels,
sacks, rags. There is coal dust under foot. In the dark I knock against a
kind of grating: it is a cage with wild goats which I saw in the daytime.
They are awake and anxiously listening to the rocking of the boat. By the
cage sit two Turks who are not asleep either.... I grope my way up the
stairs to the captain’s bridge.... A warm but violent and unpleasant wind
tries to blow away my cap.... The steamer rocks. The mast in front of the
captain’s bridge sways regularly and leisurely like a metronome; I try to
look away from it, but my eyes will not obey me and, just like my stomach,
insist on following moving objects.... The sky and the sea are dark, the
shore is not in sight, the deck looks a dark blur ... there is not a single
light.
Behind me is a window ... I look into it and see a man who looks
attentively at something and turns a wheel with an expression as though he
were playing the ninth symphony.... Next to me stands the little stout
captain in tan shoes.... He talks to me of Caucasian emigrants, of the
heat, of winter storms, and at the same time looks intently into the dark
distance in the direction of the shore.
“You seem to be going too much to the left again,” he says to someone; or,
“There ought to be lights here.... Do you see them?”
“No, sir,” someone answers from the dark.
“Climb up and look.”
A dark figure appears on the bridge and leisurely climbs up. In a minute we
hear:
“Yes, sir.”
I look to the left where the lights of the lighthouse are supposed to be,
borrow the captain’s glasses, but see nothing.... Half an hour passes, then
an hour. The mast sways regularly, the devils creak, the wind makes dashes
at my cap.... It is not pitch dark, but one feels uneasy.
Suddenly the captain dashes off somewhere to the rear of the ship, crying,
“You devil’s doll!”
“To the left,” he shouts anxiously at the top of his voice. “To the left!
... To the right! A-va-va-a!”
Incomprehensible words of command are heard. The steamer starts, the devils
give a creak.... “A-va-va!” shouts the captain; at the bows a bell is rung,
on the black deck there are sounds of running, knocking, cries of
anxiety.... The _Dir_ starts once more, puffs painfully, and apparently
tries to move backwards.
“What is it?” I ask, and feel something like a faint terror. There is no
answer.
“He’d like a collision, the devil’s doll!” I hear the captain’s harsh
shout. “To the left!”
Red lights appear in front, and suddenly among the uproar is heard the
whistling, not of the _Dir_, but of some other steamer.... Now I understand
it: there is going to be a collision! The _Dir_ puffs, trembles, and does
not move, as though waiting for a signal to go down.... But just when I
think all is lost, the red lights appear on the left of us, and the dark
silhouette of a steamer can be discerned.... A long black body sails past
us, guiltily blinks its red eyes, and gives a guilty whistle....
“Oof! What steamer is it?” I ask the captain.
The captain looks at the silhouette through his glasses and replies:
“It is the _Tweedie_.”
After a pause we begin to talk of the _Vesta_, which collided with two
steamers and went down. Under the influence of this conversation the sea,
the night and the wind begin to seem hideous, created on purpose for man’s
undoing, and I feel sorry as I look at the fat little captain.... Something
whispers to me that this poor man, too, will sooner or later sink to the
bottom and be choked with salt water. [Footnote: Chekhov’s presentiment
about the captain was partly fulfilled: that very autumn the _Dir_ was
wrecked on the shores of Alupka.]
I go back to my cabin.... It is stuffy, and there is a smell of cooking. My
travelling companion, Suvorin-_fils_, is asleep already.... I take off
all my clothes and go to bed.... The darkness sways to and fro, the bed
seems to breathe.... Boom-boom-boom! Bathed in perspiration, breathless,
and feeling an oppression all over with the rocking, I ask myself, “What am
I here for?”
I wake up. It is no longer dark. Wet all over, with a nasty taste in my
mouth, I dress and go out. Everything is covered with dew.... The wild
goats look with human eyes through the grating of their cage and seem to be
asking “Why are we here?” The captain stands still as before and looks
intently into the distance....
A mountainous shore stretches on the left.... Elborus is seen from behind
the mountains.
A blurred sun rises in the sky.... One can see the green valley of Rion and
the Bay of Poti by the side of it.
TO N. A. LEIKIN.
SUMY,
August 12.
... I have been to the Crimea. I spent twelve days at Suvorin’s in
Feodosia, bathed, idled about; I have been to Aivazovsky’s estate. From
Feodosia I went by steamer to Batum. On the way I spent half a day at
Suhum--a charming little town buried in luxuriant, un-Russian greenery, and
one day at the Monastery, at New Athos. It is so lovely there at New Athos
that there is no describing it: waterfalls, eucalyptuses, tea-plants,
cypresses, olive-trees, and, above all, sea and mountains, mountains,
mountains. From Athos and Suhum I went to Poti; the River Rion, renowned
for its valley and its sturgeons, is close by. The vegetation is luxuriant.
All the streets are planted with poplars. Batum is a big commercial and
military, foreign-looking, _cafe’-chantant_ sort of town; you feel in it at
every step that we have conquered the Turks. There is nothing special about
it (except a great number of brothels), but the surrounding country is
charming. Particularly fine is the road to Kars and the swift river
Tchoraksu.
The road from Batum to Tiflis is poetical and original; you look all the
time out of window and exclaim: there are mountains, tunnels, rocks,
rivers, waterfalls, big and little. But the road from Tiflis to Baku is the
abomination of desolation, a bald plain, covered with sand and created for
Persians, tarantulas, and phalangas to live in. There is not a single tree,
there is no grass ... dreary as hell.... Baku and the Caspian Sea are such
rotten places that I would not agree to live there for a million. There are
no roofs, there are no trees either; Persian faces everywhere, fifty
degrees Reaumur of heat, a smell of kerosine, the naphtha-soaked mud
squelches under one’s feet, the drinking water is salt.
... You have seen the Caucasus. I believe you have seen the Georgian
Military Road, too. If you have not been there yet, pawn your wives and
children and the _Oskolki_ [Translator’s Note: _Oskolki_, (i.e., “Chips,”
“Bits”) the paper of which Leikin was editor.] and go. I have never in my
life seen anything like it. It is not a road, but unbroken poetry, a
wonderful, fantastic story written by the Demon in love with Tamara.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
SUMY,
August 29, 1888.
... When as a boy I used to stay at my grandfather’s on Count Platov’s
estate, I had to sit from sunrise to sunset by the thrashing machine and
write down the number of _poods_ and pounds of corn that had been
thrashed; the whistling, the hissing, and the bass note, like the sound of
a whirling top, that the machine makes at full speed, the creaking of the
wheels, the lazy tread of the oxen, the clouds of dust, the grimy,
perspiring faces of some three score of men--all this has stamped itself
upon my memory like the Lord’s Prayer. And now, too, I have been spending
hours at the thrashing and felt intensely happy. When the thrashing engine
is at work it looks as though alive; it has a cunning, playful expression,
while the men and oxen look like machines. In the district of Mirgorod few
have thrashing machines of their own, but everyone can hire one. The engine
goes about the whole province drawn by six oxen and offers itself to all
who can pay for it.
* * * * *
MOSCOW,
September 11.
... You advise me not to hunt after two hares, and not to think of medical
work. I do not know why one should not hunt two hares even in the literal
sense.... I feel more confident and more satisfied with myself when I
reflect that I have two professions and not one. Medicine is my lawful wife
and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night
with the other. Though it’s disorderly, it’s not so dull, and besides
neither of them loses anything from my infidelity. If I did not have my
medical work I doubt if I could have given my leisure and my spare thoughts
to literature. There is no discipline in me.
* * * * *
MOSCOW,
October 27, 1888.
... In conversation with my literary colleagues I always insist that it is
not the artist’s business to solve problems that require a specialist’s
knowledge. It is a bad thing if a writer tackles a subject he does not
understand. We have specialists for dealing with special questions: it is
their business to judge of the commune, of the future of capitalism, of the
evils of drunkenness, of boots, of the diseases of women. An artist must
only judge of what he understands, his field is just as limited as that of
any other specialist--I repeat this and insist on it always. That in his
sphere there are no questions, but only answers, can only be maintained by
those who have never written and have had no experience of thinking in
images. An artist observes, selects, guesses, combines--and this in itself
presupposes a problem: unless he had set himself a problem from the very
first there would be nothing to conjecture and nothing to select. To put it
briefly, I will end by using the language of psychiatry: if one denies that
creative work involves problems and purposes, one must admit that an artist
creates without premeditation or intention, in a state of aberration;
therefore, if an author boasted to me of having written a novel without a
preconceived design, under a sudden inspiration, I should call him mad.
You are right in demanding that an artist should take an intelligent
attitude to his work, but you confuse two things: _solving a problem_ and
_stating a problem correctly_. It is only the second that is obligatory for
the artist. In “Anna Karenin” and “Evgeny Onyegin” not a single problem is