Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends
solved, but they satisfy you completely because all the problems are
correctly stated in them. It is the business of the judge to put the right
questions, but the answers must be given by the jury according to their own
lights.
* * * * *
... You say that the hero of my “Party” is a character worth developing.
Good Lord! I am not a senseless brute, you know, I understand that. I
understand that I cut the throats of my characters and spoil them, and that
I waste good material.... To tell you the truth, I would gladly have spent
six months over the “Party”; I like taking things easy, and see no
attraction in publishing at headlong speed. I would willingly, with
pleasure, with feeling, in a leisurely way, describe the _whole_ of my
hero, describe the state of his mind while his wife was in labour, his
trial, the horrid feeling he has after he is acquitted; I would describe
the midwife and the doctors having tea in the middle of the night, I would
describe the rain.... It would give me nothing but pleasure because I like
to rummage about and dawdle. But what am I to do? I begin a story on
September 10th with the thought that I must finish it by October 5th at the
latest; if I don’t I shall fail the editor and be left without money. I let
myself go at the beginning and write with an easy mind; but by the time I
get to the middle I begin to grow timid and to fear that my story will be
too long: I have to remember that the _Syeverny Vyestnik_ has not much
money, and that I am one of their expensive contributors. This is why the
beginning of my stories is always very promising and looks as though I were
starting on a novel, the middle is huddled and timid, and the end is, as in
a short sketch, like fireworks. And so in planning a story one is bound to
think first about its framework: from a crowd of leading or subordinate
characters one selects one person only--wife or husband; one puts him on
the canvas and paints him alone, making him prominent, while the others one
scatters over the canvas like small coin, and the result is something like
the vault of heaven: one big moon and a number of very small stars around
it. But the moon is not a success because it can only be understood if the
stars too are intelligible, and the stars are not worked out. And so what I
produce is not literature, but something like the patching of Trishka’s
coat. What am I to do? I don’t know, I don’t know. I must trust to time
which heals all things.
To tell the truth again, I have not yet begun my literary work, though I
have received a literary prize. Subjects for five stories and two novels
are languishing in my head. One of the novels was thought of long ago, and
some of the characters have grown old without managing to be written. In my
head there is a whole army of people asking to be let out and waiting for
the word of command. All that I have written so far is rubbish in
comparison with what I should like to write and should write with rapture.
It is all the same to me whether I write “The Party” or “The Lights,” or a
vaudeville or a letter to a friend--it is all dull, spiritless, mechanical,
and I get annoyed with critics who attach any importance to “The Lights,”
for instance. I fancy that I deceive him with my work just as I deceive
many people with my face, which looks serious or over-cheerful. I don’t
like being successful; the subjects which sit in my head are annoyed and
jealous of what has already been written. I am vexed that the rubbish has
been done and the good things lie about in the lumber-room like old books.
Of course, in thus lamenting I rather exaggerate, and much of what I say is
only my fancy, but there is a part of the truth in it, a good big part of
it. What do I call good? The images which seem best to me, which I love and
jealously guard lest I spend and spoil them for the sake of some “Party”
written against time.... If my love is mistaken, I am wrong, but then it
may not be mistaken! I am either a fool and a conceited fellow or I really
am an organism capable of being a good writer. All that I now write
displeases and bores me, but what sits in my head interests, excites and
moves me--from which I conclude that everybody does the wrong thing and I
alone know the secret of doing the right one. Most likely all writers think
that. But the devil himself would break his neck in these problems.
_Money will not help me_ to decide what I am to do and how I am to act. An
extra thousand roubles will not settle matters, and a hundred thousand is a
castle in the air. Besides, when I have money--it may be from lack of
habit, I don’t know--I become extremely careless and idle; the sea seems
only knee-deep to me then.... I need time and solitude.
November, 1888.
In the November number of the _Syeverny Vyestnik_ there is an article by
the poet Merezhkovsky about your humble servant. It is a long article. I
commend to your attention the end of it; it is characteristic. Merezhkovsky
is still very young, a student--of science I believe. Those who have
assimilated the wisdom of the scientific method and learned to think
scientifically experience many alluring temptations. Archimedes wanted to
turn the earth round, and the present day hot-heads want by science to
conceive the inconceivable, to discover the physical laws of creative art,
to detect the laws and the formulae which are instinctively felt by the
artist and are followed by him in creating music, novels, pictures, etc.
Such formulae probably exist in nature. We know that A, B, C, do, re, mi,
fa, sol, are found in nature, and so are curves, straight lines, circles,
squares, green, blue, and red.... We know that in certain combinations all
this produces a melody, or a poem or a picture, just as simple chemical
substances in certain combinations produce a tree, or a stone, or the sea;
but all we know is that the combination exists, while the law of it is
hidden from us. Those who are masters of the scientific method feel in
their souls that a piece of music and a tree have something in common, that
both are built up in accordance with equally uniform and simple laws. Hence
the question: What are these laws? And hence the temptation to work out a
physiology of creative art (like Boborykin), or in the case of younger and
more diffident writers, to base their arguments on nature and on the laws
of nature (Merezhkovsky). There probably is such a thing as the physiology
of creative art, but we must nip in the bud our dreams of discovering it.
If the critics take up a scientific attitude no good will come of it: they
will waste a dozen years, write a lot of rubbish, make the subject more
obscure than ever--and nothing more. It is always a good thing to think
scientifically, but the trouble is that scientific thinking about creative
art will be bound to degenerate in the end into searching for the “cells”
or the “centres” which control the creative faculty. Some stolid German
will discover these cells somewhere in the occipital lobes, another German
will agree with him, a third will disagree, and a Russian will glance
through the article about the cells and reel off an essay about it to the
_Syeverny Vyestnik_. The _Vyestnik Evropi_ will criticize the essay, and
for three years there will be in Russia an epidemic of nonsense which will
give money and popularity to blockheads and do nothing but irritate
intelligent people.
For those who are obsessed with the scientific method and to whom God has
given the rare talent of thinking scientifically, there is to my mind only
one way out--the philosophy of creative art. One might collect together all
the best works of art that have been produced throughout the ages and, with
the help of the scientific method, discover the common element in them
which makes them like one another and conditions their value. That common
element will be the law. There is a great deal that works which are called
immortal have in common; if this common element were excluded from each of
them, a work would lose its charm and its value. So that this universal
something is necessary, and is _the conditio sine qua non_ of every work
that claims to be immortal. It is of more use to young people to write
critical articles than poetry. Merezhkovsky writes smoothly and youthfully,
but at every page he loses heart, makes reservations and concessions, and
this means that he is not clear upon the subject. He calls me a poet, he
styles my stories “novelli” and my heroes “failures”--that is, he follows
the beaten track. It is time to give up these “failures,” superfluous
people, etc., and to think of something original. Merezhkovsky calls my
monk [Translator’s Note: “Easter Eve.”] who composes the songs of praise a
failure. But how is he a failure? God grant us all a life like his: he
believed in God, and he had enough to eat and he had the gift of composing
poetry.... To divide men into the successful and the unsuccessful is to
look at human nature from a narrow, preconceived point of view. Are you a
success or not? Am I? Was Napoleon? Is your servant Vassily? What is the
criterion? One must be a god to be able to tell successes from failures
without making a mistake.
* * * * *
MOSCOW,
November 7, 1888.
... It is not the public that is to blame for our theatres being so
wretched. The public is always and everywhere the same: intelligent and
stupid, sympathetic and pitiless according to mood. It has always been a
flock which needs good shepherds and dogs, and it has always gone in the
direction in which the shepherds and the dogs drove it. You are indignant
that it laughs at flat witticisms and applauds sounding phrases; but then
the very same stupid public fills the house to hear “Othello,” and,
listening to the opera “Evgeny Onyegin,” weeps when Tatyana writes her
letter.
... The water-carrier has stolen from somewhere a Siberian kitten with long
white fur and black eyes, and brought it to us. This kitten takes people
for mice: when it sees anyone it lies flat on its stomach, stalks one’s
feet and rushes at them. This morning as I was pacing up and down the room
it several times stalked me, and _a la tigre_ pounced at my boots. I
imagine the thought of being more terrible than anyone in the house affords
it the greatest delight.
November 11, 1888.
I finished to-day the story [Footnote: “A Nervous Breakdown.”] for the
Garshin _sbornik_: it is such a load off my mind. In this story I have
told my own opinion--which is of no interest to anyone--of such rare men as
Garshin. I have run to almost 2,000 lines. I speak at length about
prostitution, but settle nothing. Why do they write nothing about
prostitution in your paper? It is the most fearful evil, you know. Our
Sobolev street is a regular slave-market.
November 15, 1888.
My “Party” has pleased the ladies. They sing my praises wherever I go. It
really isn’t bad to be a doctor and to understand what one is writing
about. The ladies say the description of the confinement is _true_. In
the story for the Garshin _sbornik_ I have described spiritual agony.
(No date), 1888.
... You say that writers are God’s elect. I will not contradict you.
Shtcheglov calls me the Potyomkin of literature, and so it is not for me to
speak of the thorny path, of disappointments, and so on. I do not know
whether I have ever suffered more than shoemakers, mathematicians, or
railway guards do; I do not know who speaks through my lips--God or someone
worse. I will allow myself to mention only one little drawback which I have
experienced and you probably know from experience also. It is this. You and
I are fond of ordinary people; but other people are fond of us because they