Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends
command) from the Tsar on the subject and are waiting for their chiefs to
be baptized ... (by force--be it understood). This eloquent pontifex says,
too, that the native priests ought, in view of their ascetic manner of
life, to be removed from the natives and put into special institutions
somewhat after the fashion of monasteries. A nice set of people and no
mistake! They have wasted two million roubles, they send out every year
from the academy dozens of missionaries who cost the treasury and the
people large sums, yet they cannot convert the natives, and what is more,
want the police and the military to help them with fire and sword....
If you have Madame Tsebrikov’s article, do not trouble to send it. Such
articles give no information and only waste time; I want facts. Indeed, in
Russia there is a terrible poverty of facts, and a terrible abundance of
reflections of all sorts.
February 28.
... To-morrow is spring, and within ten to fifteen days the larks will come
back. But alas!--the coming spring seems strange to me, for I am going away
from it.
In Sahalin there is very good fish, but there are no hot drinks....
Our geologists, ichthyologists, zoologists and so on, are fearfully
uneducated people. They write such a vile jargon that it not only bores one
to read it, but one actually has at times to remodel the sentences before
one can understand them; on the other hand, they have solemnity and
earnestness enough and to spare. It’s really beastly....
March 4.
I have sent you to-day two stories: Filippov’s (he was here yesterday) and
Yezhov’s. I have not had time to read the latter, and I think it is as well
to say, once for all, that I am not responsible for what I send you. My
handwriting on the address does not mean that I like the story.
Poor Yezhov has been to see me; he sat near the table crying: his young
wife is in consumption. He must take her at once to the south. To my
question whether he had money he answered that he had.... It’s vile
catch-cold weather; the sky itself is sneezing. I can’t bear to look at
it.... I have already begun writing of Sahalin. I have written five pages.
It reads all right, as though written with intelligence and authority ... I
quote foreign authors second-hand, but minutely and in a tone as though I
could speak every foreign language perfectly. It’s regular swindling.
Yezhov has upset me with his tears. He reminded me of something, and I was
sorry for him too.
Don’t forget us sinners.
TO N. M. LINTVARYOV.
MOSCOW,
March 5, 1890.
... As for me, I have a cough too, but I am alive and I believe I’m well.
I shan’t be with you this summer, as I am going in April, on affairs of my
own, to the island of Sahalin, and shall not be back till December. I am
going across Siberia (eleven thousand versts) and shall come back by sea.
I believe Misha wrote to you as though someone were commissioning me to go,
but that’s nonsense. I am commissioning myself to go, on my own account.
There are lots of bears and escaped convicts in Sahalin, so that in case
_messieurs_ the wild beasts dine off me or some tramp cuts my throat,
I beg you not to remember evil against me.
Of course if I have the time and the skill to write what I want to about
Sahalin, I shall send you the book immediately that it comes into the
world; it will be dull, a specialist’s book consisting of nothing but
figures, but let me count upon your indulgence: you will suppress your
yawns as you read it....
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
MOSCOW,
March 9.
About Sahalin we are both mistaken, but you probably more than I. I am
going in the full conviction that my visit will furnish no contribution
of value either to literature or science: I have neither the knowledge,
nor the time, nor the ambition for that. I have neither the plans of a
Humboldt nor of a Kennan. I want to write some 100 to 200 pages, and so
do something, however little, for medical science, which, as you are
aware, I have neglected shockingly. Possibly I shall not succeed in
writing anything, but still the expedition does not lose its charm for
me: reading, looking about me, and listening, I shall learn a great deal
and gain experience. I have not yet travelled, but thanks to the books
which I have been compelled to read, I have learned a great deal which
anyone ought to be flogged for not knowing, and which I was so ignorant
as not to have known before. Moreover, I imagine the journey will be six
months of incessant hard work, physical and mental, and that is essential
for me, for I am a Little Russian and have already begun to be lazy. I
must take myself in hand. My expedition may be nonsense, obstinacy, a
craze, but think a moment and tell me what I am losing if I go. Time?
Money? Shall I suffer hardships? My time is worth nothing; money I never
have anyway; as for hardships, I shall travel with horses, twenty-five to
thirty days, not more, all the rest of the time I shall be sitting on the
deck of a steamer or in a room, and shall be continually bombarding you
with letters.
Suppose the expedition gives me nothing, yet surely there will be 2 or 3
days out of the whole journey which I shall remember all my life with
ecstasy or bitterness, etc., etc.... So that’s how it is, sir. All that is
unconvincing, but you know you write just as unconvincingly. For instance,
you say that Sahalin is of no use and no interest to anyone. Can that be
true? Sahalin can be useless and uninteresting only to a society which does
not exile thousands of people to it and does not spend millions of roubles
on it. Except Australia in the past and Cayenne, Sahalin is the only place
where one can study colonization by convicts; all Europe is interested in
it, and is it no use to us? Not more than 25 to 30 years ago our Russians
exploring Sahalin performed amazing feats which exalt them above humanity,
and that’s no use to us: we don’t know what those men were, and simply sit
within four walls and complain that God has made man amiss. Sahalin is a
place of the most unbearable sufferings of which man, free and captive, is
capable. Those who work near it and upon it have solved fearful,
responsible problems, and are still solving them. I am not sentimental, or
I would say that we ought to go to places like Sahalin to worship as the
Turks go to Mecca, and that sailors and gaolers ought to think of the
prison in Sahalin as military men think of Sevastopol. From the books I
have read and am reading, it is evident that we have sent _millions_
of men to rot in prison, have destroyed them--casually, without thinking,
barbarously; we have driven men in fetters through the cold ten thousand
versts, have infected them with syphilis, have depraved them, have
multiplied criminals, and the blame for all this we have thrown upon the
gaolers and red-nosed superintendents. Now all educated Europe knows that
it is not the superintendents that are to blame, but all of us; yet that
has nothing to do with us, it is not interesting. The vaunted sixties did
_nothing_ for the sick and for prisoners, so breaking the chief
commandment of Christian civilization. In our day something is being done
for the sick, nothing for prisoners; prison management is entirely without
interest for our jurists. No, I assure you that Sahalin is of use and of
interest to us, and the only thing to regret is that I am going there, and
not someone else who knows more about it and would be more able to rouse
public interest. Nothing much will come of my going there.
* * * * *
There have been disturbances among the students on a grand scale here. It
began with the Petrovsky Academy, where the authorities forbade the
students to take young ladies to their rooms, suspecting the ladies of
politics as well as of prostitution. From the Academy it spread to the
University, where now the students, surrounded by fully armed and mounted
Hectors and Achilleses with lances, make the following demands:
1. Complete autonomy for the universities.
2. Complete freedom of teaching.
3. Free right of entrance to the university without distinction of
religious denomination, nationality, sex, and social position.
4. Right of entrance to the university for the Jews without restriction,
and equal rights for them with the other students.
5. Freedom of meeting and recognition of the students’ associations.
6. The establishment of a university and students’ tribunal.
7. The abolition of the police duties of the inspectors.
8. Lowering of the fees for instruction.
This I copied from a manifesto, with some abbreviations.
TO I. L. SHTCHEGLOV.
MOSCOW,
March 22, 1890.
My greetings, dear Jean! Thanks for your long letter and for the good will
of which it is full from beginning to end. I shall be delighted to read
your military story. Will it come out in the Easter number? It is a long
time since I read anything of yours or my own. You say that you want to
give me a harsh scolding “especially on the score of morality and art,” you
speak vaguely of my crimes as deserving friendly censure, and threaten me
with “an influential newspaper criticism.” If you scratch out the word
“art,” the whole phrase in quotation marks becomes clearer, but gains a
significance which, to tell the truth, perplexes me not a little. Jean,
what is it? How is one to understand it? Can I really be different in my
ideas of morality from people like you, and so much so as to deserve
censure and even an influential article? I cannot take it that you mean
some subtle higher morality, as there are no lower, higher, or medium
moralities, but only one which Jesus Christ gave us, and which now prevents
you and me and Barantsevitch from stealing, insulting, lying, and so on. If
I can trust the ease of my conscience, I have never by word or deed, in
thought, or in my stories, or in my farces, coveted my neighbour’s wife,
nor his man, nor his ox, nor any of his cattle, I have not stolen, nor been
a hypocrite, I have not flattered the great nor sought their favour, I have
not blackmailed, nor lived at other people’s expense. It is true I have
waxed wanton and slothful, have laughed heedlessly, have eaten too much and
drunk too much and been profligate. But all that is a personal matter, and
all that does not deprive me of the right to think that, as far as morals
are concerned, I am nothing out of the ordinary, one way or the other.
Nothing heroic and nothing scoundrelly--I am just like everyone else; I
have many sins, but I am quits with morality, as I pay for those sins with
interest in the discomforts they bring with them. If you want to abuse me
cruelly because I am not a hero, you’d better throw your cruelty out of the
window, and instead of abuse, let me hear your charming tragic
laugh--that’s better.
But of the word “art” I am terrified, as merchants’ wives are terrified of
“brimstone.” When people talk to me of what is artistic and inartistic, of
what is dramatic and not dramatic, of tendency, realism, and so on, I am
bewildered, hesitatingly assent, and answer with banal half-truths not
worth a brass farthing. I divide all works into two classes: those I like
and those I don’t. I have no other criterion, and if you ask me why I like
Shakespeare and don’t like Zlatovratsky, I don’t venture to answer. Perhaps
in time and as I grow wiser I may work out some criterion, but meanwhile
all conversations about what is “artistic” only weary me, and seem to me
like a continuation of the scholastic disputations with which people
wearied themselves in the middle ages.
If criticism, on the authority of which you rely, knows what you and I
don’t know, why has it up till now not spoken? why does it not reveal the