Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends
impression. It was noticed that at the time of the sentence Dreyfus behaved
like a decent well-disciplined officer, while those present at the
sentence, the journalists for instance, shouted at him, “Hold your tongue,
Judas,”--that is, behaved badly and indecently. Everyone came back from the
sentence dissatisfied and with a troubled conscience. Dreyfus’ counsel
Demange, an honest man, who even during the preliminary stages of the trial
felt that something shifty was being done behind the scenes, was
particularly dissatisfied--and then the experts who, to convince themselves
that they had not made a mistake, kept talking of nothing but Dreyfus, of
his being guilty, and kept wandering all over Paris! ...
Of the experts one turned out to be mad, the author of a monstrously absurd
project; two were eccentric creatures.
People could not help talking of the Intelligence Department at the War
Office, that military consistory which is employed in hunting for spies and
reading other people’s letters; it began to be said that the head of that
Department, Sandhen, was suffering from progressive paralysis; Paty de Clam
has shown himself to be something after the style of Tausch of Berlin;
Picquart suddenly took his departure mysteriously, causing a lot of talk.
All at once a series of gross judicial blunders came to light. By degrees
people became convinced that Dreyfus had been condemned on the strength of
a secret document, which had been shown neither to the accused man nor his
defending counsel, and decent law-abiding people saw in this a fundamental
breach of justice. If the latter were the work not simply of Wilhelm, but
of the centre of the solar system, it ought to have been shown to Demange.
All sorts of guesses were made as to the contents of this letter, the most
impossible stories circulated. Dreyfus was an officer, the military were
suspect; Dreyfus was a Jew, the Jews were suspect. People began talking
about militarism, about the Jews. Such utterly disreputable people as
Drumont held up their heads; little by little they stirred up a regular
pother on a substratum of anti-semitism, on a substratum that smelt of the
shambles. When something is wrong with us we look for the causes outside
ourselves, and readily find them. “It’s the Frenchman’s nastiness, it’s the
Jews’, it’s Wilhelm’s.” Capital, brimstone, the freemasons, the Syndicate,
the Jesuits--they are all bogeys, but how they relieve our uneasiness! They
are of course a bad sign. Since the French have begun talking about the
Jews, about the Syndicate, it shows they are feeling uncomfortable, that
there is a worm gnawing at them, that they feel the need of these bogeys to
soothe their over-excited conscience.
Then this Esterhazy, a duellist, in the style of Turgenev’s duellists, an
insolent ruffian, who had long been an object of suspicion, and was not
respected by his comrades; the striking resemblance of his handwriting with
that of the _bordereau,_ the Uhlan’s letters, his threats which for some
reason he does not carry out; finally the judgment, utterly mysterious,
strangely deciding that the _bordereau_ was written in Esterhazy’s
handwriting but not by his hand! ... And the gas has been continually
accumulating, there has come to be a feeling of acute tension, of
overwhelming oppression. The fighting in the court was a purely nervous
manifestation, simply the hysterical result of that tension, and Zola’s
letter and his trial are a manifestation of the same kind. What would you
have? The best people, always in advance of the nation, were bound to be
the first to raise an agitation--and so it has been. The first to speak was
Scherer-Kestner, of whom Frenchmen who know him intimately (according to
Kovalevsky) say that he is a “sword-blade,” so spotless and without blemish
is he. The second is Zola, and now he is being tried.
Yes, Zola is not Voltaire, and we are none of us Voltaires, but there are
in life conjunctions of circumstances when the reproach that we are not
Voltaires is least of all appropriate. Think of Korolenko, who defended the
Multanovsky natives and saved them from penal servitude. Dr. Haas is not a
Voltaire either, and yet his wonderful life has been well spent up to the
end.
I am well acquainted with the case from the stenographers’ report, which
is utterly different from what is in the newspapers, and I have a clear
view of Zola. The chief point is that he is sincere--that is, he bases
his judgments simply on what he sees, and not on phantoms like the
others. And sincere people can be mistaken, no doubt of it, but such
mistakes do less harm than calculated insincerity, prejudgments, or
political considerations. Let Dreyfus be guilty, and Zola is still
right, since it is the duty of writers not to accuse, not to prosecute,
but to champion even the guilty once they have been condemned and are
enduring punishment. I shall be told: “What of the political position?
The interests of the State?” But great writers and artists ought to take
part in politics only so far as they have to protect themselves from
politics. There are plenty of accusers, prosecutors, and gendarmes
without them, and in any case, the role of Paul suits them better than
that of Saul. Whatever the verdict may be, Zola will anyway experience a
vivid delight after the trial, his old age will be a fine old age, and
he will die with a conscience at peace, or at any rate greatly solaced.
The French are very sick. They clutch at every word of comfort and at
every genuine reproach coming to them from outside. That is why
Bernstein’s letter and our Zakrevsky’s article (which was read here in
the Novosti) have had such a great success here, and why they are so
disgusted by abuse of Zola, such as the gutter press, which they
despise, flings at him every day. However neurotic Zola may be, still he
stands before the court of French common sense, and the French love him
for it and are proud of him, even though they do applaud the Generals
who, in the simplicity of their hearts, scare them first with the honour
of the army, then with war....
TO HIS BROTHER ALEXANDR.
NICE,
February 23, 1898.
... _Novoye Vremya_ has 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 the _cactuses_ to print Zola’s novel _for nothing_ in 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....
TO HIS BROTHER MIHAIL.
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....
TO GORKY.
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