Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends
not very well. I was ailing all yesterday. I press your hand heartily. Keep
well.
TO V. M. SOBOLEVSKY.
YALTA,
January 19, 1900.
DEAR VASSILY MIHAILOVITCH,
In November I wrote a story [Footnote: “In the Ravine.”] fully intending to
send it to _Russkiya 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.
TO G. I. ROSSOLIMO.
YALTA,
January 21, 1900.
DEAR GRIGORY IVANOVITCH,
... 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)....
TO O. L. KNIPPER.
YALTA,
January 22, 1900.
DEAR ACTRESS,
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.
TO F. D. BATYUSHKOV.
YALTA,
January 24, 1900.
MUCH RESPECTED F. D.,
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.
TO M. O. MENSHIKOV.
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....
TO L. S. MIZINOV.
YALTA,
January 29, 1900.
DEAR LIRA,
They have written to me that you have grown very fat and become dignified,
and I did not expect that you would remember me and write to me. But you
have remembered me--and thank you very much for it, dear. You write nothing
about your health: evidently it’s not bad, and I am glad. I hope your
mother is well and that everything is going on all right. I am nearly well;
I am ill from time to time, but not often, and only because I am old--the
bacilli have nothing to do with it. And when I see a lovely woman now I
smile in an aged way, and drop my lower lip--that’s all.
* * * * *
Lika, I am dreadfully bored in Yalta. My life does not run or flow, but
crawls along. Don’t forget me; write to me now and then, anyway. In your
letters just as in your life you are a very interesting woman. I press your
hand warmly.
TO GORKY.
YALTA,
February 3, 1900.
DEAR ALEXEY MAXIMOVITCH,
Thank you for your letter, for the lines about Tolstoy and about “Uncle
Vanya,” which I haven’t seen on the stage; thanks altogether for not
forgetting me. Here in this blessed Yalta one could hardly keep alive
without letters. The idleness, the idiotic winter with the temperature