Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends
always above freezing-point, the complete absence of interesting women, the
pig-faces on the sea-front--all this may spoil a man and wear him out in a
very short time. I am tired of it; it seems to me as though the winter had
been going on for ten years.
You have pleurisy. If so, why do you stay on in Nizhni. Why? What do you
want with that Nizhni, by the way? What glue keeps you sticking to that
town? If you like Moscow, as you write, why don’t you live in Moscow? In
Moscow there are theatres and all the rest of it, and, what matters most of
all, Moscow is handy for going abroad; while living in Nizhni you’ll stick
in Nizhni, and never go further than Vasilsursk. You want to see more, to
know more, to have a wider range. Your imagination is quick to seize and
hold, but it is like a big oven which is not provided with fuel enough. One
feels this in general, and in particular in the stories: you present two or
three figures in a story, but these figures stand apart, outside the mass;
one sees that these figures are living in your imagination, but only these
figures--the mass is not grasped. I except from this criticism your Crimean
things (for instance, “My Travelling Companion”), in which, besides the
figures, there is a feeling of the human mass out of which they have come,
and atmosphere and background--everything, in fact. See what a lecture I
am giving you--and all that you may not go on staying in Nizhni. You are a
young man, strong and tough; if I were you I should make a tour in India
and all sorts of places. I would take my degree in two or more faculties--I
would, yes, I would! You laugh, but I do feel so badly treated at being
forty already, at having asthma and all sorts of horrid things which
prevent my living freely. Anyway, be a good fellow and a good comrade, and
don’t be angry with me for preaching at you like a head priest.
Write to me. I look forward to “Foma Gordeyev,” which I haven’t yet read
properly.
There is no news. Keep well, I press your hand warmly.
TO O. L. KNIPPER.
YALTA,
February 10, 1900.
DEAR ACTRESS,
The winter is very cold, I am not well, no one has written to me for nearly
a whole month--and I had made up my mind that there was nothing left for me
but to go abroad, where it is not so dull; but now it has begun to be
warmer, and it’s better, and I have decided that I shall go abroad only at
the end of the summer, for the exhibition.
And you, why are you depressed? What are you depressed about? You are
living, working, hoping, drinking; you laugh when your uncle reads aloud to
you--what more do you want? I am a different matter. I am torn up by the
roots, I am not living a full life, I don’t drink, though I am fond of
drinking; I love noise and don’t hear it--in fact, I am in the condition of
a transplanted tree which is hesitating whether to take root or to begin to
wither. If I sometimes allow myself to complain of boredom, I have some
grounds for doing so--but you? And Meierhold is complaining of the dulness
of his life too. Aie, aie!
By the way, about Meierhold--he ought to spend the whole summer in the
Crimea. His health needs it. Only it must be for the whole summer.
Well, now I am all right again. I am doing nothing because I intend to set
to work. I dig in the garden. You write that for you, little people, the
future is wrapped in mystery. I had a letter from your chief Nemirovitch
not long ago. He writes that the company is going to be in Sevastopol, then
in Yalta at the beginning of May: in Yalta there will be five performances,
then evening rehearsals. Only the precious members of the company will
remain for the rehearsals, the others can have a holiday where they please.
I trust that you are precious. To the director you are precious, to the
author you are priceless. There is a pun for a titbit for you. I won’t
write another word to you till you send me your portrait.
Thank you for your good wishes in regard to my marriage. I have informed my
_fiancee_ of your design of coming to Yalta in order to cut her out a
little. She said that if “that horrid woman” comes to Yalta, she will hold
me tight in her embrace. I observed that to be embraced for so long in hot
weather was not hygienic. She was offended and grew thoughtful, as though
she were trying to guess in what surroundings I had picked up this _facon
de parler_, and after a little while said that the theatre was an evil
and that my intention of writing no more plays was extremely laudable--and
asked me to kiss her. To this I replied that it was not proper for me to be
so free with my kisses now that I am an academician. She burst into tears,
and I went away.
In the spring the company will be in Harkov too. I will come and meet you
then, only don’t talk of that to anyone. Nadyezhda Ivanovna has gone off to
Moscow.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
YALTA,
February 12, 1900.
I have been racking my brains over your fourth act, and have come to no
conclusion except, perhaps, that you must not end it up with Nihilists.
It’s too turbulent and screaming; a quiet, lyrical, touching ending would
be more in keeping with your play. When your heroine begins to grow old
without arriving at anything or deciding anything for herself, and sees
that she is forsaken by all, that she is uninteresting and superfluous,
when she understands that the people around her were idle, useless, bad
people (her father too), and that she has let her life slip--is not that
more dreadful than the Nihilists?
Your letters about “The Russalka” and Korsh are very good. The tone is
brilliant, and they are wonderfully written. But about Konovalov and the
jury, I think you ought not to have written, however alluring the subject.
Let A---t write as much as he likes about it, but not you, for it is not
your affair. To treat such questions boldly and with conviction, one must
be a man with a single purpose, while you would go off at a tangent halfway
through the letter--as you have done--saying suddenly that we all
sometimes desire to kill someone, and desire the death of our neighbours.
When a daughter-in-law feels sick and tired of an invalid mother-in-law, a
spiteful old woman, she, the daughter-in-law, feels easier at the thought
that the old woman will soon die: but that’s not desiring her death, but
weariness, an exhausted spirit, vexation, longing for peace. If that
daughter-in-law were ordered to kill the old woman, she would sooner kill
herself, whatever desire might have been brooding in her heart.
Why, of course jurymen may make a mistake, but what of that? It does happen
by mistake that help is given to the well-fed instead of to the hungry, but
whatever you write on that subject, you will reach no result but harm to
the hungry. Whether from our point of view the jury are mistaken or not
mistaken, we ought to recognize that in each individual case they form a
conscious judgment and make an effort to do so conscientiously; and if a
captain steers his steamer conscientiously, continually consulting the
chart and the compass, and if the steamer is shipwrecked all the same,
would it not be more correct to put down the shipwreck not to the captain,
but to something else--for instance, to think that the chart is out of date
or that the bottom of the sea has changed? Yes, there are three points the
jury have to take into consideration: (1) Apart from the criminal law, the
penal code and legal procedure, there is a moral law which is always in
advance of the established law, and which defines our actions precisely
when we try to act on our conscience; thus, for instance, the heritage of a
daughter is laid down by law as a seventh part. But you, acting on the
dictates of purely moral principle, go beyond the law and in opposition to
it, and bequeath her the same share as your sons, for you know that to act
otherwise would be acting against your conscience. In the same way it
sometimes happens to the jury to be put in a position in which they feel
that their conscience is not satisfied by the established law, that in the
case they are judging there are fine shades and subtleties which cannot be
brought under the provisions of the penal code, and that obviously
something else is needed for a just judgment, and that for the lack of that
“something” they will be forced to give a judgment in which something is
lacking. (2) The jury know that acquittal is not pardon, and that acquittal
does not deliver the prisoner from the day of judgment in the other world,
from the judgment of his conscience, from the judgment of public opinion;
they decide the question only so far as it is a judicial question, and
leave A----t to decide whether it is good to kill children or bad. (3) The
prisoner comes to the court already exhausted by prison and examination,
and he is in an agonizing position at his trial, so that even if he is
acquitted he does not leave the court unpunished.
Well, be that as it may, my letter is almost finished, and I seem to have
written nothing. We have the spring here in Yalta, no news of interest....
“Resurrection” is a remarkable novel. I liked it very much, but it ought to
be read straight off at one sitting. The end is uninteresting and
false--false in a technical sense.
TO O. L. KNIPPER.
YALTA,
February 14, 1900.
DEAR ACTRESS,
The photographs are very, very good, especially the one in which you are
leaning in dejection with your elbows on the back of a chair, which gives
you a discreetly mournful, gentle expression under which there lies hid a
little demon. The other is good too, but it looks a little like a Jewess, a
very musical person who attends a conservatoire, but at the same time is
studying dentistry on the sly as a second string, and is engaged to be
married to a young man in Mogilev, and whose fiance is a person like M----.
Are you angry? Really, really angry? It’s my revenge for your not signing
them.
Of the seventy roses I planted in the autumn only three have not taken
root. Lilies, irises, tulips, tuberoses, hyacinths, are all pushing out of
the ground. The willow is already green. By the little seat in the corner
the grass is luxuriant already. The almond-tree is in blossom. I have put
little seats all over the garden, not grand ones with iron legs, but wooden
ones which I paint green. I have made three bridges over the stream. I am
planting palms. In fact, there are all sorts of novelties, so much so that
you won’t know the house, or the garden, or the street. Only the owner has
not changed, he is just the same moping creature and devoted worshipper of
the talents that reside at Nikitsky Gate. [Footnote: O. L. Knipper was
living at Nikitsky Gate.] I have heard no music nor singing since the
autumn, I have not seen one interesting woman. How can I help being
melancholy?
I had made up my mind not to write to you, but since you have sent the
photographs I have taken off the ban, and here you see I am writing. I will
even come to Sevastopol, only I repeat, don’t tell that to anyone,
especially not to Vishnevsky. I shall be there incognito, I shall put
myself down in the hotel-book Count Blackphiz.
I was joking when I said that you were like a Jewess in your photograph.
Don’t be angry, precious one. Well, herewith I kiss your little hand, and
remain unalterably yours.
TO GORKY.
YALTA,
February 15, 1900.
DEAR ALEXEY MAXIMOVITCH,
Your article in the Nizhni-Novgorod Listok was balm to my soul. What a
talented person you are! I can’t write anything but belles-lettres, you
possess the pen of a journalist as well. I thought at first I liked the
article so much because you praise me in it; afterwards it came out that
Sredin and his family and Yartsev were all delighted with it. So peg away
at journalism. God bless you!