Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends
Why don’t they send me “Foma Gordeyev”? I have read it only in bits, and
one ought to read it straight through at a sitting as I have just read
“Resurrection.” Except the relations of Nehludov and Katusha, which are
somewhat obscure and made up, everything in the novel made the impression
of strength, richness, and breadth, and the insincerity of a man afraid of
death and refusing to admit it and clutching at texts and holy Scripture.
Write to them to send me “Foma.”
“Twenty-six Men and a Girl” is a good story. There is a strong feeling of
the environment. One smells the hot rolls.
They have just brought your letter. So you don’t want to go to India?
That’s a pity. When India is in the past, a long sea voyage, you have
something to think about when you can’t get to sleep. And a tour abroad
takes very little time, it need not prevent your going about in Russia on
foot.
I am bored, not in the sense of _weltschmerz_, not in the sense of
being weary of existence, but simply bored from want of people, from want
of music which I love, and from want of women, of whom there are none in
Yalta. I am bored without caviare and pickled cabbage.
I am very sorry that apparently you have given up the idea of coming to
Yalta. The Art Theatre from Moscow will be here in May. It will give five
performances and then remain for rehearsals. So you come, study the stage
at the rehearsals, and then in five to eight days write a play, which I
should welcome joyfully with my whole heart.
Yes, I have the right now to insist on the fact that I am forty, that I am
a man no longer young. I used to be the youngest literary man, but you have
appeared on the scene and I became more dignified at once, and no one calls
me the youngest now.
TO V. A. POSSE.
YALTA,
February 15, 1900.
MUCH RESPECTED VLADIMIR ALEXANDROVITCH,
“Foma Gordeyev” and in a superb binding too is a precious and touching
present; I thank you from the bottom of my heart. A thousand thanks! I have
read “Foma” only in bits, now I shall read it properly. Gorky should not be
published in parts; either he must write more briefly, or you must put him
in whole as the _Vyestnik Evropy_ does with Boborykin. “Foma,” by the
way, is very successful, but only with intelligent well-read people--with
the young also. I once overheard in a garden the conversation of a lady
(from Petersburg) with her daughter: the mother was abusing the book, the
daughter was praising it....
YALTA,
February 29, 1900.
“Foma Gordeyev” is written all in one tone like a dissertation. All the
characters speak alike, and their way of thinking is alike too. They all
speak not simply but intentionally; they all have some idea in the
background; as though there is something they know they don’t speak out:
but in reality there is nothing they know, and it is simply their _facon
de parler_.
There are wonderful passages in “Foma.” Gorky will make a very great writer
if only he does not weary, does not grow cold and lazy.
TO A. S. SUVORIN,
YALTA,
March 10, 1900.
No winter has ever dragged on so long for me as this one, and time merely
drags and does not move, and now I realize how stupid it was of me to leave
Moscow. I have lost touch with the north without getting into touch with
the south, and one can think of nothing in my position but to go abroad.
After the spring, winter has begun here again in Yalta--snow, rain, cold,
mud--simply disgusting.
The Moscow Art Theatre will be in Yalta in April; it will bring its scenery
and decorations. All the tickets for the four days advertised were sold in
one day, although the prices have been considerably raised. They will give
among other things Hauptmann’s “Lonely Lives,” a magnificent play in my
opinion. I read it with great pleasure, although I am not fond of plays,
and the production at the Art Theatre they say is marvellous.
There is no news. There is one great event, though: N.’s “Socrates” is
printed in the _Neva_ Supplement. I have read it, but with great effort. It
is not Socrates but a dull-witted, captious, opinionated man, the whole of
whose wisdom and interest is confined to tripping people up over words.
There is not a trace or vestige of talent in it, but it is quite possible
that the play might be successful because there are words in it such as
“amphora,” and Karpov says it would stage well.
How many consumptives there are here! What poverty, and how worried one is
with them! The hotels and lodging-houses here won’t take in those who are
seriously ill. You can imagine the awful cases that may be seen here.
People are dying from exhaustion, from their surroundings, from complete
neglect, and this in blessed Taurida!
One loses all relish for the sun and the sea....
TO O. L. KNIPPER.
YALTA,
March 26, 1900.
There is a feeling of black melancholy about your letter, dear actress; you
are gloomy, you are fearfully unhappy--but not for long, one may imagine,
as soon, very soon, you will be sitting in the train, eating your lunch
with a very good appetite. It is very nice that you are coming first with
Masha before all the others; we shall at least have time to talk a little,
walk a little, see things, drink and eat. But please don’t bring with you
...
I haven’t a new play, it’s a lie of the newspapers. The newspapers never do
tell the truth about me. If I did begin a play, of course the first thing I
should do would be to inform you of the fact.
There is a great wind here; the spring has not begun properly yet, but we
go about without our goloshes and fur caps. The tulips will soon be out. I
have a nice garden but it is untidy, moss-grown--a dilettante garden.
Gorky is here. He is warm in his praises of you and your theatre. I will
introduce you to him.
Oh dear! Someone has arrived. A visitor has come in. Good-bye for now,
actress!
TO HIS SISTER.
YALTA,
March 26, 1900.
DEAR MASHA,
... There is no news, there is no water in the pipes either. I am sick to
death of visitors. Yesterday, March 25, they came in an incessant stream
all day; doctors keep sending people from Moscow and the provinces with
letters asking me to find lodgings, to “make arrangements,” as though I
were a house-agent! Mother is well. Mind you keep well too, and make haste
and come home.
TO O. L. KNIPPER.
YALTA,
May 20, 1900.
Greetings to you, dear enchanting actress! How are you? How are you
feeling? I was very unwell on the way back to Yalta. [Footnote: Chekhov
went to Moscow with the Art Theatre Company on their return from Yalta.] I
had a bad headache and temperature before I left Moscow. I was wicked
enough to conceal it from you, now I am all right.
How is Levitan? I feel dreadfully worried at not knowing. If you have
heard, please write to me.
Keep well and be happy. I heard Masha was sending you a letter, and so I
hasten to write these few lines. [Footnote: Chekhov’s later letters to O.
L. Knipper have not been published.]
TO HIS SISTER.
YALTA,
September 9, 1900.
DEAR MASHA,
I answer the letter in which you write about Mother. To my thinking it
would be better for her to go to Moscow now in the autumn and not after
December. She will be tired of Moscow and pining for Yalta in a month, you
know, and if you take her to Moscow in the autumn she will be back in Yalta
before Christmas. That’s how it seems to me, but possibly I am mistaken; in
any case you must take into consideration that it is much drearier in Yalta
before Christmas than it is after--infinitely drearier.
Most likely I will be in Moscow after the 20th of September, and then we
will decide. From Moscow I shall go I don’t know where--first to Paris, and
then probably to Nice, from Nice to Africa. I shall hang on somehow to the
spring, all April or May, when I shall come to Moscow again.
There is no news. There’s no rain either, everything is dried up. At home
here it is quiet, peaceful, satisfactory, and of course dull.
“Three Sisters” is very difficult to write, more difficult than my other
plays. Oh well, it doesn’t matter, perhaps something will come of it, next
season if not this. It’s very hard to write in Yalta, by the way: I am
interrupted, and I feel as though I had no object in writing; what I wrote
yesterday I don’t like to-day....
Well, take care of yourself.
My humblest greetings to Olga Leonardovna, to Vishnevsky, and all the rest
of them too.
If Gorky is in Moscow, tell him that I have sent a letter to him in
Nizhni-Novgorod.
TO GORKY.
YALTA,
October 16, 1900.
DEAR ALEXEY MAXIMOVITCH,
... On the 21st of this month I am going to Moscow, and from there abroad.
Can you imagine--I have written a play; but as it will be produced not
now, but next season, I have not made a fair copy of it yet. It can lie as
it is. It was very difficult to write “Three Sisters.” Three heroines, you
see, each a separate type and all the daughters of a general. The action is
laid in a provincial town, as it might be Perm, the surroundings military,
artillery.
The weather in Yalta is exquisite and fresh, my health is improving. I
don’t even want to go away to Moscow. I am working so well, and it is so
pleasant to be free from the irritation I suffered from all the summer. I
am not coughing, and am even eating meat. I am living alone, quite alone.
My mother is in Moscow.
Thanks for your letters, my dear fellow, thanks very much. I read them over
twice. My warmest greetings to your wife and Maxim. And so, till we meet in
Moscow. I hope you won’t play me false, and we shall see each other.
God keep you.
MOSCOW,
October 22, 1901.
Five days have passed since I read your play (“The Petty Bourgeois”). I
have not written to you till now because I could not get hold of the
fourth act; I have kept waiting for it, and--I still have not got it.
And so I have only read three acts, but that I think is enough to judge
of the play. It is, as I expected, very good, written a la Gorky,
original, very interesting; and, to begin by talking of the defects, I
have noticed only one, a defect incorrigible as red hair in a red-haired
man--the conservatism of the form. You make new and original people sing
new songs to an accompaniment that looks second-hand, you have four
acts, the characters deliver edifying discourses, there is a feeling of
alarm before long speeches, and so on, and so on. But all that is not
important, and it is all, so to speak, drowned in the good points of the
play. Pertchihin--how living! His daughter is enchanting, Tatyana and
Pyotr are also, and their mother is a splendid old woman. The central
figure of the play, Nil, is vigorously drawn and extremely interesting!
In fact, the play takes hold of one from the first act. Only God
preserve you from letting anyone act Pertchihin except Artyom, while
Alexeyev-Stanislavsky must certainly play Nil. Those two figures will do
just what’s needed; Pyotr--Meierhold. Only Nil’s part, a wonderful
part, must be made two or three times as long. You ought to end the play
with it, to make it the leading part. Only do not contrast him with
Pyotr and Tatyana, let him be by himself and them by themselves, all
wonderful, splendid people independently of each other. When Nil tries
to seem superior to Pyotr and Tatyana, and says of himself that he is a
fine fellow, the element so characteristic of our decent working man,
the element of modesty, is lost. He boasts, he argues, but you know one
can see what sort of man he is without that. Let him be merry, let him
play pranks through the whole four acts, let him eat a great deal after
his work--and that will be enough for him to conquer the audience with.
Pyotr, I repeat, is good. Most likely you don’t even suspect how good he