Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends

TO P. I. KURKIN

YALTA, January 18, 1900.

DEAR PYOTR IVANOVITCH,

Thank you for your letter. I have long been wanting to write to you, but have never had time, under the load of business and official correspondence. Yesterday was the 17th of January – my name-day, and the day of my election to the Academy. What a lot of telegrams! And what a lot of letters still to come! And I must answer all of them, or posterity will accuse me of not knowing the laws of good manners.

There is news, but I won’t tell you it now (no time), but later on. I am 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 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.