*
The scenes in Chekhov’s stories sometimes seem as if they were staged in his head. One very particular place is animated by its sights and smells, and there are two or three characters who move about and talk. In “Frost” (“Moroz,” January 12), a garrulous and generous mayor and two of his guests recall, with some bit of pleasure, the misery of being young, poor, and cold: “I’ve a fur coat now, and at home I have a stove and rums and punches of all sorts. The frost means nothing to me now; I take no notice of it, I don’t care to know of it, but how it used to be in old days, Holy Mother! It’s dreadful to recall it! My memory is failing me with years and I have forgotten everything; my enemies, and my sins and troubles of all sorts—I forget them all, but the frost—ough! How I remember it!”
Nostalgia kicks in: “The governor and the mayor grew lively and good-humored, and, interrupting each other, began recalling their experiences. And the bishop told them how, when he was serving in Siberia, he had traveled in a sledge drawn by dogs; how one day, being drowsy, in a time of sharp frost he had fallen out of the sledge and been nearly frozen; when the Tunguses turned back and found him he was barely alive. Then, as by common agreement, the old men suddenly sank into silence, sat side by side, and mused.”
How much pleasure Chekhov, this young man full of redolent memories, had in recollection. How generous our Chekhov was to be imagining the happy reminiscences of old men. With whom did quiet, modest, young Chekhov most closely identify? The generous, gabby old mayor, who, seeing the suffering of the musicians at the town’s bitter-cold celebration, dismisses them hours early and treats them all to drinks.
*
One of the letters reproduced in nearly every selection of Chekhov’s letters is his spirited January 14 refutation of his friend and mentee Maria Kiseleva’s disappointed and moralistic criticisms of “Mire.” She had written in late December. His delayed response was unusual. His reply letters usually followed immediately, without much mulling over.
What had set him mulling was this:
Beginning with that piece you sent me, good Anton Pavlovich, I so so do not like it, despite that I am convinced that few will join with my opinion. It is written well—male readers are pitying themselves if their fate does not collide with someone like Susanna, which might unleash their licentiousness; women will in secret envy her, and a big part of the public will read it with interest and say: “This Chekhov writes in a lively way, what a fellow!”
Maybe the 115 rubles in pay please you, but13 I am personally chagrined that a writer of your caliber, i.e., not shortchanged by God, shows me nothing but a “manure pile.” The world is teeming with villains and villainesses and the impression they produce is not new; therefore, one is all the more grateful to a writer who, having led you through all the stench of the manure pile, will suddenly extract a pearl from it. You are not myopic, you are perfectly capable of finding this pearl, so why do we get only a manure pile? Give me that pearl, so that the filth of the surroundings may be effaced from my memory; I have a right to demand this of you. As for the others, the ones who are unable to find and to defend a human being among the quadruped animals—I’d just as soon not read them. Perhaps it might have been better to remain silent, but I could not resist an overpowering desire to give a piece of my mind to you and to your vile editors who allow you to wreck your talent with such equanimity. If I were your editor, I would have returned the story to you for your own good. No matter what you may say, the story is utterly disgusting! Leave such stories (such subjects) to hacks like Okreyts, Pince-nez, Aloe and tutti quanti mediocrities, who are poor in spirit and have been shortchanged by fate.
Give Kiseleva credit: she called out herself by her nickname Pince-nez as one of the “mediocrities.” She, further on in the letter, credited herself for valuing and having liked, on the other hand, “On the Road.” She understood that, a young woman losing her head over an idealistic man. She, the prim mother and author of children’s stories, had lost her head over Chekhov, I believe.
His reply to her letter is the story of their relationship and an example of how seriously and how deeply Chekhov contemplated art. Whatever literary or moral sins he had committed in “Mire,” the self-censorship that Kiseleva was advocating in her letter was a trap for any honest writer. Before arguing with her, he praised her short story, which though “uneven” was good enough for him to recommend for publication in New Times, whose editors she had maligned:
Your “Larka” is very nice, honored Maria Vladimirovna; there are roughnesses, but the conciseness and masculine manner of the story redeem everything. Not wishing to be the sole judge of your offspring, I am sending it to Suvorin, who is a very understanding man. His opinion I will let you know in due time. And now allow me to snap at your criticism.14 Even your praise of “On the Road” has not softened my anger as an author, and I hasten to avenge myself for “Mire.” Be on your guard, and catch hold of the back of a chair that you may not faint. Well, I begin….
One meets every critical article with a silent bow even if it is abusive and unjust—such is the literary etiquette. It is not the thing to answer, and all who do answer are justly blamed for excessive vanity. But since your criticism has the nature of “an evening conversation on the steps of the Babkino lodge” [… ]15 and as, without touching on the literary aspects of the story, it raises general questions of principle, I shall not be sinning against the etiquette if I allow myself to continue our conversation.
She invited his conversational response, so here it was. He started with her prudery. He pointed out that the great writers show both sides of life, the good and the bad. He reminded her that landscape painters have to show the defects of the landscape.
He refused her premise that there are purities. What is is. In chemistry as in human life:
In the first place, I, like you, do not like literature of the kind we are discussing. As a reader and “a private resident” I am glad to avoid it, but if you ask my honest and sincere opinion about it, I shall say that it is still an open question whether it has a right to exist, and no one has yet settled it [… 16]. Neither you nor I, nor all the critics in the world, have any trustworthy data that would give them the right to reject such literature. I do not know which are right: Homer, Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, and, speaking generally, the ancients who were not afraid to rummage in the “muck heap,” but were morally far more stable than we are, or the modern writers, priggish on paper but coldly cynical in their souls and in life. I do not know which has bad taste—the Greeks who were not ashamed to describe love as it really is in beautiful nature, or the readers of Gaboriau, Marlitz, Pierre Bobo.17 Like the problems of nonresistance to evil, of free will, etc., this question can only be settled in the future. We can only refer to it, but are not competent to decide it. Reference to Turgenev and Tolstoy—who avoided the “muck heap”—does not throw light on the question. Their fastidiousness does not prove anything; why, before them there was a generation of writers who regarded as dirty not only accounts of “the dregs and scum,” but even descriptions of peasants and of officials below the rank of titular councillor. Besides, one period, however brilliant, does not entitle us to draw conclusions in favor of this or that literary tendency. Reference to the demoralizing effects of the literary tendency we are discussing does not decide the question, either. Everything in this world is relative and approximate. There are people who can be demoralized even by children’s books, and who read with particular pleasure the piquant passages in the Psalms and in Solomon’s Proverbs, while there are others who become only the purer from closer knowledge of the filthy side of life. Political and social writers, lawyers, and doctors who are initiated into all the mysteries of human sinfulness are not reputed to be immoral; realistic writers are often more moral than archimandrites. And, finally, no literature can outdo real life in its cynicism, a wine-glassful won’t make a man drunk when he has already emptied a barrel.