Most of us would throw in the towel by now and agree, saying, “Dear Anton, you’re absolutely right.” But Chekhov was piqued and anticipated that Kiseleva would not have conceded yet. He went on:
2. That the world swarms with “dregs and scum” is perfectly true. Human nature is imperfect, and it would therefore be strange to see none but righteous ones on earth. But to think that the duty of literature is to unearth the pearl from the refuse heap means to reject literature itself. “Artistic” literature is only “art” in so far as it paints life as it really is. Its vocation is to be absolutely true and honest. To narrow down its function to the particular task of finding “pearls” is as deadly for it as it would be to make Levitan draw a tree without including the dirty bark and the yellow leaves. I agree that “pearls” are a good thing, but then a writer is not a confectioner, not a provider of cosmetics, not an entertainer; he is a man bound, under contract, by his sense of duty and his conscience; having put his hand to the plough he mustn’t turn back, and, however distasteful, he must conquer his squeamishness and soil his imagination with the dirt of life. He is just like any ordinary reporter. What would you say if a newspaper correspondent out of a feeling of fastidiousness or from a wish to please his readers would describe only honest mayors, high-minded ladies, and virtuous railway contractors?
To a chemist nothing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objective as a chemist, he must lay aside his personal subjective standpoint and must understand that muck heaps play a very respectable part in a landscape, and that the evil passions are as inherent in life as the good ones.
He would say something like this again a few years later, but to Suvorin: “You abuse me for objectivity, calling it indifference to good and evil, lack of ideals and ideas, and so on. You would have me, when I describe horse-thieves, say: ‘Stealing horses is an evil.’ But that has been known for ages without my saying so. Let the jury judge them; it’s my job simply to show what sort of people they are. I write: you are dealing with horse-thieves, so let me tell you that they are not beggars but well-fed people, that they are people of a special cult, and that horse-stealing is not simply theft but a passion. Of course it would be pleasant to combine art with a sermon, but for me personally it is extremely difficult and almost impossible, owing to the conditions of technique. You see, to depict horse-thieves in seven hundred lines I must all the time speak and think in their tone and feel in their spirit, otherwise, if I introduce subjectivity, the image becomes blurred and the story will not be as compact as all short stories ought to be. When I write, I reckon entirely upon the reader to add for himself the subjective elements that are lacking in the story.”18
To Kiseleva, he continued:
3. Writers are the children of their age, and therefore, like everybody else, must submit to the external conditions of the life of the community. Thus, they must be perfectly decent. This is the only thing we have a right to ask of realistic writers. But you say nothing against the form and executions of “Mire.”… And so, I suppose I have been decent.
4. I confess I seldom commune with my conscience when I write. This is due to habit and the brevity of my work. And so when I express this or that opinion about literature, I do not take myself into account.
I would make a case for Chekhov here: He freed himself of “community standards” when he wrote. He did not fight or promote existing social mores. Those were entanglements that a social or political conscience would bring—and to write at speed and to write seriously he needed to eliminate obstacles: social or moral purposes. Nonetheless, his stories are usually and naturally very moral because he continuously communed with his conscience. He and his art shared a conscience. To our and Chekhov’s amazement, Kiseleva had advocated for censorship and questioned his editor’s judgment. She also begrudged him the money!
5. You write: “If I were the editor I would have returned this feuilleton to you for your own good.” Why not go further? Why not muzzle the editors themselves who publish such stories? Why not send a reprimand to the Headquarters of the Press Department for not suppressing immoral newspapers?
The fate of literature would be sad indeed if it were at the mercy of individual views. That is the first thing. Secondly, there is no police which could consider itself competent in literary matters. I agree that one can’t dispense with the reins and the whip altogether, for knaves find their way even into literature, but no thinking will discover a better police for literature than the critics and the author’s own conscience. People have been trying to discover such a police since the creation of the world, but they have found nothing better.
Here you would like me to lose one hundred and fifteen rubles and be put to shame by the editor; others, your father among them, are delighted with the story. Some send insulting letters to Suvorin, pouring abuse on the paper and on me, etc. Who, then, is right? Who is the true judge?
But “Who is right?”… I’m going to stick my neck out on this one and assert regarding “Mire” that I’m right and a “true judge.” Even if we didn’t know Chekhov was trying to hurt Dunya Efros’s feelings with “Mire,” the story’s anti-Semitic basis makes it immoral and bad.19
6. You also write, “Leave such writing to spiritless and unlucky scribblers such as Okreyts, Pince-Nez, or Aloe.” Allah forgive you if you were sincere when you wrote those words! A condescending and contemptuous tone toward humble people simply because they are humble does no credit to the heart. In literature the lower ranks are as necessary as in the army—this is what the head says, and the heart ought to say still more.
Ough! I have wearied you with my drawn-out reflections. Had I known my criticism would turn out so long I would not have written it. Please forgive me!…
He had gone through a list of six points, to his own surprise, and then characteristically wound up apologizing for having written at such length.
Over the decades, every time I read Chekhov’s reply, I shook my head with annoyance at Kiseleva. Idiot! She’s thinks she’s bigger than her britches.… I haven’t enjoyed seeing my disapproval intersect with hers, because it means that either I, too, am getting bigger than my britches in regard to Chekhov or that the energy and power of his response had its roots in his own misgivings about the story’s anti-Semitism and mockery of Efros. That is, Kiseleva’s attack on the story may have missed its target (she doesn’t object to the anti-Semitism as such) but it touched a sore spot. The story wasn’t Chekhov at his best, and his heart had been in the wrong place. She provoked him, anyway, into spelling out some of his artistic principles.
Even as I am wincing over his deflections, he then pulled himself together and restored balance and made peace with Kiseleva with jokes and jokey immodesty. This Chekhov is Chekhov. This Chekhov is as mature as humankind will ever be.
We are coming. We wanted to leave on the fifth, but… we were held up by a medical congress. Then came St. Tatyana’s Day, and on the seventeenth we’re having a party: it’s “his” [that is, Chekhov’s] name day!! It will be a dazzling ball with all sorts of Jewesses, roast turkeys and Yashenkas. After the seventeenth we’ll fix a date for the Babkino trip.20
You have read my “On the Road.” Well, how do you like my courage? I write of “intellectual” subjects and am not afraid. In Petersburg I excite a regular furor. A short time ago I discoursed upon nonresistance to evil, and also surprised the public. On New Year’s Day all the papers presented me with a compliment, and in the December number of the Russkoye Bogatstvo, in which Tolstoy writes, there is an article thirty-two pages long by Obolenskiy titled “Chekhov and Korolenko.” The fellow goes into raptures over me and proves that I am more of an artist than Korolenko. He is probably talking rot, but, anyway, I am beginning to be conscious of one merit of mine: I am the only writer who, without ever publishing anything in the thick monthlies, has merely on the strength of writing newspaper rubbish won the attention of the lop-eared critics—there has been no instance of this before. […]