Among the numerous readers and scholars who misunderstood or misread "Mire" was Chekhov's friend and frequent hostess, the amateur writer Maria Kiselyova. The spirited and detailed letter Chekhov sent her in defense of "Mire" is another basic Chekhovian document, with its clear statement of his views on the uses and limitations of literature and on the dangers of subjective censorship.
7. To Alexei Suvorin1
Moscow, February 21, 1886
Dear Sir,
I have received your letter. Thank you for writing such flattering words about my work and printing my story so promptly.2 You can judge for yourself what a refreshing and even inspiring effect the kind attentions of as experienced and talented a person as you have had on my ambitions as a writer.
I agree with your opinion that I threw away the end of my story, and I thank you for this useful piece of advice. I've been writing for six years now, and you are the first person who ever took the trouble to give me suggestions and then motivate them.
The pen name A. Chekhonte probably sounds odd and recherche. But it was thought up at the dawn of my misty youth,3 and I've grown accustomed to it. That's why I don't notice how odd it is.
I write comparatively little: no more than two or three brief stories a week. I can find the time to work for New Times, but I'm glad nonetheless that you didn't make deadlines a condition for my becoming a contributor. Deadlines lead to haste and the feeling of having a weight around your neck. Both of these together make it hard for me to work. For me personally a deadline is inconvenient if only because I'm a physician and practice medicine. I can never guarantee that I won't be torn away from my desk for a whole day on any given day. The risk of my being late and not finishing a story by the deadline is always there.
The fee you have proposed is fully satisfactory for the present. If you could arrange to have the newspaper sent to me regularly—I rarely get a chance to see it—I will be very grateful.
This time I'm sending you a story that is exactly twice as long as the previous one, and, I fear, twice as bad.4
I remain
Yours truly,
A. Chekhov
Alexei Suvorin (1834-1912) was, like Chekhov himself, of peasant origin. He began his career as a village schoolmaster. During the reform era of the 1860s, he became a popular muckraking journalist and earned a six- month prison sentence for one of his anti-government exposes. At the time of the Russian-Turkish War of 1878 he purchased the newspaper New Times, which until then owed its circulation primarily to its domestic-help advertisements. Because of his friendly relations with Prince Milan of Serbia, Suvorin was able to send detailed dispatches from the front to New Times, and the newspaper quickly became the favorite reading of the Russian military, who were often kept in the dark by their own command about the progress of the war in which they were engaged. This made Suvorin's fortune, and it also determined the subsequent conservative orientation of the newspaper, since in later years army officers and civil servants, both active and retired, formed a large segment of its subscribers.
Suvorin later branched out into book publishing (he was the first publisher to put out cheap editions of Russian classics) and book selling (he held a monopoly on book stands at all Russian railroad stations). He was a millionaire by the time Chekhov met him. He was also a novelist and something of a literary scholar (his essay on Griboyedov was much admired by Alexander Blok), and he wrote a series of flashy plays, which, although devoid of literary merit, were popular with actresses for providing them with showy starring roles. After the turn of the century, Suvorin's energies were mainly devoted to the theater which he privately organized and operated in St. Petersburg and for which he engaged some of the biggest acting names of the period.
The excerpts from Suvorin's private journal which were published after the Revolution in 1923 with the avowed purpose of exposing his hypocrisy and corruption show a man of broad culture, with access to the centers of political power, who is helping to prop up the regime which he sees as neither honest nor just. In addition to numerous chunks of back-stairs gossip, Suvorin's journal contains fascinating accounts of his dealings and encounters with Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Emile Zola, Alphonse Daudet, Tchaikovsky, Nekrasov, Chernyshevsky and a number of other literary and political figures of the last forty years of the nineteenth century. In contrast to the often gossipy and cynical tone of the journal, Suvorin writes of his encounters with Chekhov in tones of warmth and friendship that seem otherwise untypical of this hardheaded, powerful and frequently lonely man.
"The Requiem," which was submitted by Chekhov on February 10, and which appeared on February 15. This was his first work to appear in New Times and also the first to be published under his real name instead of one of his pen names.
"At the dawn of my misty youth" is the first line of a popular song by the peasant poet of the Romantic period, Alexei Koltsov. For Chekhov's high opinion of this poet, see Letter 17.
"The Witch."
8. To Dmitry Grigorovich1
Moscow, March 28, 1886
Your letter,2 my kind and dearly beloved bearer of glad tidings, struck me like a thunderbolt. I was so overwhelmed it brought me to the brink of tears, and even now I feel it has left a deep imprint on my innermost being. May God comfort your old age as you have befriended my youth; I can find neither words nor deeds to thank you enough. You know how ordinary people look upon the favored few such as yourself, and so you can imagine what your letter does for my pride. It is worth more than the highest diploma, and for the neophyte writer it is tantamount to royalties for his present and future. I've been walking about in a daze. I lack the acumen to judge whether or not I deserve this great reward. I can only repeat that I am thunderstruck.
If I do have a gift that warrants respect, I must confess before the purity of your heart that I have as yet failed to respect it. I felt I had one, but slipped into the habit of considering it worthless. Purely external factors are sufficient to cause an organism to treat itself with excessive mistrust and suspicion. I've had my share of such factors, now that I think of it. All my friends and relatives have looked down on my work as an author, and they never stop giving me friendly advice against giving up my real life's work for my scrawling. I have hundreds of friends in Moscow, about twenty of whom are writers, and I can't remember even one of them ever reading my things or considering me an artist. There exists in Moscow a so-called "literary circle"; talents and mediocrities of all ilks and ages gather once a week in a specially reserved restaurant dining room to air their tongues. If I were to go there and read the least snippet from your letter, they would laugh in my face. In the five years I've spent hanging around newspaper offices, I've become resigned to the general view of my literary insignificance, soon took to looking down on my work, and kept plowing right on. That's the first factor. The second is that I am a doctor and up to my ears in medicine. The saying about chasing two hares at once has never robbed anybody of more sleep than it has me.
The only reason I am writing all this is to justify my grievous sin in your eyes to some small degree. Until now I treated my literary work extremely frivolously, casually, nonchalantly, I can't remember working on a single story for more than a day, and "The Huntsman," which you so enjoyed, I wrote while I was out swimming.3 I wrote my stories the way reporters write up fires: mechanically, only half-con- sciously, without the least concern for the reader or myself. While writing, I would do my best not to waste images and scenes I liked on the story at hand. Heaven knows why, but I would carefully put them away and save them for later.