How's Anna Petrovna7 doing? Allah Kerim8 . . . The Petersburg climate doesn't agree with her.
I've received the forty rubles. Thank you.
Have I been getting on your nerves? I've felt like a psychopath all November. Gilyarovsky9 is leaving for Petersburg today.
Keep well and forgive the psychopathy. I'm over it now. Today I'm normal.
I've sent Maslov a thank-you note for his telegram.
Yours,
Schiller Shakespearovich Goethe
Chekhov used this name for many years as an affectionate nickname in his correspondence with his older brother before he gave it to the principal character (a dying peasant soldier, returning from Sakhalin to Russia) in the story "Gusev," which he wrote during his visit to Ceylon in 1890.
Writer and playwright Alexei Maslov (Bezhetsky) was a fellow employee of Alexander's at the St. Petersburg offices of New Times. See also Letter 27, note 11.
A schoolteacher who was a friend of the Chekhov family.
The husband of Maria Kiselyova.
The drama reviewer of New Times.
Leonid Gradov-Sokolov appeared as Kosykh and Bronislava Kosheva played Babakina.
Alexei Suvorin's wife.
This originally Arabic phrase meaning "God is merciful" was an expletive commonly used by various Moslem peoples of the Caucasus and the Crimea; it was also popularized in the Oriental tales of Russian romantic writers.
Vladimir Gilyarovsky was a colorful adventurer, circus performer and writer, a friend of Chekhov's who frequently appears in various memoirs connected with Chekhov.
14. To Alexei Suvorin
Moscow, December 30, 18881
Nikulina thanks you for the corrections. Gorev is playing Sabinin. Rehearsals have not yet begun. I am certain the play will be successful
because the actors' eyes are clear and their faces do not look treacherous; that means they like the play and believe in its success themselves. Nikulina has had me to dinner. Thank you.2
The director sees Ivanov as a superfluous man in the Turgenev manner. Savina3 asks why Ivanov is such a blackguard. You write that "Ivanov must be given something that makes it clear why two women throw themselves at him and why he is a blackguard while the doctor is a great man." If all three of you have understood me this way, it means my Ivanov is a failure. I must have lost my mind and written something entirely different from what I had intended. If my Ivanov comes across as a blackguard or superfluous man and the doctor as a great man, if no one understands why Sarah and Sasha love Ivanov, then my play has evidently failed to pan out, and there can be no question of having it produced.
Here is how I understand my protagonists. Ivanov is a nobleman who has been to the university and is in no way remarkable. He is easily excitable, hot-headed, strongly inclined to be carried away, honest and straightforward—like most educated noblemen. He lived on his estate and served in the zemstvo. His words to the doctor (Act I, Scene 5) indicate what he did, how he behaved, what occupied and what fascinated him: "Don't marry Jewesses or psychopaths or blue stockings . . . don't take on thousands of foes all by yourself, don't do battle with windmills, don't knock your head against the wall. May God protect you from all sorts of scientific farming methods, unusual schools and hot-headed speeches. . . ." That's what his past is like. Sarah, who has seen his scientific farming methods and other projects, describes him to the doctor as follows: "He's a remarkable person, doctor, and I'm sorry you didn't know him two or three years ago. He's despondent now; he doesn't say or do anything. But the way he used to be . . . oh, lovely!" (Act I, Scene 7). His past, like that of most Russian intellectuals, is wonderful. Russian gentlemen or university graduates who do not boast of their past are few and far between. The present is always worse than the past. Why? Because Russian excitability has one specific property: it quickly turns into weariness. As soon as he leaves the school bench, the Russian recklessly takes on a burden beyond his endurance. He simultaneously becomes involved with the schools, the peasants, scientific farming and the Herald of Europe;4 he makes speeches; he writes to cabinet ministers; he fights evil and applauds good; instead of loving simply or haphazardly, he must love blue stockings, or psychopaths, or Jewesses, or even the prostitutes he tries to save, and so on and so forth. But no sooner does he reach the age of thirty or thirty-five than he starts feeling weary and bored. He doesn't even have a respectable mustache yet, but he says "Don't get married, old boy. . . . Take it from me" with great authority. Or "What is liberalism essentially? Between you and me, Katkov5 was often right." He is already willing to reject the zevistvo and scientific farming and science and love. My Ivanov tells the doctor (Act I, Scene 5), "You, dear friend, graduated only last year. You are still young and vigorous, and I am thirty-five. I have the right to give you some advice. . . ." That's the way those prematurely weary people speak. Then, with an authoritative sigh they'll say, "Don't get married to this one or that one (see one of the categories above). Choose someone ordinary and colorless, someone who is neither striking nor has anything much to say. Structure your entire life according to accepted patterns. The more colorless and monotonous the surroundings, the better. And the life I've been through, it's been wearisome. Lord, how wearisome it's been!"
Since he feels physically weary and bored, he doesn't understand what he is undergoing now or what has taken place. In horror he tells the doctor (Act I, Scene 3), "You say she's going to die soon, and I feel no love or pity. All I feel is a sort of emptiness and weariness. ... To someone looking at me from outside it probably looks horrible, but I myself can't understand what's going on in my soul. . . ." When narrow- minded, dishonest people get into a situation like this, they usually place all the blame on their environment or join the ranks of the Hamlets and superfluous men, and let it go at that. The straightforward Ivanov, however, openly admits to the doctor and the audience that he doesn't understand himself: "I don't understand, I don't understand. . . ." That he genuinely does not understand himself is clear from his long third-act soliloquy when, left alone to converse with the audience and make his confession to them, he even weeps.
The change that has taken place within him offends his sense of decency. He seeks its causes from without and fails to find them, and when he starts seeking them within himself all he finds is an indefinable feeling of guilt. This feeling is a Russian feeling. If someone in his house has died or fallen ill, or if he owes or has lent someone money, a Russian always feels guilty. Ivanov is constantly holding forth about a guilty feeling he has, and this feeling of guilt grows within him from every jolt. In Act I he says, "I must be terribly guilty, but my thoughts are confused, I am chained down by a sort of indolence, and I am powerless to understand myself. . . ." In Act II he tells Sasha, "My conscience pains me day and night. I feel that I'm profoundly guilty, but I can't understand of what."
To weariness, boredom and guilt feelings add another enemy: loneliness. Had Ivanov been a government official, an actor, a priest, or a professor, he would have resigned himself to his situation. But he lives on his estate. He is in the provinces. People are either drunkards orcard players or like the doctor. None of them are concerned with his feelings or the change within him. He is lonely. Long winters, long evenings, a barren garden, barren rooms, a grumbling count, a sick wife. . . . And there's nowhere for him to go. That's why he is constantly tormented by the problem of what to do with himself.