Want to bet that sooner or later I'll soak the management for six or seven thousand? How about it?
I wouldn't let Kiselevsky play the count for anything! My play caused him quite a bit of chagrin in Moscow. He went around complaining to everyone about being forced to play my son of a bitch of a count. Why chagrin him again?
People say it will be awkward to refuse because he's already had the part. Then why isn't it awkward to let Sazonov or Dalmatov16 play Ivanov? After all, Davydov had the part of Ivanov!
How weary I must have made you with this letter. Enough, bastal
Happy New Year! Hurra-a-ah!
Lucky you! You'll be drinking or have already been drinking real champagne, and all I have is the dregs.
My sister is ill. Her joints ache, she has a high temperature, a headache, etc. Our cook has the same thing. Both are bedridden. I fear it may be typhus.
Do forgive me for this desperately long, tiresome letter. My regards to your family. I kiss Anna Ivanovna's hand. Keep well.
Yours, A. Chekhov
If the public can't understand "iron in the blood," then to hell with it, the blood, I mean, the blood without iron.17
I've read through this letter. The word "Russian" often crops up in my characterization of Ivanov. Don't be angry. As I wrote the play, I had in mind only what I needed, only typical Russian traits. And excessive excitability, guilt feelings, and weariness are all purely Russian. Germans never get excited. That's why Germany has no disillusioned, superfluous, or weary people. The Frenchman's excitability constantly remains on one and the same plane; it never takes any sharp rises or falls. That's why the Frenchman's normal state is one of excitement and why it stays with him well into decrepit old age. In other words, the French don't spend their energy on excessive excitement; they spend their energy sensibly and therefore never go bankrupt.
Of course I don't use terms like Russian, excitability, weariness, etc., in the play; I'd hoped that the reader and the spectator would be attentive and not need a sign saying, "This is a plum, not a pumpkin."18 I have tried to express myself simply. I have not resorted to tricks and was far from suspecting that my readers and spectators would be out to trip up my characters on a phrase or lay special emphasis on the dowry talks, etc.
I failed in my attempt to write a play. It's a pity, of course.
Ivanov and Lvov seemed so alive in my imagination. I'm telling you the whole truth when I say that they weren't born in my head out of sea foam or preconceived notions or intellectual pretensions or by accident. They are the result of observing and studying life. They are still there in my mind, and I feel I haven't lied a bit or exaggerated an iota. And if they came out lifeless and blurred on paper, the fault lies not in them, but in my inability to convey my thoughts. Apparently it's too early for me to undertake playwriting.
This letter and the next one, written on the occasion of the first St. Petersburg production of Ivanov, are removed from their proper chronological sequence and included in this section for obvious thematic reasons.
While Suvorin was supervising the St. Petersburg production of Ivanov, Chekhov in Moscow was reciprocating by helping with the casting arrangements for the first Moscow production of Suvorin's play Tatyana Repina, a lurid melodrama about a famous actress who is abandoned by her lover and is driven by the intrigues of a Jewish banker and an evil Jewish confidante to take poison onstage during a performance. Blinded by his affection for Suvorin, Chekhov managed to overlook the shoddy literary quality of Tatyana Repina (and its explicit and ugly racist overtones) and he paid it the tribute of writing a one-act sequel for it, also called Tatyana Repina, which he had printed in an edition of three copies and presented to Suvorin as a private gesture of friendship. After Chekhov's death, this sequel was occasionally published and translated into other languages as an original dramatic work of Chekhov's, although it makes no sense whatsoever when it is read outside the context of Suvorin's play.
During the preparations for the Moscow production of Tatyana Repina at the famous Maly Theater, Chekhov's contribution was to carry out negotiations with various actors and actresses whom Suvorin wanted to appear in his play. Chekhov's letters to Suvorin during that period give a vivid and not very flattering account of backstage mores at the Maly Theater. His particular feat was to talk the actress Nadezhda Nikulina (of whom he wrote in another letter to Suvorin: "Actresses are cows who imagine themselves to be goddesses") into accepting a smaller role in the production and relinquishing the lead, for which the celebrated Maria Yermolova unexpectedly became available. The actor Fyodor Gorev was cast in the role of the heroine's lover.
Maria Savina (1854-1915) was one of the biggest names in Russian theater in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, celebrated both as an actress and for her intimate friendship with Ivan Turgenev (there was a book published after her death about her relationship with him). Her consenting to appear in Ivanov was felt as a great honor by Chekhov; later on, his opinion of her acting abilities was not as high as that of most of his contemporaries (see note 4 to Letter 50).
A generally respected, moderately liberal literary and political journal that was published in Moscow from 1866 to 1918.
Mikhail Katkov was a right-wing journalist and publisher who opposed and criticized the reforms of the 1860s, the zemstvo system and any kind of liberalization in general.
The former revolutionary Lev Tikhomirov, who had earlier helped organize several attempts to assassinate the tsar, published in 1888 a brochure called "Why I Stopped Being a Revolutionary." His abject repentance and his appeal for the tsar's mercy eventually secured for Tikhomirov a full pardon and permission to return to Russia from abroad.
Another big news story of 1888 was the diplomatic conflict between Russia and Bulgaria, caused by Russian objections to the invitation extended to the German Prince Ferdinand of Coburg to occupy the Bulgarian throne.
The third press sensation of the year to which Chekhov here alludes had to do with the failure of the Imperial Ballet management to renew the contract of the Italian prima ballerina Virginia Zucchi after her three years of successful appearances with their company. Instead of leaving Russia upon the expiration of her contract, Zucchi chose to form her own ballet company in Moscow.
The popular St. Petersburg physician Lev Bertenson, with whom Chekhov was later to correspond about the nomenclature of Sakhalin plants (see Letter 161).
A hackneyed slogan of anti-government dissent.
The numerous didactic novels of Alexander Sheller-Mikhailov (18381900), artistically hopeless but ideologically progressive, were widely read by socially aware young people in Chekhov's time.
Evil capitalist villains in popular melodramas by Alexander Palm and Alexander Yuzhin (pseudonym of Prince Sumbatov, who was later to become Chekhov's good friend).
Characters in Suvorin's Tatyana Repina.
In Alphonse Daudet's novel Jack.
Alexei Potekhin, a playwright of some distinction, whose skillfully written realistic dramas have been unfairly forgotten, was at the time in charge of repertory for the government-owned theaters in St. Petersburg, and was thus instrumental in selecting Ivanov for production; Fyodor Fyodorov, whose real surname was Yurkovsky, was the stage director of the St. Petersburg production.