The Chekhov controversy, the Chekhov legend, roughly dates from Ivanov. "For a long time," Bunin wrote many years later, "nobody called Chekhov anything but a 'gloomy' writer . . . a man who looked at everything with hopelessness and indiffer- ence. . . . Now they've gone to the opposite extreme . . . they've been going on about Chekhov's 'tenderness and wa^th,' 'Chekhov's love of humanity. . . .' All this makes intolerable reading. What would he have felt if he had read about his 'tenderness'? This is a word which one must use very rarely and very carefully about Chekhov." And Hingley in his biography makes it simple: he says that those who are pessimists think Chekhov is a pessimist and those who are optimists think he is an optimist.
I do not understand the pessimist theory. I know of no writer who ever made it more clear that he believed in the future. There is every difference between sadness and despair. Chekhov was often sad but basically he was a gay and cheerful man, calm, pleasant, full of fun. He liked pretty women, he liked wine and a party, he kept open house for his friends, he enjoyed music and fishing and bathing and gardening and money and fame. He took the good with the bad.
In 1889 Chekhov's brother, Nikolai, died of tuberculosis. Chekhov was deeply depressed by his brother's death and his great short story, "A Tiresome Tale," was written immediately aften,ard. Then, as if to break with the past, he began to pre- pare for a long and dangerous journey.
To NIKOLAI LEIKIN
October /2, /885, Moscow
Dear Nikolai Alexandrovich,
Your letter found me in my new apartment. It is near the Moscow River and in real country: clean, quiet, cheap and— dullish. The massacre of the latest issue of "Fragments"1 struck me like a bolt from the blue. On the one hand I regret all the work I put in, on the other hand, I feel a kind of frustration and disgust. Of course, you are right: it is better to tone down gradually and eat humble pie than to imperil the future of the magazine by getting on your high horse. One must wait and be patient. But I think you will ha,e to tone down continually. What is permitted today will be subjected to the censorship of the committee tomorrow, and the time is near at hand when even the rank of "merchant" will constitute forbidden fruit. Yes indeed, literature supplies a thin crust of bread, and you did a clever thing in being born before me, when both breath- ing and \\Titing were easier. . . .
You ad, ise me to take the trip to St. Pete . . . and you tell me that St. Pete is not China. I myself know that it isn't, and, as you are aware, have long realized the usefulness of such a journey, but what am I to do? Living as I do in a large family
1 The censor came down hea,ily on this issue of Fragments, tossing out, among other pieces, two sketches by Chekhov. Leikin was told that he must stop pub- lishing satirical articles or the magazine "ould be banned from the newsstands.
group I can never expect to have a ten-ruble note to spare, and even the most uncomfortable and beggarly trip would stand me a minimum of fifty rubles. Where can I get that kind of money? I just can't squeeze it out of my family and I ought not. If I were to cut down on food, I would pine away from pangs of conscience. I had earlier hoped it would be possible to snatch enough for the trip out of the payment received from the "St. Petersburg Gazette"; now it turns out that in starting work for this paper I will not earn a bit more than I had pre- viously, and that I will be giving the aforementioned gazette all that I formerly gave to "Diversion," "Alarm Clock" and the others. Allah alone knows how hard it is to maintain my equi- librium, and how easy to slip and lose my balance. Just let me earn twenty or thirty rubles less during the coming month and my balance, it seems to me, will go to the devil and I'll find myself in a mess. Financially I am terribly timid, and as a result of this financial, totally uncommercial cowardice I avoid loans and advances. It is not hard to move me to action. If I had any money I would fly continually from city to city.
I received payment from the "St. Petersburg Gazette" two weeks after I sent the bill.
If you are in Moscow in October, I will manage to pull my- self together and leave with you. Money for the Petersburg trip will turn up somehow, and for the return trip I can get funds (earned) from Khudekov.
It is not possible for me to write more than I do at present, for medicine is not like the bar: if you don't practice you cool off. Accordingly, my literary earnings are a constant quantity; they can diminish but not increase.
. . . Tuesday evenings we have parties with girls, music, sing- ing and literature. I want to take our poet out into the world, or he'll sour on it.
Yours, A. Chekhov
To DMITRI GRIGOROVICH
March 28, /886, Moscow
Your letter, my kind, warmly loved bearer of good tidings, struck me like a bolt of lightning. I was deeply moved, almost to tears, and now feel it has left a deep imprint on my soul. May God bestow the same kind serenity upon your old age as you have lavished on my youth. I can really find neither words nor deeds to thank you. You know how ordinary people look upon such a member of the elite as you; you may therefore judge what your letter means to me. It means more than any diploma, and for a beginning writer it is a reward both for now and the future. I am in a daze, as it were. I lack the ability to judge whether I deserve this high award or not. I can only repeat that it has overwhelmed me.
If I do have a gift to be respected, I can confess to you who have a pure heart that I have hitherto not given it any respect. I felt I had some talent, but had fallen into the habit of con- sidering it trifling. Reasons of a purely external character suffice to render one unjust, extremely distrustful and suspicious to- ward oneself. And, as I now recollect, I have had plenty of such reasons. All my intimates have always referred condescend- ingly to my writing and have kept advising me in friendly fashion not to change a genuine profession for mere scribbling. I have hundreds of friends in Moscow, among them a score of writers, and I cannot recall one who would read me or consider me a talented writer. There is a so-called "literary circle" in Moscow; talents and mediocrities of all ages and kinds gather together once a week in the private room of a restaurant and give their tongues a good workout. If I were to go there and read just a short excerpt from your letter, they would laugh in my face. During the five years of my roving from paper to paper I have adopted this general view of my own literary insig- nificance, have quickly got used to regarding my own labors condescendingly, and consider writing a minor matter. That is the first reason. The second is that I am a physician and have been sucked into medicine up to my neck, so that the saying about hunting two rabbits at one time never could have wor- ried anybody more than it worries me.