Complete Works of Anton Chekhov

The descriptions of nature are the work of an artist; you are a real landscape painter. Only the frequent personification (anthropomorphism) when the sea breathes, the sky gazes, the steppe barks, nature whispers, speaks, mourns, and so on — such metaphors make your descriptions somewhat monotonous, sometimes sweetish, sometimes not clear; beauty and expressiveness in nature are attained only by simplicity, by such simple phrases as “The sun set,” “It was dark,” “It began to rain,” and so on — and that simplicity is characteristic of you in the highest degree, more so perhaps than of any other writer….

TO A. S. SUVORIN.

YALTA,

January 17, 1899.

… I have been reading Tolstoy’s son’s story: “The Folly of the Mir.” The construction of the story is poor, indeed it would have been better to write it simply as an article, but the thought is treated with justice and passion. I am against the Commune myself. There is sense in the Commune when one has to deal with external enemies who make frequent invasions, and with wild animals; but now it is a crowd artificially held together, like a crowd of convicts. They will tell us Russia is an agricultural country. That is so, but the Commune has nothing to do with that, at any rate at the present time. The commune exists by husbandry, but once husbandry begins to pass into scientific agriculture the commune begins to crack at every seam, as the commune and culture are not compatible ideas. Our national drunkenness and profound ignorance are, by the way, sins of the commune system….

TO HIS BROTHER MIHAIL.

YALTA,

February 6, 1899.

… Being bored, I am reading “The Book of my Life” by Bishop Porfiry. This passage about war occurs in it:

“Standing armies in time of peace are locusts devouring the people’s bread and leaving a vile stench in society, while in time of war they are artificial fighting machines, and when they grow and develop, farewell to freedom, security, and national glory! … They are the lawless defenders of unjust and partial laws, of privilege and of tyranny.” …

That was written in the forties….

TO I. I. ORLOV.

YALTA,

February 22, 1899.

… In your letter there is a text from Scripture. To your complaint in regard to the tutor and failures of all sorts I will reply by another text: “Put not thy trust in princes nor in any sons of man” … and I recall another expression in regard to the sons of man, those in particular who so annoy you: they are the sons of their age.

Not the tutor but the whole educated class — that is to blame, my dear sir. While the young men and women are students they are a good honest set, they are our hope, they are the future of Russia, but no sooner do those students enter upon independent life and become grown up than our hope and the future of Russia vanishes in smoke, and all that is left in the filter is doctors owning house property, hungry government clerks, and thieving engineers. Remember that Katkov, Pobyedonostsev, Vishnegradsky, were nurselings of the Universities, that they were our Professors — not military despots, but professors, luminaries…. I don’t believe in our educated class, which is hypocritical, false, hysterical, badly educated and indolent. I don’t believe in it even when it’s suffering and complaining, for its oppressors come from its own entrails. I believe in individual people, I see salvation in individual personalities scattered here and there all over Russia — educated people or peasants — they have strength though they are few. No prophet is honoured in his own country, but the individual personalities of whom I am speaking play an unnoticed part in society, they are not domineering, but their work can be seen; anyway, science is advancing and advancing, social self-consciousness is growing, moral questions begin to take an uneasy character, and so on, and so on-and all this is being done in spite of the prosecutors, the engineers, and the tutors, in spite of the intellectual class en masse and in spite of everything….

TO MADAME AVILOV.

YALTA,

March 9, 1899.

I shall not be at the writers’ congress. In the autumn I shall be in the

Crimea or abroad — that is, of course, if I am alive and free. I am going to

spend the whole summer on my own place in the Serpuhov district. [Footnote:

Melihovo.]