Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketch(No date), 1888.… You say that writers are God’s elect. I will not contradict you.Shtcheglov calls me the Potyomkin of literature, and so it is not forme to speak of the thorny path, of disappointments, and so on. I donot know whether I have ever suffered more than shoemakers, mathematicians,or railway guards do; I do not know who speaks throughmy lips—God or someone worse. I will allow myself to mentiononly one little drawback which I have experienced and you probablyknow from experience also. It is this. You and I are fond ofordinary people; but other people are fond of us because they thinkwe are not ordinary. Me, for instance, they invite everywhere andregale me with food and drink like a general at a wedding. My sisteris indignant that people on all sides invite her simply because she isa writer’s sister. No one wants to love the ordinary people in us.Hence it follows that if in the eyes of our friends we should appearto-morrow as ordinary mortals, they will leave off loving us, andwill only pity us. And that is horrid. It is horrid, too, that they likethe very things in us which we often dislike and despise in ourselves.It is horrid that I was right when I wrote the story “The First-Class Passenger,” in which an engineer and a professor talk aboutfame.I am going away into the country. Hang them all! You haveFeodosia. By the way, about Feodosia and the Tatars. The Tatarshave been robbed of their land, but no one thinks of their welfare.There ought to be Tatar schools. Write and suggest that the moneywhich is being spent on the sausage Dorpat University, where uselessGermans are studying, should be devoted to schools for Tatars,who are of use to Russia. I would write about it myself, but I don’tknow how to.100