Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchDecember 30, 1888.… This is how I understand my characters.* Ivanov is a gentleman,a University man, and not remarkable in any way. He is excitable,hotheaded, easily carried away, honest and straightforward likemost people of his class. He has lived on his estate and served on theZemstvo. What he has been doing and how he has behaved, whathe has been interested in and enthusiastic over, can be seen from thefollowing words of his, addressed to the doctor (Act I., Scene 5):“Don’t marry Jewesses or neurotic women or blue-stockings … don’tfight with thousands single-handed, don’t wage war on windmills,don’t batter your head against the wall … God preserve you fromscientific farming, wonderful schools, enthusiastic speeches ….” Thisis what he has in his past. Sarra, who has seen his scientific farmingand other crazes, says about him to the doctor: “He is a remarkableman, doctor, and I am sorry you did not meet him two or threeyears ago. Now he is depressed and melancholy, he doesn’t talk ordo anything, but in old days … how charming he was!” (Act I.,Scene 7). His past is beautiful, as is generally the case with educatedRussians. There is not, or there hardly is, a single Russian gentlemanor University man who does not boast of his past. The presentis always worse than the past. Why? Because Russian excitabilityhas one specific characteristic: it is quickly followed by exhaustion.A man has scarcely left the class-room before he rushes to take up aburden beyond his strength; he tackles at once the schools, the peasants,scientific farming, and the Vyestnik Evropi, he makes speeches,writes to the minister, combats evil, applauds good, falls in love, notin an ordinary, simple way, but selects either a blue-stocking or aneurotic or a Jewess, or even a prostitute whom he tries to save, andso on, and so on. But by the time he is thirty or thirty-five he beginsto feel tired and bored. He has not got decent moustaches yet, buthe already says with authority:“Don’t marry, my dear fellow …. Trust my experience,” or, “Afterall, what does Liberalism come to? Between ourselves Katkov wasoften right ….” He is ready to reject the Zemstvo and scientific*Translator’s Note: In the play “Ivanov.”104