Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchMOSCOW, February 15, 1890.I answer you, dear Alexey Nikolaevitch, at once on receiving yourletter. It was your name-day, and I forgot it!! Forgive me, dear friend,and accept my belated congratulations.Did you really not like the “Kreutzer Sonata”? I don’t say it is awork of genius for all time, of that I am no judge; but to my thinking,among the mass of all that is written now, here and abroad, onescarcely could find anything else as powerful both in the gravity ofits conception and the beauty of its execution. To say nothing of itsartistic merits, which in places are striking, one must be grateful tothe novel, if only because it is keenly stimulating to thought. As onereads it, one can scarcely refrain from crying out: “That’s true,” or“That’s absurd.” It is true it has some very annoying defects. Apartfrom all those you enumerate, it has one for which one cannot readilyforgive the author—that is, the audacity with which Tolstoy holdsforth about what he doesn’t know and is too obstinate to care tounderstand. Thus his statements about syphilis, foundling hospitals,the aversion of women for the sexual relation, and so on, arenot merely open to dispute, but show him up as an ignoramus whohas not, in the course of his long life, taken the trouble to read twoor three books written by specialists. But yet these defects fly awaylike feathers in the wind; one simply does not notice them in face ofthe real worth of the story, or, if one notices them, it is only with alittle vexation that the story has not escaped the fate of all the worksof man, all imperfect and never free from blemish.My Petersburg friends and acquaintances are angry with me? Whatfor? For my not having bored them enough with my presence, whichhas for so long been a bore to myself! Soothe their minds. Tell themthat in Petersburg I ate a great many dinners and a great many suppers,but did not fascinate one lady; that every day I was confidentof leaving by the evening train, that I was detained by my friendsand by The Marine Almanack, the whole of which I had to lookthrough from the year 1852. While I was in Petersburg, I got throughin one month more than my young friends would in a year. Letthem be angry, though!*Translator’s Note: The celebrated actress.120