Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

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Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchALEXIN, May 10, 1891.Yes, you are right, my soul needs balsam. I should read now withpleasure, even with joy, something serious, not merely about myselfbut things in general. I pine for serious reading, and recent Russiancriticism does not nourish but simply irritates me. I could read withenthusiasm something new about Pushkin or Tolstoy. That wouldbe balsam for my idle mind.I am homesick for Venice and Florence too, and am ready to climbVesuvius again; Bologna has been effaced from my memory andgrown dim. As for Nice and Paris, when I recall them “I look on mylife with loathing.”In the last number of The Messenger of Foreign Literature there is astory by Ouida, translated from the English by our Mihail. Whydon’t I know foreign languages? It seems to me I could translatemagnificently. When I read anyone else’s translation I keep alteringand transposing the words in my brain, and the result is somethinglight, ethereal, like lacework.On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays I write my Sahalin book,on the other days, except Sunday, my novel, and on Sundays, shortstories. I work with zest. The weather has been superb every day;the site of our summer villa is dry and healthy. There is a lot ofwoodland. There are a lot of fish and crayfish in the Oka. I see thetrains and the steamers. Altogether if it were not for being somewhatcramped I should be very very much pleased with it.* * *I don’t intend to get married. I should like to be a little bald oldman sitting at a big table in a fine study ….246
Anton ChekhovALEXIN, May 13, 1891.I am going to write you a Christmas story—that’s certain. Two,indeed, if you like. I sit and write and write …; at last I have set towork. I am only sorry that my cursed teeth are aching and my stomachis out of order.I am a dilatory but productive author. By the time I am forty Ishall have hundreds of volumes, so that I can open a bookshop withnothing but my own works. To have a lot of books and to havenothing else is a horrible disgrace.My dear friend, haven’t you in your library Tagantsev’s “CriminalLaw”? If you have, couldn’t you send it me? I would buy it, but I amnow “a poor relation”—a beggar and as poor as Sidor’s goat. Wouldyou telephone to your shop, too, to send me, on account of favoursto come, two books: “The Laws relating to Exiles,” and “The Lawsrelating to Persons under Police Control.” Don’t imagine that I wantto become a procurator; I want these works for my Sahalin book. Iam going to direct my attack chiefly against life sentences, in whichI see the root of all the evils; and against the laws dealing with exiles,which are fearfully out of date and contradictory.247
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