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Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

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<strong>Anton</strong> <strong>Chekhov</strong>TO A. S. SUVORIN.MOSCOW, October 25, 1891.Print “The Duel” not twice a week but only once. To print ittwice is breaking a long-established custom <strong>of</strong> the paper, and it wouldseem as though I were robbing the other contributors <strong>of</strong> one day aweek; and meanwhile it makes no difference to me or my novelwhether it is printed once a week or twice. The literary brotherhoodin Petersburg seems to talk <strong>of</strong> nothing but the uncleanness <strong>of</strong> mymotives. I have just received the good news that I am to be marriedto the rich Madame Sibiryakov. I get a lot <strong>of</strong> agreeable news altogether.I wake up every night and read “War and Peace.” One reads itwith the same interest and naive wonder as though one had neverread it before. It’s amazingly good. Only I don’t like the passages inwhich Napoleon appears. As soon as Napoleon comes on the scenethere are forced explanations and tricks <strong>of</strong> all sorts to prove that hewas stupider than he really was. Everything that is said and done byPierre, Prince Andrey, or the absolutely insignificant NikolayRostov—all that is good, clever, natural, and touching; everythingthat is thought and done by Napoleon is not natural, not clever,inflated and worthless.When I live in the provinces (<strong>of</strong> which I dream now day andnight), I shall practice as a doctor and read novels.I am not coming to Petersburg.If I had been by Prince Andrey I should have saved him. It isstrange to read that the wound <strong>of</strong> a prince, a rich man spending hisdays and nights with a doctor and being nursed by Natasha andSonya, should have smelt like a corpse. What a scurvy affair medicinewas in those days! Tolstoy could not help getting soaked throughwith hatred for medicine while he was writing his thick novel ….273

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