Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchMOSCOW, November 30, 1891.I return you the two manuscripts you sent me. One story is anIndian Legend—The Lotus Flower, Wreaths of Laurel, A SummerNight, The Humming Bird—that in India! He begins with Faustthirsting for youth and ends with “the bliss of the true life,” in thestyle of Tolstoy. I have cut out parts, polished it up, and the result isa legend of no great value, indeed, but light, and it may be read withinterest. The other story is illiterate, clumsy, and womanish in structure,but there is a story and a certain raciness. I have cut it down tohalf as you see. Both stories could be printed ….I keep dreaming and dreaming. I dream of moving from Moscowinto the country in March, and in the autumn coming to Petersburgto stay till the spring. I long to spend at least one winter inPetersburg, and that’s only possible on condition I have no perch inMoscow. And I dream of how I shall spend five months talking toyou about literature, and do as I think best in the Novoye Vremya,while in the country I shall go in for medicine heart and soul.Boborykin has been to see me. He is dreaming too. He told methat he wants to write something in the way of the physiology of theRussian novel, its origin among us, and the natural course of itsdevelopment. While he was talking I could not get rid of the feelingthat I had a maniac before me, but a literary maniac who put literaturefar above everything in life. I so rarely see genuine literary peopleat home in Moscow that a conversation with Boborykin seemedlike heavenly manna, though I don’t believe in the physiology of thenovel and the natural course of its development—that is, there mayexist such a physiology in nature, but I don’t believe with existingmethods it can be detected. Boborykin dismisses Gogol absolutelyand refuses to recognize him as a forerunner of Turgenev, Gontcharov,and Tolstoy …. He puts him apart, outside the current in which theRussian novel has flowed. Well, I don’t understand that. If one takesthe standpoint of natural development, it’s impossible to put notonly Gogol, but even a dog barking, outside the current, for allthings in nature influence one another, and even the fact that I havejust sneezed is not without its influence on surrounding nature ….Good health to you! I am reading Shtchedrin’s “Diary of a Pro-278