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Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

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>June 16.… You want me to write my impressions to you.My soul longs for breadth and altitude, but I am forced to lead anarrow life spent over trashy roubles and kopecks. There is nothingmore vulgar than a petty bourgeois life with its halfpence, its victuals,its futile talk, and its useless conventional virtue; my heartaches from the consciousness that I am working for money, andmoney is the centre <strong>of</strong> all I do. This aching feeling, together with asense <strong>of</strong> justice, makes my writing a contemptible pursuit in myeyes: I don’t respect what I write, I am apathetic and bored withmyself, and glad that I have medicine which, anyway, I practise notfor the sake <strong>of</strong> money. I ought to have a bath in sulphuric acid andflay <strong>of</strong>f my skin, and then grow a new hide ….305

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