Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchMay 9.I have no news. The weather is most exquisite, and in the foliagenear the house a nightingale is building and shouting incessantly.About twelve miles from me there is the village of Pokrovskoe-Meshtcherskoe; the old manor house there is now the lunatic asylumof the province. The Zemsky doctors from the whole Moscowprovince met there on the fourth of May, to the number of aboutseventy-five; I was there too. There are a great many patients but allthat is interesting material for alienists and not for psychologists.One patient, a mystic, preaches that the Holy Trinity has come uponearth in the form of the metropolitan of Kiev, Ioannikiy. “A limit often years has been given us; eight have passed, only two years areleft. If we do not want Russia to fall into ruins like Sodom, all Russiamust go in a procession with the Cross to Kiev, as Moscow wentto Troitsa, and pray there to the divine martyr in the noble form ofthe metropolitan Ioannikiy.” This queer fellow is convinced thatthe doctors in the asylum are poisoning him, and that he is beingsaved by the miraculous intervention of Christ in the form of themetropolitan. He is continually praying to the East and singing,and, addressing himself to God, invariably adds the words, “in thenoble form of the metropolitan Ioannikiy.” He has a lovely expressionof face ….From the madhouse I returned late at night in my troika. Twothirdsof the way I had to drive through the forest in the moonlight,and I had a wonderful feeling such as I have not had for a long time,as though I had come back from a tryst. I think that nearness tonature and idleness are essential elements of happiness; without themit is impossible ….326