Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchTO A. F. KONI.MELIHOVO, November 11, 1896.You cannot imagine how your letter rejoiced me. I saw from thefront only the two first acts of my play. Afterwards I sat behind thescenes and felt the whole time that “The Seagull” was a failure.After the performance that night and next day, I was assured that Ihad hatched out nothing but idiots, that my play was clumsy fromthe stage point of view, that it was not clever, that it was unintelligible,even senseless, and so on and so on. You can imagine myposition—it was a collapse such as I had never dreamed of! I feltashamed and vexed, and I went away from Petersburg full of doubtsof all sorts. I thought that if I had written and put on the stage aplay so obviously brimming over with monstrous defects, I had lostall instinct and that, therefore, my machinery must have gone wrongfor good. After I had reached home, they wrote to me from Petersburgthat the second and third performances were a success; severalletters, some signed, some anonymous, came praising the play andabusing the critics. I read them with pleasure, but still I felt vexedand ashamed, and the idea forced itself upon me that if kind-heartedpeople thought it was necessary to comfort me, it meant that I wasin a bad way. But your letter has acted upon me in a most definiteway. I have known you a long time, I have a deep respect for you,and I believe in you more than in all the critics taken together—youfelt that when you wrote your letter, and that is why it is so excellentand convincing. My mind is at rest now, and I can think of the playand the performance without loathing. Kommissarzhevskaia is awonderful actress. At one of the rehearsals many people were movedto tears as they looked at her, and said that she was the first actressin Russia to-day; but at the first performance she was affected bythe general attitude of hostility to my “Seagull,” and was, as it were,intimidated by it and lost her voice. Our press takes a cold tone toher that doesn’t do justice to her merits, and I am sorry for her.Allow me to thank you with all my heart for your letter. Believe me,I value the feelings that prompted you to write it far more than Ican express in words, and the sympathy you call “unnecessary” at344