Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchTO A. I. ERTEL.MELIHOVO, April 17, 1897.DEAR FRIEND ALEXANDR IVANOVITCH,I am now at home. For a fortnight before Easter I was lying inOstroumov’s clinic and was spitting blood. The doctor diagnosedtuberculosis in the lungs. I feel splendid, nothing aches, nothing isuneasy inside, but the doctors have forbidden me vinum, movement,and conversation, they have ordered me to eat a great deal,and forbidden me to practise—and I feel as it were dreary.I hear nothing about the People’s Theatre. At the congress it wasspoken of apathetically, without interest, and the circle that hadundertaken to write its constitution and set to work have evidentlycooled off a little. It is due to the spring, I suppose. The only one ofthe circle I saw was Goltsev, and I had not time to talk to him aboutthe theatre.There is nothing new. A dead calm in literature. In the editor’soffices they are drinking tea and cheap wine, drinking it withoutrelish as they walk about, evidently from having nothing to do.Tolstoy is writing a little book about Art. He came to see me in theclinic, and said that he had flung aside his novel “Resurrection” ashe did not like it, and was writing only about Art, and had readsixty books about Art. His idea is not a new one; all intelligent oldmen in all the ages have sung the same tune in different keys. Oldmen have always been prone to see the end of the world, and havealways declared that morality was degenerating to the uttermostpoint, that Art was growing shallow and wearing thin, that peoplewere growing feebler, and so on, and so on.Lyov Nikolaevitch wants to persuade us in his little book that atthe present time Art has entered upon its final phase, that it is in ablind alley, from which it has no outlet (except retreat).I am doing nothing, I feed the sparrows with hemp-seed and prunea rose-tree a day. After my pruning, the roses flower magnificently.I am not looking after the farming.Keep well, dear Alexandr Ivanovitch, thank you for your letterand friendly sympathy. Write to me for the sake of my infirmity,352