Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchTO SUVORIN.MELIHOVO, July 12, 1897.… I am reading Maeterlinck, I have read his “Les Aveugles,”“L’Intrus,” and am reading “Aglavaine et Selysette.” They are allstrange wonderful things, but they make an immense impression,and if I had a theatre I should certainly stage “Les Aveugles.” Thereis, by the way, a magnificent scenic effect in it, with the sea and alighthouse in the distance. The public is semi-idiotic, but one mightavoid the play’s failing by writing the contents of the play—in brief,of course—on the programme, saying the play is the work ofMaeterlinck, a Belgian author and decadent, and that what happensin it is that an old man, who leads about some blind men, hasdied in silence and that the blind men, not knowing this, are sittingand waiting for his return ….354