Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

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Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchYALTA, January 3, 1899.… Apparently you have misunderstood me a little. I did not writeto you of coarseness of style, but only of the incongruity of foreign,not genuinely Russian, or rarely used words. In other authors suchwords as, for instance, “fatalistically,” pass unnoticed, but your thingsare musical, harmonious, and every crude touch jars fearfully. Ofcourse it is a question of taste, and perhaps this is only a sign ofexcessive fastidiousness in me, or the conservatism of a man whohas adopted definite habits for himself long ago. I am resigned to “acollegiate assessor,” and “a captain of the second rank” in descriptions,but “flirt” and “champion” when they occur in descriptionsexcite repulsion in me.Are you self-educated? In your stories you are completely an artistand at the same time an “educated” man in the truest sense.Nothing is less characteristic of you than coarseness, you are cleverand subtle and delicate in your feelings. Your best things are “In theSteppe,” and “On the Raft,”—did I write to you about that? Theyare splendid things, masterpieces, they show the artist who has passedthrough a very good school. I don’t think that I am mistaken. Theonly defect is the lack of restraint, the lack of grace. When a manspends the least possible number of movements over some definiteaction, that is grace. One is conscious of superfluity in your expenditure.The descriptions of nature are the work of an artist; you are a reallandscape painter. Only the frequent personification (anthropomorphism)when the sea breathes, the sky gazes, the steppe barks, naturewhispers, speaks, mourns, and so on—such metaphors makeyour descriptions somewhat monotonous, sometimes sweetish, sometimesnot clear; beauty and expressiveness in nature are attainedonly by simplicity, by such simple phrases as “The sun set,” “It wasdark,” “It began to rain,” and so on—and that simplicity is characteristicof you in the highest degree, more so perhaps than of anyother writer ….366
Anton ChekhovTO A. S. SUVORIN.YALTA, January 17, 1899.… I have been reading Tolstoy’s son’s story: “The Folly of theMir.” The construction of the story is poor, indeed it would havebeen better to write it simply as an article, but the thought is treatedwith justice and passion. I am against the Commune myself. Thereis sense in the Commune when one has to deal with external enemieswho make frequent invasions, and with wild animals; butnow it is a crowd artificially held together, like a crowd of convicts.They will tell us Russia is an agricultural country. That is so, but theCommune has nothing to do with that, at any rate at the presenttime. The commune exists by husbandry, but once husbandry beginsto pass into scientific agriculture the commune begins to crackat every seam, as the commune and culture are not compatible ideas.Our national drunkenness and profound ignorance are, by the way,sins of the commune system ….367
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