Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Anton ChekhovTO A. S. SUVORIN.YALTA, February 12, 1900.I have been racking my brains over your fourth act, and havecome to no conclusion except, perhaps, that you must not end it upwith Nihilists. It’s too turbulent and screaming; a quiet, lyrical, touchingending would be more in keeping with your play. When yourheroine begins to grow old without arriving at anything or decidinganything for herself, and sees that she is forsaken by all, that she isuninteresting and superfluous, when she understands that the peoplearound her were idle, useless, bad people (her father too), and thatshe has let her life slip—is not that more dreadful than the Nihilists?Your letters about “The Russalka” and Korsh are very good. Thetone is brilliant, and they are wonderfully written. But aboutKonovalov and the jury, I think you ought not to have written,however alluring the subject. Let A—t write as much as he likesabout it, but not you, for it is not your affair. To treat such questionsboldly and with conviction, one must be a man with a single purpose,while you would go off at a tangent halfway through the letter—asyou have done—saying suddenly that we all sometimes desireto kill someone, and desire the death of our neighbours. Whena daughter-in-law feels sick and tired of an invalid mother-in-law, aspiteful old woman, she, the daughter-in-law, feels easier at thethought that the old woman will soon die: but that’s not desiringher death, but weariness, an exhausted spirit, vexation, longing forpeace. If that daughter-in-law were ordered to kill the old woman,she would sooner kill herself, whatever desire might have been broodingin her heart.Why, of course jurymen may make a mistake, but what of that? Itdoes happen by mistake that help is given to the well-fed instead ofto the hungry, but whatever you write on that subject, you willreach no result but harm to the hungry. Whether from our point ofview the jury are mistaken or not mistaken, we ought to recognizethat in each individual case they form a conscious judgment andmake an effort to do so conscientiously; and if a captain steers his397