Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Anton ChekhovTO HIS SISTER.FEODOSIA, July, 1888.… The journey from Sumy to Harkov is frightfully dull. Goingfrom Harkov to Simferopol one might well die of boredom. TheCrimean steppe is depressing, monotonous, with no horizon,colourless like Ivanenko’s stories, and on the whole rather like thetundra …. From Simferopol mountains begin and, with them,beauty. Ravines, mountains, ravines, mountains, poplars stick outfrom the ravines, vineyards loom dark on the mountains—all this isbathed in moonlight, is new and wild, and sets one’s imaginationworking in harmony with Gogol’s “Terrible Vengeance.” Particularlyfantastic are the alternating precipices and tunnels when yousee now depths full of moonlight and now complete sinister darkness.It is rather uncanny and delightful. One feels it is somethingnot Russian, something alien. I reached Sevastopol at night. Thetown is beautiful in itself and beautiful because it stands by a marvelloussea. The best in the sea is its colour, and that one cannotdescribe. It is like blue copperas. As to steamers and sailing vessels,piers and harbours, what strikes one most of all is the poverty of theRussians. Except the “popovkas,” which look like Moscow merchants’wives, and two or three decent steamers, there is nothing to speak ofin the bay.… In the morning it was deadly dull. Heat, dust, thirst …. In theharbour there was a stench of ropes, and one caught glimpses offaces burnt brick-red, sounds of a pulley, of the splashing of dirtywater, knocking, Tatar words, and all sorts of uninteresting nonsense.You go up to a steamer: men in rags, bathed in sweat andalmost baked by the sun, dizzy, with tatters on their backs and shoulders,unload Portland cement; you stand and look at them and thewhole scene becomes so remote, so alien, that one feels insufferablydull and uninterested. It is entertaining to get on board and set off,but it is rather a bore to sail and talk to a crowd of passengers consistingof elements all of which one knows by heart and is weary ofalready …. Yalta is a mixture of something European that remindsone of the views of Nice, with something cheap and shoddy. The83