The Autobiographical Writings of Anton Chekhov - Anton Chekhov

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“To the left!”

      Red lights appear in front, and suddenly among the uproar is heard the whistling, not of the Dir, but of some other steamer…. Now I understand it: there is going to be a collision! The Dir puffs, trembles, and does not move, as though waiting for a signal to go down…. But just when I think all is lost, the red lights appear on the left of us, and the dark silhouette of a steamer can be discerned…. A long black body sails past us, guiltily blinks its red eyes, and gives a guilty whistle….

      “Oof! What steamer is it?” I ask the captain.

      The captain looks at the silhouette through his glasses and replies:

      “It is the Tweedie.”

      After a pause we begin to talk of the Vesta, which collided with two steamers and went down. Under the influence of this conversation the sea, the night and the wind begin to seem hideous, created on purpose for man’s undoing, and I feel sorry as I look at the fat little captain…. Something whispers to me that this poor man, too, will sooner or later sink to the bottom and be choked with salt water. [Footnote: Chekhov’s presentiment about the captain was partly fulfilled: that very autumn the Dir was wrecked on the shores of Alupka.]

      I go back to my cabin…. It is stuffy, and there is a smell of cooking. My travelling companion, Suvorin-fils, is asleep already…. I take off all my clothes and go to bed…. The darkness sways to and fro, the bed seems to breathe…. Boom-boom-boom! Bathed in perspiration, breathless, and feeling an oppression all over with the rocking, I ask myself, “What am I here for?”

      I wake up. It is no longer dark. Wet all over, with a nasty taste in my mouth, I dress and go out. Everything is covered with dew…. The wild goats look with human eyes through the grating of their cage and seem to be asking “Why are we here?” The captain stands still as before and looks intently into the distance….

      A mountainous shore stretches on the left…. Elborus is seen from behind the mountains.

      A blurred sun rises in the sky…. One can see the green valley of Rion and the Bay of Poti by the side of it.

      TO N. A. LEIKIN.

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      SUMY,

      August 12.

      … I have been to the Crimea. I spent twelve days at Suvorin’s in Feodosia, bathed, idled about; I have been to Aivazovsky’s estate. From Feodosia I went by steamer to Batum. On the way I spent half a day at Suhum — a charming little town buried in luxuriant, un-Russian greenery, and one day at the Monastery, at New Athos. It is so lovely there at New Athos that there is no describing it: waterfalls, eucalyptuses, tea-plants, cypresses, olive-trees, and, above all, sea and mountains, mountains, mountains. From Athos and Suhum I went to Poti; the River Rion, renowned for its valley and its sturgeons, is close by. The vegetation is luxuriant. All the streets are planted with poplars. Batum is a big commercial and military, foreign-looking, cafe’-chantant sort of town; you feel in it at every step that we have conquered the Turks. There is nothing special about it (except a great number of brothels), but the surrounding country is charming. Particularly fine is the road to Kars and the swift river Tchoraksu.

      The road from Batum to Tiflis is poetical and original; you look all the time out of window and exclaim: there are mountains, tunnels, rocks, rivers, waterfalls, big and little. But the road from Tiflis to Baku is the abomination of desolation, a bald plain, covered with sand and created for Persians, tarantulas, and phalangas to live in. There is not a single tree, there is no grass … dreary as hell…. Baku and the Caspian Sea are such rotten places that I would not agree to live there for a million. There are no roofs, there are no trees either; Persian faces everywhere, fifty degrees Reaumur of heat, a smell of kerosine, the naphtha-soaked mud squelches under one’s feet, the drinking water is salt.

      … You have seen the Caucasus. I believe you have seen the Georgian Military Road, too. If you have not been there yet, pawn your wives and children and the Oskolki [Translator’s Note: Oskolki, (i.e., “Chips,” “Bits”) the paper of which Leikin was editor.] and go. I have never in my life seen anything like it. It is not a road, but unbroken poetry, a wonderful, fantastic story written by the Demon in love with Tamara.

      TO A. S. SUVORIN.

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      SUMY,

      August 29, 1888.

      … When as a boy I used to stay at my grandfather’s on Count Platov’s estate, I had to sit from sunrise to sunset by the thrashing machine and write down the number of poods and pounds of corn that had been thrashed; the whistling, the hissing, and the bass note, like the sound of a whirling top, that the machine makes at full speed, the creaking of the wheels, the lazy tread of the oxen, the clouds of dust, the grimy, perspiring faces of some three score of men — all this has stamped itself upon my memory like the Lord’s Prayer. And now, too, I have been spending hours at the thrashing and felt intensely happy. When the thrashing engine is at work it looks as though alive; it has a cunning, playful expression, while the men and oxen look like machines. In the district of Mirgorod few have thrashing machines of their own, but everyone can hire one. The engine goes about the whole province drawn by six oxen and offers itself to all who can pay for it.

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      MOSCOW,

      September 11.

      … You advise me not to hunt after two hares, and not to think of medical work. I do not know why one should not hunt two hares even in the literal sense…. I feel more confident and more satisfied with myself when I reflect that I have two professions and not one. Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the other. Though it’s disorderly, it’s not so dull, and besides neither of them loses anything from my infidelity. If I did not have my medical work I doubt if I could have given my leisure and my spare thoughts to literature. There is no discipline in me.

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      MOSCOW,

      October 27, 1888.

      … In conversation with my literary colleagues I always insist that it is not the artist’s business to solve problems that require a specialist’s knowledge. It is a bad thing if a writer tackles a subject he does not understand. We have specialists for dealing with special questions: it is their business to judge of the commune, of the future of capitalism, of the evils of drunkenness, of boots, of the diseases of women. An artist must only judge of what he understands, his field is just as limited as that of any other specialist — I repeat this and insist on it always. That in his sphere there are no questions, but only answers, can only be maintained by those who have never written and have had no experience of thinking in images. An artist observes, selects, guesses, combines — and this in itself presupposes a problem: unless he had set himself a problem from the very first there would be nothing to conjecture and nothing to select. To put it briefly, I will end by using the language of psychiatry: if one denies that creative work involves problems and purposes, one must admit that an artist creates without premeditation or intention, in a state of aberration; therefore, if an author boasted to me of having written a novel without a preconceived design, under a sudden inspiration, I should call him mad.

      You are right in demanding that an artist should take an intelligent attitude to his work, but you confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly. It is only the second that is obligatory for the artist. In “Anna Karenin” and “Evgeny Onyegin” not a single problem is solved, but they satisfy you completely because all the problems are correctly stated in them. It is the business of the judge to put the right questions, but the answers must be given by the jury according to their own lights.

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