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TO A. S. SUVORIN. - Letters of Anton Chekhov
| | Page 151 of 279 | | |
ALEXIN,
May 18, 1891.
... I get up at five o'clock in the morning; evidently when I am old I shall get up at four. My forefathers all got up very early, before the cock. And I notice people who get up very early are horribly fussy. So I suppose I shall be a fussy, restless old man....
BOGIMOVO,
May 20.
... The carp bite capitally. I forgot all my sorrows yesterday; first I sat by the pond and caught carp, and then by the old mill and caught perch.
... The last two proclamations--about the Siberian railway and the exiles--pleased me very much. The Siberian railway is called a national concern, and the tone of the proclamation guarantees its speedy completion; and convicts who have completed such and such terms as settlers are allowed to return to Russia without the right to live in the provinces of Petersburg and Moscow. The newspapers have let this pass unnoticed, and yet it is something which has never been in Russia before--it is the first step towards abolishing the life sentence which has so long weighed on the public conscience as unjust and cruel in the extreme....
BOGIMOVO,
May 27, 4 o'clock in the Morning.
The mongoose has run away into the woods and has not come back. It is cold. I have no money. But nevertheless, I don't envy you. One cannot live in town now, it is both dreary and unwholesome. I should like you to be sitting from morning till dinner-time in this verandah, drinking tea and writing something artistic, a play or something; and after dinner till evening, fishing and thinking peaceful thoughts. You have long ago earned the right which is denied you now by all sorts of chance circumstances, and it seems to me shameful and unjust that I should live more peacefully than you. Is it possible that you will stay all June in town? It's really terrible....
... By the way, read Grigorovitch's letter to my enemy Anna Ivanovna. Let her soul rejoice. "Chekhov belongs to the generation which has perceptibly begun to turn away from the West and concentrate more closely on their own world...." "Venice and Florence are nothing else than dull towns for a man of any intelligence...." _Merci_, but I don't understand persons of such intelligence. One would have to be a bull to "turn away from the West" on arriving for the first time in Venice or Florence. There is very little intelligence in doing so. But I should like to know who is taking the trouble to announce to the whole universe that I did not like foreign parts. Good Lord! I never let drop one word about it. I liked even Bologna. Whatever ought I to have done? Howled with rapture? Broken the windows? Embraced Frenchmen? Do they say I gained no ideas? But I fancy I did....
We must see each other--or more correctly, I must see you. I am missing you already, although to-day I caught two hundred and fifty-two carp and one crayfish. 
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