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I ÏÊ FI.ICIIT OF THE SEAGULL
answered: 'A certain young man (a civilian) will be at the Assembly of the Gentry at the Georgian evening.' Olga Kundasova also surfaced. No longer subsidized by Anton and Suvorin, she was rushing around Moscow, giving lessons, engaging distinguished minds in debate. Her relations with Anton relaxed: she agreed to come to Melikhovo. Rumours of Anton's frenetic love life spread. Masha, who had taken Maria Drozdova to Melikhovo, joked, 'Give my regards to all the ladies who are visiting you.' Aleksandr wrote on 24 February: 'I hear you spent a long time in Moscow and led a life of fornication, the buzz of which has even reached Petersburg.'
Chertkov, the grandson of the man who had owned Chekhov's grandfather, was just then being expelled from Russia for his activities on behalf of Tolstoy. (He went to England and began to preach non-resistance to evil there.) Tolstoy went to Petersburg for the first time in twenty years to see Chertkov off. The furore over Chekhov's deportation jolted Chekhov's liberalism to the left. On 19 February, a dinner at the Continental for Moscow's literati to celebrate the supposed emancipation of the peasantry thirty-five years before sickened Anton: To dine, drink champagne, roar, make speeches about the people's self-awareness, about the people's conscience and so on, when slaves, the same serfs, in frock coats scurry round the tables, and outside in the freezing cold the coachmen wait - mat's like lying to the Holy Ghost.
There were other dinners, just as alcoholic. At a gathering at Russian Thought, with the architect Schechtel on 16 February 1897, Anton and Stanislavsky met for the first time though eighteen months would pass before anything came of it. More upsetting were the consultations Levitan asked for: I've nearly kicked the bucket again. I'm thinking of arranging a council of physicians at my place, with Ostroumov in charge… Shouldn't you drop in on Levitan and just as an ordinary decent person offer some advice on how to arrange it all? Do you hear, you viper? Your Schmul. After Goltsev's Shrovetide pancake party (which Lika shunned), Anton visited Levitan's studio with an acquaintance and covertly studied the artist. In Levitan's wrecked body he saw his own future. Anton disJANUARY-FEBRUARY 1897 cussed Levitan's tuberculosis with his old teacher, Professor Ostroumov, who was one day to deliver Anton's sentence. Death, Ostroumov predicted, was imminent. Levitan, Anton noted, was 'sick and afraid'.
After some unhappy nights, Chekhov left with Ozerova to watch Shavrova and her company act in Serpukhov. The dresses came from Paris, the diamonds were real, and the actors were good, but they made only 101 roubles for the new school. After the show Anton reached Melikhovo at 2.00 a.m. on 23 February 1897 and slept all day. In his absence the family had celebrated Shrovetide with pancakes, toped with shortages of fuel, and dealt with veterinary emergencies, while Maria Drozdova painted a portrait of Pavel. On Anton's return Masha and Drozdova gladly fled to Moscow. Masha was too dutiful to protest at his long absence; Maria Drozdova too much in love with Anton, though he teased Maria as Udodova {Hoopoe), instead of Drozdova {Thrush). Pavel's dislike of Maria Drozdova, who ate more pancakes than he did, was tempered by her painting him. In Anton's absence Pavel had asserted himself as usual. He had the servants chop the ice on the pond and one poor woman load it into the cellar. The horses fared badly: Pavel's diary for 13 February shows his ruthless-ness: 'minus2 2°C in the morning… The horses were worn out, deep snow, God forbid we take such a cart load of wood again. Why doesn't the Society for the Protection of Animals do something about it?'
Anton rested. On 1 March he announced to Suvorin that he would hereafter 'lead a sober chaste life'. Aleksandr and Vania had been taken aback by Anton's philandering: Vania, seeing the array of potential sisters-in-law, begged him not to marry. Elena Shavrova planned one more performance in Serpukhov, to see her intrigant again, as she packed her bags to be a virtuous wife in Petersburg. Lmdmila Ozerova, however, was in Moscow; her passion all the stronger, for Anton giving reasons, such as the lack of a dowry, not to marry her. On 26 February she wrote: All my things, to wit: my pink jacket, my slippers, my handkerchief and so on and also Neglinny Passage, Tverskaia Street, the Moscow City Duma etc. send their regards, are impatient for your arrival and miss you very very much. I'll tell you in secret that they are very jealous not just of you and Petersburg, Serpukhov and Lopasnia but of the air, and I was indescribably saddened because you love and want money, but perhaps you need it for some good cause.
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THE FLIGHT OF THE SEAGULL
Liudmila Ozerova had only seen The Seagull. The next day she read the play and was bowled over: she had found her role, and foolishly addressed Anton by Arkadina's extravagant phrase - 'My only one': Anton, my only one, to fall at your feet, meekly to caress and kiss your hands, to look endlessly into your eyes. To reincarnate in myself all your great soul!!! Words, looks, thoughts cannot convey the impression that our Seagull made on me. Almost by the same post a more interesting actress approached Anton. Chekhov had sent Vera Komissarzhevskaia his Plays. The actress still had Avilova's silver medallion which Anton gave her as a prop. (It interested its owner no more than the stuffed seagull in the play interested Trigorin.) Komissarzhevskaia felt she personified the Seagull and wrote to Anton as if he were Trigorin: 'You will visit me, won't you? Potapenko tells me that you're expected by i March. Are you? I doubt if I'll go away for Lent, although I've completely collapsed. Come, Anton, I terribly want to see you.'43
Chekhov found this invitation to Petersburg irresistible, and the forthcoming Congress of Theatre Workers in Moscow for the first three weeks of March was a pretext to leave Melikhovo. He wanted to deliver 'Peasants' to Goltsev and Lavrov in Moscow, even if no censor could pass the text as it was.
In 'Peasants' he had beaten the 'realists' at their own genre, drawing on his deep knowledge and understanding of the villages around Melikhovo and the peasants who worked in Moscow hotels as waiters. His plot was minimaclass="underline" the narrator is a camera. A sick waiter, Nikolai, loses his job and goes back to his village with his wife Olga and their daughter Sasha. Shocked by the squalor of his relatives, he dies, while Olga and Sasha are forced to wander off and beg. (Chekhov intended to take tbe story further with the girl's entry into prostitution in the city but the censor made it clear that this would be too sensitive and sordid a theme.) Chekhov contrasts a beautiful valley with imagery of smashed crockery, beaten children, in a series of tableaux that cover autumn, a savage winter, and spring - six months which bring tax arrears, the rape of an errant wife, the beating of another wife by her drunken husband, fire, and the death of Nikolai. 'Peasants' shows the gentry as hateful creatures from an alien world. The good that is left is a strange residue of ideals, as the peasants listen to Olga reading