3 Some 7000 letters to Chekhov have been preserved, and this was probably a fraction of the total he received.
as it actually occurs. But even in these circumstances one must feel oneself consistent with scientific data, that is, it must be clear to the reader or spectator that this is only a convention and that he is dealing with a writer who knows what he is talking about. I do not belong to those literary men who adopt a negative attitude toward science, and I would not want to belong to those who achieve everything by cleverness."
If we may believe Leontiev-Shcheglov, however, Chekhov also sensed the inhibiting force of his scientific training in the act of literary creation. He quotes Chekhov as saying to him: "Now, for example, a simple person looks at the moon and is moved as before something terribly mysterious and unattainable. But an astronomer looks at it with entirely different eyes . . . with him there cannot be any fine illusions! With me, a physician, there are, also, few illusions. Of course, I'm sorry for this — and it somehow desiccates life."
It was both as a physician and as a famous figure at Yalta that an intolerable burden was thrust upon Chekhov at this time. Perhaps because of his offer to a Serpukhov school organization to provide for one of its tubercular teachers at Yalta, a garbled report appeared in a Moscow newspaper that he intended to establish a sanatorium on the Crimean shore for rural schoolteachers. This news item was copied in many provincial newspapers, and in no time he was harried by requests for admission to the sanatorium, and even by visits of unfortunate and often indigent people who sought his assistance.
Though Chekhov endeavored to have this news account repudiated, his compassion was aroused by the extent of the human need which it brought to his attention, and he undertook the task of organizing effective aid. He formed a number of his Yalta medical friends and wealthy people into a charitable society, and, drawing up an appeal for funds to construct a sanatorium at Yalta for the indigent sick, he used his influence to have it published in a number of newspapers. Many requests, such as this one to Gorky, went out to friends: "The consumptive poor are overwhelming here. . . . Just to see the faces of these sick when they beg for something, or to see their wretched blankets when they die — this is hard. We have decided to build a sanatorium and I've written an appeaclass="underline" I've done this because I don't have any other means. If it is possible, get this appeal printed in the Nizhny Novgorod and Samara newspapers where you have acquaintances and connections. Perhaps they will send something. The day before yesterday Epifanov, the poet of Diversion, died in loneliness and neglect in a refuge for chronic consumptives; two days before his death, he asked for an apple tart, and when I brought it to him he suddenly brightened and his sick throat joyously wheezed: 'The very thing! Imagine!' " (November 25,1899.)
Agitated and wringing his hands, Chekhov said to a physician's widow interested in charitable work, Sofya Bonnier, who had visited Epifanov at Chekhov's request and reported on his hopeless condition: "Ah, how terribly we need a sanatorium here! We must remove these unfortunates from the care of people who think only of their dachas. . . . The situation of the sick is frightful. . . . Let us arrange something. Only let us do it ourselves. Money will be available."
Money did begin to arrive, but so did the sick, and it seemed that all of them wished to discuss their misfortunes with Chekhov. It was impossible to become rcconcilcd with this nightmare, he exploded to Masha, and he asserted repeatedly that if something constructive were not done about it, he would leave Yalta. Nothing so distressed him as that acquiescence of many progressive Russians to doing nothing because it was impossible to do all. He never preached love for mankind, but his compassion for the individual in distress was an all- consuming one. His efforts in this instance were eventually successful. At first a pension arrangement was established to care for tuberculars with little or no money, and later a sanatorium was provided.
Despite his varied activities and concerns that winter at Yalta, and the fact that he had once again secured for himself a settled existence in his own home, Chekhov experienced many lonely and unhappy moments. Shortly after Masha's return to Moscow, he answered one of her letters: "What you write about the theater, the group, and every conceivable allurement just provokes me; you really don't know how dull and stupid it is to go to bed at nine in the evening and lie there in a fury and with the consciousness that there is nowhere to go, no one to talk to, and nothing to work for because it makes no difference what you do if you don't see or hear your work. The piano and I are the two objects in the house existing mutely, wondering always why we have been placed here, since there is no one to play us." (November 11, 1899.) Was he missing Olga Knipper and perhaps envying the theater that absorbed her?
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Chekhov had delayed little, after his arrival in Yalta bearing a potted cactus plant which Olga had presented to him, in replying to the questions she had posed in a letter. Beneath the customary bright, jesting surface of his epistolary prose, one now detects for the first time in his letters to a woman a different and deeper note. No, he answered, he was not eating regularly, not drinking Narzan water or taking walks, only sitting at home thinking of her. "But driving past Bakhchisarai I recalled you and our trip together. My sweet marvelous actress, wonderful woman, if you only knew how happy your letter has made me. I bow down before you, bow so low that my forehead touches the bottom of my well which by now has reached a depth of fifty-six feet. I have got used to you and am so lonely without you that I cannot reconcile myself to the thought that I won't see you until spring; I'm in a bad humor and, in short, if Nadenka4 only knew what was going on in my soul, there would be quite a scandal." (September 3,18 99.)
One of Olga's letters was full of her concern over the role of Elena in Uncle Vanya which she was presently rehearsing. Though Uncle Vanya, which Chekhov regarded as an entirely new play, despite the fact that it is an adaptation of The Wood Demon,5 had been staged with much success in the provinces, he hesitated a long time before permitting it to be performed by a major theater. Perhaps because he had always desired to have one of his full-length plays staged at the famous imperial Maly Theater, the oldest in Russia, he rather thoughtlessly agreed in February, at the director's request, to submit Uncle Vanya for consideration. The decision stunned Nemirovich-Danchenko. In the light of the glorious success of The Sea Gull, he had every reason to expect that Uncle Vanya would be given to the Moscow Art Theater.
Uncle Vanya was tentatively accepted, but the literary committee of the Maly Theater, on which sat several distinguished professors, had not yet passed on it. When they did, a number of changes were demanded, especially in the third act. It has been conjectured that the
4 Nadenka was an imaginary lady Chekhov invented who played the part of a jealous bride or stem wife in their correspondence.