Chekhov's frequent mention of money difficulties in his letters to Leikin were palpable hints that the rate of about a kopeck a word, though'better than the rates of the Moscow magazines, was now inadequate, and particularly in the light of his success in Fragments, of which the editor constantly assured him. But Leikin never took the hint. At the end of 1884 Chekhov pointedly informed him that he had sent a story to Diversion. "But I hope you are not angry with this desertion of Fragments. I'm a family man and needy. Money is essential and Diversion pays me more than a kopeck a word. I cannot afford to earn less than a hundred and fifty to a hundred and eighty roubles a month, otherwise I'd go bankrupt." (November 16, 1884.)
In fact, Leikin deeply resented and feared Chekhov's publishing tales in other humorous magazines, an opportunity that increased as he became better known. Some of these were pieces Leikin had rejected, others, Chekhov would soothingly explain, were too long or not up to Leikin's standards. At times, in order to avoid hard feelings, Chekhov would send a story and inform Leikin that it was not worthy of Fragments, although he was convinced that he could easily place it elsewhere. Worried over his rivals, however, Leikin would relent on his editorial scruples. "Never mind," he would condescendingly write Chekhov, "the oven also bakes various kinds of bread." And he would print the story. The situation eventually led to angry words. It was by no means solely a question of higher payment — other magazines now seeking Chekhov's contributions could rarely afford to outbid even the relatively low rates of Fragments. Chekhov had reached a point in his literary development where Leikin's dictated form and content had become irksome and he claimed the privilege of a literary artist to write as he pleased and to publish wherever he desired. Eventually Leikin had to accept the fact that, however important money might be to Chekhov, he would not sell his freedom as an author.
Indeed, before long Chekhov found the courage to tell Leikin that occasionally his magazine was "dry." Life was not always funny, he pointed out. Misery and sadness were also real and a part of life and could be artistically embodied in fiction. And these elements Chekhov boldly incorporated into a number of miniature tales he submitted to Leikin during 1883-1884. Outwardly they resembled the anecdotal pattern of the typical humorous magazine piece. But behind the humor appeared the terrible sadness of the lonely man's existence. Suddenly the low comedy of the customary shallow story of Fragments was ennobled by the higher human perception of art. The serious note annoyed Leikin and he would object, although sometimes he missed it altogether and accepted the tale. What he disliked, however, manifestly pleased the readers of his magazine, who began to pay closer attention to the contributions of Antosha Chekhonte. Yet Leikin remained quite oblivious to the fact that he was witnessing the miracle of the artistic maturing of an innovator working within the simple pattern of the lowly miniature tale of the humorous magazines. In a few years he would be proud to claim the undeserved honor of "discovering" the great writer Chekhov.
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Tales of Melpomene neither established Chekhov as a writer nor earned him much money. Though the six stories on theatrical themes, in this little collection of ninety-six pages selling at sixty kopecks, had appeared separately shortly before, he had carefully revised them for the purpose of the book, which he published on credit, agreeing to pay the printer's cost within four months. Over the summer of 1884, Alexander, who had quit his job in the customs service at Taganrog and returned to Moscow while Chekhov was at Voskresensk, agreed to play the part of a business agent in placing copies of Tales of Melpomene for sale in the various city bookshops. Jokingly but with unconscious prophecy, he wrote his brother: "Russia will hear about you, Antosha! Die soon so you can witness the tears of the North, West, and from across the seas! Your glory will grow, but people very unwillingly buy your book."
One obstacle in the way of the book's reception was the title. Tire word Skazki in Russian carries the implication of "fairy tales" or "nursery tales," and the tragic muse Melpomene, however descriptive of the contents of the collection, was hardly a familiar name in the vocabulary of the average reader. Confused by the title, booksellers placed their copies in the children's section. A general reprimanded one of the bookstores for selling such an immoral work to youngsters. Alexander hastened to inform Chekhov that the printer was receiving letters such as one from the provinces which stated: "I have been unable to find in literature any other fairy tales to read to my five children except those of Andersen and others, therefore I ask you to send me the fairy tales of Melpomene." And Alexander teasingly offered to suggest to education and religious officials that the book be used in the schools and by preachers.
From 1880 through 1884, while Chekhov studied at the university as a full-time medical student, he published close to three hundred pieces in the humorous magazines, most of them short stories, although at least two run to short novel length.1 They occupy three thick volumes in the latest edition of his works. The vast amount of hackwork in this amazing total might almost have stifled the budding artist in him, and with his rigorous standards Chekhov included only a few of these early tales in the first collected edition of his works which he supervised from 1899-1901. Among them are at least a dozen little masterpieces, which would find an honored place in any extensive anthology of his best tales — talcs such as Autumn, A Daughter of Albion, Death of a Government Clerk, Fat and Thin, The Decoration, Surgery, A Chameleon, A Civil Service Examination, and Proper Measures.
Although the editors and the conditions under which he worked were
1 Apart from The Unnecessary Victory, Chekhov wrote Drama at a Hunting Party, serialized in the Daily News of 1884. It is a short crime novel which to some extent parodies this genre, so popular at the time.
inimical to the serious, sad, and lyrical moods that from the beginning were an inseparable part of his creative nature, Chekhov learned a few things of importance for his future development in this tawdry school of the humorous magazines. Before him the short story in Russian literature had been only an incidental art form, and Turgenev alone practiced it with an evocative brevity. Though at times the pressure to confine what he had to say within the rigid limits of the miniature tale annoyed him, Chekhov quickly realized the artistic virtue of this form in which he ultimately became one of the world's great masters. He made it his own special genre and contrived to compress the whole life of a man within its tiny compass. To write with talent, he finally decided, meant to write with brevity, to talk briefly about big things. Casting a backward glance over this early period of literary apprenticeship, he once told Bunin: "It is fine for you writers nowadays. They praise you for the little tale, but they used to scold me for it. And how they scolded. If you wished to be a writer then, you wrote novels, otherwise they wouldn't speak or listen to you and would keep you out of the important magazines. For the sake of the miniature story, I broke my head against a wall on your behalf."