After the second performance, which he felt was acted better, Chekhov began to wonder, on the basis of comments he heard, whether the audience really understood the point of Ivanov. He was irritated and weary, he wrote Alexander, and had acted like a psychopath over all of November. With a sense of relief he tried to get back to his short- story writing and busied himself about a one-act vaudeville, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, on which he had agreed to collaborate with his friend Lazarev-Gruzinsky. Though he wrote the beginning of this spoof on the acting of Hamlet, he found so many faults in Lazarev- Gruzinsky's continuation that he let the project drop.
Soon news from Petersburg that Ivanov was being talked about there — Chekhov had sent a copy to New Times for reading — aroused his interest in the play all over again. Alexander had suggested that it ought to be produced in the eapital. Despite the success of Motley Tales and In the Twilight, their sale had been relatively small. A large success with Ivanov in Petersburg would bring him badly needed roubles. At the end of November he was off to the northern capital.
To save money, and at Alexandei's pleading, Chekhov stayed with his brother. This was a bad mistake. He found the flat dirty, foul-smelling, and suffocating, Alexander despondent, and his wife ill. But Ivanovt All his literary friends were talking about it — he had taken care now to provide them with copies. Suvorin, a dramatist himself, discussed it with him by the hour. In a letter to Davydov, Chekhov carefully summarized all the comments and criticisms he had heard. Apart from a weak ending, in which Ivanov dies from a heart attack, his Petersburg friends found nothing of real importance to criticize. Quite the contrary, he wrote his brother Misha: "All are positively in raptures over my play, although they scold me for my carelessness." (December 3, 1887.) They laugh at the Moscow reviewers, he reported, regret that he ever allowed Korsh to put it on, and cannot wait until it is produced in Petersburg.
It is little wonder that Chekhov burst out in this letter to Misha: "Petersburg is glorious. I feel as though I'm in a seventh heaven. . . . How I regret that I cannot always live here!" He had dinner and spent the night at Leikin's, glad to get away from the dirt and wailing of Alexander's household. He gave a well-received reading at a literary society, and the important Northern Herald had just appeared with a long and appreciative article on him. And information had already reached him that the literary section of the Academy of Sciences was considering him for the distinguished Pushkin Prize in literature, a possibility which he could hardly take seriously; he told Alexander that he would not accept it unless the prize (a thousand roubles) were divided between him and Korolenko.
Unknown society ladies invited him to call and the famous painter I. E. Repin received him at his studio. Suvorin and other eminent figures in the publishing and literary world entertained him. He dined with the young writer I. L. Leontiev-Shcheglov and through him met the old distinguished and amiable poet A. N. Pleshcheev, who, thirty- eight years before, as a member of the revolutionary-minded Petra- shevsky Circle, had stood on a platform next to Dostoevsky in Petersburg's Semenov Square, waiting for execution, a sentence which, in "his infinite mercy," Nicholas I commuted at the very last minute to exile to Siberia at hard labor. Pleshcheev and Chekhov became fast friends.
There also in Petersburg Chekhov renewed his acquaintance with Korolenko, to whom he had written less than two months before: ". . . I was extremely happy to meet you. I say it sincerely and with all my heart. In the first place, I deeply value and love your talent; it is precious to me for many reasons. In the second, it seems to me that if you and I live in this world another ten to twenty years, we shall assuredly find points of contact. Of all the Russians now successfully writing, I am the most light-minded and the least serious; I'm regarded with doubt. If I may express myself in the language of the poets, I have loved my pure Muse but I have not respected her; I've been unfaithful to her and often taken her places not fit for her to go." And he sent with this letter the first chapter of Thoreau's Walden, which had been appearing, in'translation, in New Times. "There is thought, freshness, and originality in it," he remarked, "but it is difficult to read. The architecture and construction are impossible." (October 17, 1877.)
In his first meeting with him Korolenko had observed Chekhov's light-mindedness, but he also discovered a serious aspect which he felt was expressed fully for the first time in Ivanov, a work devoid of the carefree objectivity of Chekhov's early tales. Sensing a change in Chekhov's social outlook, Korolenko now invited him to meet the celebrated writer of peasant fiction, Gleb Uspensky, and the Northern Herald's famous populist leader and stern expounder of social significance in literature, N. K. Mikhailovsky. The four spent the better part of a day dining and talking together. Chekhov mentioned to Misha that they "chattered in friendly fashion," but Korolenko thought the meeting was not a particularly pleasant one as Chekhov argued at cross-purposes with Uspensky and Mikhailovsky. Perhaps these rather grim reformers reminded him too much of certain aspects of his Ivanov.
Chekhov returned to Moscow in an elated frame of mind, contemplating some changes he wished to make in Ivanov before submitting it for performance in Petersburg. One of his final letters of 1887 was Leikin, who had asked for a Christmas story. He had tried, he wrote, but the tale turned out so badly that in all conscience he could not send it. "You say," Chekhov continued, "that it is all the same to you how the story turns out, but I do not share this view." (December 27, 1887.) Fame now could never justify artistic failure. On December 5 he had published his last story in Fragments as a regular contributor. It was like a symbolic gesture of farewell to the literary past represented by A. Chekhonte.
chapter viii
"My Holy of Holies ... Is Absolute Freedom"
Shortly after Chekhov returned to Moscow, another project drove the revision of Ivanov out of his mind. On January 1, 1888, as though he had taken a sudden New Year's Eve resolution, he seriously tackled his lengthy story, The Steppe, which he had no doubt started somewhat earlier. Certainly the idea had long been fermenting in his mind, and his trip to the Don region the previous spring had provided him with abundant material. The ancient Pleshcheev, who headed the literary department of the "thick" magazine Northern Herald, had been after him for some time to contribute a long tale, and now old Grigorovich, in a letter from Nice, also waved him on. Though there was something annoyingly paternal in the unsolicited concern of these venerable writers, their encouragement grew out of a solid belief in Chekhov's sprouting genius. Give up the trifles and the newspapers, Grigorovich urged all over again. What about a novel, he asked, and he suggested a theme involving problems of the day — a lad of seventeen whose dire poverty drives him to suicide? A good subject, Chekhov warily replied, but more suited to a Grigorovich or writers of his generation who, besides talent, had erudition, whereas contemporary writers did not have the ability to handle such serious problems. Anyway, he countered, he had already undertaken a long piece 011 the steppe — baggage trains, sheepherders, inns, night storms, birds, and the lilac distance. There were places in it where he could almost smell the steppe grass.