Dog Olka! I shall come early in May. As soon as you get my telegram, go immediately to the Dresden Hotel
and inquire if Room 45 is free, in other words, reserve
a cheap room.
I often see Nemirovich, he is very nice ... I am coming to Moscow chiefly to gallivant and gorge myself. We'll go to Petrovskoe-Razumovskoe [a suburb of Mos- cow] and to Zvenigorod [a near-by town], we'll go everywhere, if the weather is good. If you consent to go down the Volga with me, we'll eat sturgeon.
Kuprin is apparently in love—under an enchantment. He feU in love with a huge, husky woman whom you know and whom you advised me to marry.
If you give me the word that not a soul in Moscow will know about our wedding until it has taken place, I am ready to marry you on the very day of my arrival. For some reason I am terribly afraid of the wedding ceremony and congratulations and the champagne that you must hold in your hand while you smile vaguely. I wish we could go straight from church to Zvenigorod. Or perhaps we could get married at Zvenigorod. Think, think, darling! You are clever, they say.
The weather at Yalta is pretty rotten. A fierce wind. The roses are blooming, but not fully; they will, though. The irises are magnificent.
Everything is all right with me, except for one trifle: my health.
Gorky has not been deported, but arrested; he is held in Nizhny. Posse too has been arrested.
I embrace you, Olka.
Your Antoine.
( Chekhov's wedding took place in all privacy on May 25 in the presence of four witnesses, none of them members of his family. After the ceremony the couple called on the bride's mother and then took a train to Nizhny-Novgorod [now Gorky], where they boarded a Volga steamer. ^
Yalta, Jan. 1 3, 1903
My dear Olya,
On the morning of the 11th, after Masha [his sister] had left to^, I didn't feel quite right; I had a pain in my chest, I felt sick to my stomach, a temperature of 100°, and yesterday it was the same thing. I slept weU, though I was disturbed by pain. Altschuler [his physi- cian] looked in. I had to put on a compress again (it is an immense one) . This morning my temperature was almost normal, I feel weak, and shall put on a plaster directly, but still I had a right to wire you today that all is well. Now everything is all right. I am getting better, tomorrow I shall be quite well again. I hide nothing from you, do understand that, and don't upset yourself telegraphing. If anything serious, or even resembling anything serious, should happen, you would be the first I should tell.
You are out of sorts? Chuck it, darling. It will all come out in the wash.
Today the earth is covered with snow, it is foggy, cheerless. It saddens me to think that so much time has passed without my doing any work, and that apparently I am no longer a worker. To sit in an armchair with a compress on and mope is not very jolly. Will you stop loving me, darling? In your letter of yesterday you wrote that you had lost your looks. As though it mattered! If you were to grow a nose like a crane's, even then I should love you.
I embrace my own, my good dachshund. I kiss and embrace you again. Write!!
Your A.
Works about Chekhov
Both the author's private history and his contribut;:m to fiction and drama are dealt with from contrasting stand- points by Ronald Hingley in Chekhov, a Biographiccl and Critical Study (London, 1957) and by Vladimir V. Emiilov ( Yermilov) in Anton Chekhov, originally published in Mos- cow and translated from the Russian by Ivy Litvinov (Lon- don, 1957). Hinglev and Yermilov hold to the diverse views of literature prevailing respectively in the West and in the Communist world.
The biographical aspect is stressed in The Life and Letters of Anton Tchekhov, translated and edited by S. S. Ko- teliansky and Philip Tomlinson (London, New York, 1925); Irene Nemirovsky, Life of Chekhov, translated by Eric de Mauny (London, l950); David Magarshack, Cheĥhov, a Life (London, 1953); !\ina Toumanova. Anton Chckhov, the Voice of Twilight Russia (I\ew York, 1960); Ernest J. Simmons, Chekhov, a Biographij (Boston, 1962). There are, too, Walter H. Bruford, Chekhov and His fl»m?r/, a Socio- logical Study (London, 1948) and his Anton Chekhov ( l'\ew Haven, 1957).
Reminiscences of Chekhov set do^ by his contemporaries are, of course, an important biographical source. The.se are: Reminiscences of Anton Chekhov by Maxim Gorky, Alex- ander Kuprin, and I. A. Bunin, translated by S. S. Kotclian- sky and Leonard Woolf (New York, 1921); S. S. Koteiian- sky, editor, Anton Chekhov: Literary and Theatrical Remi- niscences (London, 1927); Korney I. Chukovsky, Chekhov the Man, translated from the Russian by Pauline Rose (Lon- don, New York, 1945); 1\laxim Gorky, Reminiscences, which contains the Corky-Chckhov corrcspondence and "Chekhov in Corky's Diary" (New York, 1946); Lydia A. Avilova, Chekhov in My Life, a Love Story, translated by David
Magarshack (London, 1950). "50th Annivcrsary of Chek- hov's Death" (Voks buUeUn, Moscow, 110. t)(). May-Junc, 1954) includes rcininisccnces by Chekhov's widow and a number of papcr.s on Chckhov's influcncc abroad, including one 011 Chckhov in Iran. Entirc tcxt in English.
Of the studies devotcd largely to the story, the following may be singled out: Edward Garnett, Fridaij Nights: Liter- ary Crilicism.s and Apprcciations, first senc I :\cw York, 1922) [contains "Chckhov and Ilis Art"]; William A. Ger- hardi, Anton Chekhov, a Critical Study (Ncw York, 1923); Dorothy Brewster and Angus Burrell, Dcad Reckonings in Fiction (Toronto, 192-1 ); Janko Lavrin, Studies in Eiiro- pean Literature (London, 1926) [contains "Chekhov and Maupassant"]; Oliver Elton, Chekhov (Oxford, 1929), re- printed in his Essays aiid Addresses (London, 1939); Ed- mund Wilson, "Seeing Chekhov Plain" (The New Yorker, Xov. 22, 1952); Ilya Ehrcnlmrg, Chekhoc, Slcndlid and Other Essays (New York, 1963); Thomas G. Winner, Chek- ltov and His Prose ( i'\ew York, 1966); Lev Shestov, Chek- hov and Other Essai/s, with a new introduction by Sidney Monas (Ann Arbor, 1966)—this work by the highly original Russian thinker is a reprint of a volume issucd under a Dublin and London imprint in 1916.
The plays are one of the subjects discussed in the pub- lications notcd below: Ashley Dukes, Modem Dramatists (London, 1911 ); Oliver M. Sayler, The Russian Theatre (New York, 1922); Ronald Peacock, The Poet in the Theatre (New York, 1946); Eric Bentley, The Playu;right as Thinker, a Study of Drama in Modem Times (Ncw York, 1946) and his "Chekhov as Playwright" (Kcnyon Review, 1949, vol. ll); David .Magarshack, Chckhoc thc Dramatist (New York, 1952); Frank L. Lucas, Thc Drama of Chckhov, Synge, Yeats and Pirandello (London, 1963); Maurice Valency, The Breaking String, the Plays of Anton Chekhov (New York, 1966). English and American Criticism of Chekhov (Chicago, 19-18), a Univcrsity of Chicago thesis by Charles \V. Meister, contains, intcr alia, lists of the plays (with reviews). At this point it is appropriatc to notc tic autobiographies of two eminent theatrical figures with whom Chekhov was associated: Konstantin S. Stanislavsky, My Life in Art, translated from the Russian by J. J. Robbin:. (Boston, 1924), and Vladimir I. Nemorovich-Danchenko,