Reading Chekhov

Chekhov's attitude toward these good/bad guys-a singular combination of censoriousness and tenderness-derives, there is reason to think, from Chekhov's relationship to his two older brothers. Two long letters in which Chekhov tells Nikolai and Alexander off, respectively, permit us to move in very close to this relationship. In the letter to Nikolai (March 1886), Chekhov writes:

… You have often complained to me that people "don't understand you." Goethe and Newton did not complain of that. Only Christ complained of it, but He was speaking of His doctrine and not of Himself. Peopie understand you perfectly well. And if you do not understand yourself, it is not their fault.

I assure you as a brother and as a friend I understand you and feel for you with all my heart. I know your good qualities as I know my five fingers; I value and deeply respect them… You are kind to the point of softness, magnanimous, unselfish, ready to share your last farthing; you have no envy nor hatred; you are simplehearted, you pity men and beasts; you are trustful, without spite or guile, and do not remember evil. You have a gift from above such as other people have not: you have talent. This talent places you above millions of men, for on earth only one out of two million is an artist. Your talent sets you apart: if you were a toad or tarantula, even then, people would respect you, for to talent all things are forgiven.

You have only one failing, and the falseness of your position, and your unhappiness and your catarrh of the bowels are all due to it. That is your utter lack of culture. Forgive me, please, but Veritas magis amicitia. You see, life has its conditions. In order to feel comfortable among educated people, to be at home and happy with them, one must be cultured to a certain extent…

Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions:

1. They respect human personality, and therefore they are always kind, gentle, polite, and ready to give in to others. They do not make a row because of a hammer or a lost piece of India-rubber… They forgive noise and cold and dried-up meat and witticisms and the presence of strangers in their homes.

2. They have sympathy not for beggars and cats alone. Their heart aches for what the eye doesn't see…

3. They respect the property of others, and therefore pay their debts.

4. They are sincere, and dread lying like fire. They don't lie even in small things. A lie is insulting to the listener and puts him in a lower position in the eyes of the speaker. They do not pose, they behave in the street as they do at home, they do not show off before their humbler comrades. They are not given to babbling and forcing their uninvited confidences on others. Out of respect for other people's ears they more often keep silent than talk.

5. They do not disparage themselves to rouse compassion. They do not play on the strings of other people's hearts that they may sigh and make much of them. They do not say "I am misunderstood" or "I have become second rate," because all this is striving after cheap effect, is vulgar, stale, false…

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6. They have not shallow vanity. They do not care for such false diamonds as knowing celebrities… If they do a pennyworth they do not strut about as though they had done a hundred rubles' worth, and do not brag of having entry where others are not admitted… The truly talented always keep in obscurity among the crowd, as far as possible from advertisement…

7. If they have talent they respect it. They sacrifice to it rest, women, wine, vanity…

8. They develop aesthetic feeling in themselves. They cannot go to sleep in their clothes, see cracks full of bugs on the walls, breathe bad air, walk on a floor that has been spat upon, cook their meals over an oil stove. They seek as far as possible to restrain and ennoble the sexual instinct. What they want in a woman is not a bed-fellow… They want, especially if they are artists, freshness, elegance, humanity, the capacity for motherhood…

And so on. This is what cultured people are like. In order to be cultured and not to stand below the level of your surroundings it is not enough to have read "The Pickwick Papers" and learn a monologue from "Faust."

What is needed is constant work, day and night, constant reading, study, will… You must drop your vanity, you are not a child… you will soon be thirty. It is time! I expect you… We all expect you.