372
PARTISAN REVIEW
to act thus you've got to be not so much the young literary figure as
just a plain human being. Let us be ordinary people, let us adopt
the same attitude toward all and then an artificially wrought solidarity
is not needed.
This
persistent striving to set up the private, profes–
sional, solid little group that you people want, would only mean
unconscious spying on one another and suspicion and control; and
without meaning to, we would tum ourselves into something like
a Jesuit society. I am not in solidarity with you, dear Jan, but I
promise you to the death full freedom as a writer; i.e., you can write
where and how you like . . . change your convictions and tendencies
1,000 times, and so forth and so on, but my human relations with
you will not change one iota, and I'll always print announcements of
your books in mine. I can promise the same to all my other colleagues,
and would wish the same for myself. To my way of thinking these
are the most normal relations.
It
is
only thus that we can have mutual
respect and even friendship, and compassion in life's bitter moments.
However, I have let my tongue run away with me. God keep
you!
Your A. CHEKHOV
To ALEXEI PLESHCHEYEV
2
October
4, 1888,
Moscow
... I would be glad to read what Merejkowski
3
has to say. In
the meantime, good-by for now. Write me once you have read my
story. You won't like it, but I am not afraid of you, nor of Anna
Mikhailovna. Those I am afraid of are the ones who look for ten–
dencies between the lines and want to put me down definitely as a
liberal or conservative. I am not a liberal and not a conservative, not
an evolutionist, nor a monk, nor indifferent to the world. I would
like to
be
a free artist-and that
is
all-and regret that God has
not given me the strength to be one. I hate lies and coercion in
all
their aspects.... Pharisaism, stupidity and idle whim reign not only
in the homes of the merchant class and within prison walls; I see
2 Alexei Pleshcheyev (1825-1893) was a poet and essayist, and an early
admirer of Chekhov's.
3-
Merejkowski, the author of
Th.
Lif,
of L,onardo Da Vinci,
in 1888
wrote an article,
"An
Old Question on New Talent;,' about Chekhov's short
Itories.
