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PARTISAN REVIEW
intended settling there. Keep well, then. The heavenly angels guard
you. Your imagination is becoming an interesting thing.
Forgive the long letter.
Yours,
A. CHEKHOV
To
ALEXEI SUVORIN
November
25, 1892,
Melikhovo
You are not hard to understand and you abuse yourself need–
leg;ly for expressing yourself vaguely. You are a hard drinker and I
treated you to sweet lemonade; after downing it wryly, you remark
with entire justice that it hasn't an alcoholic kick. That is just what
our works haven't got-the kick that would make us drunk and
enthrall us, and this you set forth clearly. And why not? Leaving me
and my
Ward No.
6 out of it, let's talk in general terms, which
are more interesting. Let's talk of general causes, if
it
won't bore you,
and let's embrace the whole age. Tell me in all conscience, which
writers of my own generation, i.e., people from 30 to 45, have given
the world even one drop of alcohol? Aren't Korolenko, Nadson, and
all today's playwrights lemonade? Have Repin's or Shishkin's paint–
ings really turned your head? All this is just amiable and talented, and
though you are delighted, you still can't forget you'd like a smoke.
Science and technical knowledge are now experiencing great days, for
our brotherhood, though, the times are dull, stale and frivolous, we
ourselves are stale and dreary.... The causes for it are not to be
found in our stupidity or lack of gifts and not in our insolence, as
Burenin holds, but in a disease which in an artist is worse than syph–
ilis or sexual impotence. Our illness is a lack of "something," that is
the rights of the case, and it means that when you lift the hem of our
Muse's gown you will behold an empty void. Bear in mind that
writers who are considered immortal or just plain good and who in–
toxicate us, have one very important trait in common: they are going
somewhere and call you with them; you sense, not with your mind,
but with all your being, that they have an aim, like the ghost of
HaInlet's father, who had a reason for appearing and alarming the
imagination. Looking at some of them in terms of their caliber you
will see that they have immediate aims-the abolition of serfdom, the
liberation of their country, political matters, beauty, or just vodka,
