Anton Chekhov, from 'Letters' (1888-1903)
Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) was perhaps the greatest Russian dramatist and short story writer. In these letters to his family and friends, we are given a glimpse of Chekhov's views about writing.
To A. P. Chekhov, April 11, 1889:
Try to be original in your play and as clever as possible; but don't be afraid to show yourself foolish; we must have freedom of thinking, and only he is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things. Don't round things out, don't polish—but be awkward and impudent. Brevity is the sister of talent. Remember, by the way, that declarations of love, the infidelity of husbands and wives; widows', orphans', and all other tears, have long since been written up. The subject ought to be new, but there need be no "fable." And the main thing is—father and mother must eat. Write. Flies purify the air, and plays—the morals.
To A. P. Chekhov, May 8, 1889:
Now about your play. You undertook to depict a man who has not a grief in the world, and then you took fright. The problem seems to me to be clear. Only he has no grief who is indifferent; and people who are indifferent and aloof are either philosophers or petty, egotistic natures. The latter should be treated negatively, the former—positively. Of course, those unmoved dullards who will suffer no pain even when you burn them with red-hot irons cannot be discussed at all. Even if by a man without grief you understand one who is not indifferent to the life about him, and who bravely and patiently bears the blows of fate, and looks hopefully to the future—there, too, the problem is comparatively simple and clear.
The large number of revisions need not trouble you, for the more of a mosaic the work is, the better. The characters stand to gain by this. The play will be worthless if all the characters resemble you. In this respect your Money-Box is monotonous and arouses a feeling of boredom. What are Natasha, Kolya, Tosya for? Is there no life outside of you? And who is interested in knowing my life or yours, my thoughts and your thoughts? Give people people, and not yourself.
Avoid "choice" diction. The language should be simple and forceful. The lackeys should speak simply, without elegance. Retired captains in the reserve, with huge, red noses, newspaper reporters who drink, starving authors, consumptive women toilers, honest young people without a flaw in their make-up, ideal maidens, good-natured nurses—all these have been described again and again, and should be avoided as a pitfall. Still another suggestion: go to the theatre now and then and watch the stage. Compare—that is important. The first act may last as long as a whole hour, but the rest should not be more than twenty minutes each. The crux of the play is the third act, but it must not be so strong a climax as to kill the last act.
To A. S. Souvorin, May 30, 1888:
As to your play, I try in vain to see why you speak so ill of it. Its defects do not spring from your not being sufficiently talented, or from your not having great enough powers of observation, but from the nature of your creative ability. You are more inclined to austere creation, which was developed in you by extensive reading of classic models, and by your love for these models. Imagine your Tatyana written in verse, and you will see that its defects will take on a different aspect. If it were written in verse, nobody would notice that all its characters speak one and the same language, nobody would reproach your characters for uttering nothing but philosophy, and for "feuilletonizing" in the classic form—all this would blend with the classic tone as smoke blends with the air—and one would not observe in your Tatyana the absence of the commonplace language and the everyday, petty actions that the modern drama must provide in plenty.… Give your characters Latin names, attire them in togas, and you will get the same thing…the defects of your play are irremediable because they are organic. Console yourself with the fact that they are the product of your actual qualities, and that if you gave these qualities to other playwrights, their plays would become more interesting and clever.
To A. S. Souvorin, December 19, 1888:
The first act of your Repina is put together so strangely that I am altogether at a loss. In rehearsal this act seemed to me dreary and unskillfully done, but now I understand that one cannot make plays otherwise, and I comprehend the success of this act. After Tatyana I consider my own play as so much sweetmeats, although I have not as yet made clear to myself whether your play is good or not. In its architectonics there is something that I do not quite grasp.
To. A. S. Souvorin, January 6, 1889:
I like the "vaudeville." It begins in a very original way. Very hackneyed are: the cousin, the glove, the card falling out of the pocket, the eavesdropping.…In one-act things you must write nonsense,—there lies their strength. Manage it so that the she has become bored, and desires new experiences. She threatens seriously to cuckold her second husband.…The talk about the cuckolding is good. The eavesdropping is unnecessary; let the husband arrive just after the wife has finished writing her letter, and has gone out for a minute to her friends to ask forgiveness, then to return home for her baggage. The dialogue is suitable and pat.
To A. S. Souvorin, January 23, 1900:
The new play, Acts I and 11, I liked, and I find that it is even better than Tatyana Repina. The other is closer to the theatre, this to life. The third act was not definite, because there is no action; there is not even clarity of idea. It may be that to make it more certain and clearer, a fourth act will be required. In the third act the explanation between the husband and the wife is modeled after Sumbatov's Chains; and I would prefer that the wife remain behind the curtain all the time, and that Varya, as happens in life in similar circumstances, should believe more in the father than in the mother.
I have few comments to make. A cultured nobleman entering the priesthood, that has become stale, and no longer arouses curiosity. Those who entered the priesthood just fell into the water; some, remaining ordinary abbots, waxed fat and have long since forgotten every idea; others gave up all and are living in peace. Nothing definite was expected of them, and they gave nothing; and on the stage a young man preparing for the priesthood will simply be received without sympathy by the public, and in his activities and chastity they will see something of the Skoptsi. And, indeed, the actor will not play the part well. You would do better to take a young, learned, mysterious Jesuit dreaming of a united church; or someone else, but someone who will appear greater than a nobleman entering the priesthood.
Varya is well done. At first sight there is an excessive hysteria in the language. She must not use witticisms; but you make all of them fall into this habit; they keep playing on words, and that tires the attention a little; it is too flashy; the language of your characters is like a white silk dress on which the sun is always shining in full force and which it hurts the eyes to look at. The words "vulgarity" and "vulgar" are hackneyed.
Natasha is very good. You make her a different person in the third act.,
The families "Ratishchev" and "Muratov" are too theatrical, not simple. Give Ratishchev to a Little Russian family, for variety.
The father is without a weakness, without a distinct appearance; he does not drink, or smoke, or gamble, or fall ill. You must stitch onto him some attribute or other, so that the actor can have something to grasp.
The father knows of Varya's sin or does not know,—I think it makes no difference, and is of no importance. The sexual sphere, of course, plays an important part in this world, but not everything depends on it,—far from everything; and not everywhere, by far, does it have decisive significance.
When you send the fourth act I shall write more if I think of anything to say. I am glad that you have almost completed the play, and again repeat that you ought to write both plays and novels, first because it is necessary, and second, because for you it is healthful, as it is pleasant to vary your life.
To Maxim Gorky, February 15, 1900:
I am very sorry that apparently you have given up the idea of coming to Yalta. The Art Theatre from Moscow will be here in May. It will give five performances and then remain for rehearsals. So you come, study the stage at the rehearsals, and then in five to eight days write a play, which I should welcome joyfully with my whole heart.
To Maxim Gorky, September 8, 1900:
I have just been reading in the papers that you are writing a play. Write, write, write! It is necessary. Even should the play fail, don't let that discourage you. A failure will be soon forgotten, but a success, however slight, may be of vast service to the theatre.
To Maxim Gorky, September 24, 1900:
By all means, golubchik, finish the play. You feel that it is not turning out as you should like, but don't trust your feeling, as it may deceive you. One usually dislikes a play while writing it, but afterward it grows on one. Let others judge and make decisions.
To Maxim Gorky, October 22, 1900:
Five days have passed since I read your play The Petty Bourgeois. I have not written to you till now because I could not get hold of the fourth act; I have kept waiting for it, and—I still have not got it. And so I have read only three acts, but that I think is enough to judge of the play. It is, as I expected, very good, written à la Gorky, original, very interesting; and, to begin by talking of the defects, I have noticed only one, a defect incorrigible as red hair in a red-haired man—the conservatism of the form. You make new and original people sing new songs to an accompaniment that looks secondhand; you have four acts, the characters deliver edifying discourses, there is a feeling of alarm before long speeches, and so on, and so on. But all that is not important, and it is all, so to speak, drowned in the good points of the play. Perchikhin—how Iive! His daughter is enchanting, Tatyana and Piotr also, and their mother is a splendid old woman. The central figure of the play, Nil, is vigorously drawn and extremely interesting! In fact, the play takes hold of one from the first act. Only, God preserve you from letting anyone act Perchikhin except Artyom, while Alexeyev-Stanislavsky must certainly play Nil. Those two figures will do just what's needed; Piotr—Meyerhold. Only, Nil's part, a wonderful part, must be made two or three times as long. You ought to end the play with it, to make it the leading part. Only, do not contrast him with Piotr and Tatyana, let him be by himself and them by themselves, all wonderful, splendid people independent of one another. When Nil tries to seem superior to Piotr and Tatyana, and says of himself that he is a fine fellow—the element so characteristic of our decent workingman, the element of modesty, is lost. He boasts, he argues, but you know one can see what sort of man he is without that. Let him be merry, let him play pranks through the whole four acts, let him eat a great deal after his work—and that will be enough for him to conquer the audience with. Piotr, I repeat, is good. Most likely you don't even suspect how good he is. Tatyana, too, is a finished figure, only—(a) she ought really to be a schoolmistress, ought to be teaching children, ought to come home from school, ought to be taken up with her pupils and exercise books, and—(b) it ought to be mentioned in the first or second act that she has attempted to poison herself; then, after that hint, the poisoning in the third act will not seem so startling and will be more in place. Teterev talks too much: such characters ought to be shown bit by bit among others, for in any case such people are everywhere merely incidental—both in life and on the stage. Make Elena dine with all the rest in the first act, let her sit and make jokes, or else there is very little of her, and she is not clear. Her avowal to Piotr is too abrupt; on the stage it would come out in too high relief. Make her a passionate woman, if not loving, at least apt to fall in love.…
To Maxim Gorky, July 29, 1902:
I have read your play. It is new and unmistakably fine. The second act is very good; it is the best, the strongest, and when I was reading it, especially the end, I almost danced with joy. The tone is gloomy, oppressive; the audience, unaccustomed to such subjects, will walk out of the theatre, and you may well say good-by to your reputation as an optimist, in any case. My wife will play Vassilisa, the immoral and spiteful woman; Vishnevsky walks about the house and imagines himself the Tartar—he is convinced that it is the part for him. Luka, alas! you must not give to Artyom. He will repeat himself in that part and be exhausted; but he would do the policeman wonderfully; it is his part. The part of the actor, in which you have been very successful (it is a magnificent part), should be given to an experienced actor, Stanislavsky perhaps. Kachalov will play the baron.
You left out of the fourth act all the most interesting characters (except the actor), and you must mind, now, that there is no ill effect from it. The act may seem boring and unnecessary, especially if, with the exit of the strongest and most interesting actors, there are left only the mediocrities. The death of the actor is awful; it is as though you gave the spectator a sudden box on the ear apropos of nothing without preparing him in any way. How the baron got into the doss house and why he is a baron is also not quite clear.
To V. Nemirovich-Danchenko, November 2, 1903:
Apropos of the popular theatres and popular literature—all that is foolishness, sugar candy for the people. You must not lower Gogol to the people, but raise the people to the level of Gogol.