MOSCOW,
March 22, 1890.
My greetings, dear Jean! Thanks for your long letter and for the good will
of which it is full from beginning to end. I shall be delighted to read
your military story. Will it come out in the Easter number? It is a long
time since I read anything of yours or my own. You say that you want to
give me a harsh scolding “especially on the score of morality and art,” you
speak vaguely of my crimes as deserving friendly censure, and threaten me
with “an influential newspaper criticism.” If you scratch out the word
“art,” the whole phrase in quotation marks becomes clearer, but gains a
significance which, to tell the truth, perplexes me not a little. Jean,
what is it? How is one to understand it? Can I really be different in my
ideas of morality from people like you, and so much so as to deserve
censure and even an influential article? I cannot take it that you mean
some subtle higher morality, as there are no lower, higher, or medium
moralities, but only one which Jesus Christ gave us, and which now prevents
you and me and Barantsevitch from stealing, insulting, lying, and so on. If
I can trust the ease of my conscience, I have never by word or deed, in
thought, or in my stories, or in my farces, coveted my neighbour’s wife,
nor his man, nor his ox, nor any of his cattle, I have not stolen, nor been
a hypocrite, I have not flattered the great nor sought their favour, I have
not blackmailed, nor lived at other people’s expense. It is true I have
waxed wanton and slothful, have laughed heedlessly, have eaten too much and
drunk too much and been profligate. But all that is a personal matter, and
all that does not deprive me of the right to think that, as far as morals
are concerned, I am nothing out of the ordinary, one way or the other.
Nothing heroic and nothing scoundrelly--I am just like everyone else; I
have many sins, but I am quits with morality, as I pay for those sins with
interest in the discomforts they bring with them. If you want to abuse me
cruelly because I am not a hero, you’d better throw your cruelty out of the
window, and instead of abuse, let me hear your charming tragic
laugh--that’s better.
But of the word “art” I am terrified, as merchants’ wives are terrified of
“brimstone.” When people talk to me of what is artistic and inartistic, of
what is dramatic and not dramatic, of tendency, realism, and so on, I am
bewildered, hesitatingly assent, and answer with banal half-truths not
worth a brass farthing. I divide all works into two classes: those I like
and those I don’t. I have no other criterion, and if you ask me why I like
Shakespeare and don’t like Zlatovratsky, I don’t venture to answer. Perhaps
in time and as I grow wiser I may work out some criterion, but meanwhile
all conversations about what is “artistic” only weary me, and seem to me
like a continuation of the scholastic disputations with which people
wearied themselves in the middle ages.
If criticism, on the authority of which you rely, knows what you and I
don’t know, why has it up till now not spoken? why does it not reveal the
truth and the immutable laws? If it knew, believe me, it would long ago
have shown us the true path and we should have known what to do, and
Fofanov would not have been in a madhouse, Garshin would have been alive
to-day, Barantsevitch would not have been so depressed and we should not be
so dull and ill at ease as we are, and you would not feel drawn to the
theatre and I to Sahalin. But criticism maintains a dignified silence or
gets out of it with idle trashy babble. If it seems to you authoritative it
is because it is stupid, conceited, impudent, and clamorous; because it is
an empty barrel one cannot help hearing.
But let us have done with that and sing something out of a different opera.
Please don’t build any literary hopes on my Sahalin trip. I am not going
for the sake of impressions or observations, but simply for the sake of
living for six months differently from how I have lived hitherto. Don’t
rely on me, old man; if I am successful and clever enough to do something,
so much the better; if not, don’t blame me. I am going after Easter. I will
send you in due time my Sahalin address and minute instructions....