MOSCOW,
December 11, 1891.
... I am coming to you. My lying is unintentional. I have no money at all.
I shall come when I get the various sums owing to me. Yesterday I got one
hundred and fifty roubles, I shall soon get more, then I shall fly to you.
In January I am going to Nizhni Novgorod province: there my scheme is
working already. I am very, very glad. I am going to write to Anna
Pavlovna.
Ah, if you knew how agonizingly my head aches to-day! I want to come to
Petersburg if only to lie motionless indoors for two days and only go out
to dinner. For some reason I feel utterly exhausted. It’s all this cursed
influenza.
How many persons could you and would you undertake to feed? Tolstoy! ah,
Tolstoy! In these days he is not a man but a super-man, a Jupiter. In the
_Sbornik_ he has published an article about the relief centres, and the
article consists of advice and practical instructions. So business-like,
simple, and sensible that, as the editor of _Russkiya Vyedomosti_ said, it
ought to be printed in the _Government Gazette_, instead of in the
_Sbornik_....
December 13, 1891.
Now I understand why you don’t sleep well at night. If I had written a
story like that I should not have slept for ten nights in succession. The
most terrible passage is where Varya strangles the hero and initiates him
into the mysteries of the life beyond the grave. It’s terrifying and
consistent with spiritualism. You mustn’t cut out a single word from
Varya’s speeches, especially where they are both riding on horseback. Don’t
touch it. The idea of the story is good, and the incidents are fantastic
and interesting....
But why do you talk of our “nervous age”? There really is no nervous age.
As people lived in the past so they live now, and the nerves of to-day are
no worse than the nerves of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Since you have
already written the ending I shall not put you out by sending you mine. I
was inspired and could not resist writing it. You can read it if you like.
Stories are good in this way, that one can sit over them, pen in hand, for
days together, and not notice how time passes, and at the same time be
conscious of life of a sort. That’s from the hygienic point of view. And
from the point of view of usefulness and so on, to write a fairly good
story and give the reader ten to twenty interesting minutes--that, as
Gilyarovsky says, is not a sheep sneezing....
I have a horrible headache again to-day. I don’t know what to do. Yes, I
suppose it’s old age, or if it’s not that it’s something worse.
A little old gentleman brought me one hundred roubles to-day for the
famine.