I am answering the chief substance of your letter--the question why we so
rarely talk of serious subjects. When people are silent, it is because they
have nothing to talk about or because they are ill at ease. What is there
to talk about? We have no politics, we have neither public life nor club
life, nor even a life of the streets; our civic existence is poor,
monotonous, burdensome, and uninteresting--and to talk is as boring as
corresponding with L. You say that we are literary men, and that of itself
makes our life a rich one. Is that so? We are stuck in our profession up to
our ears, it has gradually isolated us from the external world, and the
upshot of it is that we have little free time, little money, few books, we
read little and reluctantly, we hear little, we rarely go anywhere. Should
we talk about literature? ... But we have talked about it already. Every
year it’s the same thing again and again, and all we usually say about
literature may be reduced to discussing who write better, and who write
worse. Conversations upon wider and more general topics never catch on,
because when you have tundras and Esquimaux all round you, general ideas,
being so inappropriate to the reality, quickly lose shape and slip away
like thoughts of eternal bliss. Should we talk of personal life? Yes, that
may sometimes be interesting and we might perhaps talk about it; but there
again we are constrained, we are reserved and insincere: we are restrained
by an instinct of self-preservation and we are afraid. We are afraid of
being overheard by some uncultured Esquimaux who does not like us, and whom
we don’t like either. I personally am afraid that my acquaintance, N.,
whose cleverness attracts us, will hold forth with raised finger, in every
railway carriage and every house about me, settling the question why I
became so intimate with X. while I was beloved by Z. I am afraid of our
morals, I am afraid of our ladies.... In short, for our silence, for the
frivolity and dulness of our conversations, don’t blame yourself or me,
blame what the critics call “the age,” blame the climate, the vast
distances, what you will, and let circumstances go on their own fateful,
relentless course, hoping for a better future.