I am now at home. For a fortnight before Easter I was lying in Ostroumov’s
clinic and was spitting blood. The doctor diagnosed tuberculosis in the
lungs. I feel splendid, nothing aches, nothing is uneasy inside, but the
doctors have forbidden me _vinum_, movement, and conversation, they have
ordered me to eat a great deal, and forbidden me to practise--and I feel as
it were dreary.
I hear nothing about the People’s Theatre. At the congress it was spoken of
apathetically, without interest, and the circle that had undertaken to
write its constitution and set to work have evidently cooled off a little.
It is due to the spring, I suppose. The only one of the circle I saw was
Goltsev, and I had not time to talk to him about the theatre.
There is nothing new. A dead calm in literature. In the editor’s offices
they are drinking tea and cheap wine, drinking it without relish as they
walk about, evidently from having nothing to do. Tolstoy is writing a
little book about Art. He came to see me in the clinic, and said that he
had flung aside his novel “Resurrection” as he did not like it, and was
writing only about Art, and had read sixty books about Art. His idea is not
a new one; all intelligent old men in all the ages have sung the same tune
in different keys. Old men have always been prone to see the end of the
world, and have always declared that morality was degenerating to the
uttermost point, that Art was growing shallow and wearing thin, that people
were growing feebler, and so on, and so on.
Lyov Nikolaevitch wants to persuade us in his little book that at the
present time Art has entered upon its final phase, that it is in a blind
alley, from which it has no outlet (except retreat).
I am doing nothing, I feed the sparrows with hemp-seed and prune a
rose-tree a day. After my pruning, the roses flower magnificently. I am not
looking after the farming.
Keep well, dear Alexandr Ivanovitch, thank you for your letter and friendly
sympathy. Write to me for the sake of my infirmity, and don’t blame me too
much for my carelessness in correspondence.
In future I am going to try and answer your letters as soon as I have read
them. Warmest greetings.