YALTA,
January 2, 1900.
My greetings, dear actress! Are you angry that I haven’t written for so
long? I used to write often, but you didn’t get my letters because our
common acquaintance intercepted them in the post.
I wish you all happiness in the New Year. I really do wish you happiness
and bow down to your little feet. Be happy, wealthy, healthy, and gay.
We are getting on pretty well, we eat a great deal, chatter a great deal,
laugh a great deal, and often talk of you. Masha will tell you when she
goes back to Moscow how we spent Christmas.
I have not congratulated you on the success of “Lonely Lives.” I still
dream that you will all come to Yalta, that I shall see “Lonely Lives” on
the stage, and congratulate you really from my heart. I wrote to Meierhold,
[Footnote: An actor at the Art Theatre at that time playing Johannes in
Hauptmann’s “Lonely Lives.”] and urged him in my letter not to be too
violent in the part of a nervous man. The immense majority of people are
nervous, you know: the greater number suffer, and a small proportion feel
acute pain; but where--in streets and in houses--do you see people tearing
about, leaping up, and clutching at their heads? Suffering ought to be
expressed as it is expressed in life--that is, not by the arms and legs,
but by the tone and expression; not by gesticulation, but by grace. Subtle
emotions of the soul in educated people must be subtly expressed in an
external way. You will say--stage conditions. No conditions allow falsity.
My sister tells me that you played “Anna” exquisitely. Ah, if only the Art
Theatre would come to Yalta! _Novoye Vremya_ highly praised your company.
There is a change of tactics in that quarter; evidently they are going to
praise you all even in Lent. My story, a very queer one, will be in the
February number of _Zhizn_. There are a great number of characters, there
is scenery too, there’s a crescent moon, there’s a bittern that cries far,
far away: “Boo-oo! boo-oo!” like a cow shut up in a shed. There’s
everything in it.
Levitan is with us. Over my fireplace he has painted a moonlight night in
the hayfield, cocks of hay, forest in the distance, a moon reigning on high
above it all.
Well, the best of health to you, dear, wonderful actress. I have been
pining for you.
And when are you going to send me your photograph? What treachery!