Roche asks me to send him the passages from “Peasants” which were cut out
by the Censor, but there were no such passages. There is one chapter which
has not appeared in the magazine, nor in the book. It was a conversation of
the peasants about religion and government. But there is no need to send
that chapter to Paris, as indeed there was no need to translate “Peasants”
into French at all.
I thank you most sincerely for the photograph; Ryepin’s illustration is an
honour I had not expected or dreamed of. It will be very pleasant to have
the original; tell Ilya Efimovitch [Footnote: Ryepin, who was, at the
request of Roche, the French translator, illustrating the French edition of
Chekhov’s “Peasants.”] that I shall expect it with impatience, and that he
cannot change his mind now, as I have already bequeathed the original to
the town of Taganrog--in which, by the way, I was born.
In your letter you speak of Gorky: how do you like Gorky? I don’t like
everything he writes, but there are things I like very, very much, and to
my mind there is not a shadow of doubt that Gorky is made of the dough of
which artists are made. He is the real thing. He’s a fine man, clever,
thinking, and thoughtful. But there is a lot of unnecessary ballast upon
him and in him--for example, his provincialism....
Thanks very much for your letter, for remembering me. I am dull here, I am
sick of it, and I have a feeling as though I have been thrown overboard.
And the weather’s bad too, and I am not well. I still go on coughing. All
good wishes.