real name to be printed. Chekhov reserved his real name for scientific writing. Only Nature and Field Sports had ever printed work under his real name. He consented reluctantly. Anton Chekhov consigned Antosha Chekhonte to extinction.
Leikin gave way to the inevitable loss of his protege: 'I think that it is in your direct interests to write for Suvorin, because he pays almost twice as much.' (Suvorin started Chekhov at 12 kopecks a line, and allowed him three times the length that Leikin allotted. One story might earn 100 roubles.) Leikin and Chekhov had had tiffs, and not only over his publications in Moscow. To Leikin's boasts of potency as both man and editor, Anton responded: 'A penis that smashes walnuts as a measure of editorial ability could be a fine theme for a dissertation.'54 From mid April, Khudekov cut Chekhov's allocation of space on The Petersburg Newspaper to make room for 'Current Events'. Anton transferred his loyalty to Aleksei Suvorin: he sent a congratulatory telegram to Suvorin and New Times for the paper's tenth jubilee. Leikin was at the celebrations, where Suvorin distributed gold medals to his minions. Leikin tried to make the best of Anton's new connection; he was flattered that Suvorin and Grigorovich were 'infatuated' with his protege. Dmitri Grigorovich, the first Russian writer graphically to portray the miseries of the Russian peasant, despite four decades of resting on his laurels, was still able to open doors, so infectious was his literary enthusiasm.
Chekhov had divined Suvorin's tastes. New Times, like its owner, liked brooding sexuality and graphic naturalism in its reports and its fiction. Two stories Chekhov wrote for New Times in February 1886 have a highly sexed woman rebelling against her husband: the heroine of 'Agafia' faces a beating from her husband after a day with her lover, while in 'The Witch' a woman awes her elderly husband by conjuring male visitors out of a blizzard. Suvorin, Bilibin reported, was 'simply in ecstasy'. Chekhov's more prudish friends, the architect Franz Schechtel and Viktor Bilibin, were slightly appalled; even Grigorovich, still a notorious libertine, had reservations. At the end of March Chekhov sent Suvorin a story full of social concern, where the picture of deprivation was free of any 'taint': 'Nightmare' shows a newcomer to a country district, shocked by the poverty of the priest and the doctor. The story struck a chord in Suvorin, for the doctor's wife washes her own linen - Suvorin's favourite recollection of poverty was that his first wife, a teacher, did her own washing.
Chekhov's new departure aroused acclaim on 25 March 1886. Dmitri Grigorovich had the previous summer marvelled at 'The Huntsman'. Now he was sure he had discovered a genius to succeed him. He talked to Aleksei Suvorin and wrote at length to Anton: Dear Sir, Dear Mr Chekhov, About a year ago I chanced to read a story by you in The Petersburg Newspaper, I can't remember now what it was called; I remember being struck by its features of peculiar originality, and above all by the remarkable fidelity, truthfulness in the presentation of the characters and also in the description of nature. Since then I have read everything signed Chekhonte, although inwardly I was angry that a man should so little value himself that he thinks he has to resort to a pseudonym. Reading you, I constandy advised Suvorin and Burenin to follow my example. They obeyed
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me and now none of us doubi (Inn you have a real talent - a talent that sets you far outside the circle ol (lie new generation of writers. I am not a journalist nor a publisher; I can exploit you only by reading you; if I speak of your talent, 1 do so out of conviction. I am over 65; but I still have so much love of literature and follow its progress with such enthusiasm that I am always glad when I come across something alive, gifted, so that I couldn't - as you see - hold back and I offer you both my hands. But this is not all; I want to add this: judging by various qualities of your talent, a true feeling for inner analysis, mastery of description (snowstorm, night and locality in 'Agafia' etc.), a feeling of plasticity, where you give a full picture in a few lines: clouds on a dying sunset: Hike ash on dying coals'… and so on, - your vocation is, I am certain, to write several excellent truly artistic works. You will commit a great moral sin if you do not justify these expectations. To do so you must have respect for a talent which is so rarely granted. Stop doing hack work. I don't know how well off you are; if you are not well off, better go hungry as we used to in our time, save up your impressions for work that has been pondered, polished, written at several sittings… The basis for your stories is often a motif with a somewhat cynical tinge, why? Truthfulness, realism not only do not exclude refinement, they are enhanced by it. You have such a command of form and such a feeling for the plastic that there is no particular need to talk, for instance, of dirty feet and twisted toenails or the sexton's navel… Please forgive me such remarks; I decided to make them only because I truly believe in your talent and with all my heart wish it full development and full expression. Soon, I am told, a book of your stories is coming out; if it is under the pseudonym of Che-khon-te, I earnestly ask you to telegraph the publisher to put your real name to it. After the last stories in New Times and the success of 'The Huntsman' your name will have more success. I should appreciate confirmation that you are not angry with me for my remarks but take them to heart, just as I write to you not as an authority but in the simplicity of a pure heart. I shake your hand as a friend and wish you all the best. Yours respectfully, D. Grigorovich. Wary of his own father for twenty years, Anton responded with trusting affection to the father figures of Russian literature. Great writers - Leskov, Grigorovich and, later, Tolstoy - and self-made patriarchs like Suvorin aroused filial devotion in Anton. He might back away from adoring young women, but he seized hold of tributes from Grand Old Men. Anton boasted of Grigorovich's praise to Uncle Mitrofan and to Bilibin and answered Grigorovich by return of post with unprecedented emotion: Your letter, my kind, ardently loved bringer of good tidings, struck me like lightning. I almost burst into tears, I was profoundly moved and I now feel that it has left a deep trace in my soul. May God calm your old age as you have comforted my youth, but I cannot find words or deeds with which to thank you. You know how ordinary people look on the elect, such as you; you can therefore judge what your letter means for my self-regard. It is greater than any diploma and, for a writer who is a beginner it is a royalty for the present and the future. I am bemused. I haven't the strength to judge, whether I deserve this high reward or not… If I have a gift which ought to be respected, then I confess to the purity of your heart, I haven't respected it hitherto. I have felt I had it, but have got used to considering it negligible. An organism needs only external reasons to be unjust, extremely dubious and suspicious about itself. And, as I now recall, I have plenty of such reasons. All those close to me have always been condescending about my writing and have never stopped giving me friendly advice not to change my profession, not to become a scribbler. I have hundreds of acquaintances in Moscow, a couple of dozen writers among them, and I cannot recall a single one who reads me or considers me as an artist. There is a so-called 'literary circle' in Moscow; talents and mediocrities of all ages and sorts gather once a week in a private room in a restaurant and let their tongues wag. If I were to go there and read just a bit of your letter, they would laugh at me to my face. My five years' hanging around the newspapers has been enough to imbue me with this general attitude to my literary hack work, I quickly got accustomed to looking condescendingly at my work -and everything has gone to the dogs! That's the first reason… The second is that I am a doctor and am up to my ears in medicine… I write all this only to justify my grave sin to you a little bit. Hitherto I have taken an extremely frivolous, careless, pointless view of my literary work. I don't remember a single story on which I have spent more than twenty-four hours, while 'The Huntsman', which you liked, was written in a bathing hut! As reporters write their notices about fires, so I've written my stories: automatically, semicon-sciously, not caring at all about the reader or myself… In writing I have done my utmost not to squander on a story images or pictures which, God knows why, I've been saving up and carefully hiding. The first thing that drove me to self- criticism was a very kind
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and, as far as I can see, sincere letter from Suvorin. I had begun to prepare to write something sensible, but 1 still lacked faith in my own literary sense.
Now, out of the blue, your letter has come. Forgive the comparison, but it acted on me like a governor's order to 'leave town in 24 hours!', i.e. I suddenly felt an overwhelming need to hurry, rather to get out of whatever I was stuck in… I shall free myself of hack work, but it will take time. There is no easy way to get out of the rut I have fallen into. I don't mind going hungry, as I have before, but it isn't just a question of me. I give my leisure time to writing, 2-3 hours a day and a bit of the night, i.e. time that can be used for small pieces. In summer, when I have more leisure and fewer expenses, I shall take up serious work.
My only hope is the future. I'm still only 26. Perhaps I shall manage to do something, although time is passing quickly. Leikin still announced to Anton: 'My house, my table are at your service.' Anton wanted to meet his new patrons in Petersburg independently of Leikin, whose motives, after his last visit when he had been received so frostily by Suvorin and others, he now distrusted. He called Leikin 'the uncle of lies' to Aleksandr. Schechtel, who
