Below are some of the letters written by Chekhov to various friends and family members. He discusses his plays, his views on the world and his existence, and even trivial things.

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To his uncle, M.G. Chekhov | Moscow, 1885

“I am sorry I cannot join you in being of service to my native Taganrog. … I am sure that if my work had been there I should have been more cheerful, in better health, but evidently it is my fate to remain in Moscow. My home and my career are here. I have work of two sorts. As doctor I should have grown slack in Taganrog and forgotten my medicine, but in Moscow a doctor has time to go to the club and play cards. As a writer I am no use except in Moscow or Petersburg.

… I need hardly say I have not made a fortune yet, and it will be a long time before I do, but I live tolerably and need nothing. So long as I am alive and well, the position of the family is secure. I have bought new furniture, hired a good piano, kept two servants, give little evening parties with music and singing. … What will come later, this is no knowing; as it is we have nothing to complain of, …”

 

To D.V. Grigorovitch | Moscow, March 28, 1886

“I have hundreds of friends in Moscow, and among them a dozen or two writers, but I cannot recall a single one who reads me or considers me an artist. In Moscow there is a so-called Literary Circle: talented people and mediocrities of all ages and colors gather once a week in a private room of a restaurant and exercise their tongues. If I went there and read them a single passage of your letter, they would laugh in my face. In the course of the five years that I have been knocking about from one newspaper office to another. I have had time to assimilate the general view of my literary insignificance. I soon got used to looking down upon my work, and so it has gone from bad to worse. That is the first reason. The second is that I am a doctor, and am up to my ears in medical work, so that the proverb about trying to catch two hares has given to no one more sleepless nights than me.

… I began to think of writing something decent, but I still had no faith in my being any good as a writer.

… I rest all my hopes on the future. I am only twenty-six. Perhaps I shall succeed in doing something, though time flies fast.”

 

To Madame M.V. Kiselyov | Moscow, September 21, 1886

“... It is not much fun to be a great writer. To begin with, it’s a dreary life. Work from morning till night and not much to show for it. Money is as scarce as cats’ tears.

… But being a writer has its good points. In the first place, my book, I hear, is going rather well; secondly, in October, I shall have money; thirdly, I am beginning to reap laurels: at the refreshment bars people point at me with their fingers, they pay me little attentions and treat me to sandwiches. Korsh brought me to his theatre and immediately presented me with a free pass… My medical colleagues sigh when they meet me, begin to  talk of literature and assure me that they are sick of medicine. And so on…”

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To Madame M.V. Kiselyov | Moscow, September 29, 1886

“... Life is grey, there are no happy people to be seen… Life is a nasty business for everyone, when I am serious, I begin to think that people who have an aversion for death are illogical."

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To A. S. Suvorin | May, 1888

"An artist must not be the judge of his characters or of what they say, but only an impartial witness."

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To A. S. Suvorin | October, 1888

"The artist observes, selects, guesses, combines - all these presuppose questions. If from the very start he had no questions to ask himself, there would be nothing to divine or to select. ... To deny that artistic creation involves problems, questions, and a purpose would be to admit that an artist creates without reflection, without design, under a spell... You are right in demanding that an artist should take a conscious attitude toward his work, but you confuse two conceptions: the solution of a question and the correct posing of a question. Only the latter is obligatory for the artist."

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To A. S. Suvorin | November, 1888

"Dividing people into successes and failures means looking upon human nature from a narrow, preconceived point of view. ...Are you a failure or not? Am I? Napoleon? Your servant Vasili? Where is the criterion? One must be God to be able to distinguish successes from failures and not make mistakes."

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To A. S. Suvorin | December, 1888

"[The] past is resplendent - it is so for the majority of Russia's intellectuals. There is not one single Russian member of the gentry or of the university - there hardly ever is one - who would not boast about the past. The present is always inferior to the past. Why? Because Russian excitability has a specific property: it soon gives way to fatigue. Once somebody just hopped off the school bench, they take on burdens beyond their strength simply at the spur of the moment; and all these burdens at the same time. ...However, hardly has one managed to reach the age of 30 or 35 than the fatigue and boredom begin to

be felt."

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To Alexei Plescheyev | January, 1889

"Fiction is a quiet and sacred thing. The narrative is a legal wife, and the dramatic a showy, noisy, impertinent, and tiresome mistress."

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To Alexei Plescheyev | 1889

"When people talk to me about artistic and anti-artistic, of what is dramatic and non-dramatic, of tendency, realism, etc., I get perplexed. ...I divide all works into two kinds: those which I like and those which I don't like. I have no other criterion. ...I want to remain a free artist and nothing but that."

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To A. S. Suvorin | 1895

"Very well, I'll get married, if you wish. But my conditions are: everything must remain just as before; that is, she must live in Moscow and I in the country, and I'll go see her. Happiness continuing day after day, from morning to morning, I shan't be able to stand. ...I promise to be a splendid husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, will not appear in my sky every day.

 

To Olga Knipper | Yalta, October 30, 1899

“Yes, dear actress, ordinary medium success is not enough now for all you artistic players: you want an uproar, big guns, dynamite. You have been spoiled at least, deafened by constant talk about successes, full and not full houses: you are already poisoned with that drug, and in another two or three years you will be good for nothing! So much for you!

How are you getting on? How are you feeling? I am still in the same place, and am still the same; I am working and planting trees.

But visitors have come, I can’t go on writing. Visitors have been sitting here for more than an hour. They have asked for tea. They have sent for the samovar! Oh, how dreary!

Don’t forget me, and don’t let your friendship for me die away, so that we may go away together somewhere again this summer. Goodbye for the present. We shall most likely not meet before April. If you would all come in the spring to Yalta, would act here and rest that wold be wonderfully artistic. A visitor will take this letter and drop it into the post-box…

P.S. Dear actress, write for the sake of all that’s holy, I am so dull and depressed. I might be in prison and I rage and rage…”

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To Olga Knipper | Yalta, November 1, 1899

“I understand your mood, dear actress, I understand it very well; but yet in your place I would not be so desperately upset. Both the part of Anna [in Hauptmann’s “Lonely Lives”] and the play itself are not worth wasting so much feeling and nerves over. It is an old play. It is already out of date, and there are a great many defects in it; if more than half the performers have not fallen into the right tone, then naturally it is the fault of the play. That’s one thing, and the second is, you must once and for all give up being worried about successes and failures. Don’t let that concern you. It’s your duty to go on working steadily day by day, quite quietly, to be prepared for mistakes which are inevitable, for failures in short, to do your job as actress and let other people count the calls before the curtain. To write or to act, and to be conscious at the time that one is not doing the right thing that is so usual, and for beginners so profitable!

The third thing is that the director has telegraphed that the second performance went magnificently, that everyone played splendidly, and that he was completely satisfied…"

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To Masha Chekhov | November 11, 1899

"Snow on the mountain. It's cold. Only a fool lives in the Crimea now. You write about the theater... and sundry temptations, as if to tease me; as if you don't know how boring, how depressing it is to go to bed at nine o'clock, to lie down cross, with the consciousness that there is nowhere to go, no one to speak to, nothing to work at. ...The piano and I are two objects in the house that carry on a soundless, baffled existence, ignorant of why we have been placed here, since no one can play us."

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To Vladimir Namirovich-Dachenko | Yalta, November 24, 1899

“I am not writing any plays. I’ve got a subject, ‘Three Sisters,’ but I’m not going to settle down to it until I have finished the stories which have long been weighing on my conscience. It is now certain you will have to go ahead next season without a play from me.”

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To G.I. Rossolimo | Yalta, January 21, 1900

Books should not be written for children, but one ought to know how to choose from what has been written for grown-up people that is, from real works of art. To be able to select among drugs, and to administer them in suitable doses, is more direct and consistent than trying to invent a special remedy for the patient because he is a child.

 

To Olga Knipper | Yalta, August 14, 1900

“My dearest one, I don’t know when I am coming to Moscow; the reason I don’t know is because, can you imagine, I am writing a play at the moment. Actually it’s more of a dog’s dinner than a play. It has so many characters - I may completely lose the plot and have to abandon it.”

 

To Olga Knipper | Yalta, September 8, 1900

“I shall sit in the hotel every day and write my play. Shall I write, or just make a fair copy? I don’t know my dear old girl. Something’s a bit wrong with one of my heroines; I can’t seem to do anything with her and it’s really annoying me… Wherever did ‘News of the Day’ dredge up the news that ‘Three Sisters’ is no good as a title? What nonsense! Maybe it isn’t good, but I certainly don’t plan to change it.”

 

To his Sister | Yalta, September 9, 1900

“Dear Masha,

… ‘Three Sisters’ is very difficult to write, more difficult than my others plays. Oh well, it doesn’t matter, perhaps something will come of it, next season if not this. It’s very hard to write in Yalta, by the way: I am interrupted, and I feel as though I had no object in writing; what I wrote yesterday I don’t like today…

Well, take care of yourself…”

 

To Gorky | Yalta, October 16, 1900

“Dear Alexey Maximovitch,

… On the 21st of this month I am going to Moscow, and from there abroad. Can you imagine I have written a play; but as it will be produced not now, but next season, I have not made a fair copy of it yet. It can lie as it is. It was very difficult to write ‘Three Sisters.’ Three heroines, you see, each a separate type and all the daughters of a general. The action is laid in a provincial town, as it might be Perm, the surroundings military, artillery…”

 

To Vera Komissarzhevskaya | Moscow, November 13, 1900

“The Three Sisters are ready, but their future, at least their immediate future, is lost in a mist of uncertainty. The play has turned out to be boring, sluggish, and awkward; I say awkward, because for instance it has four female leads and an atmosphere of unparalleled gloom… The play is as complicated as a novel, and the mood, so I’m told, quite deadly.”

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To Olga Knipper | January 2, 1901

"Do describe at least one rehearsal of Three Sisters for me. Should anything be added or cut? Are you acting well, my darling? And look here; don't put on a gloomy face, not in a single act. Angry, yes, but not gloomy. People who carry grief in their hearts, and have become accustomed to it, just whistle and sometimes become pensive. The way you often become pensive during discussions at rehearsals."

 

To Konstantin Stanislavsky | Nice, January 15, 1901

“You are, of course, a thousand times right. Tuzenbach’s corpse should not be seen on stage at all. I had the same thought when I was writing it, if you recall. The fact that the end of the play is reminiscent of ‘Uncle Vanya’ is not a big problem; after all, Uncle Vanya is my play, not anyone else’s, and people will accept echoes of yourself in your own work.”

 

To Olga Knipper | Nice, January 20, 1901

“Anyhow, how is ‘Three Sisters’? To judge from letters I’ve been getting, you are all talking utter nonsense. The noise in Act III - what noise, pray? The only noise should be in the distance, far offstage, a muffled, vague sort of sound, while everyone onstage is tired out, nearly asleep… If you don’t get Act III right the whole play will be ruined and I’ll be booed off the stage in the declining years of my old age. [Stanislavsky’s] letters are full of praise for you and for Vishnevsky. Even though I can’t see what you’re doing, I praise you as well. Vershinin’s ‘tram-tram-tram’ should be like a question, and yours should be, as it were, in reply, and it should strike you as such an original thing to say that you utter it with a slight smile… You should say ‘tram-tram’ and give a little laugh, not a loud one, just a hint. Your expression, meanwhile, should not be like the one you have in ‘Uncle Vanya,’ but livelier and more youthful. Remember, your character is quick-tempered, with a sense of humor. Anyhow, I’m counting on you, sweetheart, you are a good actress.

I said at the time that it would be difficult to carry Tuzenbach's body across the stage of your theater, but [Stanislavsky] has been insisting that it won't work unless they see the corpse. I have written to him saying  that the body should not be brought on, but I don't know if he has received my letter.

If the play is a failure, I shall go Monte Carlo and lose every last kopeck until I fall down in a stupor.”

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To Olga Knipper | Yalta, March 1, 1901

"My dearest, don't pay any attention to the newspapers, don't read them at all, or you'll completely collapse on me... As for me, I am going to give up the theatre altogether, I'm not going to write another play ever again. One can write for the theatre in Germany, Sweden, even in Spain, but not in Russia, where authors aren't respected, but just kicked in the teeth and not forgiven, either for their successes or failures..."

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To Georgy Chekhov | Yalta, March 8, 1901

"'Three Sisters' is indeed having a great success, but it needs to have three very good, young actresses, and the men must know how to wear uniforms. It is not a play written for the provinces..."

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To Maria Chekhova | Aksyonovo, June 4, 1901

"The letter you wrote advising me against getting married was sent to me from Moscow and arrived here yesterday... Then, it is most important to remember that this marriage will have absolutely no effect on my way of life, nor on those who have lived and are now living with me. Everything, I emphasize everything, will remain as it was before. And I will continue to live in Yalta alone."

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To S.P. Dyagilev | Yalta, December 30, 1902

“... You write that we talked of a serious religious movement in Russia. We talked of a movement not in Russia but in the intellectual class. I won’t say anything about Russia; the intellectuals so far are only playing at religion, and for the most part from having nothing to do. One may say of the cultured part of the public that it has moved away from religion, and is moving further and further away from it, whatever people may say and however many philosophical and religious societies may be formed. Whether it is a good or a bad thing I cannot undertake to decide; I will only say that the religious movement of which you write is one thing, and the whole trend of modern culture is another, and one cannot place the second in any causal connection with the first. Modern culture is only the first beginning of work for a great future, work which will perhaps go on for tens of thousands of years, in order that man may if only in the remote future come to know the truth of the real God that is not, I conjecture, by seeking in Dostoevsky, but by clear knowledge, as one knows twice two are four. Modern culture is the first beginning of the work, while the religious movement of which we talked is a survival, almost the end of what has ceased, or is ceasing to exist. But it is a long story, one can’t put it all into a letter…”

 

To Madame Stanislavsky | Yalta, September 15, 1903

“I can’t come for the opening of your season, I must stay in Yalta till November. Olga, who has grown fatter and stronger in the summer, will probably come to Moscow on Sunday. I shall remain alone, and of course shall take advantage of that. As a writer it is essential for me to observe women, to study them, and so, I regret to say, I cannot be a faithful husband. As I observe women chiefly for the sake of my plays, in my opinion the Art Theatre ought to increase my wife’s salary or give her a pension! …”

 

To his Sister | Badenweiler, June 28, 1904

“There is not a single decently dressed German woman. The lack of taste makes one depressed. Well, keep well and happy. My love to Mother, Vanya, George, and all the rest. Write!

I kiss you and press your hand.

Yours,

A.”