You say 'Gorsky', I say 'Gorky'...

I came upon an article written by Maxim Gorsky(1868-1936) about some of his encounters with Anton Chekhov. Gorsky was also a popular short story writer at the time,was the first Russian author to write sympathetically of villains and thieves, and it was Chekhov who introduced his plays to the MAT (Moacow Art Theatre). After his death in 1936, Gorky left behind a body of work that helped to found socialist realism. His other plays include The Zykovs (1914), The Old Man (1919), The Counterfeit Coin (1926), Yegor Bulychov (1931), and Dostegayev and Others (1933). In addition to his plays, novels, and short stories, he also wrote an autobiographical trilogy consisting of My Childhood (1914), In the World (1916), and My Universities (1923).

Here is a link to the article in it's entirety, http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc6w4.html.... but here are the points I thought told a lot regarding Chekhov's personality through the eyes of a dear friend.



think that in Anton Chekhov's presence every one involuntarily felt in himself a desire to be simpler, more truthful, more one's self; and I often saw how people cast off the motley finery of bookish phrases, smart words, and all the other cheap tricks with which a Russian, wishing to figure as a European, adorns himself, like a savage with shells and fish's teeth. Anton Chekhov disliked fish's teeth and cocks' feathers; anything "brilliant" or foreign, assumed by a man to make himself look bigger, disturbed him; I noticed that whenever he saw any one dressed up in this way, he had a desire to free him from all that oppressive, useless tinsel and to find underneath the genuine face and living soul of the person. All his life Chekhov lived on his own soul; he was always himself, inwardly free, and he never troubles about what some people expected and others --coarser people--demanded of Anton Chekhov. He did not like conversations with which our dear Russians so assiduously !
comfort themselves, forgetting that it is ridiculous to argue about velvet costumes in the future when in the present one has not even a decent pair of trousers.

Beautifully simple himself, he loved everything simple, genuine, sincere, and he had a peculiar way of making other people simple. Once, I remember, three luxuriously dressed ladies came to see him; they filled his room with the rustle of silk skirts and the smell of strong scent; they sat down politely opposite their host, pretended that they were very much interested in politics, and began "putting questions":

"Anton Pavlovitch, what do you think? How will the war end?"

Anton Pavlovitch coughed, thought for a while, and then gently, in a serious and kindly voice, replied:

"Probably in peace."

"Well, yes ... certainly! But who will win? The Greeks or the Turks?"

"It seems to me that those will win who are the stronger."

"And who, do you think, are the stronger?" all the ladies asked together.

"Those who are the better fed and the better educated."

"Ah, how clever!" one of them exclaimed.

"And whom do you like the best?" another asked.

Anton Pavlovitch looked at her kindly, and answered with a meek smile:

"I like candied fruits ... don't you?"

"Very much," the lady exclaimed gayly.

"Especially Abrikossov's," the second agreed solidly. And the third, half closing her eyes, added with relish: "It smells so good." And all three began to talk with vivacity, revealing, on the subject of candied fruit, great erudition and subtle knowledge. It was obvious that they were happy at not having to strain their minds and pretend to be seriously interested in Turks and Greeks, to whom up to that moment they had not given a thought. When they left, they merrily promised Anton Pavlovitch: "We will send you some candied fruit."

"You managed that nicely," I observed when they had gone.

Anton Pavlovitch laughed quietly and said: "Every one should speak his own language."


Chekhov and the enemy of Banality:

"No one understood as clearly and finely as Anton Chekhov, the tragedy of life's trivialities, no one before him showed men with such merciless truth the terrible and shameful picture of their life in the dim chaos of bourgeois every-day existence. His enemy was banality; he fought it all his life long; he ridiculed it, drawing it with a pointed and unimpassioned pen, finding the mustiness of banality even where at the first glance everything seemed to be arranged very nicely, comfortably, and even brilliantly--and banality revenged itself upon him by a nasty prank, for it saw that his corpse, the corpse of a poet, was put into a railway truck "For the Conveyance of Oysters."

That dirty green railway truck seems to me precisely the great, triumphant laugh of banality over its tired enemy; and all the "Recollections" in the gutter press are hypocritical sorrow, behind which I feel the cold and smelly breath of banality, secretly rejoicing over the death of its enemy.

and Chekhov's thought on Actors? (this relates well to Arkadina and Nina as well)

"An actor, having taken taken two or three parts tolerably, no longer troubles to learn his parts, puts on a silk hat, and thinks himself a genius. Russia is a land of insatiable and lazy people: they eat enormously of nice things, drink, like to sleep in the day-time, and snore in their sleep. They marry in order to get their house looked after and keep mistresses in order to be thought well of in society. Their psychology is that of a dog: when they are beaten, they whine shrilly and run into their kennels; when petted, they lie on their backs with their paws in the air and wag their tails."