TO MADAME M. V. KISELYOV.

MOSCOW,
January 14, 1887.


... Even your praise of "On the Road" has not softened my anger as an
author, and I hasten to avenge myself for "Mire." Be on your guard, and
catch hold of the back of a chair that you may not faint. Well, I begin.

One meets every critical article with a silent bow even if it is abusive
and unjust--such is the literary etiquette. It is not the thing to answer,
and all who do answer are justly blamed for excessive vanity. But since
your criticism has the nature of "an evening conversation on the steps of
the Babkino lodge" ... and as, without touching on the literary aspects of
the story, it raises general questions of principle, I shall not be sinning
against the etiquette if I allow myself to continue our conversation.

In the first place, I, like you, do not like literature of the kind we are
discussing. As a reader and "a private resident" I am glad to avoid it, but
if you ask my honest and sincere opinion about it, I shall say that it is
still an open question whether it has a right to exist, and no one has yet
settled it.... Neither you nor I, nor all the critics in the world, have
any trustworthy data that would give them the right to reject such
literature. I do not know which are right: Homer, Shakespeare, Lopez da
Vega, and, speaking generally, the ancients who were not afraid to rummage
in the "muck heap," but were morally far more stable than we are, or the