criticism would turn out so long I would not have written it. Please
forgive me! ...

You have read my "On the Road." Well, how do you like my courage? I write
of "intellectual" subjects and am not afraid. In Petersburg I excite a
regular furore. A short time ago I discoursed upon non-resistance to evil,
and also surprised the public. On New Year's Day all the papers presented
me with a compliment, and in the December number of the _Russkoye
Bogatstvo_, in which Tolstoy writes, there is an article thirty-two pages
long by Obolensky entitled "Chekhov and Korolenko." The fellow goes into
raptures over me and proves that I am more of an artist than Korolenko. He
is probably talking rot, but, anyway, I am beginning to be conscious of one
merit of mine: I am the only writer who, without ever publishing anything
in the thick monthlies, has merely on the strength of writing newspaper
rubbish won the attention of the lop-eared critics--there has been no
instance of this before.... At the end of 1886 I felt as though I were a
bone thrown to the dogs.

... I have written a play [Footnote: "Calchas," later called "Swansong."]
on four sheets of paper. It will take fifteen to twenty minutes to act....
It is much better to write small things than big ones: they are
unpretentious and successful.... What more would you have? I wrote my play
in an hour and five minutes. I began another, but have not finished it, for
I have no time.




TO HIS UNCLE, M. G. CHEKHOV.