Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends Part 25

MY DEAR CZECHS,

I write to you from Vienna, which I reached yesterday at four o'clock in the afternoon. Everything went well on the journey. From Warsaw to Vienna I travelled like a railway Nana in a luxurious compartment of the "Societe Internationale des Wagons-Lits." Beds, looking-gla.s.ses, huge windows, rugs, and so on.

Ah, my dears, if you only knew how nice Vienna is! It can't be compared with any of the towns I have seen in my life. The streets are broad and elegantly paved, there are numbers of boulevards and squares, the houses have always six or seven storeys, and shops--they are not shops, but a perfect delirium, a dream! There are myriads of neckties alone in the windows! Such amazing things made of bronze, china, and leather! The churches are huge, but they do not oppress one by their hugeness; they caress the eye, for it seems as though they are woven of lace. St. Stephen and the Votiv-Kirche are particularly fine. They are not like buildings, but like cakes for tea. The parliament, the town hall, and the university are magnificent. It is all magnificent, and I have for the first time realized, yesterday and to-day, that architecture is really an art. And here the art is not seen in little bits, as with us, but stretches over several versts. There are numbers of monuments. In every side street there is sure to be a bookshop. In the windows of the bookshops there are Russian books to be seen--not, alas, the works of Albov, of Barantsevitch, and of Chekhov, but of all sorts of anonymous authors who write and publish abroad. I saw "Renan," "The Mysteries of the Winter Palace," and so on. It is strange that here one is free to read anything and to say what one likes. Understand, O ye peoples, what the cabs are like here! The devil take them! There are no droshkys, but they are all new, pretty carriages with one and often two horses. The horses are splendid. On the box sit dandies in top-hats and reefer jackets, reading the newspaper, all politeness and readiness to oblige.

The dinners are good. There is no vodka; they drink beer and fairly good wine. There is one thing that is nasty: they make you pay for bread. When they bring the bill they ask, _Wie viel brodchen?_--that is, how many rolls have you devoured? And you have to pay for every little roll.

The women are beautiful and elegant. Indeed, everything is diabolically elegant.

I have not quite forgotten German. I understand, and am understood.

When we crossed the frontier it was snowing. In Vienna there is no snow, but it is cold all the same.

I am homesick and miss you all, and indeed I am conscience-stricken, too, at deserting you all again. But there, never mind! I shall come back and stay at home for a whole year. I send my greetings to everyone, everyone.

I wish you all things good; don't forget me with my many transgressions. I embrace you, I bless you, send my greetings and remain,

Your loving A. CHEKHOV.

Everyone who meets us recognises that we are Russians, and stares not at my face, but at my grizzled cap. Looking at my cap they probably think I am a very rich Russian Count.

TO HIS BROTHER IVAN.

VENICE, March 24, 1891.

I am now in Venice. I arrived here two days ago from Vienna. One thing I can say: I have never in my life seen a town more marvellous than Venice.

It is perfectly enchanting, brilliance, joy, life. Instead of streets and roads there are ca.n.a.ls; instead of cabs, gondolas. The architecture is amazing, and there is not a single spot that does not excite some historical or artistic interest. You float in a gondola and see the palace of the Doges, the house where Desdemona lived, homes of various painters, churches. And in the churches there are sculptures and paintings such as we have never dreamed of. In fact it is enchantment.

All day from morning till night I sit in a gondola and glide along the streets, or I saunter about the famous St. Mark's Square. The square is as level and clean as a parquet floor. Here there is St. Mark's--something impossible to describe--the Palace of the Doges, and other buildings which make me feel as I do listening to part singing--I feel the amazing beauty and revel in it.

And the evenings! My G.o.d! One might almost die of the strangeness of it.

One goes in a gondola ... warmth, stillness, stars.... There are no horses in Venice, and so there is a silence here as in the open country.

Gondolas flit to and fro, ... then a gondola glides by, hung with lanterns. In it are a double-ba.s.s, violins, a guitar, a mandolin and cornet, two or three ladies, several men, and one hears singing and music. They sing from operas. What voices! One goes on a little further and again meets a boat with singers, and then again, and the air is full, till midnight, of the mingled strains of violins and tenor voices, and all sorts of heart-stirring sounds.

Merezhkovsky, whom I have met here, is off his head with ecstasy. For us poor and oppressed Russians it is easy to go out of our minds here in a world of beauty, wealth, and freedom. One longs to remain here for ever, and when one stands in the churches and listens to the organ one longs to become a Catholic.

The tombs of Canova and t.i.tian are magnificent. Here they bury great artists like kings in churches; here they do not despise art as with us; the churches provide a shelter for pictures and statues however naked they may be.

In the Palace of the Doges there is a picture in which there are about ten thousand human figures.

To-day is Sunday. There will be a band playing in St. Mark's Square....

If you ever happen to come to Venice it will be the best thing in your life. You ought to see the gla.s.s here! Your bottles [Footnote: His brother Ivan was teaching in a school attached to a gla.s.s factory.] are so hideous compared with the things here, that it makes one sick to think of them.

I will write again; meanwhile, good-bye.

TO MADAME KISELYOV.

VENICE, March 25.

I am in Venice. You may put me in a madhouse. Gondolas, St. Mark's Square, water, stars, Italian women, serenades, mandolins, Falernian wine--in fact all is lost!

Don't remember evil against me.

The shade of the lovely Desdemona sends a smile to the District Captain.

Greetings to all. ANTONIO.

The Jesuits send their love to you.

TO HIS SISTER,

VENICE, March 25, 1891.

Bewitching blue-eyed Venice sends her greetings to all of you. Oh, signori and signorine, what an exquisite town this Venice is! Imagine a town consisting of houses and churches such as you have never seen; an intoxicating architecture, everything as graceful and light as the birdlike gondola. Such houses and churches can only be built by people possessed of immense artistic and musical taste and endowed with a lion-like temperament. Now imagine in the streets and alleys, instead of pavement, water; imagine that there is not one horse in the town; that instead of cabmen you see gondoliers on their wonderful boats, light, delicate long-beaked birds which scarcely seem to touch the water and tremble at the tiniest wave. And all from earth to sky bathed in sunshine.

There are streets as broad as the Nevsky, and others in which you can bar the way by stretching out your arms. The centre of the town is St. Mark's Square with the celebrated cathedral of the same name. The cathedral is magnificent, especially on the outside. Beside it is the Palace of the Doges where Oth.e.l.lo made his confession before the senators.

In short, there is not a spot that does not call up memories and touch the heart. For instance, the little house where Desdemona lived makes an impression that is difficult to shake off. The very best time in Venice is the evening. First the stars; secondly, the long ca.n.a.ls in which the lights and stars are reflected; thirdly, gondolas, gondolas, and gondolas; when it is dark they seem to be alive. Fourthly, one wants to cry because on all sides one hears music and superb singing. A gondola glides up hung with many-coloured lanterns; there is light enough for one to distinguish a double-ba.s.s, a guitar, a mandolin, a violin.... Then another gondola like it.... Men and women sing, and how they sing! It's quite an opera.

Fifthly, it's warm.

In short, the man's a fool who does not go to Venice. Living is cheap here.

Board and lodging costs eighteen francs a week--that is, six roubles each or twenty-five roubles a month. A gondolier asks a franc for an hour-that is, thirty kopecks. Admission to the academies, museums, and so on, is free. The Crimea is ten times as expensive, and the Crimea beside Venice is a cuttle-fish beside a whale.

I am afraid Father is angry with me for not having said good-bye to him. I ask his forgiveness.

What gla.s.s there is here! what mirrors! Why am I not a millionaire! ...

Next year let us all take a summer cottage in Venice.

The air is full of the vibration of church bells: my dear Tunguses, let us all embrace Catholicism. If only you knew how lovely the organs are in the churches, what sculptures there are here, what Italian women on their knees with prayer-books!

Keep well and don't forget me, a sinner.

A picturesque railway line, of which I have been told a great deal, runs from Vienna to Venice. But I was disappointed in the journey. The mountains, the precipices, and the snowy crests I have seen in the Caucasus and Ceylon are far more impressive than here. _Addio_.