Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends

TO HIS SISTER.

PETERSBURG, March 16. Midnight.

I have just seen the Italian actress Duse in Shakespeare’s Cleopatra. I don’t know Italian, but she acted so well that it seemed to me I understood every word. A remarkable actress! I have never seen anything like it before. I gazed at that Duse and felt overcome with misery at the thought that we have to educate our temperaments and tastes on such wooden actresses as N. and her like, whom we call great because we have seen nothing better. Looking at Duse I understood why it is that the Russian theatre is so dull.

I sent three hundred roubles to-day, did you get them?

After Duse it was amusing to read the address I enclose. [Footnote: A newspaper cutting containing an address: From the Students of the Technological Institute of Harkov to M. M. Solovtsov, was enclosed.] My God, how low taste and a sense of justice have sunk! And these are the students—the devil take them! Whether it is Solovtsov or whether it is Salvini, it’s all the same to them, both equally “stir a warm response in the hearts of the young.” They are worth a farthing, all those hearts.

We set off for Warsaw at half-past one to-morrow. My greetings to all, even the mongooses, though they don’t deserve it. I will write.