... And we?
We! We paint life as it is, but beyond that--nothing at all.... Flog
us and we can do more! We have neither immediate nor remote aims,
and in our soul there is a great empty space. We have no politics,
we do not believe in revolution, we have no God, we are not afraid
of ghosts, and I personally am not afraid even of death and
blindness. One who wants nothing, hopes for nothing, and fears
nothing cannot be an artist....
'... You think I am clever. Yes, I am at least so far clever as not
to conceal from myself my disease and not to deceive myself, and not
to cover up my own emptiness with other people's rags, such as the
ideas of the 'sixties and so on.'
That was written in 1892. When we remember all the strange literary
effort gathered round about that year in the West--Symbolism, the
_Yellow Book_, Art for Art's sake--and the limbo into which it has been
thrust by now, we may realise how great a precursor and, in his own
despite, a leader, Anton Tchehov was.
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