They were all pluses;
it was men who quarrelled among themselves. If men would only develop a
little more loving-kindness, things would be better. The first duty of
the artist was to be a decent man.
'Solidarity among young writers is impossible and unnecessary.... We
cannot feel and think in the same way, our aims are different, or we
have no aims whatever, we know each other little or not at all, and
so there is nothing on to which this solidarity could be securely
hooked.... And is there any need for it? No, in order to help a
colleague, to respect his personality and work, to refrain from
gossiping about him, envying him, telling him lies and being
hypocritical, one does not need so much to be a young writer as
simply a man.... Let us be ordinary people, let us treat everybody
alike, and then we shall not need any artificially worked-up
solidarity.'
It seems a simple discipline, this moral and intellectual honesty of
Tchehov's, yet in these days of conceit and coterie his letters strike
us as more than strange.
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