A short while ago I finished a book by Nick Hornby called “The Polysyllabic Spree”. It’s a collection of essays that Hornby wrote for the believer magazine. In these monthly essays he explains which books he wanted to read that month, which ones he bought and which ones he actually read. It was a nice read, especially for a non-Englishman, because it gave me some ideas about stuff to read. One of the books Hornby discusses, near the end of the book, is “A Life in Letters” by Anton Chekhov. I had heard of Chekhov of course and I had been to one of his plays, performed by “de Theathercompagnie” in Amsterdam. I remember it well as it was the first (and last) time I got to see Dutch actress “Halina Reijn” in the flesh. Anyways, I wasn’t very familiar with Chekhov’s work at all. Hornby quoted a letter that Chekhov wrote to his brother Nikolay and a couple of passages from this letter, like the one quoted below, intrigued me.

This is what cultured people are like. In order to be cultured and not to stand below the level of your surroundings it is not enough to have read “The Pickwick Papers” and learnt a monologue from “Faust.” … What is needed is constant work, day and night, constant reading, study, will…. Every hour is precious for it…. Come to us, smash the vodka bottle, lie down and read…. Turgenev, if you like, whom you have not read. You must drop your vanity, you are not a child … you will soon be thirty. It is time!

I decided to find out a bit more about Anton Chekhov and “A Life in Letters” and much to my surprise I found a website that offered a book called “Letters of Anton Chekhov” online, for free. It’s a collection of 156 letters written by Chekhov, accompanied by a short biography. I started reading it and found it very interesting. Another really interesting website I found offered a free online version of a book called “Reminiscences of Anton Chekhov”.   This particular book really sucked me into all things Chekhov. It’s a collection of three articles written by Maxime Gorky, Alexander Kuprin and I.A. Bunin, all writers and friends of Anton Chekhov. They wrote this after his death, to remember and honor him. The free online version can be found here and I promise you its brilliant.One particular part in the beginning of the article by Alexander Kuprin got me hooked right away. It speaks of friendship and times passed, in a beautiful way.

But when evening comes and the bustle in the half dark dormitory ceases, O what an unbearable sadness, what despair possesses one’s soul. One bites one’s pillow, suppressing one’s sobs, one whispers dear names and cries, cries with tears that burn, and knows that this sorrow is unquenchable. It is then that one realizes for the first time all the shattering horror of two things: the irrevocability of the past and the feeling of loneliness. It seems as if one would gladly give up all the rest of life, gladly suffer any tortures, for a single day of that bright, beautiful life which will never repeat itself. It seems as if one would snatch each kind, caressing word and enclose it forever in one’s memory, as if one would drink into one’s soul, slowly and greedily, drop by drop, every caress. And one is cruelly tormented by the thought that, through carelessness, in the hurry, and because time seemed inexhaustible, one had not made the most of each hour and moment that flashed by in vain.