Status Updates From The Selected Letters

To Olga Knipper

Black melancholy streams from your letter, my sweet little actress, joy of my life; you are gloomy, and frightfully unhappy, but not for long I should think, as soon, very soon, you will sit in a railway coach and eat snacks with great gusto. It's such a good thing you are coming before the others.

To Alexei (Maxim Gorky)

I am very sorry you have changed your mind about a visit to Yalta. The Moscow Art Theatre will be here in May, giving five performances and then staying on for rehearsals. Do come, you will learn all about the conventions of the stage at rehearsals and will then write a play in five to eight days which I would welcome joyfully, with all my heart.

I heard from St. Petersburg that the second and third performances of The Sea Gull were successful. I got several letters, signed and anonymous praising the play and scolding the critics; I read them with a sense of pleasure but I was still ashamed and peeved, and the thought lodged itself
in my head that if the good people found it necessary to console me, my affairs must be going badly.

Greetings, Alexei Sergeyevich,
I am arraying myself in a frock coat to attend the opening of the "Society of Arts and Literature" to which I have been specially invited. There's going to be a formal ball. What the aims and resources of this society are I don't know, as I am not elected to membership, and I am glad of it since contributing twenty-five rubles for the right to be bored is far from my desire.