big empty place in my life. To begin with, because I have never
loved any man as much as him.... Secondly, while Tolstoy is in
literature it is easy and pleasant to be a literary man; even
recognising that one has done nothing and never will do anything is
not so dreadful, since Tolstoy will do enough for all. His work is
the justification of the enthusiasms and expectations built upon
literature. Thirdly, Tolstoy takes a firm stand; he has an immense
authority, and so long as he is alive, bad tastes in literature,
vulgarity of every kind, insolent and lachrymose, all the bristling,
exasperated vanities will be in the far background, in the
shade....'--(January, 1900.)

Tchehov was aware of the gulf that separated him from the great men
before him, and he knew that it yawned so deep that it could not be
crossed. He belonged to a new generation, and he alone perhaps was fully
conscious of it. 'We are lemonade,' he wrote in 1892.

'Tell me honestly who of my contemporaries--that is, men between
thirty and forty-five--have given the world one single drop of
alcohol?... Science and technical knowledge are passing through a
great period now, but for our sort it is a flabby, stale, dull
time.... The causes of this are not to be found in our stupidity,
our lack of talent, or our insolence, but in a disease which for the
artist is worse than syphilis or sexual exhaustion. We lack
"something," that is true, and that means that, lift the robe of our
muse, and you will find within an empty void. Let me remind you that
the writers who we say are for all time or are simply good, and who
intoxicate us, have one common and very important characteristic:
they are going towards something and are summoning you towards it,
too, and you feel, not with your mind but with your whole being,