Chekhov on vulgarity

What are these people coming to? Everywhere I see degeneration. It is the worst disease of our age. There are old men in the streets everywhere. You can read the dejection, the lust on their faces. Will I be like them one day?

I cannot forget my father. When we were children, we would sing in the choir so that people thought us angels. Our parents were envied. Little did they know that we felt like convicts. The bastard. His insults and beatings showed us just what people can do.

I have spent my life speaking out against hypocrisy, pretention and vulgarity. My stories and my plays aim to show people just how their lives are, and how they could be. If only they would realise how much better it all could be!

Sometimes I think of my time on the Steppe, of the wide branching trees and endless fields of grass and reeds. It is that sense of peace that I humbly strive for in my life. What else is there?


Quotes from Chekhov himself:

Wherever there is degeneration and apathy, there also is sexual perversion, cold depravity, miscarriage, premature old age, grumbling youth, there is a decline in the arts, indifference to science, and injustice in all its forms.
ANTON CHEKHOV, letter to A.S. Suvorin, Dec. 27, 1889

I thought famous people were proud, unapproachable, that they despised the crowd, and by their fame and the glory of their name, as it were, revenged themselves on the vulgar herd for putting rank and wealth above everything. But here they cry and fish, play cards, laugh and get cross like everyone else!
ANTON CHEKHOV, The Seagull

There should be more sincerity and heart in human relations, more silence and simplicity in our interactions. Be rude when you’re angry, laugh when something is funny, and answer when you’re asked.
ANTON CHEKHOV, letter to A.P. Chekhov, Oct. 13, 1888

All I wanted was to say honestly to people: "Have a look at yourselves and see how bad and dreary your lives are!" The important thing is that people should realize that, for when they do, they will most certainly create another and better life for themselves. I will not live to see it, but I know that it will be quite different, quite unlike our present life. And so long as this different life does not exist, I shall go on saying to people again and again: "Please, understand that your life is bad and dreary!"
ANTON CHEKHOV, letter to Alexander Tikhonov

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