ON THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE WRITER'S BIRTH, ON THE 120th ANNIVERSARY OF VISITING CEYLON

D. T. KAPUSTIN

Candidate of Historical Sciences

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov visited Ceylon in November 1890, returning to Odessa by the "roundabout route" - around Asia-from his famous trip to Sakhalin. A visit to a tropical island turned out to be the highlight of the 52-day sea voyage, and Chekhov's memories of it are always filled with joy, light and humor-maybe because of the tropical exoticism, or maybe because of the uplift of spirit that the 30-year-old writer experienced after completing his business in a penal " hell".

After returning to Moscow, he wrote (January 5, 1891) to the "precious" A. S. Suvorin, a patron friend and publisher of the popular newspaper Novoe Vremya: "After the toils of Sakhalin and the tropics, my Moscow life now seems to me so petty-bourgeois and boring that I am ready to bite." ¹

It should be noted that there are few documents related to visiting the island. These are mostly letters from the writer himself and memoirs of his friends and relatives. However, the research of historians and Czech scholars in recent years allows us to trace the writer's stay in Ceylon in some detail and, most importantly, in a documented way. In the spring of 2008, while on a research trip to Sri Lanka, I also tried to resolve a number of issues related to the stay of the young fiction writer Anton Chekhov on the island.

Returning by sea to Odessa was conceived by the writer from the very beginning. A little over a month before his departure, A. Chekhov wrote in a letter dated March 16, 1890, to his fellow writer I. Leontiev (Shcheglov): "My route is as follows: Nizhny Novgorod, Perm, Tyumen, Tomsk, Irkutsk, Sretensk, down the Amur River to Nikolaevsk, two months on Sakhalin, Nagasaki, Shanghai, Hankow, Manila, Singapore, Madras, Colombo (in Ceylon), Aden, Port Said, Constantinople, Odessa..." share all the difficulties and delights of the journey, looking forward to:"...And in India, we'll write an exotic story or a vaudeville show, " Oh, the Tropics!"or" A Reluctant Tourist, " or "A Captain by Nature," or "A Theatrical Albatross," etc.

As you can see, the plans were grandiose and tempting. But the main object of the trip was, of course, Sakhalin and the two-month work there, and the route around Asia was more like a tourist one. Chekhov really wanted to visit Japan (he had an amazing correspondence love for this country all his life), get acquainted with the great Asian civilizations - Chinese and Indian, visit the tropical capitals-Colombo and Manila, breathe in the heat of the Arabian Desert, swim along the Red Sea and the recently dug Suez Canal, wander around Constantinople-the heir to the ancient capital Byzantium. The plans were so tempting!..

It follows from Chekhov's correspondence (namely, it preserves memories of the "Asian circumnavigation of the world") that the writer referred Ceylon to India, and its population to "Hindus" (and not Sinhalese), since at that time the island was traditionally perceived as part of colonial British India, although formally it became a separate colony in 1802. Ceylon, because of the vivid impressions, turned out to be the center of a voyage around Asia (despite the fact that the parking lot in Hong Kong, for example, was longer than in Colombo).

It is not known whether Chekhov knew that the name "Ceylon "came from the ancient self-name of the country" Sinhala-dvipa " (the island of the Sinhalese descendants of the lion) and then passed through a complex colonial Portuguese-Dutch-English transliteration - Seilao-Seilan-Ceylon.

It is known that Chekhov's "passion for movement" (in his own words) did not run out all his life. Even in his early youth, he traveled half of Russia, looking for a manor in the Ukraine, where he could settle down and retire "for the labors of the righteous", in 1888 he first visited the Crimea and the Caucasus and then tried to get there

to Central Asia and Persia. Subsequently, he repeatedly visited many European countries (including forced ones, due to illness), and in his plans and dreams he was carried even further - to Africa, to Scandinavia, "to the Arctic Ocean", to the New World (to America), and even to the Russo-Japanese War in Manchuria as a doctor. His idols were N. M. Przhevalsky and I. A. Goncharov - a traveler and writer who had the gift of fascinating descriptions of long journeys. Goncharov's Frigate Pallas, as the writer himself testified in his letters, remained one of his favorite works until the end of his life.

"...I READ, MAKE STATEMENTS"

Going on such a serious trip, and for the first time abroad - to Asia, Anton Pavlovich started a special notebook, which he entitled "Literature". The list of 65 works (books, articles, newspaper reports) compiled by hand already shows the serious, scientific nature of the preparation. From January 1890 until his departure (April 21), the writer studied the selected books and articles in depth.

Chekhov focuses on almost everything that was known about Sakhalin at that time - from the very first maps of the period of development of the island to zoology and geology and, of course, the"hard labor question". "All day long I sit, read and make excerpts," he reported on February 15 to his friend, the poet A. N. Pleshcheyev.

But the famous list includes not only works about Sakhalin. It also contains the most famous publications at that time on the development of the Russian (and not only Russian) Far East, about the long voyages of Russian sailors, artists, and writers. These are the works of I. Krusenstern and Yu. Lisyansky, S. Krasheninnikov and G. Nevelsky, A. Vysheslavtsev and Zh. La Perouse (in French). Of course, there is also "Frigate Pallada" -a romanticized description of a difficult and dangerous expedition under the command of Vice Admiral E. V. Putyatin, which ended with the establishment of diplomatic relations with Japan.

Two major works mentioned in the list are devoted to the Far Eastern countries neighboring Russia. This is a three-volume book by the German F. Siebold "A Journey through Japan or a Description of the Japanese Empire" (translated by N. V. Stroev) and a very informative study by K. Skalkovsky, sent by the author (a good friend of Chekhov in Novoye Vremya), " Russian Trade in the Pacific. (Economic Studies of Russian Trade in the Primorye Region, Eastern Siberia, Korea, China, Japan, and California)".

One-third of Chekhov's famous list consists of works taken from the Marine Collection, a monthly magazine published "under the supervision of the General Naval Staff", whose bibliographic section reported on the publication or republication of works on navigation by Russian and foreign authors, often with useful annotations. There you could find up-to-date information on any country where Russian ships visited.

From the letters, it is clear that Chekhov was familiar with a much wider range of materials on the subject of interest to him than indicated in his list. Often they are hidden behind the name of a journal or collection, and sometimes they are "encrypted" and understood only by the addressees. So, in a letter to A. S. Suvorin dated March 4, it is said that Asie, as it has now been established, has returned to him the volume devoted to Asia, the French encyclopedia "Pictorial Universe" from the publisher's personal library ².

TO SAKHALIN AND BEYOND

The 4,500-mile journey to Sakhalin took 81 (!) days (including an 11-day trip across the Amur River). and it was like a " severe, prolonged illness." The impressions of this period are reflected in Chekhov's travelogues "From Siberia", which were published in Novoye Vremya. It should be noted that the writer did not like this experience: he did not include them in his first, personally edited collection of works (published in St. Petersburg by A. F. Marx). And in general, after that, he never wrote travel notes or essays on subsequent long and short journeys, although they undoubtedly gave Chekhov "seeds" for creativity.

Arriving in North Sakhalin on July 11, 1890, Anton Pavlovich stayed on the" slave island " for just over three months. More than once later, he noted that he "saw everything" on Sakhalin, except for the death penalty, and emphasized: "I have done a lot. It would be enough for three dissertations."

Undoubtedly, Chekhov had a certain plan of scientific work - collecting materials about the living conditions of convicts, compiling a special file developed by himself (and described in detail in the 3rd chapter of "Sakhalin Islands").

On the eve of his trip to the East, Anton Pavlovich wrote to Suvorin (March 9): "I am going quite sure that my trip will not make a valuable contribution to either literature or science: there will not be enough knowledge, time, or complaints for this... I want to write at least 100-200 pages and pay a little for my medicine, which, as you know, I am a pig in front of. I may not be able to write anything, but still the trip does not lose its flavor for me: reading, looking around and listening, I learn and learn a lot."

Looking ahead, we note that the work on the book "Sakhalin Island" was difficult, with distractions. It was published in a separate edition in 1895 and had a noticeable socio-political resonance. The work on the Sakhalin penal servitude was noticed even abroad. But the author then rejoiced at the loud reviews, then for some reason complained that "the book was not useful for anything... it didn't cause any effect." Nevertheless, the writer apparently considered his duty to medicine fulfilled and finally concluded:: "I am glad that this prisoner's dressing gown will also be hanging in my fiction wardrobe. Let it hang!"

Politicized descendants, however, rated " Sakhalin Island "much higher, rightly believing that this work of A. P. Chekhov is also the beginning in Russian literature of the theme of protest against violence and crimes of those in power, the apotheosis of which was the" Gulag Archipelago " by A. I. Solzhenitsyn.

When Chekhov moved from Northern Sakhalin to Southern Sakhalin, closer to departure, he was concerned about a completely different problem. "I am healthy, although the cholera that has set a trap for me is looking at me with green eyes from all sides. In Vladivostok, Japan, Shan-

haye, Chifu, Suez, and, I think, even on the Moon-cholera is everywhere, quarantines and fear are everywhere, " he told Suvorin with despair on September 11, while on board the steamer Baikal in the Tatar Strait. - They are waiting for cholera on Sakhalin and are keeping ships in quarantine. In a word, it's tobacco."

There was even a threat to "spend the winter in hard labor". And in a letter to his mother from the Korsakov post, he confessed: "... for three months now, I have not seen anyone but convicts or those who know how to talk only about hard labor, whips and convicts. A dreary life. I want to go to Japan as soon as possible, and from there to India."

However, these plans did not come true. With the arrival of the steamship Petersburg from the Volunteer Fleet, which regularly transported cargo and prisoners from Odessa to the Far East, it became clear that due to the ongoing epidemic, it would go on a return flight under a quarantine flag, calling at the few ports open by that time.

WHERE THERE WAS PARADISE

Colombo was the third stop on the way home, on the 23rd day of the Korsakov-Odessa sea crossing. The logbook shows that "Petersburg" was in the port of the island for three days and two nights - from the morning of November 10 to the evening of November 12 (22-24 A.D., i.e., according to the Western European calendar, both dates were recorded in the log)³.

And before that, there was an eventful and impressive voyage through the Far Eastern seas, observations of ship life, visits to foreign ports - the" oasis "of the colonial civilization of Hong Kong and" sad " Singapore (which Chekhov even "poorly remembered"), the most dangerous typhoon in the South China Sea, funerals in the depths of the sea of convicts who died on the steamer.

Chekhov actively communicated with the passengers and crew of the ship, made friends with some of them and corresponded later. He also helped the ship's doctor (isn't that why the dialogues "overheard" in the infirmary in the story "Gusev" - the first after the trip?).

The ship's doctor Alexander Viktorovich Shcherbak, with whom Chekhov "almost became friends" and called "a wonderful person", also had a rather intense correspondence with the writer. As a doctor, he participated in the Serbian-Turkish and Russian-Turkish campaigns in the Balkans, and then in Central Asia. Dr. Shcherbak was the author of newspaper correspondence from the battlefields and two books about military campaigns. After the war, he was a senior doctor at the St. Petersburg Alexander Hospital for laborers, then a ship's doctor of the Volunteer Fleet, and repeatedly accompanied parties of exiles to Sakhalin and Siberia. He also wrote a number of vivid essays about the Sakhalin exile, published in the newspaper Novoe Vremya. Anton Pavlovich referred to his notes in the "Sakhalin Island".

This extraordinary man was also a good photographer. His photographic plates preserved images of the Sakhalin penal servitude, as well as episodes of Chekhov's journey around Asia. There is no doubt that A. V. Shcherbak was Chekhov's main guide during his trip around Asia. Unfortunately, 4 years later, he died of an attack of "chest toad" while parked in Nagasaki (as reported in the telegram of the Russian consul). The grave of Dr. Shcherbak in the local cemetery has been preserved.

And here is Anton Chekhov's main impression of the island (in the shortest report to Suvorin, December 9):: "Then there is Ceylon - the place where there was paradise. Here in paradise I made more than 100 versts by rail and had my fill of palm forests and bronze women. When I have children, I will say to them with some pride: "You sons of bitches, I have had intercourse with a black-eyed Hindu woman in my lifetime... and where? in the coconut forest, on a moonlit night "⁴.

Of course, the last sentence of the letter was omitted in all Soviet reprints of A. P. Chekhov's collected works and letters. It was discordant with the" icon", i.e. with the ascetic image of the classic (a representative of" critical realism", as defined by A. M. Gorky) imposed on society. Curiously, even his sister Maria Pavlovna, the publisher and strict censor of the very first collection of the writer's letters of 1912-1916, did not throw out the episode with" Hinduskaya".

It is believed that together with other "cool" passengers Chekhov stayed in the portside hotel "Grand Oriental Hotel", one of the best in the city. In the lobby of the hotel today hangs a memorial plaque in honor of the Russian writer's stay here, installed not so long ago by the Sri Lankan-Russian Friendship Society. However, there is no indisputable documentary evidence of this fact yet.

Since there were few documents related to the visit to the island, in the literature about Chekhov-

ve (or, more precisely, "near Chekhov") to this day, picturesque tales are still being told, for example, that a Russian writer was treated for tuberculosis by a native medicine woman and fell passionately in love with her. Another tells that the writer stayed first in the luxury coastal hotel "Galle Face", and then, after a night storm and a flood in the room, moved to the"Grand Oriental".

To date, it has been reliably established that Anton Pavlovich spent only one night in Colombo (and the second in the city of Kandy). But where exactly? During my stay in Sri Lanka in the spring of 2008, I first tried to resolve this issue. But the Sri Lanka Historical Museum (in Colombo) and both hotels did not have any supporting documents. The manager of the Grand Oriental Hotel even opened a special "archive room" for me, where old accounting books were kept. By the way, the memorial "Chekhov" room N 304 itself continues to be an ordinary, but rather expensive hotel room, where everyone can amuse their self-esteem by spending the night surrounded by portraits of Chekhov, drawings of Prince Alexis Soltykoff* and a number of furniture items (wardrobe, desk, luggage rack), which, according to the receptionist, preserved from the time of Chekhov.

Let us return, however, to Chekhov of those days. It is not difficult to assume that upon arrival, he and his companions explored Colombo and then for the first time at the street vendors saw the brave battle of mongooses with a cobra that surprised him.

He also visited Chekhov's nearby suburbs, as evidenced, in particular, by a number of photos he brought. On one of them you can see the railway, coming close to the ocean coast, overgrown with palm trees. This place is still the only one near Colombo, a half-hour drive to the south. There are many cozy, quiet coves with white sand beaches and lush tropical vegetation, where foreigners and local nobility came to rest. Apparently, the famous rendezvous with the "black-eyed Hindu" took place here "on a moonlit night".

However, one valuable piece of evidence was eventually obtained. The then director of the Russian Center at the Russian Embassy in Sri Lanka, M. A. Ustinov, said that "5 or 6 years ago" the Russian Embassy officially applied to the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry with a request to find documents relating to Anton Chekhov's stay in Ceylon. After some time, a presentation took place, at which the Sri Lankans showed the registration book of the Grand Oriental Hotel for November 1890, where there was an entry: "Dr. Chekhov, Russia, room 304". But then, for some reason, no one thought to take a couple of photos or make a copy from an important document. Now you need to go through this search path again.

* Prince Alexey Dmitrievich Saltykov (1806-1859) - diplomat, traveler, writer, and artist.

TRAVEL TO KANDY

The next day, Chekhov traveled by rail inland to the former Sinhalese capital of Kandy, 120 km from Colombo. In 1815, during the colonization of the island by the British, it fell last. To this day, the main attraction of the city is the Sri Dalada Maligawa Temple, where the sacred relic of Buddhism is kept - the tooth of the Buddha, found, according to legend, in the ashes of the funeral fire.

We must assume that Chekhov and his companions visited the famous Buddhist temple. But there is no direct memory of this, most likely because the tourists were here on an ordinary day, when the vault itself and the altar are usually closed. And grandiose festivals with the procession of elephants, the removal of precious relics and their demonstration to the public are held only once a year and fall, according to the Buddhist calendar, in August (sometimes July).

However, according to some journalists, the dummy has been shown to the public for more than a hundred years. And the real relic is shown very rarely only to selected guests. Apparently, the first Russian who saw the original and left a description of it was Prince A. D. Saltykov. He twice visited India (including Ceylon) and in 1848 published letters in Paris, full of vivid and subtle observations, with his own illustrations.

Another attraction of Kandy was and remains a picturesque full-flowing lake in the city center, on the banks of which the temple is located. Here, within a direct line of sight from the temple, there was (and still exists!) The old-fashioned Queen's Hotel, where Anton Pavlovich stayed. This fact is confirmed by two hotel bills from November 23-24 (present), written out in Chekhov's name, recently found in the writer's archives.

The impressions of those days are mentioned twice more in Chekhov's correspondence (with Suvorin from Melikhov on August 2 and 7, 1893) in an unexpected connection: "The Salvation Army, its processions, the church, etc. I saw it in Ceylon in the city of Kandy (Kandy. - D. K.). The impression is original, but pressing on the nerves. I don't like it." And in another letter: "More about the Salvation Army. I saw the procession: girls in Hindu dress and glasses, a drum, harmonicas, guitars, a banner, a crowd of black bare-assed boys in the back, a Negro in a red jacket... The virgins are singing something wild, and the drum is boo! Boo! And this is in the dark on the shore of the lake."

It should be emphasized that what Chekhov saw has nothing to do with Buddhist festivals. In those years, such spectacles were constantly staged by this religious and philanthropic organization, created in 1865 by an English priest (and still exists today). Her extravagant processions, emotional sermons, but most importantly - real help for the donations made attracted considerable attention of the population.

The next day Anton Pavlovich returned to Colombo and probably bought three mongooses at the same time. Interesting facts I recently learned with the help of friends from Sri Lanka in the book "Chekhov and Ceylon", written by the" patriarch " of modern Sri Lankan literature Martin Wickramasinghe (1890-1976). Based on the facts known to him at that time (1970), M. Wickramasinghe mentions that Chekhov visited a zoo in the suburbs of Colombo to find out if the mongoose could live in the Russian climate.

Another interesting insight of the Sri Lankan writer: Chekhov, having learned that one of the highest points of Ceylon - Mount Sri Pada (2243 m, 65 km from Colombo) is also called "Adam's Peak" (according to legends, Adam, who was expelled from paradise, set foot on it), called the whole of Ceylon "paradise corner". (By the way, M. Wickramasinghe repeatedly visited the USSR and in 1959 visited the Chekhov House-Museum in Yalta.)

...At sunset at 8 p.m. on November 12, 1890, the Petersburg steamer set sail from Colombo. But something very important happened that day. Being on a tropical island gave Chekhov a burst of creativity. It was here, by his own admission ,that the story" Gusev "was " conceived", which the writer brought back from a trip, as if fulfilling a joking promise made to friends. Moreover, he put down the exact date of the "conception" (in a letter to Suvorin dated December 23, 1890): "If you wish, you can write at the bottom for chic: "Colombo, November 12"". A number of contemporary publications say that the writer returned from Sakhalin very ill, he was tormented by attacks of choking and coughing. However, he himself repeatedly stressed in his letters that "he felt quite healthy", "he was never ill". Moreover, just before the trip, in December 1889, Chekhov wrote:: "I'll be 30 in January. Meanness. And I feel like I'm 22 years old."

Naturally, the sea stage around Asia was much easier for Chekhov than an 81-day "horse-and-horse journey" through Siberia, and then a 3-month stay on a convict island. He even swam in the Indian Ocean. Mikhail Pavlovich Chekhov recalled his brother's story as follows: "The end was lowered from the stern of the steamer. Anton Pavlovich threw himself from the bow at the full speed of the ship and had to catch hold of this end. When he was already in the water, he saw with his own eyes pilot fish and a shark approaching them. "⁵

The episode with the shark, as you know, was included in the" first-class good "(according to I. A. Bunin) story "Gusev" (when the deceased, wrapped in white, is thrown according to the sea tradition into the depths of the sea, and the shark, playing, picks him up in the depths). As well as a rich description of the striking colors of the sunset in the tropics - in the final story. This description is echoed by the lines from the letter to Suvorin: "If the sun sets as well in the kingdom of heaven as in the Bay of Bengal, then I can assure you that the kingdom of heaven is a very good thing."

In his memoirs, I. A. Bunin wrote that during the years of their close communication with Anton Pavlovich in the Crimea, Chekhov's oral stories about his journey through the "light-bearing countries" aroused curiosity and deep interest in the young writer. And later, making his own trip to the countries of the East, Bunin followed in Chekhov's footsteps, but in reverse order-he visited, in particular, Egypt and the Middle East, sailed the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and completed the route in Ceylon, leaving travel impressions in magnificent stories and poems.

REMEMBERING CEYLON

"We sailed nonstop from Ceylon for 13 days and were stunned with boredom," Chekhov recalled. The last (short) call was in Port Said (Egypt). And before that, Chekhov "swam" the Indian Ocean and the " sad " Red Sea, passed the recently dug Suez Canal, and on the way "touched" the Sinai Mountains - the shrine of Christianity. The writer saw the islands of the Greek archipelago, " dined with the Dardanelles, admired Constantinople." But I never got to the coveted Constantinople - I sailed by. On December 2, the ship returned to the already snow-covered Odessa, and on December 5, 1890, after three days of quarantine, Anton Chekhov left the ship and boarded the Moscow train in the evening.

In Moscow, the traveler finally " fell apart "from a cold caught in the cold winds of the Mediterranean, but it was necessary to settle in a new place (on Malaya Dmitrovka), receive endless visitors," report " in letters to friends and relatives about an unusual trip.

Chekhov told his older brother, Alexander, that "he brought with him one million and one hundred thousand memories and three wonderful animals called mongooses (i.e., mongooses). These mongooses break the dishes, jump on the tables, and have already caused us a loss of a hundred thousand, but nevertheless enjoy the general love."

However, it soon became clear that the seller in Colombo "cheated" the writer and under the guise of a female sold a palm cat. Animals from Ceylon have long been the object of adoration, and then the concerns of the entire Chekhov family, and even became the subject of the capital's newspapers. "The mongoose, these extravagant animals brought by A. P. Chekhov from the island of Ceylon, have become positively the rage of the day," wrote Novosti Denya of December 16, 1890.

In winter, it was decided to donate the animals to the Moscow Zoo. As M. P. Chekhov recalled ," from that time on, the mongoose and its companion, the palm cat, became the decoration of the zoological garden. Sister Maria Pavlovna visited them there more than once."

Anton Pavlovich also brought a lot of souvenirs, photos and postcards from Ceylon. Very expensive for the writer were figures of elephants - two small white ones made of elephant tusk and two larger ones made of black ebony. Together with a few other memorabilia brought back from a trip to the East, and next to the doctor's gavel, they always accompanied Chekhov through life and were on the writer's desk, wherever he lived - in Moscow, Melikhov, Yalta.

But, of course, the greatest value brought from the trip is the story "Gusev", which caused enthusiastic responses from friends and admirers.

In his letters from that time, Anton Pavlovich recalled Ceylon (India) for a long time and compared it with what he had seen in European travels, even dreaming of returning there again. In a letter to Suvorin on October 18, 1892, he wrote: "I will work all winter, without getting up, so that in the spring I can go to Chicago (for the World's Fair - D. K.). From there, through America and across the < elikiy> Ocean to Japan and India. After what I saw and felt in the East, I'm not drawn to Europe..."

¹ Here and further texts of A. P. Chekhov's letters are quoted from: Complete Works and Letters in 30 volumes, Moscow, Nauka (1974-1983). The dates of correspondence are indicated, according to the original, according to art.

² Suvorin's library, which he collected all his life, was later donated to the Rumyantsev Library. Unfortunately, the life and work for the benefit of the people of Russia of this extraordinary man-a writer, publisher and educator-turned out to be buried for a long time and undeservedly by a single phrase of V. I. Lenin about Suvorin's political drift from liberalism to " nationalism, to chauvinism, to shameless lackey before those in power." - Lenin V. I. Career. Teaching staff, 5th ed., vol. 22, p. 44.

³ All entries in the logbook are quoted from the original archive: RGIA (St. Petersburg), f. 98, on. 1, d. 4909, l. 71-125.

⁴ Cit. according to: Chudakov A. "Indecent words" and the appearance of a classic: about bills in publications of Chekhov's letters / / Literary Review, 1991, N 11, p. 55.

^{Chekhov M. P.} 5 Meetings and impressions // Around Chekhov, Moscow, 1990, p. 280.

Permanent link to this publication: