I am not a liberal, nor a conservative, nor a meliorist, nor a monk, nor an indifferentist. I should like to be a free artist and nothing more. . . . I hate falsehood and violence in all their aspects . . . Pharisaism, stupidity and arbitrariness reign not in shopkeepers' houses and prisons alone. . . . I detect them in science, in literature and in the younger generations. . . . For these reasons I nurse no particular partiality for gendarmes, or butchers, or savants, or writers, or the younger generation.
There is his skepticism.
"My Holy of Holies is the human body, health, mind, talent, inspiration, love and the most absolute freedom—freedom from violence and falsehood in whatever they may be manifested. This is the program I would follow if I were a great artist."
There is his faith.
If that is Chekhovism, I, for one, hope we are in for a long season of it.
