... I settled down last night to write a story for the _Novoye Vremya,_ but a woman appeared and dragged me to see the poet Palmin who, when he was drunk, had fallen and cut his forehead to the bone. I was busy over the drunken fellow for nearly two hours, was tired out, began to smell of iodoform all over, felt cross, and came home exhausted.... Altogether my life is a dreary one, and I begin to get fits of hating people which used never to happen to me before. Long stupid conversations, visitors, people asking for help, and helping them to the extent of one or two or three roubles, spending money on cabs for the sake of patients who do not pay me a penny--altogether it is such a hotch-potch that I feel like running away from home. People borrow money from me and don’t pay it back, they take my books, they waste my time.... Blighted love is the one thing that is missing. * * * * * December 26, 1888. ... You say that from compassion women fall in love, from compassion they get married.... And what about men? I don’t like realistic writers to slander women, but I don’t like it either when people put women on a pedestal and attempt to prove that even if they are worse than men, anyway they are angels and men scoundrels. Neither men nor women are worth a brass farthing, but men are more just and more intelligent. December 30, 1888. ... This is how I understand my characters. [Translator’s Note: In the play “Ivanov.”] Ivanov is a gentleman, a University man, and not remarkable in any way. He is excitable, hotheaded, easily carried away, honest and straightforward like most people of his class. He has lived on his estate and served on the Zemstvo. What he has been doing and how he has behaved, what he has been interested in and enthusiastic over, can be seen from the following words of his, addressed to the doctor (Act I., Scene 5): “Don’t marry Jewesses or neurotic women or blue-stockings ... don’t fight with thousands single-handed, don’t wage war on windmills, don’t batter your head against the wall ... God preserve you from scientific farming, wonderful schools, enthusiastic speeches....” This is what he has in his past. Sarra, who has seen his scientific farming and other crazes, says about him to the doctor: “He is a remarkable man, doctor, and I am sorry you did not meet him two or three years ago. Now he is depressed and melancholy, he doesn’t talk or do anything, but in old days ... how charming he was!” (Act I., Scene 7). His past is beautiful, as is generally the case with educated Russians. There is not, or there hardly is, a single Russian gentleman or University man who does not boast of his past. The present is always worse than the past. Why? Because Russian excitability has one specific characteristic: it is quickly followed by exhaustion. A man has scarcely left the class-room before he rushes to take up a burden beyond his strength; he tackles at once the schools, the peasants,