I have re-read The Steppe. What can one say? It is simply one of the great stories of the world—a kind of Iliad or Odyssey. I think I will learn this journey by heart. One says of things: they are immortal. One feels about this story not that it becomes immortal—it always was. It has no beginning or end. Tchehov just touched one point with his pen (.—–.) and then another point: enclosed something which had, as it were, been there for ever.