What did classic Russian writers think about FAME?

"Well, brother, I don't think my fame will ever reach such a peak as it has now. Everywhere there is incredible respect, terrible curiosity about me. I have met countless people of the most respectable class. Prince Odoevsky asks me to honor him with a visit, while Count Sollogub is tearing his hair out in despair. Panayev told him there is a talent who will trample them all into the dirt. Everyone treats me like a miracle," wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky to his brother Mikhail about the popularity that had descended upon him after the publication of his novel ‘Poor Folk’. He was immediately dubbed "the new Gogol" and everyone wanted to meet the gifted young author.

Anton Chekhov, author of ‘The Cherry Orchard’ and ‘Three Sisters’, encountered something similar. "I am now the most fashionable writer in St. Petersburg. This is evident from the newspapers and magazines that, at the end of 1886, were busy covering me, tossing my name around in every possible way and praising me beyond my merits. The consequence of this growth in my literary reputation is an abundance of commissions and invitations and, following them, intensified work and fatigue," complained Anton Chekhov in a letter to his relative.

Poet Mikhail Lermontov, meanwhile, spoke of the burden of fame to his beloved Maria Lopukhina. "I must tell you that I am the most miserable man and you'll believe me when you learn that I attend balls every day; I've entered high society; for a month, I was all the rage, literally torn apart. That, at least, is frank. This entire society, which I insulted in my poems, tries to shower me with flattery; the prettiest women beg for poems from me and boast of them as if they were the greatest victory."

Leo Tolstoy, author of ‘War and Peace’, admitted in his diary that the temptation of fame was one of the strongest for him. "…there are things I love more than goodness, [such as] fame. I am so ambitious and have so little satisfaction that I often fear that if I have to choose between fame and virtue, it would be the former, if I had to choose between them."

Nikolai Gogol, however, viewed fame with a degree of mistrust, fearing its fickleness.

"…Your accusations of love of fame may be justified, but I don't think it was to such an extent that I loved incense as much as you assume. <…> At a time when authorial fame moved me much more than it does now, I was intoxicated only during the first few days after my book's publication, but then, after a while, I felt almost disgusted by my own creation and its shortcomings revealed themselves to me in all their nakedness," he wrote to his colleague and friend Pyotr Pletnev.

But, fame is fleeting. Many writers shared this view. "…the very things we call happiness: health, wealth, fame, beauty – all of these weaken our energy, remove the possibility or at least do not evoke the need to make an effort – the very things that bring true good," believed Leo Tolstoy. And, in his diary, he noted: "Weakness and did nothing all morning. I thought and, it seems, to my advantage. I am very disgusted with myself. All in human glory. Busy with the consequences." And he added a day later: "Thank God – human glory, it seems, has been defeated."