'what writers of my generation ... have given the world even one drop of alcohol?'

You are a hard drinker and I treated you to sweet lemonade; after downing it wryly, you remark with entire justice that it hasn't an alcoholic kick. That is just what our works haven't got—the kick that would make us drunk and hold us in their grasp, and this you set forth clearly. And why not? ... Let's talk of general causes, if it won't bore you, and let's embrace the whole age. Tell me in all conscience, what writers of my own generation, i.e., people from thirty to forty-five, have given the world even one drop of alcohol? Aren't ... all today's playwrights lemonade? … The causes for it are not to be found in our stupidity or lack of gifts and not in our insolence ... but in a disease which in an artist is worse than syphilis or sexual impotence. Our illness is a lack of “something,” that is the rights of the case, and it means that when you lift the hem of our Muse's gown you will behold an empty void. Bear in mind that writers who are considered immoral or just plain good and who intoxicate us have one very important trait in common: they are going somewhere and call you with them; you sense, not with your mind but with all your being, that they have an aim, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, who had a reason for appearing and alarming the imagination.

—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, letter to Alexie Suvorin dated November 25, 1892, The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov (trans. Lederer 1984)