animal
Nikolai (the Bogimovo dog)
also: Николай
A dog in the Chekhov household's keeping during the summer of 1891 at Bogimovo, reported here to have suffered a twisted gut (volvulus). Explicitly distinct from Chekhov's late brother Nikolai Pavlovich Chekhov and from the mongoose "Mangus"; the deadpan, clinical report of the dog's ailment, capped by a French aside, is characteristic of Chekhov's letter humor.
Reading notes
- To A. S. Suvorin, 6 August 1891. Bogimovo. §6 Nikolai had a twisted gut
This "Nikolai" is a dog in the Bogimovo household's keeping, suffering from \textit{заворот кишок} (volvulus, a twisted intestine) -- an entirely different figure from Chekhov's late brother Nikolai Pavlovich Chekhov, who had died two years earlier in 1889, and unrelated to the mongoose "Mangus" kept by the family the previous year; no mongoose appears anywhere in this letter. The joke's dry, clinical delivery -- reporting a pet's bowel trouble in the same deadpan register used for human ailments elsewhere in the letter -- is capped by the French aside.
- To A. S. Suvorin, 18 August 1891. Bogimovo. §3 Speaking of Nikolai and the doctor who treated him
"Nikolai" here continues the illness of the Bogimovo household's dog, first reported in, \S6 (заворот кишок, a twisted gut); Suvorin's letter (not preserved) had apparently relayed his nanny's folk diagnosis that "the gut has burst" and accused the dog's attendants of tending it without love or self-sacrifice. This Nikolai is entirely distinct from Chekhov's late brother Nikolai Pavlovich Chekhov, who had died two years earlier in 1889; no such conflation is intended or supported by the text.