concept
Khutor
khutor
also: хутор, хуторские
A small, standalone farmstead or country property, distinct from a village commune holding; the term Chekhov uses throughout late 1891-early 1892 for the country property he was trying to buy with his family, a search that resolved in March 1892 with the purchase of the Melikhovo estate.
Reading notes
- To A. S. Suvorin, 10 January 1892. Moscow. §4 My khutor affairs are wretched.
\foreignlanguage{russian}{Хутор} (khutor): a small, standalone farmstead or country property, distinct from a village commune holding; Chekhov had spent the autumn of 1891 searching for one to buy with his family (cf., where A. I. Smagin was brokering candidate properties). This terse aside -- "no further than talk and dreaming" -- shows the search still stalled three weeks into the new year, two months before it will resolve in the purchase of the Melikhovo estate that March.
- To A. I. Smagin, 14 January 1892. Moscow. §4 The other day we took aim at a certain little estate and were about to fire on it, when we received word that it had just been sold
A third property in as many weeks -- after the Yatsenko khutor (\S3) and now this unnamed "little estate" -- slips away just as the family moves to act on it; the hunting metaphor ("took aim," "fire on it") turns the property search into a running joke of near-misses that will not resolve until the Melikhovo purchase in March 1892.
- To N. M. Lintvareva, 18 January 1892. Derevnya Belaya. §5 She too
is bustling about over a farmstead -- she wants me to buy near her, in
Chernigov province.
Zankovetskaya's own interest in Chekhov settling near her Chernigov-province property joins Ivanenko's advocacy for Kublitsky's dacha (\S3) as a second, independent voice pulling at Chekhov's still-unresolved khutor search -- a search that will not resolve until the Melikhovo purchase in March 1892, in Moscow province, near neither location.