institution
Society of Lovers of Russian Letters
the Society
also: Общество любителей российской словесности
A real Moscow literary society (founded 1811, attached to Moscow University) of which Chekhov names himself an "active member" in the mock-formal sign-off of his 21 June 1890 letter to Maria Kiseleva, listed in place of a personal closing alongside the Society of Russian Dramatic Writers and Opera Composers.
Reading notes
- To M. V. Kiseleva, 21 June 1890. Amur pod Pokrovskoy, parokhod "Ermak". §3 Active member of the Society of Lovers of Russian Letters
The letter's sign-off, in place of a personal closing ("Yours," a term of affection, or the like), lists a second real literary-society membership as a discrete line of its own. Read together with \S2's opening self-designation, this is a joke: Chekhov brackets a brief, affectionate travel note to a family friend with two mock-formal institutional titles instead of any personal words, teasing the conventions of formal correspondence rather than actually writing formally -- consistent with the light, joking register he uses with the Kiselevs elsewhere. It is not a sign of genuine distance or of two separate, spliced items.