person
Avet Nazarych
also: Авет Назарыч
A wealthy Armenian innkeeper known to the narrator's grandfather, described in caricatured physical terms; Masha's father, at whose house the narrator and his grandfather stop to rest and take tea.
Reading notes
- The Beauties §2 grotesque than that Armenian
the narrator's description of Avet Nazarych -- his 'small, close-cropped head,' 'bird's beak of a nose,' clownish costume, and 'purely Armenian dignity' -- is a caricature typical of the casual ethnic mockery common in 19th-century Russian provincial fiction. Chekhov gives the joke to the narrator's boyhood perspective without editorial comment; Hermitsh Press preserves it in translation per its fidelity policy rather than softening it, while flagging it here and in the headnote.
- The Beauties §10 Avet Nazarych
The Armenian innkeeper, Masha's father, addressed here by first name and patronymic by the narrator's grandfather.