Boleslav Markevich

Reading notes

• A Contract for the Year 1884, Concluded with Mankind §6 B. Markevich

  Boleslav Markevich, a conservative novelist and journalist frequently mocked in the satirical press of the day; the 'battle' in which he was 'wounded' alludes to public literary polemics rather than any real combat.

• To N. A. Leikin, 28 April 1885. Moscow. §7 B. Markevich

  Boleslav Markevich, a conservative novelist who had rented the same rooms the previous summer; Chekhov jokes that Markevich's "shade" (ghostly double) will haunt him at night, a comic jab at Markevich's reactionary politics and prose style.

• To N. A. Leikin, 25 June 1884. Voskresensk. §11 fractures and abysses

  A sardonic nod to two of Boleslav Markevich's romans-a-clef, "Fractures" (Переломы) and "Abysses" (Бездны), for which Katkov reportedly paid him handsomely despite (or because of) their gossip-mongering.

• Notebooks. Diaries §302 Boleslav Markevich is better than Turgenev

  Boleslav Mikhailovich Markevich (1822-1884), a conservative, now largely forgotten novelist of high-society fiction; the joke depends on his standing as Turgenev's obvious inferior.