person
Georges Boulanger
Boulanger
also: General Boulanger, Буланже
French general and politician (1837-1891) whose immense popularity as war minister and subsequent political ambitions made him a dominant, unsettling presence in French politics of the mid-1880s; Zhirkov cites his recent resignation as small talk about Paris, which the ostensibly Parisian Boiseau has never heard of.
Reading notes
- An Unpleasant Business §59 Boulanger resigned
General Georges Boulanger resigned as French Minister of War in May 1887 after a cabinet reshuffle, a major political event of the year the story is set; Zhirkov raises it as ordinary Parisian small talk, assuming any recent arrival from Paris would have opinions on it.
- To A. S. Suvorin, 6 February 1889. Moscow. §9 as if he weren't Ivanov at all, but Boulanger
See allusions.json for the full note on Georges Boulanger. Here Chekhov complains that the cheap press's coverage distorts his play's title character so badly that it might as well be describing a wholly unrelated, unrecognizable public figure -- not a claim that the two men resemble each other, but a rhetorical stand-in for total misrecognition.