Viktor Petrovich Burenin

Reading notes

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 16 June 1887. Babkino". §11 V. P. Burenin

  Novoye Vremya's influential and sharp-tongued critic; his interest in adapting or making use of Chekhov's story "Slander" is noted here with evident pleasure, since Burenin's attention carried real literary weight.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 21 June 1887. Babkino. §10 Tell Burenin that Moscow loves money

  A cryptic, joking aside to be relayed to Novoye Vremya's critic Burenin, likely referencing payment for Chekhov's work or some ongoing negotiation over terms; the remaining context ("That won't do. One must understand.") is left unexplained in the letter itself.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 26 June 1887. Babkino. §14 Burenin

  Viktor Petrovich Burenin, Novoye Vremya's prominent critic, offered as an alternative source who might know Grigorovich's address.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 7–8 September 1887. Moscow. §5 Burenin and Elpe

  Viktor Burenin, Novoye Vremya's sharp-tongued critic and satirist, named here as one of the staff members favorably disposed toward Alexander.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 7–8 September 1887. Moscow. §9 remind Burenin

  A second, business-like mention of Viktor Burenin, from whom Chekhov was evidently hoping for a favorable notice of his new book in Novoye Vremya.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 25 September 1887. Moscow. §16 Burenin

  Viktor Burenin, the sharp-tongued critic for Suvorin's Novoye Vremya, from whom Chekhov had apparently been promised a review of "In the Twilight" and whom he asks Alexander to prod gently.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 6–7 October 1887. Moscow. §4 Burenin

  Viktor Burenin, the sharp-tongued critic for Suvorin's Novoye Vremya, whose otherwise laudatory review of Chekhov's work Alexander is to be thanked for.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 6–7 October 1887. Moscow. §11 Burenin and Suvorin

  Chekhov asks Alexander to relay his warm impression of Korolenko to both Burenin and Suvorin at the Novoye Vremya office.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 10–12 October 1887. Moscow. §13 Burenin has eaten a mushroom

  An idiom ("съел гриб") roughly meaning Burenin was made to look a fool or swallowed something unpleasant; the surrounding context suggests Alexander had needled or corrected Burenin at Chekhov's prompting.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 20 November 1887. Moscow. §12 Tell Burenin

  Viktor Petrovich Burenin, the Novoye Vremya critic and satirist, a colleague of Alexander Chekhov's at the paper; the closing line -- that Chekhov has "settled back into his routine" and returned to his regular Saturday piece -- is a dry, deliberately anticlimactic sign-off after the chaos just described.

• To the Chekhovs, 3 December 1887. Petersburg. §14 "psychopathy"

  A dismissive aside: Chekhov mocks the flattering speeches of Petersburg society ladies as sounding of "psychopathy," alluding to a term Burenin had recently used in print (evidently in a pejorative, quasi-clinical sense fashionable in period feuilleton writing). Preserved as written, without softening, as a period-typical and casually dismissive remark about women rather than a considered judgment.

• To I. L. Leontyev, 4 February 1888. Moscow. §4 Burenin

  Viktor Burenin, an influential and often caustic critic for "Novoye Vremya," whose supposed grudge against Shcheglov Chekhov dismisses as imagined.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 23 February 1888. Moscow. §5 передал его в "Новое время" Буренину

  The manuscript's fallback destination: Viktor Burenin, the influential and sharp-tongued critic at Novoye Vremya, whom Chekhov asks -- via Shcheglov -- not to toss the story unread into the wastebasket.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 6 March 1888. Moscow. §3 Burenin's feuilleton

  Viktor Burenin, critic for Suvorin's Novoye Vremya, whose review of "The Steppe" Chekhov mentions alongside Ostrovsky's more admired letter.

• To N. A. Khlopov, 22 March 1888. Moscow. §5 with Burenin now

  Viktor Burenin, the sharp-tongued critic for Suvorin's Novoye Vremya; "The Eleventh" has evidently been redirected to him as an alternative venue after Severny Vestnik's backlog made near-term placement there unlikely.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 24 March 1888. Moscow. §21 Burenin

  Viktor Burenin, a prominent critic and columnist for Suvorin's Novoye Vremya.

• To A. N. Maslov, 29 March 1888. Moscow. §13 V. P. Burenin

  Viktor Burenin, sharp-tongued critic and satirist for Suvorin's "Novoye Vremya."

• To A. S. Suvorin, 3 April 1888. Moscow. §7 Viktor Petrovich

  Viktor Burenin, Suvorin's colleague at "New Times" and its sharp-tongued critic, thanked here for a newspaper piece (feuilleton) on Garshin.

• Aleksey Sergeyevich Suvorin, 28 June 1888. Sumy. §5 was angry at Burenin

  Object of the generic Petersburg man's anger in this composite sketch, not a statement that Suvorin or Chekhov himself was angry at Burenin; see the \S5 note at for the full disambiguation.

• To A. S. Lazarev, 31 August 1888. Sumy. §6 Burenin

  Viktor Petrovich Burenin, sharp-tongued critic and satirist for Suvorin's "New Times"; Chekhov offers to write to him on Lazarev's behalf.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 24 September 1888. Moscow. §14 the Burenins and the rest of the smut-mongers

  SENSITIVITY: renders "Бурениных и прочих похабников" at full force, per policy, rather than softened. Viktor Burenin is the Novoye Vremya critic already established elsewhere in this correspondence as a scandal-prone columnist; Chekhov uses his surname generically, plural ("the Burenins"), as a byword for the sort of gossip-mongering critic who might try to make scandal out of two same-named Chekhovs publishing side by side. "Похабник" carries a real, coarse insult -- a sense of "smut-peddler" or "foul-mouthed gossip" -- and is translated as "smut-mongers" rather than a milder equivalent, matching the headnote's stated translation policy.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 30 September 1888. Moscow. §6 Буренина

  Viktor Burenin, the influential and often savage critic at "Novoye Vremya"; Chekhov frames Bezhetsky's move to "Severny Vestnik" as an escape from Burenin's overbearing critical shadow ("ferula" -- a schoolmaster's rod), not from Burenin personally in any other sense.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 5–6 October 1888. Moscow. §5 Viktor Petrovich has articular rheumatism

  "Viktor Petrovich" is Viktor Petrovich Burenin, the Novoye Vremya critic and columnist already established in this corpus. Chekhov gives medical diagnosis and advice for Burenin's condition, drawing on his own training as a physician.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 10 October 1888. Moscow. §5 Burenin's pulse

  Viktor Burenin, the "New Times" critic and columnist, already established in this corpus (see's headnote); his "pulse," figured here as a row of dashes, is a joking image for steady, unhurried, evenly-paced literary output -- a reference to his prolific journalistic productivity, not any medical fact.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 18 November 1888. Moscow. §2 Might Burenin point to something?

  Viktor Burenin, the critic and columnist in Suvorin's Novoye Vremya circle, already attested in this correspondence's wider cast (e.g.); invoked only as a possible further source of oratory suggestions and takes no other role here.

• To M. M. Dyukovsky, 7 January 1889. Moscow. §4 Burenin

  Viktor Petrovich Burenin (1841-1926), the sharp-tongued critic and columnist for Suvorin's Novoye Vremya; already established elsewhere in this corpus (see the headnote).

• To I. L. Leontyev, 18 February 1889. Moscow. §8 Burenin

  Viktor Petrovich Burenin, the influential and famously acid Petersburg critic for "Novoye Vremya"; Chekhov here warns Shcheglov against being intimidated by him. The same figure recurs as a model of the "merciless" critic in, \S3 (contrasting Suvorin's ruthlessness with Chekhov's and Shcheglov's softness).

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 9 April 1889. Moscow. §14 Burenin's

  Viktor Petrovich Burenin, the influential and often reactionary critic and columnist at Suvorin's "Novoye Vremya," already established elsewhere in this corpus (e.g.) in both friendly and critical contexts; here Chekhov's assessment of his feuilleton is mixed ("amusing... but on the whole petty").

• To A. S. Suvorin, 14 May 1889. Sumy. §5 Tell Burenin that I still won't give him a ticket

  Viktor Petrovich Burenin, journalist and critic at "Novoye Vremya," already established elsewhere in this corpus as a recurring subject of Chekhov's joking ticket-refusal routine with Suvorin.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 23 October 1889. Moscow. §6 Burenin

  Viktor Burenin, Suvorin's regular literary critic and editorial colleague at "Novoye Vremya"; Chekhov names him alongside Suvorin as the pair whose approval he would defer to were he running the paper's fiction desk.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 9 December 1890. Moscow. §13 за исключением Жителя и Буренина, которым прошу только кланяться и которых давно бы уж пора сослать на Сахалин

  Zhitel (pen name of Alexander Dyakov, a Novoye Vremya columnist) and Viktor Burenin (the paper's sharp-tongued critic) are pointedly excluded from Chekhov's warm embrace of "your whole household," downgraded to a bare formal greeting -- and then, in the same breath, jokingly condemned to exile on Sakhalin, the very place Chekhov has just spent a year escaping. The joke's bite depends on the reader knowing exactly how bad Sakhalin is, freshly established by this same letter's own account in \S4. Chekhov's relationship with Burenin was genuinely strained over Burenin's public jabs at other writers and at Chekhov's circle; grouping the two together as a matched pair of household outsiders is a recurring move in Chekhov's Suvorin correspondence.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 5 January 1891. Moscow. §6 I'm pleased that Burenin praised Andrievsky

  Viktor Burenin, the combative literary critic of Suvorin's \emph{Novoye Vremya}, and Sergei Andreyevsky, a Petersburg criminal-defense lawyer and literary critic -- here rendered "Andrievsky" from the source spelling "Андриевского" -- were both regular figures in Suvorin's circle; Chekhov notes with satisfaction a rare instance of the sharp-tongued Burenin praising a fellow critic.

• To M. P. Chekhova, 14 January 1891. Petersburg. §3 Burenin abuses me in his column

  Viktor Burenin, the Novoye Vremya critic and columnist, whom Chekhov here accuses of breaking an unwritten rule against a paper's writers publicly attacking their own colleagues -- notable given Burenin wrote for the same paper, Suvorin's Novoye Vremya, where Chekhov himself was a contributor.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 27 May 1891. Bogimovo. §7 Burenin finds "absolutely nothing" in Shastunov

  Viktor Petrovich Burenin, \emph{Novoye Vremya} critic, delivering a dismissive verdict; Chekhov's retort -- that Burenin should "see to his liver" -- treats the harsh review as a symptom of bile rather than sound judgment.