Evgenia Yakovlevna Chekhova

Reading notes

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 1875. Taganrog. §6 Mama

  Evgenia Yakovlevna Chekhova, Anton's mother, mentioned here wanting to telegraph Alexander to hurry his return.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 8 November 1882. Moscow. §4 Mother

  Evgenia Yakovlevna Chekhova, Anton's mother, who kept the household's religious observance while her sons made their way as students and writers in Moscow.

• To M. M. Chekhov, 7 December 1876. Taganrog. §6 Mama

  Evgenia Yakovlevna Chekhova, Anton's mother, who by this date had already moved with much of the family to Moscow while Anton remained behind in Taganrog to finish school.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 17–18 April 1883. Moscow. §2 Mother

  Evgenia Yakovlevna Chekhova, Anton's mother, reported here as alive and well along with Marya.

• To M. M. Chekhov, 1 January 1877. Taganrog. §6 Mamasha

  Evgenia Yakovlevna Chekhova, Anton's mother, a devout woman whose piety the letter's mock-clerical turns of phrase ('meek of spirit') gently parody.

• To M. M. Chekhov, 10 April 1877. Moscow. §3 Mama

  Evgenia Yakovlevna Chekhova, Anton's mother, whom the letter describes as "broken in body and in spirit" after the family's financial collapse and relocation to Moscow.

• To M. M. Chekhov, 29 July 1877. Taganrog. §4 mother

  Evgenia Yakovlevna Chekhova, Anton's mother, also in Moscow with the family; Anton reports having sent her money and asks after its receipt.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 24 October 1887. Moscow. §16 mother

  Chekhov's mother, Evgenia Yakovlevna Chekhova.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 1888. Moscow. §5 Evgenia Yakovlevna

  TWO GRANDMOTHERS, NOT TO BE CONFLATED: Evgenia Yakovlevna is explicitly identified here as Chekhov's own mother (and so the addressee Alexander's mother too). Chekhov rules her out as the children's caretaker because her household IS his household ("to live with Evgenia Yakovlevna means to live with me"), and his flat has no room. This is a different person from "Grandmother F. Ya." named in section 6, to whom the children are actually being sent -- keep the two grandmothers clearly distinguished in translation and annotation.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 24 July 1888. Parokhod "Yunona". §17 I bought Mother a little icon

  "Mother" is Evgenia Yakovlevna Chekhova, addressed elsewhere in the family correspondence; the unidentified addressee of this second letter is not being asked to relay the gift -- Chekhov is simply reporting the purchase in passing.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 16 November 1888. Moscow. §14 our Ma

  "Ma" is the Chekhovs' mother, Yevgenia Yakovlevna Chekhova.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 2 January 1889. Moscow. §7 your mother's youth

  Evgenia Yakovlevna Chekhova, Anton and Alexander's mother; the letter blames their father's despotism and dishonesty for ruining her youth.

• To K. S. Barantsevich, 3 February 1889. Moscow. §8 my mother

  Yevgenia Yakovlevna Chekhova, Chekhov's mother, already established elsewhere in this corpus; here the source of the postscript's comic account of disbelief that anyone outside the family could feed her son properly.

• To M. P. Chekhova, 28 April 1889. Sumy. §5 your loving Mother, Evgenia Chekhova, and, for her being unlettered, her son the Literary Man

  Evgenia Yakovlevna Chekhova's blessing, written out in Anton's hand on her behalf. "For her being unlettered" ("за ее безграмотностью") is a standard epistolary formula in nineteenth-century Russian family correspondence, used when one person signs or writes a letter's closing on behalf of another who does not write it out personally -- it need not indicate total illiteracy so much as limited or uncertain penmanship/spelling, and recurs elsewhere in the family's letters; "the Literary Man" ("Литератор") is Anton's own wry self-designation as the son doing the actual writing. This third hand-shift -- from Nikolai's own hand (\S3-4) to their mother's words dictated through Anton -- makes the letter's authorship genuinely three-way within a single short document.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 14 May 1889. Sumy. §4 mother, sister, and an artist who coughs every minute

  "Mother" is Evgenia Yakovlevna Chekhova and "sister" is most likely Maria Pavlovna Chekhova, both already established elsewhere in this corpus, forming the household caring for Nikolai at Sumy.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 26 June 1889. Sumy. §13 My mother too.

  Evgenia Yakovlevna Chekhova, Anton's mother, unnamed here but consistent with her frequent unnamed appearances elsewhere in the corpus's family correspondence.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 9 September 1889. Moscow. §4 singing Jeremiads

  "поет иеремиады" (poyot ieremiady), literally "sings Jeremiads" -- a biblical-literary allusion to the Book of Lamentations traditionally attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, used colloquially for prolonged mournful complaint; kept literal in translation since the idiom is transparent and mock-elevated in the same register as the letter's other Latinate/literary jokes ("Alcoholismus").

• To the Chekhovs, 7 June 1890. Irkutsk. §4 To Chekhova

  "Чеховой," dative of "Чехова," addresses a female Chekhov by bare surname -- the minimal addressing convention of a telegram blank, giving no first name or patronymic. Almost certainly Chekhov's mother, Evgenia Yakovlevna Chekhova: she and the rest of the family were summering at Luka, near Sumy, in June 1890 (see, \S16, sent the same day, which asks after "Mama" directly and closes \S13 by referencing this very telegram), and she is the natural addressee for a family telegram asking the household to pool money and reply at length. The wire itself, however, names only the surname, so this identification rests on context (the family's known summer whereabouts and the companion letter) rather than on anything internal to the telegram.

• To the Chekhovs, 11 July 1890. Sakhalin. §4 To Chekhova

  Evgenia Yakovlevna Chekhova, Anton Chekhov's mother; the telegram form addresses her by the feminine dative form of the family name, as Russian grammar requires.