Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin

Reading notes

• To N. A. Leikin, 26 January 1887. Moscow. §11 Garshin, Korolenko, and Nadson

  Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin, a celebrated short-story writer of the generation just before Chekhov's own, who had died by suicide in 1888 -- though at the time of this letter (January 1887) he was still alive; Chekhov ranks him here among the only three young writers of note alongside Korolenko and Nadson.

• To K. S. Barantsevich, 30 March 1888. Moscow. §6 In Memory of Garshin

  Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin (1855-1888), the short-story writer, had died by suicide on 24 March 1888, days before this letter; Barantsevich had proposed a memorial anthology in his honor, to which Chekhov here pledges both moral and practical support.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 31 March 1888. Moscow. §5 Garshin's

  Vsevolod Garshin, the short-story writer, had died by suicide in Petersburg on March 24, 1888, a week before this letter; his funeral and its aftermath are the letter's central subject. This is a report of an actual, recent death.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 31 March 1888. Moscow. §10 Garshin

  Chekhov mentions calling twice on Garshin -- presumably before his death -- and failing to find him in, a detail that sets up the next section's admission of how little he actually knew the man.

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

  Vsevolod Garshin, the short-story writer, who had died by suicide (throwing himself down a stairwell) the previous year; Chekhov recalls having seen the dark, dirty stairwell himself.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 4 April 1888. Moscow. §10 the Garshin memorial evening

  Vsevolod Garshin, the short-story writer, had died by suicide on 24 March 1888, roughly a week before this letter; the Literary Fund organized a memorial evening in his honor.

• To I. L. Leontyev, 18 April 1888. Moscow. §8 the memoir on Garshin

  Vsevolod Garshin, the short-story writer, had died in March 1888; the unnamed memoirist's reminiscence of him -- not Garshin himself -- is the object of Chekhov's scorn in this passage.

• To K. S. Barantsevich, 17 May 1888. Sumy. §4 Garshin's grave

  Vsevolod Garshin, the short-story writer, had died in March 1888; Leman's graveside remarks at his funeral, made in the name of the young writers, are the recurring irritant behind Chekhov's objection here and in several nearby letters.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 15 September 1888. Moscow. §4 гаршинского сборника

  The Garshin memorial collection: a planned volume honoring the recently deceased writer Vsevolod Garshin (d. March 1888), organized in part by Pleshcheyev and his wife Anna Mikhailovna. Chekhov feels honor-bound to contribute out of personal affection for Garshin and gratitude for Garshin's attention to him near the end of his life, but has no subject he considers fit.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 15 September 1888. Moscow. §5 молодой человек гаршинской закваски

  Disambiguation: "гаршинской закваски" ("of Garshin's own stamp") describes a fictional young protagonist Chekhov is imagining for the collection story -- uncommon, honest, and deeply sensitive, like the sort of character Garshin himself might have written or embodied -- not the late Vsevolod Garshin in person. The real Garshin is named directly two sentences earlier and in section 4; this second mention is a simile drawing on his reputation, applied to an invented character who visits a brothel for the first time, the germ of what became "A Nervous Breakdown" ("Припадок").

• To Ye. M. Lintvareva, 9 October 1888. Moscow. §5 The Garshin memorial volume

  A collective tribute volume being assembled after the short-story writer Vsevolod Garshin's suicide in the spring of 1888, to which Chekhov is himself contributing (\S5) and which he arranges to have sent to Elena Mikhailovna (\S23).

• To A. S. Suvorin, 10 October 1888. Moscow. §8 the Garshin memorial collection

  The volume assembled in memory of the writer Vsevolod Garshin, who had died earlier in 1888; Chekhov's contribution is his story "An Attack of Nerves" ("Припадок"), not otherwise named in this letter.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 3 November 1888. Moscow. §3 the Garshin collection

  The volume assembled in memory of the writer Vsevolod Garshin (cf. letters 470 and 500); Chekhov here reports his contribution a quarter finished and asks for a further week's grace, confirming by title in \S7 that the story is "An Attack of Nerves".

• To A. S. Lazarev, 10 November 1888. Moscow. §5 the Garshin memorial collection

  "Гаршинский сборник," a commemorative volume for the writer Vsevolod Garshin, who had died earlier in 1888; compare the 4 April 1888 letter to Pleshcheyev, written before Garshin's death, which mentions Chekhov declining an invitation to speak at a memorial evening for him -- the two references belong to the same year's mourning and commemoration of Garshin.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 10 November 1888. Moscow. §3 the story is drawing quite close to the end

  Continues the tracked progress of Chekhov's contribution to the memorial collection for the deceased writer Vsevolod Garshin, organized by Pleshcheyev and his wife (cf. letters 470, 500, 519, 527); not yet named by title in this letter. This Garshin, the honoree of the collection, is a different person from "Evgeny Garshin" discussed later in this same letter at \S6-\S7 -- the two share only a surname; see the note at loc 6 for the disambiguation.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 11 November 1888. Moscow. §4 Today I finished the story for the "Garshin collection" -- like a weight off my shoulders.

  The memorial volume for Vsevolod Garshin, already established in this corpus (see's headnote, where the same story is still owing); this letter documents the story's completion. The story is "An Attack of Nerves" ("Припадок"), which is the subject of's own extended discussion of Sobolev Lane -- see the next note.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 13 November 1888. Moscow. §3 I have paid the late Garshin the tribute

  Vsevolod Garshin, the writer in whose memory the memorial collection was assembled (established at letters 470 and 500); this letter documents Chekhov's completion and dispatch of his contribution, "An Attack of Nerves", first named directly within a letter's body in letter 3-519 (\S7).

• To A. S. Suvorin, 15 November 1888. Moscow. §4 In the story I sent for the Garshin collection, I described a soul's pain.

  The commemorative volume for Vsevolod Garshin, already established in this corpus (see's's, and's headnotes); Chekhov's contribution is elsewhere identified as "An Attack of Nerves" ("Припадок"), though neither the story nor its subject is named here beyond "a soul's pain."

• To Ye. M. Lintvareva, 23 November 1888. Moscow. §6 The Garshin memorial volume will come out in December

  Continues the Garshin memorial volume thread from (\S5, \S23), where Chekhov first mentioned his own contribution and arranged to have the volume sent to Elena Mikhailovna; here he reports renewed anxiety that the censor may cut his story, which treats "one very delicate old question."

• To M. M. Dyukovsky, 13 December 1888. Petersburg. §2 Garshin Memorial Miscellany

  "Сборник в память Гаршина" (\emph{Miscellany in Memory of Garshin}), a memorial anthology of new fiction and verse assembled by leading writers of the day, Chekhov among them (see and, where he reports writing and completing his contribution, "An Attack of Nerves,"), in honor of Vsevolod Garshin, who had died in March 1888. Following this corpus's established convention, references to the collection are tagged to rather than to a separate work entity, since the volume is consistently identified in the letters by its dedication to Garshin rather than by an independent title of its own.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 30 December 1888. Moscow. §9 "In Memory of Garshin"

  The memorial collection for Vsevolod Garshin, already established across this corpus (cf. letters 2-470, 2-500, 3-519, 3-527, 3-528, 3-531, where Chekhov's own contribution -- "An Attack of Nerves," -- was tracked toward completion and delivery). This letter reports the sequel: Chekhov has donated his own contributor's copy to a charity auction and asks Pleshcheyev to reserve a bound copy for him to purchase in person.

• To I. L. Leontyev, 22 March 1890. Moscow. §6 Гаршин был бы жив до сих пор

  Vsevolod Garshin died in March 1888, two years before this letter, having thrown himself down a stairwell after years of severe depression and mental illness. Chekhov's counterfactual -- that a criticism worth its authority "would long ago have shown us the way" and Garshin "would still be alive" -- treats his death as the starkest available proof that literary criticism offers no real guidance for living or working; the line is elegiac in function even though its surface register stays argumentative rather than mournful.