Dmitry Vasilyevich Grigorovich

Reading notes

• To D. V. Grigorovich, 28 March 1886. Moscow. §2 Your letter, my dear, warmly beloved bearer of good tidings, struck me like a bolt of lightning

  This letter is one of the most famous in Chekhov's correspondence and a set piece in almost every biography of him. Grigorovich, then Russia's most senior living novelist and a figure who had personally discovered and championed Dostoevsky forty years earlier, wrote to the twenty-six-year-old Chekhov urging him to stop dashing off comic sketches for money and take his literary gift seriously. Chekhov's reply, written the same week, is widely read as the turning point at which he began to think of himself as a serious writer rather than a jobbing newspaper humorist.

• To V. V. Bilibin, 4 April 1886. Moscow. §12 a letter came to me from Grigorovich

  This is Chekhov's first extended report to a close friend of the letter he had just received from the elder novelist Dmitry Grigorovich (dated March 1886), urging him to abandon hack journalism for serious literary work -- an encounter widely cited by biographers as a turning point in Chekhov's sense of his own literary vocation. Chekhov's own reply to Grigorovich, written a few days earlier, survives.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 6 April 1886. Moscow. §15 an actual state councillor and a knight of orders

  Refers to Grigorovich's real standing in the Table of Ranks (deystvitelny statsky sovetnik, a senior civil rank roughly equivalent to a major-general) and his state decorations -- Chekhov cites his patron's official influence, not just his literary prestige, as a reason he might help find Alexander a position.

• To M. V. Kiseleva, 17 March 1887. Moscow. §7 angina pectoris

  Грудная жаба (grudnaya zhaba, literally "chest toad"): the period Russian term for angina pectoris, understood then as now as a symptom of underlying heart disease, typically presenting as severe chest pain brought on by exertion or strong emotion. Chekhov witnesses and describes the attack directly, including his own professional frustration at being unable to treat it ("cursing my powerless medicine"); Grigorovich, then 64, would live until 1899.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 18 March 1887. Moscow. §7 I am thinking of dedicating the book to D. V. Grigorovich.

  Chekhov would go on to dedicate this collection, "At Dusk" (Sumerki, 1887), to Grigorovich -- the older novelist whose praise the previous month had meant a great deal to him, and whose declining health is the subject of the rest of this letter.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 19 March 1887. Moscow. §13 dedicated to Dmitry Vasilyevich Grigorovich

  Grigorovich, an elder novelist who had championed Chekhov's talent in an influential 1886 letter urging him to write more seriously, is honored with the dedication of this collection ("In the Twilight").

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 17 May 1887. Moscow. §5 the book is dedicated to Grigorovich

  The book is "V sumerkakh" ("In the Twilight"), Chekhov's first major hardcover story collection, published by Suvorin in 1887 and dedicated to the novelist Dmitry Grigorovich, whose 1886 letter of encouragement had urged Chekhov to take his talent more seriously.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 3 June 1887. Babkino. §13 Grigorovich

  Dmitry Grigorovich, the elder novelist whose famous 1886 letter of praise and encouragement had a formative effect on Chekhov's sense of his own literary seriousness; Chekhov asks after his current whereabouts.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 16 June 1887. Babkino". §4 Grigorovich

  Chekhov jokingly claims the false title would 'slaughter' both himself and Grigorovich -- the elder novelist who had recently championed Chekhov's talent -- treating the fabricated honor as dangerous enough to endanger them both by association.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 26 June 1887. Babkino. §14 Grigorovich's address

  Dmitry Vasilyevich Grigorovich, the elder novelist whose famous 1886 letter had urged Chekhov to take his talent seriously; Chekhov wants his current address, presumably to write to him.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 21 October 1887. Moscow. §6 Grigorovich

  Dmitry Grigorovich, the elder novelist who had earlier championed Chekhov's talent; Chekhov asks after his whereabouts in passing.

• To V. G. Korolenko, 9 January 1888. Moscow. §4 old Grigorovich

  Dmitry Vasilyevich Grigorovich (1822-1899), the veteran novelist whose famous 1886 letter to the young Chekhov -- urging him to stop squandering his talent on trifles and take his gift seriously -- is often credited with turning Chekhov toward more ambitious literary work. The new letter mentioned here describes Grigorovich's decline into illness and loneliness despite his fame.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 3 February 1888. Moscow. §8 Grigorovich, to Ostrovsky

  Dmitry Grigorovich, the veteran novelist and early champion of Chekhov's talent, to whom Chekhov wants an offprint of "The Steppe" sent -- one of a small circle of elder writers whose opinion he especially valued.

• To D. V. Grigorovich, 9 October 1888. Moscow. §3 Dmitry Vasilyevich

  Dmitry Grigorovich (1822-1899), veteran novelist and early champion of Chekhov's talent; the letter's addressee. This appears to be Chekhov's first surviving letter to Grigorovich in the corpus, opening the correspondence with news of Grigorovich's recovery from a chest illness.

• To D. V. Grigorovich, 9 October 1888. Moscow. §5 you were at the Academy and stood by me like a wall

  Grigorovich, an Academy member, credited by Chekhov as the third of the three benefactors -- alongside Polonsky and Suvorin -- for lobbying on his behalf within the Academy.

• To D. V. Grigorovich, 24 December 1888. Moscow. §3 Dmitry Vasilyevich

  Dmitry Grigorovich (1822-1899), veteran novelist and early champion of Chekhov's talent; the letter's addressee, matching his established prior appearances in this corpus.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 28 December 1888. Moscow. §18 I showed him Grigorovich's handwriting.

  Dmitry Vasilyevich Grigorovich, the veteran novelist and early patron of Chekhov, already extensively established in this corpus (see's and's headnotes). This closing anecdote is a minor addition to his profile, noting via the clerk's joking valuation that his handwriting was notoriously hard to read, in contrast to Chekhov's own, judged worthless by the same clerk.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 6 January 1889. Moscow. §14 I'm very fond of Grigorovich, but I don't believe that he's afraid on my account. He himself is a tendentious writer and only pretends to be an enemy of tendentiousness.

  TONAL FLAG -- this passage's assessment of Grigorovich is markedly more critical and skeptical than the warmly grateful tone that otherwise characterizes Chekhov's references to him elsewhere in the corpus (Grigorovich's early encouragement of Chekhov's talent is well documented); here Chekhov questions his sincerity outright ("virtuoso insincerity"), driven by what Chekhov reads as Grigorovich's own fear of losing others' favor. Flagged for a future dedicated cross-reference review of the Grigorovich relationship arc across the corpus; the entity's existing summary is left unaltered by this note.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 11 March 1889. Moscow. §5 Grigorovich

  Dmitry Vasilyevich Grigorovich, Chekhov's early patron and correspondent, already established elsewhere in this corpus; here Chekhov defends his novel's student character, whom Grigorovich (informed of the first chapter's contents by Suvorin) worried would be dropped as superfluous partway through by dying.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 17 October 1889. Moscow. §5 хотя Григорович со свойственною ему проницательностью и видит противное

  Dmitry Grigorovich, the senior novelist and early champion of Chekhov's talent, is cast here -- sarcastically ("с свойственною ему проницательностью," "with his characteristic perceptiveness") -- as the chief instigator of the rumor that the play's unflattering lead is a portrait of Suvorin. The irony ("Ах, как рад этот Григорович!") signals Chekhov's real irritation at a friend and mentor gleefully spreading a reading he considers malicious and false.

• To A. I. Smagin, 16 December 1891. Moscow. §3 Grigorovich was here to see me not long ago.

  Dmitry Vasilyevich Grigorovich, the veteran novelist -- new to this letter within the Smagin run -- had apparently called on Chekhov in Moscow; the visit's one piece of leftover business, settled here, is a shipment of Khomutets pottery ware for Grigorovich's museum, sent cash-on-delivery for 25 rubles. True to the anecdote's deflating comic shape, Grigorovich thanks him and promptly moves on to talking about women.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 10 February 1890. Moscow. §6 Grigorovich

  Dmitry Vasilyevich Grigorovich (1822-1899), the elder novelist whose admiring letter some years earlier had urged Chekhov to take his talent seriously; noted here simply as passing through Moscow on an unspecified assignment, alongside Suvorin.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 17 December 1890. Moscow. §7 Grigorovich was never a caretaker on the Sands, which is why he prizes the kingdom of heaven so cheaply

  Opens a run of comic theological banter (sections 7-9) that continues through the rest of the letter's religious asides. The joke's logic: only someone who has done genuinely hard, menial labor (like a caretaker/dvornik in the working-class Sands district) would properly value the reward of "the kingdom of heaven"; since Grigorovich -- a comfortable literary eminence -- apparently claims some special insight into or easy purchase on heaven's value, Chekhov concludes he must be lying about ever having done such work. This is companionable ribbing of an older friend and mentor, not doctrinal argument, and sets up the mock-serious sun-in-paradise riff at section 9. Rendered at full force per the no-softening policy: the comic irreverence toward "царство небесное" (the kingdom of heaven) is Chekhov's own voice throughout this letter and is not softened or hedged in translation.

• To M. P. Chekhova, 14 January 1891. Petersburg. §10 kept begging me to tell him about the Japanese women

  The elder novelist Dmitry Grigorovich, an early champion of Chekhov's talent; his interest in stories "about the Japanese women" is a callback to Chekhov's stop in Japan-adjacent waters on the round-the-world voyage home from Sakhalin the previous year.

• To F. A. Kumanin, 13 February 1891. Moscow. §3 Grigorovich's letter

  Dmitry Vasilyevich Grigorovich (1822-1899), the elder novelist and early champion of Chekhov's talent; the letter forwarded here to Kumanin, editor of "Artist," is not otherwise identified or preserved, and its contents are left unstated.

• To M. P. Chekhova, 16 March 1891. Petersburg. §7 Grigorovich played cicerone for me around the exhibition

  Renders \textit{чичеронствовал}, a nonce verb Chekhov coins from \textit{чичероне} ("cicerone," an Italian loanword for a guide who conducts visitors through antiquities or a gallery, explaining and pronouncing on what they see). The verb form is itself a small joke -- there is no such standard Russian verb -- and its choice a fortnight before Chekhov's own departure for Italy adds a wink: Grigorovich is already playing the connoisseur-guide Chekhov expects to encounter abroad.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 27 May 1891. Bogimovo. §4 Grigorovich's letter

  Dmitry Vasilyevich Grigorovich, the elder novelist who had championed Chekhov's talent since 1886; Chekhov quotes (and in \S5 rebuts) a passage from a letter of his, evidently shared by Suvorin, praising Chekhov as belonging to a generation turning away from the West.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 27 May 1891. Bogimovo. §5 Venice and Florence are nothing more than tedious cities

  The continuation of the quoted Grigorovich passage begun in \S4; Chekhov objects strenuously to the generalization, insisting he never said abroad displeased him and that he in fact liked Bologna.

• In the Landau §8 Grigorovich

  Dmitry Grigorovich (1822-1899), a Russian novelist and early champion of peasant themes in fiction, best known for the novella "Anton Goremyka" -- named here by the baron as an unremarkable contemporary of Turgenev's.