Isaac Ilyich Levitan

Reading notes

• To N. A. Leikin, 28 January 1886. Moscow. §12 a slight psychosis

  Chekhov, who had trained as a physician, is here diagnosing his painter friend Levitan in passing, informal, half-joking clinical language; Levitan suffered recurring bouts of severe depression and nervous illness throughout his life, of which this is one of the earliest documented mentions in Chekhov's letters.

• To F. O. Shekhtel, 8 June 1886. Babkino. §5 Левитан изображает чеченца

  Levitan is shown at his easel painting a "Chechen" -- likely a costumed or posed figure study rather than an actual Chechen sitter, part of the household's running games and Levitan's habit of dramatic self-presentation (he was known among friends for a dark, Caucasian-inflected look and temperament that Chekhov's circle liked to tease him about).

• To F. O. Shekhtel, 8 June 1886. Babkino. §5 жид Левитан

  "Zhid" (жид) was, by the 1880s, a crude and demeaning slur for a Jewish person in Russian, already recognized as offensive even as some in Chekhov's generation still used it unreflectingly in private, informal speech among intimates. Chekhov applies it here to his close friend Levitan, who was Jewish, in the same breath as an affectionate description of his painting -- a jarring juxtaction characteristic of unguarded 19th-century private correspondence, where casual antisemitic language coexisted with real personal affection and loyalty (Chekhov elsewhere defended Levitan against antisemitic exclusion, including from lodging near Babkino itself). The word is translated directly, without softening or euphemism, per editorial policy for this corpus, so that the historical record is not sanitized.

• To F. O. Shekhtel, 8 June 1886. Babkino. §5 держащий в Бабкине ссудную кассу

  "Keeps a pawnshop": an invented, mock-accusatory detail, part of the running joke (developed further in the mock trial of section 7) that casts the impoverished painter Levitan as a shady moneylender -- a comic slander playing on, and mocking, contemporary antisemitic stereotypes about Jews and moneylending, rather than any real occupation of Levitan's.

• To F. O. Shekhtel, 8 June 1886. Babkino. §7 уклонении от воинской повинности

  "Draft evasion": the first invented charge in the mock trial of Levitan, playing on the fact that men of Jewish descent were subject to the same imperial conscription law as other subjects but were popularly (and often unfairly) stereotyped as evading it -- another example of the letter's casual antisemitic stereotyping folded into the household's joking legal parody.

• To F. O. Shekhtel, 8 June 1886. Babkino. §7 тайном винокурении

  "Secret distilling": the second invented charge, tied to the running joke that Nikolai Chekhov's drinking must be supplied from some undisclosed source at Levitan's lodgings, since (the letter jokes) there is nowhere else nearby to get liquor.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 26 January 1887. Moscow. §10 after Levitan's example, turn my pictures upside down

  Isaac Levitan, the landscape painter and close friend of Chekhov, apparently had a habit (relayed here as a running joke) of turning his canvases upside down to see them freshly and blunt his own overcritical eye -- a technique Chekhov wishes he could apply to his own tired writing.

• To the Chekhovs, 11 May 1887. Taganrog. §4 Levitan

  Chekhov's landscape-painter friend, invoked here purely as a byword for a keen hunter's appetite -- 'hungry as a dog, or as Levitan out hunting' -- not as a real report of Levitan's presence on this trip.

• To P. P. Gnedich, 15 December 1888. Petersburg. §6 Levitan's address

  Isaac Ilyich Levitan, the landscape painter and Chekhov's close friend, already well established elsewhere in this corpus; Chekhov passes on his Moscow address so Gnedich (or another correspondent) could write to him.

• To Ye. K. Sakharova, 13 January 1889. Moscow. §7 Levitan

  Isaac Levitan, the landscape painter and close friend of Chekhov, already extensively established in this corpus; named here as Chekhov's one real painter acquaintance in Moscow.

• To A. P. Lensky, 16 March 1890. Moscow. §8 a letter from Levitan, from Paris

  Isaac Ilyich Levitan, the landscape painter and Chekhov's close friend since their student years, already established elsewhere in this corpus (see e.g. the, and headnotes). Levitan was in Paris in the spring of 1890; the closing joke -- that his letter is mostly about women he does not like -- is a light, gossipy aside typical of the two friends' teasing correspondence, not a substantive report.

• To M. P. Chekhova, 14 January 1891. Petersburg. §8 steer clear of Levitan

  A joking aside naming the painter Isaac Levitan, Chekhov's close friend, as a mock-rival for Lidia Yegorovna's favor, paired with equally joking advice about avoiding pastries.

• To M. P. Chekhova, 16 January 1891. Petersburg. §10 Levitan

  Isaac Ilyich Levitan, the landscape painter and close friend of Chekhov's, here asked after regarding a subscription list (\textit{подписной лист}) for the Sakhalin-schools fundraising drive that occupied Chekhov and his Moscow circle that winter.

• To A. P. Lensky, 27 February 1891. Moscow. §8 Levitan

  Isaac Ilyich Levitan, the landscape painter and Chekhov's close friend, established elsewhere in this corpus (see e.g.); said here to be travelling to Petersburg and to tire quickly, offered as Chekhov's reason for not inviting him instead of Lensky on the glass-factory trip.

• To M. P. Chekhova, 16 March 1891. Petersburg. §7 Levitan is celebrating the name-day of his magnificent muse

  A mock-liturgical flourish: Chekhov casts the triumphant reception of Levitan's landscape as if it were the painter's muse having her \textit{именины} (name-day, the feast day of one's patron saint) -- the picture being celebrated as though it were a person having a birthday party thrown in her honor.

• To the Chekhovs, April 1891. Rome. §7 It is strange to me that Levitan did not care for Italy

  Chekhov reacts to having heard, presumably via a report reaching him from home, that his close friend the painter Isaac Levitan disliked Italy on some earlier visit or opinion of his own; Chekhov's surprise sets up the letter's closing reflection on Italy as the one country that convinces a man that art is "king of all" -- an odd verdict, he implies, for a landscape painter to have missed.

• To the Chekhovs, April 1891. Nice. §10 handsome Levitan

  Isaac Levitan, the landscape painter and close friend of Chekhov's, greeted here by his familiar epithet among the family circle.

• To the Chekhovs, 1891. Paris. §11 Levitan is a king

  Isaac Levitan, the landscape painter and Chekhov's close friend; Chekhov judges the French landscapists he saw at the Salon inferior to Levitan, a characteristic partisan aside on behalf of Russian art.

• To L. S. Mizinova, 12 June 1891. Bogimovo. §4 that Circassian Levitan

  \textit{черкесом Левитаном} -- literally "the Circassian Levitan." Isaac Levitan was not in fact Circassian; this is Chekhov's habitual joking shorthand for Levitan's dark, striking, "exotic" looks (he was frequently likened by contemporaries to a Caucasian type), used here to tease Mizinova about being distracted from her promised visit by her attentions to the painter. Compare section 7, where Chekhov asks Mizinova to pass along a message to Levitan directly, confirming both are current, living correspondents rather than a settled matter.

• To L. S. Mizinova, 20 June 1891. Bogimovo. §4 Levitan

  The landscape painter Isaac Ilyich Levitan, a close friend of Chekhov's then also staying in the area and a recurring figure -- half rival, half confidant -- in Chekhov's letters to Mizinova.

• Notebooks. Diaries §1588 I. I. Levitan

  Isaac Ilyich Levitan (1860-1900), the landscape painter and one of Chekhov's oldest and closest friends from their student years in Moscow; the notebooks track his declining health (\S4038, \S4046) with concern.