person
Lessing (1891 correspondent, unidentified)
Lessing
also: Лессинг, Lessing
NOT the eighteenth-century German dramatist and critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (d. 1781) -- the joking, mock-reverential tone ("He's composing. Stand in awe.") signals a living correspondent who merely happens to share the surname, almost certainly a minor contemporary acquaintance whose amateur literary ambitions Chekhov is gently ribbing. Not otherwise identified from this letter alone.
Reading notes
- To A. S. Suvorin, 24 July 1891. Bogimovo. §8 Got a letter from Lessing. He's composing. Stand in awe.
NOT the eighteenth-century German dramatist and critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (d. 1781) -- the joking, mock-reverential tone ("He's composing. Stand in awe.") signals a living correspondent who merely happens to share the surname, almost certainly a minor contemporary acquaintance whose amateur literary ambitions Chekhov is gently ribbing, in the same register as his jokes elsewhere about would-be writers in his circle. The individual has not been identified from this letter alone; treated here as a distinct, unidentified contemporary rather than linked to the historical Lessing.