Nikolai Konstantinovich Mikhailovsky

Reading notes

• The Story of a Commercial Venture §3 Mikhailovsky

  Nikolai Mikhailovsky (1842-1904), the leading Populist critic and sociologist of the day, whose thick volumes stand in for the 'serious' reading Sidorov starts out selling and trying to absorb; at loc 26 ten volumes of Mikhailovsky literally fall on his head, a piece of slapstick that doubles as the story's verdict on where high-minded reading gets him.

• To the Chekhovs, 3 December 1887. Petersburg. §6 Mikhailovsky's

  Nikolai Mikhailovsky, the leading Populist critic, had reviewed Chekhov unfavorably in "Severny Vestnik"; Chekhov notes with some irony that he nonetheless spent a convivial morning at his home.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 31 March 1888. Moscow. §7 Mikhailovsky

  Topic Chekhov anticipates discussing at length when Pleshcheyev passes through Moscow en route to the Crimea, alongside Ukraine generally.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 4 April 1888. Moscow. §8 Mikhailovsky

  Nikolai Mikhailovsky, the critic, had recently made public his resignation, a piece of literary gossip Chekhov mentions in passing.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 17 April 1888. Moscow. §7 Mikhailovsky

  Nikolai Mikhailovsky, the Populist critic Korolenko continues to visit; Chekhov frames these visits as ordinary provincial habit rather than evidence of any editorial disloyalty to Pleshcheyev.

• To I. L. Leontyev, 18 April 1888. Moscow. §9 Mikhailovsky

  Nikolai Mikhailovsky, the Populist critic; Chekhov defends him against some complaint of Shcheglov's not otherwise detailed here.

• Aleksey Sergeyevich Suvorin, 28 June 1888. Sumy. §5 A man who in Petersburg took close to heart Mikhailovsky's departure from the "Severny Vestnik," or hated Mikhnevich, or was angry at Burenin

  Referent tracking: this sentence describes a generic third-person type ("a man who...") -- a composite sketch of the anxious Petersburg literary man -- not Suvorin himself and not a claim about any one named individual's private feelings. Mikhailovsky, Mikhnevich, and Burenin are named only as objects of this generic figure's anxieties (his departure lamented, his person hated, his temper resented), not as the subject performing the action, and none of the three claims describes Suvorin's own conduct.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 3 November 1888. Moscow. §8 he wants to toss a pebble into the garden of the "nihilists" who ruined me (Mikhailovsky)

  Nikolai Konstantinovich Mikhailovsky, the influential populist critic already established in this corpus, named here as the implicit target of Leikin's insinuation that "nihilists" have led Chekhov astray.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 30 December 1888. Moscow. §10 Even Mikhailovsky says all the pieces on the board have gotten mixed up now.

  Nikolai Mikhailovsky, the prominent Populist critic and journalist, cited here only for a paraphrased remark (not a direct quotation) that political alignments have become confused -- one more item in Chekhov's inventory of burned-out "Russian enthusiasms."