person
Mlle Syrout
also: M-lle Syrout
A young woman Chekhov has not yet met in person but whose image, he jokes, does not leave his mind for a moment -- the setup for the mock-purple physical description that follows in section 8; not otherwise identified.
Reading notes
- To M. V. Kiseleva, 13 September 1887. Moscow. §7 Mlle Syrout
A young woman Chekhov has apparently not yet met, whose "image" preoccupies him -- comic scene-setting for the mock-purple description of a woman's neck and shoulders that follows in section 8; not otherwise identified.
- To M. V. Kiseleva, 28 September 1887. Moscow. §11 Mlle Syrout
The young woman whose "image" preoccupied Chekhov in the earlier letter to Kiseleva of 13 September 1887; here she is finally seen, described with mild satirical exaggeration -- "terribly got up," painted eyelids, ostrich plumes -- continuing the running joke rather than serious commentary on her appearance.
- To A. S. Kiselev, 10 November 1887. Moscow. §5 hire a couple of young ladies in the style of Ciru
A period comic device rather than a genuinely offensive proposal: Chekhov jokes about dispatching attractive young women (modeled on the not-yet-met "Mlle Syrout" teased in an earlier letter to Kiseleva) to charm and soften up the recalcitrant Kiselev, playing on the stock farcical notion that a stern man's temper melts before feminine company. The device recurs in Chekhov's informal correspondence as a comic exaggeration of persuasion tactics, not a literal proposition, and is translated and flagged here for context rather than softened.