person

Nikolai Nikolaevich Obolonsky

Obolonsky

also: Николай Николаевич, Nikolai Nikolaevich, Оболонский, N. N. Obolonsky

A Moscow physician and colleague of Chekhov's, addressed here by the informal salutation "Nikolai Nikolaevich" and asked to attend urgently to the poet Pleshcheyev, taken ill after a name-day pie. This appears to be his first appearance under this identity in the corpus's translated letters; his full biographical identity (surname confirmed from the letter's title, "To N. N. Obolonsky") and any recurring role in Chekhov's medical or social circle should be confirmed as further letters are processed.

Reading notes

To N. N. Obolonsky, 12–13 February 1889. Moscow. §2 Nikolai Nikolaevich
Dr. Nikolai Nikolaevich Obolonsky, a Moscow physician addressed here by the informal first-name-and-patronymic salutation typical of Chekhov's letters to close professional colleagues. NEW ENTITY: this appears to be his first appearance under this identity in the corpus's translated letters; his surname is drawn from the letter's own title ("To N. N. Obolonsky"), and his fuller biography and any recurring role in Chekhov's medical circle should be confirmed as more letters are processed.
To N. N. Obolonsky, 8 November 1889. Moscow. §2 Unhappy doctor, unable to find your place for love of a young lady
Chekhov opens with mock-melodramatic pity, teasing Dr. Obolonsky for being too lovestruck to keep a social promise -- the joke that sets up the letter's faux-official "first warning" below.
To N. N. Obolonsky, 29–30 November 1889. Moscow. §10 from a grateful patient
The envelope's closing line is signed "от признательной пациентки" -- in the FEMININE grammatical form ("a grateful [female] patient"), not the masculine that would match Chekhov's own voice. This is a deliberate joke: rather than sign as himself, Chekhov frames the sender as one of Dr. Obolonsky's (presumably numerous) grateful lady patients, a wink at his friend's romantic reputation consistent with the teasing about Obolonsky's love life in \S3 and in the earlier. Preserved here as "from a grateful patient" -- English lacks a marked feminine noun form, so the joke's grammatical gender cannot be reproduced directly in translation, but the comic misdirection (an anonymous female admirer, not the male friend who actually wrote it) is the same in either language.
To A. P. Lensky, 8 December 1889. Moscow. §7 Obolonsky
Almost certainly Nikolai Nikolaevich Obolonsky, the Moscow physician and colleague of Chekhov's established elsewhere in the corpus (e.g.); this closing item of gossip -- his impending marriage, with Chekhov standing as best man (шафер, literally the groom's attendant in an Orthodox wedding) -- is otherwise unconnected to the letter's theatrical business.