person
Pyotr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky
Ostrovsky
also: Островский, П. Н. Островский
Pyotr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky (1839-1906), half-brother of the dramatist Alexander Ostrovsky, an engineer and occasional literary critic whom Chekhov befriended in Moscow around 1887-1888 and praised for his sharp literary instincts; not to be confused with the playwright Alexander Ostrovsky (1823-1886), who had already died by the time of this letter.
Reading notes
- To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 23 January 1888. Moscow. §5 Ostrovsky
Pyotr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky (1839-1906), half-brother of the dramatist Alexander Ostrovsky, an engineer and occasional literary critic Chekhov had recently gotten to know in Moscow -- not the playwright Alexander Ostrovsky (1823-1886), who had died the previous year. Chekhov praises his literary instincts and records that a conversation with him about "Ivanov" taught him the worth of such critical friends.
- To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 3 February 1888. Moscow. §11 Ostrovsky's
Pyotr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky, half-brother of the playwright Alexander Ostrovsky, whom Chekhov had recently befriended in Moscow (see the letter of January 23, 1888) and planned to visit as soon as "The Steppe" was finished -- a plan he here confirms carrying out the next day.
- To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 6 March 1888. Moscow. §3 a letter from P. N. Ostrovsky
Pyotr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky, engineer and occasional critic, half-brother of the playwright Alexander Ostrovsky; his private letter of praise for "The Steppe" is the main subject of the letter's opening.
- To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 9 April 1888. Moscow. §9 Ostrovsky
Pyotr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky, not the dramatist Alexander Ostrovsky; an engineer and half-brother of the playwright, and a Chekhov acquaintance.
- To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 14 September 1889. Moscow. §7 as hard to argue with as with a spiritualist
A period-specific comparison: spiritualism (table-turning, séances, communication with the dead) was a fashionable pseudo-scientific fad in educated Russian society of the 1880s, associated with adherents whose convictions rested on experience/faith rather than evidence and were therefore immune to rational counterargument -- the same charge Chekhov levels at P. N. Ostrovsky's muddled political and moral views in this paragraph.
- To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 14 September 1889. Moscow. §7 Look at him from the right -- a materialist; go round to the left -- a freemason.
"Материалист" (materialist, in the philosophical sense of one who denies a spiritual/immaterial reality) and "франкмасон" (freemason) are cited here as two incompatible ideological poles -- Chekhov's joke is that Ostrovsky's views shift depending on which angle you examine them from, like an object that looks different from each side, rather than cohering into one consistent position.
- To A. S. Suvorin, 17 October 1889. Moscow. §3 Островский, о котором я тоже уже писал, притащил целый тюк рассказов своей сестры
"Ostrovsky" here is Pyotr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky (1839-1906), half-brother of the playwright Alexander Ostrovsky (d.1886, and therefore not the Ostrovsky meant in a live 1889 anecdote) and brother of the aspiring children's writer M. N. Ostrovskaya, whose stories he is shown here bringing to Chekhov on her behalf, continuing the placement effort already underway in.