Liodor Ivanovich Palmin

Reading notes

• The Deputy, or the Tale of How Desdemonov Lost 25 Roubles §1 L. I. Palmin

  Liodor Ivanovich Palmin, a poet in Chekhov's circle who had introduced him to Nikolai Leikin, editor of the humor weekly Oskolki that first published this story. The dedication is a private thank-you tucked into a public joke.

• Mixed-Up Announcements §3 L. I. Palmin

  Liodor Ivanovich Palmin (1841-1891), a real poet and contributor to the Moscow humor magazines, well known to the Chekhov circle; his book's title is jumbled here into the byline of a death notice.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 25 January 1883. Moscow. §7 the Palmins

  Liodor Ivanovich Palmin, a minor poet and translator of the Moscow humor-press circle, friendly with the Chekhov family; named here (in the plural, loosely) among the acquaintances paying court to Marya Pavlovna.

• To N. A. Leikin, 1883. Moscow. §6 Liodor Ivanovich

  Liodor Ivanovich Palmin, poet and regular contributor to the Moscow humor press, whose verses in Oskolki were read even when not witty -- cited by Chekhov as another precedent for sending in a graver piece.

• To N. A. Leikin, 4 June 1883. Voskresensk. §5 Palmin

  Liodor Ivanovich Palmin, poet and fellow contributor to the humor press, to whom Chekhov proposes passing along a review of Leikin's books if he cannot place it himself.

• To N. A. Leikin, 27 June 1883. Voskresensk. §4 Liodor Ivanovich

  Liodor Ivanovich Palmin, a poet and contributor to the Moscow humor magazines, friend of the Chekhov circle, whom Chekhov here volunteers (alongside himself) as a source of raw material for the Moscow notes.

• To N. A. Leikin, 3 August 1883. Moscow. §6 Palmin

  Liodor Ivanovich Palmin, a minor poet and hard-drinking fixture of the Moscow humor-magazine world, known for churning out verse for numerous publications at once despite (or amid) his dissipated habits.

• To N. A. Leikin, 6 August 1883. Moscow. §5 Palmin

  Liodor Ivanovich Palmin, poet and contributor to the humor magazines, a friend of the Chekhov circle.

• To N. A. Leikin, 19 September 1883. Moscow. §8 Palmin

  Liodor Ivanovich Palmin, poet and contributor to the Moscow humor magazines, a friend of the Chekhov family and an occasional source of material for Chekhov's "notes" column.

• To N. A. Leikin, 31 December 1883. Moscow. §8 Palmin

  Liodor Ivanovich Palmin, poet and contributor to the Moscow and Petersburg humor magazines, a friend of the Chekhov family known for his eccentric letters.

• To N. A. Leikin, 17 June 1884. Moscow. §10 Palmin

  Poet and old friend of the Chekhov family, a regular contributor to the humor magazines, whom Leikin had apparently invited to Petersburg.

• To N. A. Leikin, 23 December 1884. Moscow. §7 Palmin

  Liodor Ivanovich Palmin, poet and fellow contributor to the Moscow humor magazines, a friend of Chekhov's who brought him gossip from that world.

• To N. A. Leikin, 26 January 1887. Moscow. §11 sprinkled with the gods of Liodor Ivanych

  Liodor Ivanovich Palmin, a minor poet and contributor to the humor magazines and a friend of the Chekhov family; the phrase is a sardonic jab implying that Palmin's poetic idols or invoked "gods" (i.e., his stock classical/mythological ornamentation) are a poor showing next to Nadson's real gift.

• To N. A. Leikin, 25 February 1887. Moskva*. §6 Palmin

  Liodor Palmin, poet and old friend of the Chekhov family and a fellow contributor to the humor weeklies.

• To N. A. Leikin, 14 May 1887. Taganrog. §11 "cvartiromania"

  A mock-medical Latin coinage from Russian "квартира" (apartment/flat) plus "-mania," invented on the spot as a joking diagnosis for the poet Liodor Palmin's habitual restlessness and frequent changes of lodging.

• To N. A. Leikin, 9 June 1887. Babkino. §6 Palmin keeps moving and moving

  Liodor Ivanovich Palmin, poet and contributor to the humor magazines, friend of the Chekhov circle; his repeated household moves become the subject of Chekhov's mock caption idea.

• To N. A. Leikin, 11 September 1887. Moscow. §10 Palmin

  Liodor Ivanovich Palmin, poet and contributor to the Moscow humor magazines, a friend of the Chekhov family; Chekhov asks after him in passing.

• L. N. Trefolev, 30 September 1887. Moscow. 30 Sept. §3 Palmin

  Liodor Palmin, poet and fixture of the Moscow humor-magazine circle, at whose home Chekhov had also apparently seen Trefolev's portrait.

• N. A. Leikin, 27 December 1887. Moscow. §5 Palmin

  Liodor Ivanovich Palmin, poet and longtime contributor to the humor magazines, friend of the Chekhov family; cited here as an established writer permitted the occasional careless piece, unlike a "beginning scribbler" such as Chekhov considered himself in 1887.

• To L. N. Trefolev, 14 April 1888. Moscow. §11 L. I. Palmin

  Liodor Ivanovich Palmin, poet and friend of the Chekhov family, with whom Chekhov reports a quarrel now mended.

• To N. M. Yezhov, 8 August 1888. Sumy. §6 if you see him, to Palmin

  Liodor Ivanovich Palmin, an older poet and fellow contributor to the Moscow humor press, part of the same social circle as Chekhov, Yezhov, and Lazarev-Gruzinsky.

• To F. O. Shekhtel, 20 October 1888. Moscow. §5 the old procuress Palmin

  The poet Liodor Ivanovich Palmin, a member of Chekhov's literary circle attested elsewhere in the corpus (e.g., "the Palmins"). The Russian, "старая сводня Пальмин" (literally "the old procuress/matchmaker Palmin"), applies a grammatically feminine occupational noun to this male acquaintance as a joke; the translation preserves the joke via the appositive "the old procuress Palmin" rather than any gendered pronoun, so as not to create an ambiguous referent.

• To F. O. Shekhtel, 1 December 1888. Moscow. §3 Liodor Ivanych Palmin

  The poet Liodor Ivanovich Palmin, a member of Chekhov's literary circle attested elsewhere in the corpus (e.g., "the Palmins"), and named in as "the old procuress Palmin" for luring Nikolai away on a bender -- the same running joke that Palmin's household is a place Nikolai disappears to.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 26 December 1888. Moscow. §5 Hemorrhoids, with itching and bleeding, callers, Palmin with his forehead smashed in, and boredom.

  SENSITIVITY -- frank medical detail ("hemorrhoids, with itching and bleeding") translated without softening, consistent with this corpus's established practice for Chekhov's matter-of-fact, physician's candor about his own body (cf. similar unsoftened medical self-reporting elsewhere in the letters). CONTINUATION FLAG: "Palmin with his forehead smashed in" refers to the same incident reported as breaking news a few days earlier in (Liodor Ivanovich Palmin's drunken fall, striking his head to the bone), not a new injury; read this clause as an update on that already-established episode rather than a fresh event.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 7 January 1889. Moscow. §9 In Moscow there is a poet, Palmin, a very stingy man.

  CONTINUITY -- reuses, the entity for the poet Liodor Ivanovich Palmin established in this corpus's apparatus for, where Chekhov is fetched to treat Palmin (drunk) for a head injury sustained in a fall. This letter's anecdote is the direct follow-up: Palmin returning for a dressing on that same wound and bringing Chekhov a gift of perfume, together with the wry character note ("a very stingy man") that makes the gift notable. Not to be confused with the unrelated, earlier-established entity (a differently-scoped record from this corpus's non-letters apparatus, first_appearance gimnazicheskoe-stihotvoreniya-dubia) -- is the correct, actively-reused id for this corpus's letters batch.

• To N. A. Leikin, 24 February 1889. Moscow. §5 Palmin

  Liodor Ivanovich Palmin, the poet, cast here as the drunken source of exaggerated gossip -- relayed to Leikin -- that Chekhov was coughing blood, depressed, and near losing his mind; Chekhov denies all three with comic relish, attributing the rumor to Palmin's wine-soaked imagination.

• To N. A. Leikin, 7 November 1889. Moscow. §9 деревянные лестницы в квартире Пальмина

  "The wooden staircases in Palmin's apartment" -- Chekhov's own visual shorthand for a drab, worn, unglamorous domestic interior, used here as a simile for the flat, monotonous descriptive coloring he finds in Gruzinsky's and Yezhov's prose. Consistent with the corpus's established picture of Palmin's modest, frequently-changing lodgings.

• To N. A. Leikin, 7 November 1889. Moscow. §9 любимец богов

  "Favorite of the gods" -- an ironic classical-sounding epithet Chekhov applies to Palmin, playing against the poet's actually modest and precarious circumstances (an ironic elevation, not a sincere honorific).

• To A. S. Suvorin, 30 October 1891. Moscow. §5 Palmin

  Liodor Ivanovich Palmin, the poet in Chekhov's circle with a long-documented drinking problem (cf. the corpus's earlier letters recounting his falls and injuries, e.g. the entity's first-appearance note). This is Chekhov's terse report of Palmin's death and burial: "Вчера хоронили Пальмина" ("Yesterday we buried Palmin"), delivered in a single flat sentence with no further comment beyond "Скучно хоронить" ("It is dreary, burying people") -- a characteristic Chekhovian understatement in the face of a death. Palmin died on 27 October 1891 (Old Style); this letter, three days later, notes his burial as already past ("yesterday").

• To N. A. Leikin, 2 December 1891. Moscow. §5 No sooner had we buried Palmin than Kurepin died

  The poet Liodor Palmin was buried on 30 October 1891, as Chekhov reported the same day to Suvorin ("Yesterday we buried Palmin. It is dreary, burying people,"); Alexander Kurepin died at the end of November and was buried around 30 November 1891, also reported to Suvorin in near-real time (Kurepin "already unconscious, and will die any day,", 26 November; "Today they buried Kurepin,", 30 November). This letter to Leikin, written two days later on 2 December, compresses both deaths -- five weeks apart -- into a single terse line for a correspondent in Petersburg who would not have had the same day-to-day view of the Moscow literary world's autumn losses that Chekhov gave Suvorin as they happened.

• To N. A. Leikin, 27 December 1890. Moscow. §6 Palmin, too, ought to be dragged out of his vinegar nest

  Liodor Ivanovich Palmin, a poet in Chekhov's circle with a documented drinking problem and reclusive habits by this period of his life; "his vinegar nest" (\foreignlanguage{russian}{"уксусное гнездо"}) is a Chekhovian coinage rather than an idiom, evoking something sour, cramped, and stagnant -- consistent with other, more direct references elsewhere in the corpus to Palmin's decline and self-isolation in these years.