Alexei Potekhin

Reading notes

• The Alarm Clock's Calendar §88 Potekhin

  Alexei Potekhin, a Russian playwright and prose writer known for peasant-themed drama; listed here among the calendar's mock name-day celebrants alongside Suvorin.

• The Critic §11 Potekhin

  Alexei Antipovich Potekhin (1829-1908) was a real Russian playwright and prose writer who, from 1881 to 1886/87, headed the repertoire (managing) section of the Imperial Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg -- exactly the administrative role the noble father savages here. The story's mockery of Potekhin as lacking presence and unable to discipline his troupe is the drunken narrator's invective, not Chekhov's or the historical record's assessment; Potekhin was a respected literary figure in his own right.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 30 December 1888. Moscow. §20 I apologize to Potekhin and Yurkovsky for having troubled them for nothing.

  Named only as two colleagues Chekhov apologizes to for having needlessly involved them in the now-abandoned production plans; likely Alexei Potekhin, a playwright and senior figure associated with the Alexandrinsky Theatre's repertoire committee.

• To I. L. Leontyev, 31 December 1888. Moscow. §5 It appears that Potekhin, too, wishes to do me a kindness and to prove to you for the thousandth time that I am not Chekhov but Potemkin.

  WORDPLAY -- Chekhov puns on the near-rhyme between his own surname and that of Prince Grigory Potemkin, the eighteenth-century Russian statesman, to suggest self-deprecatingly and ironically that he is being flattered or promoted beyond his due. Potemkin himself is not a contemporary of Chekhov's and plays no real part in this correspondence -- catalogued as a one-off wordplay reference. Alexei Potekhin, the actual subject of the sentence and the target of the pun's setup, is a playwright and senior Alexandrinsky Theatre repertoire figure previously identified in's headnote.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 3 January 1889. Moscow. §7 Potekhin

  Alexei Potekhin, the playwright and senior Alexandrinsky Theatre repertoire figure already identified in's and's headnotes; here Chekhov asks Suvorin to prompt him to have a copy of "Ivanov" made and sent for revisions, since Chekhov has no copy of his own.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 8 February 1889. Moscow. §11 Potekhin

  Alexei Antipovich Potekhin, playwright and at this time head of the repertoire committee for the Imperial theaters in Petersburg, responsible for staging "Ivanov" there.