person
Pyotr Ilyich Kicheev
Kicheev
also: Петр Кичеев, Pyotr Kicheev, P. I. Kicheev
Moscow journalist, critic, and playwright (of the same Kicheev family as Budilnik editor Nikolai Petrovich Kicheev and journalist Pavel Petrovich Kicheev); killed a man in a duel witnessed by A. S. Kiselev, an incident referred to matter-of-factly here as Chekhov quotes his harsh verdict on the play "Ivanov."
Reading notes
- To A. S. Kiselev, 24 November 1887. Moscow. §5 Pyotr Kicheev, who once killed a man before your very eyes
Pyotr Ilyich Kicheev, a Moscow journalist and critic, had killed a man in a duel that Kiselev, the letter's recipient, personally witnessed -- a real, documented incident that Chekhov here mentions in the same breath as Kicheev's harsh verdict on "Ivanov," the flat, unemphatic phrasing implying that a man capable of killing in a duel is hardly a reliable judge of a play's morals. The reference is preserved as stated in the source rather than softened or omitted; it names Kicheev, the man responsible for the killing, distinctly from Kiselev, who only witnessed it.
- To Al. P. Chekhov, 24 November 1887. Moscow. §5 a review by Pyotr Kicheev
Pyotr Ilyich Kicheev's hostile notice in the \textit{Moscow Sheet} branding the play "insolently cynical, immoral trash" was answered, in Chekhov's telling, by a favorable one in the more established \textit{Moscow Gazette} the same day -- the two reviews Chekhov sets against each other as evidence the reception was genuinely divided, not simply bad.