person
Quasimodo
also: Квазимодо
The disfigured bell-ringer of Victor Hugo's "Notre-Dame de Paris" (1831), invoked in "About Women" as the proverbial type of the ugliest possible man -- even he, the piece claims with heavy irony, is convinced that only a beautiful woman could be his match.
Reading notes
- To Al. P. Chekhov, 17 January 1887. Moscow. §6 Quasimodo
Chekhov's private nickname for Leikin, borrowed from the disfigured bell-ringer of Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris -- an affectionately barbed dig at his editor's demanding, wearying persistence rather than his appearance.