person
Alexander Mikhailovich Skabichevsky
Skabichevsky
also: Скабичевский
Alexander Skabichevsky (1838-1911), influential Populist literary critic, ranked among the Court Councillors.
Reading notes
- To K. S. Barantsevich, 12 August 1888. Sumy. §10 Skabichevsky
Alexander Skabichevsky, the influential Populist literary critic, invoked here as a byword for confident critical pronouncement Chekhov declines to imitate.
- To S. A. Andreyevsky, 25 December 1891. Moscow. §5 à la Skabichevsky
Alexander Mikhailovich Skabichevsky, the influential Populist literary critic, first attested at literaturnaya-tabel-o-rangah. Chekhov self-deprecatingly likens his own failed attempts at writing seriously about Andreyevsky's books to Skabichevsky's brand of workmanlike newspaper criticism -- "something newspaperish, à la Skabichevsky" -- a mildly disparaging comparison of his own prose to a critic he elsewhere treats as a representative, competent-but-uninspired journalistic type.
- To F. A. Chervinsky, 2 July 1891. Bogimovo. §4 Skabichevsky and Co. are martyrs who have voluntarily taken upon themselves the feat of walking the streets and shouting
Chekhov's image of the bootmaker praised or damned by a passerby who makes nothing himself is a swipe at critics generally, with Skabichevsky as the named example: their commentary, in his view, changes nothing about the quality of the work itself.