person
Vladimir Danilovich Spasovich
Spasovich
also: Спасович, Spasoviches
A celebrated and highly paid St. Petersburg defense lawyer of the era, whose surname stands in here, plural, for any successful, opulently living Moscow lawyer.
Reading notes
- To S. Kramayev, 8 May 1881. Moscow. §9 Spasoviches
Vladimir Spasovich, a celebrated and highly paid St. Petersburg defense lawyer of the era; his surname, plural and generic, stands in for any successful, well-living Moscow lawyer in Chekhov's mock-boosterish patter.
- To S. A. Andreyevsky, 25 December 1891. Moscow. §5 Spasovich
Vladimir Danilovich Spasovich, the celebrated and highly paid St. Petersburg defense lawyer, first attested at. Chekhov invokes him here purely as a byword for cleverness ("I am, perhaps, as clever as Spasovich"), not as a professional comparison to Andreyevsky's own legal career, though the two lawyers moved in overlapping Petersburg legal-literary circles.