person
Vladimir Vasilyevich Stasov
Stasov
also: Стасов, V. V. Stasov, Владимир Васильевич Стасов
Influential Russian art and music critic and archivist, the leading champion of the nationalist "Mighty Handful" composers and the Peredvizhniki painters, known for his ardent, effusive advocacy. Chekhov calls him likable despite mocking his excitability as being "a Mamai of Ecstasies," punning on the name of the Tatar khan Mamai.
Reading notes
- To A. S. Suvorin, 9 June 1889. Sumy. §10 a Mamai of Ecstasies
"Мамай Экстазов" in the source: a pun on Mamai, the 14th-century Tatar khan defeated at Kulikovo and proverbial in Russian idiom for a destructive, overwhelming horde (as in the phrase "like Mamai went through it"); here refashioned to needle Stasov's famously excitable, effusive critical enthusiasms rather than any literal military reference.