person
Tatishchev
also: Татищев
Named by Chekhov, alongside Mikhnevich and Burenin, as one of only three practitioners of Russian literary criticism worth mentioning -- and dismissed as merely "blowing on his little mold" ("дующий в шаблон"), i.e. reflexively applying a stock template rather than engaging seriously with new work. Not otherwise identified in this corpus; catalogued here as a fresh, unresolved entity pending further biographical confirmation.
Reading notes
- To A. S. Suvorin, 4 January 1889. Moscow. §6 Did Tatishchev invite you to devote yourself to politics and give up trifles?
CONTINUITY -- reuses the same Tatishchev already flagged as an unresolved entity in's headnote (grouped there with Mikhnevich and Burenin as one of the only three critics Chekhov considers worth naming, though dismissed there as merely "blowing on his little mold"). This letter adds new biographical color without resolving his identity further: he apparently urged Suvorin toward political writing, himself translated Victor Hugo's "Hernani", wrote an enthusiastic ("crimson") notice of Suvorin's own "Tatyana Repina," and dines often at Maria Savina's table -- consistent with, and reinforcing, his profile as a working literary/theatrical critic in Suvorin's circle, but the surname alone still does not permit confident identification beyond that.
- To A. I. Sumbatov, 28 January 1890. Petersburg. §3 Tatishchev, the translator of "Hernani"
This letter identifies Tatishchev as the translator preparing a Russian \emph{Hernani} for the stage, matching the historical Sergei Spiridonovich Tatishchev (1846-1906), a Novoye Vremya publicist independently credited with a Russian verse translation of Hugo's play staged at the Maly Theatre around this period. The corpus's existing (first attested, 1888) names a "Tatishchev" grouped with the critics Mikhnevich and Burenin -- Burenin being Novoye Vremya's own chief critic -- placing that Tatishchev in the same Suvorin/Novoye Vremya milieu this letter's Tatishchev moves in roughly two years later. Reused here as the same person on that shared-milieu evidence, though the identification rests on circumstantial fit rather than an explicit cross-reference in either letter -- flagged for review rather than treated as certain.