Maria Konstantinovna Zankovetskaya

Reading notes

• To A. S. Suvorin, 2 October 1888. Moscow. §11 Zankovetskaya

  Maria Zankovetskaya, a celebrated Ukrainian actress, named only by surname in Korsh's agitated question about whether Suvorin is still corresponding with her; identified here only by theatrical context, as the source gives no further identifying detail.

• To A. I. Smagin, 4 January 1892. Petersburg. §6 with me rode the Ukrainian queen Zankovetskaya, whom Ukraine will not forget

  Translates "хохлацкая королева Заньковецкая, которую Украина нэ забудэ" -- Chekhov's description, after a late night out to the Petersburg entertainment gardens, of Maria Konstantinovna Zankovetskaya, the celebrated Ukrainian actress already a recurring figure of his admiration elsewhere in the correspondence. \textit{Хохлацкая} here shares its root with this corpus's flagged genuine ethnic slur \textit{хохол} (see at and, where the term is used dismissively or is quoted in order to be argued against), but the two uses are not the same case and should not be read as equivalent. Here the register is warm and celebratory throughout: Zankovetskaya is crowned a "queen," Chekhov reports she is "very likeable" (\S6, following clause), and the line about Ukraine not forgetting her -- rendered in the source with a playful Ukrainian-inflected spelling (\textit{нэ забудэ} rather than standard Russian \textit{не забудет}) that mimics her own speech or performance idiom -- is unmistakably a compliment to her fame and popularity, not a slight. Chekhov is himself part-Ukrainian on his father's side and a lifelong, affectionate user of \textit{хохлы}-family terms for Ukrainians in informal contexts (compare the corpus's note on \textit{хохлы} at, and the recurring salutation "Друзья мои хохлы" elsewhere in his letters); this is that same affectionate register, applied to a specific, real, admired person rather than deployed as a generalization about a group. This edition follows the corpus's honest-distinction practice (see's discussion of жид, and's discussion of the contrasting хохол cases): a shared root does not make every instance a slur, and collapsing this admiring, individual, complimentary usage into the same register as the corpus's genuine pejorative хохол instances would misrepresent both. \textit{Хохлацкая королева} is rendered "the Ukrainian queen" -- preserving the affectionate, folksy sense and the honorific "queen" without importing an English slur the passage does not carry, consistent with how this corpus renders unmarked-register period ethnonyms (compare the китаец policy) while still translating genuinely pejorative uses of the same root at full force elsewhere.

• To M. K. Zankovetskaya, 12 January 1892. Moscow. §3 Yesterday evening, dear Marya Konstantinovna, I called on You and did not find You in.

  The first letter in the corpus addressed directly to Maria Konstantinovna Zankovetskaya, the celebrated Ukrainian actress Chekhov had until now only mentioned admiringly at a remove -- most recently, eight days earlier, as the "Ukrainian queen... whom Ukraine will not forget" after a late night out together in Petersburg (\S6). All of her prior corpus appearances are third-person: Korsh anxiously asking after her, Chekhov reporting on an evening spent in her company. Here, for the first time, Chekhov writes to her: a brief, businesslike note -- he had called at her lodgings the previous evening and missed her -- opening in the formally respectful second-person capitalization ("Вы"/"You") and the honorific "уважаемая" ("dear"/"esteemed") that mark a courteous, not-yet-intimate register appropriate to a first direct address to an admired public figure, distinct from the joking familiarity of his contemporary letters to Suvorin or Smagin.

• To M. K. Zankovetskaya, 12 January 1892. Moscow. §4 The design for the wandering gypsy woman's costume will be sent to You by the artist very shortly.

  An unnamed artist's costume design for a "wandering gypsy woman" (\foreignlanguage{russian}{бродячая цыганка}) role -- evidently for a stage production in which Zankovetskaya was to appear, though neither the play nor the artist is named here. Chekhov is acting as an intermediary passing word of the commission along, consistent with the letter's overall function as a small bundle of practical errands (a book, a forwarded letter, a costume update) rather than substantive correspondence.

• To M. K. Zankovetskaya, 12 January 1892. Moscow. §6 Sincerely respectful and devoted,

  \foreignlanguage{russian}{Искренно уважающий и преданный} -- a formal, warmly respectful epistolary close appropriate to a first direct letter to an admired figure outside Chekhov's intimate circle; compare the plainer "Yours" (\foreignlanguage{russian}{Ваш}) he uses with regular correspondents like Suvorin (\S9) or Smagin (\S10).

• To N. M. Lintvareva, 18 January 1892. Derevnya Belaya. §5 Can you imagine, I have made the acquaintance of the Ukrainian queen Zankovetskaya, whom Ukraine will not forget.

  In the source, this section briefly shifts into a mimicked Ukrainian-accented pronunciation of Russian: \foreignlanguage{russian}{Можэтэ себэ представить} (standard Russian: \foreignlanguage{russian}{Можете себе представить}) and \foreignlanguage{russian}{которую Украина нэ забудэ} (standard: \foreignlanguage{russian}{не забудет}), substituting the vowel \foreignlanguage{russian}{э} for the expected \foreignlanguage{russian}{е}/\foreignlanguage{russian}{ет}. This is affectionate mimicry, not a slur: Chekhov is play-acting the speech idiom associated with Zankovetskaya's own Ukrainian stage fame -- the same warm, celebratory register documented at length in the glossary note to \S6, where the closely related phrase \textit{хохлацкая королева Заньковецкая, которую Украина нэ забудэ} first appears (there, in a letter written five days after their late-night outing together in Petersburg). \textit{Хохлацкая} shares a root with the corpus's flagged genuine ethnic slur \textit{хохол}, but as established at, the two uses are not equivalent; this is the same admiring, individualized usage, now describing a woman Chekhov has met and become genuinely acquainted with (\foreignlanguage{russian}{познакомился}), rather than merely praised at a remove. Russian orthography's eye-dialect substitution (\foreignlanguage{russian}{э} for \foreignlanguage{russian}{е}) has no direct English orthographic equivalent that would not risk misreading as mockery of a different, unrelated accent; the translation therefore renders the sense in plain English ("Can you imagine... whom Ukraine will not forget") and this note records the device honestly for readers of the facing Russian text, consistent with the corpus's practice of documenting untranslatable register features rather than silently flattening them (compare the \textit{adieu} note at \S7 for a different case of a preserved-versus-translated register marker).

• To A. I. Smagin, 26 January 1892. Moscow. §5 your hints are vile slander, for which you will answer to me

  Continues the running comic tease with Smagin over Zankovetskaya and Leshkovskaya begun in \S6 ("Do you think, heartless one, of Leshkovskaya?"); there Chekhov teased Smagin about Leshkovskaya, and here Smagin has evidently returned the favor with an insinuation about Chekhov's own visits to Zankovetskaya, prompting this mock-outraged denial and counter-tease. The joke depends on both actresses already being established figures in the correspondence: Zankovetskaya as a Ukrainian actress and, more practically here, an unexpected source of farmstead leads in Chernigov province; Leshkovskaya of the Maly Theatre as the actress Smagin is teased about.