place
Boromlya
also: Боромля
A village in the Sumy district of Ukraine, near Luka, invoked here purely as a byword for a small, unremarkable staging-post: Chekhov jokes that the Siberian highway has "its own Boromlyas" -- way stations 30--35 versts apart -- comparing the vast Siberian distances to a familiar small landmark from the family's own Sumy-district geography.
Reading notes
- To I. P. Chekhov, 4 May 1891. Aleksin. §3 worse than Boromlya
Chekhov's recurring byword, established on the Siberian journey the previous year, for a tediously unremarkable stretch of road or a minor way-station: "no Boromleis" and the Siberian highway's own "Boromlyas". Its reappearance here, over a year later and in an entirely different, domestic context (the road from the dacha to Aleksin station), confirms it as a settled piece of Chekhov's private vocabulary rather than a one-off Siberian coinage.