place
Colombo
also: Коломбо, Ceylon, Цейлон
The main port of Ceylon (Cyeylon, in the source specified parenthetically), named as a stop on Chekhov's planned return voyage from Sakhalin.
Reading notes
- To A. S. Suvorin, 9 December 1890. Moscow. §6 Цейлон -- место, где был рай
"Ceylon -- the place where paradise was," playing on the old tradition (found in some medieval geographies and popular lore) locating the earthly Garden of Eden on or near Ceylon/Sri Lanka. Chekhov later uses the same hell/paradise pairing explicitly in the companion letter (10 December 1890, to Leontyev/Shcheglov): "Я был и в аду, каким представляется Сахалин, и в раю, т. е. на острове Цейлоне" ("I have been both in the hell that Sakhalin seems, and in the paradise, that is, on the island of Ceylon") -- the same rhetorical figure deployed twice within a day or two, to two different correspondents.