place
Due
also: Дуэ, Douay, Due post, Due mine
A penal-labor post and coal-mining settlement on the west coast of Sakhalin, notorious in Chekhov's account for its especially harsh convict-labor conditions; he gave it a chapter of its own in Sakhalin Island. The reference here is to a standing joke about its overseers' official catchphrase of reassurance -- "vsyo obstoit blagopoluchno" ("everything is entirely satisfactory") -- which Chekhov borrows ironically to describe the placid state of his own Moscow news.
Reading notes
- To V. O. Kononovich, 27 February 1891. Moscow. §7 like the overseers at Douay
\textit{подобно надзирателям в Дуэ} -- Due (Дуэ), a coal-mining penal post on Sakhalin's west coast that Chekhov had visited and devoted a chapter to in \emph{Sakhalin Island}, known there for the grim uniformity of its overseers' stock report, \textit{"vsyo obstoit blagopoluchno"} ("everything is entirely satisfactory"). Chekhov borrows the island's own bureaucratic catchphrase, self-mockingly, to describe the placid emptiness of his Moscow news -- the joke folds his own recent book-in-progress back into the letter's small talk.
- The Murder §149 the roadstead of Duye on Sakhalin
Due (Дуэ), on Sakhalin's west coast, was the site of the island's most notorious coal-mining convict labor and one of its harshest penal posts; Chekhov visited and documented it directly during his 1890 investigation of the island, material he draws on for this entire final part of the story.