S-- Lane

Reading notes

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 3 November 1888. Moscow. §7 Sobolev Lane with its houses of ill repute

  renders "Соболев переулок с домами терпимости" plainly and factually. Sobolev Lane (Соболев переулок) was a real Moscow street historically associated with licensed prostitution, near Grachyovka and Trubnaya Square; in the finished story itself Chekhov thinly veils it as "S-- Lane", per period convention for naming disreputable real locations, but here in a private letter to Pleshcheyev he names it outright. Translated faithfully with no softening of the place name or of "houses of ill repute" (domami terpimosti, i.e. brothels), consistent with the corpus's no-softening policy and with letter 3-519's own headnote (\S5), which flags this passage as requiring plain, unsoftened treatment. Chekhov's own qualifier -- that he treats the subject "cautiously, without raking up the filth or using strong language" -- is his own authorial aside on method, not editorializing added in translation, and should not be read as an invitation to soften the translation itself.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 11 November 1888. Moscow. §4 I say a great deal about prostitution, but decide nothing. Why is it that your newspaper writes nothing about prostitution? It's the most terrible evil there is. Our Sobolev Lane is nothing but a slave market.

  this section discusses prostitution in blunt, unsoftened terms ("the most terrible evil there is," Sobolev Lane as "a slave market") and is translated faithfully per corpus policy, with no euphemism substituted for Chekhov's own directness. Sobolev Lane (Соболев переулок) was a real Moscow street near Grachyovka and Trubnaya Square historically associated with licensed prostitution; it is catalogued under the same entity as its appearance in, whose summary already identifies that entity as the real Sobolev Lane behind the veiled "S-- Lane" of the finished story "An Attack of Nerves." This letter names the street outright (as also does in its own private correspondence to Pleshcheyev), consistent with the corpus's practice of using the real name in non-fictional contexts and the euphemized dash-name only for the published story itself. No new place entity is created for this mention; it is treated as the same real-world location already on file.

• To I. L. Leontyev, 20 December 1888. Moscow. §11 Why is it you so dislike talking about Sobolev Lane?

  This mention is the SAME real-world location and is cross-referenced to those two letters for the fuller, more clinical social discussion -- but the register here is markedly different: where 3-519 and 3-530 are matter-of-fact and socially concerned, this passage to Shcheglov is personal and oblique, naming no institution or vice directly, professing fondness for "the people who go there," and admitting Chekhov's own occasional visits ("though I myself go there as rarely as you do").

• A Nervous Breakdown §2 S-- Lane

  Chekhov obscures the real street name behind a dash, per the period journalistic convention for disreputable real locations (compare 'N. town' etc.); contemporary readers would have understood this to mean Sobolev Lane, the historical center of licensed, regulated prostitution in Moscow, near Grachyovka and Trubnaya Square. The story's factual, unsensational geography (named squares, real streets for the nighttime wandering later) roots the fiction in an actual documented urban district and licensing regime rather than an invented vice den.

• A Nervous Breakdown §19 slave markets of old

  The narrator's own simile -- comparing the brothel lane's carefree, indifferent atmosphere to that of an ancient slave market -- is the story's first statement of a comparison that Vasilyev will make explicit and literal by the end of the night (see loc 146, loc 159): that the trade in women here is a form of slavery, and the men who buy access to it are, in function if not in name, slaveholders.