place
Surami Pass
also: Сурамский перевал, Surami
A mountain pass on the railway line between Batum and Tiflis in Georgia, crossing the Likhi Range; Chekhov singles out the stretch of line over the pass as especially poetic, full of tunnels, crags, rivers, and waterfalls.
Reading notes
- To N. A. Leikin, 12 August 1888. Sumy. §4 Surami Pass
The mountain pass on the Batum-Tiflis railway line that Chekhov singles out as especially poetic, with its tunnels, crags, rivers, and waterfalls.
- To A. S. Suvorin, 27 June 1890. Blagoveshchensk. §3 Imagine the Suram Pass made to serve as a riverbank
The Surami Pass crosses the Likhi Range in Georgia (then part of the Russian Empire), a landmark of dramatic mountain scenery Chekhov had seen on earlier travels in the Caucasus. Scaling that pass up into a riverbank is his shorthand for the Amur's cliffs and crags -- the kind of comparison he reaches for repeatedly in these dispatches when ordinary description fails him.