place
Vesuvius
also: Везувий, Mount Vesuvius
The active volcano near Naples whose eruption in 79 AD buried Herculaneum and Pompeii; invoked here as the mock cause of an eighteen-centuries-belated charity evening.
Reading notes
- Departed from Moscow: §4 Vesuvius
The volcano near Naples, Italy, whose 79 AD eruption buried Herculaneum and Pompeii; invoked here as a mock-charitable cause eighteen centuries out of date, since no contemporary Vesuvian eruption had produced living victims to aid.
- To F. O. Shekhtel, 14 December 1891. Moscow. §7 Climbed Vesuvius and sniffed the crater
Vesuvius, the active volcano near Naples, climbed during Chekhov's recent trip abroad (autumn 1891, through Italy and elsewhere with Suvorin) -- recounted here with the same deflating, self-mocking irony he brings to the famine-relief appeal and the roulette losses in the same section.
- To the Chekhovs, April 1891. Naples. §3 Even Vesuvius has gone out from the tenderness of it
A comic hyperbole: Chekhov credits his family's unusual burst of letter-writing (five letters waiting at once) with an effect so touching it could extinguish an active volcano -- the first of several affectionate jabs at his relatives' normally poor correspondence habits in this letter.
- The Third Case §1 Vesuvius
The volcano near Naples whose eruption in 79 AD buried Pompeii and Herculaneum; invoked alongside Etna as comic hyperbole for the narrator's passion.