place

Yalta

also: Ялта

A resort town on the southern coast of Crimea, popular in the 19th century among the well-off Russian public for its mild climate and the fashionable 'grape cure' (ampelotherapy).

Reading notes

The Lady with the Little Dog §3 Yalta
The Crimean seaside resort on the Black Sea where fashionable Russians took their holidays; the story's opening setting, and later the place Gurov cannot stop remembering.
A Long Tongue §1 Yalta
A resort town on Crimea's southern coast, fashionable in the 1880s among the well-off Russian public for its mild climate. Natalya Mihalovna's just-completed holiday there, and the mountain excursions it included, supply the whole story's material.
On August §6 Yalta
The Crimean resort town, famous in the 19th century as a fashionable destination for the well-off, including for its 'grape cure' (ampelotherapy).
To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 15 September 1888. Moscow. §10 жидовствующей Ялте
a genuine period ethnic slur in Chekhov's own hand. "Жидовствующей" is built on "жид" (a derogatory term for a Jewish person, roughly equivalent to an English-language slur), and literally means "Judaizing" or "Jew-ridden" -- Chekhov is disparaging Yalta's cost of living by casting its resort clientele and merchants as characteristically Jewish in a contemptuous register, reflecting casual antisemitism common in his milieu. Translated faithfully as "Jew-ridden Yalta" per the no-softening policy; the slur is preserved rather than euphemized so the historical record is not sanitized.
To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 3 August 1889. Yalta. §3 the Tatar-barbershop town of Yalta
Chekhov's dismissive shorthand for Yalta -- a resort town on the southern Crimean coast, then popular for its mild climate and the fashionable 'grape cure'; the tone here is bored and mocking rather than admiring.
To V. K. Mitkevich, 12 August 1889. Sumy. §3 Yalta
A resort town on the southern coast of Crimea; Chekhov's recent trip there, mentioned only in passing as the reason for his delayed reply.
To N. A. Leikin, 13 August 1889. Sumy. §4 In that Tatar-and-ladies' city I spent about three weeks, giving myself over to idleness and sweet indolence... In a land where there is much good wine and excellent horses, where there is one man to every twenty women, it is hard to be economical.
TRANSLATED FAITHFULLY, NOT SOFTENED. Chekhov's Russian ("татарско-дамском граде", literally "Tatar-and-ladies' town"; "где на 20 женщин приходится один мужчина", literally "where for 20 women there is one man") is an overtly sexist, objectifying joke: Yalta is cast as a resort stocked with women for a visiting man's diversion, and Chekhov's admission that it was "hard to be economical" there implies he spent freely on female company (echoing the same self-mocking "gravitated to female company" register he uses of Odessa in, \S5). This is characteristic of Chekhov's private, informal correspondence with male friends and should not be excised or euphemized in translation; it is flagged here for editorial awareness, not for omission. It sits uneasily beside \S3's genuine grief over his brother, within the same letter -- a juxtaposition typical of how Chekhov's letters could pivot rapidly between registers.
To A. S. Suvorin, 28 October 1889. Moskva/. §9 The pole you recommended for swimming I recall with a shudder. In Yalta it very nearly killed me.
A rueful, joking aside about a near-drowning: Suvorin had apparently recommended using a pole as a swimming aid, and Chekhov reports it nearly killed him at Yalta. No other letter in this corpus so far elaborates the incident; treated here as a passing anecdote, not further glossed.
To Ye. M. Shavrova, 11 January 1891. Petersburg. §9 Yalta
The Crimean resort town where Chekhov and Shavrova first met in 1889; invoked here as the standard against which she is (jokingly) measuring his present mood, and which he insists is a different thing entirely from the ill-fated calico ball.