work
"Рассказ моего пациента" ("The Story of My Patient")
The Story of My Patient
also: Рассказ моего пациента, The Story of My Patient
The working title Chekhov gives, in this September 1891 letter to Albov, to a novella he had begun drafting in 1888 (then titled "В восьмидесятые годы" / "In the Eighties") and set aside over censorship worries; he here reports it nearly finished and asks Albov to judge whether "Severny Vestnik"'s censor will pass it, offering to withdraw it quietly rather than risk a formal refusal. Completed in 1892 and published, retitled "Рассказ неизвестного человека" ("The Story of an Unknown Man" / "An Anonymous Story"), in "Russkaya Mysl" in early 1893 -- not in "Severny Vestnik" -- already present in this corpus at.
Reading notes
- To M. N. Albov, 30 September 1891. Moscow. §3 "The Story of My Patient"
"Рассказ моего пациента" ("The Story of My Patient") is the working title Chekhov gives here, in September 1891, to a novella he had begun drafting in 1888 under the title "В восьмидесятые годы" ("In the Eighties") and set aside, expecting censorship trouble. He did not finish it under this title either: the piece was completed in 1892 and published, retitled "Рассказ неизвестного человека" ("The Story of an Unknown Man" / "An Anonymous Story"), in "Russkaya Mysl" (not "Severny Vestnik") in early 1893 -- already present in this corpus at. Chekhov's censorship worry in this letter proved essentially well-founded: the finished work ultimately went to a different, evidently more permissive outlet than the one addressed here. No crossref is drawn to the story file itself (crossrefs in this corpus link letter-to-letter), but the entity's summary records the eventual retitling and destination for any reader following the thread forward.
- To M. N. Albov, 22 October 1891. Moscow. §5 The novella
This is the same novella Chekhov announced to Albov in under the working title "Рассказ моего пациента" ("The Story of My Patient") -- there he flagged censorship doubts as merely possible; here, three weeks later, he reports the doubt resolved in the worst direction: "Нецензурность ее не подлежит теперь никакому сомнению" ("That it will not pass the censor is now beyond any doubt"). The immediate trigger was Suvorin's visit to Moscow and his blunt verdict on hearing the opening lines and plot summary. Chekhov's response matches exactly the contingency he laid out in: rather than risk a formal censor's refusal (which would poison the story's chances everywhere), he withdraws it quietly and sets it aside "until such time" ("до поры до времени"). The work was eventually finished in 1892 and published, retitled "Рассказ неизвестного человека" ("The Story of an Unknown Man"), in "Russkaya Mysl" rather than "Severny Vestnik" -- see the entity summary and.