To V. P. Burenin, 15 December 1886. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on December 15, 1886, this brief note goes to Viktor Burenin, the influential critic and columnist at "New Times" (Suvorin’s paper), for whom Chekhov was doing an errand. A Madame Popyrnikova, who had self-published a collection of verse titled "Thoughts and Feeling" – already known to Chekhov and Burenin as a bit of an "hysterical" vanity edition – had asked Chekhov, as one of the paper’s contributors, to use his connections to secure her a bibliographic notice. Chekhov passes the request along to Burenin, noting drily that the book had in any case already been sent to him. He closes by reporting, on the strength of the poet’s own count, that Russia currently has 174 living poets, with a second volume apparently needed to fit them all in.

2 The letter is a small piece of literary-world stage business rather than a major document, but it shows Chekhov’s habitual role as a broker between petitioning minor writers and the editors who could actually help them, and his taste for turning even a favor into a joke. The footnoted aside – comparing the glut of 174 poets to the many competing "remedies" offered against an incurable disease – is a characteristic piece of Chekhov’s medical wit, using his training as a doctor to deliver a barbed literary opinion about the state of contemporary Russian poetry.