To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 17 October 1888. Moscow.
А. Н. ПЛЕЩЕЕВУ, 17 октября 1888 г. Москва.
Headnote
1 Written from Moscow on 17 October 1888 to the poet and "Severny Vestnik" editor Alexei Nikolaevich Pleshcheyev, this short letter opens with a favor: Chekhov asks Pleshcheyev to get his one-act play "Kalkhas" ("Calchas"), also called "The Swan Song" ("Лебединая песня"), read and approved by the Literary Committee (the censorship body that had to clear plays for the imperial stages). Chekhov disclaims any real regard for the piece – he calls it without merit and says he attaches no importance to it – but explains that the actor Alexander Pavlovich Lensky of the Maly Theatre (the corpus’s established "Lensky," previously seen receiving a subscriber’s copy of the Garshin collection and praised for his acting in letter 497) is determined to perform it on the Maly’s smaller stage, and that it is really Lensky’s request being relayed, not Chekhov’s own. The play’s courier is again "Jean Shcheglov," Chekhov’s French-styled nickname for his friend the writer Ivan Leontievich Leontiev, who publishes under the pen name "Shcheglov" and has appeared repeatedly in this correspondence (cf. letters 490, 497, 499).
2 Chekhov closes the request with a characteristic mock-solemn flourish, threatening Pleshcheyev with damnation at the hands of "Lucifer and his angels" if he refuses, while professing personal indifference to the outcome and deference to Pleshcheyev’s editorial authority "given by God." He adds, half in jest, that if he himself is ever seated on the Committee, he will exercise his veto without mercy – a small joke about censorship that plays against the real request just made.
3 The rest of the letter is miscellany in the same terse, list-like style seen in the neighboring short notes to Pleshcheyev (cf. letters 490, 502): a brief complaint about being short of money (continuing the money worries that run through this whole autumn 1888 sequence. letters 483, 488, 490, 499), a request that Pleshcheyev’s wife, Anna Mikhailovna, not worry (presumably about the same money matter or about a story of Chekhov’s in production at the journal, as in letter 490), a one-line note that "Georges" has already called on Pleshcheyev, a one-line remark on Moscow’s dull, gray autumn mood, and a closing that sends regards to Pleshcheyev’s family and greetings from Chekhov’s own household.