To A. P. Lensky, 8 December 1888. Petersburg.
А. П. ЛЕНСКОМУ, 8 декабря 1888 г. Петербург.
Headnote
1 Written from Petersburg on 8 December 1888, this is the second letter in this corpus addressed directly to the actor Alexander Pavlovich Lensky of the Maly Theatre, following letter 3-513 (26 October 1888, Moscow), in which Chekhov reported that his one-act play "Kalkhas" – retitled "The Swan Song" – had cleared the dramatic censorship and the Literary Committee. Six weeks on and now writing from Petersburg rather than Moscow, Chekhov turns to different business entirely: thanking Lensky’s wife for a literary gift, discussing a request for oratorical specimens, and previewing a public reading of a new story. The warmly familiar, business-and- courtesy register of the first letter continues here.
2 Chekhov opens with thanks – relayed through Lensky – to Lidia Nikolaevna for a "legend" she has apparently sent or given him (the letter does not specify which legend; it is not otherwise identified in this corpus). He praises it as both good in itself and, so far as he can tell from talking with critics and poets, not yet used by anyone else in print. He weighs three options for it: folding it into the novella he is currently writing, spinning it off as a short independent tale, or giving it away outright to a poet – and leans toward the first, using it as an ornamental set piece within the novella. (The novella in question is not named here.)
3 He then turns to a second, unrelated request: Lensky had evidently asked him to help select "specimens of the orator’s art" (образцы ораторского искусства) – presumably passages of rhetoric for declamation or teaching – and Chekhov admits, to his own embarrassment, that he has not found a single one yet, calling the task harder in practice than he expected.
4 This leads him to propose a larger project: rather than hunting for scattered specimens, someone should compile a proper reader (хрестоматия) of them. He notes that the existing reader compiled by Weinberg is, by report in Petersburg, unsatisfactory to teachers and also very expensive, and suggests that Lensky assemble a committee of five or six people in Moscow to produce a better and cheaper one – estimating a year’s work and a cover price of about a ruble and a quarter. He asks Lensky to think it over so they can discuss it further when Chekhov is back in Moscow.
5 Chekhov closes with a preview of a public event: on the coming Monday he is to read his new story at the Literary Society, and anticipates a lively debate, singling out two formidable opponents by name – the lawyers Andreyevsky and Prince Urusov – before signing off with thanks again to Lidia Nikolaevna and a warm, conventional close.