To A. S. Suvorin, 23 December 1888. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 23 December 1888 to Alexei Suvorin, this letter continues the running "Tatyana Repina" casting saga of through and, but opens with a note of real friction: the promised playscript arrived a day late, jeopardizing Nikulina’s rehearsal schedule. The letter then broadens into one of Chekhov’s most sustained pieces of literary self-reflection in this corpus – a meditation on the absence of serious Russian criticism and what it means to write without it – before returning to detailed notes on Suvorin’s play and a further round of casting news, and closing with promised deliverables for the New Year.

2 Chekhov reports the play reached him only at 8 o’clock the previous evening, two days later than Suvorin had promised, and worries that the impatient Nikulina may already have had the parts copied out from an obsolete text (3). He describes sending her the corrected copies while keeping the old redaction for himself, relaying his own instruction to the cast granting them full freedom to cut or change the play except for passages Suvorin has flagged, and noting that so long as Adashev’s part is preserved intact, Repina’s role is protected along with it (4).

3 5 is the letter’s centerpiece: a long, uninterrupted meditation prompted by rereading the play, moving from its specific merits and faults to a general complaint that Russian criticism is too weak and compromised (naming Tatishchev, Mikhnevich, and Burenin as its only practitioners) to make sense of any writer’s work, so that both praise and blame arrive meaninglessly; Chekhov confesses to fits of despair about who he is even writing for, contrasts working for money (which he says he does only sluggishly, having little of it) against working for praise (which merely irritates him, citing the mismatched reception of his story "The Attack"), and arrives at a genuine statement of what he wants instead: to be treated as raw material for the study of life, the way a star is necessary to an astronomer. He closes the reflection by turning it back to Suvorin’s own heroine, Tatyana Repina, whose fictional death he says was rendered pointless by the same absence of criticism that lets whole peoples and cultures vanish for want of historians.

4 6-7 return to concrete dramaturgical notes on "Tatyana Repina": whether Lensky should interrupt a monologue, Repina’s physical state (a stomach ailment) as a constraint on how she can plausibly listen and speak, line-by-line comments on specific pages, praise for one small insertion ("I am alone, alone"), and, prompted by a letter just received from Suvorin, a firm argument against bringing the character Sasha back on stage at the end of Act IV, since only Ivanov’s dead mother or the dead Jewish woman could plausibly speak for him, and both are unavailable.

5 8 is a lighter aside: news that Chekhov’s own farce "The Bear" is going into a second printing, answered with a mock rebuttal of Suvorin’s needling about his playwriting, and an extended comic pitch for an invented vaudeville, "Thunder and Lightning," plus a self- deprecating riff comparing his own fluency in vaudeville plots to oil gushing from the Baku oil fields. turns serious and weary: a story sent to Khudekov that Chekhov is ashamed of, an evening lost tending to the poet Palmin after a drunken fall, and a rare, direct complaint about the exhausting demands of visitors, borrowers, and unpaying patients that closes with the dry line that all that’s missing is an unhappy love affair.

6 10-11 deliver a fresh round of "Tatyana Repina" casting news gathered from a visit to Nikulina: the Olenina role has gone to Leshkovskaya just ahead of a late bid from Fedotova; Kotelnikov is settled as Sadovsky; Gorev is coming around but hasn’t yet committed; Yuzhin, Zonnenstein/Pravdin, Medvedeva, and Rykalova are placed in further roles; the benefit performance is fixed for 16 January, and Chekhov relays Nikulina’s request (which he has promised to press on Suvorin’s behalf) for expanded material in Acts II through IV to better suit the beneficiary. urges Suvorin to attend the 16th in person for the actors’ sake and mentions a post-rehearsal meeting with Lensky to discuss any cuts the cast may still want.

7 The letter closes with Christmas greetings timed to arrive on the first day of the holiday, regards to Suvorin’s household (12), the signature (13), and two publishing promises: material for the children’s book "The Children" and a further collection of stories, with a rueful note that illustrator friends have held up the drawings for "Kashtanka" (14); and a firm commitment – "I give my word" – to write exclusively for Suvorin’s paper until March, after which he will give "Severny Vestnik" a story, plus New Year’s and January deliverables: a fairy tale and "The Princess" (15), the latter already promised, and apparently still outstanding, since’s 19 December letter.