To A. S. Suvorin, 4 February 1889. Moscow.
А. С. СУВОРИНУ, 4 февраля 1889 г. Москва.
Headnote
1 Written from Moscow on 4 February 1889 to Alexei Sergeyevich Suvorin, publisher of "Novoye Vremya" and Chekhov’s closest correspondent and patron in this period, in the lull immediately after the Petersburg run of "Ivanov" and the close of the theatrical season. The letter opens with a double dateline (1-2, "4 February 1889. Moscow." and the shorthand "4 Feb.") before the salutation proper.
2 Chekhov sends along, as a curiosity rather than a document of any practical use, an autograph of the playwright Shpazhinsky (3), then describes his post-Petersburg mood in the extended image of having fallen "out of the sphere of Bengal lights" – the colored theatrical flares used for stage effects – "into a half-dark storeroom": bored, listless, hungover from the excitement of the production, yet feeling the pull back toward his own quiet prose (4). He and Suvorin can now rest until winter, when "the devil" will again begin tempting them into new theatrical schemes (5).
3 The bulk of the letter is warmly personal. Chekhov anticipates Suvorin’s forthcoming review of "Ivanov" with half-ironic, half-earnest vanity, imagining framing it on the wall of his farmstead and boasting of it to future grandchildren, and turns the compliment back on Suvorin as a "literary general" whom actors fear (6). He asks Suvorin to pass a message to his wife, Anna Ivanovna, thanking her for her visible engagement during the performance, and confesses that during the show he watched only her and the painter Repin (7). He then repeats a set of small practical requests – proofs of the story "Children," photographs from Yurkovsky and from the Shapiro studio, and a French dictionary, framed as a half-joking "bribe" for his continued goodwill (8).
4 The closing movement reflects on the "Ivanov" production and the actors who performed it. Chekhov contrasts Maslov’s contemptuous view of actors as "buffoons and low people" with his own newfound tenderness toward the profession, comparing the cast to patients he once treated or pupils he once taught, and recalling with feeling that the actress Strepetova wept after Act III (9). He renounces his earlier scruple that it was beneath a "man of letters" to walk onto the stage arm in arm with an actor and take a bow – "to the devil with aristocratism, if it lies." The letter closes with thanks for Suvorin’s hospitality, regards to Suvorin’s wife (here called "Nastyusha," a diminutive) and sons, and an apology to Alexei Alexeyevich for missing a farewell (10), and a plain signature (11).