To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 14 May 1889. Sumy.

1 Written from the Lintvaryova estate at Sumy on 14 May 1889 to Alexei Nikolayevich Pleshcheyev, the poet and Chekhov’s regular literary correspondent, continuing the warm, digressive, joking register already established in the corpus’s earlier Pleshcheyev letters. It is a light, miscellaneous letter of the kind Chekhov wrote when there was no single pressing matter to report: weather and mosquito comedy, a mock-biblical prayer against his creditors, wistful talk of travel and companionship, brief literary and theatrical news, and a run of closing items.

2 After the double dateline (1-2) and a jocular greeting (3), Chekhov opens with an extended comic complaint about the Sumy summer – laziness, crayfish-catching, drying ink, ferocious mosquitoes, and a lyrical aside on the greening Luka countryside and the Lintvaryov family’s good health – undercut by the one real shadow, his "coughing painter". This runs into a fantasy of decamping to Paris and then Tiflis until his money runs out, and a mock-liturgical prayer parodying the Divine Liturgy, asking God to swallow up his creditors.

3 Chekhov then turns more plaintive (4), missing Pleshcheyev’s companionship and professing a preference for "tranquil talk" over argument, with a wistful, self-deprecating fantasy of marrying the wealthy Sibiryakova and endowing an estate for his intimates. He presses Pleshcheyev to come south and imagines a drive together into Ukraine ("Khokhlandia") to visit the Smagins (5), then reports two pieces of Sumy news – Svobodin’s promised visit and Chekhov’s having rented additional lodgings (6), and Pleshcheyev’s son Georgy’s return with a cellist expected to join him in music-making (7).

4 A brief serious note on the recent death of Saltykov-Shchedrin follows (8), praising his uniquely open contempt for the shabby "sredni" Russian intelligentsia, contrasted with mere satirists like Burenin who only mock. Chekhov then asks Pleshcheyev to write, professes fondness for his handwriting and pride in the correspondence, and jokes about sealing away his and Suvorin’s letters for his grandchildren to read in fifty years, invoking Gayevsky and a supposed Goncharov "commandment" against early publication of private letters (9).

5 The letter closes with a run of short items (10-13): news that Ivan Shcheglov has written a drama and Chekhov himself has "dashed off" a comedy for the Literary-Theatrical Committee to review; a boast about the novel he plans to sell in Petersburg that November, with a mock-grandiose fantasy of a patriotic banquet abroad; regards to Pleshcheyev’s family and to Anna Mikhailovna, an upbeat note on the Committee’s last session, a joke about addressing Pleshcheyev’s envelope with "Serenity" instead of the formal honorific "His High Nobility," and closing greetings; and the signature.

7 No corrupted or garbled text was found in this letter, and no editorial gap markers appear in the source. double dateline, salutation, a continuous run of miscellaneous news and reflection, and signature – written in one sitting to one addressee.