To A. S. Suvorin, 14 May 1889. Sumy.
А. С. СУВОРИНУ, 14 мая 1889 г. Сумы.
Headnote
1 Written from the Lintvaryov family’s estate at Sumy on 14 May 1889 to Alexei Sergeyevich Suvorin, the wealthy publisher of "Novoye Vremya" and Chekhov’s most important literary patron and correspondent, this letter belongs to the same spring 1889 cluster as the Bourget "Le Disciple" letter and continues its rapid-fire miscellany of theater business, family news, and literary opinion.
2 After the double dateline (1-2), Chekhov opens by thanking Suvorin for a proof copy of his play "Tatyana Repina," noting wryly that his own crossed-out name and corrected misprints somehow survived into print, and joking that the cover should have claimed Leipzig rather than Petersburg as the place of publication for a "greater illusion" (3). He then turns to the grave subject of his brother Nikolai’s tuberculosis, describing the household’s position – mother, sister, and a fractious, endlessly commanding invalid – as one he cannot leave, before the text breaks off at an editorial gap (4).
3 The bulk of the letter is again a miscellany. Chekhov dismisses the playwright Ivan Shcheglov as no rival, offers an extended, proud self-assessment of his own new play (eventually "The Wood Demon"), and instructs Suvorin on ticket politics regarding Viktor Burenin and Alexei Bezhetsky (5). A joking aside about the popular-science writer "Elpe"’s milk-drinking advice, broken by a second editorial gap, leads into a plan to auction off a novel-in-progress in Petersburg that November and then retreat to the Pyrenees (6), followed by a brief note that the actor Pavel Svobodin has promised a visit and will again be dismayed at Chekhov’s ignorance of Lessing (7).
4 Chekhov then gives an extended critical judgment of the ending of Paul Bourget’s novel "Le Disciple," objecting that its courtroom "justice" material is grafted on from detective fiction and that the tutor Sixte’s reading of the "Our Father" fails to follow its own logic through to a Galilean declaration of scientific truth, while praising the novel’s Charlotte seduction scene as genuinely affecting (8). He answers a question about a "doctress" who dislikes Suvorin with a mordant, extended comparison of women doctors to a dying-out species (9), asks after a Suvorin-circle couple apparently on the verge of marriage (10), reports briefly on a diphtheria outbreak in the village and his own crayfishing with a young cobbler (11), and closes with a blessing (12) and his customary joking signature, "Potemkin" (13).
6 Two editorial gaps ("Пропуск в источнике") occur in the source, at the end of (breaking off mid-thought after "Without me they cannot be left") and within (after the joke about the milk-drinking advice). Both are preserved literally as bracketed gap markers in the translation rather than bridged or reconstructed. No other corrupted or garbled text was found. dateline, thanks for the "Tatyana Repina" proof, family/medical news broken by a gap, an extended theatrical and literary miscellany broken by a second gap, literary criticism of Bourget, personal news, and closing greetings and signature