To V. S. Likhachev, 5 September 1889. Moscow.

Written 5 September 1889 from Moscow, just after Chekhov’s return from the south (he had spent much of the summer at Luka in Ukraine and traveling in the Crimea and Caucasus following the death of his brother Nikolai in June). The addressee, Vladimir Sergeyevich Likhachev (1849–1910), was a minor playwright and translator, a fellow contributor to the Petersburg theatrical world; Chekhov addresses him as “colleague” and jokingly as his “in-law by the Academy” – a reference to their shared connection to the judging/reading apparatus of the Academy of Sciences’ Griboyedov Prize for drama (both men were, in different years, either laureates or judges in that circle), used here as an affectionate mock-formal title rather than a literal family relation.

Content is brief and businesslike: Likhachev had evidently written to Chekhov asking what he knew about a new journal called “Artist” (a Moscow theatrical/literary magazine that began publishing in 1889). Chekhov says he knows no more than Likhachev does, but reports a half-remembered winter conversation with the journal’s publisher, F. A. Kumanin, who had asked Chekhov for a play. Chekhov mentions he has since found and answered a letter from Kumanin (asking Kumanin to write back with fuller details) and jokingly claims a “premonition” that Kumanin will call on him in person soon, promising to relay whatever comes of it. He closes with formal good wishes and signature. A one-line postscript answers what appears to be a second question from Likhachev: Chekhov says he never issued a separate offprint/separate edition of his play “Ivanov”; he did receive a hundred author’s copies from the journal “Severny Vestnik” (The Northern Herald, which had serialized or printed related Ivanov material) but they were quickly given away/dispersed (“scattered... like smoke”).