To M. I. Chaykovsky, 17 January 1890. Petersburg.

The repeated bare dateline in ("17 Jan." following the full "17 January 1890. Petersburg." of) is a recurring segmentation feature of this letter batch generally – it appears identically in several neighboring, unambiguously ordinary letters from the same weeks (e.g., -752, -754, -759) The body itself has full, unelided Russian grammar, a warm personal salutation ("Дорогой Модест Ильич"), a conventional closing courtesy ("Будьте здоровы"), and a full possessive signature ("Ваш А. Чехов"), none of which appear in this corpus’s one confirmed telegram (. its bare "Чехов." signature and elliptical, preposition-dropping body). No structural or coherence concerns: this is a single short note to a single addressee.

Chekhov writes to Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Модест Ильич Чайковский, 1850-1916), the composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s younger brother, a librettist and playwright with whom Chekhov corresponded on literary matters. The note asks Modest Ilyich to pass along a copy of Tolstoy’s "Крейцерова соната" ("The Kreutzer Sonata") – shortened here in Chekhov’s own hand to "Крейц соната" – to N. M. Sokovnin, giving his address on Vasilyevsky Island, and to have Sokovnin return it to Chekhov afterward. Tolstoy’s novella, banned by the Russian censor from ordinary publication in early 1890, was circulating at this time chiefly in manuscript and lithographed copies passed hand to hand among literary Petersburg and Moscow; this note is a small, concrete instance of that circulation, not a request to obtain a printed book through ordinary channels.