To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 10 February 1890. Moscow.
А. Н. ПЛЕЩЕЕВУ, 10 февраля 1890 г. Москва.
Headnote
Written from Moscow in early 1890, less than three months before Chekhov set out on the journey across Siberia to the penal colony on Sakhalin Island – the expedition that would occupy him for the rest of the year and produce "Ostrov Sakhalin" (Sakhalin Island). The letter catches him in the run-up to that departure: he reports reading "all manner of nonsense" in preparation and states the plan as fixed, timed to when the Kama River opens after winter (a necessary detail, since the Kama was part of his river-and-rail route east). The addressee, Alexey Nikolayevich Pleshcheyev, was the poet, translator, and editor at "Severny Vestnik" ("The Northern Herald") who had become one of Chekhov’s closest literary confidants and correspondents in this period; the letter’s opening – "having passed through fire, water, and the trumpets of brass" (a Russian idiom for having survived every kind of ordeal) – refers to a stay in Petersburg from which Chekhov has just returned, alluding self-mockingly to a month of social and literary obligations there.
The letter’s other main business is "Leshy" (usually rendered "The Wood Demon"), the play Chekhov was revising at this time and intended for publication in Pleshcheyev’s "Severny Vestnik"; he promises to send it around 20 February and, in characteristic self-deprecation, asks that it be returned to him for destruction if it does not please. ("The Wood Demon" was later substantially reworked into "Uncle Vanya.") He also notes that Alexey Suvorin – the influential publisher and Chekhov’s chief patron and correspondent through the 1890s, owner of "Novoye Vremya" – and Dmitry Grigorovich – the elder novelist who had, some years earlier, written Chekhov an admiring letter urging him to take his talent seriously – are both currently in Moscow. Chekhov mentions having seen a production of Racine’s "Phèdre" ("Федра"), finding it "good, but tedious," and adds the dry aside that Moscow in general is tedious just now.
Two datelines appear in the source: "10 февраля 1890 г. Москва." (the full archival dateline, formatted per the edition) and "10 февраль." (a short marginal repetition of the same date, evidently retained from the source scan). Both are preserved as separate sections per the source structure