To M. I. Chaykovsky, 16 March 1890. Moscow.
М. И. ЧАЙКОВСКОМУ, 16 марта 1890 г. Москва.
Headnote
Written from Moscow on 16 March 1890, about six weeks before Chekhov left for his journey across Siberia to Sakhalin. The addressee, Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky, was a playwright and the younger brother of the composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky; Chekhov had recently praised Modest’s play through their mutual circle (see the letter to Pleshcheyev of 15 February 1890, this corpus) and here relays a concrete publishing opportunity for it.
The letter moves through four short topics: (1) business on Modest’s behalf – an editor from the journal Artist wants to stage/publish his play The Symphony next season, and Chekhov reports the going rate (150-250 rubles for the whole play, not per printer’s sheet) and advises Modest to answer noncommittally rather than commit himself months in advance, since the play has already lost its "virgin" status by passing through Rassokhin’s lithography house; (2) a wry aside on his own Sakhalin-research reading (coal prices, wind directions, soil composition) and on two pieces of his own literary business – a story just sent to Novoye vremya and his reluctant decision to send his play The Wood Demon (Леший) to Severny vestnik; (3) an extended, warmly hyperbolic tribute to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky occasioned by Chekhov’s forthcoming book Gloomy People (Хмурые люди), which he is dedicating to the composer – Chekhov ranks him second only to Tolstoy in Russian art (Repin third, himself ninety-eighth) but worries the book’s grim, "psychopathological" character makes it an unworthy vehicle for the dedication; (4) a closing pun – "Вы чехист?" ("Are you a Chekhist?," a coinage off Chekhov’s own name meaning roughly "a partisan/devotee of Chekhov") – followed by a plain-good-wishes sign-off and his Moscow address.
Section 6, "Вы чехист?," is a nonce coinage built on Chekhov’s own surname (Чехов → чехист, on the pattern of an "-ist" partisan or devotee), roughly "a Chekhov-ist" or "a devotee of Chekhov" – rendered here as "a Chekhist" to preserve the wordplay.
Section count