To I. L. Leontyev, 5 June 1890. Irkutsk.
И. Л. ЛЕОНТЬЕВУ (ЩЕГЛОВУ), 5 июня 1890 г. Иркутск.
Headnote
Written 5 June 1890 in Irkutsk to Ivan Leontyevich Leontyev, who wrote under the pen name Shcheglov, addressed here by the affectionate diminutive "Zhan" (a play on the French "Jean," consistent with the nickname used elsewhere in the Leontyev/Shcheglov correspondence in this corpus, e.g.). Shcheglov was a career military officer turned writer and one of Chekhov’s closer literary correspondents. This letter falls some ten weeks after Chekhov’s 22 March 1890 letter to the same addressee, written just before his departure from Moscow; it picks up from the road, partway through the overland journey to Sakhalin.
are the dateline (given twice, as a heading and then repeated inline – an artifact of how this edition typesets the letter, not two documents), opens with a full salutation, the body develops continuously through an account of the journey and forward travel plans, and it closes with conventional epistolary courtesies – an inquiry after the addressee’s life and a request not to mope, regards to his wife, a blessing, the signature, and a closing postscript-like line asking for his return address.
Content: Chekhov writes from Irkutsk, his first substantial stop after crossing Siberia by cart, apologizing for the long silence (he explains he was too sad at parting with his family to write before leaving Moscow, had no chance to write en route, and did not have Shcheglov’s address in any case). He describes the journey itself only in general, summary terms – long, hard, at times unbearable: flooded rivers, cold, a diet of nothing but tea, filthy clothes, heavy boots, impassable mud – and says the difficulty crowded out any real attention to scenery or to the people he met, whom he judges not very different from Russians generally. He singles out only the Yenisei River and the taiga as genuinely extraordinary, but demurs that a letter is too cramped a form to convey them and promises a full account in person in December (when he expects to be back). He sketches the onward route – to Lake Baikal, then the Amur, then by boat to Sakhalin – and asks after Shcheglov’s summer and his writing, urging him not to be bored or low-spirited. The letter closes with regards to Shcheglov’s wife, a blessing, the signature, and a final line asking for Shcheglov’s current address, since Chekhov did not have it.