3 Ibid., 280. [January 1, 1887.]
4 Pis’ma. Vol. 2. 345.
5 Magarshack. Chekhov: A Life. 107–108.
6 According to Mark Ural’skiy, there are thirty-eight letters in existence from Chekhov to Ezhov; there are 114 from Ezhov to Chekhov. There are thirty-three letters from Chekhov to Lazarev; there are sixty-one from Lazarev to Chekhov. (Chekhov i Evrei, 572, 577.)
7 Letopis’. 280–281. [January 1, 1887.]
8 Works. Vol. 6. 7–11.
9 Translated by Constance Garnett.
10 Letopis’. 284. [January 11, 1887.]
11 Magarshack. Chekhov: A Life. 69.
12 Pis’ma. Vol. 2. 8–9. [To Leykin, January 12, 1887.]
13 Ibid., 347. The rest of the letter is translated by Heim and Karlinsky in Anton Chekhov’s Life and Thought: Selected Letters and Commentary. 64–65.
14 Translated by S. S. Koteliansky and Philip Tomlinson. The Life and Letters of Anton Tchekhov. 82. The majority of the rest of the letter is translated by Constance Garnett, except where noted.
15 Garnett deletes “wing-porch [for lodge] or the main-house terrace in the presence of Ma-Pa [Maria Pavlovna Chekhova], the Counterfeiter and Levitan sort of flavor to it.” (Translated by Heim and Karlinsky. Anton Chekhov’s Life and Thought: Selected Letters and Commentary. 61.)
16 Garnett deletes this: “even though Olga Andreyevna [Golokhvastova] thinks she has settled it.” (Translated by Heim and Karlinsky. Anton Chekhov’s Life and Thought: Selected Letters and Commentary. 61.)
17 Garnett’s footnote: Bobo is P. D. Boborykin.
18 Translated by Louis S. Friedland. Letters on the Short Story, the Drama, and Other Literary Topics. 64. [To Aleksei Suvorin, April 1, 1890.]
19 See p. 331 of Vol. 5 in Collected Works for the title page of Rasskazi (“Stories”), 1888. The collection includes “Mire” and Chekhov has scrawled a message to Kiseleva on it.
20 This paragraph is translated by Heim and Karlinsky. (Anton Chekhov’s Life and Thought: Selected Letters and Commentary. 63.)
21 “Kalkhas,” retitled as “Swansong.”
22 Translated by Constance Garnett.
23 Letopis’. 285–286. [January 14 and 16, 1887.]
24 Letters of Anton Chekhov. Translated by Yarmolinsky. 44. [January 17, 1887.]
25 “Pavel’s phrase ‘shall perish without the law’ became a family saying.” Rayfield. Chekhov: A Life (2021). 119.
26 Letopis’. 288. [January 23, 1887.]
27 Translated by Constance Garnett.
28 Translated by S. S. Koteliansky and Philip Tomlinson. The Life and Letters of Anton Tchekhov. 86. [To Mitrofan Chekhov, January 18, 1887.]
29 Pis’ma. Vol. 2. 19. [January 18, 1887.]
30 Letopis’. 288. [January 1, January 24, 1887.]
31 Translated by Constance Garnett.
32 I’ll run that sentence now through an online Russian dictionary: “On the bed, near the window, lay a boy with open eyes and a surprised expression on his face.” Fine, but it has to be “the boy” rather than “a boy,” because we all know who that boy is.
33 Works. Vol. 6. 629–630.
34 Coope. Doctor Chekhov: A Study in Literature and Medicine. 123.
35 Fyodor Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishment. Translated by, who else, Constance Garnett.
36 Translated by Peter Constantine. 157.
37 Pis’ma. Vol. 2. 20. [Letter to Leykin, January 26, 1887.]
38 Ibid., 22. [Letter to Alexander Chekhov, January 26, 1887.]
39 Letopis’. 289. [January 29, 1887.]
40 Pis’ma. Vol. 2. 24. [Letter to Alexander Chekhov, January 31, 1887.]
February 1887
1 Oliver Sacks. In The River of Consciousness. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017. 147.
2 Pis’ma. Vol. 2. 25. [Letter to Alexander Chekhov, early February 1887.]
3 Translated by Constance Garnett.
4 Translated by Constance Garnett.
5 Pis’ma. Vol. 2. 27–28. [To Suvorin, February 10, 1887.]
6 Letopis’. 291. [February 6, 1887.]
7 Gleb Struve. “On Chekhov’s Craftsmanship.” 467.
8 In the draft of the letter, Chekhov deleted and rephrased various sentences, including this one, perhaps for being too obsequious: “Oh, I’m sorry I’m a bad critic and can’t express my impressions in all their completeness.” (Pis’ma. Vol. 2. 360–361.) See also the facsimile of the first manuscript page (Pis’ma, Vol. 2, 29).
9 Translation by Constance Garnett.
10 This point (1), I translated. Garnett overlooked it.
11 Magarshack. Chekhov: A Life. 170. [To Aleksei Suvorin, January 6, 1889.]
12 Ibid., 98.
13 Gleb Struve. “On Chekhov’s Craftsmanship.” 470.
14 Letopis’. 297–298. [March 10, 1887.]
15 Pis’ma. Vol. 2. 362.
16 Translated by Constance Garnett.
17 Pis’ma. Vol. 2. 35. [To Leykin, February 25, 1887.]
18 Letopis’. 295. [February 28, 1887.]
19 Ibid. [February 27, 1887.]
20 Translated by Heim and Karlinsky. Anton Chekhov’s Life and Thought: Selected Letters and Commentary. 40.
21 Memories of Chekhov: Accounts of the Writer from His Family, Friends and Contemporaries. 117.
22 Letopis’. 296. [February 1887.]
March 1887
1 Translated by Heim and Karlinsky. Anton Chekhov’s Life and Thought: Selected Letters and Commentary. 206. [To Shavrova, September 16, 1891.]
2 Translated by Constance Garnett.
3 Letopis’. 296. [March 2, 1887.]
4 Translated by Constance Garnett.
5 I believe it was in a friendly effort to downplay his astounding productivity that Chekhov told Korolenko, “ ‘Would you like to know how I write my short stories? Here, observe.’ He glanced at my writing desk and picked up the first object that he saw. It was an ashtray. Placing it on the desk right in front of me, he said, ‘If you wish, by tomorrow, I will write a short story. Its title will be “An Ashtray.”’ ” Memories of Chekhov: Accounts of the Writer from His Family, Friends and Contemporaries. 39.
6 Letters. Vol. 2. 33.
7 Translated by Constance Garnett.
8 Translated by Bartlett. Anton Chekhov: A Life in Letters. 87.
9 Pis’ma. Vol. 2. 36–37.
10 Rayfield. Chekhov: A Life (2021). 174.
11 Yarmolinsky. Letters of Anton Chekhov. 45. [To Schechtel, March 11–14, 1886.]
12 Eventually I found an English translation of “An Encounter” in Yarmolinsky’s The Portable Chekhov. Why did Chekhov leave it out of his Collected Works? In the Russian there’s an epigraph, which isn’t in Yarmolinsky’s translation, by a poet named Maximov: “Why do his eyes shine, why has he small ears, a short and almost round head, like a savage predatory animal?”
13 Translated by S. S. Koteliansky and Philip Tomlinson. Life and Letters of Anton Tchekhov. 99. [To Shcheglov, January 1, 1888.] Also, Alexander Kuprin describes the study at Chekhov’s house in Yalta: “The room smells of very fine scents of which A. Pavlovich was very fond.” (Reminiscences of Anton Chekhov. 43.)
14 Letopis’. 303. [April 3, 1887.]
15 “While Anton’s cull disposed of his weaker humorous stories, and his revisions cut the purple passages from many stories, very often he reacted to some fine work with a distaste that is unaccountable, unless the work that he rejected had some private unhappy associations,” writes Donald Rayfield in Anton Chekhov: A Life (1997). 488.
16 Pis’ma. Vol. 2. 38. [To the Chekhov family, March 13, 1887.]
17 Pis’ma. Vol. 2. 39–40. [To Kiseleva, March 17, 1887.]
18 The Letopis’ repeats Chekhov’s mention of sixteen but names seventeen stories. Letopis’. 299. [March 18, 1887.]
19 Pis’ma. Vol. 2. 41–42. [To Suvorin, March 18, 1887.]
20 Ibid., 368–369.
21 Ibid., 39–40. [To Kiseleva, March 17, 1887.]
22 Translated by Heim and Karlinsky. Anton Chekhov’s Life and Thought: Selected Letters and Commentary. 269–270. [To Shavrova, February 28, 1895.]
23 My translation was published in Russian Life on April 23, 2020, with editor Paul Richardson’s helpful corrections.
24 Pis’ma. Vol. 2. 46.
25 Ibid., 47.
26 Ibid., 372.
27 Ibid.
28 “Zhiteyskie Nevzrody” has never been translated into English, as far as I can find.