THE DIFFERENT TIME OF THE KISELYEVS (ON THE MATERIALS OF UNPUBLISHED LETTERS TO CHEKHOV)

Abstract

The article deals with the letters of A. Chekhov’s friends, the writer M. Kiselyeva and her husband A. Kiselyev, Head of Zvenigorod zemstvo, to Chekhov. In chronological order this collection covers the most significant period of Chekhov’s biography, from 1886 to 1900, and unfolds many aspects of his life in the Babkino area and Zvenigorod zemstvo. There were many persons who came into different contacts with Chekhov (their notes, though not found and studied so far, do wait in the wings; in particular, one source is P. Arkhangelsky’s memoirs). There were many epistolary and memoir documents (contemporary writers’ letters, the young Chekhovs’ letters, N. Golubeva’s (M. Kiselyeva’s sister) notes, and many others). The Kiselyevs’ 109 letters can be regarded valuable in terms of their deliberate mundane character as there are more ‘non-literary’ letters but at the same time they are not trivial at all. This fact enables the researcher to have a different perspective on somewhat pragmatic (A. Kiselyev’s stories about the zemstvo’s everyday routine; M. Kiselyeva’s stories about her mystical visions; their complaints about their financial and health problems) and linguistic (word play, puns, vivid descriptions, life events presented as jokes) character of the Kiselyevs’ correspondence with Chekhov, and to extend the borders of the writer’s biography. Thus a different understanding of Chekhov’s storylines can be suggested. These letters also reveal some aspects of the life of Chekhov and his family members; they enable the author to interpret variously literary legacy of various writers, to consider the stories of their works’ creation, the characters’ prototypes and artistic forms from a different angle.