From Ada's letter to Van: She [Marina] sticks to Stan's principle of having lore and role overflow into everyday life, insists on keeping it up at the hotel restaurant, drinks tea v prikusku ('biting sugar between sips'), and feigns to misunderstand every question in Varvara's quaint way of feigning stupidity - a double imbroglio, which annoys strangers but which somehow makes me feel I'm her daughter much more distinctly than in the Ardis era. (2.1)

Many a Chekhov character drink tea v prikusku but only one of them is a female. From Chekhov's Notebooks: Спальный вагон 1 класса. Пассажиры №№ 5, 6, 7 и 8. Говорят о невестках. В народе страдают от свекровей, а в интеллигенции — от невесток. «Жена моего старшего сына образованная, и в воскресных школах, и библиотечки, но бестактна, суха, жестока, капризна и физически противна; за обедом вдруг истерика, деланная по поводу какой-то газетной статьи. Ломака. Другая невестка: в обществе держится ничего, но в домашней жизни это халда, курит, скупа и когда пьёт чай в прикуску, то берёт сахар между губами и зубами — и при этом говорит». (A passanger's daughter-in-law, as she drinks tea v prikusku, takes sugar between lips and teeth and speaks in the process.)

In a letter of February 2, 1900, to Ivan Leontiev-Shcheglov Chekhov apologizes for his pevuchiy ton bogomolki (singsongy devotional tone): Простите, что я заговорил певучим тоном богомолки. In a letter of February 5, 1893, to Suvorin (see my previous post) Chekhov says that in his play Proshla groza (The Thunderstorm Passed) Merezhkovski pereshchegolyal (has surpassed) in hypocrisy Jean Shcheglov (the author of Okolo istiny, "Near Truth", the play in which Chertkov's publishing house Posrednik is ridiculed). Btw, Shcheglov comes from shchegol (goldfinch), the song-bird sung by Mandelshtam.

In a letter of March 1, 1892, to Suvorin Chekhov compares Merezhkovski (who goes with his wife to Nice where he will speak about literature at the bed of the old poet Pleshcheev) to Onegin (who prepares to amuse his half-alive uncle): Но боже, какая скука ехать в Ниццу затем, чтобы у одра Алексея Николаевича непрерывно говорить о литературе! Положение хуже онегинского. Восторженный и чистый душою Мережковский хорошо бы сделал, если бы свой quasi-гётевский режим, супругу и «истину» променял на бутылку доброго вина, охотничье ружьё и хорошенькую женщину. Сердце билось бы лучше. In Chekhov's opinion, Merezhkovski would do well if he exchanged his pseudo-Goethean style of life, spouse and istina ("truth") for a bottle of good wine, fowling-piece and pretty woman.

A cousin of VN's teacher of Russian literature at the Tenishev school, Zinaida Hippius at a session of the Literary Fund asked VN's father, its president, to tell VN that he would never, never be a writer (Speak, Memory, p. 184). Zinaida Hippius's penname as a critic was Anton Krainiy. In The Gift (Chapter Five) Christopher Mortus writes in his review of Fyodor's The Life of Chernyshevski: "I have digressed from the immediate theme of my article. But then, sometimes, one can express one's opinion with much more exactitude and authenticity by wandering "around the theme" - in its fertile environs..."

*A play on spermwhale (Physeter catodon). Cf., 'Yes,' she [Ada] said, 'he [John Starling] was quite a lovely lad and I sort of flirted with him, but the strain and the split were too much for him - he had been, since pubescence, the puerulus of a fat ballet master, Dangleleaf, and he finally committed suicide. You see ("the blush now replaced by a matovaya pallor") I'm not hiding one stain of what rhymes with Perm.' (2.9) The editor of the Mir iskusstva magazine, S. P. Dyagilev ("Dangleleaf") was a correspondent of Chekhov. In a letter of December 30, 1902, from Yalta Chekhov asks Dyagilev to thank D. V. Filosofov (Dyagilev's nephew, a close friend of Merezhkovski and his wife) for his review of The Seagull in Mir iskusstva and mentions istina (truth): Теперешняя культура — это начало работы во имя великого будущего, работы, которая будет продолжаться, быть может, еще десятки тысяч лет для того, чтобы хотя в далеком будущем человечество познало истину настоящего бога — т. е. не угадывало бы, не искало бы в Достоевском, а познало ясно, как познало, что дважды два есть четыре. (Modern culture is only the first beginning of work for a great future, work which will perhaps go on for tens of thousands of years, in order that man may if only in the remote future come to know the truth of the real God--that is not, I conjecture, by seeking in Dostoevski, but by clear knowledge, as one knows twice two are four.)