On the network you can find a story about how, after the death of the famous writer, an unusual poetic work was discovered in his personal papers. We checked whether such a case really took place.
As the preceding poem reads the text, after the death of Anton Pavlovich, an unusual poem of unknown authorship was discovered in his archive. It turned out to be completely compiled from the names of the Chekhov works. It is often clarified that the Book World magazine No. 7 for 1910 announced about this case.
The work itself is ten quatrains with an ABAB rhyme, in which the names of more than 100 works of Chekhov, mainly stories, go one after another. You can read about this find on resources such as "Picabu","Pearls of thought", As well as on the blog of the State Duma deputy Anatoly Wasserman. History gained particular popularity on social networks - on Facebook they shared it Vadim Dolinin (1153 reposts at the time of writing of the material), pages "The Hermitage of our souls"(978)," "Culturology"(799)," "You can't refuse to taste"(576) and Golbis (489). In Telegram, it can be seen on the channels History Porn (60,000 views) and The end (58,000). In 2021, a fragment of the poem sounded in a television program "What? Where? When?".
The first question that the reader may arise: if Chekhov’s poem was found in the writer’s personal archive, then could it belong to himself? Like other significant Russian prose writers (Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy), Chekhov tried himself in a poetic genre, albeit without much success. Most of these attempts cannot be called serious - they belong to the early period of the writer's work and are short humorous poems. Everything that remains of the writer to lovers of poetry has entered 18th volume The complete works of Chekhov, published in 1982. There is no work that interests us there, like any of its references in other volumes. Note that the play “Cherry Garden” that appears in the poem was completed on September 26, 1903, and for the first time Published and delivered Only next year, the last in Chekhov’s life. By that time, the writer did not write poetry for a long time, and the hit of someone else's poem into his personal archive shortly before his death looks at least strange.
The answer to the question of interest could be given by the publication of the “Book World” mentioned in the publications. Indeed, the bibliographic messenger of the same name I went out weekly in 1902–1905 and 1907-1911. However, today there are no numbers of this publication even in accessible archives Russian State Librarynot to mention other funds. In addition, such publications did not correspond to the profile of the messenger, which was dedicated to almost entirely advertising books, entering In the “Mobile Catalog of the publications of P.P. Soykin” and entering the editorial office shortly after the exit.
Thus, the only way to find out the fate of this poem is to study the history of its publication. And here we are faced with the following fact: in print publications (at least available through the service "Google Books") It is not mentioned at all, but in the World Wide Web is not found earlier than 2011. At the same time in early versions The viral text is not featured by the journal Book World, but the number of a certain newspaper Volzhsky Word of February 7, 1910. Another characteristic feature is the signature "G-K." Under the poem. The earliest of these publications Dated February 21, 2011 and belongs to the user of the Living Journal Lana Kurolesova (Lana_kurlesova). “Verified” contacted Lana, and she confirmed that she was the first to place the indicated work. According to her, she really found a poem in the number of the Volga Word Samara newspaper for the indicated date posted on the website of the regional library (today these materials are not available). And even provided screenshots:
If you believe the signatures of G.-K., a poem with the accompanying information should have been a reprint from the daily publication "Coopeta newspaper", Published in St. Petersburg (then Petrograd) in 1908-1916 and Moscow in 1909-1910. Specialized sites called The “newspaper-kopeka” “The most popular Boulevard newspaper of the Russian Empire”, which printed city news, scandalous stories, adventurous fiction and a shallow commentary on political life. Today, free access to the archive containing the numbers of this publication for 1909-1910 is absent, however, judging by the reputation of the “newspaper-kopeca”, it is not worth trusting the information from it.
We turned to the Associate Professor of the Faculty of Humanities of the Higher School of Economics, a specialist in Russian literature Mikhail PavlovtsWhich several years ago also became interested in this issue. However, the survey conducted by him in the circle of specialists did not give results, except for entering the same issue of the Volga Word newspaper. No one was a sign with the indicated text (including the director of the Chekhov Museum in Yalta), although some noted that fans of the writer's work loved to send him such opuses. For example, a “reader” portrait of Chekhov is known, the lines of which are lines from his works. However, this particular poem in the archives of the writer did not meet the literary critic.
Thus, today it is impossible to give an accurate answer regarding the fate of the poem, which has become the theme of viral posts. With a high probability, it appeared after the death of the writer in 1904, but by 1910 at least one newspaper wrote about him. It is impossible to completely exclude the appearance of such a text in the writer's papers, although we consider it unlikely, since the entire archive of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, including correspondence, was studied thoroughly.
Photo on the cover: Library of Congress
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