From the diary of a writer-publisher: 23

16 May 2023
The suspense about the Ukrainian ‘counter-offensive’ is terrible. I hope it will last. It winds the Russians up and keeps them guessing. Moreover, except at Bakhmut, Russian forces have been in deep defensive positions for months now, enabling the Ukrainians slowly but inexorably to build up their military punch, and the longer that goes on the better. Of course if a peace could be signed that withdrew all Russian forces from the East and submitted the Crimean question to international law it would be better. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian battle plan has to be as clever and unexpected as possible, and their attack devastating enough to be decisive. Many people think that Putin is finished if he fails in Ukraine, and especially if Kyiv retakes Crimea, but perhaps the days of palace revolution are over in Russia: the new bosses will attempt to keep him as some ailing figurehead to whom they give a state funeral, so as not to rock the boat too much. However, I have always believed that the Russian military hate Putin for dropping them unprepared in this mess and destroying their unity of command, so if they are defeated in Ukraine they will make him the scapegoat. There will be a disabling move against him by top army and security figures, but they will be too wary of his remaining popularity to do a Beria on him.

24 May
We have been in the Lake District, amongst other things looking for the rare butterfly the Duke of Burgundy Fritillary (Hamearis lucina, Linnaeus 1758). It’s not a true Fritillary butterfly at all, but the only European member of the large family Riodinidae (‘Metalmarks’, referring to the white spots underneath which superficially resemble the silver spangles on the underside of true Fritillaries).  And I’m glad to say we found it:

Photograph by Will Miles, May 2023

It’s an exquisite little butterfly, which is recovering its numbers at certain U.K. sites. The males are intensely aggressive: whilst they wait for a female to come along, they position themselves on a perch known as a lek from which they will aerially attack other males, as well as insects much bigger than themselves. It’s often said that no-one knows why the butterfly was given its English name (in French it is known simply as la Lucine), but it could have been by analogy with aristocratic butterflies like the Queen of Spain Fritillary — and no-one really knows how that got its name, either.

8 June
It is now almost impossible to buy a foreign newspaper in Cambridge. W.H. Smith, who only a year ago sold French, German, Spanish, Russian and Polish ‘papers, might have a copy of Le Monde Diplomatique if you are lucky. Sainsbury’s have stopped selling European newspapers, the shop opposite King’s College that used to sell a good range no longer sells newspapers at all, and a general store run by some young Arab men which sold newspapers in European languages, Arabic and Russian, did not survive the pandemic.

Is it something to do with Brexit and an assumption by newsagents that it’s not ‘necessary’ now for anyone to read foreign newspapers? Is it the result of a national attack of insularity? Or is it that everyone is supposed to read newspapers online? (Mind and sight destroying for me, at least.) Hypotheses are invited in the Comments column.

13 June
I have received three new creations by my old friend and collaborator, mature writer Harvey Pitcher: two short pieces of non-fiction with a Chekhovian connection, and a four-act play with, I think, undertones of The Cherry Orchard. Harvey is seeking what one might call a professional amateur production of the play, but meanwhile he has kindly allowed me to feature one of his prose pieces, entitled ‘Melikhovo 2004’, as a guest post on 15 July, which will be the 119th anniversary of Chekhov’s death at Badenweiler.

Melikhovo was the estate south of Moscow where Chekhov lived from 1892 to 1899; today it is a museum. A big conference was held there on the centenary of Chekhov’s death, at which Harvey acquainted Russians with the circumstantial memoir of an émigré Russian, Leo Rabeneck, who as a young man was present when Chekhov died. In his guest post Harvey speculates on an aspect of his experience at the conference and shares with us his thoughts about those ‘good times in Anglo-Russian relations that we enjoyed around the turn of the century’ and whether they will ever return.

Sam2 and I are hoping to be able to put into Harvey’s post a link to the full PDF text of his published translation of Rabeneck’s memoir. I felt it would look morbid if I added to the post itself an image of the very photograph of the dead man that Leo and his brother took the following day after the corpse had been washed and dressed, so I decided to embed it in the PDF. I know the photograph well (as Rabeneck says, it was published throughout the Russian press). However, when I went onto the Web to find it, I discovered that the second image offered was the following one, which I first saw in The Times of 5 January 2018 illustrating — presumably in good faith — an article about tests recently carried out on a blood spot on the shirt Chekhov was wearing at the moment of death:

‘Chekhov on the death bed in Badenweiler 1904’

I believe this image is what in common English parlance is called a fake. My reasons:

— It purports to be before the corpse was washed and dressed, yet Chekhov’s face is not skewed to one side, as it was in death and remained, noticeably, even after Dr Schwörer and Leo Rabeneck had turned the body onto its back next morning. In Rabeneck’s photo (taken after the body was washed and dressed) you can still see the tilt of Chekhov’s head resulting from him having died on his side and rigor mortis having set in.

— Chekhov’s face is too pale. He was suntanned at the time of his death, as Rabeneck remarks and his own photograph shows, and his face was not as long as above.

— I know of no mention in the literature of a photo being taken between Chekhov’s death at 3 a.m. on 15 July and Rabeneck’s return to the hotel room with Olga Leonardovna at about 5 p.m. that day, by which time the undertakers had done their work; although the latter could, of course, have taken their own photo after Chekhov was turned on his back but before they washed and dressed him. It seems that Rabeneck was partly in attendance whilst the undertakers were there, so his and his brother’s photograph could have been taken either before or after Leo returned with Olga Leonardovna to view the body, ‘surrounded by flowers’; most likely, surely, after.

The quasi-byline on the Pinterest version of the above image reads in Russian: ‘Poets, Rare photographs, Conceptual photograph’ (sic). ‘Conceptual photography’, I discover from the Web, ‘uses images to transmit abstract ideas […] bringing a new meaning to photography that transcends its use for portraiture, landscapes and snapshots.’ Is the image a ‘conceptual photograph’, then? I think we should be told, before too many people follow The Times and believe it is an historical document.

Incidentally, the tall object on the bedside table in this image might be thought to be the bottle of champagne from which Chekhov drank his final glass, and which was indeed placed on the bedside table; but closer inspection shows it is a candlestick with something square, looking perhaps like a label, at its base.

17 June
The advance at Zaporizhzhia is bitter and bloody… I cannot help feeling the Ukrainians have massive blows in reserve, but their commanders’ biggest asset is flexibility, their ability to adapt tactics, think outside the box, and surprise. The Russian army, created by stultifying autocracy, can never compete with that.

In 1992 the then liberal newspaper Moskovskii komsomolets published a Russian poem written by me in Moscow in 1970 and called me ‘a great friend of Russia’. So I am: of all that is good in the life and culture of the Russian people. Laughably, Putin and his accomplices accuse the West of ‘wanting to destroy Russia as a country’. No, it is they who are destroying the Russia I am talking about and believe in.

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SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS 

‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement

‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’  Michael Pursglove, East-West Review

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer

‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.