Anton Chekhov ( 1860- 1904 )

Russian playwright and one of the great masters of modern short story. In his work Chekhov combined the dispassionate attitude of a scientist and doctor with the sensitivity and psychological understanding of an artist. Chekhov portrayed often life in the Russian small towns, where tragic events occur in a minor key, as a part of everyday texture of life. His characters are passive by-standers in regard to their lives, filled with the feeling of hopelessness and the fruitlessness of all efforts. "What difference does it make?" says Chebutykin in Three Sisters. 

"There is not, or there hardly is, a single Russian gentleman or university man who does not boast of his past. The present is always worse than the past. Why? Because Russian excitability has one specific characteristic: it is quickly followed by exhaustion" (from Letters on the Short Story, the Drama and other Literary Topics, 1924) 

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in the small seaport of Taganrog, southern Russia, as the son of a grocer and grandson of a serf, who had bought his own freedom and that of his three sons in 1841. He also taught himself to read and write. Chekhov's mother was Yevgenia Morozov, the daughter of a cloth merchant. Chekhov's childhood was shadowed by his father's tyranny, religious fanaticism, and long nights in the store, which was open from five in the morning till midnight. "When I think back on my childhood," he later said, "it all seems quite gloomy to me." 

He attended a school for Greek boys in Taganrog (1867-68) and Taganrog grammar school (1868-79). The family was forced to move to Moskow following his father's bankruptcy. At the age of 16, Chekhov became independent and remained for some time alone in his native town, supporting himself through private tutoring. 

In 1879 Chekhov entered the Moskow University Medical School. While in the school, he started to publish hundreds of comic short stories to support himself and his mother, sisters and brothers. His publisher at this period was Nicholas Leikin, owner of the St. Petersburg journal Oskolki (splinters). His subjects were silly social situations, marital problems, farcical encounters between husbands, wives, mistresses, and lovers, whims of young women, of whom Chekhov had not much knowledge - the author was was shy with women even after his marriage. His works appeared in St. Petersburg daily papers, Peterburskaia gazeta from 1885, and Novoe vremia from 1886. 

Chekhov's first novel, Nenunzhaya pobeda (1882), set in Hungary, parodied the novels of the popular Hungarian writer Mór Jókai. As a politician Jókai was also mocked for his ideological optimism. By 1886 Chekhov had gained a wide fame as a writer. His second full-length novel, The Shooting Party, was translated into English in 1926. Agatha Christie used its characters and atmosphere in her mystery novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926). 

Chekhov graduated in 1884, and practiced medicine until 1892. In 1886 Chekhov met H.S. Suvorin, who invited him to become a regular contributor for the St. Petersburg daily Novoe vremya. His friendship with Suvorin ended in 1898 because of his objections to the anti-Dreyfus campaingn conducted by paper. But during these years Chechov developed his concept of the dispassionate, non-judgemental author. He outlined his program in a letter to his brother Aleksandr: "1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality; flee the stereotype; 6. compassion." 

Chekhov's fist book of stories (1886) was a success, and gradually he became a full-time writer. The author's refusal to join the ranks of social critics arose the wrath of liberal and radical intellitentsia and he was criticized for dealing with serious social and moral questions, but avoiding giving answers. However, he was defended by such leading writers as Leo Tolstoy and Nikolai Leskov. "I'm not a liberal, or a conservative, or a gradualist, or a monk, or an indifferentist. I should like to be a free artist and that's all..." Chekhov said in 1888. 

The failure of his play The Wood Demon (1889) and problems with his novel made Chekhov to withdraw from literature for a period. In 1890 he travelled across Siberia to remote prison island, Sakhalin. There he conducted a detailed census of some 10,000 convicts and settlers condemned to live their lives on that harsh island. Chekhov hoped to use the results of his research for his doctoral dissertation. It is probable that hard conditions on the island also worsened his own physical condition. From this journey was born his famous travel book The Island: A Journey to Sakhalin (1893-94). Chekhov returned to Russia via Singapore, India, Ceylon, and the Suez Canal. From 1892 to 1899 Chekhov worked in Melikhovo, and in Yalta from 1899. 

"My life is tedious, dull, monotonous, because I am a painter, a queer fish, and have been worried all my life with envy, discontent, disbelief in my work: I am always poor, I am a vagabond, but you are a wealthy, normal man, a landowner, a gentleman - why do you live so tamely and take so little from life?" (from The House with the Mezzanine, 1986) 

Chekhov was awarded the Pushkin Prize in 1888. Next year he was elected a member of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. In 1900 he became a member of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, but resigned his post two years later as a protest against the cancellation by the authorities of Gorky's election to the Academy. Later, in 1900, Gorky wrote to him: "After any of your stories, however insignificant, everything appears crude, as if written not by a pen, but by a cudgel." 

As a short story writer Chekhov was phenomenally fast – he could compose a little sketch or a joke while just visiting at a newspaper office. During his career he produced several hundred tales. 'Palata No. 6' (1892, Ward Number Six) is Chekhov's classical tale of the abuse of psychiatry. Gromov is convinced that anyone can be imprisoned. He develops a persecution mania and is incarcerated in a horrific asylum, where he meets Doctor Ragin. Their relationship attracts attention and the doctor is tricked into becoming a patient in his own ward. He dies after being beaten by a charge hand. - The symmetrical story has much similarities with such works as Samuel Fuller's film The Shock Corridor (1963), and Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over Cockoo's Nest (1975). 

Today Chekhov's fame today rests primarily on his plays. He used ordinary conversations, pauses, noncommunication, nonhappening, incomplete thoughts, to reveal the truth behind trivial words and daily life. His characters belong often to the provincial middle class, petty aristocracy, or landowners of prerevolutionary Russia. They contemplate their unsatisfactory lives unable to make decisions and help themselves when a crisis breaks out.

Chekhov's first full-length plays were failures. When Chaika (The Seagull), written in Melikhovo, was revised in 1898 by Stanislavsky at the Moskow Art Theatre, he gained also fame as a playwright. Chekhov described The Seagull as a comedy, but it ends with the suicide of a young poet. The idea for the play partly emerged from a day's hunting trip Chekhov had made with his friend Isaac Levitan, who shot at a woodcock, which did not die. Disgusted, Chekhov smashed the bird's head in with his rifle butt. 

Another masterpieces from this period is Dyadya Vanya (1900, Uncle Vanya), a melancholic story of Sonia and his brother-in-law Ivan (Uncle Vanya), who see their dreams and hopes passing in drudgery for others. Tri sestry (1901, The Three Sisters) was set in a provincial garrison town. The talented Prozorov sisters, whose hopes have much in common with the Brontë sisters, recognize the uselessness of their lives and cling to one another for consolation. "If only we knew! If only we knew!" cries Olga at the end of the play. 

Vishnyovy sad (1904, The Cherry Orchaid) reflected the larger developments in the Russian society. Mme Ranevskaias returns to her estate and finds out that the family house, together with the adjoining orchard, is to be auctioned. Her brother Gaev is too impractical to help in the crisis. The businessman Lopakhin purchases the estate and the orchard is demolished. "Everything on earth must come to an end..." 

In these three famous plays Chekhov blended humor and tragedy. He left much room for imagination - his plays as well as his stories are in opposition to the concept of an artist as a mouthpiece of political change or social message. However, in his late years Chekhov supported morally the young experimental director, Vsevolod Meyerhold, who hoped to establish a revolutionary theater. Usually in Chekhov's dramas surprise and tension are not key elements, the dramatic movement is subdued, his characters do not fight, they endure their fate with patience. But in the process they perhaps discover something about themselves and their monotonous life. 

"Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day." (from Uncle Vanya, 1897) - "When a woman isn't beautiful, people always say, 'You have lovely eyes, you have lovely hair'." (from Uncle Vanya) 

Chekhov bought in 1892 a country estate in the village of Melikhove, where his best stories were written, including 'Neighbours' (1892), 'Ward Number Six', 'The Black Monk' (1894), 'The Murder' (1895), and 'Ariadne' (1895). He also served as a volunteer census taker, participated in famine relief, and worked as a medical inspector during cholore epidemics. In 1897 he fell ill with tuberculosis and lived since either abroad or in the Crimea. 

Chekhov married in 1901 the Moscow Art Theater actress Olga Knipper (1870-1959), who had several years central roles in his plays on stage. In Yalta Chekhov wrote his famous stories 'The Man in a Shell,' 'Gooseberries,' 'About Love,' 'Lady with the Dog,' and 'In the Ravine.' His last great story, 'The Betrothed,' was an optimistic tale of a young woman who escapes from provincial dullness into personal freedom. Tolstoy, who admired Chekhov's fiction, did not think much of his dramatic skills. When he met Chekhov in Yalta, he said: "Don't write any more plays, old thing." Chekhov himself thought that Tolstoy was already a very sick man at that time, but he lived longer than Chekhov. 

Chekhov died on July 14/15, 1904, in Badenweiler, Germany. He was buried in the cemetery of the Novodeviche Monastery in Moscow. Though a celebrated figure by the Russian literary public at the time of his death, Chekhov remained rather unknown internationally until the years after World War I, when his works were translated into English. 

Chekhov's brother Aleksandr, who married the author's mistress Natalia Golden, had problems with alcohol. His son Mihail moved in the 1920s first to Germany and then in the United States, where he worked as a teacher of acting and acted among others in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945). It has been said that during WW II the German army saved Chekhov's house in Yalta because Mihail's wife Olga, whose aunt was married to Chekhov, had been photographed with Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring. She also was a Soviet agent and knew Stalin.

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 Wisdom.... comes not from age, but from education and learning."

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"Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something."

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"Everything on earth is beautiful, everything -- except what we ourselves think and do when we forget the higher purposes of life and our own human dignity."

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"Art, especially the stage, is an area where it is impossible to walk without stumbling. There are in store for you many unsuccessful days and whole unsuccessful seasons: there will be great misunderstandings and deep disappointments… you must be prepared for all this, expect it and nevertheless, stubbornly, fanatically follow your own way."

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"People should be beautiful in every way - in their faces, in the way they dress, in their thoughts, and in their innermost selves."

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"If an intelligent, educated, and healthy man begins to complain of his lot and go down-hill, there is nothing for him to do but to go on down until he reaches the bottom--there is no hope for him. Where could my salvation come from? How can I save myself? I cannot drink, because it makes my head ache. I never could write bad poetry. I cannot pray for strength and see anything lofty in the languor of my soul. Laziness is laziness and weakness weakness. I can find no other names for them. I am lost, I am lost; there is no doubt of that."

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"My mother and father are the only people on the whole planet for whom I will never begrudge a thing. Should I achieve great things, it is the work of their hands; they are splendid people and their absolute love of their children places them above the highest praise. It cloaks all of their shortcomings, shortcomings that may have resulted from a difficult life."

~ Anton Chekhov