ANTON CHEKHOV

Portrait of Anton Chekhov painted by I.E. Bras (1872 - 1937)
Photo © Novosti

Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich 1860-1904, Russian writer and physician.
The son of a grocer and grandson of a serf, he helped support his family, while he studied medicine, by writing humorous sketches.
His reputation as a master of the short story was assured when in 1888 The Steppe, a story in his third collection, won the Pushkin Prize. The Island of Sakhalin (1893-94) was a report on his visit to a penal colony in 1890. Thereafter he lived in Melikhovo, near Moscow, where he ran a free clinic for peasants, took part in famine and epidemic relief, and was a volunteer census-taker. His first play, Ivanov (1887), had little success, but The Seagull (1898), Uncle Vanya (1899), The Three Sisters (1901), and The Cherry Orchard (1904) were acclaimed when produced by the Moscow Art Theater.
In 1901 Chekhov married the actress Olga Knipper, the interpreter of many of his characters. Three years later he died of tuberculosis.
The style of his stories, novels, and plays, emphasizing internal drama, characterization, and mood rather than plot and focusing on the tragicomic aspects of banal events, had great influence.

"I am afraid of those who will look for tendenciousness between the
lines and who are determined to see me either as a liberal or a conservative.
I am neither a liberal nor a conservative, neither a gradualist nor a monk
nor an indifferentist.
I would like to be nothing more than a free artist, and I regret that God did
not give me the gift to be one. I hate falseness and coercion in all their
forms . . . . Pharisaism, stupidity and arbitrariness reign not merely in
merchants' houses and police stations: I see them in science, in literature,
among the young.
That is why I have no particular passion for either policemen or butchers or
scientists or writers or the young. I consider brand-names and labels a prejudice.
My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration,
love, and absolute freedom, freedom from force and falseness in whatever form
they express themselves. That's the platform I'd subscribe to if I were a great
artist."

You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.

To judge between good and bad, between successful and unsuccessful
would take the eye of a god.

The university brings out all abilities including incapability.

A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer.
He is a man who has signed a contract with his conscious and his sense
of duty.

When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it
can't be cured.

One must be a god to be able to tell successes from failures without
making a mistake.

The more refined one is, the more unhappy.

Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living
that wears you out.

If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry.

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

The personal life of every individual is based on secrecy, and perhaps
it is partly for that reason that civilised man is so nervously anxious
that personal privacy should be respected.

No psychologist should pretend to understand what he does not understand....
Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand nothing.

...only he is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write
foolish things.

If you cry "forward," you must without fail make plain in what
direction to go.

  1860 - Anton Pavlovic Chekhov is born, the son of a grocer, in Taganrog.
  1875 - Chekhov's father flees Taganrog due to bankruptcy; Chekhov's family
         is kicked out of their house.
  1879 - Chekhov rejoins his family in Moscow, enrolls in University to study
         medicine.
  1882 - Chekhov is a regular contributor to the St. Petersburg humorous
         journal, Oskoki, with short stories and sketches.
  1884 - Chekhov begins practicing medicine.
  1887 - Chekhov is a literary success in St. Petersburg with his first
         play, Ivanov.
  1888 - Chekhov begins publishing his stories in the "thick journals."
  1890 - Chekhov begins to see himself as a serious writer.
  1890 - April 21 Chekhov leaves to travel across Siberia to visit and report
         on the penal colony on the island of Sakhalin where he arrived on June 11.
         He interviews the entire population of prisoners and exiles.
  1895 - Moscow Art Theatre opens. Chekhov writes The Seagull.
  1896 - The Seagull opens. It survives only five performances after a
         disastrous first night.
  1897 - Chekhov realizes he is suffering from advanced consuption.
  1898 - The Seagull is produced successfully by the Moscow Art Theatre.
  1899 - Uncle Vanya is produced successfully by the Moscow Art Theatre.
  1901 - Three Sisters is produced to poor reviews. - Chekhov marries
         actress Olga Knipper.
  1904 - The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov's last play, is produced.
  1904 - After two heart attacks, Chekhov dies in a hotel bedroom in the
         German spa of Baden weiler at the age of 44.

Anton Chekhov was born the son of a grocer and grandson of a serf in Taganrog in 1860. After his father fled Taganrog in 1875 because of bankruptcy, Chekhov's family was kicked out of their house by a former lodger. In 1879 Chekhov rejoined his family, now in Moscow with his father, and enrolled at the University to study medicine. he began practicing medicine in 1884 - the start of a sporadic second career which was to bring him much hard work but little income. Chekhov's first career was that of a writer of humorous material and he began contributing to minor magazines under the pen name of Antosha Chekhonte in 1880. By 1882, he was a regular contributer the other St. Petersburg humorous journal Oskolki with his short stories and sketches, and a column on Moscow life.

By 1887, Chekhov was a literary success in St. Petersburg. His first play, Ivanov, was commissioned from a producer who wanted a light entertainment in the Chekhonte style. Produced in Moscow, it was received with a mixture of clapping and hissing. In 1888, Chekhov began publishing his stories in the "thick journals" and survived his career in comic journalism to emerge as a serious and respectable writer. At the same time, he began writing four one-act farces for the theatre.

Checkhov's second play, the Wood Demon (later used as raw material for Uncle Vanya) opened in 1889, but survived for only three performances. the following year, Chekhov made an appalling journey across Siberia to visit and report on the penal colony on the island of Sakhalin where he interviewed the entire population of prisoners and exiles at the rate of 160 a day.

As a doctor, Chekhov tried desperately to prevent recurrence of the 1891 famine among the peasants in the back country of Nizhny Novgorod and Voronyesh provinces. He became an energetic and enlightened landowner, cultivating the soil and doctoring the peasants and spent three months organizing the district against an expected colera epidemic.

The Seagull opened in 1886 and survived only five performances after a disastrous first night. Chekhov vowed never to put on another play, even if he "lived another seven hundred years." The following year, he was forced to recognize that he was suffering from advanced consumption, having suffered a violen lung hemorrhage. Also plagued by piles, gastritis, migraine, dizzy spells, and palpitations of the heart, he decided to winter in Nice.

In 1989, Chekhov moved to the Crimean warmth of Yalta. That same year, the Seagull was revived by Stanilsavsky and became an immediate success. In 1899, Uncle Vanya was also produced successfully by the Moscow Arts Theatre. Three Sisters was produced in 1901 to poor reviews, however. In 1904, Chekhov's last play, the Cherry Orchard, was produced in January. In 1904, after two heart attacks, Chekhov died in a hotel bedroom in the German spa of Badenweiler.

Olga Knipper The five-year friendship and marriage of Anton Chekhov and the actress Olga Knipper, who created many of the central female roles in his plays, is one of the most extraordinary love stories in the theatre. Separated by Knipper's work at the Moscow Art Theatre and Chekhov's illness which bound him to Yalta, their relationship flourished and survived almost insurmountable obstacles through a constant stream of letters.

After Chekhov's death, Olga Knipper kept a diary for some two months, consisting of imaginary letters to him.

August 19, 1904

At last I am able to write to you, Anton, my dear, my sweet, so near and yet so far! I don't know where you are now. I've been waiting a long time for the day when I could write to you. Today, I went to Moscow and visited your grave ... How splendid it is, if you only knew. After the arid south everything here seems so lush, so scented, so fragrant, it smells of earth and fresh grass, the trees make such a gentle sound. I can't believe you are not among the living! I need desperately to write to you, to tell you everything I have been through since your final illness and that moment when your heart stopped beating, your poor, sick, worn-out heart.
Now that I am actually writing to you, it seems strange but I have a quite irrational desire to do so. And as I write to you, I feel you are alive, out there somewhere, waiting for a letter. Dearest darling, my sweet love, let me speak some words of tenderness, let me stroke your soft, silky hair and look into your dear, shining, loving eyes. If only I knew whether you felt you were going to die. I think you did, vaguely perhaps, but you did .....

August 20 1904

Darling. I have just come back from seeing your brother, Ivan, I upset him by telling him about your last days but I felt it was good for him, even if it was distressing. And I could talk about everything, about you for ever, about Badenweiler, about something great, grand that occurred in that rich, emerald-green town in the Black Forest. Do you remember how we loved our carriage rides, our 'Rundreise', as we called them? You were so affectionate, I understood you so well at times like that. Do you remember how you would discreetly take my hand and squeeze if, and when I asked if you were all right, you would say nothing, just nod and give me a smile for an answer With what reverence I sometimes kissed your hand! You would hold my hand for a long time and so we drove through a fragrant pine wood. Your favourite spot was a lush, green glade, filled with sunlight. A stream babbled splendidly along a ditch and you kept telling the driver to drive more quietly, taking delight in a large expanse of fruit trees that stood in the open and weren't fenced in, and no one took or stole a single cherry or pear. You recalled our own, poor Russia... Do you remember the charming mill, so low it was completely hidden in the thick greenery and only the water sparkled on the wheel? How you liked the comfortable, clean villages and little gardens with the regulation rows of white lilies, rose bushes and kitchen gardens! And with what pain you said: Dearest, when will our peasant farmers live in little houses like these!
Dearest, dearest one, where are you now ? ...

   Ivanoff

   1887 - 1889 Checkhov's first play.
         Text: Project Gutenberg 


   The Wood Demon

   1889  Checkhov's second play, later used as raw material for Uncle Vanya.


   The Sea Gull

   1896  Text: Project Gutenberg


   Uncle Vanya

   1897  English translation by Marian Fell, 1916,
         revised by James Rusk, 1998, with notes.
         Text: Eldritch Press
               Project Gutenberg 


   The Three Sisters

   1900 - 1901  English translation by Constance Garnett, 1916,
         revised by James Rusk, 1998.
         Text: Eldritch Press
               Eldritch Press
         Link: library.ups.edu

   The Cherry Orchard

   1903 - 1904 English translation by Julius West, 1916.
         Text: Eldritch Press