Anton Chekhov

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Russian:

Антон Павлович Чехов[note 1], IPA: [ɐn
ˈton ˈpavɫəvʲɪtɕ ˈtɕɛxəf]; 29 January
1860[note 2] – 15 July 1904[note 3]) was a
Russian playwright and short-story writer
who is considered to be among the
greatest writers of short fiction in history.
His career as a playwright produced four
classics, and his best short stories are
held in high esteem by writers and
critics.[3][4] Along with Henrik Ibsen and
August Strindberg, Chekhov is often
referred to as one of the three seminal
figures in the birth of early modernism in
the theatre.[5] Chekhov practiced as a
medical doctor throughout most of his
literary career: "Medicine is my lawful
wife", he once said, "and literature is my
mistress."[6]
 Anton Chekhov

Born Anton Pavlovich

Chekhov
29 January 1860[1]
Taganrog,
Ekaterinoslav
Governorate,
Russian Empire
Died 15 July 1904
(aged 44)[2]
Badenweiler, Grand
Duchy of Baden,
German Empire
Resting place
 Novodevichy
Cemetery, Moscow
Occupation Physician, short
story writer,
playwright
Language Russian
Nationality Russian
Alma mater First Moscow State
Medical University
Notable awards Pushkin Prize
Spouse Olga Knipper
(m.1901)
Relatives Alexander Chekhov
(brother)
Michael Chekhov
(nephew)
Lev Knipper
(nephew)
Olga Chekhova
(niece)
Ada Tschechowa
 (great-niece)
Marina Ried (great-
niece)
Vera Tschechowa
(great-great niece)

Signature

Chekhov renounced the theatre after the

reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the
play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by
Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art
Theatre, which subsequently also
produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and
premiered his last two plays, Three
Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These
four works present a challenge to the
acting ensemble[7] as well as to
audiences, because in place of
conventional action Chekhov offers a
"theatre of mood" and a "submerged life
in the text".[8]

Chekhov had at first written stories to

earn money, but as his artistic ambition
grew, he made formal innovations which
have influenced the evolution of the
modern short story.[9] He made no
apologies for the difficulties this posed
to readers, insisting that the role of an
artist was to ask questions, not to
answer them.[10]

Biography
Childhood …

Birth house of Anton Chekhov in Taganrog, Russia

Young Chekhov in 1882

The Taganrog Boys Gymnasium in the late 19th
century. The cross on top is no longer present

Portrait of young Chekhov in country clothes

Young Chekhov (left) with brother Nikolai in 1882

Anton Chekhov was born on the feast
day of St. Anthony the Great (17 January
Old Style) 29 January 1860 in Taganrog,
a port on the Sea of Azov in southern
Russia. He was the third of six surviving
children. His father, Pavel Yegorovich
Chekhov, the son of a former serf and his
Ukrainian wife,[11] was from the village
Olhovatka (Voronezh Governorate) and
ran a grocery store. A director of the
parish choir, devout Orthodox Christian,
and physically abusive father, Pavel
Chekhov has been seen by some
historians as the model for his son's
many portraits of hypocrisy.[12] Chekhov's
mother, Yevgeniya (Morozova), was an
excellent storyteller who entertained the
children with tales of her travels with her
cloth-merchant father all over
Russia.[13][14][15] "Our talents we got from
our father," Chekhov remembered, "but
our soul from our mother."[16] In
adulthood, Chekhov criticised his brother
Alexander's treatment of his wife and
children by reminding him of Pavel's
tyranny: "Let me ask you to recall that it
was despotism and lying that ruined your
mother's youth. Despotism and lying so
mutilated our childhood that it's
sickening and frightening to think about
it. Remember the horror and disgust we
felt in those times when Father threw a
tantrum at dinner over too much salt in
the soup and called Mother a fool."[17][18]
Chekhov attended the Greek School in
Taganrog and the Taganrog Gymnasium
(since renamed the Chekhov
Gymnasium), where he was held back for
a year at fifteen for failing an
examination in Ancient Greek.[19] He
sang at the Greek Orthodox monastery in
Taganrog and in his father's choirs. In a
letter of 1892, he used the word
"suffering" to describe his childhood and
recalled:

When my brothers and I used

to stand in the middle of the
church and sing the trio "May
my prayer be exalted", or "The
 Archangel's Voice", everyone
looked at us with emotion and
envied our parents, but we at
that moment felt like little
convicts.[20]

In 1876, Chekhov's father was declared

bankrupt after overextending his finances
building a new house, having been
cheated by a contractor named
Mironov.[21] To avoid debtor's prison he
fled to Moscow, where his two eldest
sons, Alexander and Nikolay, were
attending university. The family lived in
poverty in Moscow. Chekhov's mother
was physically and emotionally broken by
the experience.[22] Chekhov was left
behind to sell the family's possessions
and finish his education.

Chekhov remained in Taganrog for three

more years, boarding with a man by the
name of Selivanov who, like Lopakhin in
The Cherry Orchard, had bailed out the
family for the price of their house.[23]
Chekhov had to pay for his own
education, which he managed by private
tutoring, catching and selling
goldfinches, and selling short sketches to
the newspapers, among other jobs.[24] He
sent every ruble he could spare to his
family in Moscow, along with humorous
letters to cheer them up.[24] During this
time, he read widely and analytically,
including the works of Cervantes,
Turgenev, Goncharov, and
Schopenhauer,[25][26] and wrote a full-
length comic drama, Fatherless, which
his brother Alexander dismissed as "an
inexcusable though innocent
fabrication."[27] Chekhov also
experienced a series of love affairs, one
with the wife of a teacher.[24]

In 1879, Chekhov completed his

schooling and joined his family in
Moscow, having gained admission to the
medical school at I.M. Sechenov First
Moscow State Medical University.[28]
Early writings …

Chekhov now assumed responsibility for

the whole family.[29] To support them and
to pay his tuition fees, he wrote daily
short, humorous sketches and vignettes
of contemporary Russian life, many
under pseudonyms such as "Antosha
Chekhonte" (Антоша Чехонте) and "Man
without a Spleen" (Человек без
селезенки). His prodigious output
gradually earned him a reputation as a
satirical chronicler of Russian street life,
and by 1882 he was writing for Oskolki
(Fragments), owned by Nikolai Leykin,
one of the leading publishers of the
time.[30] Chekhov's tone at this stage was
harsher than that familiar from his
mature fiction.[31][32]

In 1884, Chekhov qualified as a

physician, which he considered his
principal profession though he made
little money from it and treated the poor
free of charge.[33]

In 1884 and 1885, Chekhov found

himself coughing blood, and in 1886 the
attacks worsened, but he would not
admit his tuberculosis to his family or his
friends.[16] He confessed to Leykin, "I am
afraid to submit myself to be sounded by
my colleagues."[34] He continued writing
for weekly periodicals, earning enough
money to move the family into
progressively better accommodations.

Early in 1886 he was invited to write for

one of the most popular papers in St.
Petersburg, Novoye Vremya (New Times),
owned and edited by the millionaire
magnate Alexey Suvorin, who paid a rate
per line double Leykin's and allowed
Chekhov three times the space.[35]
Suvorin was to become a lifelong friend,
perhaps Chekhov's closest.[36][37]

Before long, Chekhov was attracting

literary as well as popular attention. The
sixty-four-year-old Dmitry Grigorovich, a
celebrated Russian writer of the day,
wrote to Chekhov after reading his short
story "The Huntsman" that[38] "You have
real talent, a talent that places you in the
front rank among writers in the new
generation." He went on to advise
Chekhov to slow down, write less, and
concentrate on literary quality.

Chekhov replied that the letter had struck

him "like a thunderbolt" and confessed, "I
have written my stories the way reporters
write up their notes about fires—
mechanically, half-consciously, caring
nothing about either the reader or
myself."[39]" The admission may have
done Chekhov a disservice, since early
manuscripts reveal that he often wrote
with extreme care, continually
revising.[40] Grigorovich's advice
nevertheless inspired a more serious,
artistic ambition in the twenty-six-year-
old. In 1888, with a little string-pulling by
Grigorovich, the short story collection At
Dusk (V Sumerkakh) won Chekhov the
coveted Pushkin Prize "for the best
literary production distinguished by high
artistic worth."[41]

Turning points …
Chekhov's family and friends in 1890 (Top row, left
to right) Ivan, Alexander, Father; (second row)
unknown friend, Lika Mizinova, Masha, Mother,
Seryozha Kiselev; (bottom row) Misha, Anton

In 1887, exhausted from overwork and ill

health, Chekhov took a trip to Ukraine,
which reawakened him to the beauty of
the steppe.[42] On his return, he began the
novella-length short story "The Steppe,"
which he called "something rather odd
and much too original," and which was
eventually published in Severny Vestnik
(The Northern Herald).[43] In a narrative
that drifts with the thought processes of
the characters, Chekhov evokes a chaise
journey across the steppe through the
eyes of a young boy sent to live away
from home, and his companions, a priest
and a merchant. "The Steppe" has been
called a "dictionary of Chekhov's poetics",
and it represented a significant advance
for Chekhov, exhibiting much of the
quality of his mature fiction and winning
him publication in a literary journal rather
than a newspaper.[44]

In autumn 1887, a theatre manager

named Korsh commissioned Chekhov to
write a play, the result being Ivanov,
written in a fortnight and produced that
November.[45] Though Chekhov found the
experience "sickening" and painted a
comic portrait of the chaotic production
in a letter to his brother Alexander, the
play was a hit and was praised, to
Chekhov's bemusement, as a work of
originality.[46] Although Chekhov did not
fully realise it at the time, Chekhov's
plays, such as The Seagull (written in
1895), Uncle Vanya (written in 1897), The
Three Sisters (written in 1900), and The
Cherry Orchard (written in 1903) served
as a revolutionary backbone to what is
common sense to the medium of acting
to this day: an effort to recreate and
express the "realism" of how people truly
act and speak with each other and
translating it to the stage to manifest the
human condition as accurately as
possible in hopes to make the audience
reflect upon their own definition of what
it means to be human.

This philosophy of approaching the art of

acting has stood not only steadfast, but
as the cornerstone of acting for much of
the 20th century to this day. Mikhail
Chekhov considered Ivanov a key
moment in his brother's intellectual
development and literary career.[16] From
this period comes an observation of
Chekhov's that has become known as
Chekhov's gun, a dramatic principle that
requires that every element in a narrative
be necessary and irreplaceable, and that
everything else be removed.[47][48][49]

Remove everything that has no

relevance to the story. If you
say in the first chapter that
there is a rifle hanging on the
wall, in the second or third
chapter it absolutely must go
off. If it's not going to be fired,
it shouldn't be hanging there.

— Anton Chekhov[49][50]
The death of Chekhov's brother Nikolay
from tuberculosis in 1889 influenced A
Dreary Story, finished that September,
about a man who confronts the end of a
life that he realises has been without
purpose.[51][52] Mikhail Chekhov, who
recorded his brother's depression and
restlessness after Nikolay's death, was
researching prisons at the time as part of
his law studies, and Anton Chekhov, in a
search for purpose in his own life,
himself soon became obsessed with the
issue of prison reform.[16]

Sakhalin …
Anton Chekhov in 1893

In 1890, Chekhov undertook an arduous

journey by train, horse-drawn carriage,
and river steamer to the Russian Far East
and the katorga, or penal colony, on
Sakhalin Island, north of Japan, where he
spent three months interviewing
thousands of convicts and settlers for a
census. The letters Chekhov wrote during
the two-and-a-half-month journey to
Sakhalin are considered to be among his
best.[53] His remarks to his sister about
Tomsk were to become notorious.[54][55]

Tomsk is a very dull town. To

judge from the drunkards
whose acquaintance I have
made, and from the intellectual
people who have come to the
hotel to pay their respects to
me, the inhabitants are very
dull, too.[56]

Chekhov witnessed much on Sakhalin

that shocked and angered him, including
floggings, embezzlement of supplies, and
forced prostitution of women. He wrote,
"There were times I felt that I saw before
me the extreme limits of man's
degradation."[57][58] He was particularly
moved by the plight of the children living
in the penal colony with their parents. For
example:

On the Amur steamer going to

Sakhalin, there was a convict
who had murdered his wife
and wore fetters on his legs.
His daughter, a little girl of six,
was with him. I noticed
wherever the convict moved
the little girl scrambled after
him, holding on to his fetters.
 At night the child slept with the
convicts and soldiers all in a
heap together.[59]

Chekhov later concluded that charity was

not the answer, but that the government
had a duty to finance humane treatment
of the convicts. His findings were
published in 1893 and 1894 as Ostrov
Sakhalin (The Island of Sakhalin), a work
of social science, not literature.[60][61]
Chekhov found literary expression for the
"Hell of Sakhalin" in his long short story
"The Murder,"[62] the last section of which
is set on Sakhalin, where the murderer
Yakov loads coal in the night while
longing for home. Chekhov's writing on
Sakhalin is the subject of brief comment
and analysis in Haruki Murakami's novel
1Q84.[63] It is also the subject of a poem
by the Nobel Prize winner Seamus
Heaney, "Chekhov on Sakhalin" (collected
in the volume Station Island).[64] Rebecca
Ruth Gould has compared Chekhov's
book on Sakhalin to Katherine
Mansfield's Urewera Notebook (1907).[65]

Melikhovo …
Melikhovo, now a museum

Mikhail Chekhov, a member of the

household at Melikhovo, described the
extent of his brother's medical
commitments:

From the first day that

Chekhov moved to Melikhovo,
the sick began flocking to him
from twenty miles around.
They came on foot or were
brought in carts, and often he
was fetched to patients at a
distance. Sometimes from early
in the morning peasant women
 and children were standing
before his door waiting.[66]

Chekhov's expenditure on drugs was

considerable, but the greatest cost was
making journeys of several hours to visit
the sick, which reduced his time for
writing.[67] However, Chekhov's work as a
doctor enriched his writing by bringing
him into intimate contact with all
sections of Russian society: for example,
he witnessed at first hand the peasants'
unhealthy and cramped living conditions,
which he recalled in his short story
"Peasants". Chekhov visited the upper
classes as well, recording in his
notebook: "Aristocrats? The same ugly
bodies and physical uncleanliness, the
same toothless old age and disgusting
death, as with market-women."[68]

In 1894, Chekhov began writing his play

The Seagull in a lodge he had built in the
orchard at Melikhovo. In the two years
since he had moved to the estate, he had
refurbished the house, taken up
agriculture and horticulture, tended the
orchard and the pond, and planted many
trees, which, according to Mikhail, he
"looked after ... as though they were his
children. Like Colonel Vershinin in his
Three Sisters, as he looked at them he
dreamed of what they would be like in
three or four hundred years."[16]

The first night of The Seagull, at the

Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg
on 17 October 1896, was a fiasco, as the
play was booed by the audience, stinging
Chekhov into renouncing the theatre.[69]
But the play so impressed the theatre
director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko
that he convinced his colleague
Konstantin Stanislavski to direct a new
production for the innovative Moscow Art
Theatre in 1898.[70] Stanislavski's
attention to psychological realism and
ensemble playing coaxed the buried
subtleties from the text, and restored
Chekhov's interest in playwriting.[71] The
Art Theatre commissioned more plays
from Chekhov and the following year
staged Uncle Vanya, which Chekhov had
completed in 1896.[72] In the last
decades of his life he became an
atheist.[73][74][75]

Yalta …

In March 1897, Chekhov suffered a major

haemorrhage of the lungs while on a visit
to Moscow. With great difficulty he was
persuaded to enter a clinic, where the
doctors diagnosed tuberculosis on the
upper part of his lungs and ordered a
change in his manner of life.[76]
Chekhov with Leo Tolstoy at Yalta, 1900

After his father's death in 1898, Chekhov

bought a plot of land on the outskirts of
Yalta and built a villa, into which he
moved with his mother and sister the
following year. Though he planted trees
and flowers, kept dogs and tame cranes,
and received guests such as Leo Tolstoy
and Maxim Gorky, Chekhov was always
relieved to leave his "hot Siberia" for
Moscow or travels abroad. He vowed to
move to Taganrog as soon as a water
supply was installed there.[77][78] In Yalta
he completed two more plays for the Art
Theatre, composing with greater
difficulty than in the days when he "wrote
serenely, the way I eat pancakes now".
He took a year each over Three Sisters
and The Cherry Orchard.[79]

On 25 May 1901, Chekhov married Olga

Knipper quietly, owing to his horror of
weddings. She was a former protégée
and sometime lover of Nemirovich-
Danchenko whom he had first met at
rehearsals for The Seagull.[80][81][82] Up to
that point, Chekhov, known as "Russia's
most elusive literary bachelor,"[83] had
preferred passing liaisons and visits to
brothels over commitment.[84] He had
once written to Suvorin:

By all means I will be married

if you wish it. But on these
conditions: everything must be
as it has been hitherto—that is,
she must live in Moscow while
I live in the country, and I will
come and see her ... I promise
to be an excellent husband, but
give me a wife who, like the
moon, won't appear in my sky
every day.[85]
Chekhov and Olga, 1901, on their honeymoon

The letter proved prophetic of Chekhov's

marital arrangements with Olga: he lived
largely at Yalta, she in Moscow, pursuing
her acting career. In 1902, Olga suffered
a miscarriage; and Donald Rayfield has
offered evidence, based on the couple's
letters, that conception may have
occurred when Chekhov and Olga were
apart, although Russian scholars have
rejected that claim.[86][87] The literary
legacy of this long-distance marriage is a
correspondence that preserves gems of
theatre history, including shared
complaints about Stanislavski's directing
methods and Chekhov's advice to Olga
about performing in his plays.[88]

In Yalta, Chekhov wrote one of his most

famous stories,[89] "The Lady with the
Dog"[90] (also translated from the Russian
as "Lady with Lapdog"),[91] which depicts
what at first seems a casual liaison
between a cynical married man and an
unhappy married woman who meet while
holidaying in Yalta. Neither expects
anything lasting from the encounter.
Unexpectedly though, they gradually fall
deeply in love and end up risking scandal
and the security of their family lives. The
story masterfully captures their feelings
for each other, the inner transformation
undergone by the disillusioned male
protagonist as a result of falling deeply in
love, and their inability to resolve the
matter by either letting go of their
families or of each other.[92]

Death …

By May 1904, Chekhov was terminally ill

with tuberculosis. Mikhail Chekhov
recalled that "everyone who saw him
secretly thought the end was not far off,
but the nearer [he] was to the end, the
less he seemed to realise it."[16] On 3
June, he set off with Olga for the German
spa town of Badenweiler in the Black
Forest, from where he wrote outwardly
jovial letters to his sister Masha,
describing the food and surroundings,
and assuring her and his mother that he
was getting better. In his last letter, he
complained about the way German
women dressed.[93]

Chekhov's death has become one of "the

great set pieces of literary history,"[94]
retold, embroidered, and fictionalised
many times since, notably in the short
story "Errand" by Raymond Carver. In
1908, Olga wrote this account of her
husband's last moments:

Anton sat up unusually

straight and said loudly and
clearly (although he knew
almost no German): Ich sterbe
("I'm dying"). The doctor
calmed him, took a syringe,
gave him an injection of
camphor, and ordered
champagne. Anton took a full
glass, examined it, smiled at
me and said: "It's a long time
since I drank champagne." He
 drained it and lay quietly on
his left side, and I just had time
to run to him and lean across
the bed and call to him, but he
had stopped breathing and was
sleeping peacefully as a
child ...[95]

Chekhov's body was transported to

Moscow in a refrigerated railway car
meant for oysters, a detail that offended
Gorky.[96] Some of the thousands of
mourners followed the funeral
procession of a General Keller by
mistake, to the accompaniment of a
military band.[97] Chekhov was buried
next to his father at the Novodevichy
Cemetery.[98][99]

Legacy

Anton Chekhov museum in Alexandrovsk-

Sakhalinsky, Russia. It is the house where he stayed
in Sakhalin during 1890

A few months before he died, Chekhov

told the writer Ivan Bunin that he thought
people might go on reading his writings
for seven years. "Why seven?" asked
Bunin. "Well, seven and a half," Chekhov
replied. "That's not bad. I've got six years
to live."[100] Chekhov's posthumous
reputation greatly exceeded his
expectations. The ovations for the play
The Cherry Orchard in the year of his
death served to demonstrate the Russian
public's acclaim for the writer, which
placed him second in literary celebrity
only to Tolstoy, who outlived him by six
years. Tolstoy was an early admirer of
Chekhov's short stories and had a series
that he deemed "first quality" and
"second quality" bound into a book. In the
first category were: Children, The Chorus
Girl, A Play, Home, Misery, The Runaway,
In Court, Vanka, Ladies, A Malefactor, The
Boys, Darkness, Sleepy, The Helpmate,
and The Darling; in the second: A
Transgression, Sorrow, The Witch,
Verochka, In a Strange Land, The Cook's
Wedding, A Tedious Business, An
Upheaval, Oh! The Public!, The Mask, A
Woman's Luck, Nerves, The Wedding, A
Defenceless Creature, and Peasant
Wives.[101] If anyone doubted the gloom
and miserable poverty of Russia in the
1880s, the Russian Anarchist Kropotkin
responded, "read only Chekhov's
novels!"[102]

In Chekhov's lifetime, British and Irish

critics generally did not find his work
pleasing; E. J. Dillon thought "the effect
on the reader of Chekhov's tales was
repulsion at the gallery of human waste
represented by his fickle, spineless,
drifting people" and R. E. C. Long said
"Chekhov's characters were repugnant,
and that Chekhov revelled in stripping the
last rags of dignity from the human
soul".[103] After his death, Chekhov was
reappraised. Constance Garnett's
translations won him an English-
language readership and the admiration
of writers such as James Joyce, Virginia
Woolf, and Katherine Mansfield, whose
story "The Child Who Was Tired" is
similar to Chekhov's "Sleepy".[104] The
Russian critic D. S. Mirsky, who lived in
England, explained Chekhov's popularity
in that country by his "unusually
complete rejection of what we may call
the heroic values."[105] In Russia itself,
Chekhov's drama fell out of fashion after
the revolution, but it was later
incorporated into the Soviet canon. The
character of Lopakhin, for example, was
reinvented as a hero of the new order,
rising from a modest background so as
eventually to possess the gentry's
estates.[106][107]

Osip Braz: Portrait of Anton Chekhov

One of the first non-Russians to praise
Chekhov's plays was George Bernard
Shaw, who subtitled his Heartbreak
House "A Fantasia in the Russian Manner
on English Themes," and pointed out
similarities between the predicament of
the British landed class and that of their
Russian counterparts as depicted by
Chekhov: "the same nice people, the
same utter futility."[108]

In the United States, Chekhov's

reputation began its rise slightly later,
partly through the influence of
Stanislavski's system of acting, with its
notion of subtext: "Chekhov often
expressed his thought not in speeches,"
wrote Stanislavski, "but in pauses or
between the lines or in replies consisting
of a single word ... the characters often
feel and think things not expressed in the
lines they speak."[109][110] The Group
Theatre, in particular, developed the
subtextual approach to drama,
influencing generations of American
playwrights, screenwriters, and actors,
including Clifford Odets, Elia Kazan and,
in particular, Lee Strasberg. In turn,
Strasberg's Actors Studio and the
"Method" acting approach influenced
many actors, including Marlon Brando
and Robert De Niro, though by then the
Chekhov tradition may have been
distorted by a preoccupation with
realism.[111] In 1981, the playwright
Tennessee Williams adapted The Seagull
as The Notebook of Trigorin. One of
Anton's nephews, Michael Chekhov
would also contribute heavily to modern
theatre, particularly through his unique
acting methods which developed
Stanislavski's ideas further.

Despite Chekhov's reputation as a

playwright, William Boyd asserts that his
short stories represent the greater
achievement.[112] Raymond Carver, who
wrote the short story "Errand" about
Chekhov's death, believed that Chekhov
was the greatest of all short story
writers:
Chekhov's stories are as
wonderful (and necessary) now
as when they first appeared. It
is not only the immense
number of stories he wrote—
for few, if any, writers have
ever done more—it is the
awesome frequency with which
he produced masterpieces,
stories that shrive us as well as
delight and move us, that lay
bare our emotions in ways only
true art can accomplish.[113]
Ernest Hemingway, another writer
influenced by Chekhov, was more
grudging: "Chekhov wrote about six good
stories. But he was an amateur
writer."[114] And Vladimir Nabokov
criticised Chekhov's "medley of dreadful
prosaisms, ready-made epithets,
repetitions."[115][116] But he also declared
“yet it is his works which I would take on
a trip to another planet”[117] and called
"The Lady with the Dog" "one of the
greatest stories ever written" in its
depiction of a problematic relationship,
and described Chekhov as writing "the
way one person relates to another the
most important things in his life, slowly
and yet without a break, in a slightly
subdued voice."[118]

For the writer William Boyd, Chekhov's

historical accomplishment was to
abandon what William Gerhardie called
the "event plot" for something more
"blurred, interrupted, mauled or otherwise
tampered with by life."[119]

Virginia Woolf mused on the unique

quality of a Chekhov story in The
Common Reader (1925):

But is it the end, we ask? We

have rather the feeling that we
have overrun our signals; or it
is as if a tune had stopped
short without the expected
chords to close it. These stories
are inconclusive, we say, and
proceed to frame a criticism
based upon the assumption
that stories ought to conclude
in a way that we recognise. In
so doing we raise the question
of our own fitness as readers.
Where the tune is familiar and
the end emphatic—lovers
united, villains discomfited,
intrigues exposed—as it is in
most Victorian fiction, we can
 scarcely go wrong, but where
the tune is unfamiliar and the
end a note of interrogation or
merely the information that
they went on talking, as it is in
Tchekov, we need a very daring
and alert sense of literature to
make us hear the tune, and in
particular those last notes
which complete the
harmony.[120]

While a Professor of Comparative

Literature at Princeton University, Michael
Goldman presented his view on defining
the elusive quality of Chekhov's
comedies stating: "Having learned that
Chekhov is comic ... Chekhov is comic in
a very special, paradoxical way. His plays
depend, as comedy does, on the vitality
of the actors to make pleasurable what
would otherwise be painfully awkward—
inappropriate speeches, missed
connections, faux pas, stumbles,
childishness—but as part of a deeper
pathos; the stumbles are not pratfalls but
an energized, graceful dissolution of
purpose."[121]

Alan Twigg, the chief editor and publisher

of the Canadian book review magazine
BC Bookworld wrote,
 One can argue Anton Chekhov
is the second-most popular
writer on the planet. Only
Shakespeare outranks Chekhov
in terms of movie adaptations
of their work, according to the
movie database IMDb. ... We
generally know less about
Chekhov than we know about
mysterious Shakespeare.[122]

Chekhov has also influenced the work of

Japanese playwrights including Shimizu
Kunio, Yōji Sakate, and Ai Nagai. Critics
have noted similarities in how Chekhov
and Shimizu use a mixture of light
humour as well as an intense depictions
of longing.[123] Sakate adapted several of
Chekhov's plays and transformed them in
the general style of nō.[124] Nagai also
adapted Chekhov's plays, including Three
Sisters, and transformed his dramatic
style into Nagai's style of satirical realism
while emphasising the social issues
depicted on the play.[124]

Chekhov's works have been adapted for

the screen, including Sidney Lumet's Sea
Gull and Louis Malle's Vanya on 42nd
Street. Laurence Olivier's final effort as a
film director was a 1970 adaption of
Three Sisters in which he also played a
supporting role. His work has also served
as inspiration or been referenced in
numerous films. In Andrei Tarkovsky's
1975 film The Mirror, characters discuss
his short story "Ward No. 6". Woody Allen
has been influenced by Chekhov and
reference to his works are present in
many of his films including Love and
Death (1975), Interiors (1978) and
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). Plays by
Chekhov are also referenced in François
Truffaut's 1980 drama film The Last
Metro, which is set in a theatre. The
Cherry Orchard has a role in the comedy
film Henry's Crime (2011). A portion of a
stage production of Three Sisters
appears in the 2014 drama film Still Alice.
Bibliography

See also
Ann Dunnigan, English-language
translator
Jean-Claude van Itallie, English-
language translator
Maria Chekhova
Chekhov Monument in Rostov-on-Don

Notes
1. In Chekhov's day, his name was
written Антонъ Павловичъ Чеховъ.
see, for instance, See Антонъ
Павловичъ Чеховъ. 1898. Мужики
и Моя жизнь.
 2. Old Style date 17 January.
3. Old Style date 2 July.

References
1. Letter to G. I. Rossolimo, 11 October
1899. Letters of Anton Chekhov
2. Rayfield 1997, p. 595.
3. "Greatest short story writer who ever
lived." Raymond Carver (in
Rosamund Bartlett's introduction to
About Love and Other Stories, XX);
"Quite probably. the best short-story
writer ever." A Chekhov Lexicon , by
William Boyd, The Guardian, 3 July
2004. Retrieved 16 February 2007.
4. "Stories ... which are among the
supreme achievements in prose
narrative." Vodka miniatures,
belching and angry cats , George
Steiner's review of The Undiscovered
Chekhov, in The Observer, 13 May
2001. Retrieved 16 February 2007.
5. Harold Bloom, Genius: A Study of
One Hundred Exemplary Authors.
6. Letter to Alexei Suvorin, 11
September 1888. Letters of Anton
Chekhov. On Wikiquote.
7. "Actors climb up Chekhov like a
mountain, roped together, sharing
the glory if they ever make it to the
 summit". Actor Ian McKellen, quoted
in Miles, 9.
8. "Chekhov's art demands a theatre of
mood." Vsevolod Meyerhold, quoted
in Allen, 13; "A richer submerged life
in the text is characteristic of a more
profound drama of realism, one
which depends less on the externals
of presentation." Styan, 84.
9. "Chekhov is said to be the father of
the modern short story". Malcolm
2004, p. 87; "He brought something
new into literature." James Joyce, in
Arthur Power, Conversations with
James Joyce, Usborne Publishing
Ltd, 1974, ISBN 978-0-86000-006-8,
 57; "Tchehov's breach with the
classical tradition is the most
significant event in modern
literature", John Middleton Murry, in
Athenaeum, 8 April 1922, cited in
Bartlett's introduction to About Love.
10. "You are right in demanding that an
artist should take an intelligent
attitude to his work, but you confuse
two things: solving a problem and
stating a problem correctly. It is only
the second that is obligatory for the
artist." Letter to Suvorin, 27 October
1888. Letters of Anton Chekhov.
11. Rayfield 1997, pp. 3–4: Egor
Mikhailovich Chekhov and Efrosinia
 Emelianovna
12. Wood 2000, p. 78
13. Payne 1991, p. XVII.
14. Simmons 1970, p. 18.
15. Chekhov and Taganrog , Taganrog
city website.
16. From the biographical sketch,
adapted from a memoir by
Chekhov's brother Mihail, which
prefaces Constance Garnett's
translation of Chekhov's letters,
1920.
17. Letter to brother Alexander, 2
January 1889, in Malcolm 2004,
p. 102.
18. Another insight into Chekhov's
childhood came in a letter to his
publisher and friend Alexei Suvorin:
"From my childhood I have believed
in progress, and I could not help
believing in it since the difference
between the time when I used to be
thrashed and when they gave up
thrashing me was tremendous."
Letter to Suvorin, 27 March 1894.
Letters of Anton Chekhov.
19. Bartlett, 4–5.
20. Letter to I.L. Shcheglov, 9 March
1892. Letters of Anton Chekhov.
21. Rayfield 1997, p. 31.
22. Letter to cousin Mihail, 10 May 1877.
Letters of Anton Chekhov.
23. Malcolm 2004, p. 25.
24. Payne 1991, p. XX.
25. Letter to brother Mihail, 1 July 1876.
Letters of Anton Chekhov.
26. Simmons 1970, p. 26.
27. Simmons 1970, p. 33.
28. Rayfield 1997, p. 69.
29. Wood 2000, p. 79.
30. Rayfield 1997, p. 91.
31. "There is in these miniatures an
arresting potion of cruelty ... The
wonderfully compassionate Chekhov
was yet to mature." "Vodka
 Miniatures, Belching and Angry
Cats" , George Steiner's review of
The Undiscovered Chekhov in The
Observer, 13 May 2001. Retrieved 16
February 2007.
32. Willis, Louis (27 January 2013).
"Chekhov's Crime Stories" . Literary
and Genre. Knoxville: SleuthSayers.
33. Malcolm 2004, p. 26.
34. Letter to N.A.Leykin, 6 April 1886.
Letters of Anton Chekhov.
35. Rayfield 1997, p. 128.
36. Rayfield 1997, pp. 448–450: They
only ever fell out once, when
Chekhov objected to the anti-Semitic
 attacks in New Times against
Dreyfus and Zola in 1898.
37. In many ways, the right-wing Suvorin,
whom Lenin later called "The running
dog of the Tzar" (Payne, XXXV), was
Chekhov's opposite; "Chekhov had to
function like Suvorin's kidney,
extracting the businessman's
poisons."Wood 2000, p. 79
38. The Huntsman. . Retrieved 16
February 2007.
39. Malcolm 2004, pp. 32–33.
40. Payne 1991, p. XXIV.
41. Simmons 1970, p. 160.
42. "There is a scent of the steppe and
one hears the birds sing. I see my
 old friends the ravens flying over the
steppe." Letter to sister Masha, 2
April 1887. Letters of Anton
Chekhov.
43. Letter to Grigorovich, 12 January
1888. Quoted by Malcolm 2004,
p. 137.
44. "'The Steppe,' as Michael Finke
suggests, is 'a sort of dictionary of
Chekhov's poetics,' a kind of sample
case of the concealed literary
weapons Chekhov would deploy in
his work to come." Malcolm 2004,
p. 147.
45. From the biographical sketch,
adapted from a memoir by
 Chekhov's brother Mikhail, which
prefaces Constance Garnett's
translation of Chekhov's letters,
1920.
46. Letter to brother Alexander, 20
November 1887. Letters of Anton
Chekhov.
47. Petr Mikhaĭlovich Bit︠s︡illi (1983),
Chekhov's Art: A Stylistic Analysis,
Ardis, p. x
48. Daniel S. Burt (2008), The Literature
100: A Ranking of the Most
Influential Novelists, Playwrights,
and Poets of All Time, Infobase
Publishing
49. Valentine T. Bill (1987), Chekhov: The
Silent Voice of Freedom,
Philosophical Library
50. S. Shchukin, Memoirs (1911)
51. "A Dreary Story." . Retrieved 16
February 2007.
52. Simmons 1970, pp. 186–191.
53. Malcolm 2004, p. 129.
54. Simmons 1970, p. 223.
55. Rayfield 1997, p. 224.
56. Letter to sister, Masha, 20 May 1890.
Letters of Anton Chekhov.
57. Wood 2000, p. 85.
58. Rayfield 1997, p. 230.
59. Letter to A.F.Koni, 16 January 1891.
Letters of Anton Chekhov.
60. Malcolm 2004, p. 125.
61. Simmons 1970, p. 229: Such is the
general critical view of the work, but
Simmons calls it a "valuable and
intensely human document."
62. "The Murder" . Retrieved 16 February
2007.
63. Murakami, Haruki. 1Q84. Alfred A.
Knopf: New York, 2011.
64. Heaney, Seamus. Station Island
Farrar Straus Giroux: New York,
1985.
65. Gould, Rebecca Ruth (2018). "The
aesthetic terrain of settler
 colonialism: Katherine Mansfield and
Anton Chekhov's natives". Journal of
Postcolonial Writing. 55: 48–65.
doi:10.1080/17449855.2018.15112
42 . S2CID 165401623 .
66. From the biographical sketch,
adapted from a memoir by
Chekhov's brother Mikhail, which
prefaces Constance Garnett's
translation of Chekhov's letters,
1920.
67. From the biographical sketch,
adapted from a memoir by
Chekhov's brother Mihail, which
prefaces Constance Garnett's
 translation of Chekhov's letters,
1920.
68. Note-Book. . Retrieved 16 February
2007.
69. Rayfield 1997, pp. 394–398.
70. Benedetti, Stanislavski: An
Introduction, 25.
71. Chekhov and the Art Theatre, in
Stanislavski's words, were united in a
common desire "to achieve artistic
simplicity and truth on the stage."
Allen, 11.
72. Rayfield 1997, pp. 390–391: Rayfield
draws from his critical study
Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" and the
"Wood Demon" (1995), which
 anatomised the evolution of the
Wood Demon into Uncle Vanya—"one
of Chekhov's most furtive
achievements."
73. Tabachnikova, Olga (2010). Anton
Chekhov Through the Eyes of
Russian Thinkers: Vasilii Rozanov,
Dmitrii Merezhkovskii and Lev
Shestov. Anthem Press. p. 26.
ISBN 978-1-84331-841-5. "For
Rozanov, Chekhov represents a
concluding stage of classical
Russian literature at the turn of the
19th and 20th centuries, caused by
the fading of the thousand-year-old
Christian tradition that had sustained
much of this literature. On the one
 hand, Rozanov regards Chekhov's
positivism and atheism as his
shortcomings, naming them among
the reasons for Chekhov's popularity
in society."
74. Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich (1997).
Karlinsky, Simon; Heim, Michael
Henry (eds.). Anton Chekhov's Life
and Thought: Selected Letters and
Commentary. Northwestern
University Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-
8101-1460-9. "While Anton did not
turn into the kind of militant atheist
that his older brother Alexander
eventually became, there is no doubt
that he was a non-believer in the last
decades of his life."
75. Richard Pevear (2009). Selected
Stories of Anton Chekhov. Random
House Digital, Inc. pp. xxii. ISBN 978-
0-307-56828-1. "According to Leonid
Grossman, "In his revelation of those
evangelical elements, the atheist
Chekhov is unquestionably one of
the most Christian poets of world
literature.""
76. Letter to Suvorin, 1 April 1897.
Letters of Anton Chekhov.
77. Olga Knipper, "Memoir", in Benedetti,
Dear Writer, Dear Actress, 37, 270.
78. Bartlett, 2.
79. Malcolm 2004, pp. 170–171.
80. "I have a horror of weddings, the
congratulations and the champagne,
standing around, glass in hand with
an endless grin on your face." Letter
to Olga Knipper, 19 April 1901.
81. Benedetti, Dear Writer, Dear Actress,
125.
82. Rayfield 1997, p. 500"Olga's relations
with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko
were more than professional."
83. Harvey Pitcher in Chekhov's Leading
Lady, quoted in Malcolm 2004, p. 59.
84. "Chekhov had the temperament of a
philanderer. Sexually, he preferred
brothels or swift liaisons."Wood
2000, p. 78
85. Letter to Suvorin, 23 March 1895.
Letters of Anton Chekhov.
86. Rayfield 1997, pp. 556–557Rayfield
also tentatively suggests, drawing on
obstetric clues, that Olga suffered an
ectopic pregnancy rather than a
miscarriage.
87. There was certainly tension between
the couple after the miscarriage,
though Simmons 1970, p. 569, and
Benedetti, Dear Writer, Dear Actress,
241, put this down to Chekhov's
mother and sister blaming the
miscarriage on Olga's late-night
socialising with her actor friends.
88. Benedetti, Dear Writer, Dear Actress:
The Love Letters of Olga Knipper and
Anton Chekhov.
89. Chekhov, Anton. "Lady with lapdog" .
Short Stories.
90. Rosamund, Bartlett (2 February
2010). "The House That Chekhov
Built". London Evening Standard.
p. 31.
91. Greenberg, Yael. "The Presentation
of the Unconscious in Chekhov's
Lady With Lapdog." Modern
Language Review 86.1 (1991): 126–
130. Academic Search Premier. Web.
3 November 2011.
92. "Overview: 'The Lady with the Dog'."
Characters in 20th-Century
Literature. Laurie Lanzen Harris.
Detroit: Gale Research, 1990.
Literature Resource Center. Web. 3
November 2011.
93. Letter to sister Masha, 28 June
1904. Letters of Anton Chekhov.
94. Malcolm 2004, p. 62.
95. Olga Knipper, Memoir, in Benedetti,
Dear Writer, Dear Actress, 284.
96. "Banality revenged itself upon him by
a nasty prank, for it saw that his
corpse, the corpse of a poet, was put
into a railway truck 'For the
Conveyance of Oysters'." Maxim
 Gorky in Reminiscences of Anton
Chekhov. . Retrieved 16 February
2007.
97. Chekhov's Funeral. M. Marcus.The
Antioch Review, 1995
98. Malcolm 2004, p. 91; Alexander
Kuprin in Reminiscences of Anton
Chekhov . Retrieved 16 February
2007
99. "Novodevichy Cemetery" . Passport
Magazine. April 2008. Retrieved
12 September 2013.
100. Payne 1991, p. XXXVI.
101. Simmons 1970, p. 595.
102. Peter Kropotkin (1 January 1905).
"The Constitutional Movement in
 Russia" . revoltlib.com. The
Nineteenth Century.
103. Meister, Charles W. (1953).
"Chekhov's Reception in England and
America". American Slavic and East
European Review. 12 (1): 109–121.
doi:10.2307/3004259 .
JSTOR 3004259 .
104. William H. New (1999). Reading
Mansfield and Metaphors of Reform.
McGill-Queen's Press. pp. 15–17.
ISBN 978-0-7735-1791-2.
105. Wood 2000, p. 77.
106. Allen, 88.
107. "They won't allow a play which is
seen to lament the lost estates of
 the gentry." Letter of Vladimir
Nemirovich-Danchenko, quoted by
Anatoly Smeliansky in "Chekhov at
the Moscow Art Theatre", from The
Cambridge Companion to Chekhov,
31–32.
108. Anna Obraztsova in "Bernard Shaw's
Dialogue with Chekhov", from Miles,
43–44.
109. Reynolds, Elizabeth (ed),
Stanislavski's Legacy, Theatre Arts
Books, 1987, ISBN 978-0-87830-127-
0, 81, 83.
110. "It was Chekhov who first
deliberately wrote dialogue in which
the mainstream of emotional action
 ran underneath the surface. It was
he who articulated the notion that
human beings hardly ever speak in
explicit terms among each other
about their deepest emotions, that
the great, tragic, climactic moments
are often happening beneath
outwardly trivial conversation."
Martin Esslin, from Text and Subtext
in Shavian Drama, in 1922: Shaw and
the last Hundred Years, ed. Bernard.
F. Dukore, Penn State Press, 1994,
ISBN 978-0-271-01324-4, 200.
111. "Lee Strasberg became in my opinion
a victim of the traditional idea of
Chekhovian theatre ... [he left] no
room for Chekhov's imagery." Georgii
 Tostonogov on Strasberg's
production of Three Sisters in The
Drama Review (winter 1968), quoted
by Styan, 121.
112. "The plays lack the seamless
authority of the fiction: there are
great characters, wonderful scenes,
tremendous passages, moments of
acute melancholy and sagacity, but
the parts appear greater than the
whole." A Chekhov Lexicon, by
William Boyd, The Guardian, 3 July
2004. Retrieved 16 February 2007.
113. Bartlett, "From Russia, with Love" ,
The Guardian, 15 July 2004.
Retrieved 17 February 2007.
114. Letter from Ernest Hemingway to
Archibald MacLeish, 1925 (from
Selected Letters, p. 179), in Ernest
Hemingway on Writing, Ed Larry W.
Phillips, Touchstone, (1984) 1999,
ISBN 978-0-684-18119-6, 101.
115. Wood 2000, p. 82.
116. Wikiquote quotes about Chekhov
117. Karlinsky, Simon (13 June 2008).
"Nabokov and Chekhov: Affinities,
parallels, structures" . Cycno. 10 (n°1
NABOKOV : Autobiography,
Biography and Fiction). Retrieved
10 September 2018.
118. From Vladimir Nabokov's Lectures
on Russian Literature, quoted by
 Francine Prose in Learning from
Chekhov, 231.
119. "For the first time in literature the
fluidity and randomness of life was
made the form of the fiction. Before
Chekhov, the event-plot drove all
fictions." William Boyd, referring to
the novelist William Gerhardie's
analysis in Anton Chekhov: A Critical
Study, 1923. "A Chekhov Lexicon" by
William Boyd, The Guardian, 3 July
2004. Retrieved 16 February 2007.
120. Woolf, Virginia, The Common
Reader: First Series, Annotated
Edition, Harvest/HBJ Book, 2002,
ISBN 0-15-602778-X, 172.
121. Michael Goldman, The Actor's
Freedom: Towards a Theory of
Drama, p72.
122. Sekirin, Peter (2011). Memories of
Chekhov: Accounts of the Writer
from His Family, Friends and
Contemporaries. Foreword by Alan
Twigg. Jefferson, NC: MacFarland
Publishers. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-7864-
5871-4.
123. Rimer, J. (2001). Japanese Theatre
and the International Stage. Leiden,
The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV.
pp. 299–311. ISBN 978-90-04-
12011-2.
124. Clayton, J. Douglas (2013). Adapting
Chekhov: The Text and Its
Mutations. Routledge. pp. 269–270.
ISBN 978-0-415-50969-5.

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Wood, James (2000) [1999]. "What
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Essays in Literature and Belief. New York,
 NY: Modern Library. ISBN 9780804151900.
OCLC 863217943 .
Zeiger, Arthur, The Plays of Anton Chekhov,
Claxton House, Inc., New York, NY, 1945.
Tufarulo, G, M., La Luna è morta e lo
specchio infranto. Miti letterari del
Novecento, vol.1 – G. Laterza, Bari, 2009–
ISBN 978-88-8231-491-0.

External links

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Biographical
 Anton Chekhov at the Encyclopædia
Britannica
Petri Liukkonen. "Anton Chekhov" .
Books and Writers
Biography at The Literature Network
"Chekhov's Legacy" by Cornel West at
NPR, 2004
The International competition of
philological, culture and film studies
works dedicated to Anton Chekhov's
life and creative work (in Russian)

Documentary …

2010: Tschechow lieben (Tschechow

and Women) – Director: Marina
Rumjanzewa – Language: German
Works

Works by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov at

Project Gutenberg. All Constance
Garnett's translations of the short
stories and letters are available, plus
the edition of the Note-book translated
by S. S. Koteliansky and Leonard Woolf
– see the "References" section for print
publication details of all of these. Site
also has translations of all the plays.
Works by or about Anton Chekhov at
Internet Archive
Works by Anton Chekhov at LibriVox
(public domain audiobooks)
201 Stories by Anton Chekhov ,
translated by Constance Garnett
presented in chronological order of
Russian publication with annotations.
Антон Павлович Чехов. Указатель
Texts of Chekhov's works in the
original Russian, listed in chronological
order, and also alphabetically by title.
Retrieved June 2013. (in Russian)
Антон Павлович Чехов Texts of
Chekhov's works in the original
Russian. Retrieved 16 February 2007.
(in Russian)
Works by Anton Chekhov at Open
Library
Plays, Three Sisters by Anton
Chekhov .
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