Chekhov, Anton (1860-1904)

Russian writer, who brought both the short story and the drama to new prominence in Russia and eventually in the Western world. Taking a cool, objective stance toward his characters, Chekhov conveys their inner lives and feelings indirectly, by suggestion rather than statement. His plots are usually simple, and the endings of both his stories and his plays tend toward openness rather than finality. Chekhov's works create the effect of profound experience taking place beneath the surface in the ordinary lives of unexceptional people.  Life   Chekhov was born in the southern Russian town of Taganrog, where his father kept a small general store. In 1879 he entered the University of Moscow to study medicine. While still a student, he began contributing short comic sketches to humor magazines to help support his family. After he finished his studies in 1884 Chekhov practiced medicine, but he continued to write. By 1887 his literary talent had received popular recognition and his writing left little time for his medical practice. In 1890 Chekhov made an arduous 9650-km (6000-mi) journey across Siberia by train, river steamer, and horse-drawn carriage to conduct a sociological and medical survey in a Russian penal colony on Sakhalin Island, off the eastern coast of Russia. His findings, published in 1893 and 1894 as Ostrov Sakhalin (The Island of Sakhalin), had some influence in moderating the harsh prison rule on the island. In 1891 he purchased Melikhovo, a small estate south of Moscow, where he wrote some of his finest short stories. Chekhov had suffered from tuberculosis for years, and in 1897 he moved to the milder climate of Yalta, on the Black Sea, for health reasons. The theater had long fascinated Chekhov, but the initial productions of his first major plays failed-Ivanov in 1887 and Chaika (The Seagull) in 1896. His first theatrical triumph came in 1898 with a production of The Seagull by the new and innovative Moscow Art Theater, under director Konstantin Stanislavski. The Art Theater's productions of his subsequent plays, Diadia Vanya (1899; Uncle Vanya), Tri sestry (1901; The Three Sisters), and Vishnevyi sad (1904; The Cherry Orchard), established the works as Chekhov's four masterpieces. In 1901 Chekhov married a young actress named Olga Knipper. His health, meanwhile, had steadily worsened. He died at the German resort of Badenweiler while seeking relief from tuberculosis.  Short Stories   Chekhov wrote his early comic stories for distinctly lowbrow humor magazines, which insisted on stories of about 1000 words and aimed only at amusing their readers. Although many of these writings from the early 1880s have little literary value, Chekhov developed his ability to say a great deal in a few words by working within the constraints imposed by these magazines. At the same time, he began to explore serious themes that figure in his later work, such as human isolation and the difficulty of communication. The period from 1886 to 1888 was a time of transition during which Chekhov moved toward publishing longer, more serious, and more technically accomplished stories. "Step" ("The Steppe," 1888), his first work to be published in a major literary magazine, tells of a young boy's journey across the steppe (vast, grassy plain) of southern Russia. Chekhov's so-called clinical studies from the late 1880s and early 1890s, including "Imeniny" ("The Name-Day Party," 1888), "Pripadok" ("An Attack of Nerves," 1889), and "Skuchnaia istoriia" ("A Dreary Story," 1889), are written with the sympathetic yet detached attitude of a doctor and deal with the effects of illness, fatigue, or old age on human behavior. "Duel" ("The Duel," 1891), one of Chekhov's so-called problem stories that examined social and philosophical issues, portrays the conflict of sharply different philosophies of life; another problem story, "Palata No. 6" ("Ward No. 6," 1892), deals with the consequences of indifference to human suffering.  In 1898 Chekhov published three intricately linked stories, "Chelovek v futliare" ("The Man in a Case"), "Kryzhovnik" ("Gooseberries") and "O liubvi" ("About Love"), each told by a different narrator and showing, with sadness and subtle humor, the effects of fear, loneliness, and lost opportunity on the lives of the characters. In one of his finest stories, "Dama s sobachkoi" ("The Lady with the Little Dog," 1899), Chekhov traces the course of an adulterous love affair, while refraining from judgment and moralizing. Chekhov's stories of the 1890s also present a panorama of Russian society on the eve of the 20th century, describing with sociological precision the lives of peasants, intellectuals, business people, clergymen, women, and children in situations that are universal and timeless.  Plays   In his dramatic works Chekhov sought to convey the texture of everyday life, moving away from traditional ideas of plot and conventions of dramatic speech. Dialogue in his plays is not smooth or continuous: Characters interrupt each other, several different conversations often take place at the same time, and lengthy pauses occur when no one speaks at all. The plays depart from the customary practice of focusing the action on one central character. From his first major play, Ivanov, to his last, The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov included less and less of what earlier playwrights would have called drama. Although Ivanov has some truly emotional scenes and a suicide, The Cherry Orchard deliberately underplays what would seem to be its dramatic moments, and the play ends anticlimactically. The action of The Cherry Orchard may seem sad-a landowning family loses their ancestral estate-but Chekhov insisted that the play was a comedy. Through the use of devices such as undercutting (interrupting a solemn speech or situation with a comic remark or farcical incident), he ensured that an audience did not respond to a play with just a single emotion.  Influence   Chekhov became known in English mainly through the translations of British scholar Constance Garnett, published between 1916 and 1926. Chekhov's plays were immensely popular in England in the 1920s and have become classics of the British stage. In the United States his fame came somewhat later, through the influence of Stanislavski's technique for achieving realistic acting. American playwrights such as Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Clifford Odets have used Chekhovian techniques, and few important writers of short stories in the 20th century can have escaped Chekhov's influence entirely.