Anton Chekhov
(1860–1904)
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, the grandson of a serf who had bought his family's freedom, was born in Taganrog, Russia, a small town near the Black Sea. When Anton was a teenager, his father's general store went bankrupt, and the family fled to Moscow. However, the father's creditor demanded that Anton remain in Taganrog as a sort of hostage to tutor the creditor's son at a cheap rate.
Three years later, Anton himself was able to move to Moscow. There he rescued his family from debt, helped educate his brothers and sisters, and enrolled at the medical school at Moscow University. The financial problems that had rocked his family continued, however, and Chekhov began writing comic sketches and light short stories to earn money. These early stories had scant literary merit and are rarely read today, but they helped Chekhov develop the concise, efficient prose that characterizes his later work.
Although Chekhov finished his medical degree and practiced as a doctor, he never completely devoted himself to medicine. Literature had become a more profitable career. In the mid-1880s, he began writing the carefully crafted stories that earned him the reputation as one of the best young Russian writers. Chekhov used his medical knowledge in his stories: His characters are often motivated by psychosomatic illnesses or by the psychological effects caused by physical disease.
Like Maupassant, by whom he was influenced, Chekhov played a considerable part in the development of the short story. His principal contribution was the subtle and precise exploration of a mood or of a psychological state.
In his twenties, Chekhov began writing one-act farces, including A Marriage Proposal. His first important play, The Seagull (1895), is a satire about a group of bohemian artists and a doctor, who is their detached observer. The play opened in St. Petersburg, where it set off a riot. The jeers from the audience sent an appalled Chekhov out of the theater, vowing never again to write another play. Fortunately, that vow was forgotten, and Chekhov went on to write some of the great plays in world literature: Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard—plays still staged today all over the world.
Chekhov had discovered signs of tuberculosis in his body when he was only twenty-four years old. In March 1897, as he was having dinner at the Hermitage, an art museum in St. Petersburg, blood started flowing from his mouth. As the disease wasted him, Chekhov traveled from one warm spa to another seeking a cure. He continued working, however, and in the last months of his life, he wrote furiously. He had long been dissatisfied with the productions of his plays, and he was determined to see The Cherry Orchard, his final play, produced as he wished it. He rewrote and revised as rehearsals continued. The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov's farewell to Russia and to his own life, premiered on January 17, 1904. Chekhov was taken from his bed to see the end of the third act. Six months later, he was dead.
