Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov (1860 –1904) is considered by many the greatest Russian short story writer. Chekhov, who also became a medical doctor, began writing stories to earn money and help support his impoverished family after the erratic father went bankrupt and fled the home.

His father, Pavel, the son of a former serf, ran a grocery store. He was also director of the parish choir, a devout Orthodox Christian, and a physically abusive father. Chekhov's mother, Yevgeniya, was an excellent storyteller who entertained the children with tales of her travels all over Russia with her cloth-merchant father. "Our talents we got from our father," Chekhov recalled, "but our soul from our mother."

In adulthood, Chekhov criticized 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."

It bears mentioning that Pavel Chekhov has been seen by some historians as the model for his son's many portraits of hypocrisy. In 1876 when Chekhov's father was declared bankrupt after overextending his finances, Anton was left behind to sell the family's possessions and finish his education. Chekhov was forced to pay for his own education, which he managed by private tutoring, catching and selling goldfinches, and offering short sketches to the newspapers, among other jobs. He sent every ruble he could spare to his family in Moscow, along with humorous letters to cheer them up.

Chekhov felt a personal obligation to care for the whole family. To support them and to pay his tuition fees at medical college, he wrote daily short, humorous sketches and vignettes of contemporary Russian life. 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.

But as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations that influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He offered no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them, and by 1885 he continued writing for weekly periodicals, earning enough money to move the family into progressively better accommodations.

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

Chekhov replied that the letter 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." The admission may have done Chekhov a disservice, since early manuscripts reveal that he often wrote with extreme care, continually revising.

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, won Chekhov the coveted Pushkin Prize for the best literary production distinguished by high artistic worth.

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. He spent three months there 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.

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." 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 heavy chains on his legs. His daughter, a little girl of six, was with him. Chekhov noted that wherever the convict moved the little girl scrambled after him, holding on to his shackles. At night the child slept with the convicts and soldiers all in a heap together.

Chekhov's work as a doctor enriched his writing by bringing him into intimate contact with all sections of Russian society, witnessing 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."


In Yalta, Chekhov wrote one of his most famous stories, The Lady with the Dog, 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 each other.

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." Needless to say, Chekhov's posthumous reputation greatly exceeded his expectations

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". R. E. C. Long said "Chekhov's characters were repugnant,” and that “Chekhov reveled in stripping the last rags of dignity from the human soul".

By contrast, Raymond Carver, who wrote the short story "Errand" about Chekhov's death, believed that the Russian author 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.”



To the Reader: Please note that, although
I have read through the vast bulk of Chekhov’s fiction,
the biographical material cobbled together here
was gathered from numerous internet sources.
Barry R