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Top 10 Interesting  Facts about Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov was a Russian playwright and a short story writer who was considered to be one of the greatest writers in the world.

In his career as a playwright he produced four classics and his best short stories were held in high esteem by writers and critics.

He is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre.

He was also a physician by profession and he once said “Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress“.

The plays he wrote were not complex therefore they were easy to follow because he created them in a somewhat haunting atmosphere for the audience.

1. Anton Chekhov’s Childhood

Anton Chekhov photo by Osip Braz-

He was born on January 29^th in the year 1860 in Taganrog which was a port on the sea of Azov in southern Russia.

Chekhov was the third of the siblings of six. Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov his father was the son of a former servant and his wife.

Pavel was from the village of Olkhovatka where he had a grocery store. He was also a director of the parish choir and a devoted Orthodox Christian.

He was an abusive father however he has been seen by some historians as the model for his sons.

Chekhov鈥檚 mother Yevgeniya was an excellent storyteller who entertained the children with tales of her travels with her cloth merchant father all over Russia.

2. His Education

Anton Chekhov photo by 袦械褌械谢械胁-

 Chekhov attended the Greek school in Taganrog and the Taganrog gymnasium was later renamed the Chekhov gymnasium where he was held back for a year when he was fifteen years old for failing an examination in ancient Greek.

He sang at the Greek Orthodox monastery in Taganrog and also in his father鈥檚 choirs.

He used the word 鈥渟uffering鈥� to describe his childhood in a letter he wrote in the year 1892.

In the letter, he said;鈥� when my brother and I used to stand in the middle of the church and sing the trio

鈥淢ay my prayer be exalted鈥� or 鈥渢he Archangel鈥檚 voice 鈥渆veryone looked at us with emotion and envied our parents but we at that moment felt like little convicts鈥�.

Chekhov completed his schooling and he joined his family in Moscow after gaining admission to the medical school at I.M Sechenov First Moscow state medical University.

3. His Early Writings

Anton Chekhov photo by Aditiv1810435-

Anton Chekhov due to the situation whereby his family had problems with finances took responsibility for the whole family.

To support his family and pay his tuition fees he wrote daily short humorous sketches and vignettes of contemporary Russian life.

His output gradually earned him a reputation as a satirical chronicler of Russian street life and by the year 1882, he was writing for fragments that were owned by Nikolai Leykin who was one of the leading publishers of that time.

In the year 1886, he was invited to write for one of the most popular papers in St Petersburg new times a Russian newspaper which was owned and edited by the millionaire magnate Alexey Suvorin.

Chekhov was attracting popular attention due to his writings so much so Dmitry Grigorovich a celebrated Russian writer wrote to Chekhov after reading his short story 鈥渢he huntsman鈥� he said that he had real talent, a talent that places him in the front rank among writers in the new generation.

In the year 1888 from a little string-pulling by Grigorovich, the short story collection at dusk made Chekhov win the coveted Pushkin prize for his best literary production and distinguished high artistic worth.

4. Anton Chekhov’s Turning Points in Writing Playwright

Anton Chekhov photo by Unknown-

In the year 1887, a theatre manager commissioned Chekhov to write a play which he wrote and the play was Ivanov the play was written in a fortnight and produced that November.

Chekhov found the experience sickening and painted a comic portrait of the chaotic production in a letter he wrote to his brother Alexander.

To Chekhov鈥檚 astonishment, the play was a hit and it was praised because his work was so original.

Though Chekhov did not realize it at the time his plays such as the seagull which he wrote in 1895, uncle Vanya which he wrote in 1897, the three sisters which he wrote in 1900 and the cherry orchard which he wrote in 1903 served as a revolutionary backbone to what is common sense to the medium of acting to this day.

Which was an effort to recreate and express the realism of how people truly act and speak with each other.

This philosophy of approaching the art of acting has stood not only steadfast but as the cornerstone of acting for much of the 20^th century to this day.

5. His Visit to Sakhalin

Chekhov undertook a journey by train, horse-drawn carriage, and river steamer to the Russian far east and the penal colony was Sakhalin island north of Japan where he spent three months interviewing thousands of convicts and settlers for a census.

While he was there he disliked the degradation of women taking part in Sakhalin. Chekhov’s findings were published in the years 1893 and 1894 on the island of Sakhalin his work is based on social science, not literature.

However, he found literary expression for the 鈥�hell of Sakhalin鈥� in his long short story about the murder.

6. Chekhov Settlement at Melikhovo

Mikhail Chekhov a household member of the Melikhovo described the extent of his brother鈥檚 medical commitments; from the first day, Chekhov moved to Melikhovo the sick began flocking to him from twenty miles around.

They came on foot or brought in by carts and often he was fetched to patients at a distance. Sometimes early in the morning peasant women and children were standing before his door waiting for him.

Chekhov鈥檚 work as a doctor enriched his writing by bringing him into intimate contact with all sections of Russian society.

7. His Stay in Yalta

Chekhov bought a plot of land on the outskirts of Yalta where he built a villa into which he moved in with his mother and sister after the death of his father.

However, he 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

8. His Death

Anton Chekhov died at the age of 44 after a long battle with tuberculosis and died out of it on July 15 in the year 1904.

In the year 1908 Olga his wife wrote this account of her husband鈥檚 last moments; Anton sat up usually straight and said loudly and clearly I am dying in German.

The doctor called him and took a syringe and gave him an injection of camphor and Chekhov ordered champagne.

Anton took a full glass and examined it and smiled at me and said it’s long since I drank champagne.

He drained it and lay quietly on his left side and just had time to run to him and lean across the bed and call him but he had stopped breathing and he was sleeping peacefully as a child.

9. Anton Chekhov’s Legacy

During his lifetime the British and the Irish generally did not find his work pleasing however E.J Dillon thought the effect on the reader of Chekhov鈥檚 tales was repulsion at the gallery of human waste represented by his fickle, spineless, drifting people.  

R.E.C. Long said Chekhov鈥檚 character was repugnant and that Chekhov repelled in stripping the last rags of dignity from the human soul.

After Chekhov鈥檚 death, he was reappraised and Constance Garnett鈥檚 translation won him an English language readership and the admiration of writers such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Katherine Mansfield whose story 鈥�the child who was tired鈥� is similar to Chekhov鈥檚 story 鈥�蝉濒别别辫测鈥�.

10. His Style in Plays

Virginia Wolf was amused by the unique quality of Chekhov’s story in The common reader in the year 1925 and she said;

” But is it the end, we ask? We have rather the feeling that we 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 recognize. In so doing we raise the question of our own fitness as readers.

Where the tune is familiar and the end emphatic lovers united, villans 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“.

In conclusion, Anton Chekhov at first wrote stories to earn money but as his artistic ambition grew, therefore, made a formal innovation that influenced the evolution of modern-day short stories.

He also made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers where he insisted that the role of an artist was to ask questions but not to answer them.