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Born on January 29, 1860, in Taganrog, Russia,
on the Sea of Azov, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov would eventually
become one of Russia’s most cherished storytellers. Especially
fond of vaudevilles and French farces, he produced some hilarious
one-acts, but it is his full-length tragedies that have secured
him a place among the greatest dramatists of all time.
Chekhov began writing short stories during his days as a medical
student at the University of Moscow. After graduating in 1884
with a degree in medicine, he began to freelance as a journalist
and writer of comic sketches. Early in his career, he mastered
the form of the one-act and produced several masterpieces of
this genre including The Bear (1888) in which a creditor
hounds a young widow, but becomes so impressed when she agrees
to fight a duel with him, that he proposes marriage, and The
Wedding (1889) in which a bridegroom’s plans to have a general
attend his wedding ceremony backfire when the general turns out
to be a retired naval captain "of the second rank".
Ivanov (1887), Chekhov’s first full-length play, a
fairly immature work compared to his later plays, examines the
suicide of a young man very similar to Chekhov himself in many
ways. His next play, The Wood Demon (1888) was also fairly
unsuccessful. In fact, it was not until the Moscow Art Theater
production of The Seagull (1897) that Chekhov enjoyed
his first overwhelming success. The same play had been performed
two years earlier at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg
and had been so badly received that Chekhov had actually left
the auditorium during the second act and vowed never to write
for the theatre again. But in the hands of the Moscow Art Theatre,
the play was transformed into a critical success, and Chekhov
soon realized that the earlier production had failed because
the actors had not understood their roles.
In 1899, Chekhov gave the Moscow Art Theatre a revised version
of The Wood Demon, now titled Uncle Vanya (1899).
Along with The Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry
Orchard (1904), this play would go on to become one of the
masterpieces of the modern theatre. However, although the Moscow
Art Theatre productions brought Chekhov great fame, he was never
quite happy with the style that director Constantin Stanislavsky
imposed on the plays. While Chekhov insisted that his plays were
comedies, Stanislavsky’s productions tended to emphasize their
tragic elements. Still, in spite of their stylistic disagreements,
it was not an unhappy marriage, and these productions brought
widespread acclaim to both Chekhov’s work and the Moscow Art
Theatre itself.
Chekhov considered his mature plays to be a kind of comic
satire, pointing out the unhappy nature of existence in turn-of-the-century
Russia. Perhaps Chekhov’s style was described best by the poet
himself when he wrote:
"All I wanted was to say honestly to people: ‘Have a
look at yourselves and see how bad and dreary your lives are!’
The important thing is that people should realize that, for when
they do, they will most certainly create another and better life
for themselves. I will not live to see it, but I know that it
will be quite different, quite unlike our present life. And so
long as this different life does not exist, I shall go on saying
to people again and again: ‘Please, understand that your life
is bad and dreary!’"
During Chekhov’s final years, he was forced to live in exile
from the intellectuals of Moscow. In March of 1897, he had suffered
a lung hemorrhaage, and although he still made occasional trips
to Moscow to participate in the productions of his plays, he
was forced to spend most of his time in the Crimea where he had
gone for his health. He died of tuberculosis on July 14, 1904,
at the age of forty-four, in a German health resort and was buried
in Moscow. Since his death, Chekhov’s plays have become famous
worldwide and he has come to be considered the greatest Russian
storyteller and dramatist of modern times.
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