A cartoon in The New Yorker features an author, an auto mechanic, and a baseball
player talking about their influences. All of them finished with the phrase
"and, of course, Chekhov."
While Anton Chekhov probably never tuned up a car or took batting practice,
his influence on modern literature and drama is incalculable. He wrote
hundreds of short stories that helped redefine fiction, and his plays led to new styles of acting that conveyed
the psychology beneath dramatists' words. His stories are noted for the sheer volume of characters presented, from the highest to the lowest
strata of Russian society, all of whom are portrayed with compassion and a
sharp sense of their essential humanity.
Chekhov was born on January 29, 1860, in Taganrog, Russia. After his father
drove his family into poverty, they moved to Moscow -- except young Anton,
who was left behind to finish school. He paid for his own education through a
series of odd jobs -- tutoring, selling birds, and (most importantly) writing
under a series of pseudonyms. At the age of 19, he was accepted to the medical school
at Moscow University.
Despite his workload as a medical student, Anton was still expected to
provide the bulk of his family's income, so he kept writing, turning out
short stories and sketches by the dozen. He developed a reputation as one of
Russia's finest writers, winning the coveted Pushkin Prize
at the age of 27. Even after graduation, he continued to write, claiming, "Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my
mistress. When I get fed up with one, I spend the night with the other."
Chekhov loved the theatre, and throughout his early career, turned out a
series of short comedies and broad farces.
In 1894, though, he began writing the play that would, ultimately, change the
course of world drama. That play, The Seagull,
premiered in 1896 -- and was an utter disaster, mainly because of the actors not knowing how to play the
subtleties of the script. But the production caught the attention of
directors Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and Konstantin Stanislavski, who were looking for suitable material for their new Moscow Art Theatre. Despite Chekhov's insistence that his plays were comedies,
Stanislavski directed them as intense dramas showing people in states of
emotional inertia. When the theatre presented The Seagull in 1898, it stunned audiences and critics with its psychological realism and intensity.
Stanislavski had created an acting "system" that was eventually transformed into the American "Method"
that dominated acting in the second half of the 20th century.
Chekhov suffered from tuberculosis most of his life, and his death in 1904, with its mixture of comedy and tragedy, reads
almost as though he wrote it. On his deathbed, after saying, "It's been so
long since I had champagne," he drained a glass and died. At that exact
moment, the champagne bottle exploded and a giant moth began beating its body
against a light bulb. His body was transported to Moscow in a crate labeled
"For oysters," and he was buried
in the Novodevichy cemetery alongside many of Russia’s greatest writers, artists, and statesmen.
Despite his modest dramatic output, Chekhov's influence on such writers as Samuel Beckett, August Wilson, Bertolt Brecht, Harold Pinter, and Tennessee Williams is immense.
Even though he died more than a century ago, his work is still as fresh,
relevant, and dynamic today as when he wrote it.
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