Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich
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Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
Aliases: Antosha Chehonte, My brother's brother, A man without a spleen, etc.
Date of birth: January 17 (29), 1860[1][2]
Place of birth: Taganrog, Ekaterinoslav province, Russian Empire[2][3]
Date of death: July 2 (15), 1904[1][2] (44 years old)
Place of death: Badenweiler, German Empire[1][2]
Citizenship (citizenship): The Russian Empire
Occupation: novelist, playwright, doctor
Direction: Realism
Genre: short story, novella, play
Language of works: Russian
Awards: Griboyedov Prize (1901), Pushkin Prize of the Academy of Sciences (1888)
Awards:
Signature:
Works on the site Lib.ru Works in Wikitek Files on Wikimedia Commons
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Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (January 17 (29), 1860, Taganrog, Ekaterinoslav province (now Rostov Region) — July 2 (15), 1904, Badenweiler) — Russian writer, novelist, playwright.
A recognized classic of world literature.
A doctor by profession.
Honorary academician of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the category of Fine Literature (1900-1902).
One of the most famous playwrights in the world.
His works have been translated into more than 100 languages.
His plays, especially "The Seagull", "Three Sisters" and "The Cherry Orchard", have been staged in many theaters around the world for more than 100 years.
For 25 years of creativity, Chekhov has created more than 300 different works (short humorous stories, serious novels, plays), many of which have become classics of world literature.
Special attention was drawn to "Steppe", "Boring story", "Duel", "Ward No. 6", "The Story of an unknown man", "Men" (1897), "The Man in the case" (1898)," In the ravine"," Children"," Drama on the hunt"; from the plays:" Ivanov"," The Seagull"," Uncle Vanya"," Three Sisters","Cherry Orchard".
Content
1 Biography 1.1 Childhood and youth 1.2 Formation 1.3 Sakhalin 1.4 Later years 1.5 Death
2 Creativity 2.1 Features of drama 2.2 Chekhov's pseudonyms 2.3 Bibliography 2.4 The meaning of creativity
3 Chekhov is a writer and Chekhov is a doctor 4 Memory 4.1 In numismatics 4.2 In philately 4.2.1 Foreign issues
4.3 Museums and libraries 4.4 Theaters and creative collectives 4.5 Sea and river vessels 4.6 Astronomical objects 4.7 Geographical names 4.8 Monuments 4.9 Monuments to Chekhov's heroes 4.10 Chekhov in art 4.11 Film adaptations of works 4.12 Theatrical productions
5 Family, relatives 5.1 Pedigree 5.1.1 On the father's side 5.1.2 On the mother's side
5.2 Parents 5.2.1 Mother 5.2.2 Father
6 Moscow addresses 7 See also 8 Notes 9 References 10 References
Biography
Childhood and youth
On January 17 (29), 1860, in a small house[5] on Police Street[6] (now Chekhov) in Taganrog, the third child, Anton, was born in the family of Pavel Egorovich Chekhov.
In total, the Chekhov family had 6 children: 5 sons and a daughter[7].
Anton's early childhood was spent in endless church holidays, name days.
On weekdays after school, the brothers guarded their father's shop, and at 5 o'clock in the morning every day they got up to sing in the church choir.
As Chekhov himself said: "As a child, I did not have a childhood."
Chekhov's education began at a Greek school in Taganrog;
On August 23, 1868, Anton Chekhov entered the preparatory class of the Taganrog gymnasium.
The men's classical gymnasium was the oldest educational institution in the south of Russia (founded in 1806 as a commercial one, since 1866 — a classical one).
At the gymnasium, his vision of the world was formed, his love for books, knowledge and the theater; here he received his first literary pseudonym "Chekhov", which was awarded to him by the teacher of the Law of God Fyodor Platonovich Pokrovsky; here his first literary and stage experiments began.
The writer's father's house in Taganrog
Chekhov in Melikhov with the dachshund Hina (1897)
Chekhov with Olga Knipper (1901)
The cover of the first separate edition of the play "Three Sisters" (1901) with portraits of the first performers in the Art Theater: M. G. Savitskaya (Olga), O. L. Knipper (Masha) and M. F. Andreeva (Irina)
Music and books aroused in the young Anton Chekhov the desire for creativity.
The Taganrog Theater, founded in 1827, played a big role in this.
Anton visited the theater for the first time at the age of 13, watched Jacques Offenbach's operetta "The Beautiful Elena" and soon became a passionate fan of the theater.
Later, in one of his letters, Chekhov will say: "The theater once gave me a lot of good things…
Before, there was no greater pleasure for me than sitting in the theater... "
It is no coincidence that the heroes of his first works, such as "Tragedian", "Comedian", "Benefit", "No Wonder the chicken sang", were actors and actresses.
Anton took part in the home performances of his high school friend Andrey Drossy[8].
Chekhov, a high school student, published humorous magazines, invented captions for drawings, wrote humorous stories, skits.
The first drama "Fatherless" was written by 18 year old Chekhov during his studies at the gymnasium.
Chekhov's gymnasium period was an important stage in the maturation and formation of his personality, the development of its spiritual foundations.
The gymnasium years gave Chekhov a huge material for writing work.
The most typical and colorful figures will appear later on the pages of his works.
Perhaps one of these figures was his mathematics teacher Edmund Dzerzhinsky — the father of the future first chairman of the CHEKA[9].
In 1879, he graduated from the gymnasium in Taganrog.
In the same year, he moved to Moscow and entered the medical Faculty of Moscow University (now the First Moscow State Medical University named after I. M. Sechenov), where he studied with famous professors: Nikolai Sklifosovsky, Grigory Zakharin and others.
In the same year, Anton's brother Ivan got a job as a teacher in the city of Voskresensk near Moscow.
He was allocated a large apartment that could accommodate a whole family.
The Chekhov's, who lived closely in Moscow, came to Ivan in Voskresensk for the summer.
There, in 1881, Anton Chekhov met Dr. P. A. Arkhangelsky, the head of the Resurrection Hospital (Chikinskaya Hospital).
Since 1882, as a student, he has already helped the doctors of the hospital when receiving patients.
In 1884, Chekhov graduated from the university course and began working as a district doctor in the Chikinsky hospital.
According to the memoirs of P. A. Arkhangelsky:
Anton Pavlovich carried out the work slowly, sometimes his actions expressed as if uncertainty; but he did everything with attention and visible love for the work, especially with love for the patient who passed through his hands.
The mental state of the patient has always attracted the special attention of Anton Pavlovich, and along with the usual medications, he attached great importance to the impact on the patient's psyche from the doctor and the environment[10].
Then he worked in Zvenigorod, where he was in charge of a hospital for some time.
Becoming
On December 24, 1879, as a first year student, Chekhov published in the magazine" Dragonfly "the story" A Letter to a learned neighbor" and humorous " What is most often found in novels, novellas, etc.".
This was his debut in print.
In the following years, Chekhov wrote short stories, feuilletons, humorous "trifles" under the pseudonyms "Antosha Chekhov" and "The Man without a Spleen" or their variants, [11] or completely without a signature, in the publications of the "small press", mainly humorous: the Moscow magazines "Alarm Clock", "Spectator", etc. and in the St. Petersburg humorous weekly magazines "Fragments", "Dragonfly".
Chekhov collaborated with the "Petersburg Newspaper" (from 1884, with interruptions), with the Suvorin newspaper " Novoe Vremya "(1886-1893) and with the" Russian Vedomosti " (1893-1899).
In 1882, Chekhov prepared the first collection of short stories "Prank", but it did not come out, perhaps because of censorship difficulties.
In 1884, a collection of his short stories was published- "The Tales of Melpomene" (signed " A. Chehonte").
The years 1885-86 were the heyday of Chekhov as a "miniaturist fiction writer" - the author of short, mostly humorous stories.
At that time, by his own admission, he wrote a story a day.
Contemporaries believed that he will remain in this genre; but in the spring of 1886, he received a letter from a famous Russian writer Dmitry Grigorovich, where he criticised Chekhov for the fact that he spends his talent to "PAL".
"Fast is better, as we were starving, take care of your impressions of labor considered (...)
One such work will be a hundred times higher than the estimated hundreds of wonderful stories, scattered at various times on Newspapers," wrote Grigorovich.
Subsequently, Alexey Suvorin, Viktor Bilibin and Alexey Pleshcheev joined Grigorovich's councils.
Chekhov listened to these tips.
From 1887, he collaborated less and less with humorous magazines; his cooperation with The Alarm Clock was interrupted.
His stories became longer and more serious.
The important changes that took place with Chekhov at that time are also indicated by the desire to travel.
In the same year, 1887, he went on a trip to the south, to his native places; later he went to the "Gogol places", to the Crimea, to the Caucasus.
The trip to the south revived Chekhov's memories of his youth spent there and gave him material for" Steppe", his first work in a thick magazine — "Northern Bulletin".
The debut in such a magazine attracted a lot of critical attention, much more than to any previous work by Chekhov.
In the autumn of 1887, Chekhov's letters mentioned the work on the novel "in 1500 lines".
It lasted until 1889, when Chekhov, who was burdened with work of such a large size, finally abandoned his plan.
"I am glad—" he wrote to Suvorin in January— " that 2-3 years ago I did not listen to Grigorovich and did not write a novel!
I imagine how much good I would have ruined if I had listened ...
In addition to the abundance of material and talent, I need something equally important.
We need maturity this is one time; secondly, we need a sense of personal freedom, and this feeling began to flare up in me only recently."
Obviously, it was the lack of these properties that Chekhov was dissatisfied with at the end of the 1880s, which prompted him to travel.
But he was still dissatisfied after these trips; he needed a new, big trip.
His options were a trip around the world, a trip to Central Asia, to Persia, to Sakhalin.
In the end, he decided on the latter option.
But despite Chekhov's own dissatisfaction with himself, his fame grew.
After the release of "Steppe" and "Boring Story", the attention of critics and readers was riveted to each of his new works.
On October 7 (19), 1888, he received the half Pushkin Prize of the Academy of Sciences for the third collection published in the previous year, 1887 — "At Dusk".
In the corresponding resolution of the academic commission, it was written that " the stories of G. Chekhov, although they do not fully meet the requirements of the highest art criticism, are nevertheless an outstanding phenomenon in our modern fiction literature."
At the end of the 1880s in the manner of Chekhov appeared a feature that some contemporaries considered an advantage, others a disadvantage — is the deliberate dispassion of the description, the emphasized lack of an author's assessment.
Especially this feature is distinguished by "I want to sleep", "Women" and "Princess".
Sakhalin
"Sakhalin Island" and the reaction of officials.
Russian thought, 1893, № 12, 1894, № 4.
The decision to go to Sakhalin was finally made, obviously, in the summer of 1889, after discussing this intention with the artist K. A. Karatygina, who traveled to Siberia and Sakhalin in the late 1870s.
But Chekhov hid this intention for a long time even from the closest ones; after informing Karatygina about it, he asked to keep it a secret.
He revealed this secret only in January 1890, it made a great impression on society.
This impression was also strengthened by the "suddenness" of the decision made, because already in the spring of 1890, Chekhov went on a trip.
The journey through Siberia took 82 days, during which Chekhov wrote nine essays, united under the general title "From Siberia".
Chekhov arrived on Sakhalin on July 11 (23).
For several months of his stay on it, Chekhov communicated with people, learned their life stories, the reasons for exile and collected rich material for his notes.
He conducted, according to his own words, a complete census of the population of Sakhalin, collecting several thousand cards about the inhabitants of the island.
The administration of the island strictly forbade communicating with political prisoners, but he violated this prohibition.
(Also in 1897, for participating in the All Russian population Census as a counter, he received the medal "For his work on the first general population census of 1897").
Chekhov was returning from Sakhalin by sea, on the Dobroflot steamer "Petersburg".
In Vladivostok, where the ship was standing from October 14 (26) to October 19 (31), Chekhov worked in the library of the Society for the Study of the Amur Region, collecting additional materials for a book about Sakhalin.[12]
Next — Hong Kong, Singapore, the island of Ceylon, the Suez Canal, Constantinople, Odessa.
Finally, on December 7 (19), 1890, his relatives met him in Tula.
In the next 5 years, Chekhov wrote the book "Sakhalin Island".
As for artistic creativity, the trip to Sakhalin, according to Chekhov's own admission, had a huge impact on all his subsequent works.
In 2005, on Sakhalin, for the first time in Russia, the materials of the Sakhalin census by A. P. Chekhov were published in one edition "Perhaps my figures will also be useful...".
The publication published all 10 thousand survey cards filled out by Chekhov's respondents during his trip to Sakhalin Island in 1890.
Later years
"Chekhov's House" on Malaya Dmitrovka, 2008.
Isaac Levitan Portrait of A. P. Chekhov (1885-1886)
From 1890 to 1895, after returning to Moscow from a trip to Sakhalin, Chekhov settled in a small two story wing on Malaya Dmitrovka.
Here he worked on the book "Sakhalin Island", the stories "Poprygunya", "Duel", "Ward No. 6" , and also met with writers V. G. Korolenko, D. V. Grigorovich, V. A. Gilyarovsky, P. D. Boborykin, D. S. Merezhkovsky, V. I. Nemirovich Danchenko, famous actors A. P. Lensky and A. I. Yuzhin, artist I. I. Levitan.
The wing has survived to our time and is marked by a commemorative plaque with a bas relief by A. P. Chekhov.
From 1892 to 1899, Chekhov lived in the Melikhovo estate near Moscow, where one of the main Chekhov museums now works.
During the years of "Melikhovsky sitting" 42 works were written.
Later, Chekhov traveled a lot in Europe.
At the end of 1898, the writer bought a plot of land in Yalta.
A garden was laid out on the plot and a house was built according to the project of architect L. N. Shapovalov.
In recent years, Chekhov, whose tuberculosis has worsened, has been constantly living in his house near Yalta to improve his health, only occasionally coming to Moscow, where his wife (since 1901), the artist Olga Leonardovna Knipper, occupies one of the outstanding places in the troupe of the Moscow Art Theater (Stanislavsky), formed in 1898.
In 1900, at the first election to the Pushkin branch of the Academy of Sciences, Chekhov was elected among its honorary academicians.
In 1902, Chekhov, together with V. G. Korolenko, refused the title of academician after the order of Nicholas II to annul the election of Maxim Gorky to honorary academicians.
Death
Removal of the coffin with the body of A. P. Chekhov from the car.
Nikolaevsky railway station, 1904
Chekhov's grave at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow
In the history of Chekhov's illness, which was conducted in the clinic by the writer's attending physician Maxim Maslov, it is recorded that during his gymnasium and student years, Chekhov was ill with tuberculous inflammation of the peritoneum, but he felt "tightness in the sternum" at the age of 10.
Since 1884, Chekhov suffered from bleeding from his right lung[13].
Some researchers believe that a fatal role in the writer's life was played by a trip to Sakhalin — there was a thaw and he had to travel thousands of kilometers on horses, in wet clothes and soaked felt boots (Chekhov himself and his relatives associated the disease with the trip).
Others called frequent moves from Yalta to Moscow at the most unfavorable time for health the reason for the exacerbation of the tuberculosis process.
In the summer of 1904, Chekhov went to a resort in Germany.
Due to a sharp exacerbation of the disease, which he could not cope with, the writer died on July 2 (15), 1904 in Badenweiler, Germany.
The denouement came on the night of July 1 to 2, 1904.
According to the testimony of his wife Olga Leonardovna, at the beginning of the night Chekhov woke up and " for the first time in his life he asked to send for a doctor.
After that, he ordered champagne to be given.
Anton Pavlovich sat down and somehow significantly, loudly said to the doctor in German (he knew very little German): "Ich sterbe".
Then he repeated for the student or for me in Russian: "I'm dying."
Then he took a glass, turned his face to me, smiled his amazing smile, said:" I havenot drunk champagne for a long time...", calmly drank everything to the bottom, quietly lay down on his left side and soon fell silent forever."
The coffin with the body of the writer was delivered to Moscow in a car with the inscription "Oysters".
Someone perceived this as a mockery of the great writer, but at the beginning of the XX century, few cars were equipped with refrigeration units[14].
On July 9 (22), 1904, the funeral took place.
A funeral service was held in the Assumption Church of the Novodevichy Monastery.
Chekhov was buried right behind the Assumption Church in the monastery cemetery, next to the grave of his father.
A wooden cross with an icon and a lantern for a lamp was placed on the grave.
On the anniversary of the death of A. P. Chekhov on July 2 (15), 1908, a new marble monument was opened on the grave, designed in the Art Nouveau style by the artist L. M. Brailovsky.[15]
In 1933, after the abolition of the cemetery on the territory of the Novodevichy Monastery, at the request of O. L. Knipper, Chekhov was reburied in the cemetery behind the southern wall of the monastery.
On November 16, 1933, in the presence of a few relatives and close friends, the grave was opened and the coffin was moved to a new place.
Soon both tombstones were moved here — A. P. Chekhov and his father (while the burial of P. E. Chekhov was left in the old place)[16].
Creation
Features of drama
The originality of Chekhov's plays was noticed by his contemporaries at the first productions.
At first, it was perceived as Chekhov's inability to cope with the task of a consistent dramatic movement.
Reviewers spoke about the lack of" scenic", about" stretching", about" lack of action", about" disorderly dialogue", about" scattered composition " and the weakness of the plot[17].
Theater critics increasingly reproached Chekhov for introducing unnecessary details of everyday life into his plays and thereby violating all the laws of stage action.
However, for Anton Pavlovich himself, the reproduction of the sphere of everyday life was an indispensable condition otherwise the meaning of the whole plan was lost for him.
Chekhov said:
They demand that there be a hero, a heroine who is spectacular on stage.
But it's not every minute in life that people shoot themselves, hang themselves, and declare their love.
And they donot say smart things every minute.
They eat more, drink more, drag around, say stupid things.
And now it is necessary that this should be seen on the stage.
It is necessary to create a play where people come, go, have lunch, talk about the weather, play screw, but not because the author needs it, but because it happens in real life[18].
Let everything be as difficult on stage and at the same time as simple as in life.
People are having lunch, just having lunch, and at this time their happiness is composed and their lives are broken[19].
In Chekhov's dramaturgy, contrary to all traditions, events are relegated to the periphery as a short term particularity, and the usual, even, daily recurring, familiar to everyone is the main array of the entire content of the play.
Almost all of Chekhov's plays are based on a detailed description of everyday life, through which the peculiarities of the feelings, moods, characters and relationships of the characters are conveyed to the readers.
The selection of household lines is carried out according to the principle of their significance in the general emotional content of life.
Chekhov often uses the so called "random" replicas of characters[20].
At the same time, the dialogue is constantly torn, broken and confused in some completely extraneous and unnecessary trifles.
However, such dialogues and replicas in the general stage context in Chekhov do not fulfill their purpose by the direct objective meaning of their content, but by the vital well being that is manifested in them[17].
K. S. Stanislavsky and V. I. Nemirovich Danchenko noticed the most essential principle in the dramatic movement of Chekhov's plays, the so called "undercurrent".
It was they who first revealed the presence of a continuous inner intimate behind the seemingly everyday episodes and details they made every effort to bring a new interpretation of Chekhov's drama to the viewer.
Thanks to Stanislavsky and Nemirovich Danchenko, the infecting power of Chekhov's plays became obvious[21].
Chekhov's pseudonyms
Like any humorist writer, Chekhov used dozens of various pseudonyms.
Until now, they have not been fully disclosed, since Chekhov himself, when preparing the collected works for A. F. Marx, could not remember the belonging of all his early stories.
The function of the humorist's pseudonym was not so much to conceal the true authorship, as to amuse the reader, to intrigue him (hence the variability, deliberate confusion — the reader had to try to guess the authorship of the story himself).
Often, a pseudonym is a necessary element of the composition of a particular story, part of a literary farce and cannot be properly disclosed outside of its context.
In rare cases, the background of a particular pseudonym of Chekhov could be known only to a narrow circle of his acquaintances and required additional deciphering.
Below is a list of 42 pseudonyms of the writer known to Czech Studies by the end of the last century:
A. P., A. P. Ch v, Antosha, Antosha Ch., Antosha Ch.
***, Antosha Chehonte, A n Ch te, An.
Ch., An.
H e, Anche, An.
Th in,
A. Ch., A. Ch.
v., A. Che v., A Chehonte, G. Baldastov, Makar Baldastov, My brother's brother, A doctor without patients, A hot tempered person, Nut No. 6, Nut No. 9,
Grach, Don Antonio Chehonte, Uncle, Kislyaev, M. Kovrov, Nettle, Laertes, Prose poet, Ruver, Ruver and Revur, Ulysses,
Ts., Ch.
B. S., Ch.
without S., A man without a spleen, Ch.
Ch.
Honte, A., Champagne, ...
V, Z[22].
At the insistence of A. S. Suvorin, Chekhov begins to publish his "serious" works in the "New Time" under his full name, continuing at the same time the tradition of a literary pseudonym in humorous journalism.
Bibliography
Main article: Bibliography of Anton Chekhov
The meaning of creativity
This section should be completely rewritten.
There may be explanations on the discussion page.
Chekhov and Gorky
The book "Sakhalin Island" became an artistic document of the era.
Chekhov stands at the origins of tragicomedy.
His work contains the best examples of all genre varieties of "small prose"in Russian literature.
Chekhov's drama has become the" calling card " of Russian literature in the world.
Chekhov's call "Take care of the person in yourself"is eternal.
Chekhov's artistic discoveries had a huge impact on the literature and theater of the XX century.
His dramatic works, translated into many languages, have become an integral part of the world theater repertoire.
Chekhov created new moves in literature, greatly influencing the development of the modern story.
The originality of his creative method lies in the use of a technique called "stream of consciousness" (later adopted by James Joyce and other modernists) and the lack of a final moral, so necessary for the structure of the classic story of that time.
Chekhov did not seek to give answers to the reading public, but believed that the role of the author is to ask questions, not to answer them.
In 1896, after the failure of "The Seagull", Chekhov, who had already written several plays by that time, renounced the theater.
However, in 1898, the production of "The Seagull" by the Moscow Art Theater, founded by Stanislavsky and Nemirovich Danchenko, was a huge success with the public and critics.
After that, Chekhov returned to drama and created three more masterpieces: "Uncle Vanya", "Three Sisters" and "The Cherry Orchard".
It was Chekhov who, for the first time in Russian literature, vividly demonstrated in his stories the image of a provincial philistine, devoid of any outlook, thirst for activity, good aspirations,
