Anton Chekhov

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in the year 1860 on January 17th in Ukraine. He was born in a small seaport of Taganrog. He is mostly remembered as a playwright and as a master of modern short stories. His father was a grocer and his grand father was a serf. He bought his own freedom and also that of his sons. He spent most of his years under the passions of his father’s religion as he worked long hours in his store.

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Chekhov’s Childhood and Adolescence

He attended school in his hometown which was for Greek boys in the year 1867 to 1868. He later attended a local grammar school in the year 1868 to 1876. During this time his father went bankrupt and he was forced to move to his family in Moscow. Chekhov was 16 years old by then, this situation did not make him to move with his dad but he decided to stay in his hometown and support himself as he tutored and also continuing with his education for three years. When he completed grammar school, he enrolled for a university of medical school in Moscow where he later becomes a doctor. His science and medical experiences were the evidence of his work as it was shown by the lethargy of most of his characters which is shown towards his tragic events.

As he attended the medical school he began publishing comic short stories and he used the money that he got to support himself and also his family by the end of the year 1886 he was famous due to his writing talent. His work was published to several St. Peter’s papers which included Peterburskaia Gazeta from the year 1885; Novoe vremia from the year 1886.He also published two novels at this time. One of the novels known as the shooting Party was later translated to English in the year1926.

The Pushkin Prize Brings Fame

In the year 1884 he graduated from the medical school and he continued to practice in medicine until the end of the year 1892. As he was still practicing medicine, he continued being a regular contributor to St. Petersburg newspaper Novoe vremya. During this time he was able to develop the style of being composed, non-judgmental author. Due to lack of critical societal commentary in his work, this made him net some detractors. This enabled him to gain praises just like Nikolai Leskov and Leo Tolstoy. In the year 1888, he was awarded the Pushkin Prize and the year after he was elected as a member of Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. Nevertheless, when his play failed The Wood Demon in the year 1889 he departed from literature for some time. As an alternative he went back to medicine and science during the trip to punitive city state of Sakhalin, north of Siberia. As he was there he investigated 10,000 criminals who were sentenced for life imprisonment in the islands as a part of his research. When he finished what he was doing to the islands, he traveled to all places including places of South East Asia, the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent.

In the year 1892 he purchased an estate in the country in a village known as Melikhove where he became a writer in full time. During this time- he published most of his memorable stories which included “Neighbor” in the year 1892, The Black Monk(1894), Araiadne (1895) Ward Number six (1892) and “The murder”(1895). During the year 1897 he was ill and he was suffering from tuberculosis and he moved to Yalta, and as he was there he wrote his most famous stories “About love,” “In the Ravine, “Gooseberries”, “Lady with the Dog” and “The Man in a shell”. In the year 1901 Chekhov married an actress, Olga Knipper, who had one performed in his play. Their marriage was short lived since Chekhov died in the ear 1901 on July15th in Badenweiler Germany. He was buried in the cemeteries of Novodeviche Monastery in Moscow. Even though he was celebrated after his death by the Russian literary, he remained being unknown internationally but only after the World War 1 after his work was translated to English. He was a very fast writer and he produced a short story with an hour or less. Throughout his career he produced various stories. He was not very much successful during his first plays since they were- failure to him until in the year 1898 when Seagull was revised by Stanislavsky in Moscow Art Theatre where he gained popularity because of being a playwright.

Chekhov’s Posthumous Popularity

A few months before his death, Chekhov informed Ivan Bunin that he thought that the people would go on the reading for him for seven years. Bunin asked him why he said seven years and he said seven and a half. Chekhov was always modest and he could not imagine the degree of his posthumous reputation. The applauses for The Cherry Orchard during the year of his death helped him to know how high he was in the affection of Russian public, where he was the second in literary celebrity. This was only to Tolstoy who had lived longer than him by six years but after he died Chekhov’s fame spread to the further fields. Constance Garnett’s translations made him to win an English-language readership and also being admired by some writers such as Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield and James Joyce. The main issues which surrounds the similarities which is between Mansfield’s 1910in the story of The Child Who Was Tired and the story of Chekhov Sleepy happen to be summarized in William H. Reading Mansfield and metaphors of Reform. A Russian critic D.S.Mirsky, who stayed in England, enlightened on Chekhov popularity in their country by his extraordinarily complete rejection that can be referred as heroic values. In Russia, Chekhov’s drama was not recognized as a being fashionable after the revolution although it later adapted to Soviet agenda, together with character of Lopakhin, who a for -example that reinvented like a hero in the new order, in the taking of an axe to the cherry orchard.

A non- Russian man who was the first to praise Chekhov plays was George Bernard Shaw, Who made a subtitle of Heartbreak House to “A Fantasia in Russian Manner on English Themes” he noticed the similarities in the dilemma of British landed class and the Russian complements as depicted by Chekhov that the same people who are nice utter the same futility-(Bloom).

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