Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on January 17 (Old Style) 29 (New Style), 1860 in a mer-chant’s family in Taganrog. His father wasn’t reach and just started his career at that period.
Long before Anton Chekhov’s father and grandfather had been serf peasants of a village of Olkhovatka in Voronezh region (province). Having worked hard all his life Chekhov’s grandfather, Egor Mikhailovich Chekhov, managed to save 3.500 (three and a half) thousand roubles and ransom his family in 1841 (20 years earlier before the abolition serfdom in Russia).
Pavel Egorovich, Anton Chekhov’s father, was a business-man by profession, as he reliable called himself, and an artist at his heart. He was a very gifted person and was good at various fields. He managed to learn to play the violin. He was fond of painting and even tried to paint icons. One of them has been preserved till nowadays. It has been keeping in Yalta museum.
Anton Pavlovich once said about himself, his brothers and a sister, “We have got our talent from our father and soul – from our mother”. Apparantly, one of the greatest passion of Pavel Egoro-vich Chekhov was a church choir organized by him. It was it to which he used to devote all his free time, in damage of his commerce. With his usual persistence and punctuality he tried to make his choir to be the best in Taganrog. The singers of P.Egorovich’s choir were the blacksmithes. His sons had to perform in it high-pitched voice parts. It was that choir, but not trade that composed the chief interest of his life.
In 1876, Pavel Egorovich Chekhov found himself to be bankrupted, and being an insolvent debter, he had to run away to Moscow where soon his family moved, too.
Anton, the sixteen-year-old youth, had to stay in Taganrog so that to finish Gymnasium. Living in Taganrog quite along (1876-1879), Anton had to sell the rest of the household furniture out. He used to run, giving lessons, over Taganrog. All money he earned he sent to Moscow. It was then, he, first, had to meet with the humiliating waiting for earned money, within some months, not good glances made by chance at the torn shoes of him, as a coach, agonizing dreams of a glass of warm and sweet tea that might serve or not. He had to pay debts of his father by means of selling domestic things off, and at the same time he had to earn his living by giving lessons. Hard impressions of his childhood and youth have found its reflection in his stories devoted to children. Let’s remember, for example, such stories of his as “Vanka”, “Wanting of Sleep” and many others.
Anton Chekhov was infatuated with theatre and literature very early. His first youth work, known us, has been written by him for theatre. It’s a play titled “Fatherless”. His early literature sketches are associated with a manuscript comic unskilled magazine, called “Stammerer”, as well as the letters to his relatives in which he has displayed himself, as a skillful critic and a brilliant narrator.
Yet, his future Anton Pavlovich has decided to devote to medicine. In 1879, having finished Gymnasium, he got a small scholarship from the town council and left for Moscow, to join his family, where then he would enter the Moscow University (the Medical Department). However, there wasn’t enough money to have good living, that’s why Chekhov had to start to contribute to some comic magazines and periodicals: he wrote short stories and sent them to various editions. In 1880, in a periodical, called “Dragon-fly” (Number 10), the first publication of his comic story appeared. It was called “A letter of a Don Landlord Stepan Vladimirovich N to his Scholarly neighbour Doctor Fridrikh”. He published his comic sketches under various funny pseudonyms “Baldastov”, “My brother’s Brother”, “A Man without Spleen”, “Antonson”, “Antosha Chekhonte”.
Since 1880-1884 he was published in various comic magazines and periodicals such as “Strekoza” (“Dragon-fly”), “Budilnik” (“An Alarm-clock”), “Zritel” (“A Spectator”), “Moskva” (“Moscow”), “Mirskoy tolk”, “Svet and teny” (“Light and Shade”), “Sputnik” (“Companion”), “Razvlecheniye” (“Amusement”) and others. Yet, he gave his preference to the magazine “Oskolky” (“Splinters”) where a special department has been established for him personally, titled “The Fragments of Moscow life”. Some of his stories of that period were met good appraisals. Among them such works as “Anyuta”, “Aptekarsha” (“A Chemist’s Shop Woman”), “A Husband”. In 1884, the first collection of his stories was issued, highly appreciated by critics. It was titled “Melpomena’s Fairy-Tales”.
Undoubtedly, the Medical Practice has widened the writer’s life experience. His patients were people of different kinds and faiths. That’s why it’s no wonder that a circle of people who we meet in his stories is quite large. These are people of various characters and social groups.
New stage in Chekhov’s creative work is associated with his dramaturgy. At first he altered some of his stories into theatre plays, yet, they wouldn’t be big success as it had happened with his play “Ivanov”. The first staging of the first original play of Chekhov “A Sea-Gull” has failed. It was the Moscow Arts Theatre that would has appreciated simplicity, naturalism and inner text-meaning of the play and would be able to make the author’s conception come true. Since then “A Sea-Gull” has become the symbol of the theatre, and Anton Chekhov–its permanent author. The two plays that fol-lowed: “Uncle Vanya” (altered from the vaudeville “A Forest Monster”) and “The Cherry Orchard” (1904) were met enthusiastically by spectators and critics. Soon afterwards they would have been translated into some foreign languages. Bernard Show, for example, said that after he had read the Chekhov’s plays he got wished to destroy everything he had written before.
In 1901 Anton Pavlovich got married an actress of the Moscow Arts Theatre Olga Knipper. Yet, he wasn’t intended to enjoy his creative success and family happiness. As tuberculosis became aggravated the state of his health got worse sharply, and then on his doctors’ advice the writer had to settle in Yalta. Still in 1898 Chekhov had bought a lot in Yalta, built a house and planted a flower and tree garden. To say frankly he didn’t like Yalta and used to call it for fun “The devil’s island”.
Chekhov kept working on “The Cherry Orchard”. In autumn he watched the rehearsals of the play at the Moscow Arts Theatre. The first night of “The Cherry Orchard” took place on January 30 (17), 1904. It was Anton Pavlovich’s name day, and the performance in connection with it just after the third act turned actually into the real public celebration, the first in his life indeed. Chekhov was staying in front of the audience greeting him with the exalted applauses. He was being handed in wreath by wreath, the telegrams were being read, the speeches were being made. Everything that was going on that night in the theatre looked like a festivity, though for those people who knew Chekhov quite well, it seemed to be a farewell.
Anton Pavlovich looked weak and pale like a shade, and people gathered in the hall, shouted to him “Sit down, please. Sit down.Let Anton Pavlovich sit down!” At last he yielded to the requests and sat down into a big armchair. His state of health was catastrophic. On his doctors’ advice he went to Germany to a health resort called Badenweiler. There on July 15 (New Style) 2 (Old Style) 1904 at the age of 44 Anton Pavlovich Chekhov suddenly died. In some days the coffin with his body was transported to Moscow, and he was buried with attending ceremony as a great man of Russia in Novodevichy cemetery, not far from his father’s tomb.
In the history of the world’s culture Anton Chekhov is considered as a short story master and a creator of a new type of play–tragicomedy. His skill to find a precise artistic detail, the talent of depicting the thinnest feelings of his characters’ souls–all this has won him fame all over the world.
As for the history of Taganrog, he first of all has remained as an organizer and a curator of the Taganrog town library for the address of which he within almost 15 years sent books. Due to Chek-hov there have been established two departments: the one of Foreign literature (it was constantly filled up by Chekhov during his trips abroad), and the other–the Reference department (now–Bibliography-Reference).
Anton Pavlovich also helped to form the catalogues, gave advice how to arrange the library as well as on organization and systematization of its catalogues and how to attract the future readers (as a youth Chekhov was a permanent reader of the town’s library).
By the 200th anniversary of the foundation of Taganrog Anton Pavlovich solicited for buying by his native town a monument to its founder Peter I by sculpter Antokolsky.
It’s Anton Chekhov’s credit who was at the sources of establishing of the town’s museum and the Arts Department, as well. He personally participated in collection of the works of art. At Anton Chekhov’s request the Academy of Arts Council, its commission and a group of the mobile painters sent some paintings to Taganrog. Nowadays the Taganrog Arts Museum due to its unique fund is considered a real “pearl” of the South of Russia.
