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"My Goal is to Depict Life Truthfully". Anton Chekhov in the new collection of the Presidential Library
January 29, 2020, marks the 160th anniversary of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, one of the most popular Russian writers. The specialists of the Presidential Library prepared a new large collection “Anton Chekhov (1860–1904)”, which features different aspects of the writer’s personality, life, and work. The collection includes digital copies of rare books, periodicals and archival documents, postcards, and photographs, as well as the texts of his oeuvres, articles, and letters.
Anton Chekhov, who was a son of the Taganrog chandler, became a doctor, but literature was the purpose of his life. Despite the charm of Chekhov's humor, the literary searches of the writer and the strong civic position were too very serious. The comic and the tragic components of Chekhov's works are in balance, and represent life as it is.
A. Izmailov is Chekhov’s largest biographer and researcher, who prepared his first collected works. He wrote: “Chekhov was characterized by organic rectitude. <...> He was a smart muzhik, the son of a smart muzhik who was not used to pathos. He did not allow pathos in his work, although he dreamed from beginning to end of a happy land warmed by grace, love, brotherhood”. His work “Chekhov: 1860–1904: a biographical sketch” is available in the electronic collection of the Presidential Library.
The first published Chekhov's works were the short humorous stories, they were released in "Sterkoza" and "Oskolki" magazines, under the pseudonyms - A Man Without a Spleen, Chekhonte, A Doctor Without Patients, etc. “Scapegrace and Good-natured” is writer's first storybook which was prepared for printing in 1882, was not released. The censors considered that the young writer ridiculed the sins and lifestyle of respectable inhabitants too caustically. The “Colorful Stories” published in the "Oskolki" magazine in 1886 got a lot of controversial reviews. The result of the disputes was the comment of the authoritative Vladimir Korolenko: “The whole book <...>, is full of some kind of youthful carelessness, sparkled with humor, fun, often genuine wit and extraordinary compression and power of the image, but at the same time it is distinguished by <...> special, unique A. P Chekhov's sadness".
Researcher K. Polonskaya in the book "Chekhov" (1943), which electronic copy is also presented in the collection of the Presidential Library, reflects on Chekhov's work: "The issue of Chekhov's writing work is defined as follows: "My goal is to depict life truthfully and show how much life is far from norms: the norm is unknown to me as well as to anyone". Chekhov is looking for the "norm", drawing a variety of deviations. The peculiarity of Chekhov as the artist is not only in fact that he knew how to detect vulgarity in a peaceful, decent, sometimes even cultural and happy life, and how to show its terrible and exciting power but also in the fact that he contrasted that power with the high intellectual life of his best heroes".
100 short stories by Chekhov, never released before, became the subject of careful study. Some of them are included in the digests of the literature study. The example of such work is “A. P. Chekhov: lost works. Unpublished letters. Memories. Bibliography” edited in one of the volumes of “Proceedings of the Pushkin House by the Russian Academy of Sciences ”(1925).
A. Izmailov noted one of the main writer's features: “Chekhov realized the dream of senior writers, giving the never described type of a real person of the 1890s so bright as it was never done before by our fiction. The idealists of the 1840s, perhaps, would have nothing to talk about with Chekhov, but if Pomyalovsky and Pisarev saw him they would rejoice”. (“Chekhov: 1860–1904: a biographical sketch” (1916).
Soon after the first humorous stories the pages of the writer's works are filled with complex, reflective images of characters like Ivanov, Astrov, Gurov and Uncle Vanya. Chekhov writes plays with the piercing atmosphere of general ill-being, dissatisfaction with circumstances and dreams of a different, bright and joyful life.
Until 1900, Chekhov refused to attend the Art Theater and watch the play "Uncle Vanya", he also refused all requests of Stanislavsky to create a new one under the pretext of his impossibility to look at the result of his stage production. When the spring came the theater went to Yalta, where the writer was treated for phthisis, to show the author the result of his work. In Moscow, they joked: “The mountain went to Mohammed”. The troupe and Chekhov became close, which caused the creation of the next play “Three Sisters”. Finally, the day came when the theater received thin handwritten play.
On January 31, 1901, the play was staged at the Art Theater. It impressed the audience much, but the reviews were obscure, same to the play "Uncle Vanya". “Criticism,” writes A. Izmailov, “tried to explain this by the fact that the whole mood of the drama is based on a combination of two alternative motives of necessity and futility of life. (The Courier, February 3, 1901).
Another review notes: “Three Sisters” - is not a drama, it is a poem that perfectly tells the story of the dull and fearful life of the intelligent loners in the gloomy atmosphere of the Russian province. <...> It is the same old Chekhov's theme. "
A serious, even doomy outlook on life allowed the critic to designate Chekhov as a "twilight singer." At the same time, his contemporaries pointed out the writer's amazing thirst for life, soft humor, and self-irony. Only some people knew that Chekhov was seriously ill. However, he tried not to pay attention to the disease and, despite everything, went to Sakhalin. As a doctor, he was interested in everything, exсept his illness ...
The trip of Anton Pavlovich in 1890 is taken a special place in the A. Izmailov's book “Chekhov: 1860–1904: a biographical sketch”. The author says that Chekhov talked with people, learned their life stories, took part in a census of Sakhalin, collected several thousand cards about the island residents.
Returning home Anton Pavlovich launched the great five-year work "Sakhalin Island", which became a powerful piece of art of the time. K. Polonskaya cites in her book fragments from Chekhov’s letter to Suvorin: “I don’t know what I will receive as the result, but I have done quite a bit. Enough for three dissertations. I got up every day at 5 in the morning, went to bed late, and all day long I was very stressed realizing that I hadn’t done enough”.
A.F. Koni, whose memories of Chekhov are in the work “Anton Chekhov: lost works. Unreleased letters. Memories. Bibliography”, wrote that book about Sakhalin full of strict form, pragmatic tone, and multitude of factual and digital data conceals sad and indignant heart of the writer.
Chekhov's soul felt compassion to the hundreds of Sakhalin prisoners under the iron pressure of law and executors outrage wrote A.F. Koni in the book “Memoirs of Anton Chekhov”, which is available in the electronic reading room of the Presidential Library.
Thanks to the writing skills of Anton Chekhov and juristic notes by A. F. Koni, there was established a branch of the Society for the Care of Exiled Convicts Families in Sakhalin.