The Presidential Library’s collections illustrate Anton Chekhov’s life and career

“The entire critical Sanhedrin participates in the multi-vocal assessment of Chekhov. Chekhov is brilliant, witty, whose every word is like a diamond remembered forever, Chekhov, perfect like demigod, - mocks Izmailov in his study "Chekhov" (1916) from the Presidential Library’s collections, warning fellow writers about the danger of sugary canonization of the writer. - There were moments when Chekhov approached this almost antique image. But history should know Chekhov in the fullness of his image. The prose writer was distinguished by organic directness, directness of a plebeian and a realist, who is simply disgusting a lie, both as shameful and aimless. He was unique among writers, but also the son of his family, his class and his time. He was a clever man, the son of a clever man, who was not used to pathos. He did not allow him in his work, although he dreamed from beginning to end of a happy land, warmed by grace, love, fraternity”.

Anton Chekhov was born on January 29, 1860. The son of a Taganrog shopkeeper, who received a medical education and made literature the meaning of life, Chekhov experienced an early literary debut that did not go unnoticed. With short humorous stories he was published in the magazines "Strekoza", "Oskolki" and others under pseudonyms The Man without a Spleen, Chekhonte, Antoshka  and others. His first collected works "Shalopai and Kindhearted", which was prepared for printing in 1882, was not released. The censors considered that the young author, not by age, caustically ridiculed the vices and way of life of respectable residents.

“Chekhov fulfilled the dream of senior writers, who gave the book type of a real person of the 90s in such brightness as he seemed to be viewed by our fiction”, - Izmailov notes. “The idealists of the 40s probably wouldn’t have anything to talk about with Chekhov, but Pomyalovsky and Pisarev would see him and rejoice”.

Researcher K. Polonskaya reflects on the causes of misanthropy attacks in a young optimist in the book “Chekhov” (1943), an electronic copy of which is available on the Presidential Library’s portal: “Chekhov defines the meaning of writing as follows:“ My goal is to kill two birds at once: truthfully draw life and by the way, to show how far this life deviates from the norm: the norm is unknown to me, as unknown to any of us". "Chekhov is looking for a "norm", drawing a variety of deviations from it. The peculiarity of the Chekhov-artist, not only in the fact that he was able to detect vulgarity in a peaceful, decent, sometimes even outwardly cultural and happy life, was able to show her insurmountable, sometimes sucking force, but also in that he contrasted it with the high intellectual content of life of the best their heroes.  

However, before the plays and later prose of the writer come to the forefront of the complex reflective Astrovs, Gurovs and Uncle Vanya, a literary string of gloomy, unprincipled people depicted "without the slightest falsehood of his incisor" will pass before reading Russia. This made it possible for critics to label the new author as a “twilight singer”.

However, contemporaries pointed to the amazing thirst for the life and work of the writer, gentle humor and self-irony. Towards the end of his life, few knew that he was seriously ill. Chekhov tried, as far as possible, not to notice his condition. In spite of everything, I went to Sakhalin, then wrote a courageous book-report on the life of the island. Everything did matter him, the doctor, except for his own illness...

Published five years later, “Sakhalin Island” became an artistic document of the era. The book was based on Chekhov's travel impressions, communication with convicts, and the extensive statistical data collected by him used in the population census. In the book of K. Polonskaya, the lines from the letter of Chekhov to Suvorin are given: “I don’t know what will happen to me, but I have done quite a few. Enough for three dissertations. I got up every day at 5 o'clock in the morning, went to bed late, and all the days were in great tension”. Izmailov writes about Sakhalin: “Sakhalin is a place of unbearable suffering, which only a free and bonded person can be ... I regret that I am not sentimental, otherwise I would say that in places like Sakhalin, we must go to worship ... "

Chekhov more than once confessed in his letters that he feels his guilt and the guilt of the entire intelligentsia for the existence of the hell of Sakhalin penal servitude. Many of the characters in his works experience this feeling of guilt; under the direct influence of Sakhalin impressions, the stories “In exile”, “Ward No. 6” were written.

“As for censorship,” Izmailov testifies about the period of life “after Sakhalin”, “Chekhov of the epoch of fame knew little of the endless grief of the first time. Rather, perhaps, to talk about that inner yoke, which he felt himself, being a man of tremendous talent and clever forethought, which tells in what mode of the country he lives. <...> The most disturbing thing was the printing of Sakhalin, where censorship sometimes crossed out "whole chapters"".

Gradually, Chekhov's dramas, unlike canon plays, were born. They were distinguished by the penetrating atmosphere of general trouble, dissatisfaction with circumstances and dreams of a different, bright and joyful life ...

Until 1900, Chekhov did not watch "Uncle Vanya" at the Art Theater, and all requests from the theater to create a new play were rejected on the pretext that he did not see the result of the stage performance. And then in the spring the theater went to Yalta, where a writer was treated with a sick patient, to show the production to the author. In Moscow, they were joking: “The mountain went to Mohammed”. The acquaintances before only from afar, the troupe and the writer became close friends, became friends, and the day came when the theater received leaflets thickly covered with beaded handwriting - “Three Sisters”.

January 31, 1901 the play was represented at the Art Theater. The impression remained the same as after “Uncle Vanya”, vague. “Criticism”, - continues Izmailov, “tried to explain this by the fact that the whole mood of the drama is based on a combination of two mutually exclusive motives:“ we must live ”and “why live”. The Three Sisters, we read in a review, is not a drama, it is a poem that beautifully conveys the story of how bored and scary to live to intelligent lonely people in the desolate situation of the Russian province ... All the same original Chekhov’s theme”.

Summing up his work, Izmailov writes: “He was something extremely alive and free, organically hostile to all theories. But the elder brothers would have bowed before his calm wise mind, before his aversion to the phrase, the “medical” simplicity of looking at things, the clear directness of the relationship, an honest statement that he did not believe where he did not believe. If such people like him were going not by units, but by a whole generation, the sky in diamonds would rather come down to earth and the dream of two noble madmen from “Ward No. 6” and “Black Monk” would become closer”.