On the life of Anton Chekhov

When Tolstoy abandoned the prosaic ethos, Chekhov, one of the greatest short story writers in world literature, remained loyal to it. Indeed, he reinterpreted it within his essentially bourgeois values, stressing the moral necessity of ordinary virtues such as daily kindness, cleanliness, politeness, work, sobriety, paying one's debts, and avoiding self-pity. Replying to the intelligentsia's demand for political tendentiousness, which he equated with a stifling intellectual conformity, he maintained that his only "tendency" was a protest against lying in all its forms. In his hundreds of stories and novellas, which he wrote while practicing medicine, Chekhov adopts something of a clinical approach to ordinary life. Meticulous observation and broad sympathy for diverse points of view shape his fiction. In his stories, an overt plot subtly hints at other hidden stories, and so the experience of rereading his fiction often differs substantially from that produced by a first reading. Especially noteworthy are "Skuchnaya istoriya" (written 1889; "A Dreary Story"), "Duel" (written 1891; "The Duel"), "Palata No. 6" (written 1892; "Ward Number Six"), "Kryzhovnik" (written 1898; "Gooseberries"), "Dushechka" (written 1899; "The Darling"), "Dama s sobachkoy" (written 1899; "The Lady with the Lap Dog"), "Arkhiyerey" (written 1902; "The Bishop"), and "Nevesta" (written 1903; "The Betrothed").

Along with Gogol's The Inspector General, Chekhov's plays are the high point of Russian drama. In his four great plays, Chayka (1896; The Seagull), Dyadya Vanya (1897; Uncle Vanya), Tri sestry (1901; Three Sisters), and Vishnyovy sad (1904; The Cherry Orchard), Chekhov's belief that life is lived at ordinary moments and that histrionics are a dangerous lie found expression in a major innovation, the undramatic drama--or, as it is sometimes called, the theatre of inaction.