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CHEKHOV
CHEKHOV
by Ernest J. Simmons
The University of Chicago Press
chicago and london
International Standard Book Number: 0-226-75805-2 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 76-117623
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 1962 by Ernest J. Simmons
All rights reserved
First published by Little, Brown and Company in 1962 University of Chicago Press Edition 1970
Printed in the United States of America
Chekhov is an incomparable artist. An artist of life. And the worth of his creation consists of this — he is understood and accepted not only by every Russian, but by all humanity.
— Leo Tolstoy
Preface
There are various ways of writing a biography, but one way not to write it is to leave the reader in doubt, at the end, about how the hero would act in any given situation. The image must be a complete one, for to possess the whole man is to know his whole life, his total personality as it develops and takes final shape. In a special sense the enigma of Chekhov's complex personality yields to resolution, if ever, only through an awareness of the myriad of small actions that determined and gave meaning to the significant periods of ebb and flow in his forty- four years. A high degree of selectivity is necessarily involved in what has been set down, but all the accessible data connected with Chekhov's life, including his creative writings, that would contribute to an understanding of the man has been drawn upon, in the effort to achieve a faithful and living portrayal.
To the many previous studies of Chekhov's life and works, I am particularly grateful for all I have learned from them. If a new attempt at biography seemed appropriate, it was because of a mass of fresh material that has appeared in Russia over the last ten years, much of it in connection with the hundredth anniversary of Chekhov's birth in i960. Scores of new letters have turned up, diaries and memoirs of close friends, and especially the important letters of Chekhov's sister to her famous brother and the reminiscences she wrote before her death in 1957 at the age of ninety-four. Then the vast corpus of material bearing on Chekhov's life and writings has recently been chronologically arranged and excerpted, with an elaborate system of references, by the Russian scholar N. I. Gitovich. This huge volume has proved to be of inestimable value. All this fresh evidence has illuminated many dark comers of Chekhov's life, and particularly the part that women played in it.
Inevitably, extensive use has been made of the more than four thousand letters of Chekhov, one of the treasures of Russian epistolary prose, in which the writer's character fascinatingly unfolds over the years in the course of correspondence with hundreds of people. The main source for these, as well as for Chekhov's creative writings, is the twenty-volume Complete Works and Letters, published in Russia in 1944-1951. When letters have been translated from this edition, instead of in footnotes the addressee and the date have been indicated in the text — information which is of help to the reader and also facilitates easy checking of the source. However, footnotes are used in certain places to indicate sources of quoted letters not in this edition or in earlier collections, these sources having been used occasionally when passages in letters in the complete edition have been deleted for ideological or other reasons.
In general, however, footnotes on the Russian sources for the numerous translations I have made have been omitted; and, instead, a comprehensive bibliographical survey has been added at the end, where all these sources are listed.
All dates conform to the Russian practice of using the Julian calendar (Old Style), which is twelve days behind the Gregorian calendar of the West in the nineteenth century, and thirteen days behind in the twentieth century.
For many services in procuring material for the study, I am grateful to Mr. Robert H. Haynes of the Harvard College Library, and to Mr. Harold D. Gordon and Mr. David K. Turpin of the Libraries of Columbia University. And to the administrations of Columbia University and its Russian Institute I am also grateful, for released time and financial aid during the early stages of research for this book.
Not a conventional pat, but a heartful prayer of thanks goes out to my wife for her help and her infinite tolerance during my many months of self-imposed exile in the attic.
E.J.S.
Contents
Preface ix
Part I
childhood, boyhood, and youth 1860-1886
I. "Tea, Sugar, Coffee, and Other Groceries" 3
II. "Before Men You Must Be Aware of Your Own
Worth" 17
"Father Antosha" 34
Aesculapius versus Apollo 50
Chekhov and the Humorous Magazines 63 VI. "All My Hopes Lie Entirely in the Future" 75
Part II
first fame as a writer 1886-1889
VII. "Schiller Shakespearovich Goethe" 103
VIII. "My Holy of Holies ... Is Absolute Freedom" 141 IX. "There Is a Sort of Stagnation in My Soul" 174
Part III
frustration, travel, literary maturity 1889-1892
X. "Mania sachalinosa" 207
XI. "Landowner A. Chekhov" 235
Part IV
the melikhovo period 1892-1898
XII. "Drive the Poets and Fiction Writers into the
Country" 269
"For the Lonely Man, the Desert Is Everywhere" 289
"Twice Rejected" 311 XV. "Man Will Become Better Only When You
Make Him See What He Is Like" 331
XVI. "A Work of Art Should Express a Great Idea" 353
XVII. "I'll Go with the Spring Freshets" 380 XVIII. "To Be Doctored ... Is a Form of the Most
Repulsive Egoism" 399
Part V
the yalta period begins 1898-i9oo
XIX. "As I Grow Older, the Pulse of Life in Me Beats
Faster ..." 423
XX. "I Have Become a 'Marxist' " 452 XXI. "Hello, Last Page of My Life, Great Actress of
the Russian Land" 474
XXII. "My Dear Enchanting Actress" 491
Part VI
5*9
marriage and death 1901-1904
XXIII. "What Do You Know, I'm Going to Get Married"
XXIV. "A Wife Who, Like the Moon, Will Not Appear
in My Sky Every Day" 537
XXV. "We Are Both Incomplete People" 557
XXVI. "To Moscow, to Moscow!" 585
XXVII. "Ich Sterbe" 611
Bibliographical Survey 639
Index 651
Parti
CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD, AND YOUTH
1860-1886
chapter i
"Tea, Sugar, Coffee, and Other Groceries"
"I've got to go off on business; so you, Antosha, mind the store, and see that all goes well there." The full-bearded face of Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov was stern. He wore his thick winter coat and high leather boots.
Nine-year-old Antosha — the future writer — looked up at his father from a Latin grammar which he had been studying by candlelight. Tears came to his eyes and he began to blink hard.
"It's cold in the store," he murmured, "and I've been shivering ever since I got out of school."
"Never mind. Dress warm and it will be all right."
"But I've got a lot of lessons for tomorrow."
"Study them in the store," ordered his father, a rising note of irritation in his voice. "Get going, and see that you take care of everything. Hurry! Don't dawdle!"
In vexation Antosha threw down his pen, snapped the grammar shut, pulled on his padded school overcoat and tattered boots, and followed his father out into the growing darkness of a bitter winter's evening.
It was only a short distance from the Chekhov house to the grocery store. As the proprietor and son entered, two red-nosed Ukrainian peasant boys, condemned to the wretched servitude of apprenticeship, ceased stamping their feet and swinging their hands, blue with the cold, and came to respectful attention.