V4.
v. Letters to Chekhov
In the archives arc some 7000 letters to Chekhov, many from leading literary and artistic personalities of his time. There arc a great many letters also from his wife, Olga Knipper. Chekhov made a practice of saving and filing letters to him, and he considered it a duty to answer them. The great disproportion between the extant letters to him and his own suggests that very many of his letters have been lost. These letters to Chekhov often contain extremely valuable material that has a bearing on his personal life, activities, views, and his literary labors. Only a fraction of this huge correspondence has been published, but it is perhaps the most significant part. Many of these letters to Chekhov may be found in the following works:
Slovo: sbornik 2. Moscow, 1914. Contains letters of D. V. Grigorovich, N.
K. Mikhailovskii, P. I. Tschaikovsky, Ya. P. Polonskii, A. N. Pleshcheev. Perepiska A. P. Chekhova i O. L. Knipper. Ed. A. B. Dcrman. Vols. I-II. Moscow, 1934, 1936. A promised final volume has not appeared, but some of the correspondence of Chekhov and his wife over 1903 to 1904, which was to be published in the third volume, has been printed in the magazines Novyi mir, 1938, Nos. 10-12; Oktyabr, 1938, No. 7; Teatr, i960, No. 1.
Pisma A. P. Chekhovu ego brata Aleksandra Chekhova. Ed. I. S. Yezhov. Moscow, 1939.
Zapiski Otdela rukopisi. Vyp. 8: A. P. Chekhov. Ed. N. L. Meshcheryakov. Moscow, 1941. Contains letters to Chekhov of K. S. Barantsevich, P. I.
Kurkin, V. M. Lavrov, B. Lazarevskii, M. O. Menshikov, V. A. Posse, I. N. Potapenko, M. I. Tschaikovsky, and others. M. Gorkii i A. Chekhov. Perepiska. Stati. Wyskazyvaniya. Sbornik materialov.
Ed. N. I. Gitovich. Moscow, 1951. Konshina, E. N.: Iz perepiski Antona Pavlovicha Chekhova. Moscow, 1954. Contains especially the letters of the actor P. M. Svobodin to Chekhov, 1889-1892. Chekhova, M. P.: Pisma k bratu A. P. Chekliovu. Ed. N. A. Sysoev. Moscow, 1954.
Teplinskii, M. V.: "Novye materialy 0 sakhalinskom puteshestvii A. P. Chekhova," in Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, sbornik statei. Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, 1959. Contains an interesting group of letters to Chekhov from acquaintances on the Island of Sakhalin. "Neizdannye pisma к Chekhovu," in Literaturnoe Nasledstvo, Moscow, i960, LXVIII, 293-448. Letters to Chekhov from A. N. Pleshchecv, A. I. Kuprin, I. A. Bunin, V. Ye. Meierhold. Iz arkhiva A. P. Chekhova. Moscow, i960. Letters to Chekhov from N. V. Altukhov, V. V. Bureiko, V. G. Valtcr, D. P. Golitsyn, S. S. Golushev, I. Ya. Gurlyand, S. P. Dyagilev, and others.
vi. Biography
Before the 1917 Revolution the Russians were never partial to formal full-length biographies of their great literary figures, and since then they have been even less so. At best, specialized treatments of a single period of a subject's life, or brief sketches of a famous author's life and works, seem to be preferred. On the whole, biographies of Chekhov in the West, although few in number, tend to be more comprehensive than the Russian. The following are the best-known biographical treatments — arranged, for the sake of convenience, in alphabetical order:
Brisson, P.: TcMkhov et sa vie. Paris, 1955.
Chukovskii, KoRNEi:"Podvig," in Ogonyok, N0. 28, 1954. (Translated by
Pauline Rose as Chekhov the Man. London, n. d.) Derman, А. В.: Anton Pavlovich Chekhov: Kritiko— biograficheskii ocherk. Moscow, 1939. A short sketch in which Chekhov's life shares almost equal space with his writings.
: Moskva v zhizni i tvorchestve A. P. Chekhova. Moscow, 1948. A
specialized study of the relation of Chekhov's life and works to his years of residence in Moscow. Gerhardi, W.: Anton Chekhov, a Critical Study. New York, 1923. Hingley, Ronald: Chekhov: A Biographical and Critical Study. London, 1950.
Izmailov, A. A.: Chekhov 1860-1904: Biograficheskii nabrosok. Moscow, 1916.
Magarshack, David: Chekhov: A Life. London, 1952.
Nemirovsky, Irene: La vie de TcMkhov. Paris, 1946. (Translated by Erik
de Mauny as A Life of Chekhov. London, 1950.) Roskin, A. I.: Antosha Chekhonte. Moscow, 1940. The author employs the Western technique of Actionized biography, telling the story of Chekhov's youth up to 1887. However, he sticks very close to the facts, and introduces fresh archive material on the early life of Chekhov.
: Chekhov: Biograficheskaya povest. Moscow, 1959. A new edition
of a 1939 book, again offering an attractive Actionized biographical sketch — this time of the whole of Chekhov's life — but always being faithful to the facts. Toumanova, N. N.: Anton Chekhov. The Voice of Twilight Russia. New York, 1937.
Triolet, Elsa: L'histoire d'Anton Tchekhov: Sa vie — son oeuvre. Paris, 1954.
Yermilov, Vladimir: A. P. Chekhov. Moscow, 1954. This originally appeared in 1946, and the present edition is somewhat augmented. (One of the earlier editions was translated into English by Ivy Litvinov and published in Russia as Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Moscow, n. d.) Perhaps the most extensive Russian attempt at formal biography of Chekhov, but a good half of the book is devoted to critical analyses of a number of stories and plays, and these and the life are interpreted from the point of view of Soviet ideology.
vii. Memoir Literature However lacking the Russians may have been in contributing formal full- length biographical studies of Chekhov, they have published without stint the preparatory materials for such studies. This memoir literature is very extensive. Chekhov knew a large number of people, and it seems as though most of them felt the urge to tell, in print, of their acquaintance with him and their impressions of his life. Many of the contributors were individuals of distinction in the world of literature, art, and learning. Significant items have been written by Chekhov's sister and brothers. On the other hand, much of this material, especially scores of magazine articles, is of unequal value, and a good deal of it is buried in miscellanies devoted to various aspects of Chekhov's life and works. Fortunately, perhaps the most important articles have been collected in book form and hence made more accessible. With some few exceptions, only those titles in this memoir literature which have been drawn upon in the preparation of the present work are listed. For easy reference they have been arranged alphabetically.
Altschuler, I. N.: "O Chekhove," in Sovremennye zapiski. Paris, 1930, pp. 470-485.