“Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”
This advice offered to Maxim Gorki in 1898 is credited to be the origin of the admonition writers often hear of the need to remove unnecessary adjectives and adverbs from their writings. Only a master of this eclectic art and one with the greatest respect for economy of words will tender such an advice.
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, born today a hundred and sixty two years ago, is one such master, and is in fact, an all-time master of short stories and plays. Considered amongst the tallest literary figures of his time, his plays still draw full houses worldwide and his overall body of work has influenced writers like James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams and Henry Miller, representative of as diverse a collection of genre as the styles they represent.
The most defining aspect of Chekov’s oeuvre is his capacity to effortlessly weave humour with pathos, and to seamlessly merge the sublime and absurd in his narrations. And this extraordinary skill so magnifies the inconsequential details of people’s lives that it becomes both fascinating and gripping. This, and his economical use of language and ambivalent style, redefined the literary trends prevalent then, evolving a new unique style.
He also developed a technique of ending stories with ‘zero endings’ or anti-climactic conclusions. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Another aspect that uniquely under lined his writings was that he did not moralize.The reader is allowed to make his own conclusions, so the meaning of the story can change depending on who is reading.
Chekhov earned a livelihood from medical practice. “Medicine is my lawful wife,” he once said, “and literature is my mistress.”Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his literary career. Medicine may have sustained him materially but his soul was nurtured and nourished eternally by his writings.
Playwright or Story Teller?
The three works that would establish him as a playwright of unusual talent and creativity were Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These, along with The Seagull later, put in place of conventional action a ‘theatre of mood’ and a ‘submerged life’ in the text: an effort to recreate and express the realism of how people truly act and speak with each other. From this period also comes an observation of Chekhov’s that has become known as ‘Chekhov’s Gun’, a dramatic principle that requires that every element in a narrative be necessary and irreplaceable, and that everything else be removed.
Chekhov’s migration to story writing firmly materialised after he renounced the theatre following the reception of The Seagull in 1896, though the play would be later revived to acclaim. Chekhov’s forays in writing short stories were initially compelled by his financial needs, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story.He made no apologies for the difficulties they posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.
A definitive verdict as to whether he should be remembered more as a story writer or a play wright will always be riven by a passionate controversy.
An Early Death
In 1884 and 1885, Chekhov found himself coughing blood, and in 1886 the attacks worsened, but he would not admit his tuberculosis to his family or his friends. The malaise lingered till his death in 1904. Olga wrote this account of her husband’s last moments:
“Anton sat up unusually straight and said loudly and clearly (although he knew almost no German): Ich sterbe (“I’m dying”). The doctor calmed him, took a syringe, gave him an injection of camphor, and ordered champagne. Anton took a full glass, examined it, smiled at me and said: “It’s a long time since I drank champagne.” He drained it and lay quietly on his left side, and I just had time to run to him and lean across the bed and call to him, but he had stopped breathing and was sleeping peacefully as a child …”
Chekhov, who was just over 44 then, was buried next to his father at the Novodevichy Cemetery.
A few months before he died, Chekhov told the writer Ivan Bunin whether he thought people might go on reading his writings for seven years. “Why seven?” said Bunin, “well, seven and a half.” And Chekhov replied. “That’s not bad. I’ve got six years to live.” Chekhov’s posthumous reputation greatly exceeded his expectations. The ovations for the play The Cherry Orchard in the year of his death served to demonstrate the Russian public’s acclaim for the writer, which placed him second in literary celebrity only to Tolstoy, who outlived him by six years.
One of Russia’s most influential radical political thinkers, the anarchist theorist Peter Kropotkin famously quipped, “If anyone doubted the gloom and miserable poverty of Russia in the 1880s, read only Chekhov’s novels”, showing his mastery of social observation.But perhaps the most generous praise was heaped by none other than Vladimir Lenin, and nowhere more could be found a resounding endorsement of the man’s talent, creativity, success and popularity: “reading his short story (Ward No. 6) made me a revolutionary.”
Happy Birthday, Anton.
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