Rarely did he operate this technique more movingly and effectively than in the seven samples of his work which now follow.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Biography and Autobiography
Heim, Michael Henry (trans.), and Karlinsky, Simon (ed.), Letters of
Anton Chekhov (New York, 1973). Hingley, Ronald, A Life of Chekhov (Oxford, 1989). Rayfield, Donald, Anton Chekhov: A Life (London, 1997).
Bibliography
Lantz, Kenneth, Anton Chekhov: A Reference Guide to Literature (Boston, 1985).
Background
Druford, W H., Chekhov and His Russia (London, 1948). Tulloch, John, Chekhov: A Structuralist Study (London, 1980).
Criticism
Bitsilli, Peter M., Chekhov's Art: A Stylistic Analysis (Ann Arbor, 1983). Clyman, Toby W. (ed.), A Chekhov Companion (Westport, Conn., 1985). Gerhardi, William, Anton Chekhov: A Critical Study (London, 1923). Hahn, Beverly, Chekhov: A Study of the Major Stories and Plays (Cambridge,
1977).
Jackson, Robert Louis (ed.), Reading Chekhov's Text (Evanston, 1993). Kramer, Karl D., The Chameleon and the Dream: The Image of Reality in
CCexov's Stories (The Hague, 1970). Llewellyn Smith, Virginia, Anton Chekhov and the Lady with the Dog (Oxford,
1973).
Turner, C. J. G., Time and Temporal Structure in Chekhov (Birmingham,
1994).
Winner, Thomas, Chekhov and His Prose (New York, 1966). Further Reading in Oxford 'World's Classics
Twelve Plays; translated and edited by Ronald Hingley (On the High Road; Swan Song; The Bear, The Proposal; Tatyana Repin; A Tragic Role; The Wedding; The Anniversary; Smoking is Bad for You; The Night Before the Trial; The Wood-Demon; Platonov). Early Stories, translated and edited by Patrick Miles and Harvey Pitcher. The Steppe and Other Stories, translated and edited by Ronald Hingley. The Russian Master and Other Stories, translated and edited by Ronald Hingley.
A CHRONOLOGY OF ANTON CHEKHOV
All dates are given old style.
i860 16 or 17 January. Born in Taganrog, a port on the Sea of Azov in south Russia.
1876 His father goes bankrupt. The family moves to Moscow, leaving Anton to finish his schooling.
Joins family and enrols in the Medical Faculty of Moscow University.
Begins to contribute to Strekoza ('Dragonfly'), a St. Petersburg comic weekly.
1882 Starts to write short stories and a gossip column for Oskolki ('Splinters') and to depend on writing for an income.
1884 Graduates in medicine. Shows early symptoms of tuberculosis.
1885--6 Contributes to Peterburgskaya gaze/a ('St. Petersburg Gazette') and Novoye vremya ('New Time').
March. Letter from D. V. Grigorovich encourages him to take writing seriously.
First collection of stories: Motley Stories.
Literary reputation grows fast. Second collection ofstories: In the Twilight.
19 November. First Moscow performance of Ivanov: mixed reception.
First publication (The Steppe) in a serious literary journal, Severny vestnik ('The Northern Herald').
31 January. First St. Petersburg performance of luanou: widely and favourably reviewed.
June. Death of brother Nicholas from tuberculosis.
April-December. Crosses Siberia to visit the penal settlement on Sakhalin Island. Returns via Hong Kong, Singapore and Ceylon.
First trip to western Europe: Italy and France.
March. Moves with family to small country estate at Melikhovo, fifty miles south of Moscow.
1895 First meeting with Tolstoy.
CHRONOLOGY
17 October. First—-disastrous—performance of The Seagull in St. Petersburg.
Suffers severe haemorrhage.
1897—8 Winters in France. Champions Zola's defence of Dreyfus.
Beginning of collaboration with the newly founded Moscow Art Theatre. Meets Olga Knipper. Spends the winter in Yalta, where he meets Gorky.
17 December. First Moscow Art Theatre performance of The Seagulclass="underline" successful.
Completes the building of a house in Yalta, where he settles with mother and sister.
26 October. First performance by Moscow An Theatre of Uncle Vanya (written ?i896).
1899—1901 First collected edition of his works (io volumes).
1901 3 I January. Three Sisters fiTSt performed.
25 May. Marries Olga Knipper.
I 904 I 7 January. First performance of The Cherry Orchard.
XX
2 July. Dies in Badenweiler, Germany.
THE BUTTERFLY
I
All Olga's friends, everyone she knew well, came to her wedding. 'Just look at him,' she told her friends. 'There's something about him; isn't there?'
And she nodded towards her husband as if trying to explainjust why she was marrying so simple, so very ordinary, so utterly undistinguished a man.
The bridegroom, Osip Dymov, was a rather junior doctor on the staff of two hospitals: a temporary registrar in one, and an assistant pathologist in the other. He saw his patients and worked in his ward from nine til noon every day, then took the horse-tram to his other hospital in the afternoon and performed autopsies on deceased patients. His private practice was negligible, worth about five hundred roubles a year. That's all. What else can one say about him? Whereas Olga, her friends and her cronies were not quite ordinary people. Each one of them was somehow distinguished and somewhat famous, was already something of a name and was reckoned a celebrity. Or even if he wasn't quite a celebrity yet, he at least showed brilliant promise. There was an established and extremely gifted actor from the 'straight' theatre: an elegant, intelligent, modest ^^ with a superb delivery who had taught Olga elocution. There was an opera singer, a jolly fat man who sighed that Olga was ruining herself. If she hadn't been lazy, he told her, if she had taken herself in hand, she might have become a distinguished singer. Then there were several artists, headed by the genre- painter, animal-painter and landscapist Ryabovsky, a very handsome, fair young man of about twenty-five who had exhibited successfully and had sold his last picture for five hundred roubles. He touched up Olga's sketches and used to say that she might possibly come to something. Then there was a 'cellist whose instrument sobbed and who openly declared that Olga was the only woman he knew who could play an accompaniment. And there was also an author, young but already famous, who wrote short novels, plays and stories. Who else was there? Well, there was a Vasily Vasilyevich: squire, lando^er, amateur iUustrator and vignettist with a great feel for the old Russian style, for the folk ballad and for epic. On paper, china and smoked plates he could work absolute miracles. In this spoilt, free-and-easy, Bohemian milieu—admittedly sensitive and modest, but conscious of such as doctors only at times of illness—the name Dymov cut no ice whatever. In this ambience he seemed an alien, superfluous, shrunken figure, tall and broad-shouldered though_ he was. He looked as if he had borrowed someone else's coat, and his beard seemed like a shop- assistant's. Had he been a writer or artist, though, they would have called his beard Zolaesque.