Early Writing Careerĭuring the mid-1880s, Chekhov practiced as a physician and began to publish serious works of fiction under his own name. With his father still struggling financially, Chekhov supported the family with his freelance writing, producing hundreds of short comic pieces under a pen name for local magazines. Chekhov finally joined his family in Moscow in 1879 and enrolled at medical school. When Pavel’s business failed in 1875, he took the family to Moscow to look for other work while Chekhov remained in Taganrog until he finished his studies. His father, Pavel, was a grocer with frequent money troubles his mother, Yevgeniya, shared her love of storytelling with Chekhov and his five siblings. Youth and EducationĪnton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on January 29, 1860, in Taganrog, Russia. Chekhov died of tuberculosis on July 15, 1904, in Badenweiler, Germany. ■Įditor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter.Through stories such as 'The Steppe' and 'The Lady with the Dog,' and plays such as The Seagull and Uncle Vanya, Anton Chekhov emphasized the depths of human nature, the hidden significance of everyday events and the fine line between comedy and tragedy. Alas, you never find out what happened to the gentlewoman’s baby. Murdered in a bakery, a cruel official “fell into the kneading trough and stained the dough with blood”. After confessing to killing her child a prisoner wept bitterly, but then (in Brian Reeve’s translation) “wiped her eyes and asked, ‘Fancy buyin’ a nice little bit o’ pickled cabbage?’” Despite lashings and stints in a punishment cell, an old con had refused to work in the end the guards gave up, and he strolled around, singing. Afterwards he wrote many of his finest stories, as well as “The Seagull”, “Three Sisters” and “The Cherry Orchard”.Įven in “Sakhalin Island”, his account of the expedition, the artist in Chekhov keeps elbowing aside the social reformer, and amid the demographic details that he amassed are a trove of exquisite vignettes. Just before he set out, his play “The Wood Demon” had flopped. It coloured his view of authority and redoubled his commitment to describe life as it was, compassionately but without illusions. Today, two museums are devoted to Chekhov on Sakhalin, which is dominated by giant energy projects. They made doomed bids to escape, often butchering each other in the process, desperate to cross the strait and breathe the air of freedom before they died. And the boozing! The bedbugs! Like covid-era readers taking their licensed strolls, many inmates were able to roam around, but they could never see their loved ones. Bears scooped salmon from the rivers, but the human food was terrible. Virtually all the women, convict or free, had been forced into prostitution.

On Sakhalin, chains clanked incessantly and the floggings gave Chekhov nightmares.

Chekhov wood demon