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He qualified as a doctor in 1884 although he rarely practised. In his hundreds of stories and novellas, which he wrote while practicing medicine, Chekhov adopts something of a clinical approach to ordinary life.
After a successful production of The Seagull by the Moscow Art Theatre, he wrote three more plays for the same company: Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. In 1901 he married Olga Leonardovna Knipper ( 1870- 1959), an actress who performed in his plays.
The movement toward Naturalism in theatre that was sweeping Europe reached its highest artistic peak in Russia in 1898 with the formation of the Moscow Art Theatre (later called the Moscow Academy Art Theatre). Its name became synonymous with that of Chekhov, whose plays about the day-to-day life of the landed gentry achieved a delicate poetic realism that was years ahead of its time. Konstantin Stanislavsky, its director, became the 20th century's most influential theorist on acting.
Chekhov visited western EuropeFor the band of the same name, see Europe (band . Europe is a continent forming the westermost part of the Eurasian supercontinent. Europe is bounded to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the Mediterranean Se in the company of A.S. Suvorin, a wealthy newspaper proprietor and the publisher of much of Chekhov's own work. Their long and close friendship caused Chekhov some unpopularity, owing to the politically reactionary character of Suvorin's newspaper, Novoye vremya ("New Time"). Eventually Chekhov broke with Suvorin over the attitude taken by the paper toward the notorious Alfred Dreyfus affair in FranceThe French Republic or France ( French: Republique francaise or France is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in western Europe, and which is further made up of a collection of overseas islands and territories located in other continents., with Chekhov championing Dreyfus.
Chekhov died of tuberculosisTuberculosis is also called TB consumption (TB seemed to consume people from within with its symptoms of bloody cough, fever, pallor, and long relentless wasting), wasting disease White Plague (TB sufferers appeared markedly pale), phthisis (Greek for con and is now buried in Novodevichy CemeteryNovodevichy Cemetery is located in Moscow, Russia and is the city's third most popular tourist site. It has a park-like ambience, dotted with small chapels and large sculpted monuments. The cemetery was built next to the 16th century Novodevichy Convent,.
Anton Chekhov was Russia's, and perhaps the world's, foremost story writer. He was also a pioneering dramatist whose four last plays (The Seagull, The Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, and The Cherry Orchard) are the opposite of conventionally dramatic, depending for their impact (as do his stories) on hints and cunning anticlimaxes.
Late in the 19th century Anton Chekhov revolutionized the short story. No other storywriter so consistently as Chekhov turned out first-rate works. Though often compared to Guy de Maupassant, Chekhov is much less interested in constructing a well-plotted story; nothing much actually happens in Chekhov's stories, though much is revealed about his characters and the quality of their lives. While Maupassant focuses on event, Chekhov keeps his eye on character.
The typical Chekhovian story has little external plot. The point of the story is most often found in what happens within a given character, and that is conveyed indirectly, by suggestion or by significant detail. It is often said that nothing happens in Chekhov's stories and plays, but he compensates for any lack of outward excitement by his original techniques for developing internal drama. His main themes are work and love, but his characters find lasting satisfaction in neither activity. His younger characters are usually portrayed as victims of illusion, the older ones as victims of disillusionment. The passage of time is a constant preoccupation, as are the trivialities of life and the desultory and unsuccessful search for its meaning.
Especially noteworthy amongst his stories are "Skuchnaya istoriya" (written 1889; "A Dreary Story"), "Duel" (written 1891; "The Duel"), "Palata No. 6" (written 1892; "Ward Number Six"), "Kryzhovnik" (written 1898; "Gooseberries"), "Dushechka" (written 1899; "The Darling"), "Dama s sobachkoy" (written 1899; "The Lady with the Dog"), "Arkhiyerey" (written 1902; "The Bishop"), and "Nevesta" (written 1903; "The Betrothed").
Stories like "The Grasshopper" (1892), "The Darling" (1898), and "In the Ravine" (1900)--to name only three--all reveal Chekhov's perception, his compassion, and his subtle humour and irony. One critic says of Chekhov that he is no moralist--he simply says "you live badly, ladies and gentlemen," but his smile has the indulgence of a very wise man.
As samples of the Russian epistolary art, Chekhov's letters have been rated second only to Aleksandr Pushkin's by the literary historian D.S. Mirsky. Although Chekhov is still chiefly known for his plays, critical opinion shows signs of establishing the stories--and particularly those that were written after 1888--as an even more significant and creative literary achievement.
In his dramatic works Chekhov sought to convey the texture of everyday life, moving away from traditional ideas of plot and conventions of dramatic speech. Dialogue in his plays is not smooth or continuous: characters interrupt each other, several different conversations often take place at the same time, and lengthy pauses occur when no one speaks at all. His plays commonly feature the struggle of a sensitive individual to maintain his integrity against the temptations of worldly success. A recurring theme is the pointlessness of radical, human/mechanical change, versus the powerful inertia of slow natural/organic cycles.
One of the actors once told Chekhov that Stanislavsky intended to have frogs croaking, the sound of dragonflies, and dogs barking on the stage. "Why?" Chekhov asked with a note of dissatisfaction in his voice. "It is realistic," the actor replied. "Realistic," Chekhov repeated with a laugh, and after a slight pause he said: "The stage is art. There is a canvas of Kranskoi (a famous Russian painter) in which he wonderfully depicts human faces and substituted a real one. The nose will be realistic but the picture will be spoiled."
Chekhov disliked Symbolist drama and Konstantin's play parodies it in The Seagull. All the same, he confessed that one of his great influences was Maeterlink . And then there was Ibsen: without The Wild Duck (one of Chekhov's favorite plays) The Seagull would not be as it is, indeed perhaps would not exist at all.