Creative development of Anton Tchekhov on the pages of Presidential Library editions

The Year of Literature, the Presidential Library exposes its collections. In honor of the 155th birthday anniversary of Anton Tchekhov, celebrated today, 29 January 2015, the first electronic national library of Russia presents rare books about the life and work of the famous Russian writer.

Anton Tchekhov got medical education, but chose a different path of development - literature. While still a student, he wrote short stories, satires, humorous pieces for various magazines and newspapers, where he was willing to publish. The beginning of his career is described in the collection of articles about Tchekhov, available in the Presidential Library: "He entered the literary field as "Antosha Tchekhonte" with a mighty reserve of fresh, young, healthy laughter, which mercilessly scourged vulgarity, with a cheerful faith in his abilities. Great writers (such as Grigorovich, Pleshcheyev) immediately perceived in the unfledged writer the signs of a strong, bright and original talent."

However, not all reacted positively to the work of young writer. Negative evaluations of his literary activity fell from the lips of critics who told him: "your creativity is unprincipled and aimless," "you will die in a ditch," "you are fading without having blossomed." Having a thin, delicate, dreamy nature, Anton Chekhov suffered considerably from such statements. His soul experienced an internal crisis. If at the beginning of his career Tchekhov abounded in brilliant humor, boundless joy, a sense of vitality, the mature works of the writer are filled with sadness, melancholy. This change is noted in the materials of the collection: "Throughout Tchekhov's literary career, it was consistently moving from the young, "light" laughter and faithful positivism to the "cursed" issues, anguish of searches and day-dreams about the distant future happiness of mankind."

Everyone knows the famous stories by Anton Chekhov "Thick and Thin," "Man in a Case," "Death of the official," "Mask," "Daughter of Albion," "Gooseberries" and many others. Their narrative thread lurks behind the contradictions of dialogues and debates, in the depth of laugh. The best of his heroes not knowing how to rebuild life feel that a storm is coming, which "is going to blow away laziness, indifference, prejudice against work, rotten boredom from our society." 

Tchekhov's works are imbued with a passionate expectation of this life-giving storm. According to K. Polonskaya’s book "Tchekhov": "Tchekhov was a "man with the hammer," which is referred to by the narrator of his "Gooseberry": slamming his hammer he called for vigilance, for a reasonable creative work making benefits for the good of mankind. Tchekhov woke people from spiritual slumber; all his works argued that life in the old forms cannot continue."

Publicism helped Tchekhov to understand his problems of an artist. Writer Trigorin, the hero of Tchekhov's play "The Seagull", says: "But I'm not just a landscape painter, I'm also a citizen, I love the motherland, the people, I feel that if I am a writer, I have to speak about the people, their sufferings, their future... about human rights and so forth.”

The website of the first electronic national library of Russia under the heading "Topical document" features a biographical work of Alexander Izmailov about Anton Chekhov. The book contains the unique facts of the author's life, the most important of which was Anton Tchekhov’s trip to the island of Sakhalin in 1890. As Tchekhov admitted, the trip had a tremendous impact on all of his subsequent works. There Tchekhov communicated with people, learned the stories of their lives, the reasons for exile and collected a wealth of material for his notes. He carried out a real census of Sakhalin recording several thousand cards on the inhabitants of the island.

The next five years, Anton Tchekhov was writing his great work "Sakhalin Island", which later became a literary document of the era. The book is based both on personal travel impressions of Tchekhov and on extensive statistical data that he had collected. In his work the writer talked about the terrible life, about the limits of human patience and suffering. In her book K. Polonskaya cites the lines of Tchekhov’s letter to Suvorin: "I do not know what I will work out but I have already done a lot. It would have been enough for three dissertations. Every day I got up at 5 o'clock in the morning, went to bed late, and all the days I was strained of thought that there is still a lot to do, and now that I have already finished with hard labor I feel as if I had seen everything but did not notice the most important thing." The biographical sketch of Alexander Izmailov contains another statement of Anton Tchekhov on Sakhalin, "Sakhalin is a place of unbearable suffering, the one that can only experience a free man and a forced one... I regret that I am not sentimental. Otherwise I would have said that, we must go to such places as Sakhalin to worship..."

Tchekhov had repeatedly admitted in his letters that he feels his own guilt and blame and that of the entire intelligentsia of the existence of such a hell as Sakhalin penal servitude. This feeling of guilt is inherent in many of the characters of his works. For example, the tales "In exile", "The Ward N 6" were directly influenced by his visit to Sakhalin.

In addition, Anton Tchekhov is one of the most famous playwrights in the world. The basis of his views is an aversion to artificial stories, to theatricality. He believed that everything on the stage should be as simple as in life. The main theme of Tchekhov's plays ("The Seagull", "Uncle Vanya," "The Cherry Orchard" and others) is the fate of provincial intellectuals, devoid of serious life problems and prospects. His dramas are filled with an atmosphere of general distress, dissatisfaction with the circumstances and dreams of a different, bright and joyful life.

To date, the Presidential Library collections include a large amount of material telling about the fates of the brightest talented figures and important historical events. Materials related to the life and work of Anton Tchekhov, occupy a special place among them. He had made an invaluable contribution to the development of literature, not only in Russia but also worldwide. Tchekhov's plays are very popular in Europe.