Editing Anton Chekhov (section)

==Biography==
[[File:Chekhov Birthhouse.jpg|thumb|left|[[Birth house of Anton Chekhov]] in [[Taganrog]], Chekhova street, Russia]]
[[File:Taganrog gymnasium boys.jpg|thumb|left|[[Chekhov Gymnasium|The Taganrog Boys Gymnasium]] in the late 19th century. The cross on top is no longer present.]]
===Childhood===
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on the feast day of St. [[Anthony the Great]] (17 January [[Old Style and New Style dates|Old Style]]) 29 January 1860 in [[Taganrog, Russia|Taganrog]], a commercial port city on the [[Sea of Azov]] – on Politseyskaya (Police) street, later renamed Chekhova street – in southern [[Russian Empire|Russia]]. He was the third of six surviving children; he had two older brothers, [[Alexander Chekhov|Alexander]] and [[Nikolai Chekhov|Nikolai]], and three younger siblings, Ivan, [[Maria Chekhova|Maria]], and [[Mikhail Chekhov (writer)|Mikhail]]. His father, Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov, the son of a former [[serfdom|serf]] and his wife,<ref>{{harvnb|Rayfield|1997|pp=3–4}}: Egor Mikhailovich Chekhov and Efrosinia Emelianovna</ref> was from the village [[Olkhovatka, Olkhovatsky District, Voronezh Oblast|Olkhovatka]] ([[Voronezh Governorate]]) and ran a grocery store. He was a director of the parish choir, a devout [[Russian Orthodox|Orthodox Christian]], and a physically abusive father.  Pavel Chekhov has been seen by some historians as the model for his son's many portraits of hypocrisy.<ref name = "Wood 78">{{harvnb|Wood|2000|p=78}}</ref> Chekhov's mother, Yevgeniya (Morozova), was an excellent storyteller who entertained the children with tales of her travels all over Russia with her cloth-merchant father.{{sfn|Payne|1991|p=XVII}}{{sfn|Simmons|1970|p=18}}<ref>{{Cite web |title=taganrogcity.com {{!}} Chekhov & Taganrog |url=http://www.taganrogcity.com/chekhov_taganrog.html |access-date=2025-02-15 |website=www.taganrogcity.com}}</ref> "Our talents we got from our father," Chekhov recalled, "but our soul from our mother."<ref name = "Bio">From the biographical sketch, adapted from a memoir by Chekhov's brother Mihail, which prefaces [[Constance Garnett]]'s translation of Chekhov's letters, 1920.</ref> 

Young Chekhov attended the [[Greek Church and Greek School (Taganrog)|Greek School in Taganrog]] and [[Chekhov Gymnasium|The Taganrog Boys Gymnasium]] (since renamed the [[Chekhov Gymnasium]]). There he was held back for a year at fifteen for failing an examination in Ancient Greek.<ref name = "Bartlett 4-5">Bartlett, pp. 4–5.{{Incomplete short citation|date=October 2023}}</ref> He sang at the [[Greek Orthodox Church|Greek Orthodox]] monastery in Taganrog and in his father's choirs. In a letter of 1892, he used the word "suffering" to describe his childhood and recalled:

{{blockquote|text=When my brothers and I used to stand in the middle of the church and sing the trio "May my prayer be exalted", or "The Archangel's Voice", everyone looked at us with emotion and envied our parents, but we at that moment felt like little convicts.<ref name="multiref1">Letter to I.L. Shcheglov, 9 March 1892. [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6408 ''Letters of Anton Chekhov''.]</ref>}}

Later, in his adulthood, Chekhov criticized his brother [[Alexander Chekhov|Alexander]]'s treatment of his wife and children by reminding him of their father Pavel's tyranny: "Let me ask you to recall that it was [[despotism]] and lying that ruined your mother's youth. Despotism and lying so mutilated our childhood that it's sickening and frightening to think about it. Remember the horror and disgust we felt in those times when Father threw a tantrum at dinner over too much salt in the soup and called Mother a fool."{{Sfnm|1a1=Malcolm |1y=2004 |1p=102 |1ps=; Letter to brother Alexander, 2 January 1889}}{{efn|Another insight into Chekhov's childhood came in a letter to his publisher and friend Alexei Suvorin: "From my childhood I have believed in progress, and I could not help believing in it since the difference between the time when I used to be thrashed and when they gave up thrashing me was tremendous."{{sfn |Chekhov |Garnett |2004 |loc=[https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6408/pg6408-images.html#link2H_4_0187 YALTA, March 27, 1894]}}}}

In 1876, Chekhov's father Pavel was declared bankrupt after overextending his finances building a new house, having been cheated by a contractor named Mironov.{{sfn|Rayfield|1997|p=31}} To avoid [[debtor's prison]] he fled to Moscow, where his two eldest sons, [[Alexander Chekhov|Alexander]] and [[Nikolai Chekhov|Nikolai]], were attending university. The family lived in poverty in Moscow. Chekhov's mother was physically and emotionally broken by the experience.<ref>Letter to cousin Mihail, 10 May 1877. [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6408 ''Letters of Anton Chekhov''.]</ref> 

Chekhov was left behind to sell the family's possessions and finish his education. He remained in Taganrog for three more years, boarding with a man by the name of Selivanov who, like Lopakhin in ''The Cherry Orchard'', had bailed out the family for the price of their house.{{sfn|Malcolm|2004|p=25}} Chekhov had to pay for his own education, which he managed by private tutoring, catching and selling [[European Goldfinch|goldfinches]], and selling short sketches to the newspapers, among other jobs. He sent every [[ruble]] he could spare to his family in Moscow, along with humorous letters to cheer them up.{{sfn|Payne|1991|p=XX}} 

As a teenager Chekhov fell in love with the [[Taganrog Theatre]]. He attended the theatre on a regular basis and became enchanted and inspired by productions of [[vaudeville]]s, [[Italian opera]]s and popular [[comedie]]s.<ref>Chekhov and Taganrog: [http://taganrogcity.com/chekhov_taganrog.html]</ref><ref>Taganrog Theatre: [https://mytaganrog.ru/16-dramaticheskij-teatr-imeni-a-p-chehova.html]</ref>

During that time, Chekhov read widely and analytically, including the works of [[Miguel de Cervantes|Cervantes]], [[Ivan Turgenev|Turgenev]], [[Ivan Goncharov|Goncharov]], and [[Arthur Schopenhauer|Schopenhauer]],<ref name = "Mihail 1876">Letter to brother Mihail, 1 July 1876. [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6408 ''Letters of Anton Chekhov''.]</ref>{{sfn|Simmons|1970|p=26}} and wrote a full-length comic drama, ''Fatherless'', which his brother Alexander dismissed as "an inexcusable though innocent fabrication."{{sfn|Simmons|1970|p=33}} Chekhov also experienced a series of love affairs, one with the wife of a teacher.{{sfn|Payne|1991|p=XX}} In 1879, Chekhov completed his schooling in Taganrog and moved in with his family in Moscow, having gained admission to the medical school at [[I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University]].{{sfn|Rayfield|1997|p=69}}

===Early writings===
Chekhov then assumed responsibility for the whole family.{{sfn|Wood|2000|p=79}} To support them and to pay his tuition fees, he wrote daily short, humorous sketches and vignettes of contemporary Russian life, many under pseudonyms such as "Antosha Chekhonte" (Антоша Чехонте) and "Man Without Spleen" (Человек без селезенки). His prodigious output gradually earned him a reputation as a [[satire|satirical]] chronicler of Russian street life, and by 1882 he was writing for ''Oskolki'' (''[[Fragments (magazine)|Fragments]]''), owned by [[Nikolai Leykin]], one of the leading publishers of the time.{{sfn|Rayfield|1997|p=91}} Chekhov's tone at this stage was harsher than that familiar from his mature fiction.<ref name="Obs">"There is in these miniatures an arresting potion of cruelty&nbsp;... The wonderfully compassionate Chekhov was yet to mature." [http://books.guardian.co.uk/critics/reviews/0,,489891,00.html "Vodka Miniatures, Belching and Angry Cats"], [[George Steiner]]'s review of ''The Undiscovered Chekhov'' in ''The Observer'', 13 May 2001. Retrieved 16 February 2007.</ref><ref name="SS1">{{cite web| last=Willis|first=Louis| title=Chekhov's Crime Stories| url=http://www.sleuthsayers.org/2013/01/chekhov-wrote-crime-stories_27.html| work=Literary and Genre| publisher=SleuthSayers |location=Knoxville| date=27 January 2013}}</ref>
[[File:Anton P Chekhov.jpg|thumb|right|Portrait of young Chekhov in country clothes]]
[[File:Chekhov with brother 1882.jpg|thumb|left|Anton Chekhov (left) with brother Nikolai in 1882]]
[[File:Young Chekhov 1880s.jpg|thumb|upright=.7|left|Anton Chekhov in 1880s]]

In 1884, Chekhov qualified as a physician, which he considered his principal profession though he made little money from it and treated the poor free of charge.{{sfn|Malcolm|2004|p=26}}

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.<ref name = "Bio"/> He confessed to Leykin, "I am afraid to submit myself to be sounded by my colleagues."<ref>Letter to N.A.Leykin, 6 April 1886. [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6408 ''Letters of Anton Chekhov''.]</ref> He continued writing for weekly periodicals, earning enough money to move the family into progressively better accommodations.

Early in 1886 he was invited to write for one of the most popular papers in [[St. Petersburg]], ''[[Novoye Vremya (newspaper)|Novoye Vremya]]'' (''New Times''), owned and edited by the millionaire magnate [[Alexey Suvorin]], who paid a rate per line double Leykin's and allowed Chekhov three times the space.{{sfn|Rayfield|1997|p=128}} Suvorin was to become a lifelong friend, perhaps Chekhov's closest.<ref>{{harvnb|Rayfield|1997|pp=448–450}}: They only ever fell out once, when Chekhov objected to the [[antisemitism|anti-Semitic]] attacks in ''New Times'' against [[Alfred Dreyfus|Dreyfus]] and [[Émile Zola|Zola]] in 1898.</ref><ref name = "Wood 79">In many ways, the right-wing Suvorin, whom [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]] later called "The running dog of the [[Tsar|Tzar]]" (Payne, XXXV), was Chekhov's opposite; "Chekhov had to function like Suvorin's kidney, extracting the businessman's poisons."{{harvnb|Wood|2000|p=79}}</ref>

Before long, Chekhov was attracting literary as well as popular attention. The sixty-four-year-old [[Dmitry Grigorovich (writer)|Dmitry Grigorovich]], a celebrated Russian writer of the day, wrote to Chekhov after reading his short story "The Huntsman" that<ref>[https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1944 ''The Huntsman''.]. Retrieved 16 February 2007.</ref> "You have ''real'' talent, a talent that places you in the front rank among writers in the new generation." He went on to advise Chekhov to slow down, write less, and concentrate on literary quality.

Chekhov replied that the letter had struck him "like a thunderbolt" and confessed, "I have written my stories the way reporters write up their notes about fires—mechanically, half-consciously, caring nothing about either the reader or myself."{{sfn|Malcolm|2004|pp=32–33}} The admission may have done Chekhov a disservice, since early manuscripts reveal that he often wrote with extreme care, continually revising.{{sfn|Payne|1991|p=XXIV}} Grigorovich's advice nevertheless inspired a more serious, artistic ambition in the twenty-six-year-old. In 1888, with a little string-pulling by Grigorovich, the short story collection ''At Dusk'' (''V Sumerkakh'') won Chekhov the coveted [[Pushkin Prize]] "for the best literary production distinguished by high artistic worth."{{sfn|Simmons|1970|p=160}}

===Turning points===
[[File:Chekhov family.jpg|thumb|Chekhov's family and friends in 1890: (top row, left to right) Ivan, Alexander, father; (second row) Mariya Korniyeeva, Lika Mizinova, Masha, Mother, Seryozha Kiselev; (bottom row) Misha, Anton]]
In 1887, exhausted from overwork and ill health, Chekhov took a trip to Ukraine, which reawakened him to the beauty of the [[Pontic–Caspian steppe|steppe]].<ref name = "Masha 1887">"There is a scent of the steppe and one hears the birds sing. I see my old friends the ravens flying over the steppe." Letter to sister Masha, 2 April 1887. [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6408 ''Letters of Anton Chekhov''.]</ref> On his return, he began the novella-length short story "[[The Steppe (novella)|''The Steppe'']]", which he called "something rather odd and much too original", and which was eventually published in ''[[Severny Vestnik]]'' (''The Northern Herald'').<ref>Letter to Grigorovich, 12 January 1888. Quoted by {{harvnb|Malcolm|2004|p=137}}.</ref> In a narrative that drifts with the thought processes of the characters, Chekhov evokes a [[chaise]] journey across the steppe through the eyes of a young boy sent to live away from home, and his companions, a priest and a merchant. "The Steppe" has been called a "dictionary of Chekhov's poetics", and it represented a significant advance for Chekhov, exhibiting much of the quality of his mature fiction and winning him publication in a literary journal rather than a newspaper.<ref>"'The Steppe,' as Michael Finke suggests, is 'a sort of dictionary of Chekhov's poetics,' a kind of sample case of the concealed literary weapons Chekhov would deploy in his work to come." {{harvnb|Malcolm|2004|p=147}}.</ref>

In autumn 1887, a theatre manager named Korsh commissioned Chekhov to write a play, the result being ''[[Ivanov (play)|Ivanov]]'', written in a fortnight and produced that November.<ref name=autogenerated3>From the biographical sketch, adapted from a memoir by Chekhov's brother Mikhail, which prefaces [[Constance Garnett]]'s translation of Chekhov's letters, 1920.</ref> Though Chekhov found the experience "sickening" and painted a comic portrait of the chaotic production in a letter to his brother Alexander, the play was a hit and was praised, to Chekhov's bemusement, as a work of originality.<ref name = "Alexander 1887">Letter to brother Alexander, 20 November 1887. [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6408 ''Letters of Anton Chekhov''.]</ref> 

Although Chekhov did not fully realise it at the time, Chekhov's plays, such as ''The Seagull'' (written in 1895), ''Uncle Vanya'' (written in 1897), ''The Three Sisters'' (written in 1900), and ''The Cherry Orchard'' (written in 1903) served as a revolutionary backbone to what is common sense to the medium of acting to this day: an effort to recreate and express the realism of how people truly act and speak with each other. This realistic manifestation of the human condition may engender in audiences reflection upon what it means to be human.

This philosophy of approaching the art of acting has stood not only steadfast, but as the cornerstone of acting for much of the 20th century to this day. [[Mikhail Chekhov (writer)|Mikhail Chekhov]] considered ''Ivanov'' a key moment in his brother's intellectual development and literary career.<ref name = "Bio"/> From this period 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.<ref>{{citation |title=Chekhov's Art: A Stylistic Analysis|author=Petr Mikhaĭlovich Bit︠s︡illi|year=1983|publisher=Ardis|page=x}}</ref><ref>{{citation|title=The Literature 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Novelists, Playwrights, and Poets of All Time|author=Daniel S. Burt|year=2008|publisher=Infobase Publishing}}</ref><ref name="marble">{{citation|title=Chekhov: The Silent Voice of Freedom|author=Valentine T. Bill|year=1987|publisher=Philosophical Library}}</ref>

{{blockquote|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.|Anton Chekhov<ref name="marble" /><ref>S. Shchukin, ''Memoirs'' (1911)</ref>}}

The death of Chekhov's brother Nikolai from tuberculosis in 1889 influenced ''A Dreary Story'', finished that September, about a man who confronts the end of a life that he realises has been without purpose.<ref name="Dreary">{{Cite book |last=Chekhov |first=Anton Pavlovich |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1883 |title=The Wife, and Other Stories |date=2006-02-26 |language=English |translator-last=Garnett |translator-first=Constance}}</ref>{{sfn|Simmons|1970|pp=186–191}} Mikhail Chekhov recorded his brother's depression and restlessness after Nikolai's death.  Mikhail was researching prisons at that time as part of his law studies.  Anton Chekhov, in a search for purpose in his own life, himself soon became obsessed with the issue of prison reform.<ref name = "Bio"/>

===Sakhalin===
[[File:Chekhov ht.jpg|thumb|Anton Chekhov in 1893]]
In 1890, Chekhov undertook an arduous journey by train, horse-drawn carriage, and river steamer across [[Siberia]] to the [[Russian Far East]] and the ''[[katorga]]'', or penal colony, on [[Sakhalin Island]], north of Japan.  He spent three months there interviewing thousands of convicts and settlers for a census. The letters Chekhov wrote during the two-and-a-half-month journey to Sakhalin are considered to be among his best.{{sfn|Malcolm|2004|p=129}} His remarks to his sister about [[Tomsk]] were to become notorious.{{sfn|Simmons|1970|p=223}}{{sfn|Rayfield|1997|p=224}}

{{blockquote|Tomsk is a very dull town. To judge from the drunkards whose acquaintance I have made, and from the intellectual people who have come to the hotel to pay their respects to me, the inhabitants are very dull, too.{{sfn |Chekhov |Garnett |2004 |loc=[https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6408/pg6408-images.html#link2H_4_0079 (TO HIS SISTER.) TOMSK, May 20 (1890)]}}}}

Chekhov witnessed much on Sakhalin that shocked and angered him, including floggings, embezzlement of supplies, and [[sexual slavery|forced prostitution]] of women. He wrote,  "There were times I felt that I saw before me the extreme limits of man's degradation."{{sfn|Wood|2000|p=85}}{{sfn|Rayfield|1997|p=230}} He was particularly moved by the plight of the children living in the penal colony with their parents. For example:

{{blockquote|On the [[Amur River|Amur]] steamer going to Sakhalin, there was a convict who had murdered his wife and wore fetters on his legs. His daughter, a little girl of six, was with him. I noticed wherever the convict moved the little girl scrambled after him, holding on to his fetters. At night the child slept with the convicts and soldiers all in a heap together.{{sfn |Chekhov |Garnett |2004 |loc=[https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6408/pg6408-images.html#link2H_4_0106 TO A. F. KONI. PETERSBURG, January 16, 1891.]}}}}

Chekhov later concluded that charity was not the answer, but that the government had a duty to finance humane treatment of the convicts. His findings were published in 1893 and 1894 as ''Ostrov Sakhalin'' (''[[Sakhalin Island (Chekhov)|The Island of Sakhalin]]''), a work of social science, not literature.{{sfn|Malcolm|2004|p=125}}<ref name = "Simmons 229">{{harvnb|Simmons|1970|p=229}}: Such is the general critical view of the work, but Simmons calls it a "valuable and intensely human document."</ref> Chekhov found literary expression for the "Hell of Sakhalin" in his long short story "[[s:The Murder|The Murder]]",<ref>{{Cite book |last=Chekhov |first=Anton Pavlovich |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13419 |title=The Bishop and Other Stories |date=2004-09-09 |language=English |translator-last=Garnett |translator-first=Constance}}</ref> the last section of which is set on Sakhalin, where the murderer Yakov loads coal in the night while longing for home. Chekhov's writing on Sakhalin, especially the traditions and habits of the [[Gilyak people]], is the subject of a sustained meditation and analysis in [[Haruki Murakami]]'s novel ''[[1Q84]]''.<ref>Murakami, Haruki. ''1Q84''.  Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2011.</ref> It is also the subject of a poem by the Nobel Prize winner [[Seamus Heaney]], "Chekhov on Sakhalin" (collected in the volume ''Station Island'').<ref>Heaney, Seamus. ''Station Island'' Farrar Straus Giroux: New York, 1985.</ref> [[Rebecca Gould]] has compared Chekhov's book on Sakhalin to [[Katherine Mansfield]]'s ''Urewera Notebook'' (1907).<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Gould|first=Rebecca Ruth|s2cid=165401623|date=2018|title=The aesthetic terrain of settler colonialism: Katherine Mansfield and Anton Chekhov's natives|journal=Journal of Postcolonial Writing|volume=55|pages=48–65|doi=10.1080/17449855.2018.1511242|url=https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/40478/1/Gould_The_aesthetic_terrain_of_settler_Journal_of_Postcolonial_Writing_2018.pdf }}</ref> In 2013, the Wellcome Trust-funded play 'A Russian Doctor', performed by Andrew Dawson and researched by Professor Jonathan Cole, explored Chekhov's experiences on Sakhalin Island.

===Melikhovo===
[[File:Melihovo.jpg|thumb|[[Melikhovo]], now a museum]]
Mikhail Chekhov, a member of the household at Melikhovo, described the extent of his brother's medical commitments:

{{blockquote|From the first day that Chekhov moved to Melikhovo, the sick began flocking to him from twenty miles around. They came on foot or were brought in carts, and often he was fetched to patients at a distance. Sometimes from early in the morning peasant women and children were standing before his door waiting.<ref name=autogenerated1>From the biographical sketch, adapted from a memoir by Chekhov's brother Mikhail, which prefaces Constance Garnett's translation of Chekhov's letters, 1920.</ref>}}

Chekhov's expenditure on drugs was considerable, but the greatest cost was making journeys of several hours to visit the sick, which reduced his time for writing.<ref name=autogenerated2>From the biographical sketch, adapted from a memoir by Chekhov's brother Mihail, which prefaces Constance Garnett's translation of Chekhov's letters, 1920.</ref> However, Chekhov's work as a doctor enriched his writing by bringing him into intimate contact with all sections of Russian society: for example, he witnessed at first hand the peasants' unhealthy and cramped living conditions, which he recalled in his short story "Peasants". Chekhov visited the upper classes as well, recording in his notebook: "Aristocrats? The same ugly bodies and physical uncleanliness, the same toothless old age and disgusting death, as with market-women."<ref name="note">{{Cite book |last=Chekhov |first=Anton Pavlovich |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12494 |title=Note-Book of Anton Chekhov |date=2004-06-01 |language=English |translator-last=Koteliansky |translator-first=S. S. (Samuel Solomonovitch) |translator-last2=Woolf |translator-first2=Leonard}}</ref> In 1893/1894 he worked as a [[Zemstvo]] doctor in [[Zvenigorod]], which has numerous sanatoriums and rest homes. A local hospital is named after him.

In 1894, Chekhov began writing his play ''The Seagull'' in a lodge he had built in the orchard at Melikhovo. In the two years since he had moved to the estate, he had refurbished the house, taken up agriculture and horticulture, tended the orchard and the pond, and planted many trees, which, according to Mikhail, he "looked after&nbsp;... as though they were his children. Like Colonel Vershinin in his ''[[Three Sisters (play)|Three Sisters]]'', as he looked at them he dreamed of what they would be like in three or four hundred years."<ref name = "Bio"/>

The first night of ''The Seagull'', at the [[Alexandrinsky Theatre]] in St. Petersburg on 17 October 1896, was a fiasco, as the play was booed by the audience, stinging Chekhov into renouncing the theatre.{{sfn|Rayfield|1997|pp=394–398}} But the play so impressed the theatre director [[Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko]] that he convinced his colleague [[Konstantin Stanislavski]] to direct a new production for the innovative [[Moscow Art Theatre]] in 1898.<ref name = "Ben">Benedetti, ''Stanislavski: An Introduction'', 25.</ref> Stanislavski's attention to psychological realism and ensemble playing coaxed the buried subtleties from the text, and restored Chekhov's interest in playwriting.<ref>Chekhov and the Art Theatre, in Stanislavski's words, were united in a common desire "to achieve artistic simplicity and truth on the stage."{{harvnb |Allen |2002 |p=[https://archive.org/details/performingchekho0000alle/page/10/mode/2up 11]}}</ref> The Art Theatre commissioned more plays from Chekhov and the following year staged ''Uncle Vanya'', which Chekhov had completed in 1896.<ref>{{harvnb|Rayfield|1997|pp=390–391}}: Rayfield draws from his critical study ''Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" and the "Wood Demon"'' (1995), which anatomised the evolution of the ''Wood Demon'' into ''Uncle Vanya''—"one of Chekhov's most furtive achievements."</ref> In the last decades of his life he became an [[atheist]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Tabachnikova|first=Olga|title=Anton Chekhov Through the Eyes of Russian Thinkers: Vasilii Rozanov, Dmitrii Merezhkovskii and Lev Shestov|year=2010|publisher=Anthem Press|isbn=978-1-84331-841-5|page=26|quote=For Rozanov, Chekhov represents a concluding stage of classical Russian literature at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, caused by the fading of the thousand-year-old Christian tradition that had sustained much of this literature. On the one hand, Rozanov regards Chekhov's positivism and atheism as his shortcomings, naming them among the reasons for Chekhov's popularity in society.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Anton Chekhov's Life and Thought: Selected Letters and Commentary|year=1997|publisher=Northwestern University Press|isbn=978-0-8101-1460-9|editor1-first=Simon |editor1-last=Karlinsky |editor2-first=Michael Henry|editor2-last=Heim| last=Chekhov|first=Anton Pavlovich|page=13|quote=While Anton did not turn into the kind of militant atheist that his older brother Alexander eventually became, there is no doubt that he was a non-believer in the last decades of his life.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov|year=2009|publisher=Random House Digital, Inc.|isbn=978-0-307-56828-1|pages=xxii|author=Richard Pevear|quote=According to Leonid Grossman, 'In his revelation of those evangelical elements, the atheist Chekhov is unquestionably one of the most Christian poets of world literature.'}}</ref>

===Yalta===
In March 1897, Chekhov suffered a major haemorrhage of the lungs while on a visit to Moscow. With great difficulty he was persuaded to enter a clinic, where doctors diagnosed tuberculosis on the upper part of his lungs and ordered a change in his manner of life.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Chekhov |first=Anton Pavlovich |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6408 |title=Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends |date=2004-09-01 |language=English |translator-last=Garnett |translator-first=Constance}}</ref>

[[File:Tolstoy and chekhov.jpg|thumb|left|Chekhov with [[Leo Tolstoy]] at [[Yalta]], 1900]]
After his father's death in 1898, Chekhov bought a plot of land on the outskirts of [[Yalta]] and built a [[White Dacha|villa (The White Dacha)]], into which he moved with his mother and sister the following year. Though he planted trees and flowers, kept dogs and tame cranes, and received guests such as [[Leo Tolstoy]] and [[Maxim Gorky]], Chekhov was always relieved to leave his "hot [[Siberia]]" for Moscow or travels abroad. He vowed to move to Taganrog as soon as a water supply was installed there.<ref>Olga Knipper, "Memoir", in {{harvnb |Benedetti |1997 |pp=[https://archive.org/details/dearwriterdearac0000chek/page/36/mode/2up 37], [https://archive.org/details/dearwriterdearac0000chek/page/270/mode/2up 270]}}</ref><ref name = "Bartlett 2">Bartlett, 2.{{Incomplete short citation|date=October 2023}}</ref> In Yalta he completed two more plays for the Art Theatre, composing with greater difficulty than in the days when he "wrote serenely, the way I eat pancakes now". He took a year each over ''[[Three Sisters (play)|Three Sisters]]'' and ''[[The Cherry Orchard]]''.{{sfn|Malcolm|2004|pp=170–171}}

On 25 May 1901, Chekhov married [[Olga Knipper]] quietly, owing to his horror of weddings. She was a former protégée and sometime lover of [[Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko]] whom he had first met at rehearsals for ''The Seagull''.<ref>"I have a horror of weddings, the congratulations and the champagne, standing around, glass in hand with an endless grin on your face." Letter to Olga Knipper, 19 April 1901.</ref>{{sfn |Benedetti |1997 |p=[https://archive.org/details/dearwriterdearac0000chek/page/124/mode/2up 125]}}<ref>{{harvnb|Rayfield|1997|p=500|ps="Olga's relations with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko were more than professional."}}</ref> Up to that point, Chekhov, known as "Russia's most elusive literary bachelor",<ref>Harvey Pitcher in ''Chekhov's Leading Lady'', quoted in {{harvnb|Malcolm|2004|p=59}}.</ref> had preferred passing liaisons and visits to brothels over commitment.<ref>"Chekhov had the temperament of a philanderer. Sexually, he preferred brothels or swift liaisons."{{harvnb|Wood|2000|p=78}}</ref> He had once written to Suvorin:

{{blockquote|By all means I will be married if you wish it. But on these conditions: everything must be as it has been hitherto—that is, she must live in Moscow while I live in the country, and I will come and see her.... I promise to be an excellent husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, won't appear in my sky every day.<ref>Letter to Suvorin, 23 March 1895. [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6408 ''Letters of Anton Chekhov''.]</ref>}}

[[File:Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper, 1901.jpg|thumb|upright=.7|Chekhov and [[Olga Knipper|Olga]], 1901, on their honeymoon]]
The letter proved prophetic of Chekhov's marital arrangements with Olga: he lived largely at Yalta, she in Moscow, pursuing her acting career. In 1902, Olga suffered a miscarriage; and [[Donald Rayfield]] has offered evidence, based on the couple's letters, that conception occurred when Chekhov and Olga were apart, although other Russian scholars have rejected that claim.<ref>{{harvnb|Rayfield|1997|pp=556–557|ps=Rayfield also tentatively suggests, drawing on obstetric clues, that Olga suffered an [[ectopic pregnancy]] rather than a miscarriage.}}</ref><ref name = "Simmons Benedetti">There was certainly tension between the couple after the miscarriage, though {{harvnb|Simmons|1970|p=569}}, and {{harvnb |Benedetti |1997 |p=[https://archive.org/details/dearwriterdearac0000chek/page/240/mode/2up 241]}}, put this down to Chekhov's mother and sister blaming the miscarriage on Olga's late-night socialising with her actor friends.</ref> The literary legacy of this long-distance marriage is a correspondence that preserves gems of theatre history, including shared complaints about [[Stanislavski]]'s directing methods and Chekhov's advice to Olga about performing in his plays.{{sfn |Benedetti |1997 |p=}}{{page needed |date=October 2023}}

In Yalta, Chekhov wrote one of his most famous stories,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://short-stories.co/@antonchekhov/lady-with-lapdog-g7e4vkp3zd06|title=Lady with lapdog|last=Chekhov|first=Anton|website=Short Stories}}</ref> "[[The Lady with the Dog (short story)|The Lady with the Dog]]"<ref>{{cite news|author=Rosamund, Bartlett|title=The House That Chekhov Built |journal=London Evening Standard|date= 2 February 2010|page=31}}</ref> (also translated from the Russian as "Lady with Lapdog"),<ref>Greenberg, Yael. "The Presentation of the Unconscious in Chekhov's Lady With Lapdog." ''Modern Language Review'' 86.1 (1991): 126–130. Academic Search Premier. Web. 3 November 2011.</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2014-10-07 |title=7 Memorable Dogs From Literature (IMAGES) |url=https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dogs-literature_b_5940408 |access-date=2025-02-15 |website=HuffPost |language=en}}</ref> which depicts what at first seems a casual liaison between a cynical married man and an unhappy married woman who meet while holidaying in [[Yalta]]. Neither expects anything lasting from the encounter.  Unexpectedly though, they gradually fall deeply in love and end up risking scandal and the security of their family lives.  The story masterfully captures their feelings for each other, the inner transformation undergone by the disillusioned male protagonist as a result of falling deeply in love, and their inability to resolve the matter by either letting go of their families or of each other.<ref>"Overview: 'The Lady with the Dog'." ''Characters in 20th-Century Literature.'' Laurie Lanzen Harris. Detroit: Gale Research, 1990. Literature Resource Center. Web. 3 November 2011.</ref>

===Death===
In May 1903, Chekhov visited Moscow; the prominent lawyer [[Vasily Maklakov]] visited him almost every day. Maklakov signed Chekhov's will. By May 1904, Chekhov was terminally ill with [[tuberculosis]]. Mikhail Chekhov recalled that "everyone who saw him secretly thought the end was not far off, but the nearer [he] was to the end, the less he seemed to realise it".<ref name = "Bio"/> On 3 June, he set off with Olga for the German spa town of [[Badenweiler]] in the [[Black Forest]] in Germany, from where he wrote outwardly jovial letters to his sister Masha, describing the food and surroundings, and assuring her and his mother that he was getting better. In his last letter, he complained about the way German women dressed.<ref>Letter to sister Masha, 28 June 1904. [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6408 ''Letters of Anton Chekhov''.]</ref> Chekhov died on 15 July 1904 at the age of 44 after a long fight with tuberculosis, the same disease that killed his brother.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Anton-Chekhov | title=Anton Chekhov &#124; Biography, Plays, Short Stories, & Facts &#124; Britannica | date=27 October 2023 }}</ref>

Chekhov's death has become one of "the great set pieces of literary history"{{sfn|Malcolm|2004|p=62}}{{mdash}}retold, embroidered, and fictionalized many times since, notably in the 1987 short story "Errand" by [[Raymond Carver]]. In 1908, Olga wrote this account of her husband's last moments:

{{blockquote|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&nbsp;...<ref>Olga Knipper, ''Memoir'', in {{harvnb |Benedetti |1997 |p=[https://archive.org/details/dearwriterdearac0000chek/page/284/mode/2up 284]}}</ref>}}

Chekhov's body was transported to Moscow in a refrigerated railway-car meant for [[oyster]]s, a detail that offended [[Maxim Gorky|Gorky]].<ref>"Banality revenged itself upon him by a nasty prank, for it saw that his corpse, the corpse of a poet, was put into a railway truck 'For the Conveyance of Oysters'." Maxim Gorky in [http://www.eldritchpress.org/ac/gorky.htm ''Reminiscences of Anton Chekhov''.]. Retrieved 16 February 2007.</ref> Some of the thousands of mourners followed the funeral procession of a [[Fyodor Keller|General Keller]] by mistake, to the accompaniment of a military band.<ref>Chekhov's Funeral. M. Marcus.''The Antioch Review'', 1995</ref> Chekhov was buried next to his father at the [[Novodevichy Cemetery]].<ref>{{harvnb|Malcolm|2004|p= 91}}; Alexander Kuprin in [http://www.eldritchpress.org/ac/gorky.htm ''Reminiscences of Anton Chekhov'']. Retrieved 16 February 2007.</ref><ref>{{cite news|title= Novodevichy Cemetery|url= http://www.passportmagazine.ru/article/1099/|access-date= 12 September 2013|work= Passport Magazine|date= April 2008}}</ref>