Anton Chekhov Biography

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Russian: , Anton Pavlovi? ?ehov) (29 January 1860 [O.S. 17 January] – 15 July 1904 [O.S. 2 July]) was a physician, major Russian short story writer and playwright. His best short stories are among the supreme achievements in prose narrative and regarded as world classics, while his brief playwriting career produced at least three plays which are incomparable and have altered the history of the theatre.

It can be safely said that Chekhov revolutionized the genre of the short story; his subject matter and technique influenced many future short-story writers. Little action occurs in Chekhov's stories and plays, but he compensates for lack of outward excitement by his original techniques for developing internal drama. The point of a typical Chekhov story is most often what happens within a given character, and that is conveyed indirectly, by suggestion or by significant detail. Chekhov eschews the traditional build-up of chronological detail, instead emphasizing moments of epiphany and illumination over a significantly shorter period of time. As such, his best stories have a psychological realism and concision seldom matched by other writers. Tolstoy likened Chekhov's technique to that of the French Impressionists, who daubed canvases with paint apparently without reason, but achieved an overall effect of vivid, unchallengeable artistry.