Chekhov's last years stand in the shadow of his health problems. In March 1897, he suffered a major hemorrhage of the lungs after which tuberculosis was diagnosed.
To live at least part of the time in a healthier climate, in 1898 Chekhov bought a plot of land on the outskirts of Yalta and built a villa ("The White Dacha"), into which he moved with his mother and sister the following year.
In this period Chekhov was busy writing his great plays. In 1898, "The Seagull" was produced successfully by the Moscow Art Theater, and in 1899 "Uncle Vanya" would follow.
In 1900 Anton Chekhov became the first writer elected to membership in the Russian Academy of Sciences.
In 1901 Chekhov's play "Three Sisters" was produced to poor reviews. But thanks to his affiliation with the theater, in 1898, Chekhov ("Russia's most elusive literary bachelor") had met the actress Olga Knipper. They married quietly in 1901 (Chekhov hated big weddings), but Olga Knipper acted in Moscow during the season while Chekhov stayed in Yalta to improve his health. The literary legacy of this long-distance marriage is a correspondence that preserves important theater history, such as Chekhov's advice to Olga about performing in his plays.
In the last years of his life, Chekhov wrote some of his best short stories, such as the trilogy "The Man in the Case," "Gooseberries" and "About Love." Others are "The Schoolmistress," "The Darling," "The New Bishop" and "In the Hollow." Yalta also gave him the special inspiration to write "The Lady With the Dog," which depicts a casual liaison between a cynical married man and an unhappy married woman who meet while holidaying in Yalta, a fling which then grows into a passionate love affair, against the expectation of both participants.
1904, "The Cherry Orchard," Chekhov's last play, was produced.
Chekhov's tuberculosis worsened in 1904, and on his way to warmer climes, he died in a hotel in Badenweiler (a spa town in the Black Forest in Germany). Olga was with him when he died. His body was returned to Moscow for the funeral.
To live at least part of the time in a healthier climate, in 1898 Chekhov bought a plot of land on the outskirts of Yalta and built a villa ("The White Dacha"), into which he moved with his mother and sister the following year.
In this period Chekhov was busy writing his great plays. In 1898, "The Seagull" was produced successfully by the Moscow Art Theater, and in 1899 "Uncle Vanya" would follow.
In 1900 Anton Chekhov became the first writer elected to membership in the Russian Academy of Sciences.
In 1901 Chekhov's play "Three Sisters" was produced to poor reviews. But thanks to his affiliation with the theater, in 1898, Chekhov ("Russia's most elusive literary bachelor") had met the actress Olga Knipper. They married quietly in 1901 (Chekhov hated big weddings), but Olga Knipper acted in Moscow during the season while Chekhov stayed in Yalta to improve his health. The literary legacy of this long-distance marriage is a correspondence that preserves important theater history, such as Chekhov's advice to Olga about performing in his plays.
In the last years of his life, Chekhov wrote some of his best short stories, such as the trilogy "The Man in the Case," "Gooseberries" and "About Love." Others are "The Schoolmistress," "The Darling," "The New Bishop" and "In the Hollow." Yalta also gave him the special inspiration to write "The Lady With the Dog," which depicts a casual liaison between a cynical married man and an unhappy married woman who meet while holidaying in Yalta, a fling which then grows into a passionate love affair, against the expectation of both participants.
1904, "The Cherry Orchard," Chekhov's last play, was produced.
Chekhov's tuberculosis worsened in 1904, and on his way to warmer climes, he died in a hotel in Badenweiler (a spa town in the Black Forest in Germany). Olga was with him when he died. His body was returned to Moscow for the funeral.
"An Artist’s Story"
[The House with the Mezzanine] [1896] (The Darling and other stories)
Chekhov compares two different young people: an indolent landscape painter and an idealistic woman who has dedicated her life to educating the peasantry. The painter is staying with his friend Belokurov, a landowner. The two men visit the Volchaninovs, a mother who has been widowed and two daughters, the beautiful and cold Lydia, and the young and sensitive Genia. Lydia is a teacher and social activist. The narrator likes the family atmosphere and starts making daily visits, although he doesn't hit it off with Lydia, with whom he has frequent collisions about her political and social views. Lydia wants to open a school and dispense medicine to the peasants, she wants to improve their lot by positive action. The narrator believes this will only enslave them more. The painter falls in love with the 17-year old Genia, and one evening he kisses her at the gate when leaving. The next day when he comes back, both Genia and her mother have disappeared. Lydia has sent them away after hearing about the furtive kiss. She looks down upon the painter for his idleness and wrong views and doesn't want her sister (whom she also may think too young) to have a serious relation with him. The two never meet again.
"My Life"
[1896] (The Chorus Girl and other stories)
The narrator Misail Poloznev lives in a provincial town (Chekhov's own hometown of Taganrog, a port town in southern Russia on the Sea of Azov) with his father, an architect, and his sister, Cleopatra. He has no liking for the standard office-type employment for the middle or upper classes, but instead wants to earn his bread with manual labor – his own class is morally corrupt, he thinks. His father and others in his environment think that manual labor is demeaning, so when Misail starts working for a house painter, his father disowns him. The local governor also warns him about his immoral behavior. Through his friend, Dr Blagovo, who thinks that Russia is still a savage country (he talks a lot about improving the peasant's lot, but in fact never acts), he meets Masha Dolzhikov, the daughter of an engineer, whose ideal it is to work on the land and help the peasants. She thinks that Misail embodies her ideals and they marry, moving to the countryside and trying to farm. But the peasants cheat them and Masha's project of setting up a school is also sabotaged. Finally she tires of the hard life and gives up, asking Misail for a divorce. In the meantime, the sister, Cleopatra, has become close to Dr Blagovo and even is pregnant with his child. But Dr Blagovo refuses to marry her and leaves the town. The outcast brother and sister now start living together, until Cleopatra dies of tuberculosis after having the baby. Misail takes on the care of the child and continues his career as a workman. His commitment to a simple life is authentic.
"Peasants"
[1897] (The Witch and other stories)
Nikolay Tchikildyeev, formerly a valet in Moscow, falls incurably ill and returns with wife Olga and daughter Sasha to his ancestral village, as life in the city is too expensive for a sick man without a job. They start living in the hut of his parents, where they also find brother Kirill and wife Maria (and many, many children). Kirill is a drunkard who regularly beats his wife – she accepts this mistreatment passively. Life in the countryside is terrible: dirty, unhealthy, poor, full of degradation, one constant quarrel with others. There is no morality and no religion. When the hut of a neighbor burns, none of the other farmers helps to put out the fire. After the death of her husband, Olga therefore returns to the city with her daughter, leaving poor Maria behind for more beatings. A most unpleasant story, true to its naturalistic origin.
"The Petchenyeg"
["The Savage") [1897] (The Horse-stealers and other stories)
Evokes the Cossacks in all the barbarity for which they were notorious. Ivan Zhmuhin, a retired Cossack officer, returns by train from the city to his farmhouse. In the train, he meets a lawyer whom he offers a lodging for the night. Both men arrive at his farmhouse in the middle of the endless steppe: without trees or water and two kids running wild. After a frugal dinner, Ivan's wife asks advice from the lawyer about her two sons (the eldest is 19), who are neither able to read nor write. Their father has kept them in ignorance and as nobody ever visits, she doesn't know whom to ask. Ivan chases her away, interrupting the conversation, and starts speaking himself about the time he was a Cossack, complaining about the stupidity of his wife, of his sons, and of vegetarians (the lawyer happens to be a vegetarian: if people don't eat pigs anymore, pigs will destroy everything, is the silly counter-argument). The lawyer can't stand it anymore and leaves early at dawn.
"At Home"
[1897] (The Duel and other stories)
Twenty-three-year-old Vera Kardin returns to the home of her childhood that she left ten years ago. Her parents are deceased. Only her grandfather and aunt live on the estate which is now hers. After the first happy moments of the family reunion, she worries about her future in this god-forsaken place. Her aunt wants her to marry Doctor Neshtchapov, but Vera finds no charm in him. But she lets herself be won over by resignation and idleness, and finally agrees to marry the doctor to make herself useful. A month later, she is a housewife at the doctor's office.
"The Schoolmistress"
[In the Cart] [1897] (The Schoolmistress and other stories)
Marya Vassilyevna returns from town in old Semyon's cart. She had gone to get her teacher's salary and do some shopping. She has been making the same trip for thirteen years, and is thinking about her boring life: the death of her parents in Moscow, her difficulties with the administrative authority of the school, her loneliness (she is not married). She is overtaken by the carriage of Hanov, a rich widower, in his forties. She likes him, although he is an alcoholic. At one point, while crossing the river, the cart all but overturns, and she gets knee-deep in icy water. At another she stops for tea in a local tavern full of drunken lout, some of them outright abusive. At a railway barrier, watching the train passing by, she sees in it a woman who looks very much like her late mother. She then has a vision of Hanov again driving up and inviting her to his cart in a dismissive way. Then she wakes up and she is again alone.
"The Man in the Case"
[The Man in the Shell] [1898] (The Wife and other stories)
In 1898, Chekhov wrote a trilogy of stories each of which is told by a narrator to characters who figure as narrators in the other two stories. All three stories (in fact "stories in stories") focus on the failure to grasp the essential joys of life by not taking advantage of opportunities that come only once in a lifetime, for fear of making a mistake. In the first story, "The Man in the Case," the schoolteacher Burkin describes a fellow teacher who shuts himself off from life. Byelikov, a teacher of classical Greek, was like “a man in a case,” always keeping himself and his things wrapped up so as not to come into contact with the outside world. He was also a strict disciplinarian, intent on always doing things the proper way. At one point, Byelikov fell in love with Varinka, the sister of Kovalenko, a new teacher at the school. But when he saw Varinka and her brother bicycling in the park, he complained about this scandalous behavior (at that time, cycling was considered as immodest for women). Kovalenko pushed him down the steps, after which Byelikov became so depressed that he died – and so truly became a man in a case (his coffin).
"Gooseberries"
[1898] (The House with the Mezzanine and other stories)
The vet Ivan Ivanovitch tells the story of his brother Nikolay who worked as a government functionary and always dreamed of saving enough money to buy his own country house with a garden and gooseberry bushes. He skimped and saved and finally, after his wife's death, bought an estate. When his brother visits many years later, he has become a fat landowner and tucks into a bowl of hard, unripe, practically inedible gooseberries from the bushes he has planted, convinced they are utterly delicious. A story of dreams and self-delusion. Ivan Ivanovitch realizes that he, too, is one of the self-deluded persons, content with his lot and not helping to reduce suffering and injustice.
"Concerning Love"
[About Love] [1898] (The Wife and other stories)
About Love describes a love that was professed too late. When he was young, Alehin worked closely with Luganovitch, the vice-president of the circuit court, and became close friends with Luganovitch and his beautiful wife Anna Alexyevna. They spend a lot of time together and Alehin falls passionately in love with Anna - although he feels his love is reciprocated, he never acts on his passion. Only when Luganovitch is transferred to a distant province and they say goodbye at the station, Alehin takes Anna in his arms - but it is too late and they separate forever. One could say the theme is this story is "carpe diem."
"A Doctor's Visit"
[A Case History] [1898] (The Lady with the Dog and other stories)
The medical intern Korolyov is sent by his professor to the Lyalikov factory just outside Moscow. Lisa, the daughter, has been ill for a long time and now has "heart palpitations." Korolyov examines her, but finds nothing wrong. He decides it must be her nerves and wants to leave immediately, but Mrs. Lyalikov insists on keeping him that night. At night, unable to sleep, he walks around the factory, pondering the condition of the workers, the bad cotton produced here and the fact that everybody seems unhappy. He decides it must be the oppression of the dreary town that is responsible for Liza's condition. Later, he talks to Liza - she knows she is not sick, but she suffers from loneliness - and she realizes her father's wealth is won over the backs of the workers. The intern listens to her with empathy and it seems Liza feels much better the next morning, when she puts on her beautiful clothes when the intern is leaving.
"Ionitch" [Doctor Startsev]
[1898] (The Lady with the Dog and other stories)
A new doctor, Dmitri Ionitch Startsev, settles in a provincial town and soon meets the Turkins, considered as the most distinguished family. He falls in love with the daughter, Yekaterina, who teases him by inviting him on a date in the cemetery at night and then not showing up. She soon moves to Moscow to study music and become an artist. Startsev builds a big practice, but also get corpulent and wealthy, and looses all interest in romance. When Yekaterina returns to the town (her dream of becoming an artist has not been realized as she lacks real talent), he is not interested in her anymore. But he is not a good doctor, either: he only works for financial reward and shouts at his patients.
"The Darling"
[1898] (The Darling and other stories)
A negative commentary on the sort of woman who has no intellectual life of her own. but who simply serves as a mirror of the interests and opinions of her husband. Olga is a lovely, plump, and friendly girl - a true "darling." But she has no identity of her own, each time she marries she takes on the identity of her husband, whether it be the manager of an amusement park, a timber merchant or an army veterinary surgeon who is separated from his wife... While Chekhov believed that women should be more than "darlings," and have their own opinions, here we again find a large difference with Tolstoy, who was a terrible anti-feminist - Tolstoy believed that women could only find happiness by reflecting "the light of their husbands." He criticized the present story and re-interpreted Chekhov’s tale of a woman without a self as a paean to truly selfless women...
"The New Villa"
[1899] (The Witch and other stories)
A well-meaning engineer and his wife settle in a rural spot after the engineer has built a bridge there. They attempt to befriend their peasant neighbors, only to find themselves opposed by malice and incomprehension at every turn. How irrational their treatment is, becomes clear after they flee and sell their villa to a pompous government clerk who disdains the peasants: the clerk is treated with paradoxical civility by the locals. Chekhov demonstrates here how mistaken his fellow intellectuals were who romanticized the Russian peasant as the epitome of virtue and purity (as Tolstoy did). On the contrary, the peasants are ignorant and live in a tribal world - as is also shown in another story, "The Peasants." They feel the engineer is friendly and therefore weak and only bow to the power of the official class. The "noble" peasants in reality prove to be nasty, brutish, and mean.
"On Official Duty"
[1899] (The Schoolmistress and other stories)
Judge Lyzhin and doctor Startchenko travel to the village of Syrnya to question witnesses and perform an autopsy after the suspicious death of insurance agent Lesnitsky, believed to be suicide. They arrive after dark because of a snowstorm. The witnesses have already left, so they have to wait until the next day. Startchenko refuses to spend the night in such a grim place and goes to an acquaintance, Von Taunitz. Lyzhin decides to sleep where he is, and has a long conversation with the old rural policeman, Loshadin. Later that night, Lyzhin is woken up by Startchenko to take him to his friend Von Taunitz's place where singing and dancing is going on. The next day, the snowstorm prevents them from leaving the estate. Two days later, at dawn Loshadin comes to fetch them - there is still work to be done...
"The Lady with the Dog"
[1899] (The Lady with the Dog and other stories)
Chekhov's most famous story, a tale of insuppressible love and infatuation, written at a time Chekhov had also found a new love, Olga Knipper, the actress whom he would marry in 1901. Gurov, a 40 year old family man, is holidaying alone in Yalta and sees a lovely young woman, Anna, with a Pomeranian dog on the beach. Although she is also married, they become passionate lovers. When the time comes she has to return to her husband in a provincial town, she implores Gurov to forget her. But although he has had regular extramarital affairs, this time he cannot control his passion and he follows her to her hometown. They fall into one another's arms again, Anna forgiving him that he has followed her. Now she starts visiting Moscow for secret trysts with Gurov. Their love grows into tenderness, and they decide to remain together, realizing that "the most complicated and difficult part of their road is just beginning." A story written with great sensitivity to the subtleties of human relationships and deep respect for the characters. There is no cheap romanticizing in the story and it is clear there is no easy solution - there is suffering ahead and both lives could well be destroyed. Like "About Love" this story is an oblique commentary on the cheap morality preached by Tolstoy in Anna Karenina.
"At Christmas Time"
[1900] (The Witch and other stories)
A story written at the request at a newspaper for the Christmas season. It is much less highbrow than Chekhov's usual work and also more straightforward. Vassilissa, an old peasant woman, goes to see a vague acquaintance to have her write a letter to her daughter, Yefimia. The latter left her parents after her marriage four years ago, but she never writes. After wishes for good health and the hope to see her soon, the public letter writer fills the letter with excerpts from the Army Regulations! The next day, Vassilissa will take the letter to the station twelve versts away. In Moscow, Andrey Hrisanfitch, Yefimia's husband, hands the mother's letter to his wife. Yefimia bursts into tears upon hearing news from her parent and her village. Andrey now remembers that in the past he has often lost the letters his wife gave him for her mother. It doesn't matter, he concludes by himself.
"In the Hollow"
[In the Ravine] [1900] (The Witch and other stories)
A depressive and even cruel tale about Russian village life. The village, lying in a ravine, is ruled dictatorially by an oligarchy of a few wealthy families and is a "gray wasp nest of deception and injustice." One of well-to-do is Grigori Tsybukin, who runs the local grocery store by cheating on all his customers and supplementing his income by dealing in anything he can get his hands on, including home brewed vodka. A widower, he has two sons. The first, Anisim, still single, almost illiterate, is a police officer in the nearby town; Stepan, the youngest is deaf and a bit strange in the head. He is married to Axinia, a dynamic woman with lots of business acumen. She seems pleasant and effective, but is in fact a true devil. She swindles the customers of the store and deceives her husband with one the mill owners in the village.
Tsybukin decides to remarry himself and finds Varvara, who is pleasant enough and creates a clean and bright home, but who is in reality a hollow shell of superficial kindness with nothing underneath. In fact, the whole family is a masquerade of deceit (including Anisim, with whom there is something wrong which is only hinted at initially).
A wife is now found for Anisim: Lipa, a child-wife of only fifteen from a poor family, soft, delicate and frail, and completely innocent. The wedding is celebrated. On the occasion of the wedding, Anisim offers new money to his parents and to the guests, before returning to the city. A few months later, we learn that Anisim has been arrested for making and selling counterfeit money. His 'secret' has come out and he is sentenced to 6 years in Siberia.
The young Lipa seems almost relieved by the disappearance of her husband: she has a new sun in her life, her baby Nikifor. But she now dreads her sister-in-law Axinia whose ambition begins to come out in the open, especially after it is rumored that Grigori has made a new will leaving a large piece of land to his new grandson. In the kitchen, Axinia gets angry with Lipa who is doing the laundry, while the baby is playing by her side. Axinia grabs a scoop and pours scalding hot water over the baby. Nikifor is taken to hospital in the nearby town, but dies the same evening in excruciating pain. Lipa returns alone, with the corpse of her son, and after the funeral Axinia drives her out of the house. Axinia has triumphed and become the true head of the family. Old Grigori Tsybukin has become a weak and silent King Lear, and often goes days on end without food.
"The Bishop"
[1902] (The Bishop and other stories)
This story depicts the last days of an elderly bishop, who though tired and ill, still tries to keep his busy schedule, living for others rather than for himself. He has risen from humble origins - at the beginning of the story his old mother, a peasant woman, visits him to see her famous son. But although the bishop is famous and powerful, in the end what matters to him are the simple things - his commitment to duty and his family relationships. And despite his fame, after his death he is soon forgotten - except by his old mother. The story reads like an anthem on Chekhov's own death from tuberculosis and his effort to continue working till the last.
"The Betrothed"
[The Fiancée] [1903] (The Schoolmaster and other stories)
The antithesis of "The Darling," this is a story about a strong woman with a desire for independence. Nadya lives with her mother and grandmother in the dreary countryside, and out of sheer boredom has acquiesced to a marriage with Andrey, the son of a local priest, who is a colorless and vacuous man. Her mother is a religious freak who even at her advanced age is financially wholly dependent on the dictatorial grandmother. Sasha, an impoverished student who is supported by the family, and who stays with them during the summer, implores Nadya to follow her heart - and go to Petersburg and attend university. She does so by eloping a few days before her marriage with his help. Although Nadya returns once home after two years to see her family, she realizes that things will never be the same and the news of Sasha's death from tuberculosis steels her resolve to leave the estate forever, and lead an independent life. This was the last story Chekhov completed - he was killed by the same illness as the character Sasha in the story, who died after taking a course of koumiss therapy at a tuberculosis sanitarium.
Chekhov Stories in Five Parts:
Chekhov (Stories 1): Earliest Comical Stories (1882-1885)
Chekhov (Stories 2): The Years of High Production (1886-87)
Chekhov (Stories 3): Period of Maturity A (1888-1891)
Chekhov (Stories 4): Period of Maturity B (1892-1895)