Word: chekhovs
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...professional journalist. Said he: "Literature is my mistress and medicine my lawful wife." As a doctor, he knew he was threatened with tuberculosis but would never admit it, refused to be examined. Potent Alexey Suvorin, editor of St. Petersburg's Novoe Vremya, biggest Russian daily, read some of Chekhov's stories, was impressed, sent for him. Chekhov described their first interview: "He was very courteous and even shook hands with me. 'Do your best, young man,' he said. 'I am satisfied with you, only go to church often, and do not drink vodka. Breathe...
Pull up your trousers!' " Though Suvorin was 26 years the elder, the two became close friends. The Dreyfus Case finally put an end to their intimacy: Chekhov was a strong supporter of Zola and the Dreyfusards, Suvorin was a professional anti-Semite...
Guaranteed by such respectable sponsors as Suvorin, Chekhov became a little literary lion. He began to write seriously for the stage. His first play, Ivanov, the tragi-comedy of an ordinary man, puzzled the public, which had gone to the theatre expecting to be amused. But it aroused a flurry of controversy. His first collections of stories were so successful- one of them won a prize-that Chekhov felt like touching wood. "I am too lucky...
...begin to cast suspicious glances towards heaven. I shall hide myself quickly under the table and sit there tamely and quietly, without raising my voice." Chekhov took his success and its inevitable criticism calmly. The one shaft that got under his skin was that, almost alone in a socially-minded day, he took no interest in social problems. Chekhov certainly did not believe in Art for Propaganda's sake: he thought that "a writer should be just as objective as a chemist." But he surprised his critics by suddenly taking himself off to the Island of Sakhalin, Russian penal...
Besides his crowded family in Moscow there were friends, and their friends. Chekhov bought a dilapidated country house outside the city, to get away from visitors, soon found his household was as crowded as ever. It was a relief to get away occasionally for a quiet stroll in a graveyard. Chattering women gave him a special pain. "What a lot of idiots there are among ladies!" he exclaimed. "People have got so used to it that they no longer notice it." He liked such misogynisms as: "If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry." Chekhov finally married...