Chekhov: Life and Writing

About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about the figure of Anton Chekhov himself – his life and writing – focusing in particular on: (i) Chekhov’s status as one of the most well-known Russian writers, alongside Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-81) and Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910); (ii) Chekhov’s early life: his early life in Taganrog; his family’s move to Moscow, leaving Chekhov behind, his own move to Moscow to study medicine; he earliest writings; and the first signs of tuberculosis; (iii) his decision to travel to Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East in 1890, his work with the prisoners there, and the publication of his findings in Sakhalin Island (1893-94); (iv) his prose output in the 1890s, including ‘Ward No. 6’, ‘The Black Monk’, ‘My Life’ and ‘Three Years’; (v) his declining health and his move first to Nice (1897) and then to Yalta (1898); (vi) his work with the Moscow Art Theatre, including successful productions of The Seagull (1898), Uncle Vanya (1899), Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904); (vii) his marriage to the actress Olga Knipper; and (viii) the extent to which Chekhov was not at all like his male protagonists, as was previously thought, but fun-loving, socially active and gregarious.

About the lecturer

Carol Apollonio is Professor of the Practice of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at Duke University. She is a specialist in Russian literature, Russian and Japanese translation, and language pedagogy, and has worked as a conference-level interpreter for the U.S. Government in nuclear weapons negotiations and other talks. Some of her recent publications include Simply Chekhov (2020) and Chekhov's Letters, co-edited with Radislav Lapushin (2018).