Anton Chekhov

You reproach me for my objectivity, [he wrote to Suvorin, 1 April 1890] calling it indifference to good and evil, absence of ideals and ideas, etc. You want me to say, when I depict horsethieves: horse-stealing is a bad thing. But that's been known for a long time, without my help, hasn't it? Let juries pass verdicts on horse-thieves; as for me, my work is only to show them as they are.

The year before77ze Steppe appeared, Chekhov had at last had a play produced; the impresario Fyodor Korsh had commissioned Ivanov and staged it at his Moscow theatre on 19 November 1887. It was an outstanding if controver­sial success. 'Theatre-buffs say they've never seen so much ferment, so much unanimous applause-cwra-hissing, and never ever heard so many arguments as they saw and heard at my play' (To Aleksandr, 20 November 1887). It was taken up by the Alexandra Theatre, the Imperial playhouse in St. Petersburg, and produced there on 31 January 1889, after much hectic rewriting in an attempt to make the playwright's intentions clearer and to take into account the strengths and weaknesses of the new cast.

Secure in his reputation and income at the age of thirty, Chekhov made the surprising move of travelling ten thousand miles to Sakhalin, the Russian Devil's Island, in 1890; the journey alone was arduous, for the Trans- Siberian Railway had not yet been built. The enterprise may have been inspired by a Tolstoy-influenced desire to practice a new-found altruism. In any case, the ensuing documentary study of the penal colony was a model of impartial field research and may have led to prison reforms. On a more personal level, it intensified a new strain of pessimism in Chekhov's work, for, despite his disclaimers, he began to be bothered by his lack of outlook or mission. The death of his brother Nikolay and his own failing health led him to question the dearth of ideals or motives in his writing. ,4 Boring Story (Skuchnaya istoriya, 1889) initiated this phase, with its first-person narrative of frustrated ideals and isolation.

The steady flow of royalties enabled Chekhov in 1891 to buy a farmstead at Melikhovo, some fifty miles south of Moscow, where he settled his parents and siblings. There he set about 'to squeeze the last drop of slave out of his system' (to Suvorin, 7 January 1899); 'a modern Cincin- natus,' he planted a cherry orchard and became a lavish host. This rustication had a beneficial effect on both his literary work and his humanitarianism. He threw himself into schemes for road-building, ameliorating peasant life, establishing schools and other improvements; during the cholera epidemic of 1892-93, he acted as an overworked member of the sanitary commission and head of the famine relief board. These experiences found their way into the character of Dr. Astrov in Uncle Vanya.

During this period, Chekhov composed masterful novel­las that explored the dead ends of life: The Duel {Duel), Ward No. 6 (Palata No. 6), The Black Monk (

The success of Ivanov and the curtain-raisers, The Bear (Medved) and The Proposal (Predlozhenie) (1888-89), had put Chekhov at a premium as a dramatist. Urged on by Korsh and others, and frustrated by abortive projects for a novel, Chekhov plugged away at the comedy The Wood Demon (Leshy). It was promptly turned down by the state-subsidised theatres of Petersburg and Moscow which regarded it as more a dramatised story than a genuine play; they recommended that Chekhov give up writing for the theatre. A production at Abramova's Theatre in Moscow was received with apathy bordering on contempt, and may have confirmed Chekhov's decision to go to Sakhalin. For some years he did abandon the theatre, except for a one-act farce The Jubilee (Yubiley, 1891) and an unfinished comedy, The Night Before the Trial (Noch pered suda).

Not until January 1894 did he announce that he had again begun a play, only to renounce it a year later: 'I am not writing a play and I don't feel like writing one. I've grown old and I've lost my spark. I'd rather like to write a novel a hundred miles long' (to V. V. Bilibin, 18 January 1895). A year and a half later he was to break the news, \ . . can you imagine, I'm writing a play. . . it gives me a certain pleasure, although I rebel dreadfully against the conventions of the stage. It's a comedy, three female roles, six male roles, a landscape (view of a lake); lots of talk about literature, little action, a ton of love' (to Suvorin, 21 October 1895).