Anton Chekhov. Should you hang yourself, to drink a tea, or to read Chekhov?

More than a hundred years ago, in the quiet South Russian city of Taganrog, in the light of a tallow candle, in the evenings, he did homework or read books, a gymnasium student - Antosh Chehonte, as one of the teachers called him. After a hard day of studying and running around on orders from his father, who kept a grocery store, he dreamed of some other life - interesting, without rude words and slaps.

And now the young man decided to become an educated person - a doctor. In 1879 he entered the medical faculty of Moscow University. Already a student, Chekhov began to publish small stories in humorous magazines and signed them - "Antosh Chehonte." At first he wrote only humorous works. Such stories as "Horse name", "Surgery", "Tutor", "Burbot", and now make us laugh. And now - to experience. A peasant boy, who was given a teaching to a shoemaker, writes a letter to his grandfather asking him to take him back to the village. "Have pity on me, an unfortunate orphan, or I'm all pounded and I want to have a passion, and boredom is such that I can not say, I'm crying." This is from the story "Vanka Zhukov."

Later Chekhov began to write stories and serious plays. Whom only we will not meet in them! There are doctors, teachers, officials, students, military, landlords, peasants, beggars, police and prisoners. All professions, all ages - all of Russia! Chekhov ridiculed everything that prevented him from living honestly and fairly: the arrogance of the strong and the ingratiating of the weak, cowardice, rudeness and indifference ("The Death of an Official"). Disgusting to him and derzhimordy, who see themselves as the backbone of the fatherland ("Unter Prishibeev"), brawlers, detractors, rowdy, drunkards ("Mask" and "In the Bath"). The writer sharply ridiculed those who idealized the peasant. In the story "Malefactor" the peasant has his own logic, his needs, he does not want to know anything else.
In general, the beginning of Chekhov's literary activity is surrounded by the tetral-artistic environment of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Familiar Chekhov - musicians, artists, actors, directors, critics and writers. Sometimes Chekhov acted as a theater reviewer. Many stories, feuilletons, articles and letters Chekhov 1880's. devoted to the theater and actors. The writer highly appreciated the Russian realistic school, he was well acquainted with the great tragic actress Ermolova, was friends with the actors VN Davydov and PM Svobodin, VF Komissarzhevskaya and Savina. Among the Moscow theaters he preferred the Small Theater, among the St. Petersburg theaters - Alexandrinsky. Almost in all works devoted to the theater, Chekhov noted the importance of acting culture and professionalism.

But only the attention of criticism, reader sympathies and most importantly, the support of leading writers (Grigorovich, Pleshcheyev, Korolenko) were regarded by Chekhov as an invitation to professional literary activity, which required him to reconsider his own attitude to literary pursuits as a way to earn money or fun. In the story "The Steppe", published in 1888 in the journal "Severny Vestnik", the main artistic discoveries of Chekhov emerged: the absence of a traditional hero for the Russian literature expressing the author's worldview position; The reconstruction of the surrounding world, refracted by emotional human perception; the transfer of the emotional state of the characters through "occasional" replicas and gestures.

Quite a lot of Chekhov's stories and love. He wrote them masterfully, deeply penetrating into the nature of human feelings, revealing the characters: "Lady with a Dog", "Witch", "Boring Story." Unusual human types he showed in the stories "Gooseberries" (the main character: Nikolai Ivanovich Chimsh-Himalayan), "Ionich" (the main character: Dmitry Ionich Startsev), "The Man in a Case" [the main character: Belikov), "Student". In his works, Chekhov knew how to do without the "pointing finger". It provides an opportunity for the reader to draw conclusions. The language is expressed with "the closest words to life," as AM Gorky noted. If you read the stories "Unter Prishibeyev", "The Man in a Case" and others, you will feel how difficult life was in Russia then. But Chekhov believed that it would change and all bad things would go away. This dream of the beautiful future of Russia is the heroes of his plays "Cherry Orchard", "Three Sisters", "Seagull", "Uncle Vanya". Now Chekhov is read from small to large. Plays of it do not leave the stage of the theaters of many countries, the works are screened, and books are published in almost all the languages ??of the world.
Chekhov does not accidentally start with light genres. He does not seek his reader, he knows the public and addresses it in his unassuming humoresques. It is not accidental and his numerous pseudonyms: A man without a spleen, Antosha ... This is a soft domestic humor, not claiming anything but a joke, causing a smile - and only.

And the themes of his early stories are simple and unpretentious: he ridicules excessive vigilance, a stupid pompousness ... But there is something unexpected: the themes of the stories of Antoshi Chekhonte - the comprehension of the central problems of Russian literature familiar to us! Let us recall the "Death of an Official".

The hero, accidentally sneezing at a bald head, apologized, , and died with fear. But this is the Chekhovian refraction of the theme of the "little man"! After keen sympathy for the fate of Gogol's Akaky Akakiyevich, after feeling endless guilt over the humiliated and insulted heroes of Dostoevsky, Russia laughed at the stupid and vulgar death of a small official. For they sympathized - "to the lesser brothers", that is, they were addressed - it was not for them.

The subject of interest and artistic understanding of Chekhov is a new layer of life, unknown to Russian literature. He opens the reader's life to everyday, everyday, familiar to all a series of routine everyday affairs and considerations that pass by the consciousness of the majority: it serves only as a backdrop for truly decisive, extraordinary events and accomplishments.

Thus, Chekhov's hero becomes a man who acts mechanically, without knowing life and not realizing himself in it. And the whole life of this hero passes in anticipation of a certain decisive turn, a bright event. But, when this event really happens, it turns out that a person can not only act - to promote a favorable turn of fate or to resist its blow; he is not able even to comprehend what is happening: the undeveloped, unskillful consciousness "stumbles" ... And as a result, life is rolling further along the already laid channel to that last result, which with full clarity proves that one more person did not take place, one more person was not formed, one more life was wasted ... And all his creativity is perceived precisely as a diagnosis: a drop in the sense of personality.

He wrote private life - it was an artistic discovery. Under his pen, literature became the mirror of the minute, which only matters in the life and destiny of one particular person. Chekhov's Russia consists of questions from hundreds of unraveled and unsolved fates. And only out of this whole multitude, from the totality of strokes, the outlines of the picture begin to appear. Chekhov's characters form a motley crowd, they are people of different fates and different professions, they are occupied by various problems - from small domestic concerns to serious philosophical issues. Chekhov's artistic manner is not edifying, he is disgusted with the pathos of the preacher, the teacher of life. He acts as a witness, as a writer. In the "Cherry Orchard" Chekhov not only created images of people whose life came at a turning point, but captured the very time in his movement. The course of history is the main nerve of the comedy, its plot and content. The hero of Chekhov, as always, plays a secondary role in his own life. But in the "Cherry Orchard" the heroes are victims of unfortunate circumstances and their own lack of will, but of the global laws of history: the energetic and energetic Lopakhin is as much a hostage of time as the passive Gay. The play is based on a unique situation, which has become favored for the whole new drama of the 20th century, is the situation of threshold. Still nothing like this happens, but there is a sense of the edge, the abyss into which man must fall. The system of characters: heroes and their roles each of the heroes confesses, but in the end all these confessions turn out to the auditorium, and not to the stage partners. At some point the confessor understands that the most important can not explain. So Anya will never understand the drama of her mother, and Love Andreevna herself will never understand her enthusiasm for Petite ideas. A person can to a certain extent adjust his personality, his relationships with others. But he can not change his role, no matter how alien to him. The discrepancy between the inner essence of the hero of the socio-historical role that he is compelled to play is the dramatic essence in the Cherry Orchard.
In the comedy, several storylines intertwine. Earlier all ends the line of the failed novel Lopakhin and Vary. It is built on a favorite Chekhov reception: most of all, and most willingly talk about what is not, discuss the details, argue about trifles - nonexistent, not noticing or deliberately keeping silent about the existing and significant. Let's look first at Lopakhin's image. Chekhov himself considered his role "central" in the comedy.