Anton Chekhov In Yalta

Famous Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov spent nearly half of his life in small town on the south-eastern coast of the Crimean peninsula - Yalta.

garnet hill dress

In March 1897 Chekhov was diagnosed with tuberculosis and had to move to Yalta avoiding spring and autumn damp of Moscow and St. Retersburg. Chekhov wrote about Yalta, not without irony: "two most noticeable featured of the smart Yalta crowd: middle-aged ladies dressed like young women, and a great many generals..."

GARNET HILL

In 1989 he decided to build a house there. An impractical man, he paid too much for a poor patch of land on the border of Yalta, on a mountain slope next to a Muslim cemetery. In 1899 the house was ready and Chekhov moved in with his mother and sister Masha. Very soon his thin, tall and slightly stooping figure became a familiar sight in Yalta. Over the next few years Chekhov and his family with persistent efforts planted trees and flowers in attempt to make a garden from this hilly, barren site, kept dogs and cranes. In 1900 Chekhov was delighted to have organized a small guest-house for TB sufferers.

Chekhov's numerous letters, tinged with sadness and irony, tell of his new life and the cheerful atmosphere during visits by fellow-writers, such as Ivan Bunin, Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Korolenko and Maxim Gorky. Chekhov was usually happy to go away from Yalta to Moscow or trips abroad. In 1900, the Moscow Art Theatre company came to Yalta and its founders, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, paid a surprise visit to their terminally ill friend. The tour was remembered for many years and the building where they performed has miraculously survived subsequent wars and periodic reconstruction activities.

During the few years of Chekhov's life in Yalta he worked enthusiastically. There he completed two plays, The Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904), pieces that were produced by the Moscow Art Theatre, and the several famous short stories, among them the brilliant In the Ravine, The Bride, The Man in a Shell, Gooseberries, About Love and The Bishop. In Yalta Chekhov wrote probably one of his best short story, The Lady with the Dog (also known as Lady with Lapdog), a story about romantic relationship between a married man and woman in Yalta.

Modest by nature, Chekhov hardly ever thought of the level of his popularity. Only success and quickly spread popularity of The Cherry Orchard demonstrated him love of the Russian audience.

Internationally, Chekhov's work remained unknown until few years after World War I Constance Garnett translated his plays and won him the admiration of an English-speaking authors including Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and George Bernard Shaw.

In the united states, Chekhov's popularity begun mostly with the Stanislavski's method of acting approach to drama. The system has been developed by The Group Theatre and still inspires and motivates American playwright, screenwriters and actors.

Virginia Woolf wrote bout Chekhov's stories in The Common Reader (1925): "These stories are inconclusive... we need a very daring and alert sense of literature to make us hear the tune, and in particular those last notes which complete the harmony".

After his death (14 July 1904) his sister preserved the house exactly as it was in Chekhov's time and in 1926 she was appointed director of the Chekhov Museum that was set up there. During the grim 30-month German occupation in the World War II, when a German major was billeted there, she used her tact to protect the Museum from looting and she continued her guardianship right up to her death in 1954 at the age of ninety-three.

Little today remains of the Chekhov's Yalta, which suffered from a terrible earthquake in June 1927, followed by the destruction of the World War II when Soviet troops retreated from the Crimea in 19941 and recaptured the peninsula in spring 1944.

The lively Yalta now has a population of 140.000, a number swelled four times over in the summer when visitors come to stay in the hotels and sanatoriums that dot the coastline. In the evenings the seaboard promenade, stretching for several kilometres either side of the town, is filled with people enjoying the sea air, watching the ships, listening to music and visiting Chekhov museum.

Chekhov's plays became recognized around the world and made him one of the best Russian dramatists of modern days.

Anton Chekhov In Yalta

GARNET HILL