"Checkov, Anton - Swan Song" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chekhov Anton)

during Anton's boyhood, he carried on a small and unsuccessful
trade in provisions. The young Tchekoff was soon impressed into
the services of the large, poverty-stricken family, and he spoke
regretfully in after years of his hard-worked childhood. But he
was obedient and good-natured, and worked cheerfully in his
father's shop, closely observing the idlers that assembled there,
and gathering the drollest stories, which he would afterward
whisper in class to his laughing schoolfellows. Many were the
punishments which he incurred by this habit, which was
incorrigible.

His grandfather had now become manager of an estate near
Taganrog, in the wild steppe country of the Don Cossacks, and
here the boy spent his summers, fishing in the river, and roving
about the countryside as brown as a gipsy, sowing the seeds of
that love for nature which he retained all his life. His evenings
he liked best to spend in the kitchen of the master's house among
the work people and peasants who gathered there, taking part in
their games, and setting them all laughing by his witty and
telling observations.

When Tchekoff was about fourteen, his father moved the family to
Moscow, leaving Anton in Taganrog, and now, relieved of work in
the shop, his progress at school became remarkable. At seventeen
he wrote a long tragedy, which was afterward destroyed, and he
already showed flashes of the wit that was soon to blaze into
genius.

He graduated from the high school at Taganrog with every honour,
entered the University of Moscow as a student of medicine, and
threw himself headlong into a double life of student and author,
in the attempt to help his struggling family.

His first story appeared in a Moscow paper in 1880, and after
some difficulty he secured a position connected with several of
the smaller periodicals, for which, during his student years, he
poured forth a succession of short stories and sketches of
Russian life with incredible rapidity. He wrote, he tells us,
during every spare minute, in crowded rooms where there was "no
light and less air," and never spent more than a day on any one
story. He also wrote at this time a very stirring
blood-and-thunder play which was suppressed by the censor, and
the fate of which is not known.

His audience demanded laughter above all things, and, with his
deep sense of the ridiculous, Tchekoff asked nothing better. His
stories, though often based on themes profoundly tragic, are
penetrated by the light and subtle satire that has won him his
reputation as a great humourist. But though there was always a
smile on his lips, it was a tender one, and his sympathy with