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  • Memories of Chekhov: Accounts of the Writer from His Family, Friends, and Contemporaries
  • Valleri J. Hohman (bio)
Peter Sekirin, ed. and trans. Memories of Chekhov: Accounts of the Writer from His Family, Friends, and Contemporaries. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006. Pp. viii + 215. $45.00.

Anton Chekhov’s friends, or more accurately, his contemporaries began to publish their recollections of meetings with him soon after his death in 1904. A great diversity of actors, writers, journalists, publishers, former classmates, neighbors, and family members recounted their memories of Chekhov’s smiling eyes, his easygoing but private nature, his pranks, his advice to writers, his support for educational and medical institutions, and his great love of gardening. Some who wrote about him knew him intimately or worked with him for many years, while others met him only once or twice but felt compelled to record their impressions. Editor and translator Peter Sekirin has put forth a volume that captures the breadth of writing about Chekhov by his contemporaries. Memories of Chekhov is a compilation of brief, often heavily edited sketches of the writer by dozens of individuals who encountered him at some point. The wide-ranging selection depicts multifaceted aspects of the writer’s life and interests from the points of view of a broad spectrum of interpreters.

Of course, there is no shortage of documentary material on Chekhov’s life and writing. The leading Russian sources for Sekirin were the thirty-volume collection of Chekhov’s complete works and letters (Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v 30 tomakh, 1974), the multi-volume Chekhov v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov (Chekhov in the Remembrances of his Contemporaries, 1947 and 1960), Sbornik statei i materialiov (A. P. Chekhov: Collection of Articles and Materials, 1954), and Chekhovskii sbornik (Chekhov Collection), compiled by [End Page 548] his brother Mikhail in 1929. Sekirin also makes use of materials from published diaries, collected works, and memoirs of Chekhov’s contemporaries, as well as uncollected newspaper and journal articles. A number of the items Sekirin presents are available in English in such documentary works as The Moscow Art Theatre Letters (1991) and Dear Writer, Dear Actress: The Love Letters of Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper (1997), edited by Jean Benedetti; Anton Chekhov and his Times (1995), compiled by Andrei Turkov; and Anton Chekhov: A Life in Letters (2004), edited by Rosamund Bartlett. Several documents appear in English for the first time. Chekhov scholars, however, have long had access to these documents, so these new materials do not generally contest the dominant views of Chekhov’s life and work or greatly amplify or broaden our understanding of him.

Sekirin, editor of a similar work on Dostoevsky, arranges the memories of Chekhov’s associates into six chapters. The first three and final chapters are arranged chronologically and spatially, following Chekhov from his birth in Taganrog, to his university experiences in Moscow, to his cottage in Melikhovo, and finally to Yalta. Chapters 5 and 6 are devoted to his literary life and work in the theater, respectively. While material in these two chapters overlaps with the dates of his life in his various homes, it helps to destabilize, by arrangement alone, the sense of Chekhov as fundamentally tied to specific spaces at particular times that the rest of the book suggests. Chekhov, a frequent and avid traveler, enjoyed a mobility never entirely extinguished, though it was threatened by serious illness. While the other chapters give us a glimpse of Chekhov’s relation to his specific physical and social environments, chapters 5 and 6 reveal the way his impact was felt beyond his own community. The book also contains a foreword by Alan Twigg, a preface by Sekirin, an appendix of important lifetime dates, and an annotated bibliography. The bibliography is the most useful component, pointing to the primary sources used and giving a brief description of each author.

While the usually effective organization of the book allows for the chronological, spatial, and thematic developments of Chekhov’s life and work, it raises structural problems for Sekirin, and the divisions are not always logically and effectively maintained. For example, chapter 1, “Childhood and School Years: 1860–1879,” largely adheres to the category established, but...

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