Dramatic understatement, a deeply poetic perception of loss and psychological impotence, exquisite and often gay humor, and extraordinary linguistic aptness characterize what has come to be called "the Chekhovian manner."
Chekhov was born in Taganrog in South Russia on the Azov Sea on Jan. 17/29, 1860, third of six children of a grocery store owner. Chekhov's grandfather was a serf who bought his family's freedom in 1841. While his father tried to improve his social status by attending to civic duties, the young Chekhov and his brothers and sisters worked in the family store and studied in the local school. In 1876 his father went bankrupt and fled to Moscow to start anew. Chekhov's mother soon joined his father in Moscow. Chekhov, then 16, was left behind to finish his schooling.
The blond, brown-eyed Chekhov was a self-reliant, amusing, energetic, and attractive young man. In August 1879 he joined his parents in Moscow, where his father was a laborer and his mother a part-time seamstress. Chekhov soon took his father's place as head of the household, a responsibility he shouldered all his life. He immediately entered the medical faculty of Moscow University. After graduating in 1884, he went to work in the hospital at Chikino, but by December of that year he had begun to cough up blood, the first symptom of the tuberculosis that was to kill him.
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