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Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper
Anton Chekhov’s short story “The Lady with the Dog” is told from the point of view of Moscow banker Dmitri Gurov. When the text opens, the reader learns that Dmitri has been unhappily married for several years and that he has escaped to the Yalta seaside in order to get a break from his dull job and his suffocating family. About two weeks into his stay, he meets a young, married woman named Anna Sergeyevna and the two of them begin to have an affair. What started as a mere dalliance blossoms into true love and the unhappy couple finds themselves trapped in a long-distance romance that only allows them to briefly see each other every few months.
“The Lady with the Dog” is a work of narrative fiction. However, many Chekhov scholars have noted that the short story bears a striking resemblance to Chekhov’s own life. Chekhov had a difficult life that was filled with sadness. For example, he had a complicated family life, his brother died an untimely death, and he lost many friends to suicide. Towards the end of this life, Chekhov suffered another personal tragedy. In March 1897, Chekhov was debilitated by a major hemorrhage of the lungs while he was on a visit to Moscow. He was eventually diagnosed with tuberculosis and, in 1898, he exchanged his active lifestyle in the city for the tranquility of Yalta where he would remain for the rest of his years. While living in Yalta, Chekhov became infatuated with an actress named Olga Knipper. The pair would eventually marry in 1901. However, both before and after they were married, Chekhov and Knipper often had to live far away from each other because Chekhov was confined to Yalta while Knipper pursued her acting career in Moscow. While they were apart, the couple sent letters back and forth in which they discussed a wide array of topics including theater and how difficult it was to live so far away from one another.
There are many similarities between the events outlined above and the events of “The Lady with the Dog.” To begin with, Chekhov published “The Lady with the Dog” in 1899 while he was living in Yalta, which is where Dmitri and Anna meet and where the first half of the story is set. There is also a high degree of crossover between the love stories of Chekhov and Knipper and Dmitri and Anna. Both couples formed a connection while in Yalta, both couples included a sizable age gap between the men and the women that they fell in love with, and both couples were kept apart from one another for long periods of time. When “The Lady with the Dog” is examined through this historical lens, it becomes abundantly obvious why many Chekhov scholars consider the short story to be semi-autobiographical.
