AILED by Jean Benedetti in his fine introduction as "one of the most extraordinary love stories in the history of the theatre", the relationship between Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper was brief, intense, and paradoxical. Between April 1899, when they met, and July 1904 when he died, the writer and the actress became lovers and then - spouses, yet the total time in each other's company amounted to little more than a few months. Knipper's commitments to the Art Theatre in Moscow and Chekhov's tubercular exile to Yalta, his "hot Siberia", meant that they were often separated for months. As Benedetti points out, however, "their misfortune is our gain" for, had their relationship been more conventional, we would not now be able to peruse their remarkable correspondence.
Linked where necessary by extracts from Knipper's Memoir, these letters leave no question as, to the sincerity of their love, but they do highlight the vast differences between them. Whereas Chekhov tended to be reclusive and taciturn, especially when it came to expressing emotions, Olga was an impulsive, emotional and temperamental actress whose spontaneous performances led to her becoming "an icon in Soviet art". Her letters tend to be longer than Chekhov's and she frequently complains that his are too short. Shortly after their marriage in May 1901, for example, she implores him to "write more about yourself, who you are", almost as if she barely knew the man she had married. He replied that the brevity of his letters was due to no more than his small handwriting besides, he wrote, "my ideas aren't wide spaced".
Chekhov's letters to Olga abound with avowals of love and devotion, but these are somehow qualified by his use of pet names; Olga was variously his "doggie", his "horseykins", his "darling linnet", his "chicklet", and (I ask you) his "little cockroach". Similarly, he never signed his letters with his own Christian name; after being elected to the Russian Academy of Language and Literature, for example, he signed a letter: "Antonio academicus". Other letters were signed simply "A." or "Ant" or, tellingly, "Your Husband A. Chekhov". His hesitancy to use either of their Christian names was a bone, but not a big bone, of contention between them.
Despite their complaints that neither wrote frequently enough (due in part to crossed letters) and despite Chekhov's persistent bitching about visitors (he hated it when they descended upon him, but hated it more when they didn't), there seems to have been few serious disputes between them. While this may very well have been another blessed consequence of their long separations, Chekhov also despised faction. Elsewhere, he wrote, "My Holy of Holies is the human body, health, mind, talent, inspiration, love and the most absolute freedom freedom from violence and falsehood in whatever they may be manifested." However different their natures, Olga at least provided him this "absolute freedom from violence and falsehood".
There was some considerable faction between Olga and Chekhov's domineering sister, Masha, however, and Olga was perhaps not entirely truthful in this regard for she tried to mask the seriousness of the situation. As Benedetti points out in his Introduction, "Masha cast a long shadow on the marriage". From the letters, too, it would seem that she systematically and routinely nourished Olga's small insecurities and a quashed her enthusiasms. A particularly poignant instance of this was when Olga single handedly set about the arduous task of finding a suitable marital home in Moscow, only to be levelled at every turn by Masha's poo pooing. "Why aren't you here with me, Anton? It's absurd, strange being without you," Olga wrote in frustration. It was only in her diary of imaginary letters to Chekhov after his death that she openly admitted that the binding force between herself and Masha was "jealously, pure and simple". The most delicious Chekhovian irony, however, is that he wrote the role of Masha in Three Sisters specifically for Ola.
No marital home was ever established and, as Benedetti claims, theirs was "a marriage and no marriage ... Knipper continued essentially to function as a mistress, providing physical and emotional pleasure and diversion for short periods". Whatever the true nature of the marriage, though, Knipper and Chekhov were devoted to each other, if devoted from a distance. Given their different natures, it would be within reason to speculate that their devotion may have been seriously compromised had they been in closer proximity. Still, it was an extraordinary relationship and Benedetti does an extraordinary job in presenting it here.