One hundred years have passed since the death of Anton Chekhov in a spa town of the Black Forest. The Russian writer was fifty-four years old; he left behind plays (such as Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard, The Seagull), novellas, one-act plays (like The Marriage Proposal and The Complaints Book), as well as numerous short stories published during his lifetime (some of them in the satirical journal The Grasshopper) or that remained in his drawers.

Chekhov, like the greatest writers in the world, engaged in all genres of prose and associated his name with half a century of human history: with the pre-revolutionary state of affairs in Russia, with the Stanislavski theater that was just being born. Prolific and defying the old generation, which found his works 'actionless,' Chekhov managed to identify with the Russian 'soul' and to become its magician.

His work, although not lacking in humor, carries the shadow of death, decay, and despair; his heroes remain helpless and nostalgic. He experienced poverty and paternal authoritarianism - he was born in Taganrog, among Greek neighbors - and later the poverty of others: he studied medicine and practiced it without ambition and without rewards; he soon abandoned it for literature.

He always worked very hard: he believed that the beauty of life stems from labor; the work, hardships, and deprivations contributed to his contracting tuberculosis. Although established writers, such as Tolstoy, attacked him, Chekhov quickly found his place in Russian letters: his serene despair, the precision of his language and emotions, the cough that seems to echo behind every sparkling dialogue, and his political independence assemble the portrait of a classic.

As Ivan Bunin writes in his biography (1908), 'Chekhov was an exorcist... his true hero is despair...', a despair that is described without heavy words, without effervescent emotions and violent reactions, but with the irony and clarity of a ruthless yet humane observer.