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Anton Chekhov

1860–1904 · Writer and playwright

You confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly. It is only the second that is obligatory for the artist.
Вы смешиваете два понятия: решение вопроса и правильная постановка вопроса. Обязательно для художника только второе.
Anton Chekhov · letter to A. S. Suvorin, 1888

Read it in the source →

Anton Chekhov wrote this in October 1888 to his publisher, Alexei Suvorin. A writer need not solve the questions he raises, he said: Anna Karenina and Eugene Onegin solve none, yet satisfy completely, because every question in them is stated correctly.

Letter to A. S. Suvorin, 27 October 1888. Letters of Anton Tchehov to his Family and Friends, tr. Constance Garnett (London: Chatto & Windus, 1920), p. 100.

The originals

Photograph of Anton Chekhov in pince-nez, with a short beard — **The likeness**PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN · c. 1903Our portrait is painted after it.Public domain (anonymous, published 1904; Commons: PD-RusEmpire; PD in the US as published before 1931).

The title page of Motley Stories, 1886, with library stamps — **Motley Stories, 1886**His collection Motley Stories, published in St Petersburg in 1886 by the comic journal Oskolki, under his pen name A. Chekhonte with his own name beside it.Motley Stories (St Petersburg: Oskolki, 1886), title page. Russian State Library, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.