Writer Anton Chekhov His Commitment To His Art Made Him One Of Literature's Greats.(LEADERS & SUCCESS)

Byline: Christopher L. Tyner

When it came to writing, Anton Chekhov was pushy.

Not that he was offensive to others; his efforts focused on himself. Called the father of the modern short story, Russian dramatist and writer Chekhov (1860-1904) earned his reputation by pushing himself to work hard and maintain artistic integrity.

Despite winning the Pushkin Prize for his short-story collection "In the Twilight" in 1888, Chekhov drove himself onward to literary perfection.

"I have a whole army of people in my head begging to be let out and ordered what to do," Chekhov said soon after winning the prize. "Everything I've written to date is nonsense compared with what I would like to have written."

Unearthing the psychological terrain just beneath the grit of ordinary Russian lives, Chekhov's realist pen pulled literature out of the era of romantic illusion.

Through hundreds of short stories such as "The Steppe," "A Dreary Story," "Neighbors" and "Anonymous Story," and plays such as "The Seagull," "Uncle Vanya," "Three Sisters" and "Cherry Orchard," he tried to frame not answers, but questions. The writer's job, he argued, was not to answer questions. It was to formulate the correct questions.