Olga Knipper met Chekhov when she was an actress at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898. Throughout their relationship, she worked in Moscow while lived in Yalta, this arrangement suited both of them. From Knipper, we can see the intimate perspective of a devoted wife as well as a unique glimpse into the final years of Chekhov's life. 

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When Anton Pavlovich read Three Sisters to us, the performers and directors who had long awaited a new play from our favorite writer, there was perplexity and silence. Anton Pavlovich gave a confused smile and paced up and down among us, coughing nervously. Then came individual attempts to pass some comment, and one could hear: “It’s not a play, just the outline.” “It can’t be performed, there aren’t any roles, only the suggestion of them.” It was hard work, and we had to dig deeply into our hearts.

 

Several years passed, however, and we asked ourselves in amazement how it was possible that this, our favorite play, so full of emotions, so profound, so significant, so able to reach the deepest and finest qualities of the human heart, had once appeared to us to be not a play but only an outline, and we had been able to say that it contained no roles.

 

In 1917, after the October Revolution, one of the first plays we performed was Three Sisters, and we had the feeling that previously we had performed it without thinking, not appreciating the significance lodged in the thoughts and emotions, and - above all - in the dreams. It was as if the entire play sounded different, and one could feel that these were not just dreams but presentiments, and that indeed “something huge will overwhelm us” and a strong storm will sweep away “the idleness and complacency in our society, the prejudice against work and the stagnant boredom.”

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Anton Pavlovich Chekhov in the last six years of his life—such was the man I knew: the Chekhov who was weakening physically, but growing stronger in spirit. The impression of those six years is one of restlessness and rushing about, just like a seagull flying over the ocean and not knowing where to land: the death of his father, the sale of Melikhovo, the sale of his works to A. F. Marx, the purchase of some land just outside Yalta, setting the house and garden in order; and at the same time Chekhov’s strong desire to go to Moscow, to be involved in his new, theatrical undertaking; trips back and forth between Moscow and the now prisonlike Yalta; the wedding, the search for a small plot of land not far from our beloved Moscow, and a dream almost realized—the doctors permitted him to spend the winter in central Russia—dreams of taking a trip along the northern rivers, to Solovki, to Sweden and Norway, to Switzerland; and the last and strongest wish of all, in Schwarzwald, in Badenweiler, just before his death, the dream of returning to Russia through Italy, which beckoned with its colors, its vitality, and, most of all, with its music and flowers. 

 

During these six years our inner life was extraordinarily full, rich, interesting, and complex, so that the superficial disorder and inconveniences were blunted. Nonetheless, when I look back over those six years, they seem to be made up of a series of painful separations and joyous reunions. . . . It would seem very easy to resolve the problem: leave the theater and go to be with Anton Pavlovich. I lived with this thought and battled with it, because I knew and felt how this rupture in my life would affect and weigh on him. He would never have agreed to my voluntary departure from the theater, in which he also took such a keen interest, and which linked him to the life he so loved. A man with a very sensitive soul, he well understood what it would mean for both him and me if I left the stage, for he knew how difficult it had been for me to reach it.