From the New York Times, a review of "Neva," a new play in which Olga Knipper, actress and widow of Chekhov, is a character, reviewed by Charles Isherwood, March 12, 2013, Self-Absorbed, With Chekhov as a Background:

"During Chekhov’s lifetime many people died because of politics. Before he became a dramatist of renown, Chekhov made a long visit to the prison island Sakhalin, where inmates suffered terrible deprivation and even death. His bearing witness to the cruelty and abuse they endured did not stop him from believing instinctively in the necessity of art as a civilizing influence worthy of his devoted attention."



Not a bad line to reflect over.  Indeed, the events of our lives give us material to reflect, and some would say, as I believe, that the things that happen are just the vehicle to aid us to enlightenment, toward being better human beings.  Years are spent laboring under illusions, illusions of what you take to be real; slowly, gradually, you come to realize the emptiness, the void-backed quality of the things you held in your heart as real but are only lessons of the coming wisdom that will liberate you.  Paul is not the only one who refers to mirrors, darkened glass, being cleared.

Isherwood's unprompted mention of Chekhov's visit to Sakhalin (an incredibly long trip with its traveller already aware of his tuberculosis) is interesting as a necessary background for any understanding of his work in prose and in theater.  What were the previously-held or discovered illusions going to Sakhalin might have dispelled for Chekhov?  Might he have regarded certain criminal types as irredeemable, less worthy of being treated with basic decency?  Or, perhaps, in the sufferings of others, here dramatic in a penal colony, did he observe the human condition?  What is imprisonment?  It doesn't seem the author of the long short story "Penal Colony Number 7" would have been too far off from opened eyes.

Chekhov enjoyed in his travels relationships with people.  He drank vodka will local dignitaries, he rode in rickety coaches, voyaged on languorous ships, he visited geisha type houses for first-hand experience of other peoples.  He was a doctor, not shy of physical contact in certain situations.

And in a certain sense, without too much of a stretch, Chekhov is a doctor in the Christian sense, a physic amongst the ill and those in need of one.  It is as if he spent a professional life immersed in human suffering as a ballast for his observational material.

He gained from all his experiences, his great stories piercing the illusions of the momentary solutions people grab on to.

An experience of life:  something to study, by which to gain Buddha Enlightenment.