Citation:
Date Published:
June 3, 2026Abstract:
Anton Chekhov contracted tuberculosis in his late teens; his sickness may have increased his capacity for empathy. His literary talent allowed him not only to internalize other people’s suffering but to voice it, often creating new frameworks and vocabulary for expression of fear and inner calamity. In “A Boring Story” (1889), relatively young Chekhov renders the agonizing thoughts of the protagonist, a dying old man, an eminent professor of medicine, Nikolai Stepanovich. This article analyzes “A Boring Story” as an example of illness and end-of-life stories that have become the focus of narrative medicine. My purpose is to highlight some unavoidable limitations that a narrator such as Nikolai Stepanovich might have faced in the late 1880s. I argue that in presenting this old physician’s thoughts, Chekhov started a discussion about the likelihood and usefulness of such concepts as a proper death and death with dignity, an important topic of today’s debates.
March 2026: Galina Rylkova is Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Florida. She was born in Moscow, Russia/Soviet Union, and received her M.A. in Romance-Germanic languages and literatures from Moscow State University. She received her Ph. D. from the University of Toronto in Slavic Languages and Literatures. She is the author of more than 20 published research articles, book reviews, and two books: The Archaeology of Anxiety: The Russian Silver Age and Its Legacy (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007) and Breaking Free from Death: The Art of Being a Successful Russian Writer (Academic Studies Press, 2020). Her current research interests include Psychology of Creative Personality; Narrative Medicine; Chekhov; Nabokov; Cultural Memory; Biography; and World Theater.