Chekhov's great short story 'The Bishop'
How to read and talk about an Easter classic for free in a new reading club
In 1902 Anton Chekhov wrote to his editor to say that if censors cut or changed one word of his story “The Bishop,” he wouldn’t authorize its publication. Was he right that it was perfect as it was? Or was he another author with an oversized ego?
If you have thoughts, please join our new classic-short-stories group by leaving an answer or another response in the comments below. At the end of this post, you’ll find ways to read or listen to “The Bishop” or to a critical analysis for free.
To jump start your thinking, here’s a brief, elegant view of Chekhov’s great Easter story by
, whose short stories have won the Milkweed Editions National Fiction Award and other honors described in my earlier story on the club. I offer a few thoughts of my own after Susan’s.Susan on truth and compassion in ‘The Bishop’
© 2025 Susan Lowell. All rights reserved.
To tell a great story, Anton Chekhov once gave six rules. Don’t pontificate. Be objective. Be truthful. Be brief. Be audacious. Have compassion.
In “The Bishop” he brilliantly demonstrates those rules in action, except perhaps for “Be brief”—and yet, as a detailed study of a man’s whole life, it is brief. It also demonstrates Chekhov’s phenomenal ability to manipulate both a microscope and a telescope. He delves into the Bishop’s most private consciousness, and simultaneously he locates his character in the widest possible ontological context. Chekhov doesn’t say to himself, “Let’s talk about Easter,” but he thinks of a character based to some extent on an actual Orthodox bishop. Chekhov’s Bishop is a particular prelate in a particular place and time, and yet he is Christ and he is Everyman. We travel to ecclesiastical Russia around 1900 and totally immerse ourselves in it for ten minutes; we care about the Bishop and we mourn him, all without stirring from our chairs.
This is very hard to do. As a minor practitioner of the short story myself, I can only hope to pick up crumbs. Chekhov is very good at realistic details: the green beard, the tears and singing in the church services, the slog of church work, the red-headed enfant terrible, the tallow candle. His emotional tone modulates constantly, like music, and yet, as with much of his work, the overall effect is almost unbearably melancholy. (But always dimly sparkling with humor.) His flawed, inconclusive, often dull people seem “real.” Nothing much happens, just life and death, recounted with objectivity, truth, and compassion. But to create such a powerful illusion while writing fiction is extremely difficult and extremely audacious. — Susan Lowell
Jan on Chekhov’s view that medicine was his ‘lawful wife’ and literature his mistress
© 2025 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
“The Bishop” is a high point—maybe the Everest—of short fiction about Holy Week, which begins on April 13, Palm Sunday. It’s my favorite among Chekhov’s many wonderful stories.
Susan Lowell rightly notes that nothing much happens in “The Bishop.” In that sense, it resembles Willa Cather’s great novel Death Comes for the Archbishop. It shows the heroism of its title character by following him through ordinary events that reveal his character with a quiet eloquence and moral force. And like Cather’s novel, it doesn’t preach, so readers of all faiths—or no faith—can enjoy it.
Bishop Pyotr’s eminence leads people to treat him with a deference that results in a profound loneliness as his tuberculosis worsens during Holy Week. He has faith and has attained everything expected of man of his position “and he still felt that he had missed what was most important, something of which he had dimly dreamed in in the past.”
The bishop reflects, as he sinks into bed after leading a service at packed cathedral: “If only there were one person to whom he could have talked, have opened his heart!”
Part of what makes his story so heartrending is that his loving and beloved mother has come for a visit. His work and illness have kept the two from seeing each other for nine years, and he longs to unburden himself to her. But she, too, holds back, unsure of how to treat a son of such high rank. All of it builds toward one of the most haunting last lines in short fiction.
Chekhov, a doctor, died of tuberculosis, and apparently never suggested that the disease had influenced his work. But he wrote to a friend: “Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress.” “The Bishop” shows how harmoniously the two relationships can coexist. —Jan Harayda
Where to read ‘The Bishop’ and other resources for free
Download The Bishop and Other Stories to your Kindle for free on Amazon:
https://tinyurl.com/chekhovbishop
Read “The Bishop” online for free or download it at Project Gutenberg
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13419 or at the Literature Network
https://www.online-literature.com/anton_chekhov/1300/
Read a brief Guardian essay on why Chekhov is the undisputed father of the modern short story by the excellent critic Chris Power at https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2007/oct/30/abriefsurveyoftheshortst
Listen to this free reading or another on YouTube
And here’s a photo of the Yalta Bishop Mikhail Gribanovsky, whom Chekhov met and is believed to have inspired story's main character.
You might also like:
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/23/home/pritchett-chekhov.html
https://www.commentary.org/articles/joseph-epstein/god-literature-chekhov/
I read this, and I'm participating in this group, out of self-interest. When Jan announced the reading group's focus on short stories, it dawned on me that while I was familiar with the form, I haven't had any notable experiences with any stories that come to mind. I even wrote a short story for an English class in college, coincidentally, about a young woman's weekend visit to a convent for nuns-to-be. But at my stage of life, with as much pent-up and backlogged material I want to write about, maybe I'd be better off concentrating on the short form. So I'm here to learn. As for my thoughts on the story, I wish I had waited to read it until after I read Susan's thoughts that included Chekhov's six points.
Jan, I read The Bishop that night after I received this newsletter. Thank you for providing the push I needed to finally plunge into Chekov. I enjoyed it very much. I don't have anything insightful to add beyond what you and Susan have written. I look forward to your future short story selections. Also, I keep getting these nudges to read Death Comes for the Archbishop!