Did Chekhov write that every fool could cope with the crisis?

Aphorism is popular in the network, in which the complexity of ordinary life and crisis periods is compared. We checked whether the author of these words really is Anton Pavlovich Chekhov.

The quote completely sounds like this: “Every fool can cope with the crisis. What is more difficult for us is everyday life. ” These words attribute to Chekhov such resources as sites of aphorisms ("Pearls of thought", Socratify.net, Mislitel.info, wisdoms.ru), social networks ("VKontakte", Facebook) dedicated to the writer site Chehov-lit.ruas well as English -speaking printed reference books Quote.

The written heritage of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov fit in the 30-volume Collected works, published in 1974-1982 in the USSR. More than half of the volumes compiled letters, articles, notes and diaries of the writer, but we do not find such statements in either in them or in works of art. Moreover, the searches show that the quote has appeared and bred in the Russian -speaking segment of the Internet only in the last decade. Moreover, one of the early cases was the translation of the article in the American edition The Chronicle of Higher Education In 2013, the author of which just could not find this quote from Chekhov after he heard her from his wife. And only then she began to really meet in many Pages With Chekhov's aphorisms.

This means that traces lead us to the English -speaking world. Moreover, among the above sources in English were the books published in the 20th century, and an additional study suggests that the quote “Any Idiot Can face a crisis; it's this day-to-day Living that Wears You Out "with the attribution of Chekhov first appears in publications 1980-x. Where did she come from abroad? Researchers from the site Quote investigator They found a very similar thought in a multiple film epistolary novel "Long -legged daddy"(1912) American writer Jin Webster:" Anyone can rise to a crisis and courageously meet a crushing tragedy, but in order to meet with a laugh, small daily dangers - I really think that this requires spirit. "

Will pass for many years, and in the classic American film "Village girl"(1954) The character of Bing Crosby, an alcoholic trying to return to show business, will say:“ I ran into a crisis there, in Boston, and it got away with me. Almost everyone can encounter a crisis. Everyday life is hard. ”

Another 17 years passed, and in 1971 an anthology called ""Theatrical tradition"Containing, among others, Chekhov's play" Cherry Garden ". In the preface, the authors quoted a replica from a “village girl”, noting: “The script was written by Clifford Clifford, the main heir to Anton Chekhov’s dramatic tradition in America, and in this line he embodied his teacher’s lesson.” This proposal contained one mistake (in fact, the script was written by George Siton, the director of the film, and in the primary source, the play of Classes, there is no such quote) and, apparently, led to another. One of the readers inattentively read the thought of literary scholars, and at least in 1979 the attribution of Chekhov appeared in the book "Successful time management"Jack Ferner, after which she got into collections of aphorisms.

Thus, the quote attributed to Anton Pavlovich Chekhov actually turned out to be a distorted quote from the 1954 American film “Village Girl”, although a very similar thought met in literature earlier.

Incorrect attribution of quote

What do our verdicts mean?