MOSCOW - Literature lovers around the world on Friday held celebrations and paid tribute to Anton Chekhov on the 150th birthday of Russia's most universally acclaimed playwright. Chekhov fans said the author famed for combining a raw emotional writing style with detailed studies of the human condition at the turn of the last century maintains his relevance more than 100 years after his death. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev jetted to Chekhov's hometown of Taganrog in southern Russia, where he described the physician-turned-writer's short stories and plays as "immortal". Clutching a bouquet of cream roses, the Kremlin chief said we can still learn from the dozens of Chekhov works, which enjoy an enduring universal appeal and have inspired other renowned writers, including James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. Though his myriad of short stories are enormously popular in his homeland, it is his theatrical contributions to world drama that have earned Chekhov international fame. British playwright Top Stoppard and America's David Mamet have both re-worked works by the humble, often bespectacled Chekhov and women revered him for giving them a strong voice by creating complex female characters. German director Peter Stein, in Moscow for the anniversary, said Chekhov was as important to theatre as Greek tragedy and William Shakespeare. "These are the three basic columns of European theatre. Shakespeare reinvented the Greeks for modern times and Chekhov for the 20th century," he told Reuters. At his snow-covered grave in Moscow's Novodevichy cemetery, where he lies beside his wife, actress Olga Knipper, theatre enthusiasts huddled in -20 C (-4 F) temperatures to pay homage to the writer who was born on Jan. 29. 1860.
