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Five Plays
The five plays on which Chekhov's worldwide reputation rests defy attempts to determine what they are about. Some productions of Chekhov exude an atmosphere of unrelieved gloom; others turn into a boisterous romp round the samovar. Are they tregedies of loss and dispossession, or lighthearted send-ups of society's misfits? Chekhov does not answer such questions; instead he involves us in the emotional experience of his characters as they seek for a pattern and meaning in their lives. The grand design eludes them, but what they have left, their everyday existence, their unspectacular victories, and unheroic disappointments, can seem somehow, within the confines of the Chekhov play, to matter at least as much.
This collection of five great plays is taken from the Oxford Chekhov, Ronald Hingley's scholarly edition, acclaimed for the accuracy and 'speakability' of the translations.
This collection of five great plays is taken from the Oxford Chekhov, Ronald Hingley's scholarly edition, acclaimed for the accuracy and 'speakability' of the translations.
295 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1887
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About the author
Anton Chekhov
5,426books9,348followersDramas, such as
The Seagull
(1896, revised 1898), and including "A Dreary Story" (1889) of Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, also Chekov, concern the inability of humans to communicate.
Born ( Антон Павлович Чехов ) in the small southern seaport of Taganrog, the son of a grocer. His grandfather, a serf, bought his own freedom and that of his three sons in 1841. He also taught to read. A cloth merchant fathered Yevgenia Morozova, his mother.
"When I think back on my childhood," Chekhov recalled, "it all seems quite gloomy to me." Tyranny of his father, religious fanaticism, and long nights in the store, open from five in the morning till midnight, shadowed his early years. He attended a school for Greek boys in Taganrog from 1867 to 1868 and then Taganrog grammar school. Bankruptcy of his father compelled the family to move to Moscow. At the age of 16 years in 1876, independent Chekhov for some time alone in his native town supported through private tutoring.
In 1879, Chekhov left grammar school and entered the university medical school at Moscow. In the school, he began to publish hundreds of short comics to support his mother, sisters and brothers. Nicholas Leikin published him at this period and owned Oskolki (splinters), the journal of Saint Petersburg. His subjected silly social situations, marital problems, and farcical encounters among husbands, wives, mistresses, and lust; even after his marriage, Chekhov, the shy author, knew not much of whims of young women.
Nenunzhaya pobeda , first novel of Chekhov, set in 1882 in Hungary, parodied the novels of the popular Mór Jókai. People also mocked ideological optimism of Jókai as a politician.
Chekhov graduated in 1884 and practiced medicine. He worked from 1885 in Peterburskaia gazeta.
In 1886, Chekhov met H.S. Suvorin, who invited him, a regular contributor, to work for Novoe vremya, the daily paper of Saint Petersburg. He gained a wide fame before 1886. He authored The Shooting Party , his second full-length novel, later translated into English. Agatha Christie used its characters and atmosphere in later her mystery novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd . First book of Chekhov in 1886 succeeded, and he gradually committed full time. The refusal of the author to join the ranks of social critics arose the wrath of liberal and radical intelligentsia, who criticized him for dealing with serious social and moral questions but avoiding giving answers. Such leaders as Leo Tolstoy and Nikolai Leskov, however, defended him. "I'm not a liberal, or a conservative, or a gradualist, or a monk, or an indifferentist. I should like to be a free artist and that's all..." Chekhov said in 1888.
The failure of The Wood Demon , play in 1889, and problems with novel made Chekhov to withdraw from literature for a period. In 1890, he traveled across Siberia to Sakhalin, remote prison island. He conducted a detailed census of ten thousand convicts and settlers, condemned to live on that harsh island. Chekhov expected to use the results of his research for his doctoral dissertation. Hard conditions on the island probably also weakened his own physical condition. From this journey came his famous travel book.
Chekhov practiced medicine until 1892. During these years, Chechov developed his concept of the dispassionate, non-judgmental author. He outlined his program in a letter to his brother Aleksandr: "1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality; flee the stereotype; 6. compassion." Because he objected that the paper conducted against Alfred Dreyfus, his friendship with Suvorin ended
Born ( Антон Павлович Чехов ) in the small southern seaport of Taganrog, the son of a grocer. His grandfather, a serf, bought his own freedom and that of his three sons in 1841. He also taught to read. A cloth merchant fathered Yevgenia Morozova, his mother.
"When I think back on my childhood," Chekhov recalled, "it all seems quite gloomy to me." Tyranny of his father, religious fanaticism, and long nights in the store, open from five in the morning till midnight, shadowed his early years. He attended a school for Greek boys in Taganrog from 1867 to 1868 and then Taganrog grammar school. Bankruptcy of his father compelled the family to move to Moscow. At the age of 16 years in 1876, independent Chekhov for some time alone in his native town supported through private tutoring.
In 1879, Chekhov left grammar school and entered the university medical school at Moscow. In the school, he began to publish hundreds of short comics to support his mother, sisters and brothers. Nicholas Leikin published him at this period and owned Oskolki (splinters), the journal of Saint Petersburg. His subjected silly social situations, marital problems, and farcical encounters among husbands, wives, mistresses, and lust; even after his marriage, Chekhov, the shy author, knew not much of whims of young women.
Nenunzhaya pobeda , first novel of Chekhov, set in 1882 in Hungary, parodied the novels of the popular Mór Jókai. People also mocked ideological optimism of Jókai as a politician.
Chekhov graduated in 1884 and practiced medicine. He worked from 1885 in Peterburskaia gazeta.
In 1886, Chekhov met H.S. Suvorin, who invited him, a regular contributor, to work for Novoe vremya, the daily paper of Saint Petersburg. He gained a wide fame before 1886. He authored The Shooting Party , his second full-length novel, later translated into English. Agatha Christie used its characters and atmosphere in later her mystery novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd . First book of Chekhov in 1886 succeeded, and he gradually committed full time. The refusal of the author to join the ranks of social critics arose the wrath of liberal and radical intelligentsia, who criticized him for dealing with serious social and moral questions but avoiding giving answers. Such leaders as Leo Tolstoy and Nikolai Leskov, however, defended him. "I'm not a liberal, or a conservative, or a gradualist, or a monk, or an indifferentist. I should like to be a free artist and that's all..." Chekhov said in 1888.
The failure of The Wood Demon , play in 1889, and problems with novel made Chekhov to withdraw from literature for a period. In 1890, he traveled across Siberia to Sakhalin, remote prison island. He conducted a detailed census of ten thousand convicts and settlers, condemned to live on that harsh island. Chekhov expected to use the results of his research for his doctoral dissertation. Hard conditions on the island probably also weakened his own physical condition. From this journey came his famous travel book.
Chekhov practiced medicine until 1892. During these years, Chechov developed his concept of the dispassionate, non-judgmental author. He outlined his program in a letter to his brother Aleksandr: "1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality; flee the stereotype; 6. compassion." Because he objected that the paper conducted against Alfred Dreyfus, his friendship with Suvorin ended
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 285 reviews
July 10, 2024
1. Uncle Vanya
5 Stars
Uncle Vanya left me breathless! It's a play that resonates so deeply, like a tuning fork struck true to the human soul. Brilliant doesn't even cover it. It's a play that stays with you, a symphony of human emotions that leaves you both heartbroken and strangely hopeful.
A journey of people lost or longing for something just out of reach.
I am stunned.
Loved it.
2. The Cherry Orchard
4 stars
Chekhov paints a world both humorous and heartbreaking, with characters whose faded grandeur of the aristocracy crumbles around them, yet they cling to the past with a bittersweet tenderness. The satire cuts deeps but with a surprising gentleness that makes you care about these flawed, unforgettable characters. It's a play that is a poignant reminder of lost beauty and the bittersweet passage of time.
3. Three Sisters
3 stars
Three Sisters wasn't quite my cup of tea compared to Chekhov's other plays, but it still packs a punch. It's a slow burn of a play, but the characters' longing for something more just seeps into you. You can't help but feel for them stuck in that provincial town, yearning for a life that keeps slipping away.
4. Ivanov
5 stars
Chekhov's Ivanov is not a prince of Denmark, but his ennui is as potent, his existential malaise as suffocating. We encounter a man drowning in a stagnant provincial life, a Hamlet shorn of grandeur, but no less burdened. We see echoes of the Danish prince in his introspection and despair, but his existential crisis unfolds not in the grand halls of Elsinore, but amidst the petty gossip and suffocating boredom of the landed gentry. His dissatisfaction bleeds outward, poisoning his relationships and leaving a trail of devastation.
Chekhov masterfully paints a portrait of a man drowning in regret. His love for his wife, Anna, has curdled into a weary obligation. Anna, a woman who sacrificed wealth and faith for him, withers under his indifference and occasional, barbed cruelty, a tragic echo of Ophelia. Her illness becomes a constant reminder of his choices, a physical manifestation of his emotional paralysis. Ivanov's descent is laced with moments of self-loathing, his sharp intellect offering no solace, only a harsher spotlight on his failings. His anti-Semitism, a reflection of the prevalent societal prejudice, adds another layer of ugliness to his character.
Yet, Chekhov refuses to paint Ivanov as a villain. We find ourselves oscillating between repulsion and a grudging empathy. His despair is palpable, a suffocating miasma that permeates the play. The supporting characters, sketched with Chekhov's characteristic brilliance, become bystanders to this slow-motion tragedy. Their witty barbs and idle chatter only amplify the hollowness at the play's core.
The play is a tapestry of beautifully wrought dialogue. Chekhov, with his keen eye for human folly, exposes the festering discontent that lies beneath the veneer of polite society and delivers harsh truths that resonate deeply. He forces us to confront the human capacity for self-destruction and the devastating impact of unaddressed dissatisfaction. Ivanov leaves a lingering ache, a reminder of the quiet tragedies that unfold when hope withers and life loses its lustre, and the potential for tragedy that lurks within the seemingly ordinary.
ANNA. I'm beginning to think I've been unlucky, Doctor. There are lots of people, no better than me perhaps, who are happy and whose happiness costs them nothing. But I've paid for everything, every single thing. And so dearly: Why charge me such a shocking rate of interest? My dear, you're all so careful with me, so very tactful, you're afraid to tell me the truth, but do you think I don't know what's the matter with me? I know all right.
5. The Seagull
4 stars
A masterpiece of bittersweet deception. Billed as a comedy, it unfolds as a poignant tapestry of unfulfilled dreams and loves that spiral into heartbreak. Set on a languorous estate, the play dissects a web of yearning and unfulfilled dreams. Each character, brilliantly crafted by Chekhov, grapples with a profound sense of being adrift. While the characters look for meaning and yearn for something more, they remain frustratingly entangled in the stasis of their lives.
5 Stars
Uncle Vanya left me breathless! It's a play that resonates so deeply, like a tuning fork struck true to the human soul. Brilliant doesn't even cover it. It's a play that stays with you, a symphony of human emotions that leaves you both heartbroken and strangely hopeful.
A journey of people lost or longing for something just out of reach.
I am stunned.
Loved it.
2. The Cherry Orchard
4 stars
Chekhov paints a world both humorous and heartbreaking, with characters whose faded grandeur of the aristocracy crumbles around them, yet they cling to the past with a bittersweet tenderness. The satire cuts deeps but with a surprising gentleness that makes you care about these flawed, unforgettable characters. It's a play that is a poignant reminder of lost beauty and the bittersweet passage of time.
3. Three Sisters
3 stars
Three Sisters wasn't quite my cup of tea compared to Chekhov's other plays, but it still packs a punch. It's a slow burn of a play, but the characters' longing for something more just seeps into you. You can't help but feel for them stuck in that provincial town, yearning for a life that keeps slipping away.
4. Ivanov
5 stars
Chekhov's Ivanov is not a prince of Denmark, but his ennui is as potent, his existential malaise as suffocating. We encounter a man drowning in a stagnant provincial life, a Hamlet shorn of grandeur, but no less burdened. We see echoes of the Danish prince in his introspection and despair, but his existential crisis unfolds not in the grand halls of Elsinore, but amidst the petty gossip and suffocating boredom of the landed gentry. His dissatisfaction bleeds outward, poisoning his relationships and leaving a trail of devastation.
Chekhov masterfully paints a portrait of a man drowning in regret. His love for his wife, Anna, has curdled into a weary obligation. Anna, a woman who sacrificed wealth and faith for him, withers under his indifference and occasional, barbed cruelty, a tragic echo of Ophelia. Her illness becomes a constant reminder of his choices, a physical manifestation of his emotional paralysis. Ivanov's descent is laced with moments of self-loathing, his sharp intellect offering no solace, only a harsher spotlight on his failings. His anti-Semitism, a reflection of the prevalent societal prejudice, adds another layer of ugliness to his character.
Yet, Chekhov refuses to paint Ivanov as a villain. We find ourselves oscillating between repulsion and a grudging empathy. His despair is palpable, a suffocating miasma that permeates the play. The supporting characters, sketched with Chekhov's characteristic brilliance, become bystanders to this slow-motion tragedy. Their witty barbs and idle chatter only amplify the hollowness at the play's core.
The play is a tapestry of beautifully wrought dialogue. Chekhov, with his keen eye for human folly, exposes the festering discontent that lies beneath the veneer of polite society and delivers harsh truths that resonate deeply. He forces us to confront the human capacity for self-destruction and the devastating impact of unaddressed dissatisfaction. Ivanov leaves a lingering ache, a reminder of the quiet tragedies that unfold when hope withers and life loses its lustre, and the potential for tragedy that lurks within the seemingly ordinary.
ANNA. I'm beginning to think I've been unlucky, Doctor. There are lots of people, no better than me perhaps, who are happy and whose happiness costs them nothing. But I've paid for everything, every single thing. And so dearly: Why charge me such a shocking rate of interest? My dear, you're all so careful with me, so very tactful, you're afraid to tell me the truth, but do you think I don't know what's the matter with me? I know all right.
5. The Seagull
4 stars
A masterpiece of bittersweet deception. Billed as a comedy, it unfolds as a poignant tapestry of unfulfilled dreams and loves that spiral into heartbreak. Set on a languorous estate, the play dissects a web of yearning and unfulfilled dreams. Each character, brilliantly crafted by Chekhov, grapples with a profound sense of being adrift. While the characters look for meaning and yearn for something more, they remain frustratingly entangled in the stasis of their lives.
September 30, 2022
Edit: the extended version of my little Chekhov-meets-Beckett play (below) can now be found on the Substack of the book podcast Beyondthezeropod (which if you are a fan of, say, NPR's Bookworm or CBC's Writer's & Co., you simply need to listen to):
On this mini-tour of 19C Eurodrama I reviewed Ibsen succinctly, Strindberg at some length as well as in a state of not unwelcome derangement, and, as you shall soon enough see, Chekhov…not at all—which is not to say that I failed to enjoy these plays immensely (I did, I did!), but that, as each one of the five gave way (rather seamlessly, as if mere acts in some larger play, some Ur-drama) to the next, I had and continue to have very little to say about any of them.
Are they deserving of the epithet "classic"?
—Of course they are.
Did they not create strong impressions in the audience-of-one?
—They most assuredly did!
Was the reader, then not quite up to the challenge of thinking about them deeply, or at least competently?
—No doubt he wasn't!
Nevertheless, I do think there is also something else at play here, with these plays: not a samey-ness, exactly, about them, but such an icono-something or an-amnesis that, like Socrates' pupil in the Meno un-forgetting the geometrical principles that he apparently knew before he was born, but had forgotten in the birth canal. . . Deja-vu all over again, in other words, even though I had previously read only one of these plays (Uncle Vanya), perhaps because Chekhov is that central to the wider culture, perhaps because, like Isaiah Berlin's fabled Hedgehog, the author keeps circling and worrying over the same key themes.
To that end, then, I hereby present to you Waiting For Anton (a Play in Five Acts), the TLDR (all quotes verbatim, in original order presented) Edition!
On this mini-tour of 19C Eurodrama I reviewed Ibsen succinctly, Strindberg at some length as well as in a state of not unwelcome derangement, and, as you shall soon enough see, Chekhov…not at all—which is not to say that I failed to enjoy these plays immensely (I did, I did!), but that, as each one of the five gave way (rather seamlessly, as if mere acts in some larger play, some Ur-drama) to the next, I had and continue to have very little to say about any of them.
Are they deserving of the epithet "classic"?
—Of course they are.
Did they not create strong impressions in the audience-of-one?
—They most assuredly did!
Was the reader, then not quite up to the challenge of thinking about them deeply, or at least competently?
—No doubt he wasn't!
Nevertheless, I do think there is also something else at play here, with these plays: not a samey-ness, exactly, about them, but such an icono-something or an-amnesis that, like Socrates' pupil in the Meno un-forgetting the geometrical principles that he apparently knew before he was born, but had forgotten in the birth canal. . . Deja-vu all over again, in other words, even though I had previously read only one of these plays (Uncle Vanya), perhaps because Chekhov is that central to the wider culture, perhaps because, like Isaiah Berlin's fabled Hedgehog, the author keeps circling and worrying over the same key themes.
To that end, then, I hereby present to you Waiting For Anton (a Play in Five Acts), the TLDR (all quotes verbatim, in original order presented) Edition!
Act I: IvanovI won't go on (and on and on) in this vein here, but I've put the whole thang on my blog for all you gluttons for punishment...
DRAMTIS PERSONAE:
A (ANTON]
C (CHEKHOV)
The house. Evening is coming on.
A: One needs money. Even suppose I find it, she still categorically�.
C: That’s bad…I long ago saw in her face that she wouldn’t�.
A: All nonsense, nonsense and more nonsense.
C: [Yawns.]
A: Nonsense and�
C: And a swindle.
A: Well, I am wholly unremarkable�
C: …And have sacrificed nothing.
A: I’d sit for whole days on my wife’s grave and�
C: And think?
A: I’d sit like that on her grave till I�
C: Dropped dead!
A: But it’s a long�
C: Long story �
A: The greyer, the more monotonous...
C: The better!
A: But the life I have lived � how exhausting it’s been!
C: Oh how exhausting!
A: How many mistakes, injustices, how much folly�
C: It’s an agony for me!
A: It’s an agony for me at home! As soon as the sun disappears, my spirit begins to be weighed down by depression.
C: What depression!
A: I am beginning to think, doctor, that fate has cheated me. The majority of people, who maybe are no better than I am, are happy and pay nothing for that happiness. I have paid for everything, absolutely everything!
C: You cut off withered leaves with scissors.
A: Oh!
C: This is all nonsense. This is all so boring, boring! The air has set thick from boredom.
A: Well, have some tea.
CHEKHOV spits contemptuously.
A: Your situation is delicate and unpleasant...
C: But mine is even worse.
[Curtain]
Act II: The Seagull
The lake cannot be seen at all.
Some chairs, a small table.
The sun has only just set.
C: Why do you always wear black?
Read
April 11, 2019I don't think that this translation is the one that I was familiar with and can't recommend any one translation in particular.
Chekhov has a had a strange fate in English in that his plays - judging by revivals of - seem to be more valued than his short stories. It seems as though Chekhov's plays have tapped into a particular British nostalgia which doesn't help us to understand his plays in their own context. Chekhov wasn't a solidly middle-class Edwardian Englishman reflecting on a world that had vanished after WWI, he was the grandson of a serf who through the business acumen of his grandfather was able to study to become a Doctor in late Tsarist Russia, an era of abrupt and uneven violent economic and social change.
During his medical training Chekhov wrote some one act comedies but moved on to become a writer of short stories. Later in his career he began to write plays as a sideline and his relationship with the actress Olga Knipper was important here. Reading the plays in chronological order you can feel the slow development of his style and voice, Three Sisters and Cherry Orchard are competent pieces but don't in my opinion come close to being as powerful as his best short fiction. Then again perhaps I don't have much of a taste for the theatrical. Though I'm oddly haunted that at the centre of Three Sisters is the maligned sister-in-law!
Chekhov has a had a strange fate in English in that his plays - judging by revivals of - seem to be more valued than his short stories. It seems as though Chekhov's plays have tapped into a particular British nostalgia which doesn't help us to understand his plays in their own context. Chekhov wasn't a solidly middle-class Edwardian Englishman reflecting on a world that had vanished after WWI, he was the grandson of a serf who through the business acumen of his grandfather was able to study to become a Doctor in late Tsarist Russia, an era of abrupt and uneven violent economic and social change.
During his medical training Chekhov wrote some one act comedies but moved on to become a writer of short stories. Later in his career he began to write plays as a sideline and his relationship with the actress Olga Knipper was important here. Reading the plays in chronological order you can feel the slow development of his style and voice, Three Sisters and Cherry Orchard are competent pieces but don't in my opinion come close to being as powerful as his best short fiction. Then again perhaps I don't have much of a taste for the theatrical. Though I'm oddly haunted that at the centre of Three Sisters is the maligned sister-in-law!
September 21, 2019
"Of most importance was that he was always sincere, which is a great thing for a writer; and thanks to his sincerity Chekhov created new, totally new forms of writing." -
"I THINK that in Anton Chekhov's presence every one involuntarily felt in himself a desire to be simpler, more truthful, more one's self; I often saw how people cast off the motley finery of bookish phrases, smart words, and all the other cheap tricks with which a Russian, wishing to figure as a European, adorns himself, like a savage with shells and fish's teeth. Anton Chekhov disliked fish's teeth and cock's feathers; anything "brilliant" or foreign, assumed by a man to make himself look bigger, disturbed him; I noticed that, whenever he saw any one dressed up in this way, he had a desire to free him from all that oppressive, useless tinsel and to find underneath the genuine face and living soul of the person. All his life Chekhov lived on his own soul; he was always himself, inwardly free, and he never troubled about what some people expected and others—coarser people—demanded of Anton Chekhov. He did not like conversations about deep questions, conversations with which our dear Russians so assiduously comfort themselves, forgetting that it is ridiculous, and not at all amusing, to argue about velvet costumes in the future when in the present one has not even a decent pair of trousers." -
My reviews of the individual plays:
Ivanov
The Seagull
Uncle Vanya
The Three Sisters
The Cherry Orchard
Now I can talk of the whole experience. Having already read , my expectations were high and, fortunately, met. These plays took Chekhov's themes of humanism and the examinations of working-class Russians and examined the last years of the old aristocracy. Chekhov was one of the few people to really want to include all people in Russia's society. The former serfs, former nobles, Russian Jews and the present (of that time) bourgeoisie all are in these plays with their full humanity on display. Many of the great Russian authors come close, but only Chekhov nails it. I am a Dostoevsky fan solidly, but I recognize Chekhov's beauty.
Taken in chronological order, I was divided. I thought Ivanov was a decent start of one of Chekhov's early plays, but he really spoke to me with The Seagull--his second best play in my opinion. Uncle Vanya was very sad and very beautiful, while I was thrown off-balanced with The Three Sisters and that hurt me a little. I was really looking forward to reading this book, in part, because of the hype around this play. It is a good play, but coming off of "Vanya" I was hoping for something that could hit me more directly. Fortunately, The Cherry Orchard was the ultimate work of Chekhov. I am still amazed by it now 24 hours after reading it.
Chekhov was not a raging artist like my favorite Dostoevsky, not a saint/anarchist like Tolstoy, he is just a middle-class country doctor that wrote stories and plays. He reminds me a lot of in his refusal to hate as an act of revenge against the society around them. It takes a true humanism to have that in them, without expecting a reward. Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard see the contrast of tears of sorrow with tears of joy. This pretty much completes my inquiry into Chekhov; I will, of course, go back to reread his plays and stories (and give The Three Sisters a second chance). I hate to do this, but I have to turn the end of this review back over to :
"I THINK that in Anton Chekhov's presence every one involuntarily felt in himself a desire to be simpler, more truthful, more one's self; I often saw how people cast off the motley finery of bookish phrases, smart words, and all the other cheap tricks with which a Russian, wishing to figure as a European, adorns himself, like a savage with shells and fish's teeth. Anton Chekhov disliked fish's teeth and cock's feathers; anything "brilliant" or foreign, assumed by a man to make himself look bigger, disturbed him; I noticed that, whenever he saw any one dressed up in this way, he had a desire to free him from all that oppressive, useless tinsel and to find underneath the genuine face and living soul of the person. All his life Chekhov lived on his own soul; he was always himself, inwardly free, and he never troubled about what some people expected and others—coarser people—demanded of Anton Chekhov. He did not like conversations about deep questions, conversations with which our dear Russians so assiduously comfort themselves, forgetting that it is ridiculous, and not at all amusing, to argue about velvet costumes in the future when in the present one has not even a decent pair of trousers." -
My reviews of the individual plays:
Ivanov
The Seagull
Uncle Vanya
The Three Sisters
The Cherry Orchard
Now I can talk of the whole experience. Having already read , my expectations were high and, fortunately, met. These plays took Chekhov's themes of humanism and the examinations of working-class Russians and examined the last years of the old aristocracy. Chekhov was one of the few people to really want to include all people in Russia's society. The former serfs, former nobles, Russian Jews and the present (of that time) bourgeoisie all are in these plays with their full humanity on display. Many of the great Russian authors come close, but only Chekhov nails it. I am a Dostoevsky fan solidly, but I recognize Chekhov's beauty.
Taken in chronological order, I was divided. I thought Ivanov was a decent start of one of Chekhov's early plays, but he really spoke to me with The Seagull--his second best play in my opinion. Uncle Vanya was very sad and very beautiful, while I was thrown off-balanced with The Three Sisters and that hurt me a little. I was really looking forward to reading this book, in part, because of the hype around this play. It is a good play, but coming off of "Vanya" I was hoping for something that could hit me more directly. Fortunately, The Cherry Orchard was the ultimate work of Chekhov. I am still amazed by it now 24 hours after reading it.
Chekhov was not a raging artist like my favorite Dostoevsky, not a saint/anarchist like Tolstoy, he is just a middle-class country doctor that wrote stories and plays. He reminds me a lot of in his refusal to hate as an act of revenge against the society around them. It takes a true humanism to have that in them, without expecting a reward. Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard see the contrast of tears of sorrow with tears of joy. This pretty much completes my inquiry into Chekhov; I will, of course, go back to reread his plays and stories (and give The Three Sisters a second chance). I hate to do this, but I have to turn the end of this review back over to :
READING Anton Chekhov's stories, one feels oneself in a melancholy day of late autumn, when the air is transparent and the outline of naked trees, narrow houses, grayish people, is sharp. Everything is strange, lonely, motionless, helpless. The horizon, blue and empty, melts into the pale sky and its breath is terribly cold upon the earth which is covered with frozen mud. The author's mind, like the autumn sun, shows up in hard outline the monotonous roads, the crooked streets, the little squalid houses in which tiny, miserable people are stifled by boredom and laziness and fill the houses with an unintelligible, drowsy bustle. Here anxiously, like a gray mouse, scurries "The Darling," the dear, meek woman who loves so slavishly and who can love so much. You can slap her cheek and she won't even dare to utter a sigh aloud, the meek slave. . . . And by her side is Olga of "The Three Sisters": she too loves much, and submits with resignation to the caprices of the dissolute, banal wife of her good-for-nothing brother; the life of her sisters crumbles before her eyes, she weeps and cannot help any one in anything, and she has not within her a single live, strong word of protest against banality.
And here is the lachrymose Ranevskaya and the other owners of "The Cherry Orchard," egotistical like children, with the flabbiness of senility. They missed the right moment for dying; they whine, seeing nothing of what is going on around them, understanding nothing, parasites without the power of again taking root in life. The wretched little student, Tronmov, speaks eloquently of the necessity of working—and does nothing but amuse himself, out of sheer boredom, with stupid mockery of Varya who works ceaselessly for the good of the idlers.
Vershinin dreams of how pleasant life will be in three hundred years, and lives without perceiving that everything around him is falling into ruin before his eyes; Solyony, from boredom and stupidity, is ready to kill the pitiable Baron Tousenbach.
There passes before one a long file of men and women, slaves of their love, of their stupidity and idleness, of their greed for the good things of life; there walk the slaves of the dark fear of life; they straggle anxiously along, filling life with incoherent words about the future, feeling that in the present there is no place for them.
At moments out of the gray mass of them one hears the sound of a shot: Ivanov or Triepliev has guessed what he ought to do, and has died.
Many of them have nice dreams of how pleasant life will be in two hundred years, but it occurs to none of them to ask themselves who will make life pleasant if we only dream.
In front of that dreary, gray crowd of helpless people there passed a great, wise, and observant man; he looked at all these dreary inhabitants of his country, and, with a sad smile, with a tone of gentle but deep reproach, with anguish in his face and in his heart, in a beautiful and sincere voice, he said to them:
"You live badly, my friends. It is shameful to live like that."
November 27, 2013
Reading, as opposed to seeing Chekhov is quite a strange experience because of his impressionistic technique - nothing is explained, everything is surface, the opposite of the great classic novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky which are all psychology. There are motifs, as in poetry, which emerge or sink into the narrative. The dialogue is so ambiguous, so flexible, that the variety of interpretations that theatre companies can bring to the plays seems to be endless, judging from Anatoly Smeliansky's 2000 essay "Chekhov and the Moscow Art Theatre". Prevailing ideologies continuously transformed and shifted the mood and political content of Chekhov over the century in Russia. His subject is spiritual emptiness, vast empty space, like the Russian landscape itself. The meaning of that space must come from the actors.
As I've yet to see a Chekhov play, I can only admire this genius for creating a dramatic canvas to be filled...
As I've yet to see a Chekhov play, I can only admire this genius for creating a dramatic canvas to be filled...
September 2, 2023
"At twenty we're all heroes, tackle anything, nothing's too much for us, but by thirty we're tired and useless." (41)This collection includes five of Chekhov's plays: Ivanov, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard. I have reviewed the plays separately; my favorites are The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard. It's fascinating to read the plays back-to-back, in rough chronological order, and to witness the progression of Chekhov as a playwright—to feel him grappling with the themes that preoccupied him throughout his life. Overall, I have to say that I prefer Chekhov's stories to his plays. Having said that, the plays are wonderful at times—the fourth acts especially tend to be magnificent. Chekhov is the master of moving anticlimaxes.
The translation by Ronald Hingley seem fine in general, except that I really didn't like that some of the characters' names were anglicized: if a character's name is Andrei, why call him Andrew? It's pointless and distracting.
December 31, 2015
From IVANHOV
- "You're a clever man: think. According to you, nothing could be simpler than to understand me! Yes? . . . . Man is such a simple, uncomplicated machine! No, Doctor; in every one of us there are far too many wheels, screws, and valves for us to be able to judge one another by first impressions, or by two or three external signs. I don't understand you, you don't understand me, and we don't understand ourselves. It is possible to be an excellent doctor - and at the same time to know absolutely nothing about people. Don't be so sure of yourself, admit that I am right."
From THE SEAGULL
- “How easy it is, Doctor, to be a philosopher on paper, and how difficult in real life!�
From THE THREE SISTERS
- "Oh, I'm miserable. . . . I can't work, I'm not going to work. I've had enough of it, enough of it! . . . . I've been working for a long time, and my brain is drying up, I'm getting thin and old and ugly and there's nothing, nothing, not the slightest satisfaction, and time is passing and you feel that you are moving away from a real, a beautiful life, moving farther and farther away and being drawn into some sort of abyss. I'm in despair, and why I am alive, why I haven't killed myself before now, I don't know...."
- "[H]umanity is passionately seeking something . . . . If, don't you know, we could add culture to the love of work, and love of work to culture..."
- "You're a clever man: think. According to you, nothing could be simpler than to understand me! Yes? . . . . Man is such a simple, uncomplicated machine! No, Doctor; in every one of us there are far too many wheels, screws, and valves for us to be able to judge one another by first impressions, or by two or three external signs. I don't understand you, you don't understand me, and we don't understand ourselves. It is possible to be an excellent doctor - and at the same time to know absolutely nothing about people. Don't be so sure of yourself, admit that I am right."
From THE SEAGULL
- “How easy it is, Doctor, to be a philosopher on paper, and how difficult in real life!�
From THE THREE SISTERS
- "Oh, I'm miserable. . . . I can't work, I'm not going to work. I've had enough of it, enough of it! . . . . I've been working for a long time, and my brain is drying up, I'm getting thin and old and ugly and there's nothing, nothing, not the slightest satisfaction, and time is passing and you feel that you are moving away from a real, a beautiful life, moving farther and farther away and being drawn into some sort of abyss. I'm in despair, and why I am alive, why I haven't killed myself before now, I don't know...."
- "[H]umanity is passionately seeking something . . . . If, don't you know, we could add culture to the love of work, and love of work to culture..."
August 8, 2022
Ivanov - 4 stars
The Seagull - 4 stars
Uncle Vania - 4 stars
Three Sisters - 4.5 stars
The Cherry Orchard - 4.5 stars
The Bear - 4 stars
The Proposal - 3 stars
A Jubilee - 3 stars
The Seagull - 4 stars
Uncle Vania - 4 stars
Three Sisters - 4.5 stars
The Cherry Orchard - 4.5 stars
The Bear - 4 stars
The Proposal - 3 stars
A Jubilee - 3 stars
February 21, 2016
I must confess that classical Russian authors scare me. I believe that is why my Dostoevsky collection and most of my Tolstoy have remained untouched for all these years. When I reached for Chekhov I didn’t know what to expect. The only thing I was certain of was that I wanted to see The Sea Gull in London. The plan was to actually read just that one play and carry on with my life. However, after reading the foreword by Robert Brustein I just couldn’t � and I am glad I didn’t.
How was I not to fall in love? These characters, all so rich in humanity, discussing life and the future of humankind� They open so many doors to thoughts of existence. Ah, the wonders of finding like-minded souls in literature� But not everything is virtue! Or maybe the virtue resides in exactly that, the balance of light and shadow. These are not perfect characters, perfect people. And they know it, trying to forgive themselves and carrying on as we all do. Some are able to do it better than others, and others aren’t at all, but they all have their place on Chekhov’s stage.
There’s nothing out of this world about these plays. The events and contexts are mundane, but the voices� they are extraordinary in their ordinariness.
Chekhov was called an “incomparable artist of life� by Tolstoy, if I am not mistaken. I believe it’s a perfect appraisal of the playwright. He found life in life and shared it in the most real and humane way. I cannot wait to see some of his plays on stage.
"You're a clever man: think. According to you, nothing could be simpler than to understand me! Yes? (. . .) Man is such a simple, uncomplicated machine! No, Doctor; in every one of us there are far too many wheels, screws, and valves for us to be able to judge one another by first impressions, or by two or three external signs. I don't understand you, you don't understand me, and we don't understand ourselves. It is possible to be an excellent doctor - and at the same time to know absolutely nothing about people. Don't be so sure of yourself, admit that I am right."
How was I not to fall in love? These characters, all so rich in humanity, discussing life and the future of humankind� They open so many doors to thoughts of existence. Ah, the wonders of finding like-minded souls in literature� But not everything is virtue! Or maybe the virtue resides in exactly that, the balance of light and shadow. These are not perfect characters, perfect people. And they know it, trying to forgive themselves and carrying on as we all do. Some are able to do it better than others, and others aren’t at all, but they all have their place on Chekhov’s stage.
There’s nothing out of this world about these plays. The events and contexts are mundane, but the voices� they are extraordinary in their ordinariness.
Chekhov was called an “incomparable artist of life� by Tolstoy, if I am not mistaken. I believe it’s a perfect appraisal of the playwright. He found life in life and shared it in the most real and humane way. I cannot wait to see some of his plays on stage.
August 27, 2019
Chekhov is perhaps the most dedicated chronicler of unhappy, dissolute minor aristocrats there's ever been. The five major four-act plays selected here examine in grim detail the joyless lives of cash-strapped gentry with their best days behind them, forced to pawn off what's most dear to them merely to preserve a life that, on reflection, hasn't been worth much to anyone anyway. Chekhov's work is "funny" in that same melancholy way that Kafka's oeuvre strikes a certain bleak-minded kind of person as funny, so in striking contrast to Gogol's weirdly cheerful absurdity, the "comedy" involves characters being required to continually revise their expectations of life downwards, the previously fixed emotional scaffolding supporting their cherished conceptions of life getting knocked out bit by bit, until their lives collapse into lovesickness or destitution or terminal misery or all of the above. Midway through Uncle Vanya, an odd comparison struck me: Chekhov's plays are like a gloomier, more realistic Seinfeld, bone-dry modernist studies of small people in ill-fitting clothing too big for them, going through the motions of their meaningless lives with only themselves to blame. Unlike the harmless slapstick of a a sitcom though, Chekhov thoughtfully includes murder or suicide at the end to punctuate the unavoidable futility of everyone's existences, so there's that.
The perennial downside of reading plays instead of seeing them is that you lose the different emotional valences that performers bring out of the text; you might as well read an opera's sheet music instead of hear it, or judge a movie by its script alone. Chekhov worked very closely with Konstantin Stanislavski, the inventor of "method acting", on these plays, so I can only imagine the contrast between the somber action and the intense performances in a contemporary production. Reading all these plays back to back is a bit bleak, although it must be said that there's a sparse perfection to the construction of the scenes and flow to the dialogue that's impressive even if you feel the need to detox with some lighthearted farces afterwards. Chekhov keeps his characters on a tight leash for the most part, only occasionally letting their frustrations loose in volcanic monologues. One can't help but sympathize with Ivanov, Triplev, Astrov, Vershinin, or Trofimov's agonizing, and yet their passionate declamations are typically dismissed instantly by their loved ones. It's a great example of theater as tempo and cumulative effect, and although he does occasionally dip into the dangerous waters of metafiction, like the play-within-a-play in The Seagull, he always returns from his abstractions to the hard facts of his characters' lives. Perhaps all our most cherished possessions, experiences, and even thoughts themselves are like cherry orchards, fated to be consigned to oblivion in the end; or perhaps I just need a refreshing dose of Molière.
The perennial downside of reading plays instead of seeing them is that you lose the different emotional valences that performers bring out of the text; you might as well read an opera's sheet music instead of hear it, or judge a movie by its script alone. Chekhov worked very closely with Konstantin Stanislavski, the inventor of "method acting", on these plays, so I can only imagine the contrast between the somber action and the intense performances in a contemporary production. Reading all these plays back to back is a bit bleak, although it must be said that there's a sparse perfection to the construction of the scenes and flow to the dialogue that's impressive even if you feel the need to detox with some lighthearted farces afterwards. Chekhov keeps his characters on a tight leash for the most part, only occasionally letting their frustrations loose in volcanic monologues. One can't help but sympathize with Ivanov, Triplev, Astrov, Vershinin, or Trofimov's agonizing, and yet their passionate declamations are typically dismissed instantly by their loved ones. It's a great example of theater as tempo and cumulative effect, and although he does occasionally dip into the dangerous waters of metafiction, like the play-within-a-play in The Seagull, he always returns from his abstractions to the hard facts of his characters' lives. Perhaps all our most cherished possessions, experiences, and even thoughts themselves are like cherry orchards, fated to be consigned to oblivion in the end; or perhaps I just need a refreshing dose of Molière.
September 17, 2015
"BORKIN [sighing]: Our life-. Man's life is like a bright flower blooming in a meadow. A goat comes along and eats it up. No more flower."
That is to say, it is all meaningless.
"Ivanov" is quite a mixture of sour humor and misery for all.
--
"The Seagull" touches existential questioning and crisis - not only the meaning of life but of life as an artist.
Again it is all pretty banal and meaningless in-between moments of self evaluation (or lack thereof).
--
A wasted life preoccupies “Uncle Vanya�. Its characters are aged and idle, whose dreams were dashed, and they suffer without even knowing exactly what has been lost.
Melancholic and lethargic, the play is overflowing with despondent bouts of introspection and bitter musings.
If there’s something I fear is a wasted life; something I hate just as much. I dislike this play for what is upsets; and love it also.
--
"Don't you see that from every cherry-tree in the orchard, from every leaf and every trunk, men and women are gazing at you? if we're to start living in the present isn't it abundantly clear that we've first got to redeem our past and make a clean break with it?�
In "The Cherry Orchard", the relentless march of time gives voice to those who renounce the past and those who cling futilely to the old aristocracy.
--
“Three Sisters� is brimming with unfulfilled dreams � of love and of live. And Moscow, the idealized city where they will achieve true happiness � happiness they had in their past �, is never reached.
Quite depressing actually.
That is to say, it is all meaningless.
"Ivanov" is quite a mixture of sour humor and misery for all.
--
"The Seagull" touches existential questioning and crisis - not only the meaning of life but of life as an artist.
Again it is all pretty banal and meaningless in-between moments of self evaluation (or lack thereof).
--
A wasted life preoccupies “Uncle Vanya�. Its characters are aged and idle, whose dreams were dashed, and they suffer without even knowing exactly what has been lost.
Melancholic and lethargic, the play is overflowing with despondent bouts of introspection and bitter musings.
If there’s something I fear is a wasted life; something I hate just as much. I dislike this play for what is upsets; and love it also.
--
"Don't you see that from every cherry-tree in the orchard, from every leaf and every trunk, men and women are gazing at you? if we're to start living in the present isn't it abundantly clear that we've first got to redeem our past and make a clean break with it?�
In "The Cherry Orchard", the relentless march of time gives voice to those who renounce the past and those who cling futilely to the old aristocracy.
--
“Three Sisters� is brimming with unfulfilled dreams � of love and of live. And Moscow, the idealized city where they will achieve true happiness � happiness they had in their past �, is never reached.
Quite depressing actually.
July 7, 2021
The cherry orchard was my favourite one!
Read
December 31, 2024If you like reading about upper-class people rotting in their estates navigating their crumbling status as their society transforms around them, these plays might be for your
I just like probably shouldn’t have read them all in a row, like there were too many things I had questions about and I could barely keep these characters� names straight and never figured out how much a ruble was worth in 1900 tsarist Russia
Experiencing play fatigue atm, in need of setting, description, and action
But these are great plays
I just like probably shouldn’t have read them all in a row, like there were too many things I had questions about and I could barely keep these characters� names straight and never figured out how much a ruble was worth in 1900 tsarist Russia
Experiencing play fatigue atm, in need of setting, description, and action
But these are great plays
August 3, 2023
como não amar os russos? crítica social, romances falhados, questionamento do sentido da vida. as minhas peças preferidas foram o tio Vânia e o cerejal. agora só preciso de as ver a todas num teatro
October 4, 2015
What a fantastic collection of plays! Every one of them was a masterpiece.
I particularly loved the nuanced naturalism of the characters. They were all , of course, intelligently reflective and the women were all substantial and equal to the men in every way. How refreshing! My only misgiving was that I wanted to tell them not to be so defined by their past and that today is a new day.
Wonderful. I am so happy I finally picked this up off my bookshelf. Now to find a theatre company performing one of these gems.
I particularly loved the nuanced naturalism of the characters. They were all , of course, intelligently reflective and the women were all substantial and equal to the men in every way. How refreshing! My only misgiving was that I wanted to tell them not to be so defined by their past and that today is a new day.
Wonderful. I am so happy I finally picked this up off my bookshelf. Now to find a theatre company performing one of these gems.
December 19, 2018
أول تجاربي مع تشيخوف، ولكن للأسف لم تكن كما توقعتها.
ربما عشان قرأتها بالإنجليزي، ولكن في الحقيقة أنا كنت بكملها ب"الزء".
قصة العم فانيا هي الأفضل في الخمس مسرحيات. وما لاحظته هو قدرة تشيخوف العظيمة في صنع حبكة مُتدرجة مميزة من لا شيء تقريباً. ولكن الشعور بالرتابة يأتي من تشابه بعض الأحداث وتكرارها.
قصص الحب هي معقد القصص تقريباً، يتخللها النزعات الإنسانية بما يشوبها من مادية العالم، والشيخوخة الجيد.
كانت تجربة حلوة وأكيد ليا معاها جولة أخرى.
ربما عشان قرأتها بالإنجليزي، ولكن في الحقيقة أنا كنت بكملها ب"الزء".
قصة العم فانيا هي الأفضل في الخمس مسرحيات. وما لاحظته هو قدرة تشيخوف العظيمة في صنع حبكة مُتدرجة مميزة من لا شيء تقريباً. ولكن الشعور بالرتابة يأتي من تشابه بعض الأحداث وتكرارها.
قصص الحب هي معقد القصص تقريباً، يتخللها النزعات الإنسانية بما يشوبها من مادية العالم، والشيخوخة الجيد.
كانت تجربة حلوة وأكيد ليا معاها جولة أخرى.
January 24, 2016
This book consists of five different plays. As I read each one, I just wrote down my thoughts:
Ivanov: a disillusioned landowner is fed up with his life. Really, he just over-thinks everything and has given up on trying to be happy. There is a lot of fussing over Ivanov and his choices - ever since his marriage to a "Jewess" who gave up her family and religion to be with him, he's gone emotionally downhill. There is a lot of men crying in this play and if I had to give it a theme or a point, I think it's that other people and the outside world can't really make up for our own lack of effort at happiness. I could be TOTALLY OFF.
The Sea Gull: We're in the countryside with a group of artists and wanna-be artists. No one is happy with their lot - if they are already an artist, their work consumes them and disappoints them. If they aren't, they can't imagine how they will be happy until they are an acknowledged artist. I appreciated several interesting passages, some quite thought provoking, on writing and the passion of writers. There's a lot of selfishness, though, and there isn't a character to balance that out - we're all most intrigued our own self-interest. The book claims this play is a "comedy," but, um, I didn't find really anything funny, so it might have a different definition of comedy than I do.
Uncle Vanya: In this story, we've got a gouty old professor, his very young second young and a bunch of the family and friends of his first wife (as well as their daughter). The professor and his wife are from town, sort of sweeping in and creating a bustle of needs at the estate that is run primarily by the brother-in-law and the daughter. So many relationships to keep straight, it was one of the puzzles of this play for me, to keep everyone straight (oh wait, that has happened in every play). There is unrequited love and disillusionment (HERE are the themes!), but also some forward-thinking, environmentally aware characters. I liked that there was discussion in this play about Russia and Russians and hard it is to rise above the drudgery of life there. This was a more interesting, faster read than the other two for me, although things are wrapped up almost too nicely in the end.
The Three Sisters: living in a provincial town with their brother, Olga, Irina and Masha begin the play remembering their recently deceased father, eager to begin a useful life of work, culture and purpose. The army regiment in town provides most of the rest of the cast, infusing the environment with prospective lovers and philosophical conversation companions. Of course things do not go well for the sisters � I’ve just recognized the trend in Chekhov’s plays and didn’t expect giddy happiness for them, but of all the characters I’ve read about so far, I liked these sisters the best. They seem to sincerely care about each other and while they get desperate with longing for what they once had, they don’t give up on each other. Their sister-in-law is a malicious character, slowly sucking the marrow out of their household. I would recommend reading some critical analysis of the play, because that made it even more meaningful � there’s a fascinating disintegration of the sisters and their brother, a sad reflection of the disintegration of cultured Russian society at the time. I liked reading this one a lot.
The Cherry Orchard: along the same theme at The Three Sisters, we're at a provincial estate run by the adopted daughter of a woma, Luybov, who along with her brother Gayev has squandered all the wealth of their ancestral home and its famous cherry orchard. What is to be done to pay the bills? While Luybov and Gayev are rather blase about the issue, others on the estate (and those who are interested in its possibilities) are frantic to decide its fate. One character in particular, a perpetual student great friend of Luybov's daughter Anya, has a tendency to get philosophical about the situation and I really loved his observations. In one rather long speech, I felt like he dug into the crux of all of Chekhov's plays when he talks about the failings of the Russian intelligentsia, their lack of work ethic or interest in really doing something about their affairs. In another speech that I REALLY loved, he waxes eloquent about the sad history of Russia's serfs and how so much of the beauty in Russia was built on the backs of slave labor. In this play, there are more characters who see that just because the orchard might be lost, it doesn't mean we have to give up and shoot ourselves (certainly a twist of Chekho's usual theme) - we can find work and be loved and have other adventures out in the wide world. Of course, other characters are not half so optimistic, and I wouldn't say its a happy play, but it felt more like it went full circle, where I could see the depth of it without having to have someone else tell me. I'd love to see it performed.
SO. I read five plays! Holy cow. I have officially decided I would like to try reading more from that land of Russia, what a different vein of experiences than my own and what a different way of looking at the world. Reading plays is NOT easy, but it helps that there is a list of characters at the beginning that you can refer to for all those tricky Russian names :) Honestly? It's not for the faint of heart, but it really is worth it, I think, to immerse yourself in provincial Russia for a while and to wonder how you would deal with a world where it seems like you are constantly hitting your head against a brick wall and everyone around you is doing the same dang thing. Could you stay true to your wife/husband/fiance? Could you work through the stress without succumbing to constant philosophizing or complaining? Hard to say, but interesting to think about.
May 24, 2020
IVANOV - 4/5
THE SEAGULL - 4/5
UNCLE VANYA - 4/5
THREE SISTERS - 3/5
THE CHERRY ORCHARD - 3/5
THE SEAGULL - 4/5
UNCLE VANYA - 4/5
THREE SISTERS - 3/5
THE CHERRY ORCHARD - 3/5
April 26, 2024
"You must know why you are alive, or else everything is nonsense, just blowing in the wind"
Anton Chekhov
This book is an absolute must-read if you want to truly understand the transition from classic to modern drama.
Anton Chekhov
This book is an absolute must-read if you want to truly understand the transition from classic to modern drama.
August 26, 2013
Ivanov
Boy, that kinda hits close to home.
***1/2
The Seagull
Unrequited love truly is the universal human condition.
***1/2
Uncle Vanya
Man, Chekhov just gets me, you know?
****
Three Sisters
Oh man, I wanted to punch Natasha in the face SO HARD.
****
The Cherry Orchard
I, too, like to solve problems by ignoring them until they "solve" themselves. Like I said, Chekhov gets me.
****
So I noticed that a great many GR reviewers have complained that these sucked because (1) it's hard to read plays (in which case, why are you trying to read a play in the first place?); or (2) nothing happens in them. But I don't know, a lot more happens in these plays than my actual life and I don't think anyone would complain about what a sucky life I'm living, you know? And that's the thing about Chekhov I guess you should know before you pick him up; if you want melodrama, go somewhere else.
I was young, full of fire, sincere, no fool; I loved, I hated and I believed, but not like other men, I worked and I had hopes for ten, I tilted at windmills and beat my head against walls.... And tell me: could it have been otherwise? There are so few of us, and so much, so much to do! God, how much to do! And now the life against which I struggled is taking this cruel vengeance on me! I've worn myself out! ... Before you stands a man of thirty-five, disillusioned and crushed by his worthless achievements....
Boy, that kinda hits close to home.
***1/2
The Seagull
Unrequited love truly is the universal human condition.
***1/2
Uncle Vanya
Man, Chekhov just gets me, you know?
****
Three Sisters
Oh man, I wanted to punch Natasha in the face SO HARD.
****
The Cherry Orchard
I, too, like to solve problems by ignoring them until they "solve" themselves. Like I said, Chekhov gets me.
****
So I noticed that a great many GR reviewers have complained that these sucked because (1) it's hard to read plays (in which case, why are you trying to read a play in the first place?); or (2) nothing happens in them. But I don't know, a lot more happens in these plays than my actual life and I don't think anyone would complain about what a sucky life I'm living, you know? And that's the thing about Chekhov I guess you should know before you pick him up; if you want melodrama, go somewhere else.
January 27, 2021
"The Russian writers...from whom I had something to learn; they rank among the most beautiful strokes of fortune in my life."19th century to the early part of 20th century Russia is the time period of the country's greatest contribution to world literature. The tales, novels, plays, prose and poetry produced at that time do not only paint the nihilistic landscape of the crumbling Russian society prostrated on the ground by the threats and attacks of the radicals, but actually the divided world at large reeling against itself, the whole conundrum of the human spirit's unceasing struggle against its obstinate material form as it appears superimposed on the Russian soul.
--- paraphrasing Friedrich Nietzsche on Dostoyevsky
"One thing only is not hidden from me: in the cruel, persistent struggle with the devil, the principle of the forces of matter, I am destined to be victorious; then matter and spirit shall merge in glorious harmony, and the kingdom of universal will shall be at hand."And this Anton Chekhov tactfully addresses by subtlety beginning with the conflicting nature of an individual as it defines and restructures collectively the world soul...
--- The Seagull
IVANOV: Dead Soul or The Death of Ivanov, Nikolai Alekseyevich
While I'm reading I'm often stricken by its simplicity. The story seems to progress without much happening, but without the dose of tedium. It is as if the audience or the reader is unconsciously held in suspense by the characters themselves as they converge and converse ordinarily blending seemingly with the commonness of the Russian provincial life. Yet, in this common ground, this "sameness" rises the individual, the forlorn and exhausted character of Ivanov amid the intoxicating conflict that universally leaves him and defeated others like him bereft of meaning. How can you endure living and having the will to live when you realize there is no more meaning? How can you embrace life when what you see is only death?
When the soul dies, the body eventually goes with it and seeks solace at gunpoint...
THE SEAGULL: Pride and Jealousy
"A young girl like you lives all her life beside a lake; she loves the lake like a seagull, and, like a seagull, is happy and free. A man comes along by chance, sees her and having nothing better to do, destroys her, just like this seagull here."
"I am a seagull. No, that's not it...Do you remember, you shot a seagull? A man came along by chance, saw it, and having nothing better to do, destroyed it..."Imbued with so much symbolism, it overstates the futility of human vanity, of superiority and its power to corrupt and debilitate by envy and jealousy the innate "sameness" there is in our innocent nature. The pedestal we have often built for someone whom we regard is above us is often the same platform below our feet when we fall dazed on the pavement of disillusionment. We usually unconsciously chase dreams and happiness that can only feed our vanity and wager on love like a trade in the stock market with values based on profit. Often like Nina Mikhailovna, who chooses to endure her fate, miscalculates further her next step. Not understanding that bearing one's cross becomes easier when total surrender means letting go.
And letting go does not mean voluntarily letting go of your own life just like what Treplev did by reaching for the gun...
UNCLE VANYA: The Village of Serebryakovo
Life in the country is interrupted by the arrival of the retired and learned Serebryakov from the city with his young beautiful second wife, Elena. Disturbing the usual hustle and bustle of his estate that has been assiduously managed by Sonya his plain looking daughter by his first wife and his brother-in-law Vanya. The urban idleness that they bring with them foments dissatisfaction from Vanya himself as he awakens to the ungratefulness and indifference of Serebryakov to everything he did for him, wasting away his youth, his whole life serving his useless undertakings and in the act of hopeless despair as in the case of Chekhov, the drama reaches fever pitch at gunpoint...
"What's to be done, we must go on living!.. We shall live through a long, long chain of days and endless evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials fate sends us; we'll work for others... without ever knowing rest, and when our time comes, we shall die submissively; and there, beyond the grave, we shall say that we have suffered... and God will have pity on us; and you and I, Uncle, dear Uncle, shall behold a life that is bright, beautiful, and fine... We shall rest! We shall hear the angels...we shall see all earthly evil... drowned in a mercy that will fill the whole world...We shall rest!"
THREE SISTERS: The Sisters Prozorov
"By tomorrow... it will all be a memory, and for us, of course, a new life will begin... Nothing ever happens the way we want it to..."The dream of going to Moscow, the dream of a new life, the dream of the future, why are we always haunted living in the present moment of a future dream?
The sisters, Olga, Masha and Irina are restlessly living in the country. For Olga and Irina, their only hope is in their brother, Andrei to have a promising future as a professor in Moscow so as to go back with him when the time comes. Having soldiers from the city as their constant guests in the house is their only comfort as it reminds them of their would-be-life in Moscow. But life remains as unpredictable as the future. When Andrei falls in love with a local girl, the heartless Natasha, who took over the household, he becomes addicted to gambling, perhaps more so to deaden the blatant display of his wife's infidelity. The sisters eventually lost their house and with the soldiers being permanently transferred to a far away place. Their dream of the future goes with them.
And with it...
[The faint sound of a gunshot is heard in the distance.]
THE CHERRY ORCHARD: The Emancipation of the Serfs
"The ominous sound of the breaking of string in The Cherry Orchard, meanwhile, which seems in retrospect such a prescient symbol of sudden and violent social collapse..." --- Rosamund Bartlett, AfterwordThis last work of Chekhov written in 1903 and premiered for the first time on the stage in 1904 seems to trumpet the incoming gust of violent wind (a distant sound of a snapped string mournfully dying away) that will eventually topple down Imperial Russia from its high perch as ousted by the common people. What could be more symbolic than the dismantling of The Cherry Orchard itself, the cutting of its trees by Lopakhin, the former peasant turn merchant, who has grown incredibly rich, enabling him to buy the land from the helpless condition of Lyubov Andreyevna, the ruined owner immersed in unpaid debts that vividly represents the fall and decay of the old aristocracy. Her being gently turned out from the house and the orchard she loves, where her ancestors lived and died, is an ominous drumming of the future that will soon come. An uproarious future that will shake and sweep the Tsarist landscape and forever extinguish the world of Chekhov and his beloved Russia. Never to come back except only in remembrance of a distant memory...
[A distant sound is heard that seems to come from the sky, the sound of a snapped string mournfully dying away. A stillness falls, and nothing is heard but the thud of the ax on a tree far away in the orchard.]
February 10, 2021
El cine es un truco. Todo en él es un fuego de artificio. Es antes que nada un entretenimiento y, para eso, para mantenerse interesante (y económicamente rentable) debe darle a los espectadores justo lo que en él buscan: un rato de esparcimiento, de alivio incluso, y lo demás es secundario.
Supongo que es por eso que, pese a que sus guiones prefabricados, sus patrones establecidos, sus recetas para ganar Óscares y sus trucos narrativos sean a veces tan evidentes (y hasta descarados), siga funcionando.
El cine como fuente de reafirmación, de esperanza, la calma de que todo en el mundo funciona como debería, los buenos siempre son recompensados y los malos castigados, los malentendidos se resuelven, los misterios se desvelan, pese a los malos ratos hay un final feliz y todo queda tan claro como el agua� y no como en la vida real.
La vida real con sus incertidumbres, sus pesares crónicos, sus alegrías pasajeras y sus múltiples problemas, sus vagas esperanzas y los desastres bien reales, las decepciones y fracasos, la impotencia, el cotidiano acumularse de las horas y los días� por no decir ya de la injusticia que queda impune, el sufrimiento que no recibe jamás alivio, el amor puro jamás correspondido o los sueños aplastados sin remedio y sin sentido� y pese a ello, la necesidad de seguir andando, el espíritu que levanta al cuerpo ya cansado aunque sea un día más.
Todo eso, en cambio, es Chéjov.
El más ecuánime, lúcido y antirrimbombante de los escritores rusos, en cuyas obras de teatro no se encontrará ningún villano (lo más cercano a eso, la Natalia Ivánovna de Tres hermanas, ni siquiera es netamente malintencionada sino sólo egoísta y algo estúpida) ni héroe claro alguno, no en el sentido de un personaje mayor y positivo que mueva todo el drama, y ni siquiera habrá problemas supertrascendentales o conflictos contemporáneos que haya que resolver con espadazos metafísicos� Aquí sólo hay personas, y de ahí, tal vez, el que este teatro, como todo otro derivado de él (tan alejado de casi todo el cine contemporáneo), sea tan complicado de leer para no pocos.
Un teatro que no trata de ver o retratar la vida como una idealización o mero recreo ni tampoco como una desilusión o completo absurdo sino sólo como es, lo complicada que casi siempre es.
Ivanov y Trepliov, el abrumado tío Vania, son quizá sólo una forma de mostrarnos lo perdidos que en ocasiones nos llegamos a sentir todos, lo inútiles, irrelevantes, y la respuesta chejoviana, del artista, ante al absurdo o aplastante peso de la existencia: solamente aguantar, seguir trabajando cada día, como al fin comprenden deben hacer la gaviota Nina Mijaílovna, las tres hermanas Prózorov, Ania y Varia en El Jardín de los cerezos o Sofía Aleksándrovna, tan fuerte en su propio pesar que es capaz de cargar con ella a su derrumbado tío Vania; aguantar, aguantar nada más sin caer en un pesimismo total ni perderse en ensueños o imposibles que sólo pueden acabar con una decepción aún mayor o en un desastre.
“Qué fácil es, doctor, ser un filósofo en el papel, y que difícil serlo en la vida�, dice cansado Trepliov en La Gaviota, e irónico, Ivanov le dirá al honestísimo Lvov “Qué fácil y qué simple� el hombre es una máquina tan simple y poco complicada� No, doctor, todos tenemos demasiadas tuercas, palancas y válvulas como para ser capaces de juzgarnos unos a otros con primeras impresiones o en base a dos o tres indicaciones externas�, probables respuestas ambas del propio Chéjov ante los críticos (y quizá incluso algunos cuantos literatos), para quienes su teatro y personajes resultan nada más que perdedores, guiñapos incapaces de hacer “lo correcto� o necesario; los problemas de un personaje de ficción son increíblemente simples (y por ende fáciles de resolver) para el que lee, pero qué difíciles de arreglar y a veces tan sólo de darse cuenta de que existen cuando se trata de la vida propia.
“Cuando lees una novela, te imaginas que todo eso es bien sabido y tan sencillo de entender, pero cuando tú misma amas a alguien, puedes ver entonces que nadie sabe nada y cada uno debe decidir por uno mismo…�, le dice Masha a sus hermanas, resignada también ella a llevar su propia carga sin causar más alboroto.
No es un teatro pues, para acabar decepcionado de la vida ni tampoco un laboratorio de ideas con el cual se podrá encontrar respuesta a la existencia propia, sino apenas (y asombrosamente) un cuadro íntimo de lo que realmente somos, más allá de conveniencias, de poses o incluso de lo que se supone debemos ser.
Es bueno a veces simplemente entretenerse un rato con una historia de superhéroes, claro que sí, pero también es bueno a veces echar un vistazo a lo que en verdad hay, pues, aunque pudiera parecer lo contrario, el encontrarte a ti mismo en páginas como éstas te puede ayudar al menos a no sentirte tan extraño, solo, entre el absurdo de este mundo.
“VERSHININ: El otro día estaba leyendo el diario de un ministro francés, escrito en prisión. El ministro había sido enviado allí por el asunto de Panamá. Con qué deleite, con qué éxtasis habla de los pájaros que ve desde la ventana de su prisión y que nunca había notado antes cuando era ministro. Por supuesto, ahora que ha sido liberado, no se da cuenta de los pájaros, como antes. De la misma manera, usted tampoco se dará cuenta de Moscú cuando esté viviendo allí. No tenemos felicidad y no existe, sólo la deseamos.� -Tres hermanas
Supongo que es por eso que, pese a que sus guiones prefabricados, sus patrones establecidos, sus recetas para ganar Óscares y sus trucos narrativos sean a veces tan evidentes (y hasta descarados), siga funcionando.
El cine como fuente de reafirmación, de esperanza, la calma de que todo en el mundo funciona como debería, los buenos siempre son recompensados y los malos castigados, los malentendidos se resuelven, los misterios se desvelan, pese a los malos ratos hay un final feliz y todo queda tan claro como el agua� y no como en la vida real.
La vida real con sus incertidumbres, sus pesares crónicos, sus alegrías pasajeras y sus múltiples problemas, sus vagas esperanzas y los desastres bien reales, las decepciones y fracasos, la impotencia, el cotidiano acumularse de las horas y los días� por no decir ya de la injusticia que queda impune, el sufrimiento que no recibe jamás alivio, el amor puro jamás correspondido o los sueños aplastados sin remedio y sin sentido� y pese a ello, la necesidad de seguir andando, el espíritu que levanta al cuerpo ya cansado aunque sea un día más.
Todo eso, en cambio, es Chéjov.
El más ecuánime, lúcido y antirrimbombante de los escritores rusos, en cuyas obras de teatro no se encontrará ningún villano (lo más cercano a eso, la Natalia Ivánovna de Tres hermanas, ni siquiera es netamente malintencionada sino sólo egoísta y algo estúpida) ni héroe claro alguno, no en el sentido de un personaje mayor y positivo que mueva todo el drama, y ni siquiera habrá problemas supertrascendentales o conflictos contemporáneos que haya que resolver con espadazos metafísicos� Aquí sólo hay personas, y de ahí, tal vez, el que este teatro, como todo otro derivado de él (tan alejado de casi todo el cine contemporáneo), sea tan complicado de leer para no pocos.
Un teatro que no trata de ver o retratar la vida como una idealización o mero recreo ni tampoco como una desilusión o completo absurdo sino sólo como es, lo complicada que casi siempre es.
Ivanov y Trepliov, el abrumado tío Vania, son quizá sólo una forma de mostrarnos lo perdidos que en ocasiones nos llegamos a sentir todos, lo inútiles, irrelevantes, y la respuesta chejoviana, del artista, ante al absurdo o aplastante peso de la existencia: solamente aguantar, seguir trabajando cada día, como al fin comprenden deben hacer la gaviota Nina Mijaílovna, las tres hermanas Prózorov, Ania y Varia en El Jardín de los cerezos o Sofía Aleksándrovna, tan fuerte en su propio pesar que es capaz de cargar con ella a su derrumbado tío Vania; aguantar, aguantar nada más sin caer en un pesimismo total ni perderse en ensueños o imposibles que sólo pueden acabar con una decepción aún mayor o en un desastre.
“Qué fácil es, doctor, ser un filósofo en el papel, y que difícil serlo en la vida�, dice cansado Trepliov en La Gaviota, e irónico, Ivanov le dirá al honestísimo Lvov “Qué fácil y qué simple� el hombre es una máquina tan simple y poco complicada� No, doctor, todos tenemos demasiadas tuercas, palancas y válvulas como para ser capaces de juzgarnos unos a otros con primeras impresiones o en base a dos o tres indicaciones externas�, probables respuestas ambas del propio Chéjov ante los críticos (y quizá incluso algunos cuantos literatos), para quienes su teatro y personajes resultan nada más que perdedores, guiñapos incapaces de hacer “lo correcto� o necesario; los problemas de un personaje de ficción son increíblemente simples (y por ende fáciles de resolver) para el que lee, pero qué difíciles de arreglar y a veces tan sólo de darse cuenta de que existen cuando se trata de la vida propia.
“Cuando lees una novela, te imaginas que todo eso es bien sabido y tan sencillo de entender, pero cuando tú misma amas a alguien, puedes ver entonces que nadie sabe nada y cada uno debe decidir por uno mismo…�, le dice Masha a sus hermanas, resignada también ella a llevar su propia carga sin causar más alboroto.
No es un teatro pues, para acabar decepcionado de la vida ni tampoco un laboratorio de ideas con el cual se podrá encontrar respuesta a la existencia propia, sino apenas (y asombrosamente) un cuadro íntimo de lo que realmente somos, más allá de conveniencias, de poses o incluso de lo que se supone debemos ser.
Es bueno a veces simplemente entretenerse un rato con una historia de superhéroes, claro que sí, pero también es bueno a veces echar un vistazo a lo que en verdad hay, pues, aunque pudiera parecer lo contrario, el encontrarte a ti mismo en páginas como éstas te puede ayudar al menos a no sentirte tan extraño, solo, entre el absurdo de este mundo.
“VERSHININ: El otro día estaba leyendo el diario de un ministro francés, escrito en prisión. El ministro había sido enviado allí por el asunto de Panamá. Con qué deleite, con qué éxtasis habla de los pájaros que ve desde la ventana de su prisión y que nunca había notado antes cuando era ministro. Por supuesto, ahora que ha sido liberado, no se da cuenta de los pájaros, como antes. De la misma manera, usted tampoco se dará cuenta de Moscú cuando esté viviendo allí. No tenemos felicidad y no existe, sólo la deseamos.� -Tres hermanas
Read
February 28, 2022Read:
—Uncle Vanya
—Three Sisters
—The Cherry Orchard
—Uncle Vanya
—Three Sisters
—The Cherry Orchard
September 7, 2021
Before embarking on this read-through of Chekhov’s major drama, I assumed that I was in for an experience of boredom and frustration. This was indeed the case—but I had not anticipated just how fulfilling that experience would turn out to be. The five plays in this volume range from very good to outstanding.
The first performance of Ivanov was apparently a failure but this does not mean that the play itself is lacking in interest. In fact, Chekov’s first major play is rather surprising. All the way through the play, its main character is hinting, even declaring, that his life is a tragedy waiting to happen, but when the fatal blow does eventually come, it feels unexpected and unprepared for because, with the exception of the honest but insufferable doctor, nobody (including Ivanov himself) takes him seriously or even really considers him worth taking seriously. Surrounded by comic triviality, Ivanov’s life moves through domestic to romantic melodrama, until it abruptly ends with a bolt from the grey.
The Seagull feels like a richer and more fluent re-run, and it is the only Chekhov play that I have actually seen performed, at the Birmingham Rep in 1990. My teenage self was not impressed. Nina’s mourning for her life line seemed pretentious and her seagull act laughably self-important. The whole thing came across as very petty. Having read the play many years later, I’m struck by the impression that this was probably the point. Like Ivanov, Konstantin threatens to become a tragic hero but, also like Ivanov, no-one seems to think him capable of it, even though he has already tried to commit suicide halfway through the play. His eventual success in doing so comes as a banal surprise, and Nina� rejection of the gull symbolism that first he and then Trigorin try to foist on her is a very undramatic dramatic act. Apparently, Chekhov intended the play to be a comedy; but it is one in which nothing notably comic happens and that ends with a death.
Uncle Vanya also centers around an act of violence that fails. Earlier in the play, Voynitsky’s mother has told her son, “You should have done something� when he complains, “I can’t sleep at night for frustration and anger at the stupid way I’ve wasted time when I might have had everything I can’t have now because I’m too old� [Forty-seven: my age when I read this play!]. He then does do something, but it changes nothing. Sonya’s comment on this outburst (“Uncle Vanya, this is boring�) is cutting but does not quite hit the mark. What follows throughout the play is not boring, and while frustration and anger are not enough for tragedy (might this be why Voynitsky’s shots miss?) they demand and deserve something more than just our amusement. I imagine that Sonya’s final speeches and Voynitsky’s silent tears during them might be rather moving in performance.
Three Sisters is a much more complex play � I had to read it twice before I really felt that I had understood what was going on, and one that I imagine would be much easier to follow on the stage than on the page. Its action, and indeed its emotion (whether comic or pathetic is not always easy to distinguish) is spread around a larger group of central characters which includes but is not confined to the three sisters of the title. Again there is an violent action � off-stage and at the end of the play � and again it seems less climactic than another playwright might have made it: not so much a bolt of lightning that changes lives or even illuminates them, but just one more cloud in the sky of frustrations and disappointments under which the characters live their lives, not wholly consumed by the gloom but always aware that life ought to be, could be, will be beautiful, but not for them, in this time and this place.
The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov’s last play, reads like a companion-piece to Three Sisters in its portrayal of a complex network of familial and dependent relationships facing, and at the same time, trying to avoid having to face up to, the forces of change. Although I enjoyed it, I found it both a little repetitive (of its predecessor) and somewhat muddled—ironically, given its more concrete representation of the economic and social forces that will work to sweep away its characters� certainties. Chekhov’s complaints about Stanislavski’s having made his comedy into a tragedy seem off the mark: The Cherry Orchard is both and neither, but none the worse for that.
The first performance of Ivanov was apparently a failure but this does not mean that the play itself is lacking in interest. In fact, Chekov’s first major play is rather surprising. All the way through the play, its main character is hinting, even declaring, that his life is a tragedy waiting to happen, but when the fatal blow does eventually come, it feels unexpected and unprepared for because, with the exception of the honest but insufferable doctor, nobody (including Ivanov himself) takes him seriously or even really considers him worth taking seriously. Surrounded by comic triviality, Ivanov’s life moves through domestic to romantic melodrama, until it abruptly ends with a bolt from the grey.
The Seagull feels like a richer and more fluent re-run, and it is the only Chekhov play that I have actually seen performed, at the Birmingham Rep in 1990. My teenage self was not impressed. Nina’s mourning for her life line seemed pretentious and her seagull act laughably self-important. The whole thing came across as very petty. Having read the play many years later, I’m struck by the impression that this was probably the point. Like Ivanov, Konstantin threatens to become a tragic hero but, also like Ivanov, no-one seems to think him capable of it, even though he has already tried to commit suicide halfway through the play. His eventual success in doing so comes as a banal surprise, and Nina� rejection of the gull symbolism that first he and then Trigorin try to foist on her is a very undramatic dramatic act. Apparently, Chekhov intended the play to be a comedy; but it is one in which nothing notably comic happens and that ends with a death.
Uncle Vanya also centers around an act of violence that fails. Earlier in the play, Voynitsky’s mother has told her son, “You should have done something� when he complains, “I can’t sleep at night for frustration and anger at the stupid way I’ve wasted time when I might have had everything I can’t have now because I’m too old� [Forty-seven: my age when I read this play!]. He then does do something, but it changes nothing. Sonya’s comment on this outburst (“Uncle Vanya, this is boring�) is cutting but does not quite hit the mark. What follows throughout the play is not boring, and while frustration and anger are not enough for tragedy (might this be why Voynitsky’s shots miss?) they demand and deserve something more than just our amusement. I imagine that Sonya’s final speeches and Voynitsky’s silent tears during them might be rather moving in performance.
Three Sisters is a much more complex play � I had to read it twice before I really felt that I had understood what was going on, and one that I imagine would be much easier to follow on the stage than on the page. Its action, and indeed its emotion (whether comic or pathetic is not always easy to distinguish) is spread around a larger group of central characters which includes but is not confined to the three sisters of the title. Again there is an violent action � off-stage and at the end of the play � and again it seems less climactic than another playwright might have made it: not so much a bolt of lightning that changes lives or even illuminates them, but just one more cloud in the sky of frustrations and disappointments under which the characters live their lives, not wholly consumed by the gloom but always aware that life ought to be, could be, will be beautiful, but not for them, in this time and this place.
The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov’s last play, reads like a companion-piece to Three Sisters in its portrayal of a complex network of familial and dependent relationships facing, and at the same time, trying to avoid having to face up to, the forces of change. Although I enjoyed it, I found it both a little repetitive (of its predecessor) and somewhat muddled—ironically, given its more concrete representation of the economic and social forces that will work to sweep away its characters� certainties. Chekhov’s complaints about Stanislavski’s having made his comedy into a tragedy seem off the mark: The Cherry Orchard is both and neither, but none the worse for that.
February 5, 2025
4.5/5
The Cherry Orchard was my favourite I think... Lopakhin was a really interesting character. My main takeaway is that everyone is bored and one should work work work
The Cherry Orchard was my favourite I think... Lopakhin was a really interesting character. My main takeaway is that everyone is bored and one should work work work
January 7, 2008
There is something special about Chekhov. I would have to admit that Dostoevsky and Tolstoy may be greater writers than he is, but it seems that no writer has been able to produce a certain Russian spirit, tone, and sentiment as well as Chekhov in his writings. To put it simply, his plays and short stories have more "soul" and "heart" to them than anything else I have read. The Russian Shakepeare is my second favorite Russian author (after Dostoevsky), and is an underappreciated genius in his own right.
The four major works I will briefly sum by theme as follows:
"The Seagull"
The play revolves around the artistic and romantic conflicts between four characters
"Three Sisters"
This is a play about the collapse of the elite class in Russia, as well as alienation in a modern world. It involves the Prozorov family, and describes the three sisters (Olga, Masha, and Irina) and their brother Andrei. They are an unhappy and frustrated family.
"Cherry Orchard"
An interesting an complex play which ultimately relies on the theme of what effect social and political change has on individuals.
"Uncle Vanya"- aka "Uncle Vanja"
I cannot say exactly why, but this is my favorite Checkhov play. This play is essentially about the lonely and alienated life. It illustrates the miseries of the characters, leading to a somewhat melancholic mood and atmosphere.
The four major works I will briefly sum by theme as follows:
"The Seagull"
The play revolves around the artistic and romantic conflicts between four characters
"Three Sisters"
This is a play about the collapse of the elite class in Russia, as well as alienation in a modern world. It involves the Prozorov family, and describes the three sisters (Olga, Masha, and Irina) and their brother Andrei. They are an unhappy and frustrated family.
"Cherry Orchard"
An interesting an complex play which ultimately relies on the theme of what effect social and political change has on individuals.
"Uncle Vanya"- aka "Uncle Vanja"
I cannot say exactly why, but this is my favorite Checkhov play. This play is essentially about the lonely and alienated life. It illustrates the miseries of the characters, leading to a somewhat melancholic mood and atmosphere.
March 17, 2015
This collection of Chekhov's major and most well-known plays has to be one of my most valued possessions. Each story is unique, each plot has its own theme, the characters could undoubtedly have existed and not just been imagined. Chekhov's plays seem to have a strong effect on me, I could see myself on his characters, I could sympathize with their actions and the setting would have me instantly on board.
I'd love to read more of his work, especially his short stories, for which as well he is highly regarded.
I'd love to read more of his work, especially his short stories, for which as well he is highly regarded.
April 28, 2010
I'm ok with these, but I muc prefer Chekhov as a short story writer. His plays are so delicate, that you just know you're losing something due to the translations.
August 14, 2018
Ivanov: 2
The Seagull: 4
Uncle Vanya: 3
Three Sisters: 3.5
Cherry Orchard: 3.5
The Seagull: 4
Uncle Vanya: 3
Three Sisters: 3.5
Cherry Orchard: 3.5
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