Ivanoff - A Play by Anton Chekhov- first Preformed in 1887- translated by Constance Garnett

Ivanoff - A Play by Anton Chekhov- first Preformed in 1887- translated by Constance Garnett 

CHARACTERS

 NICHOLAS IVANOFF, perpetual member of the Council of Peasant Affairs

 ANNA, his wife.

 Nee Sarah Abramson

 MATTHEW SHABELSKI, a count, uncle of Ivanoff

MICHAEL BORKIN, a distant relative of Ivanoff, and manager of his estate

 AVDOTIA NAZAROVNA, an old woman 

GEORGE, lives with the Lebedieffs

 FIRST GUEST SECOND GUEST THIRD GUEST FOURTH GUEST

This four-act drama was first performed in 1887, when Fiodor Korsh, the owner of the Korsh Theatre in Moscow, commissioned Chekhov to write a comedy. Chekhov responded with a four-act drama, which he completed in only ten days. 

 The play concerns Nikolai Ivanov, a man struggling to regain his former glory. For the past five years, he has been married to Anna Petrovna, a disinherited ‘jewess’, who has suffered greatly from illness.

Ivanov’s estate is run by a distant relative, Mikhail Borkin, who is frequently advising people on how he can help them make money. The doctor, Lvov, an ‘honest’ man as he likes to frequently remind the rest of the cast, informs Ivanov that his wife is dying of Tuberculosis and that she needs to recover by going to the Crimea. Unfortunately, Ivanov is unable to pay for the expensive journey, as he is heavily in debt, owing Zinaida Lebdeva 9000 roubles. Ivanov is criticised for heartlessness and for spending time with the Lebedevs instead of his seriously ill wife.

This is one of his early lesser known but still Preformed plays that in a comic fashion, deals with the issues of changing times in Russia, as do his more famous plays.

Mel Ulm
 

Three Sisters- A Play in Four Acts by Anton Chekhov- 1900- translated by Constance Garnett

 Three Sisters- A Play in Four Acts by Anton Chekhov- 1900- translated by Constance Garnett

I was motivated to read Chekhov's play by the chapter devoted to it in Viv Groskup's marvelous book, The Anna Karenina-Life Lessons from Russian Literature, "How to Live with the Feeling That the Grass is Always Greener: Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov".

Born: January 29, 1860, Taganrog, Russia

Died: July 15, 1904, Badenweiler, Germany

Spouse: Olga Knipper (m. 1901–1904)

Three Sisters along with The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya and The Seagull are considered Chekhov's best plays. The play was written for the Moscow Art Theatre and it opened on 31 January 1901, under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko.

The three sisters, twenty something live in a provisional town but they long to move to Moscow.

Their parents are deceased, they have been left a comfortable house and enough money to have servants. The oldest sister, Olga is at 28 considered a spinster. She works as a teacher but wishes she could be a wife instead, even "to an old man". She functions as the matriarch of the family.

Marsha, the middle sister is married to a teacher who she despises for his pettiness. She has an affair. The youngest sister Irina, 20, longs for love. Their brother Andrei, whose ill-advised romance and compulsive gambling wreaks havoc on the family finances and eventually forces them out of their home. Weary of their small-town surroundings, the Prozorovs long to return to Moscow, the bustling metropolis they left eleven years ago. Unfortunately, ground down by disappointment, debt, and the oppressive ordinariness of their daily lives, they’re never able to get there. There is an army camp nearby and a number of officers visit.

Here is Viv Groskup's take on the lesson to be learned from Three Sisters. 

"The problem is, no matter how good we have it, the grass genuinely does seem greener elsewhere. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Chekhov’s play Three Sisters, where all the three sisters really want in life is to get back to Moscow, scene of their childhood. Moscow represents a reaction against their present life – which they don’t want – and a promise of something better. They want Moscow, Moscow, Moscow. They say it enough times. But what they also want, crucially, is to be somewhere else other than where they are right now. Sound familiar?"

One of the factors I enjoyed in the play was that the Sisters seemed aware there was a growing demand for social change directed at ending the vast inequalities in Russian society.

"Chekhov’s brilliance lies in capturing something important about a life change that was happening at the time he was writing: people were starting to be able to affect their own lives, change their class, break out of the confines of their gender". Viv Groskup 

”Gooseberries” - A Short Story by Anton Chekhov, 1888 - Introducing Elizabeth B. Yousopov, Consultant Upon Czarist Literature

George Saunders on “Gooseberries”

Podcast of “Gooseberries”

As I mentioned in The Reading Life Review for November I have asked a few highly literate individuals, mostly associated with the extended Bousweau family, Ambrosia was a great help in this, to lend their occasional expertise to the blog.  As we approach our ninth year and visit five million I felt a need for help which  I am sure will enhance The Reading Life.  

Elizabeth Bousweau Yousopov is  joining us as a consultant upon Czarist Era Russian Literature.  As readers of the classic travel book, Tea and 

Tokyo With Nicky by Ruffington Bousweau, 1902, know, a strong connection was made between Ruffington  Bousweau and Grand Duke Felix Yousopov during a tour of Japan.  This connection still exists between The families. Elizabeth was married to Rolf Yousopov,  grand nephew of Felix.  The marriage was by mutual consent morgantic.  They had four daughters. She currently lives in Paris, now a widow, with two Russian Blue Cats.  She is considered a world class authority on Czarist Era Russian Literature.  When asked about post revolutionary literature she said there was none.  

Mel u

Anton Chekhov is nearly universally regarded as the greatest short story writer of all time.  He also was employed on one of the Yousopov estates to medically certify the health of serfs prior to purchasing or selling.  

“Gooseberries” is a beautiful story, structured as one gentleman telling the story of his brother’s life history to a friend as they made their way through a snowstorm.   The brother, two years older than the narrator, worked many years as a civil servant but his great dream was to own an estate in the country, one with Gooseberries bushes.  At forty he married an ugly widow for her money.  She died after three years, and at last the brother can buy an estate.  As the narrator, on his way there arrives he and his friend are shocked by the beauty of the young serf woman who greets them.  Serf Women were, of course, of mistresses of estate owners or their sons.  His brother is very happy.  The narrator  thinks to himself that the happy and content must know of the misery of others.   He feels his brother lacks the depth to see his own vulnerability.  Chekhov wonderfully evokes the beauty of the Russian country side. He rightfully says any Russian aristocrat who has ever lived in the country will see himself as from the country, not the city.  You can see this in Tolstoy and Turgenev.  

I urge you to read the article by George Saunders, a writer Mel u greatly admires.

Elizabeth B. Yousopov

Consultant upon Czarist Era Literature

The Reading Life

"The New Villa" by Anton Chekhov (1898). --"Chekhov on Sakhalin" by Seamus Heaney (1984)

"To try for the right tone, not tract,not thesis

And walk away from the flogging,

He was taught to squeeze the slave's blood out

and waken a free man,

Shadowed a convict guide through Sakhalin" -Seamus Heaney

I have been reading Chekhov (1860 to 1904) on and off for decades.  I am sad to say it took the publicity generated by his passing to draw me to read Seamus Heaney (1939 to 2013-Nobel Prize 1995).   Chekhov, his father was a serf who bought his families freedom,  was a doctor.  In Czarist Russia this carried little prestige outside of physicians to the nobility.  Heaney illuminates one of the central mysteries of Chekhov in his poem about his time at the convict colony of Sakhalin.  In his vast writings it is near impossible to see behind it an ideological structure.  Chekhov just presented life.  

"At the Villa" helps us understand one of the central puzzles of twentieth century Russian history.  Why did the serfs, the peasants support the Czar and the nobles rather than the Bolsevicks?  The argue,ent of the left was that the peasants suffered horrible oppression, basically slavery.  Their sons were sent to die in senseless wars, their labor went to pay for incredible luxury for the elite.  The answer of the serfs was "better the devil you know than one you do not".  

An affluent bourgeoise couple, the man is an engineer buy a villa in the country.  The man had previously been in charge of building a bridge and he liked the area.  The couple, the wife is in fact from a serf family, want to treat the local peasants as equals, as friends.  They do decent things to help them.  In return the peasants rob them and vandalize their property and show no respect.  In time the couple are so unhappy they sell the villa.  The new owner treats the peasants as his inferiors and lords it over him.  In return he is treated with the utmost respect and suffers no robberies.  A great story illuminated by a great poet, deep responds to its own.

"The Lady With the Little Dog" by Anton Chekhov (1899, translated by Constance Garnett )

I

Anton Chekhov (1860 to 1904) is a near consensus pick for greatest short story writer of all time.  "The Lady with the Little Dog" is often listed as among the very greatest of all short stories.  (There is additional background on Chekhov in my prior posts on his work.). He has as good a claim as any one to the title of greatest short story writer of all time.  

"The Lady and With the Little Dog" is set in a sea side resort town where Moscovites go to get away for a while.  A married man is there, he has had numerous affairs.  He spots a woman by herself but for her dog, something like a Pomeranian.  He approaches her in a practiced fashion and slowly a relationship develops.  The woman is also married, her husband is a civil servant and is back in Moscow.  Chekhov does a marvelous job of letting us see the predatory technique the man employs to seduce the woman.  We see their relationship develop in masterful minimalist strokes. There is great depth of characterization in the few pages of this story.

The Garnett translation of this story is in the public domain and can easily be found online.