Thursday, March 31, 2016

It’s like living in Australia - Chekhov's Ivanov
















  1. Boredom is so often a motif in Chekhov. Reading about boredom in Chekhov, however, as something of a paradox, is not boring. And that is the sum and substance of my Chekhovian observations for today. But I should further note that I have just downloaded a Kindle collection of Chekhov. So, I have you to thank for giving me the nudge in that direction. Now, I think I will read a bit about boredom among Chekhov's creations. Onward!

  2. I had heard that this first play was a little more "stagey" than the later ones, so I was not expecting the boredom theme to be present. But it is just as strong as in Uncle Vanya.

    It is not boring, quite the opposite. Little changes and minor events becomes highly interesting. I become like one of Chekhov's characters.

  3. "Ivanov" has always struck me as being very much in the vein of Turgenev. It's funny how Chekhov's plays work a lot of the same territory as Turgenev's novels. In "The Seagull," the writer character even complains about how he'll always be known as "clever, but no Turgenev."

    There are unfired guns all through Chekhov's stories! There are two or three guns in "The Cherry Orchard," his final play, that are never fired.

    What's amazing about Chekhov is how quickly he wrote. He revised carefully, but even that was done quickly. In a letter to Gorky, Chekhov advises him to spend six weeks watching plays, and then take a couple of weeks to write one of his own, as if it was all that simple.

  4. Ivanov has some resemblance to Turgenev's A Month in the Country (1855), which is clever, but no Chekhov.

    The whole "Chekhov's Gun" idea strikes me as some kind of joke on posterity.

  5. "Chekhov's gun" is a neat bit of stagecraft in itself. You wonder which gun will go off and when, so Chekhov can bamboozle you with the things you didn't expect to happen.

  6. Yes, good point. The writer will mess with the audience expectations whatever they are.