OVERVIEW
Over a hundred years after they were written, Anton Chekhovâs plays fill theatres throughout the world, his stories are continually reprinted and retranslated and critical material on Chekhov is produced in abundance. However, Chekhovâs personality and his work apparently continue to mystify critics, audiences and readers. Narratives about his life persistently refer to the âelusiveness of Chekhovâ (Turkov 1995: x), the âenigmaâ of Chekhov (Llewellyn Smith 1973: x) and present descriptions of him that are full of paradoxes and contradictions. For example, Gillès states âthis gentle face of a young Christ ⌠masked a strange resolutionâ (1968: 44), Karlinsky refers to âthe gentle subversiveâ (Chekhov 1973: 1) and Troyat to âthe agnosticâ with âardent faith in the futureâ (1987: 50). Rayfield portrays a Don Juan who could be vindictive, writing âcruel parodyâ of people he knew (1998: 376, 352). Kelly describes him as âdeeply subversive ⌠a figure whose originality is as yet poorly understoodâ (1999: 171). Chekhovâs expression of own persona was ambiguous: he was deliberately self-abnegating, he wrote little about himself, admitting to, as he styled it, âautobiographophobiaâ (Chekhov 1973: 366). He presented himself in different ways to different correspondents, as analyses of his letters demonstrate (see OâConnor 1987). âHis âsociabilityâ particularly as expressed in his enormous correspondence, was one of his most successful disguisesâ (Miles 1993: 187). He was very hospitable, filling his family homes with guests, while complaining in letters that his visitors gave him no peace to write; those who knew him well spoke of his friendliness, his sense of humour and his deep reserve (Gorky et al. 2004: 49).
The problems for biographers and critics, both western and East European, have been compounded in the past by a lack of access to all the material and information on the context in which Chekhov wrote. Karlinsky has described layers of censorship, including both state censorship and editorial choices made to protect privacy by Chekhovâs sister, in the publication of papers after his death (Chekhov 1973: xii). Previous restrictions have now been lifted and the emergence of new material from archives in Russia that have opened since perestroika in the 1990s has resulted in new translations, and in new biographical studies such as those by Donald Rayfield, Rosamund Bartlett and Alevtina Kuzicheva. This has facilitated new approaches to the work, such as A. A. Chepurovâs re-examination of the first performance of The Seagull at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, and Galina Brodskayaâs account of the cultural background to Stanislavskyâs and Chekhovâs lives and work. Critiques of Chekhovâs work from feminist and other theoretical standpoints, such as Peta Taitâs analysis, combining studies of gender theory, emotion and phenomenology, John Tullochâs analysis of the work as theatrical event and Michael C. Finkeâs psychoanalytic approach, have supplemented biographical approaches to Chekhov scholarship, such as that of Ronald Hingley or David Magarshack. The main subjects for critical material on Chekhov remain the multiplicity of possible interpretations of his work, its autobiographical significance, its relationship to literary movements such as naturalism and symbolism, his worldview and his use of language. In general, the extent of the intertextual allusions and literary references, and the subtlety of Chekhovâs use of language have only relatively recently begun to be fully analysed (see de Sherbinin 1997: 3, Senderovich and Sendich 1987, Stepanov 2005) and much work continues to present a Chekhovian persona that is informed by the bias of the writer (McVay 2002: 64, 77).
Topical references have not been fully understood, especially in the west, and it is important in any consideration of Chekhov to have an understanding of the historical context in which he was writing. He was born in 1860, in a Russia under the autocratic rule of Tsardom, essentially a feudal system before reforms in 1861. He came from a family of serfs, peasants who were owned by the state or by the upper classes, but his grandfather had managed to buy his familyâs freedom and Chekhovâs father subsequently became a merchant. Chekhov gained an education, training and working as a doctor as he also began to be known as a writer. His fame began to spread through fin-de-siècle Europe and he died in 1904, just before the first Russian revolution of 1905. Political currents after this eventually led to the overthrow of the Tsars in the revolution of 1917 and the establishment of communist rule in Russia. Chekhovâs formative years and working life, therefore, were in a Russia undergoing a period of political and cultural turmoil, which is examined in Chekhovâs work.
The complexity of interpretation is demonstrated by the wide variety of readings in the production history of the plays since their first chequered reception in Russia and the west (see Senelick 1997a). Labelled âThe Voice of Twilight Russiaâ (Toumanova 1937), Chekhov was considered by many in Russia and the west to be the poet of the decline of the nobility and the gentry in pre-revolutionary Russia. He was known first in the west as a short story writer, and was compared with French realist writers such as Guy de Maupassant; critics viewed his work as expressive of pessimistic philosophies (Emeljanow 1997: 2). Interestingly, in the Russia of his own time, the plays, though controversial, were hugely acclaimed, but thereafter for some time seen as examples of historical pessimism, presenting the past nostalgically in an idealized way (Simonov 1969: 23). After the 1917 revolution, there was an ideological imperative in Soviet times for the work to be interpreted as an exposition of the state of a dying class, a class that was the enemy of the proletariat or workers and had been vanquished by the revolution, out of keeping with the new Soviet age. New interpretations began from the 1940s in Russia (see Shakh-Azizova 2000) and in the west from the 1950s, but in the late 1970s, Trevor Griffiths asserted that the dominant western interpretation of Chekhovâs plays remained âplangent and sorrowing evocations of an âorderedâ past no longer with âusâ, its passing greatly to be mourned ⌠â (2007: 266). Arguing that Chekhovâs was a coded revolutionary agenda, Griffiths and others have re-examined the political aspects of Chekhovâs work.
Class politics are very important; the presence of servants, of landowners and merchants, literati and artists, is central to Chekhovâs playwriting. The turmoil brought about by shifts in the class system as a result of the emergence of new ideologies and economies in Chekhovâs lifetime has echoes in many other contexts and has resulted in the adaptation, in recent years, of Chekhovâs plays to settings such as South Africa after apartheid, as in Suzmanâs The Free State (2000), or Mustapha Maturaâs Three Sisters, after Chekhov (2006), a reworking set in colonial Trinidad in 1941. Similarities between the situation in Ireland and that of Chekhovâs Russia have been drawn in many adaptations and the work of writer Brian Friel (see Pine 2006: 104â16, Kilroy 2000: 80â90).
Arguably, some of the appropriation of Chekhov â whether the lyrical English Chekhov, or the Soviet politicized Chekhov â results from a narrow view of the context in which he was writing. An understanding of context is important not so that the cultural context can be reproduced authentically in production â the work is open to a variety of performance styles â but to acknowledge that Chekhovâs work occupied a specific historical position and provided a perspective on the ideological thought of the time. Many stories and the full-length plays are a locus for the discussion of current philosophical and political ideas in the debates and attitudes of the characters, reflecting the ferment of the times. His work surveys the inheritance of nineteenth century romanticism and idealism and the nihilisms and pessimistic philosophies that characterized a strong strand of thought in his epoch, while also examining optimistic philosophies ranging from that of Tolstoy to Marx. Chekhov provides no answers, as he famously said, seeking rather to formulate questions correctly (Chekhov 1973: 117). Drawing on his own experience and observation of others, he questions the basis for peopleâs ideas of how to live life, and his writing, though discussing the cultural and political currents of a particular epoch, has resonances today.
This book seeks to survey the historical context, to position Chekhov in relationship to political ideologies and to contribute to the reappraisal of his work facilitated by new biographies and translations. In looking at selected productions, I will consider whether directors of widely differing interpretations of Chekhov are working from a socially and historically contextualized reading of Chekhov and how necessary this is to a productionâs success.