Chekhov: The Vaudevilles and Other Short Works

by Anton Chekhov, Carol Rocamora (Translator)

The first complete American translation of Chekhov's ten vaudevilles. The comedic one-act farces The Bear, The Proposal, On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco, The Night Before the Trial, On the High Road, The Wedding, The Anniversary, A Tragic Role, and Tatyana Repina. These are jewels for the stage -- ready to use for actors and directors, and for students of drama who wish to enrich their appreciation of the virtuosity and complexity of this great Russian playwright. Chekhov wrote these confections early in his career, before he tuned to his serious plays. All ten have been newly (and faithfully) translated and assembled in a unique collection here, to make them fresh and accessible for contemporary actors and audiences. An introduction is included for literary historical perspective, as well as a glossary and pronunciation guide for the actor's usage.

Genres: Plays

212 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1997

About the author

Antón Chéjov (Spanish)

Dramas, 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 [a:Alfred Dreyfu

Reviews

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

These early first plays are amusing romps. Chekhov got more serious as time went on, but the fun comic sketches and one acts here show flashes of his characterizations, but with more belly laughs and physical comedy.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5.

Specifically : "Swan Song", "The Bear", "In Moscow (A Moscow Hamlet)".

"I write a play and produce it myself, and only when it flops do I realize that the same play was already written by Vladimir Aleksandrov, and before him by Fedotov, and before Fedotov, by Shpazhinsky. [...] From my own room I study 'life,' I look at everything from the point of view of what goes on in furnished quarters, so now I write only of the fräulein, the girls, and dirty linen. Or else I play the role of drunkard and disillusioned idealist, and maintain that the most important question of the day is that of flophouses and the intellectual proletariat. And yet, all the while, I feel nothing, I notice nothing." (In Moscow, 178-179)

"A cold dawn is breaking, dimly... [...] How will it all end?" (174)

Obstacles which complicate pace, which forces silence, or reflection, or a doubling down, or then, after reflection, a doubling down, or change, or the enlistment of other senses... "'The eye wasn't made to see everything.'" (On the High Road, 48)





ON "Swan Song":

I could put this right next to TW's "A Season of Grapes."

QUOTES:

The theater, but also, the imagination. "'Strange, isn't it... (Goes to the footlights.) Can't see a goddamn thing...Wait...prompter's booth...reserved box...conductor's stand...and beyond? Darkness! A black hole, a yawning grave, where death itself is lurking!... Brrrrr!...it's cold! A draft from the hall, cold, like an empty chimney, ghosts drifting down the aisles...sends chills up your spine!...'" (73)

"Whom do I belong to? Who needs me? Who loves me?" (73)"
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"Swan Song" is an invocation. Like Shelley's "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" (While yet a boy [...] // When musing deeply on the lot / Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing / All vital things that wake to bring / News of birds and blossoming, / Sudden, thy shadow fell on me; / I shriek'd, and clasp'd my hands in ecstasy!") // But operating, albeit, with less intention and ownership, alongside Dickinson's 348:

I would not paint - a picture -
I'd rather be the One
It's bright impossibility
To dwell - delicious - on -
And wonder how the fingers feel
Whose rare - celestial - stir -
Evokes so sweet a torment -
Such sumptuous - Despair

I would not talk, like Cornets -
I'd rather be the One
Raised softly to the Ceilings -
And out, and easy on -
Through Villages of Ether -
Myself endued Balloon
By but a lip of Metal -
The pier to my Pontoon -

Nor would I be a Poet -
It's finer - Own the Ear -
Enamored - impotent - content
The License to revere,
A privilege so awful
What would the Dower be,
Had I the Art to stun myself
With Bolts - of Melody!

Genius as a moment; we are ALL mouthpieces -- but we are not all aware. See: writers. So often in denial - governed and softened by a deluded, Hephaestusian self-image. You are no Dickinson! You faux-engineer! // Actors, in order to act, must - and do - know this. They incorporate, refine it; puppets of human emotion and scheme. Directors believe actors speak their words. They don't. The great ones - oracles.

But most importantly...At what point, and HOW, does song become separate from the one who makes it? DO we make it? With which instrument? Language has flesh written all over it. But song... what is it that we infuse it with? What is it that returns - hears our call and comes to meet?

[Sylvia · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Evils of Tobacco- 5/5: Perfection, one of the best things ever written, genius.
Swan Song- 5/5: Perfection, genius. Life imitates art.
The Bear- 4/5: Don’t think about this one too much. It’s genius.
The Proposal- 4/5: Funny one.