آواز قو

by Anton Chekhov

One-act-play with only two characters: Vasili Svietlovidoff, a 68 year old comic actor and Nikita Ivanich, an even older man, the theater's prompter.

Genres: Plays, Classics, Russia, Fiction, Russian Literature, Drama, Theatre

Paperback

First published January 1, 1887

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

[پیمان عَلُو]

آقای چخوف تاریخ را فراموش نکن ۱۴۰۱/۸/۳
شاهکار ترین اثر ادبیات «هرچه باشد »هم در این روزها لذت بخش نخواهد بود .
معذرت میخواهم یک ستاره می‌دهم.این روزها حس خواندن هیچ کتابی نیست .جسارت نباشد تو خوبی اما من حالم خوب نیست .
به امید خوب شدن حال من و حال همهٔ آنهایی که سرشار از شرافت هستند.

[Daniel T]

موضوع نمایشنامه آواز قو راجع ناامیدی، شکست و داستان تراژیک زندگی سویتلوویدوف است. این نمایش‌نامه با اینکه حجم کمی دارد با موضوعات جدی و تکان دهنده پر شده است. 

شخصیت اصلی داستان که روزگاری نام و شهرتی بر هم زده و چشم ها با دیدنش و اجرای او متحیر می‌شدند، در خلوت خود شکننده و تنها است.

نمایشنامه خیلی کوتاهه پس پیشنهاد میکنم بخونید.

اما جا داره به نام گذاری این اثر اشاره‌ای بشه، قو تنها یک بار در زندگی خود آواز میخواند و آن به هنگام مرگ خود است و گویی آوازی خوش نوا و زیبا دارد، اما در ادبیات و سایر موارد از آواز قو برای اشاره به داستانی تراژیک اشاره میشود.

[Hessam Ghaeminejad]

یکی از کوتاهترین نمایشنامه های چخوف با موضوعی در ستایش تئاتر و بازیگران تئاتر

[Laleh]

نام نمایشنامه "اواز قو" به یک باور باستانی اشاره دارد که قوها درست قبل از مرگشان آواز زیبایی می‌خوانند، زیرا بیشتر عمرشان ساکت بوده‌اند.
سوتلاویدوف در ۶۸ سالگی درحالی که نقش دلقکی را بازی میکند و در سراشیبی مرگ و یاس است به این سوال اساسی میرسد که برای ماندگار بودن چه کرده است؟
او میداند که تماشاگران به او تعلق ندارند و شخص او فارغ از تمام نقش هایی که به روی صحنه اجرا میکند برای انها بیگانه است.
او به تمام توانایی ها و عمری که از سر گذرانده حسرت میورزد ولی در نهایت میگوید"جایی که هنر هست،جایی که استعداد وجود دارد،آنجا نه از پیری خبری هست نه از تنهایی و عزلت و نه از بیماری.مرگ هم اگر باشد نیمی از آن بیشتر نیست."
در اخرین سخنانش قطعه ای میخواند که در پایان ان نوشته شده "می‌روم تا مگر برای احساس تحقیر شده ام کنجی دنج بیابم!" و فکر میکنم این همان حرف دل سوتلاویدوف است که میخواهد بعد از تمام این پستی بلندی های عمر به ارامش برسد و چه ارامشی متعالی تر از مرگ،درست همانطور که نام نمایشنامه ان را بازگو میکند "اخرین ژست درست قبل از مرگ"
چخوف این نمایشنامه را در یک ساعت و پنج دقیقه نوشته و کوتاه‌ترین درام دنیا محسوب می‌شود.

[Ana]

Very short, yet it packs a bundle of emotion. Swang Song is a great look at lost life and regrets, career over personal relationships and that one drunk friend you just cannot get rid off because he keeps babbling on way into the early hours. It is a smidge of life in an honest and simple scene. Why not use up to twenty minutes of your own life to enjoy it? I say it is worth it.

[Ehsan'Shokraie']

ما قاتل روز های خود ایم تا زمانی که آنان را برای تصور فردایی خیالی سلاخی می کنیم

پایان اخرین اثر پروژه چخوف..

[Amaranta]

Alla fine di uno spettacolo un attore, Svetlovidov, ormai avanti negli anni e ubriaco, si addormenta per risvegliarsi da solo e con il teatro al buio. Sono momenti di panico per lui in cui sente le forze abbandonarlo e quel teatro nero diventare sepolcro della sua vita, e in cui la sua vita così come il suo mestiere gli appare vuoto e vacuo.
“Capii allora che non esiste nessuna sacralità dell'arte, che è tutto delirio e inganno, che io sono uno schiavo, un giocattolo dell'ozio altrui, un buffone, un pagliaccio!”
L’incontro inatteso con il suggeritore gli permette di ricordare i fasti della sua carriera, rivivere emozioni che credeva perdute, splendere con le sue piume bianche in un ultimo canto del cigno.
Un dramma forte, in cui la morte si accosta alla vita, la luce all’ombra, in cui gli opposti si bilanciano rendendo lo scritto potente. Riflessioni sulla vita che scivola lo accompagnano.

[Nick]

Ok, ok. Yes I read this because it's short and I'm behind in my reading challange. Sue me. I also remember liking Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard in college and am a sucker for Russian literature. This is a one act play that can be read in 15-20 minutes. It has dramatic tension and a plot. The characters are believable and drew my sympathy. That being said, I also felt it was over too soon...like a well made short film that you wish was a bit longer. I would like to see it acted sometime when I want to be a little sad.

[Duane Allen]

Feeling it.

I could feel the main character's despair, his joy, then despair again. He had given his life to entertain others, pouring himself into his career, and neglected to live his life to the full. That's a theme that will never be outdated. Regrets not of things done, but of opportunities not taken.

[Amalie]

*******spoiler alert******

This is a one-act-play with only two characters: Vasili Svietlovidoff, a 68 year old comic actor and Nikita Ivanich, who is an even older man, the theater's prompter.

Chekhov's hero finds himself locked in a theatre and who, attended only by a prompter, dwells on impending death, the life unlived and memories of past glories. His thoughts reflected on whether it is still worth living or whether he should crawl towards death. Eventually he chose life, with Shakespeare to guide him. The best bits are the quotations from Aeschylus and Shakespeare, but the piece has nothing much to tell us other than that theatre is a house of dreams.

A very quick read. Nice.

[Jim]

This is a one-act plays for people who have a special feeling for acting in a theater. It is a short short play with only two characters, a leading actor who wakes up at night having fallen asleep after acting in a play, and Nikita, a prompter who lives in the theater;. Even at this early stage in his career, Anton Chekhov is on top of his game, as the actor, just from discussing his misgivings about his career, seems to find himself in the middle of his conversation and leaves the theater feeling energized.

[Realini Ionescu]

Swan Song by Anton Chekhov – The Short Stories of Anton Chekhov are included on The Bokklubben World Library’s Best 100 Books of All Time list, and they are ranked 127th on The Greatest Books of All Time site…you have thousands of reviews on magnum opera from the apportioned and other web pages on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... and YouTube channel


10 out of 10

Kingsley Amis https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... my absolute favorite novelist wrote about the ‘Checkoff formula: you take a lot of characters, all miserable because of something they won't do, and let them talk without influencing each other for three acts, and at the last moment you introduce some arbitrary calamity, or some proposed change like a return to Petrograd or a holiday in the Cry-mere, which you know won't make any difference to any of them, and then you go on for ten minutes or so after the thing should have stopped even by your own standards, to show how delicate and unemphatic your art is’ there is also the shotgun principle, a Chekhov rule:

"Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first act that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third act it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."
George Constantin https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... has the leading role in this one act play, he sings the Swan Song: he is an actor who laments the passing of time, he is about sixty and thinks of death, he talks to the prompter, a man who sleeps in the theater, for he has no means

This was the greatest thespian ever, if you ask me, he was above Jack Nicholson and all the other masters of this game, because he had a Unique gift, he had supernatural powers, could transmit a whole range of feelings, he was both dramatic and humorous, dominant and humble, he was an alien, a god of the stage
https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... he would have made a fabulous Ulysses – he is part of the cast of the adaptation for National Radio, though I cannot remember what his role was, there may be another note, coming soon, or at least in the next seven years, and then it will all be clear

Any and every character would gain if this Magister Ludi were to bring it to the stage, on the screen, or even for the Radio Theater: he had the chance to play some of the local heroes – Burebista, Petru Rares, the latter has a play dedicated to his memory and I plan to write a few lines about that, albeit I do not find it online
https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... Geroge Constantin would have brought substance, pomp and circumstances, irony, majesty and ludicrousness to Widmerpool, the villain of A Dance to The Music of Time…I did not mention (so far) the most abject figure in the world
nevertheless, Putin would take that spot, along with a few others, such as Kim of North Korea, Xi of China, the latter likes to project a rather amiable, if powerful sovereign, except we know these are tyrants, and others aspire to get the same strength, from Orban in Hungary to Erdogan in Turkey, Simion here

[David Gallagher]

As humans who have to face our mortality sooner or later, we tend to think and reminisce of our "glory days." The main character in this play is realizing his destructibility; his old age; his closeness to death and its irreversibility. And so, he begins to recite Shakespearean stanzas to prove that he is still a magnificent actor and a genius of the theatrical world. He hasn't lost his mind yet.

Many writers have touched the theme of an imminent death - none as brilliantly as it is expressed in The Death Of a Salesman, but still, Chekhov's play is a worthy contender.

[adre]

Es bien sabido q yo amo a Chéjov pero tener que relacionar este texto con otros dos que son más bien estudios dramáticos me está drenando pq que coño se supone que tengo que sacar yo de estas 6 paginitas...en fin besos

[Nermeen]

و برغم ان الصوت كان زي الزفت و مقدرتش افهم نص النص بس مع ذلك دور عبد الرحيم الزرقاني أقل ما يوصف به انه مميز جدا .. و مؤثر جدا

[Margaret Carpenter]

Like every time I read Chekhov, I find myself fighting wordlessness. I don't know how to express what his plays do to my mind. This simple, comedic, one-scene drama is no exception.

I am very partial to my Elisaveta Fen translation and this (relatively) new Paul Schmidt translation is quite different, but he does bring an aspect to Chekhov's work that I think Anton would appreciate - that is, the voice of the people of our age. I'm interested to compare translations to see how they diverge.

[Sneh Pradhan]

A one -act play , with only two characters , it could as well have been a soliloquoy by an old thespian , who contemplates his mortality and the bitter truth of his momentary, ephemeral existence in this world .

[Mihai Criveti]

A very vivid picture of an old actor dealing with mortality.

[Prashant]

The wickedness of art and the rantings of a drunkard. It's a dangerous mix.

[Carol]

An older man reflects on his life and acting to a buddy in a theatre. Some good details and perspectives. Thought provoking as always.

[Kath]

I am not a big fan of plays, neither reading them nor watching them, but I liked this one.

[Ghada]

I am like the wind blowing across the lonely fields.

أول مره أقرأ لـ تشيخوف...قصه قصيره جداً مدتها 20 دقيقه أوديو, لكن شجعتني أقرأ له أكتر :)

[Steven]

An old actor contemplating the end of his life.

[Maca]

It was quite short and I love that it takes place in a theater, on a scene, but it was too short and ended too quickly for my preference.

[VICKI VIOLET]

I'll not get into the details as so many reviews have, as I'm not one to bore people with redundancy. The idea that as one edges closer to the end of his/her life, one can have moments of panic. I am speaking as an older lady myself.... I have just recently entered my 6th decade. We as older homo sapiens tend to 'look back' and glamorize our high points and go below the basement on our regrets.

This little story of that aged old man hit a chord with me, and I laughed inwardly, 'There but for the grace of God go I'.... Except thankfully, I've not ever cottoned on to the drink. I tried to, but I failed miserably at it. That my friends is another story, and this is not about me. But doesn't that tell you something? This story...made me think inwardly. And that is what good writing is all about. Thank you, Dear Mr Chekhov

[David]

I quite enjoyed listening to this! I was imagining Asparagus "Gus" the Theatre Cat from CATS! the musical during the whole thing!

[Orgeleuse]

Un testo prezioso. Una interpretazione magistrale.

[Kiraaaaa]

Reading it doesn’t make it justice 🤷🏻‍♀️

[Saadia]

Reminiscent of Cobain's "it's better to burn out than to fade away" as well as Bukowski's "And when nobody waits for you at night . . . what do you call it, freedom or loneliness?'

[Francesco]

7+
Come si dice: “nella botte piccola, c’è il vino buono”