leah hohauser’s Reviews > Chekhov's Three Sisters & Woolf's Orlando > Status Update

“When you read a novel, it seems that everything is clear, trite and understandable. But when you yourself fall in love, you understand that nobody knows anything and everyone must decide for themselves.”

“Woolf and Chekhov, chasing illumination over and above animation, trying to capture the invisible moments as they fled, I humble kneel before you.”

“I am sorry…to squeeze you, Ms. Woolf, onto the vulgar smallness of the stage, and to squeeze you, Mr. Chekhov, into the vulgar smallness of the English language.”

“There is a tragic element in the life of every day that is far more real, far more penetrating, far more akin to the true self that is in us than the tragedy that lies in great adventure” -Maurice Maeterlinck’s The Tragical in Daily Life

Mmmmm “We need a very daring and alert sense of literature to make us hear the tune, and in particular those last notes which complete the harmony…as we read these little stories about nothing at all, the horizon widens; the soul gains an astonishing sense of freedom.” -Virginia Woolf on Chekhov in The Common Reader

I am really loving Sarah Ruhl’s introduction here. (And Virginia Woolf is such a brilliant little writer). I loved hearing Sarah Ruhl’s unfinished unpolished thoughts about how the two writers connect with one another. I LOVE LOVE LOVED the idea that something being unfinished actually opens up more room and space for the soul to exist/be free/ask questions.