“Alyosha the Pot” (1905) by Tolstoy is the seventh and last Russian story featured in George Saunders’s master class book on writing and reading, A Sw“Alyosha the Pot” (1905) by Tolstoy is the seventh and last Russian story featured in George Saunders’s master class book on writing and reading, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. I am reading and reviewing each of the stories separately, and then “going to class” to see what Saunders--one of the greatest living short story writers and a great teacher--has to tell me about it.
"Alyosha the Pot" is a very short story (maybe especially for an author we associate with verbosity in Anna Karenina and War and Peace) about a "simple" guy raised in poverty, "rented" out by his father to a wealthier family, all of whom mistreat him, piling on work as he smiles agreeably, doing his work, his duty. At one point a woman, Ustinya, a fellow "underling" also working for the family, agrees to marry him. They care about each other! Alyosha and Ustinya are valued for themselves, and not just the work they do to serve others.
Spoilers!!: The family and Alyosha's father get wind of the possible engagement, and they forbid it, which Alyosha dutifully agrees to, though he also cries in response, initially. Ustinya cries, too, no surprise. Soon after this, he falls off a roof, and then soon after dies! That's it, in a way, this sad quick ending for a sadsack serf and his new love. Who needs this misery, you ask?! But this is a picture of life for the peasants, limited by social caste. Powerful image of a poor man in Russia. Anguished story.
PS: Just when I was getting a little tired of my teacher, Professor Saunders, he finishes his analysis of his seventh Russian story with an inspiring lecture/essay, illustrating through various examples how different translations can lend different tones to our interpretation of the story. But Saunders also shows us that by omitting information--what was Alyosha thinking before he died?!--he leaves it ambiguous and allows us to consider different possibilities on how to interpret the story.
Saunders tells us his long time interpretation of Alyosha, then tells us that a student in his class felt the story was coming more out of Tolstoy’s turn to didacticism, his Christian turn. Alyosha, the student believes, wants us to admire the dutiful, self-sacrificing Alyosha, and this makes sense. But then why have him cry, and why the amazement and "being startled" at some unnamed thing at the end? Mystery! Ambiguity.
“The secret to boring people lies in telling them everything”--Chekhov
“The story makes a beautiful case for cheerful obedience. The story also makes a beautiful case for the argument that making a case for cheerful obedience is a gift to tyrants”--Saunders Which is it?!
So Saunders argues that Tolstoy, in not telling us what Alyosha is thinking when he cries and when he is amazed at something at the end of his life, wants to leave it to us to decide! Saunders thinks Tolstoy pulled back from his late career didactic impulse, as I think he also did in criticizing Anna Karenina, falling in love with her instead of condemning her for her frailty and foibles.
Saunders reminds us that Tolstoy preached sexual abstinence AND has thirteen children with his wife. Do I contradict myself? I contain multitudes! In other words, Tolstoy may have wanted to preach in the story, but he couldn't quite leave it that simply.
Saunders tells us Tolstoy wrote the story at 77 in a single day, and was unsatisfied with it, but I agree with Saunders, I love it, feeling so sorry for simple Alyosha and his simple sweet love, Ustinya, so cruelly cast down by fate and the social system! Saunders considers Alyosha a “holy fool,” better than the people who mistreat him, and I like that....more
“Gooseberries” (1898) by Anton Chekhov is the sixth Russian story featured in George Saunders’s master class book on writing and reading, A Swim in a “Gooseberries” (1898) by Anton Chekhov is the sixth Russian story featured in George Saunders’s master class book on writing and reading, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. I am reading and reviewing each of the stories separately, and then “going to class” to see what Saunders--one of the greatest living short story writers and a great teacher--has to teach me about it.
I have read “Gooseberries” a few times in my life, but not recently, and as with any great work, it tells me different things every time I read it. It’s the middle story of the so-called Little Trilogy of 1898. On the surface it doesn’t seem like much happens. Two guys, Ivan, a veterinarian and Burkin, a high school teacher, are out hunting in the rain and need shelter, so they go to Alyohin’s house, where Pelagya is the housekeeper.
Ivan, as promised to Burkin, tells a story after Pelagya has served them drinks and food, and after Ivan has had a joyous swim in the pond in the rain: “‘By God!’ he kept repeating delightedly. “Lord have mercy on me!” Ivan’s story (within the story) is a tale of his brother Nikolay, a civil servant who has a lifelong dream of buying rural property and raising gooseberries on the land. He saves every miserly penny, over decades, and marries an old rich widow to the purpose, and when he has what he said he wants he gets fat, lazy (indolent), pretends he is powerful (of the gentry), wanting more and more money and power. Maybe we can say that gooseberries represent some kind of misguided idea of happiness, because it is never enough for him. Is he happy? Maybe. But is happiness enough?
In the telling of the story Ivan gets more and more agitated, and critical of the landed gentry (including now, his brother Nikolay) and their pompous, greedy ways. “Money, like vodka, can do strange things to a man.” Happiness? Well, Ivan thinks his brother Nikolay has a limited idea of happiness, but at the expense of the poor and needy. “. . . obviously the happy man is at ease only because the unhappy ones bear their burdens in silence.” Ivan goes on to say he thinks he can no longer be happy if others are unhappy. Forget happiness! Choose instead to do good! This moral opinion seems persuasive to me, or did, in earlier readings, but not to Burkin and Alyohin, who are bored by the story and just go to bed.
Years ago I thought the other two going to bed was just amusing, that they are just ignorant about the wisdom of Ivan’s story, but now I see they have other ideas, and in fact I think the story is far more complicated than I ever knew. I now think the story is a kind of meditation on happiness. Mikhail Bakhtin said the best stories could be cultural forums on societal issues, and I think this is true here. For instance; sure Ivan is right, on a certain level. But is not Ivan happy when he swims, and why not? What actually is happiness? And is it enough?
The two hunters, encountering the “lovely” Pelagya, encounter beauty, and they are happy in the moments they are with her. So maybe she helps to make Ivan's point, though he keeps accepting her service instead of asking her to join them, but this is 1898, folks. She is mainly an object of pleasure for the men, and she does all the work when the guests are there, so while she may in part seem to be happy herself, she’s also a servant paid to serve her “betters.” Are they happy at her (largely silent, underling) expense?
Maybe Burkin and Alyohin in dismissing Ivan's point help to reinforce it for us. But they are simple guys, happy in their work and in their eating and drinking. Sometimes "don't worry, be happy" isn't just an ignorant dismissal of the pain of the world. Anyway, I think it’s not a simple story or essay on one view of happiness; we get to think about it from a variety of ways, not just either-or.
PS: After reading the story, I read Saunders's (informal) lecture on the story. He recalls hearing his teacher Tobias Wolff read it aloud when he was first a grad student. Saunders claims that the best stories reveal 1) a "highly organized system" (which suggests a logical, comprehensive approach to the craft and 2) the work of intuition, something beyond explanation. Contradiction? His view is that if you follow your instincts the organization will lay itself out for you. But it's only your organization, since it could only be your story. And you have to hone your instincts to listen closely to your inner vibe, have to prioritize that. He admits elsewhere that writers may not be consciously aware of all the interlocking parts of their stories; but on some deeper level, the best stories reveal the author's tastes and preferences. But of course bad writers make bad choices, too, have bad instincts.
He tells us that Tolstoy thought Chekhov was a good writer and person but he needed to make clearer ideological commitments. But this is where Tolstoy sometimes got in trouble, pushing agendas in his weakest work. The strength of Chekhov is that he had no ideological agenda, he was exploring what it meant to be human.
PPS: The "beautiful" Pelagya is to Saunders both 1) evidence of Ivan's point about a silent underclass serving the upper classes' happiness and 2) evidence of happiness, of beauty. Is this a contradiction founded in patriarchy? You decide, because Chekhov ain't telling you, he's leaving it to your consideration. When Ivan and Burkin first see Pelagya they are sort of stunned by how lovely she is. Is this wrong of them to notice her beauty? Saunders says no. And I (a man, admittedly!) agree. But I don't agree every time I think of her. And that's good, and interesting, the power of story and ambiguity in story....more
“The Nose” by Nikolai Gogol is the fifth Russian story featured in George Saunders’s master class book on writing and reading, A Swim in a Pond in the“The Nose” by Nikolai Gogol is the fifth Russian story featured in George Saunders’s master class book on writing and reading, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. I am reading and reviewing each of the stories separately, and then “going to class” to see what Saunders--one of the greatest living short story writers and a great teacher--has to teach me about it.
“The Nose” (1836) is an absurd/strange and funny story that contrasts the previous four more realistic stories Saunders features. It’s about a lost nose, and you know, if a nose is big or long enough, it can be funny. Clowns have funny noses. And to lose it has added comic potential. A barber, Ivan Yakovlevich, finds a nose in the bread his wife has baked. She blames him for cutting it off one of his customers and he reluctantly agrees he must have done this. But they also agree he should get rid of it. So he does, with comic effects.
The same morning, Major Kovalyov awakens to discover that his nose is missing:
“But, to his unbounded astonishment, there was only a flat patch on his face where the nose should have been!”
He finds it, walking down the street:
“Strangely enough, I mistook it for a gentleman at first. Fortunately I had my spectacles with me so I could see it was really a nose.”
In addition, it appears the nose has achieved a higher rank than him! He is despondent. And later, when her] attempts to refasten it to his face, it refuses to cooperate!
One thing that runs (nose-running pun not initially intended) through this story is satire about the obsession with status in Russian society. But it appears there is no relation between the nose and ranking. Why did he lose it? Why does he get it back? No answers. It’s just funny.
He goes around town trying to post an ad in the paper, turning to the police, who actually return it (who says we should defund the police?!) and the next day goes back to the barber, who is discouraged from touching the nose while shaving him.
There’s a long comic tradition to which this story belongs. One that comes to mind that it may have in part inspired is Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” where a guy wakes up to find he has turned into a cockroach. There is a long Yiddish tradition of absurdist stories, jokes. Many comic writers use the absurd to comment on the absurdity of life. In Tristram Shandy there is a long disposition on noses, just for fun.
In the end, the narrator acknowledges that silly stories may have a limited educative role in Russian life. But as the narrator says in the end, “”Utterly non-sensical things happen in the world.”
So maybe there’s a couple points to consider: that 1) life can be strange--like people claiming Jewish lasers deliberately start forest fires, and 2) why not just be funny?
Steven Wright one-liners for consideration:
*My watch is three hours fast, and I can’t fix it, so I’m going to move to New York. *I broke a mirror in my house, and you’re supposed to get seven years bad luck, but my lawyer thinks he can get me five. *I hate when my foot falls asleep during the day, because that means it’s going to be up all night. *I’m going to court next week. I’ve been selected for jury duty. It’s kind of an insane case. 6000 ants dressed up as rice and robbed a Chinese restaurant …I don’t think they did it. *I was walking through the forest alone and a tree fell right in front of me. And I didn’t hear it.
I could read these all day, or better yet, hear him deliver these, dead-panned, on YouTube. Okay, so I did, after reading this story. Thinking of the absurdist tradition.
PS I also read what Saunders taught me in his essay, "The Door to the Truth Might be Strangeness," which it occurs to me opens the door for writers such as Saunders himself, who is also often a strange and comical writer. In an afterword he talks about a strange story he wrote that sort of took off on its own (il)logic in a way similar to the way Gogol's story seems to proceed; that is, kinda randomly. He notes the way things do not add up in the story--it's not logical or predictable, but as he says, this may be a truth about life and stories Gogol is underscoring for us.
Saunders talks about the Russian unreliable narrator skaz tradition, a written narrative that imitates a spontaneous oral account in its use of dialect, slang, and the peculiar idiom of that persona. Examples include Huckleberry Finn (1884) and J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951). But in general Saunders takes too much time trying to get deeper into the joke of the story. Sometimes explaining a joke is a bit boring. ...more
PS below after I read Saunders's analysis of the story.
“Master and Man” by Leo Tolstoy is the fourth Russian story featured in George Saunders’s mastePS below after I read Saunders's analysis of the story.
“Master and Man” by Leo Tolstoy is the fourth Russian story featured in George Saunders’s master class book on writing and reading, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. I am reading and reviewing each of the stories separately, and then “going to class” to see what Saunders--one of the greatest living short story writers and a great teacher--has to teach me about it.
So you all know of Tolstoy, even if you have never read one of his two masterpiece novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, which you should do, I say. He was a progressive reformer and was a moralist, a Christian with sort of Eastern religious leanings. A proponent of nonviolence who influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King. A vegetarian farmer and landowner. And one of the world’s greatest writers ever. I also have admired many of his short stories, but don’t recall having read this one. Which at my age doesn't mean I haven't!
“Master and Man” is a longish story that mainly involves two people--the wealthy landowner and "master" Vasili and his servant, serf Nikita. Vasili loves acquiring wealth and possessions, and insists on going out in a raging storm, accompanied by his servant, on a sled pulled by his horse, Mukhorty, to beat his competitors to make the best offer for a stand of woods, against all advice.
The whole story is a problematic ride into an increasingly terrible storm where (spoiler alert) almost predictable disaster ensues. Along the way we come to see that Nikita is far more reasonable and calm than his master. He’s the better “man” by far, but he does what he is told, just as does the horse, because Vasili is the “master.” So in this trip they get lost--whiteout storm--and repeatedly. They find an inn in a small town and are thus given a chance to stay there over night, but Vasili insists on going on, stupidly, selfishly. Then they get stuck, and decide to just huddle together and try to last the night in the blizzard with no shelter, something that neither the horse nor Nikita reasonably expect they can accomplish. Nor do we see it as possible.
But a (moral) transformation takes place in Vasili after he, freezing to death, tries to take off alone on the horse, but the horse circles back to the sled where Nikita is now also freezing to death. Suddenly Vasili, seeing Nikita at death’s door, decides to lie down over Nikita, whose life he saves.
“. . . Nikita was lying under him and he had got warm and was alive, and it seemed to him that he was Nikita and Nikita was he, and that he was not himself but he was in Nikita.”
In a lesser writer this climax might have proved to be a sentimental and moralistic moment, but I say Tolstoy earns genuine emotion with this transformation. You read it and tell me. He accomplishes the sense of authenticity by being mostly descriptive in the story, not making many moralistic pronouncements on the action. Oh, he is quietly critical of Vasili’s materialism, the greed that leads to the tragedy, but in this moment he reveals what true selflessness can be. Vasili just does it. People can change, Tolstoy asserts. Do I believe it, in these hard-hearted times? Tolstoy makes me believe it.
So it’s a kind of adventure story about the recklessness of rich and arrogant people ignoring the very real threat of the brutality of the natural world, as in Jack London’s “To Build a Fire," though London was no moralist; he’s just a realist who shows you human stupidity in the face of imminent danger, and I like his brutal lack of sentimentality. Tolstoy, a farmer, knows the brutality of nature, too, but he adds a spiritual dimension I also like very much. Maybe the title refers to God as the true “master” of man in the story. Or nature--that storm--as the true master of man who only thinks he can do anything he wants with his environment.
PS: I just read Saunders's wonderful 25 page analysis of why this story is so good. At one point he calls attention to four separate times we see frozen clothes on a clothesline, each time more ominous, each time a louder fire alarm portent of disaster. And Sanders's own explanation off why the transformation works and is believable he says more clearly than me, of course, that he does not talk about it, he just shows it.
Saunders thinks that one section of the story, that transformation, is one of the best things he has ever read and so I reread it now, slowly, and agree. He also notes a "quibble" he has with the fact that Nikita never gets to reflect later on Vasili and that night. He thinks it is class-ist of Tolstoy not to give Nikita the same interiority as he gave to Vasily. I was persuaded by that. A small mistake. But I still loved the story....more
“The Darling” by Anton Chekhov is the third Russian story featured in George Saunders’s master class book on writing and reading, A Swim in a Pond in “The Darling” by Anton Chekhov is the third Russian story featured in George Saunders’s master class book on writing and reading, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. I am reading and reviewing each of the stories separately, and then “going to class” to see what Saunders--one of the greatest living short story writers and a great teacher--has to teach me about it.
Chekhov is one of the greatest writers of all time--playwright, short story writer, critic--but I especially think his stories are amazing. He was part of what I think of as the invention of the short story in the nineteenth-century, which is also to admit that what was experimentation for him--and maybe also the close look he takes of a range of “ordinary” Russian lives--may be of less interest to many contemporary readers. But again, to me, story number three, “The Darling,” is wonderful for many reasons. The Goodreads description (above) says the story represents Chekhov’s “criticism” of women as if he were some kind of misogynist, (I understand several critics saw this story in this way, including Tolstoy) but I strongly disagree with this characterization of Olenka. I prefer to think of the story as (in part) social criticism of the low expectations for women in nineteenth-century Russia.
But I in no way think Chekhov is criticizing Olenka; that’s not what Chekhov does. He makes complex characters come to life in all their richness and foibles. He’s a humanist, which is to say he cares very much for the people about which he tells stories. He loves them. He’s more likely to laugh lightly at them or to tear up in sympathy for them.
Olenka lives in a house she inherits when her ailing father dies. She has a huge heart, and thus people nickname her “darling.” She cares about others and wants to help them. And so after many years the plump and positive Olga marries the grumpy theater director Kukin. She seems to adopt his interests and opinions in the process, and fails to see his shortcomings, his negativity. We support her approach to him and can see why everyone might call her darling.
When Kukin dies, she meets another man, Vasily, the merchant of a local timber yard, whom she admires and similarly adopts his interests and opinions, until he, too, dies! Maybe we are a little troubled now that she seems to love people in this selfless way; we begin to be troubled by it a bit. Then she meets Smirnan, a vet who is estranged from his wife; they begin an affair, but he is critical of her adopting his views in front of others. He leaves for military service, and when he is gone her cat seems to assert itself as a love object (as pets do for many people), but Olenka wants more than a cat for an object of her love.
But instead of Smirnan dying while away, as expect, he returns, announcing to Olenka that he has sort of reconciled with his wife, and so Olenka invites them to move in with her! The wife moves away at one point, but Olga has developed a close relationship to the couple’s teenaged son, Sasha.
in my first draft of my review I said "The story ends without a clear resolution," but Sanders helps me see it better that Sasha resents the kind of smothering attention Olenka brings to him. He needs space! It appears he will be staying with Smirnan and Olenka, but we see some of the limitations of this way of loving for Sasha, and also Olenka.
Doormat, you say of Olenka? Fair. Over-functioning? Okay, sure. But I tend to think of her as selfless, in a good and bad sense. She’s admirably selfless in that she cares for most everyone she meets; she’s also woefully selfless in that she is kind of a zelig; she has little personality outside of others. She has few opinions for herself. She lives for others. I think this is a characteristic not confined to the nineteenth-century! And can be associated with the passivity that patriarchal society constructs for women. But as Saunders reminds me, this kind of approach to relationships isn't confined to women. I liked the story as a way to reflect on this twin consideration of “selflessness.” And I do think Chekhov cares for Olenka, who he breathes life into.
Saunders says in his analysis of the loving of Olenka that she has a good heart, but fails to see herself in relationship with others. He also helps me appreciate that Chekhov shows me her way fo being with others from a variety of angles, with a variety of people. We get to consider what it means to really be in a healthy relationship with others. The closer I look at the story, the better it gets for me....more
“The Singers” by Ivan Turgenev is the second story that George Saunders explores in his book on reading and writing fiction, A Swim in the Pond, and I“The Singers” by Ivan Turgenev is the second story that George Saunders explores in his book on reading and writing fiction, A Swim in the Pond, and I decided to respond briefly to it without benefit of his analysis. The story was published in Turgenev’s short story collection, A Sportsman’s Sketches (1852). Turgenev was a master of realism, much loved as a chronicler of everyday life in Russia. This story focuses on rich characterization and description of peasant life.
The location is bleak and grimy and hot summer Kolotovka, particularly the Corner Pub owned by Nikolai Ivanovich, where an apparently spontaneous singing contest occurs between Yashka the Turk and the contractor from Zhizdra. Other characters enliven the scene, such as Blinker and Booby, the Wild Gentleman. No singing--and very little dialogue, little “voice”--happens in the first half of the story, which is taken up with description of the bleak town and its lively peasant characters as a kind of set-up for the competition.
The contractor is an impressive technician, but Yashka sings with deep passion and soul, of grief:
“A warmhearted, truthful Russian soul rang and breathed in it and fairly clutched you by the heart, clutched straight at your Russian heartstrings. The song expanded and went flowing on. Yashka was evidently overcome by ecstasy: he was no longer diffident; he gave himself up entirely to his feeling of happiness; his voice no longer trembled—it quivered, but with the barely perceptible inner quivering of passion which pierces like an arrow into the hearer’s soul. . .”
The Russian peasantry, the Russian soul, contains multitudes, but the heart and soul of it all is in this comparison, where passion and depth win over technical expertise. And this point is mirrored in Turgenev's own stylistic choices, his focus on atmosphere and affectionate portraiture over structure.
The narrator is a kind of journalist and a “sportsman,” moved very much by the scene, which is increasingly drunken, so he sleeps in a barn for some time, awakening to view the pub in the completion of the revelry, in which all the dismal scene of poverty had been transformed into the joy of Russian song. However, in a coda, a boy yells for his missing brother, who promises his father wants him home to thrash him. Back to reality. A midsummer night’s dream comes back to earth. The ending elevates the somewhat mundane story to a kind of realistic realization of the peasant life in this village. It feels like magic, balancing the music with the mundane morning after.
PS: After this review I read Saunders's pretty extensive commentary on this story. He likes it more than his students. One thing he says is that the boys in the epilogue are actually kind of singing to each other: "Rohhhhh-bert!" "Wha-at?" in the dark, paralleling the two singers in the bar, though the end of this song exchange is less joy than an admission that some songs lead to violence, sadness, sometimes. Saunders also calls attention to all the binaries, the opposites, that happen in the story. Neither of those things had I noticed, cool....more
When you type in the title Lenin's Embalmers here you come up with two books first. One is this book, a play which I listened to, a production by the When you type in the title Lenin's Embalmers here you come up with two books first. One is this book, a play which I listened to, a production by the LA Theater Works, a comedy about two Jewish scientists faced with a demand by the then dictator and monstrous murderer Stalin that they make it possible to preserve Lenin or. . . face the Gulag. And/or death. But the description of the play includes the mention that this play is based on actual historical events. So, the second description of this title is the following, referencing the author:
"Professor Ilya Zbarski mummified Lenin two months after his death to maintain the Soviet founder's body in perpetuity. Between 1924 and the fall of communism in 1991, hundreds of millions of visitors paid their respects to the embalmed bodies of Lenin and later, Stalin. This text reveals the story of Zbarski, his family and of those who worked in the mausoleum laboratory."
The play is sort of "madcap," which is to say manic, played for laughs, where two Russian Jews--knowing Stalin was not actually devoted, let's say, to Russians who also happened to be Jews--are told to do something wild by Stalin or else. The play begins with a kind of joke, the kind of joke mad about ruthless dictators:
Three guys are in the gulag.
#1: Why are you in here? #2: I said Zbarski was a revolutionary. How about you? #1: I said Zbarski was a counter-revolutionary. They turn to the third guy. #1: What about you? #3: I'm Zbarski.
So this is in a science theater list produced by the LATW, and yeah, they embalmed him, though other means of preservation were discussed at the time. I thought it was pretty funny and a little scary, knowing millions of people who had been killed or starved at this monster's hands. A man who has been consistently defended and mourned by a certain aspect of the Russian population to this day: He made the trains run on time. I listened to it looking for insight into monstrously murderous Russian dictators. I mean, in case we ever see one again. Trump says Putin isn't a dictator, that he has never done anything wrong, he always tells the truth, and you have to believe him. I mean, these are the leaders of major world countries! Why would they lie?!...more
I knew most of this basic information, but it is a good and succinct introduction to Putin's rise from KGB thug to dictator, documenting some of the jI knew most of this basic information, but it is a good and succinct introduction to Putin's rise from KGB thug to dictator, documenting some of the journalists and other detractors who opposed him, many of whom he had killed. The criminal enterprise that is running Russia now depends on disinformation and repression, and we can see it happening there even as we recall how Putin and his lackeys influenced right-wing American media (hello, Tucker!) and an American President they had been grooming as their puppet for decades. Cunningham makes it clear that Obama and Bush were also misled by Putin and underestimated the depths of his dictatorial intent.
Chronologically we get a kind of biography of Putin, some of it based on what we now think we know, almost all of it denied by him, and takes us through the Trump regime and the pandemic. We learn of Chechnya and Ukraine and so much more, so it's good to have an historical perspective on current events. I liked the pace, the amount of information and illustration style and recommend it for those seeking a concise and engaging approach. ...more
“I have always been ridiculous, and I have known it, perhaps, from the hour I was born. Perhaps from the time I was seven years old I knew I was ridic“I have always been ridiculous, and I have known it, perhaps, from the hour I was born. Perhaps from the time I was seven years old I knew I was ridiculous. Afterwards I went to school, studied at the university, and, do you know, the more I learned, the more thoroughly I understood that I was ridiculous.”
Thanks to Ostrova for urging me to reread this story which, like “White Knights,” is nothing like the deeper, darker great Dostoevsky novels I love. This is a simple short story, which I listened to three times, each time appreciating it a bit more. I kind of associate the story with his “The Underground Man,” both first person stories that are more overtly philosophical, though “Ridiculous Man” has a more straightforward moral.
“Underground Man” is sometimes identified as the first existentialist novel, whereas “Ridiculous Man’ takes on nihilism, a favorite punching bag for the author. Albert Camus has said that there is only one serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide” (Myth of Sisyphus). The Ridiculous Man also understands this question of whether “to be or not to be,” since he has come to believe in nothing, and so he comes to view suicide as his most logical path.
"Perhaps it was owing to the terrible misery that was growing in my soul through something which was of more consequence than anything else about me: that something was the conviction that had come upon me that nothing in the world mattered."
In a dream he commits suicide, and encounters a little girl who seems to guide him to a different way, a way out of no way, let’s say. When he awakes, he understands: “Only he who sows kindness and not indifference is capable to become happy.” ...more
You're going to guess I read this today because I was thinking of the current dictator of Russia? Hmm, just a coincidence. Just in case anyone is readYou're going to guess I read this today because I was thinking of the current dictator of Russia? Hmm, just a coincidence. Just in case anyone is reading this or following me on Goodreads. . . hey, I'm just reading a book here! And no, have not yet seen the movie, but this is very accomplished, crazy, tragic-comic, and though I had read about Stalin from time to time over the years, I only had recalled that everything was not surprisingly repressed, there were purges of the top rings of Soviet power accusing people of murder. The authors subtitle this "A True Soviet Story," but they also write:
“. . . the authors would like to make clear that their imaginations were hardly stretched in the creation of this story, since it would have been impossible for them to come up with anything half as insane as the real events surrounding the death of Stalin.”
So I know there is no definitive account of the death of Stalin, so much of this is speculation, invented, fiction, but it has a basis in some known events and some things culled together from historical sources. But it is an amazingly well told and frightening and horrific tale of a dictatorship and terror and the suppression of truth by all official channels. It is great comics storytelling that may make you want to delve deeper into the story. I will look into other reviews reflecting greater knowledge of Russian history than I have to see if it is more than just a crazy tale. I am sure just as American history only reveals the truth (see The People's History of The US by Zinn), Russian history books must tell what really happened, right? You mean the suppression of truth I understand is happening in Russia right now has always been a little problem there (and everywhere)? But let me take a chance here: In this historical moment, I stand with Ukraine....more
An 1848 short story within a story by Fyodor Dostoevsky about a quiet loner whose housekeeper, Agrafena, persuades him to take on a lodger in a spare
An 1848 short story within a story by Fyodor Dostoevsky about a quiet loner whose housekeeper, Agrafena, persuades him to take on a lodger in a spare room. The man is an ex-soldier, poor, suffering, a drunkard and also, as it turns out, a thief; an old coat from his landlord has gone missing. Border Astafy Ivanovich, hearing the story, tells his own story of a man named Yemelyan Ilyitch—an “honest thief” he once knew and helped. The landlord is doubtful that such a person actually exists:
“To my thinking there is no vermin in the world worse than a thief. Another takes what you can spare, but a thief steals the work of your hands, the sweat of your brow, your time . . . ”
Astafy encourages Yemelyan to give up his drinking throughout the story, but it’s a struggle. Then Astafy’s riding breeches are stolen, and Yemelyan is the chief suspect. Accused, feeling guilty but in denial, Yemelyan becomes ill, drinks to excess. But in decline, he tells the truth to Astafy, and he gives him his only remaining possession of any worth, an old coat. This story is told to the landlord. What’s the point? Well, you can take different views of crime, of poverty, of human nature. Sad and sweet early work. ...more
White Nights is a sweet and somewhat sentimental short story by Fyodor Dostovesky, who is known for plumbing the dark corners of the soul. The subtitlWhite Nights is a sweet and somewhat sentimental short story by Fyodor Dostovesky, who is known for plumbing the dark corners of the soul. The subtitle of the story is “A sentimental story from the diary of a dreamer.” Our sad and lonely hero meets just by chance a woman who is crying, reaches out to her, befriends her, and falls quickly in love with her:
“I am a dreamer; I have so little real life that I look upon such moments as this now, as so rare, that I cannot help going over such moments again in my dreams. I shall be dreaming of you all night, a whole week, a whole year.”
The anguishing problem here is that the woman is engaged to another man.; still, they end up spending four evenings getting to know each other. After one of these nights he pronounces:
“It was a wonderful night, such a night as it is only possible when we are young, dear reader. The sky was so starry, so bright that, looking at it, one could not help asking oneself whether ill-humoured and capricious people could live under such a sky. This is a youthful question too, dear reader, very youthful, but may the lord put it more frequently into your heart!”
And as this is a telling of the story as we look back on it, he admits, “And you know this fantastic world of fairyland is so easily, so naturally created! As though it were not a delusion!”
We can see the heartbreak ahead for the young man, but would we wish otherwise for him (or us), given the opportunity for connection? Maybe don’t read this next paragraph if you don’t want this 1848 story spoiled for you.
Our heartbreaker tells him, finally:
“If and when you fall in love, may you be happy with her. I don't need to wish her anything, for she'll be happy with you. May your sky always be clear, may your dear smile always be bright and happy, and may you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of one's life?”
I think we might just hope more for the poor guy, but we consider this story we can be satisfied that he renders these two convincingly. And what I like is that it is a different register than that of the great novels. A tale of unrequited love in all its sweetness and anguish.
Bésy (Russian: Бесы, singular Бес, bés) is the original title of one of four masterworks by Fyodor Dostoevsky, published in 1872. Demons is the title Bésy (Russian: Бесы, singular Бес, bés) is the original title of one of four masterworks by Fyodor Dostoevsky, published in 1872. Demons is the title translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (1994) I read while listening (for 29 hours!) over the past month, off and on, to another translation. Some translate the title as Devils, or The Possessed, and they all convey different connotations, of course. The “demons,” Pevear and Volokhonsky see as better suited to these purportedly “demonic” ideas--nihilism, atheism--that Dostoevsky saw undermining his country in the mid-nineteenth century.
Dostoevsky alludes to the episode of the Exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac in the Gospel of Luke as the inspiration for his title: "Exactly the same thing happened in our country: the devils went out of the Russian man and entered into a herd of swine. . . " Near the conclusion of the book Stepan Verkhovensky, the unwitting perpetrator of unrest and chaos through his early ideas, echoes this story as a cautionary commentary on the political climate of the mid nineteenth century Russia.
The trigger for this book came from Dostoevsky’s shock at the murder of a man by his fellow revolutionaries. It was a sensational story in all the papers. It kind of reminded me of how the Weatherman bombing of a building in the sixties--and the killing of a man--led to some remorse about ideological violence. Some critics at the time and still now see Dostoevsky as both politically and spiritually conservative, but I think it’s a little more complicated than that. This is not a political screed, nor didactic. There's as Mikhail Bakhtin said a "polyphony" of voices exploring cultural ideas in this and every Dostoevsky novel, While some characters that are admired in his books do come to faith, Dostoevsky himself was filled with anguish and doubt. A gambler, a drinker, and an epileptic given to visions, he once said he was “possessed by this idea of God he could not let go of.”
Dostoevsky had also been, as a younger man, a revolutionary thinker, was jailed for it, and was even put before a firing squad for it before he was suddenly pardoned. I’m reminded of Bob Dylan’s reflective line: “I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now.” Maybe part of Dostoevsky’s shock at the killing was informed by the sense that it could have been one of his own group that had committed this act.
So this is a long and somewhat meandering book about a fictional town descending into chaos as it becomes the focal point of an attempted revolution, orchestrated by master conspirator Pyotr Verkhovensky, who was influenced by his father’s political writings. The aristocrat Nikolai Stavrogin is the central character throughout, a nihilistic upper-class, completely unempathetic anarchist; at one point he reveals he has sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl, Matryosha, a chapter of the book that was for a long time censored as too shocking, and it is difficult to read, but it is at the heart of the nihilistic immorality Dostoevsky decries in the book.
Where’s the balance of light and dark in the book? Well, it is narrated by a secondary character, Anton Lavrentyevich G—v with Dostovesky’s characteristic philosophical insight, psychological acumen, and dark satirical humor. This is the darkest, most difficult work I have read from the master, Dostoevsky--violent and grim, born of his almost despairing concerns for his country--so there is almost no one to admire, except maybe Ivan Shatov, who represents an image of Dostoevsky’s idea of an authentically Russian culture growing out of the best of its people's inherent spirituality and goodness.
This is a masterpiece, one of four--at least--he wrote, and while I prefer all of the other three, I appreciate the passion in it, the sense of tragedy, filled as it is with violence, abuse, madness (always madness in Dostoevsky) and political unrest. And humor! In a time of twenty-first nihilism--the embrace of conspiracy theories, the murder of children in schools, the gang killings in my own Chicago, the climate denialism as the world burns up, the attack on the US Capitol by ill-informed “leaders,” waging sexual and political power, feeding vulnerable folks with lies, I feel a sense of prophecy in this spiritual and political allegory. ...more
"During the terrible years of the Yekhov terror I spent seventeen months in the prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone ‘identified’ me. Then a wo"During the terrible years of the Yekhov terror I spent seventeen months in the prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone ‘identified’ me. Then a woman with lips blue with cold who was standing behind me, and of course had never heard of my name, came out of the numbness which affected us all and whispered in my ear—(we all spoke in whispers there): ‘Could you describe this?’ I said, ‘I can!’ Then something resembling a smile slipped over what had once been her face"—Requiem, Anna Akhmatova
Akhmatova writes of the city, her ultimate muse, “We are inseparable, / My shadow is on your walls.”
“The white night of June 24, 1942, Petersburg, the city is in ruins”--Akhmatova
“The real- not the calendar- / Twentieth Century draws near”--Akhmatova
The autobiographical fifteen-poem cycle, worked on for decades and was intended (with Requiem, I think) by Anna Akhmatova, as her major poetic statement. Both deal with the siege of Leningrad, where Russia defended itself against Nazi Germany, though much of the wonderful city was destroyed and tens of thousands of people were killed, many starved. One of the great tragedies of that war. The poem AA says was intended for those who were there, those that died, those that survived, and not for posterity, so it has lots of references that I needed help to understand. Many literary and cultural references, lots of epigraphs, inside information. The poem has a formal cast, an ode to the city and its people, and elegy, a kind of dirge. Some of AA’s poetry is light and breezy, early love poems, when she was in the avant garde, going to read at the Stray Dog, but this is opera. I heard that she initially conceived of it as the libretto to a tragic ballet on the topic of her much loved city.
The poem tells the story of a mother’s (AA’s) vigil waiting in line outside Leningrad Prison every day for seventeen months-for news of her son Lev’s fate. But then AA broadens to express the collective grief for all the millions vanished under the Stalinist regime, and those killed or starved during the siege. It was dedicated to all those friends and countrymen that died at Leningrad (St. Petersburg). Though it was not published until after her death, Akhmatova began it in 1940, and proceeded to work on it for twenty years, considering it the major work of her life. Today, it is one of her longest and most well known works, and regarded as one of the finest poems of the twentieth century.
The poem also features the Fountain House, where for many years AA lived, and where she composed much of Poem Without a Hero. So she looks at herself and her friends and Russia at various stages as she was living in the house/museum. Here’s a film biography of her re: the house:
The Don runs softly in the night, The yellow crescent walks inside. It enters, with its hat askance – And sees a shadow in a trance. It’s a woman, who needs help, It’s a woman, by herself, Her spouse - dead, her son – in jail. I am she. Please, say a prayer.
Another excerpt:
the year 1913. A lyrical digression: a final memory of Tsarskkoye Selo. The wind, recalling or prophesying, mutters:
Bonfires in Petersburg, warm Christmas, carriages fall from the bridges, and my mourning city drifts, floating from its graves along the Neva or against the current toward a secret assignation. Blackening at the Galernaya arch, a weathervane cries shrilly in the Summer Garden, chilling vividly a silver moon freezing the centuryÕs silver eyelidsÑ on every roadway, near each threshold, a shadow is approaching slowly, wind rips posters from the walls, smoke perches, dancing on the houses, and the graveyards smell of lilacs lurking unaccountably, a humming . . . muffled, vaguely audible, almost beyond rumor, barely reaching out to touch the ear, buried in a snowdrift by the Neva like a man who does not wish to know that he is mirrored by the terrifying night a human frenzy on a famous embankment this approaches, not the calendar’s, reality’s its own, its Twentieth Century. Now leave quickly through the Cameron Galley and the icy, hidden garden, where the waterfall is quiet, and the nine still greet me happily as you welcomed me beyond the island and the garden, we will greet each otherÕs eyes serenely, lucidly again and will you say the word that conquers death that answers for my life?
Another excerpt from Poem Without a Hero
Epilogue To my city
A white night. 24 June. The year 1942. My city in ruins. From the Harbor to Smolney, everything visible as in a grave. In places old fires from a conflagration are still burning out. In Sheremetev Garden lindens are flowering and a nightingale chanting. One third-floor window (facing a crippled maple) is blown out, from it a black emptiness. From the Kronstadt quarter, a rumble of heavy guns. But in general, stillness.
I finally finished this book in the summer of 2023, taking Saunders's "Master class" on writing, reading and life, making use of four Russian Master sI finally finished this book in the summer of 2023, taking Saunders's "Master class" on writing, reading and life, making use of four Russian Master short story writers from the nineteenth century. He's been teaching this class for many years, and he finally decided to make the class public through this book. I read all seven short stories, reviewing them separately and then enjoying Saunders teaching me about the way he sees each story works, each one of them a masterpiece to Saunders.
The stories in the Russian short story master class:
Chekhov's "In the Cart" Turgenev's "The Singers" Chekhov's "The Darling" Tolstoy's "Master and Man" Gogol's "The Nose" Chekhov's "Gooseberries" Tolstoy's "Alyosha the Pot"
I also found each one of them masterpieces, unforgettable. i reviewed each story on Goodreads separately, then added comments after reading Saunders's essay on each story. He also has some writing exercises at the end, and a reflection on fiction for making your life and the world (slightly) better. He admits that Stalin murdered more than 20 million after the greatest literary period in Russian history in which these writers lived and were lauded by Russian society, so he realizes he can't claim that literature will automatically change the political landscape, or make all people better. Nor did it make Hitler and his boys--murders of millions as well, and lovers of literature and music and art--more humane.
But those of who love reading deeply, those of us who write feelingly and complexly, those of us who teach reading and writing and passionately share books with others, parents and friends and teachers and librarians, know very well that stories can sometimes change lives, even in small ways. It can make you see things from a range of perspectives. It can make you read carefully for "truths" and complexity and and gray areas and lies.
PS: I am doing all this reading and learning about stories in part in conjunction with a project: To collect, edit/revise all of my own short stories (in part with the help of my trusty assistant and fine young writer in her own right, [and daughter] L). I am retyping each story, revising/editing as I/we go. Several of these stories were published, some of them decades ago, so will eventually make them available on a website to be named later. I am also commenting on what I can recall about the construction of each story--including origins, influences--as I recall them. I received an MFA (my advisor was short story master Stu Dybek of Chicago), featuring four of these stories, long ago. My daughter and I are also both writing (parallel) stories this summer based on our trip to the Southland to complete our having visited all fifty US States! The stories touch on our encounters with bears, alligators and sharks, among other potentially scary things....more
“Everything is for you: My daily prayer And the thrilling fever of the insomniac, And the blue fire of my eyes, And my poems, that white flock.”
I am in “Everything is for you: My daily prayer And the thrilling fever of the insomniac, And the blue fire of my eyes, And my poems, that white flock.”
I am in the process of reading The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova, whose work spanned much of the twentieth century, creating both an intimate portrait of her own life and loves and a kind of anguished history of her beloved Russia, where she remains herself beloved. Her work ranges from a kind of formal lyrical approach in her love poetry and in contrast, more direct emotional poetry about the great world wars that were in part fought on Russian soil, and the reign of Stalinist terror.
“Let me bestow upon the world Something more imperishable than love.”
The poems in this, her third volume, both precede and encompass her experiences with the first World War. During this time she was married to poet Nikolay Gumilyov, divorcing in 1917, and so poems in the collection feature the separations and demise and divorce from him, and also her love of other men--Nikolay Nedoboro, Boris Anrep-- as Gumilyov was often gone from Russia, though he was also unfaithful to her.
“Memory of love, you are painful!”
“Those unkissed lips, unsmiling eyes Will never return to me.”
“Forgive me that I felt forsaken, That grief and angst was all I knew. Forgive me that I kept mistaking Too many other men for you.”
But the anguish here in this still popular volume is not just about lost love but also captures the dread and gloom of the early days of the war and what it did to her and the Russian people.
On August 1, 1914, Russia was at war, and: “We aged a hundred years And this happened in a single hour.”
“Warm red liquid sprinkled the trampled fields.”
“I no longer smile. A freezing wind chills my lips, One less hope becomes one more song.”
“The sunless, gloomy gardens And barely audible, the Muse’s voice.”
She prays that “the stormcloud over darkened Russia Might become a cloud of glorious rays.”
In this collection lyrical images reflect emotional states, the battle of love, the battle of war:
“But there, where a few scraggly birches Cling to the windows and rustle dryly-- A dark read wreath of roses twines"
Here's a whole poem:
In Memoriam, July 19, 1914
but this time translated by Stephen Edgar
We aged a hundred years and this descended In just one hour, as at a stroke. The summer had been brief and now was ended; The body of the ploughed plains lay in smoke.
The hushed road burst in colors then, a soaring Lament rose, ringing silver like a bell. And so I covered up my face, imploring God to destroy me before battle fell.
And from my memory the shadows vanished Of songs and passions—burdens I'd not need. The Almighty bade it be—with all else banished— A book of portents terrible to read....more
“All ten years of my trepidations, Each and every sleepless night, I placed them all in a quiet word And I voiced it – in vain, unsure. You walked off and“All ten years of my trepidations, Each and every sleepless night, I placed them all in a quiet word And I voiced it – in vain, unsure. You walked off and with order restored, My soul was empty and pure.
- From "Confusion", Anna Akhmatova, Rosary
I am reading, in 2021, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova, translated by Judith Hemschemeyer, and I have already read and reviewed Evening. As I read Chetki, or Rosary (or Beads), her second book, I also have the translation by Andrey Kneller, for comparison, for fun, both good. Rosary is one of her most popular collections. After its publication, she became one of Russia’s most beloved poets, and in many ways remains that way today. Rosary is also one of the pre-WWI volumes, mostly short lyrical poems about love, descriptive and passionate, the emotions of love and anguish in a heightened, almost classical state and form.
She writes here of her anguish:
“Let love become the gravestone That lies upon my life.”
She writes of “the poisoner, love.”
During the time Akhmatova wrote these poems she married (in 1910) Gumilev and gave birth to their only son, Lev. They divorced in 1918 but he would always have an impact on her life and work until his untimely death. In August 1914, Germany declared war on Russia ending, among many other things, this period of poetry for her.
But before that, it was lyrical images:
“And the voices of the mournful violins Sing through the drifting smoke.”
And she writes of other men, such as the symbolist poet Alexander Blok. I prefer the later poetry of Akhmatova, but this had such an impact on Russian poetry, spurring many imitators, so I was glad to read it....more
I am, beginning on Christmas, 2020, to read the complete poems, book by book, of the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, whom I knew as a poet when I wI am, beginning on Christmas, 2020, to read the complete poems, book by book, of the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, whom I knew as a poet when I was young but really delved into when I went to Russia in 1991 with a group of high school students for a kind of writing/cultural exchange. We took the train from Moscow to Leningrad for a couple days, visited many of the key tourist attractions, but one thing I did to prepare for this was to read the poetry of Akhmatova, paying particular attention to her war poetry, specifically her poetry of WWII, focused on the siege of Leningrad.
The trip included a visit to the Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery and two or three Russian Orthodox Cathedrals, all of which was very memorable and moving for me., in part I suppose because we visited there on Easter. Of her poetry, Akhmatova said, “I never stopped writing poems. In them is the link with time, with the new life of my people. When I wrote them, I believed in the resounding rhythms reflected in the heroic history of my country.”
Evening is the first book the young Akhmatova published, in 1911, at the age of 22, but it was both critically and popularly received. The focus in these poems is love, though other subjects are included, of course, such as nature, but it is tempting to see the work as emerging out of her tempestuous, tumultuous relationship with her first husband, Nikolay Gumilyov. It’s a book about what she called “meetings,” by which she meant emotional encounters, and a range of emotions we associate with love. The critic Korney Chukovsky said that a couple generations of Russians grew up and fell in love to the accompaniment of her poetry.
“I’m carrying a bouquet of white gillyflowers. In them there’s a secret, latent flame for the one Who, taking the blossoms from my timid hands, Will touch my warm palm.”
“The blood beats ever stronger In a body wounded by desire.”
“First as a serpent, it’ll cast its spell Next to your heart, curled up. Then it’ll come as a dove as well, Cooing for days nonstop.”
And of jealousy?
“I keep the candle burning in my window til dawn And I don’t long for anyone But I don’t want, don’t want, don’t want To know how they kiss.”
“He loved three things in life: Evensong, white peacocks And old maps of America. He hated it when children cried He hated tea with raspberry jam And women’s hysterics . . . And I was his wife.”
The Complete Poems was translated by Judith Hemschemeyer, who devoted seventeen years of her life to the unenviable task of taking her rich lyrical Russian language and conveying it into the more prosaic English. But this is now the definitive Russian to English edition. I can't read the original (though I have two record albums of her reading her own work that were given to me as gifts when I was there that are priceless, amazing), but the poetry is terrific.
Of these early poems Akhmatova was to write: “These naïve poems by a frivolous girl for some reason were reprinted thirteen times [...] And they came out in several translations. The girl herself (as far as I recall) did not foresee such a fate for them and used to hide the issues of the journals in which they were first published under the sofa cushions." ...more
Well! I have been familiar with this over 200 page Russian narrative poem--one of the jewels of Russian literature written by one of the greatest of RWell! I have been familiar with this over 200 page Russian narrative poem--one of the jewels of Russian literature written by one of the greatest of Russian authors--but don't recall reading the whole of it before now. It may be best known in the west because of Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin. But I know it is something very familiar still to Russian schoolchildren, the story of an aloof upper class man who spurns the advances of young provincial Tatyana only to find her later in life, making advances on her, who is now very different and happily married. So he finds love, the transformative power of love, too late, alas, but hey, you don't exactly get to love and sympathize with the guy, really.
I liked it, though I am not a huge fan of "verse novels," given the strictures that call attention to the language. Pushkin wrote the whole thing in alexandrines, with rhyming couplets. Add to that the limitation that I am reading it in translation, hearing all the hubbub about how Pushkin in particular is impossible to translate. See Manny's review where he basically just posts Vladimir Nabokov's poem about that impossibility, though if you see Jim Elkins's very long review you will see that Nabokov himself wrote a translation of the 200 page poem that with footnotes is more than FOUR VOLUMES, 1,200 pages!!!? Literary scholars, hmmph, they can be obsessively crazy. But hey, the poem is great, published in the early nineteenth century in serial form initially, and what do I know about this translation by Mary Hobson versus any other one? I don't know the original, but I thought it was very readable and witty and well done....more
The Reduced Shakespeare Company performed a shortened version of Uncle Vanya on their BBC radio show, which contained only three lines:
Are you Uncle VThe Reduced Shakespeare Company performed a shortened version of Uncle Vanya on their BBC radio show, which contained only three lines:
Are you Uncle Vanya? I am. [Gunshot sounds] Ouch!
“One hundred years from now, the people who come after us, for whom our lives are showing the way--will they think of us kindly? Will they remember us with a kind word? I wish to God I could think so.”
I listened to an LA Theater Works Production featuring Stacy Keach as Uncle Vanya, translated/adapted by David Mamet. The play portrays the visit of an elderly professor and his glamorous younger wife, Yelena, from Moscow to their rural estate. Two friends—Vanya, brother of the professor's late first wife, who has long managed the estate, and Astrov, the local doctor—both fall for the (younger) Yelena, bemoaning their aging and boring country life.
Vanya: You’ve known me for a long time. Tell me, how have I changed?
Astove: You were once young, and now you are old.
And another great exchange:
Helena: What a fine day! Not too hot. [A pause.]
Vanya: A fine day to hang oneself.
Astrov announces he plans to sell the estate, putting things in turmoil. Among other things, Vanya tries to shoot Astrov, and Vanya later considers suicide, until Astrov changes his mind and his daughter talks him out of it
Sonia: What can we do? We must live our lives. Yes, we shall live, Uncle Vanya. We shall live through the long procession of days before us, and through the long evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials that fate imposes on us; we shall work for others without rest, both now and when we are old; and when our last hour comes we shall meet it humbly, and there, beyond the grave, we shall say that we have suffered and wept, that our life was bitter, and God will have pity on us. Ah, then dear, dear Uncle, we shall see that bright and beautiful life; we shall rejoice and look back upon our sorrow here; a tender smile—and—we shall rest. I have faith, Uncle, fervent, passionate faith.
One of the four great Chekhov plays, including The Seagull, Three Sisters, and The Seagull. Focusing on character and raising questions versus plot and action. I love me some Chekhov.
**Uncle Vanya and Zombies by Anton Chekhov and Markus Wessendorf, a post-apocalyptic stage adaptation of Chekhov's play with the following premise:
After a major zombie outbreak on the island of Oʻahu, a television network has turned Kennedy Theatre into a studio for their new reality show Theatre Masterpieces and Zombies. The major challenge for the contestants on this show is to survive their performance of a classic play while fending off zombies released onto the stage by the popular host. After the success of last month's The Tempest and Zombies, tonight's show will feature a classic example of Russian Realism, Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya (1897).
My own idea for a contemporary parody is Uncle Vanya and Cellphones, where we see all these amusingly self-absorbed people talking and constantly peering into their phones and commenting endlessly on their boring lives and what they see on their phones. ...more
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