Chekhov 2004. Chekhov Special Issues in Two Volumes. Volume 1: Aspects of Chekhov by Joe Andrew , Robert Reid Chekhov 2004. Chekhov Special Issues in Two Volumes. Volume 2: Chekhov and Others by Joe Andrew , Robert Reid (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 711 absence or separateness of Russian history. And even stereotypes change colour over the period, becoming more or less essentialist depending on the surrounding frame of reference. It isnot fornothing that the book aptly ends with a discussion of Saltykov's equivocal assessment ofWestern Europe, as Offord draws a rich and nuanced picture of a complex and ambiguous relationship, which continues to haunt Russia to thisday. Scrupulously researched and eminently readable (in some cases more so than its sources), enhanced, furthermore,with helpful historical and biograph ical backgrounders, this study should attract the interestof both specialists and the general public. Through this idiosyncratic lens, itoffersan invaluable view onto the intellectual history of nineteenth-century Russia. School ofLanguages,LinguisticsandFilm Andreas Schonle Queen Mary, UniversityofLondon Andrew, Joe and Reid, Robert (eds). Chekhov2004. ChekhovSpecial Issues in Two Volumes.Volume 1:Aspects ofChekhov.Essays in Poetics, 30. EIP (EIP Publications No. 10),Keele, Autumn 2005. [x] + v + 253 pp. Notes. ?24.00 (paperback). Andrew, Joe and Reid, Robert (eds). Chekhov2004. ChekhovSpecial Issues in Two Volumes.Volume2: Chekhovand Others.Essays inPoetics, 31. EIP (EIP Publications No. 11),Keele, Autumn 2006. [x] + vi + 368 pp. Notes. ?24.00 (paperback). The thirty-three essays in this two-volume edition derive from papers read at two conferences held inOxford in September 2004 ? 'One Hundred Years of Chekhov' and 'Chekhov's Legacy inRussian Culture of the 20th Century and Beyond'. As the editors note in their brief prefaces, the topics range widely from close readings of individual short stories to analysis ofChekhov's drama as text, performance and film adaptation. The second volume con siders Chekhov in relation to his predecessors and contemporaries, and the appropriation of his legacy both in Russia and beyond. The disparate articles in this loosely-linked collection are held together by one common thread ? the art of Anton Chekhov. As with many miscellanies, the individual items vary in style and content from thepedestrian and predictable to the stimulating and original. In the first volume there are several useful and thoughtfulpieces. Thus, Andrzej Dudek offers a wide-ranging discussion of themotif of insanity inChekhov's works, Wolf Schmid demonstrates the ambiguity of 'change' at the end of 'Dama s sobachkoi' and 'Nevesta', and Laurence Senelick evaluates various produc tions of Chekhov's plays, while observing that, 'in the English-speaking theatre, dramatists remote from Chekhov's sensibility, language and concerns, such as Pam Gems, Edward Bond, David Mamet, Trevor Griffiths, Peter Barnes, Lanford Wilson, David Hare, Brian Friel, and Richard Nelson, warp him into new shapes which express their own preoccupations' (p. 174). Birgit Beumers maintains that Vishnevyi sad isprimarily a 'vaudeville' (p. 24), in which the characters 'play a game, deliberately avoiding reality and turning 712 SEER, 86, 4, OCTOBER 2008 their lives into litde performances' (p. 29). This interesting article makes no mention, however, of themore profound and universal aspects of Vishnevyisad, which have been subdy illuminated by such scholars as Mikhail Gromov, Boris Zingerman and Emma Polotskaia. Cynthia Marsh meditates discern inglyon the theme of'the deceptive comfort of time' (p. in) inTri sestry, and claims that, at the end of the play, the immobility and words of the sisters 'suggest that there is a horrifyingbleakness, invulnerable to time, at the heart of human life' (p. in). Itmight perhaps be claimed with at least equal justifi cation that the end ofTri sestry suggests that, at the heart of human life, there is an indomitability and hopefulness? Perhaps the twomost memorable and heartfelt articles in the firstvolume are those by Harai Golomb and Richard Peace. Peace provides a sensitive analysis of 'SkripkaRotshiTda', inwhich perhaps the crucial ubytokis 'the loss of a loved child, the loss of past happiness' (p. 136). 'Thus, from the story's tide to itsending, thenarrative twists its way through inversions of stereotypes, reversals of character, personality and theme, but it is the titlewhich sets this progress inmotion' (p. 138).Golomb writes at length about human degenera tion and diminishment, with special reference to Tri sestry, before arriving at an unexpectedly optimistic conclusion: 'And indeed, people who want, who aspire, who aim high; even people who feel the need, albeit a futile one, to talk and think about aiming...