The Implications of Quotation in Performance: Masha's Lines from Pushkin in Chekhov's "Three Sisters"

Abstract

SEER, Vol.84, No.3, Jul 2006 The Implications of Quotation in Performance: Masha's Lines from Pushkin in Chekhov's 7hree Sisters CYNTHIA MARSH THEperformance of Chekhov's plays is a global industry constantly confronting directors and performerswith issues of cultural transference . This activity also necessitatesregular retranslationof his works. These processes have resulted in attention being paid to aspects of Chekhov's dramatictext which have not always attractedcomparable scrutiny from critics and scholars. Prominent among these aspects is Chekhov'suse of quotation.The issueof quotationin a sourcetext and its translationis a vexed one for translatorand performeralike. However , confrontingthe function of quotation in Chekhov's Russian text and its implied performancein the source culture is equally complex. Quotation might appear an anodyne topic: an accepted moment of borrowing, recognizable or not, or a referencefor the scholar to trace and illuminate.These moments, usuallycalled intertextual,operate on a number of verbal levels from direct quotation to implied reference, and have a number of functions in the verbal text. They can, for example, create a relationshipbetween the text and other texts, making contact with a world external to the text and vice versa, which can have implicationsfor potential interpretations.'However, transposing quotation into performance confronts the director and performernot only with a practicalproblem but also with a theoretical conundrum. Citing quotation for inclusion in an academic articleor for a readerof a play is very differentfrom regardingit as a moment of performance. Although anotherplan of researchconfrontedme with the issueof quotation in Three Sisters as a translatedtext, my focus here is on the role of quotation in immediate performanceof the text in its own culture. Nevertheless, writing in English about a text from a different source culture inevitably draws in the issues of cultural transferenceintrinsic to translatedperformance. Cynthia Marsh is Associate Professor of Russian and Head of the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies at the University of Nottingham. ' Witold Kosny makes this point: 'Bedeutung und Funktion der literarischen Zitate in A. P. Chechovs "Tri sestry"', WeltderSlaven,i6, 197I, pp. I26-50 (hereafter, Kosny), see pp. 128-29. CYNTHIA MARSH 447 Chekhov'sThree Sisters is wellknownas a repository of quotationof manydifferent kinds,butmostparticularly forMasha'srepeatedlines fromPushkin.Masha'squotationis takenfromthe prefaceto Ruslan andLiudmila, addedforthe secondeditionin I824: Y JIYKOMOpSbgy6 3eJIeHbIH; 3siaTasueHbHa gy6e TOM: A literal translationwould give: Nearthe curvingshore(is)a greenoaktree, A golden chain (is)on that oak ... Admittedly,focusingon Masha'slinesfrom Pushkinmakesthis studyof quotation in ThreeSistersnarrow. As will be indicated there is much other quotation in this play. Although these lines are slight in the overall structureof the play, my argument rests on the fact that their function is strengthened by other devices, many of them only fully sensed in performance. The extraordinary finesse of Chekhov's dramatic art, as distinctfrom his fictional skills,is here on full view. Jacques Derrida has elaborated the idea that all text is quotation.2 This notion can be extended in performativeterms:every act of uttered quotation (because of the need to embody another's voice) is an act of performance. Conventional theatre performance is quotation from a script.Any performancethat embodies notions of mimesisis a quotation from reality. Speech act theory refers to the adoption of an assumed voice and views quotation as a category which covers everything from reported speech to direct quotation from acknowledged sources of all genres, both vocal and printed.3In other words, do we ever cease quoting? In addition, certain, perhaps rather obvious, laws are clear. Quotation relies on a peculiarlylinear structure:for quotation to takeplace a source has to exist, that is, it has to pre-exist the quotation itself. In other words it is older in terms of a linear understandingof time. Quotation has also to be recognizableto be able to operate effectively: intertextualityhas been a revelatorytool both for writersand workers in other creative media, for a generation. As a furthercharacteristic, quotation, if not immediately attributable,has to be sufficientlydifferent from surroundingmedia to be perceived as quotation. In a written text the practice is to punctuate quotation by placing it in the conventional speech marks.However, such 'pointing-up'is not alwaysthe case: sometimes readers are left to discern quotation themselves and 2 See, for example, Jacques Derrida, 'Signature Event...