reviews 109 time, objects, prose, and the 'exalted' world of 'incalculable essences' (p. 236), dreams, yearnings, aspirations, lyricism. 'It is as hard to livewithout arith metic and clocks as it iswithout faith, hope and love' (p. 242). Szczukin is mistaken, however, in claiming thatAct IV of Tri sestryis set 'in the spring', that 'the entire action lasts, as itwere, four years and two hours', and that in Act III Irina 'is twenty-four' (p. 234). Chekhov's textunambiguously states that Act IV is set in the autumn, and that Irina is aged twenty-three inAct III ? factswhich Szczukin seems to recognize elsewhere (pp. 239, 242). In another substantial piece Elena Siemens writes informatively (if discursively) about three highly diverse adaptations of Chaika at the School of Contemporary Play Theatre on Moscow's Trubnaia Square, and there are also essays by, among others, Vladimir Kataev (on Chekhov's rejection of happy endings and his existential irony),Yana Meerzon (a thoughtful piece on 'defamiliarization', weighed down by literary theory), and Natalia Vesselova (a somewhat mechanical piece on the flora and fauna in Vishnevyi sad). Throughout the volume theoretical obfuscation periodically rears itsugly head (see, for instance, pp. 7, 54, 156-57, 172, 208, 268, 270-73). One wonders how Chekhov (a writer who sought to speak simply on profound matters) would have regarded the following statement: 'The communicative strategyof Chekhov's discourse [...] isbased on the co-referentiality of the creative and receptive acts. As a result, itmay be characterized as a strategy of narrative enthymeme' (V. Tiupa, p. 9). There are over eighty misprints and minor errors, such as universiteteta (p. vii), Dolzhnikov (forDolzhenkov, p. 15), stated about (for stated above, p. 84), Gemetti (forDemetti, pp. 126, 129), how own (forhis own, p. 197), Ivanova (forIvanov, p. 200), isplays (forhis plays, p. 204), Coponent (p. 224), there first(for their first, p. 256), socheninenii (p. 265), okresnosti (pp. 295, 307), and Garentt (p. 306). Vershinin and Natasha (p. 29) should be Vershinin and Masha. Chaika was written in 1895, not 1893 (pp. 140, 146).Radislav Lapushin is sometimes disguised as Lopushin (pp. 83, 91, 315), Paramon reappears as Paromon (pp. 63, 65, 66) and Paromonov (p. 65), and Inostrannaiaalternates with Innostrannaya(pp. 269, 311, 314). Gaints Zettser (pp. 136, 149, 319) should be reconstituted as Heinz Setzer, and Valentine T. Bill (pp. 247-48) is female. Despite these reservations, J. Douglas Clayton is to be congratulated for his valiant efforts in editing such a heterogeneous volume and translating many of its articles. Bristol Gordon McVay Ciepiela, Catherine. The Same Solitude: Boris Pasternak andMarina Tsvetaeva. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY and London, 2006. xvi + 246 pp. Illustrations. Appendix. Notes. Index. ?16.95: $29.95. Making use of Boris Pasternak and Marina Tsvetaeva's correspondence, poems and other major writings, Catherine Ciepiela conducts a careful 110 SEER, 87, I, JANUARY 200g analysis of their literary and emotional relationship. Drawing on psycho analytic criticism and on analyses of hysteria in particular, Ciepiela argues thatTsvetaeva and Pasternak have an ambivalent view of femininity: they 'celebrate passive desire in theirwriting and understand their lyric creativity in the same terms ? as an eroticized act of submission. As male and female poets, however, they are differentiy situatedwith respect to femininity' (p. 8). Ciepiela maintains that the conflicts in their relationship arise out of these differences and are fuelled by theirpolitical disagreements. Ciepiela begins bymapping out the poets' search for a creative identity in the context of the heritage of Symbolism. She traces Tsvetaeva's move from the girl-muse in her firstcollection via the powerful persona of themother to her eventual renunciation of maternity and sexuality after the death of her daughter Irina. From then on, Ciepiela writes, Tsvetaeva engaged in a 'hystericmiming of masculinity, a compensation for her loss of feminine agency' (p.42). Pasternak's poetics are similarly based on an identification with the sufferingwoman in Ciepiela's view; in his early poems and espe ciallyMy SisterLife she sees him performing 'a femininity defined by sexual anxiety or trauma and expressed through hysterical affect' (p. 52). In the third chapter Ciepiela presents the poets' 'Romance of Distance', charting the torrentof poetic creativityTsvetaeva's encounter with Pasternak unleashed...