Anton Chekhov

The date given by Chekhov himself, although he would appear to have been born on the 16th. The 17th was his 'name-day,' that is, the day of the saint for whom he was christened. Dates given here are 'Old Style,' in accord with the Julian calendar, twelve days behind the Gregorian.

M. P. Chekhov, Vokrug Chekhova (Moscow: Moskovsky rabochy, 1980), p. 44.

Ernest Simmons, Chekhov. A Biography (Boston: Little, Brown, 1962), p. 6.

Peter the Great had established a table of ranks which stratified society status into civil, military, naval and ecclesiastical hierarchies. In the civil hierarchy, meshchanin (townsman) came just above peasant. Treplyov, in The Seagull, complains that his father had been classified asameshchanin of Kiev, even though he was a famous actor, and that the same rank appears on his own passport. He finds it particularly galling since the term had come to suggest petty bourgeois philistinism.

Letter to Dmitry Savlyev, Jan. (?) 1884. All quotations from Chekhov's creative writings and letters are based on the texts in A. P. Chekhov, Polnoe sobranie sochineny i pisem (30 vols.) (Moscow: Nauka, 1974-1974), henceforth referred to as PSS. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own.

6. Maksim Gorky, Literary Portraits, tr. Ivy Litvinov (Mos­cow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.), pp. 158-59.

At The Play

V. F. Tretyakov, Ocherki istori i Taganrogskogo teatra s 1827 do 1927 god (Taganrog: Izd. Khud. Sektsii Taganrogskogo Okrolitrosveta, 1928), pp. 36-38.

PSS, III, 95.

PSS, V, 455.

PSS, XVI, 65.

M. P. Chekhov, Vokrug Chekhova (Moscow: Moskovsky rabochy, 1964), p. 212. All mention of Yavorskaya is dropped from the most recent edition.

PSS, XVI, 60.

M. P. Chekhov, Vokrug Chekhova (Moscow: Moskovsky rabochy, 1980), p. 142.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky, 'Neoromantizm v drame,' Vestnik inostrannoy literatury 11 (1894), p. 101.

Anton Krayny (pseud, of Zinaida Gippius), 'O poshlosti,' Literaturny dnevnik (1899-1907) (St. Petersburg: M. V. Pirozh- kov, 1908), pp. 221-22.

Olga Knipper-Chekhova, 'Ob A. P. Chekhove,' Vos- pominaniya i stati (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1972), I, 57.

Quoted by Arseny Gurlyand, 'Vospominaniya ob A. P. Chekhove,' Teatr i iskusstvo 28 (1904).

A. I. Urusov, Stati yego o teatre, literature i iskusstve (Moscow; Tip. I. N. Kholchev i ko., 1907), II, 34.

Journeyman Efforts

M. P. Chekhov, 'Ob A. P. Chekhove,' Novoe slovo 1 (1907), p. 198.

Pisma A. P. Chekhovu yego brata Aleksandra Chekhova, ed. I. S. Yezhov (Moscow: Gos. sotsialno-ekonomicheskoe izd., 1939), pp. 50-51.

Chekhov did not know the German's 'masochistic' works, but did see one of his plays.

A. R. Kugel, Russkie dramaturgi (Moscow: Mir, 1934), p. 33.

Letter to Chekhov from Pavel Svobodin (25 Oct. 1889), in Chekhov i teatr, ed. E. D. Surkov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1961), p. 211.

M. P. Chekhov, Vokrug Chekhova (Moscow: Moskovsky rabochy, 1980), p. 152.

Khrushchyov's nickname 'Leshy' gives too diabolic an impression when translated as 'Wood-Demon'; there is nothing Mephistophelian about the mischievous sprite which the ancient Slavs thought inhabited the forests. Russians use ieshy voz'mi' the way an Englishman might say 'Deuce take it.' 'Wood-goblin' might be more appropriate.

A. P. Chudakov, Chekhov's Poetics, tr. F. J. Cruise and D. Dragt (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1983), p. 210.

Quoted in D. Gorodetsky, 'Mezdu "Medvedem" i "Leshim",' Birzhevye vedomosti 364 (1904).

4. The One-Act Plays

Quoted in PSS, XI, 403.

Quoted in PSS, XI, 427.

A. S. Suvorin, Tatyana Repina, komediya v chetyrakh deystvyakh (St. Petersburg: A. S. Suvorin, 1889), Act IV,scene 3.

Ibid., Act III, scene 6.

Quoted in PSS, XII, 397.

5. The Seagull

K. S. Stanislavsky, My Life in Art, tr. J. J. Robbins (Boston: Little, Brown, 1924), p. 355.

A. I. Urusov, Stati yego o teatre, literature i iskusstve (Moscow: Tip. I. N. Kolchev i ko., 1907), II, 35-38. First appeared in Kuryer (3 Jan. 1889).

A. G. Gladkov, 'Meyerhold govorit,' Novy Mir 8 (1961), p. 221.

Leonid Andreyev, 'Letters on the Theatre,' in Russian Dramatic Theory from Pushkin to the Symbolists, ed. and tr. L. Senelick (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981),pp. 238-242.

A. N. Ostrovsky, Artistes and Admirers, tr. E. Hanson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1970), p. 64.