Word: chekhovisms
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...Nabokov is at his most provocative when he ranks the great Russians. Most of his own emotions, it seems, were poured into his worshipping of Tolstoy, on the one hand, and his vicious debunking of Dostoevsky, on the other. The final ranking is, officially: 1. Tolstoy; 2. Gogol; 3. Chekhov; 4. Turgenev. Dostoevsky is dead last. Nabokov accuses him of sloppy and melodramatic Christianity, reactionary slavophilism (which Nabokov links with both Fascism and Communism), lack of artistic sense or taste, and a hackneyed, long-winded style. He doesn't have much to say about the works themselves, and, in fact...
After Tolstoy, Nabokov serves up a pleasant dessert of Chekhov. Chekhov occupies a distant but secure third place in the official ranking. He is neither poetic nor playful, but his wisdom and good taste capture Nabokov's heart. The survey ends with a small but appetite-killing dose of Gorki. Except for a couple of untranslatable modernists (Blok and Bely), Nabokov says, the future of Russian literature lies with the expatriates...
...already available in an annotated critical edition. Still, there is something missing in all of Nabokov's work. His starchy aestheticism comes through as cold, crystalline, and almost inhuman. We wait in vain for that warm human glow that pervades all the works of Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov. And his work lacks the psychological or emotional depth that might have compensated for the limited range of characters and situations. Nabokov must have been a fiery lecturer, but somehow the fire chills...
...director. In 1949 he produced a scandalous Salome-largely because of bizarre sets by Surrealist Painter Salvador Dali. He has set Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in what resembled an abandoned squash court, with the actors flying about on trapezes. Earlier this year, he staged Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard with rugs as virtually the only props...
After Vassar she toured Vermont colleges and ski areas for a few months with the Green Mountain Guild, a rep company, playing Shaw and Chekhov for $48 a week?"and it wasn't even the Depression." Then she made her commitment, and sent off an application to the Yale School of Drama. Yale awarded her a three-year scholarship and, as it turned out, the privilege of playing twelve to 15 roles a year...