Chekhov S Leading Lady

A biography of a leading actress of the Moscow Art Theatre who became the wife of Anton Chekhov three years before his death.

"Chekhov's keen powers of observation have been remarked by both memoirists who knew him well and scholars who approach him only through the written record and across the distance of many decades. To apprehend Chekhov means seeing how Chekhov sees, and the author's remarkable vision is understood as deriving from his occupational or professional training and identity. But we have failed to register, let alone understand, just what a central concern for Chekhov himself, and how deeply problematic, were precisely issues of seeing and being seen."—from the Introduction Michael C. Finke explodes a century of critical truisms concerning Chekhov's objective eye and what being a physician gave him as a writer in a book that foregrounds the deeply subjective and self-reflexive aspects of his fiction and drama. In exploring previously unrecognized seams between the author's life and his verbal art, Finke profoundly alters and deepens our understanding of Chekhov's personality and behaviors, provides startling new interpretations of a broad array of Chekhov's texts, and fleshes out Chekhov's simultaneous pride in his identity as a physician and devastating critique of turn-of-the-century medical practices and ideologies. Seeing Chekhov is essential reading for students of Russian literature, devotees of the short story and modern drama, and anyone interested in the intersection of literature, psychology, and medicine.

Chekhov often said that 'I am a doctor by trade and sometimes I do literary work in my free time', a surprising claim, given his status as a giant of 20th century drama. This literary-biographical study uncovers new sides to him, as both a medical professional and humanitarian, and tells the story of Chekhov's trip to Sakhalin Island in the harsh wastes of Siberia. Anton Chekhov practiced medicine for most of his life and engaged in humanitarian work which took him away from writing for months. He placed one such trip though, across the unforgiving terrain of Siberia to write about the penal island of Sakhalin, above all others. Chekhov's Sakhalin Journey, written by a neuroscientist and practicing clinician, uses this trip and Chekhov's own account of it to shed light on hitherto overlooked aspects of his life. In doing so, it shows that to understand the man we need his medicine as well as his literature, and we need to assess his life from his perspective as well as ours.

THE STORY: Trapped in a provincial Russian town after the death of their father, three sisters lament the passing of better times and long for the excitement of Moscow. One of them has married a local high school teacher; another has become a teach

Gather any group of actresses, from students to stars, and someone will inevitably ask, "Where are all the great roles for women?" The roles are right here, in this magnificently diverse collection of plays–full-lenghts, one-acts, and monologues--with mainly female casts, which represent the answer to any actress's prayer. The editors of the groundbreaking anthology Plays for Actresses have once again gathered an abundance of strong female roles in a selection of works by award-winning authors and cutting-edge newer voices, from Wendy Wasserstein and Christopher Durang to Claudia Shear, Eve Ensler, and Margaret Edson. The characters who populate these seven full-length plays, four ten-minute plays, and eleven monologues include a vivid cross-section of female experience: girl gang members, Southern debutantes, pilots, teachers, traffic reporters, and rebel teenagers. From a hilarious take on Medea to a taboo-breaking excerpt from The Vagina Monologues to a moving scene from the Pulitzer Prize-winning Wit, the plays in Leading Women are complex, funny, tragic, and always original--and a boon for talented actresses everywhere. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library-Literary Society is a non-profit educational organization. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG The author is well aware that whosoever discusses historical mysteries pleases the public best by being quite sure, and offering a definite and certain solution. Unluckily Science forbids, and conscience is on the same side. We verily do not know how the false Pucelle arrived at her success with the family of the true Maid; we do not know, or pretend to know, who killed Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey; or how Amy Robsart came by her death; or why the Valet was so important a prisoner. It is only possible to restate the cases, and remove, if we may, the errors and confusions which beset the problems. Such a tiny point as the year of Amy Robsart's marriage is stated variously by our historians. To ascertain the truth gave the author half a day's work, and, at last, he would have voted for the wrong year, had he not been aided by the superior acuteness of his friend, Mr. Hay Fleming. He feels morally certain that, in trying to set historians right about Amy Robsart, he must have committed some conspicuous blunders; these always attend such enterprises of rectification.

"The Lady with the Toy Dog," "Goussiev" and other famous tales by Anton Chekhov (1860-1904). -- Time's revenges or the irony of satisfied desires are treated in "The Lady with the Toy Dog." Yet one cannot say that Chekhov himself is "disillusioned." His sense of spiritual beauty is too strong; and his depth of acceptation of life's pattern forms an aura enveloping his subject. This spiritual aura hovers about it and enwraps the gloomiest, greyest, most sardonic facts of life; death itself cannot diminish it. Examine "Goussiev," a sketch of the death of two worn-out soldiers on board a steamer, when returning from the East, a sketch that is so "modern" in its all-embracing outlook and bold acceptations as to shame nearly all our writers of today. It is so humanly broad, so tender, so infallibly true in its spiritual lightings, and it conveys the mystery of nature and all its transitory processes with sharp precision.

The five year friendship and marriage of the writer Anton Chekhov and the actress Olga Knipper, who created many of the central female roles in his plays, is one of the most extraordinary love stories in the history of the theatre. Because of Knipper's work at the Moscow Art Theatre and Chekhov's illness which bound him to Yalta, their relationship flourished through a constant stream of letters between them. Temperamentally, the actress and writer were at odds and the letters reflect their life together, as tempestuous, teasing and spontaneous as the many relationships found in Chekhov's stories and plays. The volume is a testimony to the deep, passionate, improbable love of Chekhov and Knipper which survived almost insurmountable obstacles.