Ivanov

Reading notes

• To A. S. Suvorin, 19 December 1888. Moscow. §11 My Mr. Ivanov is now much more comprehensible.

  FICTIONAL-VS-REAL FLAG (governing note for \S11-18) -- from here through \S17, Chekhov is casting the FICTIONAL characters of his own play "Ivanov" with REAL actors of the Alexandrinsky Theatre. Keep the two layers explicit: "Mr. Ivanov" here is the fictional title character, not the real actor who will play him (Davydov,, named at \S12). Every subsequent character name in the \S12-17 playbill (Ivanov, Sarra, Shabelsky, Lvov, Lebedev, Sasha) refers to a role in the play, matched on the same line against the real actor cast to play it -- see the individual \S12-17 notes.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 19 December 1888. Moscow. §12 Ivanov -- Davydov.

  FICTIONAL role "Ivanov" (the title character of Chekhov's play) matched against the REAL actor Vladimir Nikolayevich Davydov, already established elsewhere in this corpus as having played the lead in "Swan Song"/"Kalkhas." Chekhov's reasoning for giving Ivanov to Davydov despite reservations is explained at \S18.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 23 December 1888. Moscow. §7 родная мать и жидовка

  The source names the two women who could plausibly speak for Ivanov at the end of Act IV as "his own mother, and жидовка" ("the Jewess"/"the Jewish girl") -- referring to Ivanov's late wife Sarra, a convert from Judaism, within Chekhov's own play "Ivanov", not Suvorin's "Tatyana Repina." Rendered here as "the Jewish girl" rather than a slur-equivalent English term, since the source word here functions descriptively (identifying which of the play's two dead women is meant) rather than as an insult in this particular clause; nonetheless it uses the same pejorative root (жид-) as the two \S6/\S10 instances below and should be read as part of the same period-typical usage pattern running through this letter.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 30 December 1888. Moscow. §5 Ivanov, a nobleman, a university man, in no way remarkable

  Nikolai Alexeyevich Ivanov, the title character of Chekhov's play, and the letter's central analytical subject through \S11 (and returned to at \S19, \S23, \S31, \S33). A fictional character, not a real person; must not be confused with any real-world Ivanov elsewhere in this corpus.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 30 December 1888. Moscow. §5 "Don't you go marrying Jewesses, or hysterical women, or bluestockings"

  5) groups "Jewesses" with "hysterical women" and "bluestockings" as categories of woman not to marry, reflecting the play's own period antisemitic and misogynist vocabulary rather than the letter's or the apparatus's editorial voice. Translated faithfully without softening, per policy, as essential context for understanding both the play's period texture and Chekhov's analytical vocabulary about it. See also \S12-13 and \S16-18 below for further instances.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 30 December 1888. Moscow. §7 This feeling is a Russian one.

  The first appearance of the letter's recurring claim that Ivanov's psychological pattern -- here, free-floating guilt -- is specifically "Russian"; this claim is picked up and defended at length in the letter's final movement (\S31-32), which should be read together with this passage.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 30 December 1888. Moscow. §8 Were Ivanov a clerk, an actor, a priest, a professor, he would have grown used to his position.

  Part of Chekhov's inventory of Ivanov's "enemies" (fatigue, boredom, guilt, loneliness, life's practical demands); "the doctor" mentioned later in this section is Lvov, listed among the unhelpful company available to Ivanov in his rural isolation.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 30 December 1888. Moscow. §19 If the public leaves the theater with the conviction that Ivanovs are scoundrels and Doctor Lvovs are great men

  Chekhov's summary declaration closing the craft essay proper: if this characterization is not legible on stage, the fault is his alone, and no "corrections and insertions" can fix Ivanov or Lvov, though Sasha "can be brought out more fully at the end."

• To A. S. Suvorin, 30 December 1888. Moscow. §31 the word "Russian" keeps turning up

  Opens the letter's final defensive movement (\S31-33): Chekhov's explanation and defense of his repeated use of "Russian" in describing Ivanov's psychology, contrasting Russian excitability-then-exhaustion with steadier German and French temperaments. Directly continues the claim first made at \S7 that Ivanov's guilt-feeling "is a Russian one."

• To A. S. Suvorin, 30 December 1888. Moscow. §33 Ivanov and Lvov appear to my imagination as living people.

  The letter's closing declaration: Ivanov and Lvov are, to Chekhov, living people born of real observation, ending with the uncharacteristically humble admission that if they read as lifeless on the page, "it is too soon for me to take up plays."

• To V. N. Davydov, 22–23 January 1889. Petersburg. §2 then, I think, my Ivanov will be clearer to you

  FICTIONAL-VS-REAL FLAG -- "my Ivanov" (source: "мой Иванов") refers to the title character of Chekhov's own play "Ivanov" (the role Davydov was then preparing to play at the Alexandrinsky Theatre), not to any real person named Ivanov. Do not link this mention to an unrelated Ivanov entity elsewhere in the corpus; it is the same fictional role discussed throughout the surrounding Petersburg "Ivanov" casting letters (e.g.).

• To A. S. Suvorin, 6 February 1889. Moscow. §4 In my letter Ivanov is probably clearer than he is on the stage.

  This "Ivanov" is the title CHARACTER of the play, as performed at the Alexandrinsky Theater -- Chekhov is responding to Suvorin's criticism that the character reads more clearly on the page than he plays on stage, attributing the gap to a quarter of the role having been cut in performance; consistent with the same character/production discussed in the immediately preceding letters and.