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Sarra
also: Сарра
FICTIONAL CHARACTER, Ivanov's dying wife in Chekhov's play "Ivanov". Not to be confused with the real actress Maria Savina, cast here to play her -- keep the fictional role and the real actress distinct.
Reading notes
- To A. S. Suvorin, 19 December 1888. Moscow. §13 Sarra -- Savina.
TWO-MARIAS FLAG (2 of 2) -- FICTIONAL role "Sarra" (Ivanov's dying wife) matched against the REAL actress Maria Gavrilovna Savina of the Alexandrinsky Theatre. Savina is a DIFFERENT Maria from "Mashenka"/Yermolova of \S4 (of the Maly Theatre, cast in Suvorin's "Tatyana Repina" as Repina) -- both Marias appear in this single letter, in two entirely separate casting projects, and must be kept distinct.
- To A. S. Suvorin, 30 December 1888. Moscow. §5 Sarra, who witnessed his rational farming and his other undertakings
Sarra, Ivanov's dying wife in the play. In the play's own text she is a convert from Judaism, born Sarra Abramson and renamed Anna Petrovna after her marriage and conversion; Chekhov here (as elsewhere in his analytical correspondence) uses her birth name exclusively. A fictional character.
- To A. S. Suvorin, 30 December 1888. Moscow. §16 Sarra loves Ivanov because he is a good man
The shorter treatment of the play's two female characters begins here: Sarra's love for Ivanov is presented as contingent on his being "excited and interesting," fading once he grows "blurred" and loses his "definite outline".