Sasha

Reading notes

• To A. S. Suvorin, 19 December 1888. Moscow. §17 Sasha -- your choice.

  FICTIONAL role "Sasha" (Lebedev's daughter, in love with Ivanov), the one role in this playbill Chekhov leaves entirely to Suvorin's own discretion rather than naming a specific real actress.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 26 December 1888. Moscow. §8 You want me, come what may, to let Sasha go free. But "Ivanov" will hardly even go on.

  FICTIONAL-CHARACTER FLAG -- "Sasha" here is NOT a real person but the fictional character from Chekhov's own play "Ivanov" (Lebedev's daughter, in love with Ivanov;), the same figure whose casting was left to Suvorin's discretion in (\S17). Suvorin has apparently urged Chekhov to give the character's plotline a happier resolution ("let her go free"); Chekhov resists, joking that he'll "give her a proper talking-to" instead. Do not confuse with any real-world Sasha in this corpus (e.g., Chekhov's own brother, whose nickname is also "Sasha").

• To A. S. Suvorin, 30 December 1888. Moscow. §11 Sasha declares her love; Ivanov cries out in rapture: "A new life!"

  Illustrates the jagged excitement-then-apathy curve just described, using a specific plot beat from Act III of the play: Sasha's declaration and Ivanov's momentary rapture, followed by disillusionment "by the next morning."

• To A. S. Suvorin, 30 December 1888. Moscow. §17 In the absence of fish, even a crayfish will do

  Renders the Russian proverb "На безрыбье и рак рыба" (literally: "in the absence of fish, even a crayfish is a fish"), which has no exact English equivalent; the translation preserves the proverb's structure and force -- Sasha regards Ivanov as the best available option, not a first choice -- rather than substituting a loosely equivalent English saying.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 30 December 1888. Moscow. §18 She is one of those females whom the males win over not by brightness of plumage

  Translated faithfully without softening, per policy, as part of Chekhov's own analytical vocabulary about the play; not to be mistaken for the editorial voice of this apparatus.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 8 January 1889. Moscow. §7 My Sasha in Act III now goes about like a spinning top -- see how I've changed her! Entirely for Savina's sake.

  Sasha (Alexandra Pavlovna Lebedeva) is the supporting role in Chekhov's own "Ivanov", not a real person; the reworking described here for Savina's benefit is the same project detailed firsthand in's letter to Fyodorov, and continues Chekhov's misgivings about the role expressed the day before in (\S4).

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 15 January 1889. Moscow. §3 made a new Sasha (for Savina), altered Act IV past recognition, polished up Ivanov himself

  The revision work described here -- a rewritten Sasha tailored to the actress Maria Savina, a reworked Act IV, and a "polished" Ivanov -- is the same emergency rebuild of the play traced in the surrounding correspondence to Suvorin and others in this same fortnight.