figure
Ivan Ivanovich Tolkachov
Tolkachov
also: Иван Иванович Толкачов, Ivan Ivanych, Иван Иваныч
A harried state councillor and dacha-dwelling father of a family who bursts in on his friend Murashkin begging to borrow a revolver, then delivers an escalating comic tirade on the miseries of commuting, errand-running, mosquitoes, and his wife's singing lessons -- and, when Murashkin obliviously tries to load him with one more errand, actually snaps and chases him around the room shouting for blood. A dramatized, named version of the unnamed 'Ivan Ivanych' protagonist of Chekhov's 1887 story "Один из многих" ("One of Many"), which supplies nearly the same monologue and several of the same minor characters.
Reading notes
- To A. Dmitriyev, 21 September 1889. Moscow. §6 the role of Tolkachov
Ivan Ivanovich Tolkachov, the harried lead of "A Tragedian in Spite of Himself," whose long comic monologue Chekhov here offers to shorten for the performer's sake -- a rare glimpse of the author revising his own text to suit a specific actor.
- A Tragedian in Spite of Himself §9 lend me your revolver
The play's entire premise is set up in its first exchange: Tolkachov's opening request for a revolver "just in case" for a supposed dark-wood errand is, we eventually learn, a lie of convenience -- there is no dark wood, and the real reason (dacha-life exhaustion tipping into something closer to breakdown) only emerges across the long monologue that follows, and is confirmed rather than resolved by the play's mock-violent ending.
- A Tragedian in Spite of Himself §14 state councillor
"статский советник" (state councillor) was the fifth of the fourteen ranks in Russia's Table of Ranks -- a solidly respectable mid-level civil rank, roughly equivalent to a colonel in military terms, and a status Murashkin invokes precisely because it is at odds with Tolkachov's undignified panic: a man of this rank fainting and begging for a revolver over dacha errands is the joke, not the rank itself.
- A Tragedian in Spite of Himself §15 a beast of burden, a Negro, a slave
Translated without softening, consistent with Hermitsh Press's practice of translating period text faithfully rather than sanitizing it -- the humor of the whole tirade depends on its rhetorical excess being visible, not trimmed.
- A Tragedian in Spite of Himself §31 I thirst for blood
"Крови жажду! Крови!" is first introduced here as a description of what Tolkachov shouts during his private fits of vexation -- it recurs as his literal final lines (section 49, 52, 58), so the play's climax is not a new development but Tolkachov's own described symptom finally happening in front of a witness rather than in private.
- A Tragedian in Spite of Himself §49 I thirst for blood
The climax: Tolkachov's private, described symptom (see section 31) finally erupts in front of a witness.