work
Hernani
also: Эрнани, "Hernani"
Victor Hugo's 1830 verse drama "Hernani," the landmark Romantic play whose Paris premiere touched off the famous "battle of Hernani"; cited by Chekhov alongside Lev Mey as a standard of dramatic quality against which a play given prominence "before the eyes of all Petersburg" ought to measure up. A literary reference to an existing, independently famous work, not part of this corpus.
Reading notes
- To L. N. Lenskaya, 15 November 1889. Moscow. §4 the pseudo-classical shackles
Translates "ложноклассические кандалы" ("pseudo-classical shackles"), Chekhov's ironic phrase for the strict neoclassical dramatic conventions (unities of time, place, and action; elevated verse diction) that Victor Hugo's "Hernani" (1830) famously broke with, touching off the "battle of Hernani" at its Paris premiere. Chekhov's joke inverts the history: he casts studying/rehearsing the play itself -- the very work that shattered those conventions -- as if it were the confining "shackles," implying Alexander Pavlovich Lensky had been laboriously working through the role rather than simply reading for pleasure.
- To A. S. Suvorin, 20 November 1889. Moscow. §8 you should see "Hernani," which is playing at the Maly Theater. On the whole they act not badly, no worse than the French, though, to be sure, Ernani-Gorev is bad, like a cobbler.
Victor Hugo's "Hernani", already established in this corpus (cross-checked against), here reviewed in brief by Chekhov after a Maly Theater production; "Ernani-Gorev" refers to the actor Gorev in the title role, whose performance Chekhov singles out as weak ('like a cobbler') even while judging the company's acting as a whole comparable to the French.
- To A. I. Sumbatov, 28 January 1890. Petersburg. §3 "Hernani"
Victor Hugo's 1830 verse drama \emph{Hernani} (see, already established in this corpus as a standard of dramatic quality Chekhov invokes elsewhere, e.g.). The Maly Theatre was staging a Russian version in this period; Tatishchev's translation is the occasion for the whole letter.