concept
Tartuffe
also: Тартюф, Le Tartuffe, Moliere's Tartuffe
Moliere's 1664 comedy about a religious hypocrite who ingratiates himself into a household while secretly pursuing money and seduction; "Tartuffe" is used as a byword for a sanctimonious hypocrite. In Chekhov's play "Ivanov", Dr. Lvov twice calls Ivanov a Tartuffe to his face and in soliloquy (sections 146, 625) as his central diagnosis of Ivanov's character -- a charge the play as a whole holds in suspension rather than confirming, since Ivanov's self-loathing is presented as more genuine and more tragic than Lvov's rigid moral certainty allows for.
Reading notes
- Ivanov §146 this Tartuffe
Dr. Lvov's private soliloquy, alone onstage, in which he first names his central charge against Ivanov: that Ivanov is a calculating hypocrite performing suffering for effect, like the title character of Moliere's 1664 comedy "Tartuffe", a byword for sanctimonious hypocrisy. See the note at \S625 for Lvov's second, direct use of the same charge to Ivanov's face, and the quotables sidecar for the full passage.
- Ivanov §625 you, magnificent Tartuffe
Dr. Lvov's second and more pointed use of the Tartuffe charge (see the note at \S146), this time delivered directly to Ivanov's face during their climactic confrontation: that Ivanov's grief and self-torment over his dying wife are a hypocritical performance concealing a calculated pursuit of Sasha's dowry. The play never fully confirms or refutes this reading -- Ivanov's own self-diagnoses (see the quotables sidecar) suggest something closer to genuine, paralyzing self-loathing than to Lvov's tidy moral villain.