Alexei Suvorin plaque, Voronezh

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Alexei Suvorin (1834-1912) is one of those people that casual lovers of Russian culture may not know, but anyone up to their neck knows quite well. I think it is safe to say that Suvorin is best remembered as Anton Chekhov’s publisher and friend. That’s no small thing already. He would probably next be known as a major publisher – of books and periodicals. He turned the New Era newspaper into a thriving, popular publication. Not everyone appreciated him for that. Even though he began as a relatively liberal, democratically-minded individual, he increasingly was seen as a conservative whose views did not represent progressive thought. Vladimir Korolenko said that Suvorin formed one of the “sad pages in the dramatic history of Russian journalism.”
It is worth pointing out that the relationship between Suvorin and Chekhov, strong as it was at times, was often put under great strain by the two men’s divergent political views. They corresponded often over a 17-year period. We only have access to Chekhov’s 337 letters because Suvorin removed all of his letters from Chekhov’s archive after the great playwright’s death. Whether or not Suvorin destroyed these letters I do not know, although we are told that none of them, aside from a stray postcard or so, have surfaced in the ensuing 110 years.  The Chekhov>Suvorin letters are available online on a bibliographical site.
At the remove of over 100 years, I have the luxury of not choosing sides on this one. I’m primarily interested in looking for a moment at a man who made huge contributions to his country and left a legacy that still is felt today.
Suvorin had a hand in all kinds of different activities, which the Chronos.ru historical website does a very good job of describing. Let me draw directly from it:
“Suvorin studied at the Voronezh Cadet Corps, then in special classes of the Regiment of the Nobility, but, having rejected a military career, he took a job as a teacher outside of the city, later teaching history and geography in Voronezh. He began to publish his writings in provincial publications in 1858. In 1861 he moved to Moscow where he became close to writers of a democratic bent, including Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Leo Tolstoy. He earned respect and recognition as one of the best theater critics. He wrote popular books on history, and biographies of great people. At the end of 1862 he moved to St. Petersburg. A talented journalist with good business acumen, Suvorin in 1876 became the owner of the New Era newspaper, which he made popular by skillfully combining the interests of the general public with the interests of court circles. New Era became a household name denoting nationalist agitation in favor of pogroms. … Suvorin was known as a passionate theater-goer and, in 1895 he founded his own theater in St. Petersburg. He was an interesting conversationalist, and a friend of Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoevsky and others, He was a sharp observer (who left behind an interesting diary), and a major book publisher, who published numerous book series (The Cheap Library Russian and foreign classics, the All Petersburg, All Moscow, All Russia and Russian Calendar reference books, works on the history of Russia, and others). He amassed a large fortune.”

Suvorin wrote several plays, none of which – to my knowledge – are of particular interest today. They included Tatyana Repina (1899, to which Chekhov famously wrote a brief “sequel” using the same title), Medea (1883, co-authored with Viktor Burenin), Tsar Dmitry the Imposter and Ksenia the Tsarevna (1902), Stock Market Frenzy, Not a Thief if not Captured, He in Retirement, The Honest Word, Women and Men (1887),  and others. He wrote a novel The End of an Era. Love (1893), which, in 1903, he adapted as a play, The Question, with the help of Chekhov. He was also the author of several books of prose: Drama Competition (1860), All Kinds (1866), Essays and Pictures (1875), and the posthumously published Stories (1913). He began publishing in 1872 and, over his life, put out over 1600 books. He was also the owner of a network of bookstores around the country, which gave him the ability to distribute his books easily and quickly.
Suvorov was born in the village of Korshev in the Voronezh region. He studied in Voronezh and worked there for some time before leaving for the big cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The plaque on this building at 30 Revolution Prospect in Voronezh informs us that Suvorin lived here in 1855. Over the years one suspects he would have had many addresses in town, especially if you count places he stayed when returning to Voronezh, which he apparently did regularly. I wrote a bit here on this site about a trip Chekhov made to Voronezh in 1892 with Suvorin. At that time they both stayed at the Central Hotel, just a few blocks down the road from this building.
I am making the small leap of assuming that Suvorin lived in the building pictured here temporarily because he taught history and geography at the college in the town of Bobrov from 1854 to 1858 or thereabouts. Unless he lived here and traveled to Bobrov for his lectures, that would indicate that his time in this stately, columned building was a short-term affair.
The plaque on this building, which has connections to other famous people and events about which I will write another time, was unveiled in 2003.

 

 

Chekhov, Mayakovsky, Uspensky hotel plaque, Voronezh

Click on photos to enlarge. If you happen lose yourself in your thoughts as you walk down the main drag in Voronezh you might be excused for thinking at a certain moment that you had taken a wrong turn and wound up in some Mediterranean or even Caribbean resort. That would happen as you look up at the three-story building at 42/44 Revolution Prospect (formerly Bolshaya Dvoryanskaya [Grand Nobility] Street). It’s a beautiful, happy structure with lovely, earthy colors, hispanic-looking mosaics, seemingly non-functional towers, and lacy window frames that look like they could be anywhere but in the middle of Russia. This is the former Central Hotel, where, after it was built in the early 1880s, most everybody who was anybody stayed when they were in town. As the plaque on the street-side wall proclaims, the writers Gleb Uspensky, Anton Chekhov and Vladimir Mayakovsky all checked in here at one time or another. I can’t find much about Uspensky’s visit. Even a website devoted to the plaque itself provides no more information that the fact that he “lived here in February 1890.” End of that story, at least for now. Chances are he was here while traveling around the country collecting material for his essays and stories on Russian life. Elsewhere on this blog I write a little about his short stay in a hotel in Tomsk in the summer of 1888. Chekhov showed up with his friend and publisher Alexei Suvorin in tow in February of 1892. They spent five days here while on business in connection with Chekhov’s charity work. Based on letters published in that spectacular, blue, 30-volume collected works that every Russianist owns or wants to own, Chekhov arrived on February 3 and departed on the 7th. He was always active in fighting famines and epidemics. According to Russian Wikipedia, the Famine of Fall 1891 to Summer 1892 involved most of the so-called Black Earth and Central Volga areas of the country. It was kicked off by a bad harvest in the spring of 1891, and it quickly turned into a catastrophe, destroying the local economy and setting off problems with typhus and cholera. This, of course, is where Doctor Chekhov came in. He, along with another doctor-writer Vikenty Veresaev, were instrumental in getting help and medicine to the afflicted. Chekhov’s experience with this famine/epidemic found reflection in his story “The Wife,” published the same year that he was in Voronezh. The first note written by Chekhov on Feb. 3 is to local resident Grigory Lepnev. In it he states he will depart the next day for a trip around the region, but it didn’t happen as soon as the good doctor expected. On Feb. 6, he wrote to Yefgraf Yegorov, a retired officer in the Nizhgorod area, “The same thing happened that happened in Nizhny, which is to say, the governor invited me to dine and I had to speak, and listen to, much about the famine… Voronezh is filled with activity. The battle with the famine here is set much better than in the Nizhgorod region. They aren’t only giving out bread here, but also transportable stoves and coal. There are workshops set up and many cafeterias. Yesterday there was a benefit for famine victims at the theater – the house was full.” Chekhov’s father and paternal grandfather, incidentally, were born in the Voronezh area. They famously were serfs there in the household of Alexander Chertkov, a well-known archaeologist, historian, book collector and publisher. Mayakovsky appeared in Voronezh on the morning of November 22, 1926. Thanks to a detailed description of his visit on the Communa website, we know that nobody met him at the train station and he made his own way to the hotel, where he met with Nina Logofet, a member of the local Black Earth writers group. She, apparently, was in charge of his schedule during his stay. That evening he appeared at a reading at the theater – I don’t know which one specifically. Mayakovsky delivered a talk called “My Discovery of America,” then spent “several hours in the company of his fans.” He did not return to his hotel room until dawn. Thanks to this meeting, the local poets Logofet and Vladimir Korablinov were soon published in Moscow in the literary journal New LEF. Mayakovsky promised them he would publish their work and he kept his promise. On November 25 the first public account of Mayakovsky’s visit appeared in the newspaper Voronezh Commune. It was written by the poet Ivan Belyaev, a huge fan of Mayakovsky’s who recently had come to Voronezh from Estonia. For the record, Belyayev had less than a year to live at this point – he was arrested in the summer of 1927 and sent to prison in Moscow, where he perished. Mayakovsky himself was almost on borrowed time by now – he shot himself on April 30, 1930, in Moscow. That sad deed occurred in a building I have written about elsewhere on this blog site. You can hear Mayakovsky himself read his poetry by going to the very cool openculture website, which has two audio links to Mayakovsky reading his own work, as well as a link to a video of the 1918 film The Lady and the Hooligan, in which you can see Mayakovsky act. In the final photo below you can see an old photograph of the hotel taken, I assume, at around the turn of the century. It looks very much like it does today, aside from the garish advertisements on the street level. I took the photo of the photo in a marvelous basement cafe in the old building.

Anton Chekhov statue, Melikhovo

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I had late lunch yesterday with my friend Maxim Osipov. I have no interest whatsoever in putting Max on the spot, but he is sort of the modern-day Anton Chekhov. Max is a practicing doctor as well as an excellent writer who started out writing short stories, and later began writing plays. Just to make the connection even a bit more fun, Max began publishing when he was 44 years old, the age that Mr. Chekhov had his last glass of champagne, rolled over in his bed in Badenweiler, Germany, and expired, leaving bereft his wife Olga Knipper-Chekhova, his contemporaries and every lover of literature and theater since. Anyway, as Max and I left the restaurant in the late afternoon and we walked out into the bright, sparkling, spring sunlight that was flooding Moscow so generously, Max began to expound upon his theory that Chekhov never quite loved Melikhovo. “All those women who work there, do!” he laughed. “But I don’t think Chekhov loved it very much. Do you?”
I was a bit taken aback by the question. I’d never considered what Chekhov might have thought about his home. I guess I just always assumed he lived there because he liked it, and he liked it because he lived there. Rather like most of us do wherever we live. That’s why you get musicians coming into Topeka or Poughkeepsie  and getting huge cheers from the crowd when they shout out, “Great to be here in Poughkeepsie tonight!” Because everybody in Poughkeepsie loves Poughkeepsie insofar as they live in Poughkeepsie. That kind of thing. And so when Max blindsided me with that question, I did what I often do when caught off-guard – I hemmed and hawed as intelligently as I could and wriggled out of answering it. Now, the truth is that I don’t know what Chekhov loved or didn’t love. It is certainly true that all those times I have visited Melikhovo, the women who run the roost there harangue me and other visitors with lovely tales of Chekhov’s love for every lovable object, every plant, every nook and every cranny of the grounds and buildings that make up the small estate where Chekhov lived with his family for much of the 1890s. If I have always taken their exuberant affection for everything Chekhovian with a certain grain of salt, I have never doubted the love.

Be that as it may, Max’s tossed-off comment got me thinking about Melikhovo and Chekhov again. It wasn’t long ago that I wrote about visiting the estate in March with the Cuban-born, American playwright Nilo Cruz. On that occasion I posted some photos of a bust of Chekhov that stands hidden behind a small grove of trees, way off the beaten path. But actually, upon arriving on the museum grounds, everyone these days is greeted by another likeness of the writer that stands just on the other side of the entrance booth. This full-length sculpture of Chekhov, created and erected in 2002 by Yury Chernov, kind of has dual purposes. On one hand, it is one of those typical, ceremonial kinds of monuments. The right hand grabs the right lapel in a way that declares, “This is a solemn moment!” And yet, Chekhov stands jauntily on one leg, the other folded underneath him for purposes of balance alone. And the left hand is partially slipped into the pants pocket, maintaining a folksiness that offsets the lofty mission of the right hand. There’s something about the face here that I like, even though it leans toward the generic. Maybe it’s the flecks of blue that have begun to seep out of the bronze. As you can see in the top two photos, they, at least, match the gorgeous blue March sky well. But there is something strong about the expressionless visage that suits the writer and his purpose as a museum greeter. And, anyway, maybe there’s more life in this hunk of bronze than I give it credit for. In the last of the three photos immediately above, you can see Nilo whipping around, as if he just heard Chekhov whispering something to him. As though he is saying, “What did you say to me? Did you just say something?”
I guess Max Osipov would say he was saying, “I really don’t like this place, you know!” but I myself didn’t hear anything. So I can’t weigh in on the subject.

Anton Chekhov bust, Melikhovo

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This, I learned when visiting Anton Chekhov’s estate at Melikhovo a few weeks ago, was the first monument ever raised to Chekhov in Russia. The bust (bronze on a granite pedestal) was sculpted by Georgy Motovilov and unveiled in 1951. Since Aug. 30, 1960, according to act No. 1327 (supplement No. 1) of the Sovet of Ministers of the Russian Federation of the Soviet Union, this bust has been considered a work of art of federal significance. Motovilov was best known for his bas relief work in many of Moscow’s metro stations, but he clearly had a soft spot for Chekhov. He also created a statue of Chekhov in Yalta. Other “literary” sculptures include monuments to Alexei Tolstoy in Moscow and Nikolai Nekrasov in Yaroslavl. He received a Stalin prize for his bas reliefs of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin in the Kaluzhskaya metro station in 1950. One rather suspects it was this award that led to his receiving the commission to be the first Russian sculptor to honor Chekhov. In any case, commissions like this were often handed out in such a manner. When Motovilov (1892-1963) died he was done the great honor of being buried in the cemetery at the Novodevichy monastery.
The Chekhov bust is a very nice one, oldish-looking now, of course. But that is a plus in this case. It has that sense of Soviet reverence. Chekhov here is a Great Figure, entirely realistic, distant in many ways, yet also human. I think one of the nicest things about it is its placement on the grounds of the Melikhovo estate museum. For our purposes now it is stuck off in a corner, quite hidden by trees and bushes. You almost want to think that this must be especially pleasing to Chekhov, if he ever bothers to look down upon this spot. It is a place of quiet and peace and repose. It’s true that the bust was erected at the end of what used to be the main, ceremonial entrance to Melikhovo in Chekhov’s time. He had a beautiful, long alleway put in and lined it with some three dozen various kinds of lilac bushes. It must have been an extraordinary sight in Spring to come in from dirty, bustling Moscow to visit the writer and to trundle down this gorgeous lane for the last half-kilometer or so of the trip. But that was when Chekhov lived here. Today that entrance is locked up and, I presume, is only opened for very big VIPs, if at all. Thus, although Chekhov is here to greet folks coming in, nobody comes in this way anymore. In fact, this bust stands with its back to the area where most of the museum visitors now enter and walk around. And, as I say, you rather get the feeling that Chekhov, the bust, likes it that way.

I often travel out to Melikhovo with Americans visiting Moscow. Their initial reaction when I suggest it is always one of excitement. It has never failed. The magic of Chekhov, its hold on the people of the world – especially theater people, but not only – is endless. I got the same reaction when Cuban-American playwright Nilo Cruz was in Moscow a few weeks ago to attend the Moscow premiere of his play Anna in the Tropics at the Stanislavsky Electrotheater. His interest was seconded by his agent Peregrine Whittlesey, whose mother Eunice Stoddard had worked with Konstantin Stanislavsky when the latter was finishing his books on acting. The idea to suggest the trip came to me during a public talk where Nilo and I, along with several others, were talking about his play, Leo Tolstoy, and Russian culture. Nilo mentioned that his favorite writer is probably Chekhov. Here is how I jotted down his comment as I sat next to him at the front table: “I haven’t used any other Russian themes in my plays, but Anton Chekhov is probably my favorite dramatist. The longing and nostalgia of his characters is close to mine.”
Nilo was very generous as Peregrine and I aimed our cameras at him time and time again. Below you can see one of the shots I got of him with the Chekhov bust. There is something similar in their reserved gazes.

 

 

Olga Knipper-Chekhova plaque, Moscow

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If you’re a Moscow Art Theater fan, this building at 5/7 Glinishchevsky Lane is a treasure trove. It was built in 1938 and a whole gaggle of Art Theater employees moved in. At the same time the street was given the name of Nemirovich-Danchenko Street, which held sway until 1993. Writing about this building and the numerous plaques hanging on its outside walls, I could speak of any number of people – Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko himself, the actors Vera Maretskaya, Iosif Tumanov, Vasily Toporkov, Mikhail Shtraukh, Ivan Moskvin, Mikhail Tarkhanov, Alexander Kaidanaovsky, Alla Tarasova and many, many more. Some of you will notice that not all of these people were connected to the Art Theater – this building was one of those Soviet structures that went up for specific purposes, to house people from a particular walk of life. But it so happened that many of those who moved in here in 1938 were from the Art Theater. In any case, one new resident that year was Olga Knipper-Chekhova, the widow of Anton Chekhov. She lived here, as her plaque proclaims, from 1938 until her death in 1959.
The building was erected by architects Vladimir Vladimirov and G. Lutsky (I wasn’t able to ascertain his full first name) with aid from artist Vladimir Favorsky and sculptor Georgy Motovilov (see the last photo below for what I presume is their joint work). It’s an imposing building, perhaps a little too large for the tiny street it stands on, and very official-looking. I personally find I am put off by it lightly when I approach it, although I also recognize its effective compositional design. The dark marble running along the base of the building looks funereal to me, just as many of the plaques look like gravestones.

Olga Knipper-Chekhova (1868-1959) began a relationship with Chekhov in 1899, just before he sold his small family estate in Melikhovo. She actually visited that home south of Moscow once, maybe twice. I happened to be in Melikhovo with American playwright Nilo Cruz a week or so ago and our tour guide told us that it is thanks in large part to Knipper-Chekhova that the writer’s former estate is now such a respected museum and retreat. The local people, official and otherwise, were not especially interested in having the estate made into a museum. But Knipper-Chekhova threw her weight behind the project and, as I understand it, helped financially, to ensure that the museum was opened and that it survived. Chekhov and Knipper-Chekhova first met in 1898 at rehearsals of Chekhov’s The Seagull and A.K. Tolstoy’s Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich. They were married in 1901 and she was with her husband when he died in Badenweiler, Germany, in 1904.
There are all kinds of words written – good, bad, insulting and indifferent – about the relationship between these two people. I don’t know a thing about that. I do know that Knipper-Chekhova carried the banner of her husband’s greatness for the rest of her life. During his lifetime she played many of the great Chekhovian heroines – Arkadina in The Seagull, Yelena in Uncle Vanya, Masha in Three Sisters, Sarah in Ivanov and Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard. There is a short video of Knipper-Chekhkova reviving her role of Ranevskaya decades later in a kind of concert performance, when she was already an elderly woman. Whatever flaws the advancement of time may have introduced into her performance, you cannot take this from her – she was extremely light on her feet, had a wonderful sense of humor and a feeling for her character that was natural and buoyant. You can see a short clip from that performance on YouTube.
Knipper was born to a German father from Alsace and an ethnically German mother in what was then called Vyatskaya gubernia. He, Leonard Knipper, was an engineer and was the administrator of a local factory. She, Anna Zaltz, was a gifted singer, who gained some fame before her marriage, although her husband would not allow her to continue performing. Olga’s father also forbid Olga to become an actress when she declared that as her life’s dream. Leonard wanted her to become a painter or a translator. She was educated in languages in her early years and was said to have been fluent in English, French and German. Things changed when Leonard died unexpectedly. This left the family in dire straights and most everyone had to go to work. Although Knipper’s mother, like her father, was against the idea of her daughter becoming an actress, she also recognized how strong that dream remained in her daughter’s head. Eventually Olga was allowed to begin studying acting with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and the die was cast for history to be made.

 

 

 

Chekhov’s choice restaurant, Tomsk

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This is to satisfy everyone’s craving for Chekhov porn. I could write the most interesting little essay of my life about some fascinating person you haven’t heard of and I’ll get a handful of brave readers. I can write “Chekhov” and quote the phone book and readers will swoop in drooling from all over the world.
So, swoop in and drool.
I once got in huge trouble being facetious about Chekhov. An editor at a Chekhov newsletter asked me if I’d like to shake up the somnambulant Chekhov community around the world by writing a polemical essay for him – you know, a little thing done tongue-in-cheek? I’d just written a review of a horrible production of Ivanov and I had admitted I was sick and tired of seeing bean-pushing productions of Chekhov, those soporific outings in which “innovation” lurks in the director’s decision to have the actor playing the doctor sit with legs crossed or arms akimbo. I gladly took on the challenge and I unloaded a bit of frustration – leaving plenty of admiration in place for those who know how to read – and always leaving my tongue in my cheek.
It turned out there are a lot of people who can’t read, and who haven’t the vaguest notion what to do with a tongue in a cheek! My humble little essay “Back off, Chekhov!” (the title itself being a pun on the famous essay by Anatoly Lunacharsky, “Back to Ostrovsky!” – I still haven’t seen anybody pick up on that) stirred a real hornet’s nest. I was ridiculed by Chekhovites and Chekhovians the world ’round. Being someone who has always taken Satchel Paige, John Lee Hooker and Bob Dylan seriously, most of the time I don’t look back. So I knew nothing of the tempest in the teapot in which my essay was being boiled to a nub until a friend one day asked me, “What did you do to tick off all the Chekhov people?”
I won’t go into that any more at this point. If you’re interested, I wrote a bit about it in the bibliographical entry to “Back Off, Chekhov!” on my website. Just follow this link then drop down to that title to find the text in fine print. I also referred to the situation in a blog I wrote for The Moscow Times in 2009.
But all of that is prologue to what I’m really up to today – casting about a few thoughts about Chekhov’s brief stay in Tomsk. It’s a place where Anton Chekhov once ate a hearty meal at the Slavyansky Bazaar restaurant, and a place where a – God forbid! – irreverent statue of Chekhov now stands. I wrote about Leonty Usov’s great monument some time ago in this space – go there to see some photos of his fabulous work.
Chekhov came through Tomsk on his way to Sakhalin, about which he wanted to write a book – and did so later. He arrived in Tomsk on May 15, 1890 and took a room at the Rossia Hotel (on the corner of Nechaevskaya and Spasskaya Streets, a structure torn down long ago). It was a hard trip, made on trains, carts, carriages, boats, rafts and maybe even horseback. As such, we must understand that our Shining Example of a Writer wasn’t always in the best frame of mind. Things obviously came to a head in Tomsk. There was a policeman who wanted to talk shop – that is, literature – with Chekhov, but only succeeded in keeping the Great Man from writing. Here is what Chekhov said about him in a letter sent back to Moscow:
“I have been informed that an assistant of the Chief of Police wishes to see me. What is that all about? But my alarm was unfounded. It turns out the policeman is a lover of literature and even writes, thus did he come to me to pay his respects. He went home in search of his drama and, I think, he wants to entertain me with it. He’ll come now and again interrupt my writing…”

Chekhov continued, “The policeman came back. He did not read his drama although he brought it. But he did entertain me with a story. Not bad, but too local. He showed me a gold ingot. Asked for some vodka. I can’t recall a single Siberian member of the intelligentsia who hasn’t asked for vodka when visiting me. He told me that he has acquired a “little love girl,” a married woman, and let me read the petition sent to a high-placed official asking for a divorce. Then he suggested we go take a look at the Tomsk bordellos.”
It’s uncertain how much of that vodka Chekhov himself partook of, but here is how he described his visit to the ladies of the night:
“Returned from the bordellos. Disgusting. Two a.m. Tomsk is a boring city, drunken, not a single pretty woman, filled with Asian lawlessness. The only fine thing about this city is that the governors in it die.”
Oops! What happened to everyone’s refined, sad, pouting, melancholy, wistful, sensitive, kind Anton Chekhov?
The Slavyansky Bazaar, pictured here and built between 1886 and 1888,  is practically the only 19th-century building left in this part of the city, on the banks of the Tom’ River. Chekhov ate here around May 16 or 17 and apparently enjoyed it.
“They have a Slavyansky Bazaar,” he wrote to his publisher Alexei Suvorin, hinting, presumably, at the famous Slavyansky Bazaar restaurant in Moscow. “The dinners are good, although getting to this bazaar is not easy – unsurpassable mud. Today (May 17), I’ll go to the bathhouse. They say there is only one good bath attendant in all of Tomsk, a man named Arkhip.”
By the way, a brief digression on bathhouses: My friend Bryon MacWilliams wrote a wonderful book about Russian bathhouses called With Light Steam. In it you learn why a good bath attendant is so important, as well as many other important things.
But back to Chekhov and Tomsk.
“The folks here are good, kind and have wonderful traditions. Their rooms are arranged simply, but cleanly, their beds are soft, made of down with big pillows and their floors are decorated and covered with homemade canvas rugs. … True, one old woman who gave me a teaspoon wiped it on her backside, but at least they don’t sit you down to tea without a tablecloth. They don’t burp in your presence, they don’t hunt in their heads [for lice?], don’t hold their fingers inside the glass when bringing you water or milk. The plates are clean and the kvas is transparent… They bake the most tasty  bread. Their pies and pancakes and potato pies are all tasty too…”
Still, the women of Tomsk gave him no peace and inspired no respect.
“The women here are not interesting,” he wrote. “They are cold, do not know how to dress, don’t sing, don’t laugh, and are not good looking…”
Chekhov left Tomsk on May 21 (which, according to the contemporary calendar is June 4). He never returned. The people of Tomsk have never forgotten him.

 

 

Chekhov and Lyubimov at the Vigszinhaz, Budapest, Hungary

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The Vígszínház (pronounced more or less Veeg-seen-hahs) in Budapest is quite an extraordinary theater. The only thing I could compare to it in Moscow is the Bolshoi. But this historically was a “lowly” comedy theater, created in 1896, to counteract the conservatism of the National Theater. So this place was an upstart, a rebel, a renegade. Hardly looks like one by today’s standards. And when you get inside it only gets more opulent. According to the Geocaching website, “The Vígszínház is one of the finest examples of theatre buildings designed by [Ferdinand] Fellner and [Hermann] Helmer, whose 19th century ‘new-standard theatres’ can be found scattered across central Europe.” I attended the Vig, as it is called colloquially, one night last week to see a performance of Nikolai Gogol’s classic comedy The Inspector General. I was intrigued to see, when I arrived, a huge banner advertising the theater’s dramatization of Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita. So the Russian connection at this theater remains strong. You see, it was this very theater that introduced Anton Chekhov to Hungarian audiences. My half-hearted, though sincere, efforts to determine exactly which Chekhov play was produced here and when remain in vain. Numerous websites, including the theater’s own, proudly proclaim that Chekhov was produced here “from the very beginning,” or that the “first Chekhov offered in Hungary was staged here,” but nobody says which of the plays it was. A letter to the theater’s literary department has gone unanswered as of yet. And I used to have a book that listed all of the Chekhov productions around the world in the early years, but that book is not with me in Moscow. So I remain in the dark and I regrettably leave you there too. If anybody knows the first Chekhov play to be performed at the Vig, do inform me, please. I’ll add that information here.

But, as I say, this playhouse has a long and rich connection to Russian culture that goes far beyond Chekhov. Among others, the Boris Eifman Ballet has played here. But one of the most memorable Russian connections to this day remains Yury Lyubimov’s production of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. This, in fact, was the first of several interpretations Lyubimov would do of this seminal literary work. Although there exists some alternate information, Lyubimov’s own pages on the Taganka Theater site list the premiere of this show as having taken place Jan. 26, 1978. It preceded his famous Moscow production by just over a year (that production opened on Feb. 12, 1979). (Birgit Beumers in her book, Yury Lyubimov at the Taganka Theatre, 1964-1994 , puts the Budapest premiere date as June 1978, although I am inclined to go with the information provided by the Taganka.) The Taganka website also provides a full program of the production at the Vig. Lyubimov would return to Crime and Punishment in 1983 at the Lyric Hammersmith in London; the Academy Theater in Vienna in 1984; and Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. in 1987. This was not the only time that Lyubimov would stage a show abroad first and then follow with a production in Moscow. He did the same with Dostoevsky’s novel A Raw Youth, which he first directed in Finland in 1991 and then mounted at the Taganka in 1996.
Budapest was an important city for Lyubimov. He met the woman who would become his last wife while rehearsing Crime and Punishment at the Vig. Katalin Koncz was a journalist who interviewed Lyubimov and they ended up marrying, remaining together from 1978 until Lyubimov’s death in 2014. Lyubimov taught  for several years in Budapest at the theater academy. In fact, rounding out the Lyubimov-Vígszínház connection, the current artistic director here is Enikő Eszenyi, a director and actress who studied under Lyubimov at the Hungarian academy.

 

 

Anton Chekhov statue, Moscow

Click on photos to enlarge.

This is one of the most maligned statues in Moscow, for all of the wrong reasons to my mind. I hate to begin with this, but everybody else talks about it first of all. I could ignore that, you say, and you’d be right. And maybe I should. But I also want to have my say about it because I’ve never agreed with the complaints.
To the point: It seems to really irritate people that there used to be two public restrooms right where this statue of Anton Chekhov was unveiled in 1998 during the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the Moscow Art Theater.  It doesn’t bother anybody that the prestigious Chistiye Prudy, or Clean Ponds, region of Moscow is built on an old dumping grounds for the reeking remains of butchered animals. And rightly so. Things change. Big deal. So there were restrooms here? I remember my beloved mentor Alma Law going off about this and I could never understand it. I remember the restrooms. They kinda stunk when you walked by. I never went down in there – didn’t quite have the nerve, even if I had the need a time or two. So, for me, it was a great thing to close those things up and put them in the slot where all those things from the past go that we are able to forget. But no! Seventeen years later people are still making snide comments about the restrooms that used to be here, are long gone, and will never again rise to stink! What is the deal? I say it because I saw a comment on the net yesterday about my post about Nemirovich-Danchenko and Stanislavsky – somebody just had to bring up the old restrooms back in the corner of one of my photos. With all the things to talk about in Russia and the world!…
For the record, this statue was sculpted by Mikhail Anikushin, who died a year before it was unveiled. There is information, repeated in Russian Wikipedia, that then-Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov is the one who decided that the monument would stand in this corner in place of – yes, the former restrooms! – and before one of the walls of the once-famous Hotel Chevalier, which sheltered many great Russian writers and personages in the 19th century. I’ll get to that some day on this blog.

I love Anikushin’s work. It is precisely what I look for in sculptural art – it is a rendition, an interpretation. Sure he gets the general likeness, for which we are grateful. But that exaggerated lean, almost gaunt look is an interpretation, a suggestion. It makes us think about Chekhov, his life, his beliefs , his art. It is also true of the face, which I really love. There is something of the Pieta in this, isn’t there? A kind of mix between the expressions both Mary and Christ that are given by various artists working with that subject. And that suits Chekhov. This is a face that knows so much, almost too much for the individual to bear. As with any good work of sculpture, the expression changes as you move around it. Look at the two close-up shots above, taken almost, but not quite, from the same angle. I see something approaching stoicism in the first, an attempt to be strong against suffering, while in the second I see suffering beginning to take precedence. Actually, go up to the top photo and you see still another aspect – here there’s a kind of resignation and sorrow that predominates the image. All of these suit well the man who wrote “The Steppe,” “The Black Monk,” “Three Sisters,” “The Cherry Orchard” and much, much more.
I wrote in yesterday’s post about how the new monument to Nemirovich-Danchenko and Stanislavsky now marginalizes this Chekhov monument. You can see that in the last photo below. Chekhov really looks stuck in a corner now, dwarfed and diminished. Before the appearance of the new statue, one’s attention when arriving on Kamergersky Lane was drawn immediately to Chekhov. No more. He is now an afterthought. Ever since he appeared and ever since that silly restroom debate unfurled, there has been talk about moving the monument. I wouldn’t be surprised if that were to happen now. To my tastes, anyway, this is too good a work to be shunted off into the shadows.

 

 

Sytin Printing Press, Pyatnitskaya Ulitsa, Moscow

 

Our little march up and down Pyatnitskaya Street this week ends today with a building I see every time I emerge onto Pyatnitskaya from the courtyard in which I live. It’s a beautiful, stately old structure that has been abandoned for many of the years I have been here. That’s beginning to change and I’m thrilled about that. In the section of the building that faces 2nd Monetchikovsky Lane (the glass windows running away from the main peach/white structure in the picture above) several restaurants have gone into the first floor. One of them, Coin, has a great, inexpensive “business lunch” from 1 to 5 p.m. every weekday. You can often find Oksana and me there after 4 p.m. But, as with so many locations in Moscow, there is much, much more here than meets the contemporary eye.
This huge building, and many of the wings and additions stretching out over the entire city block covering Pyatnitskaya 71-73, once belonged to Ivan Sytin, one of the great publishers in Russian history. He was from a simple family and was not overly educated. Anton Chekhov described him as “a great, but completely unlettered man who came from the people. A bundle of energy together with slackness… and lack of firmness.” (I pull this quote from Charles A. Ruud and Marina E. Soroka’s introduction to My Life for the Book: The Memoirs of a Russian Publisher.) But Sytin had a nose for publishing and business and, leaning on the advice of many important cultural figures – Leo Tolstoy and Chekhov among them – he effected a revolution in Russian publishing. He made books, chapbooks, picture books, maps and such things available at extremely low cost, meaning they could reach masses. At one time or another he published the works of Alexander Pushkin, Ivan Krylov, Tolstoy, Chekhov and many others. He obtained the property on which his huge printing factory was built in 1887 and he put it to use immediately. Later he had the architect Adolf Erikhson build a fabulous new home for his business – that was in 1903 and that is pretty much what we see today. Because of Sytin’s stinginess and his exploitative relationship to his workers, this building was gutted by fire during the Revolution of 1905. However, it was rebuilt and working again within the year. It’s also worth noting that those same workers, or their “descendants,” if you will, were extremely loyal to Sytin. When the new Soviet government appropriated the building it took them nearly three years to get the workers to accept Communist Party representation. The workers were unhappy that their boss had been treated so badly.

According to the great Know Moscow website,  many of the top writers of the age paid visits to these offices, including Chekhov, Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky and Vladimir Mayakovsky. The poet Sergei Yesenin, before he was a poet or Yesenin in anyone’s mind but his own, worked as a copy editor here when he was 18 years old in 1913. Also of interest is that the future playwright Alexander Ostrovsky lived in his father’s home in a building on this plot that I am assuming was destroyed at some point. If I understand correctly, this would have been somewhere near the point where the peach and yellow buildings meet in the very last photo below.
I personally encountered Sytin for the first time in Nikolai Erdman’s black comedy The Warrant. At the beginning of Act III the old Avtonom Sigismundovich is horrified to hear that his tattered old copy of the newspaper Tsarist News has perished, i.e., was used as toilet paper by his servant Agafangel.
“How could it have perished?” Avtonom Sigismundovich asks. “My, what a healthy issue it was. The print. The ideas. The letters. Why do you think that was? Because people then were great. Take Sytin, for example. He published the newspaper Russian Word. And, oh, how he did publish it! He built a three-story building and printed it on every floor. Every time you’d ride by, you’d think to yourself, ‘There it is. The bulwark of the Russian empire. The three-story Russian Word…'”
In fact, Sytin began publishing Russian Word at the behest of Chekhov, who believed the country needed a good, cheap newspaper. As for the translation from the Erdman play, that’s taken from my own translation published in The Major Plays of Nikolai Erdman.

 

Anton Chekhov Monument, Tomsk

Ah, the Chekhov sculpture in Tomsk! I love it! This was hugely controversial when it was erected in 2004 for the city’s 400th anniversary. Many thought (and still do) that this interpretation of a slightly grumpy Chekhov by sculptor Leonty Usov was an abomination. I say this is what statues and monuments are all about – witty, honest, bold and filled with chutzpah. The text ringing the base of the sculpture says, “Anton Chekhov as seen through the eyes of a drunken peasant, lying in a ditch, who has never read [the beloved children’s story] ‘Kashtanka’.” It is intended to be, and succeeds in being, a light-hearted response to Chekhov’s famous blasting of Tomsk in a letter he wrote while on his way to Sakhalin Island, “Tomsk isn’t worth a brass nickel,” he wrote in 1890, “an incredibly boring city…. the people are incredibly boring… the city is full of drunks… endlessly muddy… the maid at the local tavern wiped my spoon on her butt before giving it to me… The dinners here are excellent, unlike the women who are rough to the touch…”

The statue stands on the banks of the Tom River, for which Tomsk, naturally, is named, and it faces the Slavyansky Bazaar restaurant (the red brick building below), where the writer apparently had at least some culinary satisfaction.