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From bibliographical sources it is
known that there are 3 copies of the A.P. Chekhovs legendary play
Tatiana Repina:
1st copy Chekhovs copy with Chekhovs own signature on the
title page (Yalta)
2nd copy Efremovs copy with A.S. Suvorins signature.
3rd copy Pleshcheevs copy without a signature, with A.S.
Suvorins book plate.
Its genre is dreaming, and everything is possible in a dream, no
wonder the book was destined to have a mysterious life...
The play was written in early March 1889, and its plot is related the
same name 4-act comedy by A.S. Suvorin which was premiered on
11/12/1888 in Saint-Petersburg and on 16/01/1889 in Moscow. The
Suvorins Tatiana had an enormous success with public and there was
a lot of talk about it. It was the subject of the correspondence
between two mates, Suvorin and Chekhov, for a quite a long time. The
circumstances in which Chekhov wrote his Tatiana Repina was later
described by his brother Mikhail Pavlovich, He had his own library of
liturgical books, a part of which is still in his house in Yalta. So,
in one of those days, he thought he wanted to make a present to old
Suvorin, so he took a service book from the shelf, opened the Rite of
Matrimony, and purely for his own pleasure, and not at all for public
or critics, he wrote a one-act play which was a sequel to the
Suvorins Tatiana Repina. |
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I will remind that the Suvorins
drama ends with Tatiana Repinas death and what happened next
namely, whether Sabinin, her lover, married to his newly seduced woman
named Olenina, and if yes, then what he felt when he found out that
Tatiana Repina whom he had left had poisoned herself all this
remained unclear. And so Anton Chekhov wrote such sequel. (M.P.
Chekhov. Theatre, actors and Tatiana Repina (Chekhovs unpublished
play), Petersburg, 1924, pp. 60-61). The Tatiana Repina plot was
inspired by the tragic fate of the actress E.P. Kadmina who in 1881
during performance of the play Vasilisa Melentieva on the stage in
Kharkov Theatre took a poison and died after several days (a
reminiscence of this story was also in I.S. Turgenevs novel After
death, A.I. Kuprins story Last debut, and a number of other
literary works of that time). The Chekhovs play has the same players
as those in Suvorins Tatiana Repina: a broke landowner, a high
society bon vivant and a womanizer, Petr Ivanovich Sabinin (Suvorins
play was called Hunt For Women); Sabinins bride a young widow and
a very rich landowner Vera Alexandrovna Olenina; Sabinins close
friend the landowner Platon Mikhailovich Kotelnikov; the landowner
Andrey Andreyevich Kokoshkin; Zakhar Ilyich Matveev, an entrepreneur
from a theatre where Tatiana Repina used to play; a banker David
Solomonovich Sonenstein; lawyer Patronnikov. On March 5, 1889, after
having thanked Suvorin for his promise to send him foreign
dictionaries Chekhov wrote, For the dictionaries I will send you a
very cheap and useless present but such that only I can give it to
you. Wait for it. Chekhov sent to Suvorin his present, which was
this play, the next day and told him, I wrote it in one sitting, in a
hurry, so it came out very cheap. You can sue me for using your title.
Do not show it to anyone, and once you have read it throw it into the
fire. Or throw it without reading. Having received the script (now
lost) Suvorin made from it in his typography only 3 small-format
copies. In early May 1889 he sent to Chekhov, first, a proof sheet,
and later a ready printed copy. Chekhov replied to him on 14 May 1889
with a few comments, The paper is very good. I have struck my name
out, and I dont understand how it survived there at all. I have also
struck out, or corrected, numerous misprints which also survived.
Well, its all rubbish. For a greater illusion, the word Leipzig, not
Petersburg, should have appeared on the title sheet. This reference
to Leipzig obviously alluded to an unofficial nature of the edition. A
play depicting a matrimonial ceremony in church with quotations from
liturgical books would be undoubtedly forbidden by censorship. Indeed,
many illegal editions forbidden for circulation in Russia were printed
in or as if in Leipzig. Suvorin gave the play to A.N. Pleshcheev who
lived with his family in a countryside at the time. After reading it
the poet wrote to Chekhov in his letter on 22 May 1889, A very
original thing, I enjoyed it. Pity that theres more of the Holy
Scripture in it rather than conversations . At the same time, he
wrote to Suvorin, You know, Alexey Sergeyevich, I did not like it
that much. Theres little of Chekhov and too much of the Scripture.
Some time later Pleshcheev asked his son, Alexander Alexeyevich, to
bring the play back to Petersburg, to A.A. Suvorins apartment where
it remained until late summer 1912, and later this copy was dubbed as
Pleshcheevs among the literary people. |
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It was about this copy of the play
which remained with Suvorin and was found soon after his death in 1912
that newspapers wrote, Among the papers of A.S. Suvorin there was a
printed copy of the play Tatiana Repina which is a one-act parody
written by A.P. Chekhov. The play was printed in 3 copies, one of
which belongs to Suvorin, the other to Pleshcheev, and the
third one to Chekhov. Obviously, the Suvorins copy is the only one
which remained since no one has ever seen or heard of the other two.
(Novoye Vremya, 1912, 19 August, No. 13088). However, this play was
mentioned earlier by M.P. Chekhov in his memoirs published in 1907, he
wrote, Already being a famous writer, Anton Pavlovich wrote a play
the title of which I forgot. I think it was a sequel to the Suvorins
Tatiana Repina. Regrettably, I have only 4 pages left of the printed
copy of this play (a part of the proof sheets). The papers of Anton
Pavlovich may contain a full copy of this unique play. It was printed
in a very small format. The copy which belonged to Chekhov is in the
archives of the Museum house of A.P. Chekhov in Yalta (now Ukraine).
There is no information left about the Pleshcheevs copy. It is
not ruled out that M.P. Chekhov might have had the remains of it!
Among the materials in the Chekhovs archives in the Central Archives
of Art and Literature in Saint-Petersburg there are 4 initial pages
(without a cover) of the unknown copy probably those which were
mentioned in 1907 by M.P. Chekhov (and being actually the same proof
sheets that were sent to Chekhov by Suvorin) this is how the
situation was described by the publishers of the academic complete
edition, Vol. 12, Moscow, Nauka. 1986, p. 366. In his index of
Chekhovs works the bibliographer M.P. Klensky also wrote of the
Suvorins printed 3 copies of the play, One copy was received by the
author, the other two remained with Suvorin. On January 31st, 1890, he
gave as a present one copy to P.A. Efremov with a gift inscription!
This Efremovs copy with Suvorins inscription was given to Lev
Eduardovich Buhgeim and was later received by the library at the
Pushkin House. No one knows what happened with the third copy.
(Chekhov, Atheneum, p. 294). Currently, the Efremovs copy of
Tatiana Repina is missing in the resources of the Pushkin House
(IRLI)! |
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The interest to the play
itself has remained:
1. In 1999, the director Valery Fokin. following the idea by Peter
Stein, implemented a co-project of the Moscow Theater of Young
Spectators and the Avignon Festival, with participation of the
International Confederation of Theater Unions: he staged Tatiana
Repina. The spectacle starred Consuelo de Aviland (France) and Igor
Yasulovich (Russia). The spectacle became a whole a event in the world
theater life.
2. In 2002, the film director Kira Muratova made a sensational film
Chekhovskiye motivy (Chekhovs Motifs). The film was based on the
A.P. Chekhovs novels the play Tatiana Repina and the story
Trudniye Lyudi (Hard People). During a matrimonial ceremony in a
church, the groom is horrified when he sees among the guests his
ex-lover who has previously committed a suicide. The film was given a
number of prizes and did not pass unnoticed.
Given the universal importance of Chekhovs plays (they are present
in repertoires of almost every theater both in the Old and the New
World) this Pleshcheevs copy of Tatiana Repina gains
Reference literature:
1. Gitovich, N.I. Letopis zhizni I tvorchestva A.P. Chekhova,
Moscow, GIHL, 1955, p. 224.
2/ A.P. Chekhov Complete Edition in 30 Volumes, Vol. 12, Moscow,
Nauka, 1986, pp. 364-367
3. Chekhov, M.P. Anton Chekhov. Theater, actors, and Tatiana
Repina (Chekhovs unpublished play), Petersburg, 1924.
4. Letopis zhizni I tvorchestva A.P. Chekhova, Vol. 2, Moscow, 2004,
pp. 12-149. |
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