Doctor Lvov therefore needed touching up. In traditional drama, doctors were raisonneurs, whose sagacious moralizing clued the audience into the way to think about the characters. But Lvov does not heal breaches: he creates them through his purblind and self-righteous assumptions. In this respect, he much resembles Gregers Werle in Ibsen's The Wild Duck, who, in his quixotic attempt to strip away illusions, destroys the lives of those around him. Chekhov's task was to make sure that Lvov did not seem either an objective spokesman or a fatuous prig. 'Such persons are necessary, and for the most part sympathetic. To draw them as caricatures, even in the interests of the stage is dishonorable and serves no purpose' (to Suvorin, 30 December 1888).
Rehearsals for the Petersburg production went badly, despite a strong cast, and Chekhov quarrelled with the comic actor Vladimir Davydov who played the lead in a monotonous style to indicate seriousness. The opening night was a huge success, but Chekhov sneaked away, regarding the ovations as intoxication that would later give him a severe hangover. He continued to revise Ivanov, dropping one comic character, Dudkin, and, in general, toning down the farce elements. A third version appeared in 1889, with more explanations added between Lvov and Anna, and the removal of the dream monologue of Ivanov in the last act. Even then, Chekhov was not content and kept touching it up until 1901.
Chekhov never managed to eliminate the mannerisms of boulevard drama that vitiated the subtlety of his concept. The Act Two curtain, with a consumptive wife intruding on her husband in the arms of another woman, is effective claptrap; at least we are spared the fainting which is described in the next act. Scenes of vituperation rise, in the best melodrama manner, to one consummate insult. 'Kike bitch,' Ivanov screams at Anna in his ugliest moment; 'Bastard!' (or 'Cad' 'Villain' - podlets is too dated to translate well) is the summation of Lvov's contempt for Ivanov. Chekhov was to handle the slanging-match between Arkadina and Treplyov in The Seagull more saliently. Even the final suicide is, as the critic Kugel said, 'a sacrifice made by Chekhov's soul to the god of theatrical gimmickry,'4 literally ending the play with a bang. It may have been copied directly from Luka Antropov's popular comedy-melodrama Will-o'-the-Wisps (1873).
Even toned down, the comic characters are reduced to a series of tics and hardly seem to exist on the same plane as the primary characters. Kosykh is nothing more than his obsession with cards; Zinaida becomes the epitome of her stinginess, 'Madame Gooseberry-Jam'. Gradually, Chekhov learned how to make farcical elements more revelatory of his plays' inner meanings. On the other hand, Shabelsky's off-again-on-again courtship of the widow sardonically comments on Ivanov's own conscience- stricken interest in Sasha. Here the comedy has the Shakespearean function of a reflective subplot, with the result that 'two weddings are spoilt'.
Within the conventional framework, however, a Chekhovian sense of atmospherics is beginning to emerge. He knew well the resonance that derived from a properly-chosen setting, and structured the play to alternate private and public life. We first see Ivanov solus, seated in a natural surrounding against the background of his house; he is outside it, because it represents to him a suffocating prison to be escaped. But the primal image of isolated Ivanov is shattered by Borkin with his gun.
As if to exacerbate the incursions into his privacy, Ivanov flees to a more peopled spot, the party at the Lebedevs. But there the guests are already yawning at the very boredom he hoped to avoid. Act Two begins in a crowd of persons, some so anonymous as to be designated only as First Guest, Second Guest, etc.; this chorus makes common knowledge deeds performed in private. Even before Ivanov and Shabelsky appear, their lives are trotted forth as gossip and conjecture; Ivanov's innermost motives are distorted, and his most intimate action here, the embrace of Sasha, is intruded upon by the worst possible witness, his wife.
Act Three returns to Ivanov's study, which ought to be his sanctum, but is, as the stage direction makes clear, a jumble, a visual metaphor for the disorder of his existence. His papers, presumably the products of his brain, lie cheek by jowl with food and drink, brought in by others, who expatiate on gastronomy. Coming as it does after Anna's melodramatic discovery, this interlude strikes the note of triviality, and neutralises what might otherwise be overly theatrical. It is Chekhov's way of cooling overheated actions by pairing them with the banal. Ivanov himself seems aware of this, for he resents the impinging of his workaday fellows on his moping. Their commentary reduces his soul-searching to cheap and obvious motives.
'It's like living in Australia!' says Kosykh, unwittingly evoking this provincial barbarity where vast expanses stretch between estates, and yet privacy is impossible. The last act sanctions a medley of public and private worlds as the wedding party prepares for blessing before going to church. The event could not be more gregarious, despite the personal nature of the conjugal bond, and the characters have difficulty finding a quiet corner in which to unburden their minds. Ivanov's entrance is regarded as tactless invasion, a bridegroom seeing the bride before the ceremony; and his self-destruction is enacted before a crowd of horrified onlookers.
Suicide as a public act chimes in with Ivanov's continual self-dramatisation. He and his uncle Shabelsky put a literary construction on life. The Count tends to compare persons to characters in Gogol, life to events in French plays and novels. Ivanov points the comparisons inward: 'I'm dying of shame that I'm a healthy, strong man, and not turning into Hamlet or Manfred or a superfluous man'. Dr Lvov labels Ivanov a Tartuffe, Moliere's classic hypocrite. Most frequent is the Lazarus image, the dead man who might yet be called from the tomb if Sasha acts the Saviour. During the wedding preparations, Ivanov is told not to be a Chatsky, Griboyedeov's comic hero who regarded his society with scorn and was taken by it to be a madman. Ivanov's problem often seems to be an embarrassment of role models, none of which adequately expresses his complexity. Despite the conspectus of opinion that runs from Sasha's hero-worship to the malign slanders of the party-guests, Ivanov's character does not get beyond his own verbose self-scrutiny. 'How can a man see into another man's soul?' he asks Lvov. Chekhov did his best to present the evidence fairly, but he had yet to achieve the proper form.
4The Wood Demon'
In 1888, even before he had finished work on Ivanov, Chekhov suggested to Suvorin that they collaborate on a comedy. They drew up a list of characters, episodes and a distribution of assignments. Suvorin soon dropped out, and Chekhov reworked the play into The Wood Demon in Spring 1889.
The play turned out boring, pieced together like a mosaic, . . . nowhere in the whole play is there a single lackey or peripheral comic character or little widow. There are eight characters in all and only three of them are episodic. As a rule I tried to avoid superfluity, and I think I have succeeded' (to Suvorin, 14 May 1888).
The Wood Demon was read by the committee that passed on plays for the Petersburg state theatres, whose members included Grigorovich, the critic who had persuaded Chekhov to be a serious writer. Its devastating and unanimous decision was unanimously to reject The Wood Demon as 'a beautiful dramatised novella'.5 However, the play was solicited by Chekhov's boyhood friend Solovtsov, who had left Korsh's to start a new theatre in Moscow with Madam Abramova. So The Wood Demon, with a hastily rewritten fourth act, was first presented at Abramova's private theatre on 27 December 1889, in a very weak production. The role of Yelena was taken by the corpulent actress Mariya Glebova, and, as Mikhail Chekhov remembered, 'to see the jeune premier, the actor Roshchin- Insarov, making a declaration of love to her was positively incongruous; he called her beautiful, yet he could not get his arms round her to embrace her. Then the glow of the forest fire was such that it raised laughter'.6 Dissatisfied, Chekhov withdrew the play, which had been at best received with indifference.