Product Description

The volume contains a chronology of the playwright's life and work; an introduction giving the background to the play; a discussion of the various interpretations; and notes on indiviual words and phrases in the text

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #975652 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-01
• Original language: Russian
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Review
Russian drama in four acts by Anton Chekhov, first performed in Moscow in 1901 and published as Tri sestry in the same year. The Prozorov sisters (Olga, Masha, and Irina) yearn for the excitement of Moscow; their dreary provincial life is enlivened only by the arrival of the Imperial Army. The sisters' dreams of a new life are crushed when their brother marries a woman they consider ill-bred and mortgages the house; the army is withdrawn, and Irina's fiance is killed in a duel. The characters of Three Sisters are outstanding examples of Chekhovian boredom, longing, and listlessness. The playwright portrays the sisters' social aspirations with sensitivity and irony, using them as emblems of Russian middle-class pretensions and despair. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

Review
"Chekhov's brilliant tale of the sisters' dream to return to Moscow, and the clash between duty and desire that keeps them in their garrison town, is rendered anew in Susan Coyne's vital new translation. She infuses all with a muscularity and humour even as heartbreak and betrayal insinuate themselves, and we are left standing alone with the sisters watching the parade go by -- right out of town."

Language Notes
Text: English, Russian (translation)

Customer Reviews

A fable for the modern reader
Checkov was a master of composing life's largest problems into beautiful language and ordinary situations which the entire world could understand. Granted he wrote them a long time ago but the underlying situation exists everywhere today. Here are three sisters completely unable to move on with their lives. They are unhappy, they are desperate for a change of scene, they are forced to give up anyone they love to someone else but yet they remain glued to the exact place where all of this occurs. Olga has passed her prime, Masha loves someone other than her husband, and Irina has no idea what could possibly make her happy and all they do is talk about change, but never do anything active. And in the end it all comes full circle and we as an audience, a reader, need to decide how to not fall into such a life rut, to learn by their actions as we do from Aesop's fables. This play is just written a great deal better, with a little more comedy and tugging at the heartstrings.

Life is mostly disappointment
The 'Three Sisters' is another Chekhov depiction of life's pains, disappointments, hopes , illusions and moments of beauty. It is once again as in the 'Seagull' life in the provinces which is a central villain depriving the heroines of what they believe would be a fuller more realized life in the city. Each one of the sisters does not come to the Love and realization in life that they dreamed. Olga the schoolteacher ends up as the mistress of her school, but this is not her heart's desire. Masha longs for a richer kind of love with one wiser than the husband she has outgrown .Irina dreams of an escape she can never make. Their brother Andrei who marries the peasant woman Natalya and has two children with her , sees her take over his life and drive out the sisters from the ancestral home.
The characters as is usually the case with Chekhov are not one- dimensional but are complex mixtures .Though the play ends in the seeming failure of all , a speech of sister Olga suggests that 'hopelessness' is not the last word for Chekhov, but dream and delusion maintain us to the end.

"We shall be forgotten, our faces will be forgotten, our voices, and how many there were of us; but our sufferings will pass into joy for those who will live after us, happiness and peace will be established upon earth, and they will remember kindly and bless those who have lived before. Oh, dear sisters, our life is not ended yet. We shall live! The music is so happy, so joyful, and it seems as though in a little while we shall know what we are living for, why we are suffering... If we only knew--if we only knew!"