About the work
Anton Chekhov's drama „Ivanov" was written in 1887 and is his first completed major work. Reworked several times until 1889. Chekhov called the play „my first serious work" and created in its title figure the prototype of the „superfluous man" who marked nineteenth-century Russian literature.
Plot
In the Russian provinces the landowner Nikolai Ivanov lives in deep crisis. Five years ago he married Anna, a baptised Jew, who gave up her faith for him and was disowned by her family. Today Anna has tuberculosis, Ivanov has ruined his fortune, is in debt to his wife's cousin and can no longer love his wife. In the evenings Ivanov retreats to his neighbour, the steward Lebedev, whose grasping wife eyes any chance of money. There the young Sasha Lebedeva falls naively and romantically in love with Ivanov. Ivanov recognises his own moral dissolution but cannot resist Sasha's energy. Anna, who has followed Ivanov, accidentally overhears him kissing Sasha — she dies shortly thereafter. A year later Ivanov is to marry Sasha. As he enters the church, he draws his pistol and shoots himself.
Cultural significance
Ivanov is Chekhov's transitional work between his early writing and the mature drama of the four great plays. The work now appears modern through its unsparing diagnosis of depression as a psychological phenomenon. Russian productions from Stanislavsky (1904) to Lev Dodin have kept it constantly in the repertoire. Long less known in Western Europe, it has gained ground since the 1990s — Tom Stoppard's English translation (2008) eased access.