READINGS OF THE WORK BY PHILIP HARVEY

  Anton Chekhov: 16 June 1904 Gregorian Calendar 29 June I just cannot get used to German silence and calm. One day is like any other day in Badenweiler.   There’s not a sign of good taste or talent anywhere. At 7 in the morning a band plays in the garden: they’re awful. But there’s loads of order and formality and honesty. Names: Doktor Formula, Frau und Fraulein Bassoon, Herr Lipp. My health has improved, not so much out of breath. Never submit a manuscript to two publishers at once. They might both publish at once, ignoring your protests. Out walking I don’t notice I’m ill, no aches and pains. My legs are thinner than ever they’ve been. Anyway, my play would seem to have been received well. At 7.30 a German visits, a kind of masseur. Herr Spa rubs me over with water, then I rest a while. Idea for a novella: all one man’s thoughts over course of one day. His thoughts about their thoughts and so on and so forth. At 8 I drink some acorn cocoa....

  An anti-ode entitled ‘Fire’ opens with a line from a letter of Anton Chekhov written to Dmitri Grigorovich, March 28, 1886, Moscow, and published in the Picador edition of selected letters in 1984. The whole poem is about Chekhov, reading him in Melbourne during the January bushfires.   FIRE   “I have composed my stories as reporters write their accounts of fires – mechanically, half-consciously,   “with no concern either for the reader or myself,” fire being the given, the sudden cause of all decisions   the story tells as people run one way snatching belongings or would stay put and fight heat they cannot beat.   Leave now, it is too late to leave, abandon your plans is the language of fire coming over the hill towards us.   Staying doesn’t make you a hero. Fire came from nowhere. We’ve lost everything. The whole place has just gone.   Fire quietens the township’s dreams of a world trip. Fire has leapt the r...

http://www.openculture.com/2013/04/two_beautifully-crafted_russian_animations_of_chekhovs_classic_childrens_story_kashtanka_.html Here are two films based on Anton Chekhov's children's story 'Kashtanka', one made in 1952, the other in 2004. 1 952 is a classic short feature film of the period, gorgeous like '101 Dalmatians' and so many other of that time, besotted as everyone was at the time withe use of 'full colour'. 2004 is more Shaun Tan, with scene action graphic and scratch and shadow effects giving heightened sense of Kashtanka's changing moods. 2004 better tells the story through Kashtanka's eyes. That in itself makes it a satisfying account. She finds herself with a new owner who treats her better than the carpenter, but it's still all a matter of survival. This film discloses only at the start and end how it is the son, not the father, who cares most for Kashtanka. The Soviet-era film is much softer on the carpenter's mistr...

Day 8 Having met the challenge to post the cover of seven books that I love (no explanation, no review, just the cover), I will come clean with my explanation. All the covers I posted are of books that I read, either in whole or part, every year. Hence the absence of novels. Some are there just for consultation, some to touch base, others are essential to my general well-being. The 100 word entries that go with the books are my creative interest, being neither explanations or reviews of the book. Being thus inspired, I will continue with this exercise until either I or the reader, probably the latter, wearies of it. Today is a book I found in a Hobart second-hand bookshop, ‘The personal papers of Anton Chekhov’ (Lear, 1948) Here are 100 words on a word in the title: Personal (July)   “It’s personal” is an admission you make to fend off discussion about religion, love life, latest argument. Reading Chekhov’s notebook again this July,...

Troyat on Chekhov, how does he differ from Pritchett? Anyway, there he is again, Anton Chekhov. You sit down and read about this educated Russian doctor who kept his peace, who saved all of his family (even Sonia?) in turn, who wrote all those remarkable stories and plays with seeming facility, who went down with consumption, and all the time made so little of his own trials. One reads thinking, why this Chekhov and not one of his brothers? Why was it Anton who lived like that and wrote that way? Why were there no other Russians who said it so exactly? He stands out, so rare, but how come it was him? All the time it must have seemed miraculous. No wonder the first night crowds went mad and the speechifiers went on for hours, causing Chekhov himself so much chagrin. When something speaks so directly of the social condition, criticism is forgotten. His relationships with women are given defiant shape. Troyat dismisses Aliuva as a romantic with delusions, one who could not see...