Guide to Chekhov’s Comedy ‘The Cherry Orchard’

This original study of A.P. Chekhov's comedy ‘The Cherry Orchard’ is based on a detailed examination of exclusively primary sources — Chekhov's correspondence, memoirs and testimonies of his family and friends, a narrow and confidential social circle. In his first part - ‘The Cherry Orchard’ - ‘Anton Chekhov's Dreams’ - the author attempts to trace the accumulation of creative material, to substantiate and understand the primary sources from which the author derived his idea of writing the play, to analyze the most important circumstances of the writer's life that impacted his creative process. The second part - ‘The Cherry Orchard’ - ‘Mystification of Life’ – is in fact a scientific study of the play itself. The author presents and proves a number of hypotheses and psychological motives for the behavior of the play’s main characters, offers an original explanation of the factual aspect of the play, draws up complete and at times paradoxical psychological portraits of his characters. The third part of the book - ‘The Undisclosed Secrets of the Cherry Orchard’ (The Talk that Never Happened’ - gives the reader an opportunity to fantasize about the play and to reflect on the motives and circumstances that are not subject to scientific discussion and are merely the author’s assumptions and hypotheses.
For teachers and students of secondary and higher schools, applicants and everyone who wants to broaden their understanding of Chekhov's art outside the standard interpretation of this author that has been elaborated in the scientific and journalistic literature.