Les palimpsestes du théâtre de Čexov ou La Réécriture comme miroir des mutations de l’Union soviétique‐Russie

The rewriting of Čekhov’s drama is central in the Russian theatrical life of these last thirty years because the chekhovian characters, in search of ideal in a dying society, propose a reading of the Communism and post-Communism’s troubles. It is in a context of extreme saturation by Čexov’s theater that the contemporary playwrights try to make their voice heard. From examples chosen among the ‘new wave’ plays, then among those of the Perestroika and of post-Soviet period, the author shows that both fascination and aversion define the relationship contemporary authors have with this classic, whose plays monopolize the stage, to the detriment of the contemporary production. As a barometer, the rewriting of Čexov’s drama records the social changes. After periods of nostalgia towards the end of the 19th century, idealized as a lost paradise, then of sarcasms and destructive irony, the recent Čexov rewritings are rooted in a thematic, structural matrix which is a part of the collective unconscious

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Communism · Drama · Irony · Linguistics · Literature · Paradise · Political science · Politics · Reading (process) · Rewriting · Sign (mathematics) · Sociology · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · History · Law · Philosophy