Road trip

Eastside Road, April 25, 2012—

AS THE PREVIOUS POST indicates, we were down in Pasadena over the weekend, seeing plays at A Noise Within. Much as we like the company, and (for the most part) their productions, I look forward to the trip itself almost more. As Gertrude Stein notes someplace, Plays and Landscape have an elective affinity. (Actually what she says, as I recall, is that a landscape has no purpose other than providing a site for landscape or for battle: but cut me a little slack here.)

If I am religious, my religion is Landscape. Chekhov explains this better than I can:

The leaves did not stir on the trees, grasshoppers chirruped, and the monotonous hollow sound of the sea rising up from below, spoke of the peace, of the eternal sleep awaiting us. So it must have sounded when there was no Yalta, no Oreanda here; so it sounds now, and It will sound as indifferently and motonously when we are all not more. And in this constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards perfection. Sitting beside a young woman who in the dawn seemed so lovely, soothed and spellbound in these magical surroundings — the sea, mountains, clouds, the open sky — Gurov thought how in reality everything is beautiful in this world when one reflects: everything except what we think or do ourselves when we forget our human dignity and the higher aims of our existence.

—Chekhov: The Lady with the Dog, quoted in Janet Malcolm: Reading Chekhov

I found Malcolm's book interesting and useful. It combines, or better perhaps merges, literary criticism, travel, and first-person essay, all genres dear to my heart; and if she occasionally slips into a snippy mood she does not dwell there: with Chekhov at one's side, it's hard to remain scornful or overweening for more than a moment.

The quoted passage stands on the very first page of Reading Chekhov. Malcolm has gone to Yalta to visit Chekhov's home, and the seaside cottage that was his getaway; and what better way to set the scene than through the master's own words? She soon flashes back to earlier stages of her literary pilgrimage, visits to Petersburg and Moscow; and in those pages we're reminded that Janet Malcolm is a city-dweller; she doesn't take to the countryside as easily, I think, as Chekhov does. She writes about the stories more than the plays; she writes well about the letters (and quotes liberally from them, making me hunger to read them soon). She writes about Chekhov's rather surprising journey to Sakhalin, and the report he wrote on the lunatic asylum there.

I read Reading Chekhov quickly, in a borrowed copy no longer at hand — just as well, perhaps: I don't really want to write extensively about it here. Partly because of the speed, because it was read late at night in hotel rooms, and while seeing plays and driving through landscape, the book has gone into a vague and rather mysterious corner in the theater of my memory, taking on the quality of something W.G. Sebald might have written. I didn't take any notes while reading it, either: but I remember being particularly impressed with Chekhov's letter to his brother, urging him to put himself in order, and particularly to get some culture: to live well on this earth, among civil human society, one needs culture, which includes, Chekhov makes clear, discipline, kindness, modesty, and truthfulness.

You have only one failing, and the falseness of your position, and your unhappiness and your catarrh of the bowels are all due to it. That is your utter lack of culture. Forgive me, please, but veritas magis amicitia. You see, life has its conditions. In order to feel comfortable among educated people, to be at home and happy with them, one must be cultured to a certain extent…

—Malcolm, Reading Chekhov, p. 97 (I find the passage on Google Books)

Malcolm traveled by air and rail: Chekhov crossed Siberia, she points out, for the most part, in horse-drawn conveyances, on rutted and muddy roads. For most of us, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, landscape is experienced through glass and at speed. What Stein knew is that landscape divulges its content and its meaning only at slower tempo. Among the many differences between live theater and film or television perhaps the least discussed is tempo: theater is slower, even when it is punctuated, as are battles, by moments of violence and the violence of haste. I've noted here before that Bruckner's music is best appreciated by those who are accustomed to long walks: like Schubert, like Sibelius, Bruckner was accustomed to them.

(Mozart was I think not much of a walker; his awareness of landscape was formed during his childhood from the view of it receding from a coach moving as swiftly as possible — perhaps not very swiftly — as he sat next to his valet-companion on the rear seat, making up stories of reverse-motion worlds. I think that may be why his music often seems to have been conceived from the final moment forward to the beginning, guaranteeing all threads to converge and resolve at the conclusion.)

Looking north from Mission San Juan Bautista

As we like to do, we drove to Los Angeles with a friend, stopping to see another friend in Ojai on the way down, and dawdling in search of wildflowers on the way back. We stopped at Missions, too: I have my favorite sites and don't like to miss a chance to revisit them. One is at the edge of the little rose garden at Mission San Juan Bautista, where you gaze out over a flat expanse of farmland toward the eastern scarp of the San Andreas Fault. Last Thursday that view was spoiled a little bit by the extensive sheets of plastic covering the soil, which was probably being fumigated — one doesn't like to think about such modern industrial compromises with the higher aims of our existence, but there it is; and since it is there, it's good to be reminded of it.

(Others will be similarly discouraged by the thought of the hundreds of bodies in unmarked graves, just inside the wall in the "Indian Cemetery." It's politically fashionable to insist that the Mission movement was nothing but evil, exploitive, even cynical. You'll perhaps not be surprised to hear I think that's a bit simplistic: not only autre temps, autre moeurs, but also other truths, I believe.)

Then there was Ojai. Its valley was an inspiration, I believe, for James Nordhoff's Shangri-la; the writer lived in the Ojai valley. It is one huge citrus grove — citrus and avocados — relieved from time to time by the rather palatial residences of the rich who live quietly at the foot of the east-west range protecting them from north winds.

Churchill Orchard, Ojai

Malcolm points out that Chekhov writes of a Nature quite inflected by human activity; the natural beauty he contemplates is not wilderness but horticulture; and on this road trip I come to realize once again that I agree. The reassurance of the everpresent beauty — justice, even, I would say — derives from an intersection of natural context and human occupation or use. An appropriate use, of course, at the natural tempo and scale deriving from the natural energies: wind, water, gravity, animal and manpower.

I can never drive through California's Central Valley near Williams without thinking of old photographs my grandfather had, of enormous steam tractors big as small houses, standing out in mown and threshed wheatfields: they took the place of huge teams of horses, but likely moved not much faster. They opened a door, though, with the straining pull of an insatiable demand for ever faster, cheaper energy; and the result has been a widening of the gap between rich and poor, and a terrible cost to the environment. Demand for cheap labor, always related to willingness to exploit others for one's own comfort, always seems to result in some form of slavery.

The question arises inevitably on visiting California's Missions. We stopped at Mission San Miguel on the way back, after crossing the magnificent Figueroa Mountain in search of wildflowers — the blue and gold of lupine and poppy against sandstone and serpentine, enhanced by eddies of Kurosawa mists on an early afternoon troubled by changeable weather. The San Miguel sanctuary was badly damaged by the San Simeon earthquake of a few years ago, but the community and its parish rallied and somehow raised the funds necessary for a fine restoration. The cloister — wrong word, I'm sure, for the interior courtyard, originally little more than a stockyard — is nicely and modestly gardened; the cells left pretty much in the dark, furnished with the rawhide beds and crude tables and chairs.

Clearly the local population was worked in the vineyards and orchards, at the presses and ovens; and one can only wonder what they thought as they sat on the adobe floor of the church listening to sermons in Spanish and masses in Latin. The mental effort must have matched the physical, and they must have known they lived in a time of utter change, plunged from a preliterate hunter-gatherer society into one organized through the printed word, monetary exchange, and travel across great distances. I think California's Missions provide a glimpse into the Russian feudalism still living memory but soon to change utterly in Chekhov's day. I think, too, that we are utterly misled by sentiment when we try to apply contemporary concepts of social justice, themselves often based greatly on suspect assumptions of material needs and available energies, to a world now perhaps hopelessly distant from our ken.
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Mission San Antonio

We drove from Bradley, on Highway 101, westerly through Lockwood to Mission San Antonio, one of the most isolated of the Missions. Much of the way we were driving through Fort Hunter Liggett, whose target ranges and airstrips are scattered discreetly among stately oaks in a broad, tranquil valley. The Mission itself is changed since I was last there, say twelve years ago. The Franciscans left, we were told; they'd pretty much let the place go to nature; Dominicans have taken over, the place is cleaned up, it's made available to groups for retreats, and Mass is again celebrated every Sunday for a local parish of three hundred souls or so.

The calla lilies were still standing in vases at the front of the sanctuary, their perfume mingling with that of candles and incense. God knows I am no Catholic, nor Christian either: but I respect the better instincts of those who are, and appreciate their places of gathering in devotion to the forces they think determine their nature and destiny. As I learned in my first week of college, in a required course on religion (I'd been sent to a Christian college in Los Angeles):

Religion is the serious and social attitude of individuals or communities toward the power or powers which they conceive as having ultimate control over their interests and destinies.

—James Bisset Pratt, The Religious Consciousness, page 2

From there we drove on to King City, where a county park features an interesting museum of local agriculture whose relics reminded me once again of my grandparents and great-grandparents; and then northeasterly to Highway 25, which runs north through the valley of the San Andreas Fault toward Hollister. This valley can not be photographed to any advantage; its physical impact on the visitor is spatial more than visual. The road runs between parallel ridges, the Pinnacles on the west, the mercury-bearing San Idria on the right. Apart from the asphalt the only human evidence is fencing and the occasional farmstead. The fields are grazed, of course; one wonders what the grasses would have been before cattle were introduced nearly two hundred years ago.

Lichen-encrusted oak off Highway 25 (photo: March 2011)

When we entered Cold Creek Tavern on the Cuesta pass outside Santa Barbara, at 11:30, we were the only customers; when we left the place was nearly full. Twenty minutes later, when we left Highway Highway 154 to drive along Armour Canyon Road toward Figueroa Mountain Road, we were blissfully alone. We saw one or two cars on the mountain road. We saw none on the road from Bradley to Mission San Antonio, except for one slow tank truck whose driver obligingly signalled us to overtake him. We saw none on Highway 25. It continues to amaze me that on leaving the busy highways one can be alone for hours on these California back roads, even today, even after all the publicity their pleasures have produced.

Many more photographs from this road trip can be found here.

The Genuine Article: Chekhov's Seagull in Mill Valley

SLAVIC LANGUAGES LACK the definite article, as anyone with a Czech in the family can attest. So Libby Appel's version of Anton Chekhov's least-performed major play, now running at Marin Theatre, is called simply Seagull, promoting that bird from what's too easily little more than shtick to pervasive metaphor. It's clear in any case, of course, that Seagull stands for Konstantin Gavrilovich, the male lead; Kostya (as he's nicknamed) shoots the damned thing in the first act, then shoots himself in the last. (Oh. Spoiler. Sorry. I assumed you already knew.)

Seagull also stands for a force of Nature, like the lake brooding in the backdrop of the stage; the lake visible through the makeshift stage set up outside Sorin's country estate for the production of Kostya's play, an experiment in "new forms" and abstraction. Unlike Chekhov's other three major plays, in many ways more finished perhaps because less ambitious, The Seagull — sorry; I'm so used to using the article — is among other things a play about theater: about acting and actors, certainly; about writers, yes; but also about itself. I always think of Chekhov as the first truly modern playwright: this first play of his Big Four features recursion among its fingerprints; it's what Francis Ponge calls a momon, a work about itself. Chekhov himself is all over the cast list, from the young visionary writer Kostya to the successful hack writer Trigorin to the country doctor Yevgeny Sergeyevich, whose objectivity and practical acceptance of the conditions of life, while bordering on cynicism, brings a gentle note of reality to the proceedings.

There's so much to think about here. The histrionic women in this cast — three of them, of course, stage ladies seem generally to come in threes — drink and flail and wheedle and dictate. In this version, some lines have been restored giving even Polina Andreyevna her measure of desperation, so there are four failing ladies. Four of the men, too, portray various kinds of ineptitude. It's a human comedy; another aspect of Chekhov's modernity is the source he provides such diverse followers as Pirandello, Beckett, and Federico Fellini. Throwaway jokes collide with terror, cruelty, and anguish.

Marin Theatre's production is worth seeing. (It runs through Feb. 27.) Apart from the servant class, who in any event have little material to work with, the casting, and the individual roles, are quite well played; and the more difficult the role, the better the performance seems to be. John Tufts was remarkably strong as Kostya; Tess Malis Kincaid every bit as resourceful and commanding as his mother, the actress Irina; Christine Albright and Lis Sklar memorable (and very different) as the young women Nina and Marya; Craig Marker made a sympathetic character out of the weak, amoral Trigorin; Howard Swain was the well-detailed doctor Yevgeny. Smaller roles were just as well portrayed: Peter Ruocco, Richard Farrell, Julia Brothers, Michael Ray Wisely.

Jason Minadakis directed carefully and effectively, though curtains seemed mistimed and curtain lines sometimes tossed off too lightly. The large cast was well distributed onstage; even in large ensembles there never seemed to be a dead area. Robert Mark Morgan's scenic design caught the accelerating ennui and oppression of the play nicely, and Chris Houston's music — an onstage piano is used to very good effect — was atmospheric without being distracting.

The translation is by Libby Appel, who relied on a literal translation by Allison Horsely. Oddly anachronistic vernacular sometimes distracts — phrases like "desk job" and "will do" don't seem to me to belong in Chekhov's world. But this adaptation is strong, passionate, energetic, and detailed.

Anton Chekhov: Seagull continues through Feb. 27 at Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Avenue, Mill Valley; tel. 415.388.5208

Chekhov

THE MODERN THEATER BEGINS with Chekhov, say I. By Modern Theater I mean theater that primarily addresses the modern condition, which puts us in a constant triangulation of self, society, and history. Well, The Modern Theater begins with The Winter's Tale, of course; it only resumes with Chekhov: but it resumes after so long a stretch — since the French Baroque theater, writing and thinking here off the top of my head — that it's virtually a new beginning.
Last night we went to Santa Rosa, a twenty-minute drive, to see three one-act plays of Chekhov's: On the Injuriousness of Tobacco; A Tragic Man Despite Himself; The Proposal, produced by The Imaginists in their loft-style theater — no proscenium, wings, or backstage.
These short plays make me think of so much early-20th-century work: Gertrude Stein's chamber plays, the short stories of Saki, the experimental one- and two-page fictions of Virginia Woolf. Chekhov positions himself between the concrete realism of narrative and the abstract pointlessness — well, apparent pointlessness — of the Theater of the Absurd.
I love his great full-length plays: The Sea-gull; The Three Sisters; Uncle Vanya; The Cherry Orchard. They are marvelous examples of scale and proportion. But these shorter plays are just as carefully proportioned, but tense and alarming in their quick jumps and alternations. They're extremely psychological, of course; more so perhaps than the more extensive, conversational three-act plays.
A curiously determinate, even fateful number-scheme underlay the Imaginists' presentation On the Injuriousness of Tobacco is a monologue portraying an anxious lecturer; A Tragic Man Despite Himself is a two-man play; The Proposal adds an actress to the number.
Brent Lindsay was brilliant in all three vehicles, with perfect control of pitch, facial expression, body language, timing, and voice: I don't see how anyone could have done any of it better.
Eliot Fintushel was nearly his match in the supporting roles in the other two plays, and Tessa Rissacher was marvelous as the canny, down-to-earth would-be bride of The Proposal, an early play (1889) that lifts farce toward the 20th-century Absurdists.
Staged in a neutral space, directed with style and enterprise by Amy Pinto, the production repeats June 25, 26, and 27 at 8 pm, and we're going back: it was that good.

The Imaginists Theatre Collective, 461 Sebastopol Ave., Santa Rosa; tel. 707-528-7554; www.theimaginists.org

Green Integer has published these texts in George Malko's translation, which is the version used by The Imaginists; the web page linked here describes the publication and offers a review, by John Stokes (originally run in TLS), with interesting comments on On the Injuriousness of Tobacco, which Chekhov revised five times and completed only in 1902, the year of Uncle Vanya.