ABSTRACT

Constantin Stanislavski longed to record the fruit of his experiences and searching; he actually planned the materials for a series of books of which only My Life in Art was actually published inside the Soviet Union during his lifetime. At the same time he was distrustful of his ability to put what he had to say on paper; his medium was the acted word, for he was above all an actor working with actors. Stanislavski stands apart from many great artists in the profession of acting because, together with his personal talent he combined a rare quality of self-discipline. There is a real basis, when one is speaking of Anton Chekhov, for being reminded of a landscape by Levitan and melodies of Tschaikowsky. Chekhov's plays are profound in their amorphousness, the characters often feel and think things not expressed in the lines they speak.