ABSTRACT
In examining St. Denis's production of ‘The Three Sisters,’ one is constantly recognizing that his artistic triumph with it was fundamentally due to his subtle French psychological intuition, his sensitiveness to the fluctuating moods in which Chekhov deals, his understanding of the inner minds of men and women. At the outset, he stresses the importance in the approach to Chekhov of making a clear distinction between realism and naturalism, between a physical expression of life which is impregnated with its spiritual significance and the mere representation of insignificant surface detail. Chekhov makes the distinction himself in ‘The Sea Gull’ when Constantin compares his work with the naturalists like Trigorin who ‘represent how people eat, drink, love, move about and wear their jackets (and) from these commonplace sentences and pictures . . . try to draw . . . a petty moral, easy of comprehension and convenient for domestic use. . . .’
