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A New Poetics of Chekhov’s Plays
Presence Through Absence

Harai Golomb
Harai Golomb has retired as Professor of Theatre Studies, Musicology and Multi-disciplinary Studies at Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Arts. He has published extensively and lectured widely on Chekhov’s plays worldwide. This is his first book-length study on the subject.

One century after the death of Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), his plays are celebrated throughout the world as a major milestone in the history of theatre and drama. Presence through Absence is a bold attempt to map the unique structure and meaning that comprise Chekhov’s immensely rich artistic universe. Golomb’s text is an incursion into Chekhov’s vision of unrealised potentials and present absences. The prime components of his theatrical technique and fictional world – e.g., text construction; views of humanity and human beings; themes and ideas; scenes, dialogue and plot; interaction between verbal and nonverbal elements in theatre – are explored. The result is more than an analysis of the form of Chekhov’s plays: Golomb’s main achievement is to uncover basic principles governing the universe of an author much studied, yet rarely subjected to such rigorous and comprehensive treatment. His timeless works are shown with rare insight and clarity to have artistic principles and coherence above and beyond the scope of the individual play.
… This book is essential reading for scholars and students of the Chekhovian dramatic art, and throws new light on how Chekhov’s plays can be interpreted and enacted; Golomb refreshes the reader’s perceptions of the basic tenets of drama, theatre, and the concept of art as a whole.

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