Post-Jungian Criticism: Theory and Practice

Drs. Jung and Chekhov: Physicians of the Soul by

A funny thing has happened. Anton Chekhov, who was judged in his own time to be a playwright narrowly culturebound , over-refined and obscure, whose drama was persistently characterized at home and abroad as “depressing” and “pessimistic,” has become second only to Shakespeare in reputation and in frequency of production. Andrzej Wajda’s remark—“Theatre in our European tradition derives from the word, from literature, the Greeks, Shakespeare, Chekhov”—is typical of the regard in which Chekhov is held. He is a synecdoche for all modern drama, indeed, in Wajda’s debatable overview, for all drama from the Elizabethans to ourselves. —Senelick, The Chekhov Theatre What then, is responsible for this “funny happening”? Why does Chekhov’s relatively small, seemingly parochial body of work take its place in the mythic cosmos of the Greeks and Shakespeare? What can Jung tell us about the work of this man whose life and his own show some interesting commonalities? To begin, in a collection that deals largely with the written word, it is vital to record that the leap from page to stage is never a solitary venture. The audience member sees only the end result of the collaborative work that brings a piece of dramatic 159 Drs. Jung and Chekhov Physicians of the Soul ������ SALLY PORTERFIELD literature to life on stage, while the solitary reader creates his own world from the text, his imagination, and his own experience. The two encounters might be likened to that of the contemplative in his cell and the public worshiper in church or temple. ARCHETYPE AND CULTURE The process of production begins in the individual conscious and unconscious workings of the director, the actors, and the designers. Those widely diverse sensibilities work together to create a synthesis that begins with the text and becomes something unique, not only in each production but in each performance, each moment of its life. Thus the ephemeral nature of the performing arts generates something as elusive as the unconscious itself and often as numinous, like the shimmer of currents beneath a moving stream, hints of truth in a language that can be grasped only by the unconscious mind. Jung’s description of this process reframes Keats’s notion of “negative capability” as he asserts that “The essence of a work of art is not to be found in the personal idiosyncrasies that creep into it—indeed, the more there are of them, the less it is a work of art—but in its rising above the personal and speaking from the mind and heart of the artist to the mind and heart of mankind” (Spirit 19). He continues later in the same essay: “Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him” (101). Since art emanates from the unconscious, very often the artist has no conscious awareness of the process that produces it. Great dramatic characters have the ability to come to life only through actors who allow themselves to be vessels for that incarnation. There is no Hamlet, no Oedipus, no Uncle Vanya, just as there is no sounding glory in a Beethoven manuscript. Hamlet, Oedipus, and Vanya come alive only in the merger of character and actor that is the transcendent function of great theater. This incarnation becomes an experience of enormous power, for both actor and audience, a sort of group descent into the collective unconscious. We are discussing here, then, not only the private versus the public but the unmediated versus the mediated transaction between the work of art and the individual. How much influence do time, place, and culture wield over the strength of archetypal patterns? We can agree that specifics alter with these variables, as Jung himself asserts with uncharacteristic consistency. A casual perusal of photographs and drawings 160 Sally Porterfield from various productions of Shakespeare or the Greeks shows an enormous difference in aesthetic values, from set and costumes to body language and attitude, even among those that are performed in a generally “traditional” style, according to the popular notions of what that tradition is. Acting styles themselves change so quickly that a film or television program of ten or fifteen years ago often seems already dated. Often, attempts to “update” classics merely serve to strip them...