The works of A.P. Chekhov in A. Naim's reception (Iraq)

A.P. Chekhov’s works have been attracting an invariable interest in Arabic countries. A. Naim - playwright, actress, director and researcher - has suggested her own stage interpretation of Chekhov’s works. The novelty of the authors’ academic approach is to introduce A. Naim’s plays so far unpublished not translated in Russia, as well as to analyze them as a type of Chekhov’s works adaptations to the environment of a different culture and ethnic origins. The play “What if…” is based on Chekhov’s story “Grief”. The title of the story reflects the idea that it is impossible to fix a broken life. Hamadi is a “small person” just like the protagonist in Chekhov’s story. However, Chekhov’s character reconsiders his own life and his place in it, whereas Hamadi becomes a victim of social circumstances. Chekhov’s story “Ward № 6” became a resource of main motifs and characters for the play “Traveler With Good Imagination”. The action takes place in a mental hospital where the employees torment the patients. A young doctor who has recently come to the hospital tries to make things right, but he is murdered by the patients who were bullied into it by the medical staff. Chekhov’s motifs of despair and irresponsibility multiplying the evil are brought to the extreme in the Naim’s play. Chekhov’s story “The Death of a Government Clerk” provided the basis for the play “A Hot Day”. Like in the previous cases, the playwright places the action in modern Iraq and adds some critical socio-political sense to it. The protagonist of the play is a photographer who sneezed in his boss’s face just by accident. Unlike Chekhov’s general, the boss provokes the photographer’s death. In the play “Masud’s Dream” we can easily recognize the story “The Chameleon”, though the protagonist is bitten not by a lapdog, but by a large dog belonging to the British consul. This fact determines the policeman’s behavior who blamed Masud. Naim added a love story to the play which Chekhov doesn’t have. The authors of the paper arrive at the following conclusions: in A. Naim’s perception of Chekhov’s stories historical and socio-political aspects come to the fore. In her plays event emphasizing has given way to plot smoothing, open endings - to tragic ones, individual features - to typical ones that are sometimes brought to sketchiness. Chekhov’s works are becoming a fact of Arabic culture, they are creatively rethought under the influence of the social and literary development of the peculiarities of the other nation and those of social practice.