Ivanov reinterpreted with the ideas of Sartre

On Saturday evening I saw Ivanov by Tchekov to the Théâtre de l'Odéon staged by Luc Bondy. When we talked about Sartre in class it reminded me what I saw in this play. We can indeed see the play in the light of the thought of Sartre.

The play of Tchekov as illustration of the bad faith

Everybody in the play judges this man. It is accused of greediness because he gets married to women with rich families. We accuse it of being dishonest because his bursar is not honnest.

Ivanov is not the only character of the play to undergo the other people's opinion. All the characters are reduce by other one in single one things: the one is a drunkard, the other one a stingy and an other one a beautiful woman. They play all their role in front of the others, they are for the others what they are not. But paradoxically it is this negative identity which allow them to escape the space of their existence. Maybe because they are afraid of choosing, because they refuse their freedom. So they refuse their " condemnation to freedom " and leave the others define who they are.

Ivanov in the face of his freedom

Ivanov understood this choice and he feels the anxiety to have to choose, to actualise his life’s poissibilities but he never manages to be alone to think about it. Even in his office there are always people who enter and go out. He cannot reach the “being-in-itself” to which he aspires. Ivanov appears as an illustration of Sartre's " useless passion " because he wants to become (or become again) his own “ideal self”. An alive and kicking man, who worked, loved, lived in the enjoyment and the spirit. An impossible goal which drive to the loss.

At the beginning of the play Ivanov is aloneon stage. The curtain is not raised yet and separates him from others. The levying of the curtain is as an opening towards all the possibilities of his existence.

During all the room he has to find the courage to choose his possibilities of life. But he prefers to run away from the death of his women and really not to choose his actions, like his second marriage.

Ivanov trying to escape the look of the others

The end of the story as the triumph of the " being-for-other "

We can see the end of the play, when the doctor treats Ivanov of "bastard", as the moment when Ivanov understands that he will never can just reach his goal of “being-in-itself” and “being-for-itself” but that there is always the “being-for-other”. This revelation drives him to the death as the negation of its own existence: his life has no meaning and it is  why he dies. We can even think that Ivanov does not commit suicide but that he already died from the moment when he understood there is no meaning in his life and he refuses to choose his life’s possibilities.

The death of Ivanov is then the triumph of others because their only judgments shall continue to make him live by their words and their memories  because he leaves nothing else behind him. Neither child, nor fortune.