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From the book:Heartbreak House is not merely the name of the play which follows this preface. It is cultured, leisured Europe before the war. When the play was begun not a shot had been fired; and only the professional diplomatists and the very few amateurs whose hobby is foreign policy even knew that the guns were loaded. A Russian playwright, Tchekov, had produced four fascinating dramatic studies of Heartbreak House, of which three, The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya, and The Seagull, had been performed in England. Tolstoy, in his Fruits of Enlightenment, had shown us through it in his most ferociously contemptuous manner. Tolstoy did not waste any sympathy on it: it was to him the house in which Europe was stifling its soul; and he knew that our utter enervation and futilization in that overheated drawingroom atmosphere was delivering the world over to the control of ignorant and soulless cunning and energy, with the frightful consequences which have now overtaken it. Tolstoy was no pessimist: he was not disposed to leave the house standing if he could bring it down about the ears of its pretty and amiable voluptuaries; and he wielded the pickaxe with a will. He treated the case of the inmates as one of opium poisoning, to be dealt with by seizing the patients roughly and exercising them violently until they were broad awake. Tchekov, more of a fatalist, had no faith in these charming people extricating themselves. They would, he thought, be sold up and sent adrift by the bailiffs; and he therefore had no scruple in exploiting and even flattering their charm.
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Heartbreak House: a fantasia in the Russian manner on English themes
2000, Penguin Books
in English
0140437878 9780140437874
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Heartbreak House: A Fantasia in the Russian Manner on English Themes (Shaw Library)
February 7, 1988, Penguin (Non-Classics)
in English
0140450173 9780140450170
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Heartbreak House: A Fantasia in the Russian Manner on English Themes (Penguin Plays & Screenplays)
January 30, 1965, Penguin (Non-Classics)
in English
0140480536 9780140480535
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September 14, 2012 | Edited by VacuumBot | Updated format 'eBook' to 'E-book'; Removed author from Edition (author found in Work) |
July 20, 2010 | Edited by WorkBot | add editions to new work |
June 22, 2010 | Created by ImportBot | Imported from marc_overdrive MARC record |