Double Translation
AUTUMN HOLIDAY, the short play based on Chekhov's Lady With a Dog, was a translation in more senses than one. dramatising the. story, it transferred it from 19th Century Russia to modern England. The scene was now Lowestoft, and since there is a very special melancholy that broods over- an English seaside resort in the off-season, the Chekhovian effect was to some extent preserved. Two middle-aged people ‘on holiday fall in love: each is married, and not unhappily. There is no answer to the problem; and that is the point of the story. The play caugltt something of the shading and nuance of Chekhov, and the note of human unhappiness for which there is no cure; and to that extent, I suppose, it survived the double vrocess of translation. But of the chief character, the middle-aged business man, I’m not so sure. As played by Wilfred Pickles, it was a tailormade part; but do north-country businessmen, even when in love, remark on the colours of sunsets and admit without shame to an interest in water-colour painting?
M.K.
J.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19530925.2.21.4
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 741, 25 September 1953, Page 10
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180Double Translation New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 741, 25 September 1953, Page 10
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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