My country of origin, Ethiopia, was once part of the communist bloc and the USSR was a natural ally. In fact, there was and still is a Russian Center for Science and Culture in Addis Ababa, near Arada, the oldest center of the city. When I was in my late teens, my friend who was a major in literature at Addis Ababa University, introduced me to the center and its library, full of Russian literature. I immediately became a member and borrowed books, back to back. The first summer, all I did was read these books -- the entire season. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, Anton Chekhov, Nikolai Gogol and a few others whose names I have forgotten since. The theme in most seemed to be misery and suffering. That, I truly disliked and was affected by but I kept reading, I don't know why!
Dostoevsky was a favorite; either my friend shared with me his literary grandeur or I naturally gravitated towards him, I don't recall. I read
The Gambler,
Crime and Punishment,
Notes from Underground and I believe
The Insulted and Humiliated as well. My memory is fuzzy on the last one, though. I deliberately did not want to read
The Brothers Karamazov. I knew what the book was about. I was dealing with my own uncertainty about God and I made a decision not to exacerbate the guilt I was experiencing by getting ideas from it! At the time, I also thought I wanted to write about my own experience, thoughts, and uncertainty and I didn't want it to be influenced by the book in any way. I still have not read it.
The Idiot was his other book that I picked up at that time. I loved it ... the thing is I have not still finished reading it. It is an inexplicably mystery to me. Twice, I restarted it with the intent of finishing it. For some reason, I stopped somewhere half-way. I still don't know how the story ends. I also have the movie adaptation, which I still have not watched. The few times I tried, there were technology glitches. A Russian friend of mine told me the
Toronto Public Library has the DVD and I kept postponing borrowing it!
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| The stage setting for "I take your hand in mine..." at the Tarragon Theatre |
I read Anton Chekhov's compilation of short stories as well. If memory serves me correctly, I think his writing was lighter in tone than the other writers. Out of his many short stories, one stood out for me; the story whose titled I forgot but was about a civil servant who unknowingly sneezes on a superior. In any case, one morning in March, I tuned in to listen to
The Sunday Edition on CBC Radio One and to my delight, the episode was about the writings of Anton Chekhov! It was an hour-long discussion with Chekhov experts. One of them was the director of a play about Chekhov entitled "I take your hand in mine...", which was playing at the
Tarragon Theater in the Annex. I was not going to miss it.
On the Easter weekend, I invited my friend to go together and see the play at the Tarragon - we did and we even stayed for the Q & A. We told the director that we enjoyed the played. Credit should be given when it is due. I took the opportunity to ask him for the tile of the short story about the civil servant. It was:
Death of a Civil Servant.
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| The Tarragon Theater, Toronto |
