Theatre at the Microphone 11. Goncharov - The Precipice

The “Radio Russia” theater presents a multi-series radio play based on Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov’s novel. “An Cliffhanger” (Obryv) was conceived by the author back in 1849 as a novel about the complex relationship between an artist and society. By the 60s, the idea had been enriched with new problems born of the post-reform era. At the center of the work is the tragic fate of revolutionary-minded youth, embodied in the figure of the “nihilist” Marko Volokhov. Even the novel’s title, found at the very last stage of the work, testified to the author’s rejection of social radicalism. The intense conflict backdrop, unusual for Goncharov the novelist, was dictated by the sharp formulation of the problem of freedom in love: the struggle of the main heroine against passion. The clash between moral imperatives and the force of romantic attraction gave Goncharov rich material for deep psychological analysis.

After “An Cliffhanger,” Goncharov’s name rarely appeared in print. He limited himself to publishing only a few memoir essays and literary-critical articles, among which the “critical sketch” “A Million of Torments” stands out, devoted to staging Griboedov’s “Woe from Wit” at the Alexandrinsky Theatre. Goncharov offered such a profound interpretation of the psychological and dramatic nature of “Woe from Wit” that no later literary historian could ignore his analysis. The writer himself painfully experienced the creative silence of the last decades. His letters from those years depict the image of a lonely, closed person—an unusually subtle observer—someone who consciously kept away from life and yet suffered from his isolated position.