Appearing Tpo Be Sad Poem by gershon hepner

Writing plays appearing to be sad
for people who are humorous, Anton
prevents us all from forming our foregone
conclusions about what is good or bad.
Because they both are linked, you have to laugh
both at what’s funny and what’s sad, he found,
for crying will not help you hear the sound
that splits the sides of sadness into half.


Hilton Als reviews a production of Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull” in The New Yorker, March 24,2008 (“Servants of Art”) , and quotes Nabokov, who observed in 1981 that Chekhov wrote “sad books for humorous people. Things for him were funny and sad at the same time, but you would not see their sadness if you did not see their fun, because both were linked up.”

3/19/08