Mkhatovskaya pause: what is it?

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:46

Such an expression as "Mkhatovskaya pause" has long and firmly entered into colloquial speech. This phrase has become almost a catchphrase or a saying, it is familiar to many from early childhood.

Heard in the family, on the streets, in television programs and begin to use in their own speech, without even thinking about where this expression came from and what it means. Indeed, everything seems to be simple and clear - “pause”. However, this is not entirely true.

How is this expression understood?

In most cases, this is how the expression “MKhAT pause” is understood - it is something that can draw people's attention to the silent one. Understanding is absolutely correct. However, it is difficult to understand the word “pause” in any other way, and the adjective “Mkhatovskaya” directly refers to the Moscow theater known throughout the country.

Quite often this expression is used in allegoricalsense, with intonations of sarcasm. In colloquial speech, it has long become a household word and often expresses irony or a direct “banter” over someone, emphasizes the pretentious manner of human behavior.

What is this?

"Mkhatov pause" is the ability to eloquently be silent. That is, this is not just a pause in speech in order to take a breath or think about the right words. This phrase is called a pause, which emphasizes the importance of the spoken phrases.

It can be sustained both before a significant speech, this is the technique used by American filmmakers, and after what has been said, many domestic directors use this option.

Why "MKhAT"?

Why the ability to focus the attention of the interlocutor or the audience on a specific phrase spoken with the help of silence became known as the “MKhAT pause”, and not in any other way, no one can say for sure.

There is a version, rather even a legend or a tale, which tells that the artists of the Moscow Art Theater during the time of Stanislavsky were so skilled at holding a pause on the stage that, without uttering a single line, they made the audience sob and laugh. Of course, no one can say whether it was so or not.

However, this version is supported by the presence of another catchphrase in colloquial speech. It's about the phrase: "I do not believe!". It is attributed to Stanislavsky, the author of his own method of presenting the performance to the viewer, in which, by the way, pauses were involved. Stanislavsky andNemirovich-Danchenko were the founders of the Moscow Art Institute. Accordingly, it is quite logical that if one of the verbal expressions of the great Russian director and theatrical figure entered the mass colloquial speech, then both can be associated with the skill of the artists of his theater.

Where did this expression come from?

Similar phrases exist in European languages. For example, in English there is a stable expression "theatrical pause". Its meaning is completely analogous to the phrase "MKhATov pause." A stable phraseologism is translated from the language of Shakespeare as a “theatrical pause”.

In Russian, this phrase arose much earlier than Stanislavsky organized his theater. At first it sounded like an "eloquent pause." This expression was in use in literary and educational circles, it did not go to the people. It is not known what expression the theatergoers used, but at the time of the transition of Russian artistic troupes from booths to performances on a permanent stage, that is, in the buildings built for this, the word “pause” was in common use. The word itself came into the Russian language from German, but when exactly this happened, of course, is impossible to establish.

At the time of the organization of the Moscow Art Theater, in the capital's theater circles, the expression "Chekhov's pause" was in common use. This phrase also did not become winged, stable and did not enter into the widespread colloquial speech.

Probably, this is not at all connected with the talent of the artists of the Stanislavsky troupe, but with the fact that afterDuring the Revolution, the performances of the theater were visited by the Red Army soldiers, who, at the end of the civil war, dispersed to different parts of the country. They took with them the phrase "MKhATov pause." And thanks to the rapid development of information technology and the mass eradication of illiteracy in the last century, the expression has gone to the people and from the pages of newspaper pages.