Such an expression as “Mkhatov’s pause” has long and firmly entered into colloquial speech. This phrase has become almost a catch phrase, or a saying, it has been familiar to many since early childhood.
They hear it in the family, on the streets, in television programs and begin to use it 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 - a “pause”. However, this is not quite true.
How do you understand this expression?
In most cases, this is understood as the expression “mkhatovskaya pause” - this is something that can draw people's attention to the silent. Understanding is absolutely true. However, it is difficult to understand the word "pause" in any other way, and the adjective "Mkhatovskaya" directly refers to the Moscow theater, well-known throughout the country.
Quite often, this expression is used in an allegorical sense, 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 pathos of human behavior.
What is it?
“Mkhatov pause” is the ability to eloquently be silent. That is, it is not just a pause in speech in order to take a breath or think over the right words. This phrase is called a pause, which emphasizes the importance of spoken phrases.
It can be sustained both before a speech that matters, it is precisely this technique that American filmmakers resort to, and after what has been said, many domestic directors use this option.
Why "mhatovskaya"?
Why the ability to focus the attention of the interlocutor or the audience on a specific phrase uttered with the help of silence was called precisely “Mkhatov’s pause”, and not otherwise, no one can say for sure.
There is a version, more likely even a legend or a bike, telling that the artists of the Moscow Art Theater during Stanislavsky’s time were so skilled at keeping a pause on the stage that, without uttering a single remark, they made the audience cry and laugh. Of course, whether it was so or not, no one can say.
However, in favor of this version is the presence in colloquial speech of another winged expression. It's about the phrase: "I do not believe!". It is attributed to Stanislavsky, the author of his own methodology for presenting the performance to the audience, in which, by the way, pauses were involved. Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko were the founders of the Moscow art. Accordingly, it is quite logical that if one of the verbal expressions of the great Russian director and theatrical figure entered into mass colloquial speech, then both can be related to 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." The stable phraseological unit is translated from the language of Shakespeare, as a "theatrical pause."
In Russian, this phrase arose much earlier than Stanislavsky organized his own theater. At first it sounded like an “eloquent pause.” This expression was in use in literary and educational circles, it did not come out to the people. The expression used by the theater-goers is unknown, but at the time of the transition of Russian artistic troupes from booths to performances on a permanent stage, that is, in buildings built for this purpose, there was simply the word “pause” in everyday life. The word itself came into Russian from German, but when exactly this happened, of course, it is impossible to establish.
At the time of the organization of the Moscow Art Theater, the expression "Chekhov pause" was in use in metropolitan theater circles. This phrase also did not become winged, stable, and did not enter into ubiquitous colloquial speech.
Probably, this is not due at all to the talent of the artists of the Stanislavsky troupe, but to the fact that after the revolution, the theater was visited by Red Army soldiers who, after the end of the civil war, went 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 massive elimination of illiteracy in the last century, expression has also gone to the pages of newspaper pages.