The Complete Plays

page 30 / After: at home? — From this day forth I shall believe you!

GLAGOLYEV SR. Good afternoon, Mariya Yefimovna!

GREKOVA. You didn’t believe me before?

TRILETSKY. How can I put it? Sometimes I believed you, sometimes I didn’t. I don’t usually believe women much.

GLAGOLYEV SR. (laughs). Nikolay Ivanovich can’t help making compliments! Good afternoon, Mariya Yefimovna!

page 31 / After: Already jumping to conclusions! — Oh you women!

page 34 / After: She’s coming! —

VENGEROVICH JR. (entering). Don’t forget that Auerbach is a Jew, Heine is a Jew . . .

SOFYA YEGOROVNA. That doesn’t mean much to the masses . . . It may have a certain meaning for me, but hardly for the masses . . . If someone other than me is to believe you, you need something more persuasive . . .

page 35 / After the stage direction: Laughter. —

GLAGOLYEV SR. Or a quiet angel flew by.

PLATONOV. A quiet angel has no business here.

page 37 / After: to answer your question . . . —

TRILETSKY (to Bugrov). A wonderful fellow, that Platonov! Look at him: a marquis, the most authentic marquis, and a schoolteacher, just everything. Believe then in suum cuique!⁶

GLAGOLYEV SR. That remark was made in a tone suggesting there is something disgraceful, humiliating about teaching . . . If our most kind Mikhail Vasilich made a blunder, it is only that, in starting out life and picking a career, he lost sight of the fact that in society one must present a handsome exterior, but this blunder from Mikhail Vasilich’s point of view is, so far as I know, not a blunder.

PLATONOV. I didn’t pick out my career and didn’t make a blunder. I never picked out anything and never made anything.

page 37 / After: stand in the way all on their own . . . — However, don’t you scowl so hard, Sofya Yegorovna! I’m not a complete waste of time. I have an excellent hobby. My hobby consists in not spoiling my baby boy, playing the guitar and constantly cursing the moment when I came up with the insane, homicidal idea of leaving the university, leaving what I now so love . . .

page 38 / After: ladies’ polonaise. — I made conquests, I turned men into cuckolds, but now I’m retired.

page 39 / After: no serial number!” — What do you still have to drag your loins in here for?

page 40 / After: I suppose . . . — (to Sofya Yegorovna.) There, as you see . . . A fascinating tribe!

page 40 / After: you start to be wary of young people . . . —

SHCHERBUK (out the window). They’re here? They’re here to hoist their own father on a pike? To show off their disobedience? In green dresses, the idiots, they’ve tarted themselves up! Look, Christian folk! Lizards! (Whistles.) Green as grass! Shshsh . . .

VEROCHKA (offstage). Papa dear, you can talk dirty at home . . .

ANNA PETROVNA. Who’s that? Your daughters, Pavel Petrovich? Why don’t they come in? (Out the window.) Good afternoon! Come in, we’ll say our hellos inside!

VEROCHKA (offstage). Is the doctor here, Your Excellency?

ANNA PETROVNA. The doctor won’t pick on you. Come inside!

VEROCHKA (offstage). And is Mister Platonov there?

ANNA PETROVNA. I promise you they won’t pick on you.

Laughter.

SHCHERBUK. They’re here! They might as well have brought their mother too!

SCENE XV

The same, VEROCHKA, and LIZOCHKA.

Enter, make curtsies and sit at the piano.

TRILETSKY. Ah, ah! (Hides his face behind a handkerchief.) Ah! Whom do I see?

Laughter.

For shame! For shame! I’m so embarrassed! There are unmarried women here!

SHCHERBUK sprawls in an armchair and gazes disdainfully at his daughters.

VEROCHKA. Best wishes on your lawful marriage, your excellency!

ANNA PETROVNA. Not me, but Sergey Pavlovich . . .

VOINITSEV. Thank you very, very much! How are you?

VEROCHKA. Merci. . . Your Excellency, I . . . Mama dear sends you her regards . . .

ANNA PETROVNA. Merci . . . (To Triletsky.) Stop it!

SHCHERBUK. My eyes are dazzled! What beauties! They came to show off their manners . . . Parlay voo fransay? Vui! Non!

PLATONOV. Why are you in hiding, Nikolay?

TRILETSKY. Lizaveta Pavlovna is here . . . Ah! I’m so embarrassed . . .

LIZOCHKA. Mama dear sent you her regards, Your Excellency.

ANNA PETROVNA. Thank you. (to Triletsky.) Stop it!

SHCHERBUK (winks at Triletsky). Aren’t they the pretty things! They should obey their father!

ANNA PETROVNA. Pay no attention, Vera Pavlovna, or you, Yelizaveta Pavlovna, to that laughter. The doctor is always laughing and mostly for no good reason. Mister Platonov is the same.

PLATONOV. I have no idea of laughing.

ANNA PETROVNA. Pay no attention . . . Remember the fable: “Once friends went for a walk one night . . .”? Remember?

VEROCHKA. I don’t remember, Your Excellency.

Huge laugh.

SHCHERBUK (applauds). A regular philistine! They do not understand decorum and propriety! That’s what comes of not showing respect to your father, you slags!

VEROCHKA. Papa dear, you can talk dirty at home . . .

SHCHERBUK (turns his back on her). There are no paternal feelings in my breast! I had a few but they’re gone! Begone!

TRILETSKY (hugs himself in glee). Oof! This is just to my taste! (Embraces Shcherbuk.) Great Beelzebub Bucephalovich! Great man!

page 41 / After: my father’s friends. —

SHCHERBUK. Little beauties, little cuties . . . They’re here! Their mother doesn’t keep them at home!

ANNA PETROVNA. Pavel Petrovich! (Shakes her head.)

page 42 / After: Don’t be angry, please! — What value can I put on your good words, your noble appearance, your kindly smiles, endearments, how can I put any faith in them, if I know that you, his friends, were incapable and, perhaps, even too lazy to protect my father from thousands of follies, and if I know that you haven’t got the strength to grab me by the scruff of my neck and pull me out of the quicksand?

page 43 / After: You don’t? . . . — It’s not for you to talk about charity . . . Take a look: everyone’s surprised and affected. Around here it’s usually boldness or stupidity that raises eyebrows.

page 43 /

SCENE XVI

The same, VASILY, and OSIP.

VASILY (runs in). Sergey Pavlych! Mistress!

OSIP (chases Vasily and slams the door). Slap my face because I’m a menace to society! (Stops in bewilderment.)

VASILY. He’s tortured me to death . . . He pummeled my whole back with his fists . . . There’s no escape . . .

OSIP. He flew in here! . . . They’ve already arrived . . . (Laughs.) Honest to God, it’s an accident. I was chasing him, and wound up in here . . . (Starts to withdraw.) An accident . . .

ANNA PETROVNA. What new stupidity is this?

PLATONOV. Ah . . . Whom do I see!? The devil’s bosom buddy! Hold on, hold on! (Grasps Osip by the shoulder.) Hold on, my dear fellow.

ANNA PETROVNA (to Vasily). Put Yakov in your place and retire to the kitchen to wipe your feet! (To Platonov.) Let him go, Mikhail Vasilich! (To Osip.) Greetings, Osip, and clear out!

VASILY. Massacred my whole back . . . Been feeding his face since first thing in the morning . . . Damned fellow can’t get enough to eat!

Laughter.

ANNA PETROVNA. You’ll tell us later! Get out!

VASILY. Yes, ma’am. (Exits.)

page 44 / After: give you something to eat . . . — You ought get a shave as well, your physiugly face looks like a cactus . . . You ask Yakov for a shave . . .

page 48 / After: And who gave you the right? — (Whispers in Verochka’s ear.)

VEROCHKA sits at the piano and loudly plays a waltz.

page 48 / After: Honor’s gone down the drain! — Where is it? It’s got old, worn out, turned into a hollow sound used to describe something obsolete . . .

page 49 / After: All of a sudden . . . —

VEROCHKA. Why are you telling this, Papa dear?

SHCHERBUK. Begone, Medusa!⁷

page 49 / After: not her love . . . — For amours he goes (points at Lizochka) to her! He’s turned her into a she-idiot. She used to be a submissive daughter, but he’s spoiled her . . .

page 50 / After: There’s a city for you! — A house twenty stories high!

page 51 / After: hopeless fools . . . — Stop being surprised! Be surprised by the staying power of your clever, luminous family.

page 51 / After: (Exits with Sofya Yegorovna.) —

VEROCHKA and LIZOCHKA exit into the garden.

page 53 / After: You crank! — Go and yawn!

page 53 / After: What business is it of yours, you shyster? — What’s it got to do with you as a matter of fact! Don’t you think I can take myself and get married? Why don’t you mind your own business?

page 55 / After: A big-hearted youngster! — Now I shall be careful!

page 56 / After: (Looks through the doorway to the dining room.) — They’re eating as if there’s no tomorrow! Triletsky is gulping down sardines like a shark . . . Voinitsev isn’t eating, but stares wide-eyed at his wife. Lucky dog! He loves her the way Adam loved his Eve! He’d be ready to eat candle-wax if it would make her happy . . . He’s having a wonderful time! Soon it will pass and never come again.

page 56 / After: kiss that hair! — stage direction: Pause.

page 56 / After: that head of hair brings back to me . . . — It’s past, it’s gone, it’s sunk as if drowned, as if it had never been! Ech . . . human happiness! Just enough to smear on your lips . . . There, pal, get a whiff of it just once, and you’ll remember all your life long what it smells like!

page 56 / After: a very good thing — a glorious, lawful, even if tormenting, thing, even if it is sometimes like envy . . .

page 57 / Replace: PLATONOV (looks through the doorway to the dining room).

with: PLATONOV. Only there’s one annoying thing . . . Still, why be so skeptical? What I wanted to say about rapid transit . . . Oh the hell with it! Enjoy yourselves! There’s no point in getting ahead of ourselves . . . We can and should live happily with it . . . (Looks through the dining-room door.) Not an ordinary woman . . . Not like my Sashka . . .

Pause.

page 57 / After: let’s have a drink! —

VOINITSEV (nods at Triletsky). Have you heard? “If people are there, he’ll pull up a chair!” He’s been courting Grekova! Have you noticed?

TRILETSKY. Save it for later. Say, are we going to get drunk today or not?

page 57 / After: and your sermons make me sick to my stomach! — Leave me alone, do me a favor!

page 58 / After: All day long, all day long . . . — Honestly, I’m soon going to prescribe you to my patients for chronic diseases, as sweat-producing and sleep-inducing.

page 58 / After: All day long . . . —

PLATONOV. Shut up!

page 59 / After: grief on account of my friendship — the way that my former friend but present enemy once came to grief, master of pharmacy Frantz Zakharovich Shriftbaum!

ACT TWO

TABLEAU ONE

page 60 / After: only you don’t want to! — You’ve got such a clever mind, such as you never had before!

page 61 / After: General’s lady’s mines? — You’re a con man, a con man!

page 63 / Replace: I didn’t look after her, old Fool Ivanych Merry-maker!

with: The Lord took her away! Forgive me. Forgive me, Sasha! I didn’t look after your mother . . . I didn’t look after her, old Fool Ivanych Merrymaker! I hastened her death!

page 63 / After: I understand! — From this minute on not a drop! You give the orders, and the ghost of your mother is on your side . . .

page 63 / After: All right, sir . . . — But, young man, aren’t you the son of Colonel Triletsky?

TRILETSKY. So it seems, I am, sir!

IVAN IVANOVICH. In that case I’ll take it! (Roars with laughter.)

page 63 / After: rich and famous! — During the war I had thousands, hundreds of thousands in my hands, and didn’t take the slightest kopek from the Russian Empire . . . I was content with nothing but my pay . . .

page 64 / After: I got the Vladimir third class . . . — Not second, second would have a star on it . . . Third . . . Here it is . . . Around my neck . . . Can you see it, Sasha? There it is . . . This is the Anna, this is the Stanislav, this is the Anna third class with crossed swords . . . This is for the Rumanian campaign . . . And here for no particular reason is the Persian Lion and Sun . . . Medals . . . One for life-saving . . . A silver one . . . In ‘63, I pulled the wife of the regimental doctor out of the water by her hair . . . The military George . . . I got another one for Sebastopol, on the very day you were born, Nikolay . . . During the war I was sent to supreme command three times . . . — “Been in the service long, Triletsky?” — “Thirty-one years, your imperial highness!” — “Stand easy. Go with God! My regards!” God will provide, my children . . . He’s already provided for my son-in-law . . . Over and done with! The grave, requiem mass . . . Your old man is falling apart, has fallen apart . . .

page 65 / After: when I was young — I played Pechorin and Bazarov

page 65 / After: L-e-eft face! — Forward ma . . . arch!

page 66 / After: All right, all right . . . — Hello and good-bye!

page 66 / After: I’m feeling generous, damn it all! — Here’s another little ruble for the two of you, because the two of you put together aren’t worth the two-hundredth part of this little ruble!

page 67 / After: he’s an old man . . . — What for? Still on about her?

page 67 / After: some little dimwit . . . — What’s she need a husband for? Camouflage? A Potiphar⁸ who’s never around? Never fear, she’s not marrying him for love, if she does marry him. Tempted by his riches.

page 68 / After: What are you thinking about? — You don’t want to understand the wretched situation I’m in! I’m suffering, Sophie! Your frigid yes and no are an utter calamity for me! You never laugh, you never smile, you never say a word, with something constantly on your mind . . . This thing you’re thinking about, which gives me no peace, no place, tears my soul to pieces . . .

page 68 / After: my moods — but forgive me for the yes and no.

page 70 / Before: There’s no reason — I am not avoiding people, Mikhail Vasilich!

page 70 / After: have a word with you — when you’re alone, when you have only a perceptibly small, not great, desire to get away from me

page 70 / After: repulsive? — After all, listen, to feel oneself a pariah, whom people run away from, is not very pleasant, it’s insulting, depressing!

page 71 / After: (Walks up to her). — Can you think that if I wanted to undermine the welfare of your Sergey Pavlovich, to make off with you now in my arms, I would start by using a weapon that for me is holier than any on earth? No, respected Sofya Yegorovna, I’m not strewing my pearls for the right to possess you, and if you become necessary to me, I shall take you for what you’re worth!

page 71 / After: to your Sergey Pavlovich! — Hold on, be quiet! Let me finish! You’ve seen my desire to let you know that I didn’t complete my acquisition at that time, that I have some claims . . . You saw and . . . got scared? Your wretched family was against it! You have no right to despise me!

page 72 / After: eight rubles . . . — And played cards, lost two bottles of Lafitte . . .

page 74 / After: Worse than anyone on earth. — You looking for good people, Abram Abramych?

page 80 / Before: I could have smitten with a great love — There are people, my boy, who don’t smoke cigarettes, don’t talk nonsense to womenfolk, don’t put on boots without previously checking to see if there are boot trees in them . . . Boot trees or rules, they’re everything for them . . . And they’ll set off for the next world according to some legal statute . . . They’re arid, pedantic, constantly fussing over themselves and their rules.

page 80 / After: to our tongues! —

PLATONOV. Stupid . . . You spout the most hopeless poppycock . . . To talk that way you don’t have to have attended medical school for five years.

TRILETSKY. “Medical schools,” my grandfather Brigadier Triletsky wrote to his posterity, “are nothing but self-indulgence and perplexity for the upper classes. Among the ancient Hellenes and Romans of the Empire physicians were slaves, and astrologers superstitious swindlers, and a slavish nature has absolutely nothing to do with your blue blood! For your noble blue blood is such that however powerfully you strive to be a slave, you never will be, for a lord cannot be a boor, and a boor cannot be a lord.” A clever brain, you must admit, my grandfather!

PLATONOV. But don’t you cut off legs? Don’t you provide ointments for rashes?

TRILETSKY. The other day . . .

page 81 / Replace: Couldn’t find us . . . she does care . . .

with: However, I won’t grieve . . . My mind is fully made up on that point . . . No slavish hope will creep in . . . I’m very calm . . . I’m not Sofya Yegorovna!

page 81 / Before: She’s miffed — She has hopes . . .

page 81 / After: She imagines . . . Hm . . . — I don’t love her, being a sinful man. I find it depressing. From her head to her heels a bookworm, crammed with those lofty matters, concepts, high ideals, sublime, damn it, truth, faith, lack of faith, spontaneous impulses . . .

page 81 / After: Let’s go get a drink! — That doesn’t require honor or knowledge or duty or anything sublime, but no one has a right to forbid it either. Am I right? Let’s go, pal!

page 81 / After: On his money merrily we roll along . . . — These easygoing Voinitsevs surprise me not a little! Fireworks cost twenty-five smackers, champagne a hundred smackers, wine, vodka also go for a hundred . . . That’s three hundred rubles, all told, for this pernicious party. Three hundred rubles! And they probably borrowed five hundred from Vengerovich . . . Three hundred they’ve squandered today, and with the other two hundred Sergey will order a bicycle or buy his wife a little watch . . .

TRILETSKY. They’re organizing an amateur theatrical.

PLATONOV. Do tell! The scenery will cost about a hundred and fifty smackers . . . And up to their eyebrows in debt . . . Starting with the General’s lady’s chess games with Vengerovich! As God is my judge! And there’s some kind of underhanded deal being cooked up about the estate . . . It’s annoying and pathetic, especially since you consider them to be intelligent people!

page 82 / After: (Roars with laughter). — Pockmarks and chalk instead of powder . . .

page 83 / After: stench — and raggedy leggings instead of a scarf

page 83 / After: get married! — Well I shall thwart his eagerness to get married!

page 83 / After: You’re the idiot, Count! — It’s incredibly depressing to talk to you!

page 87 / After: Insufferable man! — After all he knows that I love him, that he loves me, he can’t breathe without me . . . Oh, no, you don’t! He has to play his little games, he has to put on his acts, has to flirt with his tongue! Plays with my respect like a musician on a violin! He doesn’t like to look at things simply, but has to have a preface to them . . . Oh, no, you don’t! Don’t try it on me!

page 89 / After: rather peculiar, Porfiry Semyonych! — You need my spiritual goodness, as you write in your letter, but what do you know about my spiritual goodness?

page 89 / Before: But actually I did . . . If only you would act for yourself . . .

page 92 / After: That’s frank — Oh, you idiot, you idiot!

page 92 / After: (Sits down.) — It’s become hideously obscured, my golden age is gone forever! I turned it into filthy nonsense . . . I buried it all in the grave, except this body . . .

page 93 / Before: How am I to rise above — My talents must be deeply hidden, they’re stuck in the quicksand . . . Either I haven’t unearthed them over the course of a lifetime or I’m stuck in it myself . . .

Pause.

page 93 / After: I’m not feeling sorry for myself! — I’m reaching the point when I must come to the definite conclusion that I am an irremediably ruined man!

page 93 / After: to lie? — Who gave you the right to prattle all day long on my behalf about labor, suffering, freedom, if you do nothing for them and intend to do nothing?

TABLEAU TWO

page 100 / After: prayed God for death, sinner that I am . . . — But, Osip, imagine my joy, when one day he walks over to me and says all of a sudden: “Little girl, would you like to be my wife?” Imagine my joy . . . In my joy I quite lost all sense of shame and threw my arms around his neck . . .

page 107 / After: despicable, absurd! — Why did I kiss her down by the river? There’s got to be a reason I didn’t pass up that pleasure. (Sits down.) Kiss her, you dunce: it’s a pretty face! She even offered her cheek! Aaah . . .

Pause.

I’ve got to get away from here . . . It’s over!

page 107 / After: perfectly revolting . . . — The General’s lady seemed like a peasant wench, Sofya a stupid old maid, I . . . What about Grekova?

page 107 / After: When? — They start to laugh through bloody tears . . .

page 107 / After: self-scrutiny! — When I’m drunk, I soar aloft and build towers of Babylon!

page 108 / After: monarch of all you survey! — Nature, Thou art mine! Thou art for me!

page 109 / Before: Just look at that sky! — On such a night, however, as this, it’s all right to be a bit of a poet . . .

page 109 / After: Just look at that sky! Yes . . . — Happy the man who can breathe this air! Yes . . . In my bosom there is such warmth, such expan-siveness . . . Isn’t this a poetic feeling, after all?

page 109 / After: ashamed of being young! — who blushes at emotions, which old age remembers with pleasure! Enough of setting up obstacles to what now constitutes your true strength! Do not alienate your youth! Do not violate its nature! You will be accursed! Woe to the man who was not and will not be young!

page 110 / After: Am I your inferior or what? — At least once in my life I should give free rein to my flesh . . . Sometimes rejuvenation works in conjunction with stupidity . . .

page 111 / Before: Leave me out of it! — . . . And when, my dear sir, will you and your dear papa stop opening taverns? And when will I stop being the most fervent customer at your taverns? When will the Vengeroviches disappear and stop eating the hard-earned bread of the Platonovs? When? Let’s shut up, my dear fellow . . . Or here’s what . . .

page 111 / Replace: (Goes far upstage and comes back again.)

with: (Goes far upstage.)

PLATONOV. Poor fellow! So much contradiction, so much unnecessary crap, insufferably old-fashioned pedantry in this poor little body! Ech! They should give me back my youth again! I could show him . . . And sits and moans! There’s nothing to be done with him! He has to tell the world, that personal happiness is egoism! That’s the only thing he’s got to do! What inexcusable impoverishment! His tongue and another man’s words . . . No more! No more of other people’s words and other people’s brains!

VENGEROVICH JR. walks back.

page 112 / After: Ugh! — Youth, youth! . . . On one hand, a healthy body, a lively brain, total honesty, boldness, love of freedom, light and greatness, and, on the other, contempt for hard work, desperate phrase-making, foul language, licentiousness, boasting . . . On one hand, Shakespeare and Goethe, and on the other money, career, and whoring! What about arts and sciences? (Laughs.) Poor orphans! Neither called nor chosen! It’s high time to file them in the archives or lock them up in a home for illegitimate children . . . (Roars with laughter.) A hundred million people with heads, brains and — a handful of scholars, some fifty artists and not a single writer! That’s an awful lot! Neither called nor chosen! Have fun, kind people! Arts and sciences is hard work, it’s the triumph of ideas over muscles, it’s an evangelical life . . . and what is life to us? Without living we still know how to die!

Pause.

It’s horrible!

page 113 / Replace: PLATONOV (leaps up).

with: PLATONOV. What do you want from me? (Leaps up.) What do you want from me?

page 113 / After: I rode over, my dear! — (Laughs out loud.)

page 114 / Before: But are you really mine? — Do I really know what makes your eyes shine so brightly? You want happiness, you expect the triumph of youth, passions, ardor . . . Courageous and honorable words of love . . .

page 116 / Replace: No fooling.

with: Would you like me to introduce you to the editor of our local paper? I’m acquainted with him . . . No fooling . . . Oh you . . . Oh you, my darling big bass drum! Oh you . . .

page 117 / Replace: carpenters

with: janitors

page 118 / After: you ingrate! —

PLATONOV (walks up to him). Get out of here!

PETRIN. Huh?

PLATONOV. Clear out of here!

PETRIN. Why get angry? No need to get angry, sweetheart! Where’s the road? There it is, the road! (Shouts.) Where’s the road? There’s the roadoden-dron! Good-bye, Mister Platonov! Did you hear, sweetheart, the way I cursed her out?

PLATONOV. I heard.

PETRIN. Don’t you dare . . . tell her! I was joshing. Pava and I . . .

PLATONOV. All right . . . Go away! By the way, Gerasim Kuzmich . . . If I ever see you at the Voinitsevs’ again, if I hear just one word about that sixteen thousand, you old crook, then . . . I’ll throw you out the window!

PETRIN. I understand, young man! Take my arm, Pavochka! You’re the only friend I have left . . .

They start to go.

You’ll throw me out, your arms are too short! I’ll call in the I.O.U.s, and a certain somebody will be out of a school job! I’ll get you fired! We don’t need your ideas! We don’t need all these ideas and hocus-pocus! We need teachers, not Spinozas and Martin Zadeks!⁹ I’ll denounce you and get you fired! Honest to God, I’ll get you fired! We know all about his ideas, Pav-ochka! I’ll drag him through the mud! I’ll write a letter to the district police chief right away . . .

PLATONOV. And what will you scribble?

PETRIN (shouts). That’ll do, sir! That’ll do! We understand!

They start to go.

PLATONOV. That’ll do, but remember that you were educated at Moscow University, that by the stupidest of fates you call yourself a cultured Russian! Don’t be crass, because your crassness is sullying not only you but the reputation of cultured Russians!

PETRIN. All right! Sing, nightingale!

PLATONOV. Leave slander and denunciations to those who don’t value that wretched reputation! I won’t say anything else! Sober up and mark my words!

page 119 / Replace: but if you had any idea . . . an irreparable mistake . . .

with: It’s not me going to your place, but my weak body . . . I would have thrown you over, if it hadn’t been for this, this ill-behaved body!

ANNA PETROVNA. How loathsome! . . . (Strikes Platonov with her riding-crop.) Talk, talk, but mind what you’re saying! (Walks away from Platonov.) You want to go, go, you don’t want to — the hell with it! I’m not about to beg you! That’s going too far!

PLATONOV. But . . . It’s too late to be insulted! (Walks behind her and takes her by the arm.)

ANNA PETROVNA tears away her arm.

PLATONOV. It doesn’t matter, after all . . . I’ll go . . . Now you’ve unleashed the devil in me . . . Are you turning away? It’s too late to be insulted! We’re now both stuck in the same situation and no matter how much we offend one another’s dignity, we cannot separate . . . We’re weak! Don’t be insulted, woman! (Embraces her.) I don’t mean to insult you! I wanted to express myself more graphically . . . I’d kill myself rather than insult you . . . You’re everything to me! Even when you’re sinning I think you’re great!

page 121 / Replace: Good-bye

with: Zheh voo saloo!¹⁰

page 124 / Replace: What am I thinking!

with: Where is their strength, their reason? What a one I am! My soul weeps, but some kind of cursed power, some kind of demon holds me back, shoves with all his might . . .

page 124 / After: I will make a note of it! — Filth . . . filth! I’ll make a note and show it to anyone I want to corrupt!

page 128 / After: (Runs out.)

ECHO. You bastard . . . turd . . . turd . . .

ACT THREE

page 132 / After: for your sacrifices? — Ugh, Sofya, Sofya . . . those sacrifices of yours . . . dreadful! . . . your ruin!

page 134 / After: of this whole tiresome mess! — I’m a lunatic! I don’t know what I’m to say and to do!

page 136 / After the stage direction: Pause. — And we will forget him, and he will forget us . . . Time will do its work . . .

page 136 / After: and the General’s lady . . . — Today I am still yours, but tomorrow . . . What will things be like tomorrow?

page 136 / After: (Lies down on the sofa.) — Tomorrow I’ll be a new man . . . Interesting!

page 136 / After: ignoramus! — What power keeps you at home?

page 137 / Replace: Sergey and Sofya are behaving

with: Sergey and Sofya have both suddenly come down with a fit of bickering and are behaving

page 137 / After: You are the little dunderhead. — You’re a very great fool, Mishenka!

page 137 / After the stage direction: Pause. — A general’s lady to end all general’s ladies!

page 138 / After: like God’s image, sir . . . — A Christian, I’ve served God and Tsar faithful and true for twenty-five years, sir . . .

Pause

I swore an oath faithful and true on the Holy Bible . . .

page 140 / After: like a holy relic. — You’ll impose a fine. It’s about time I was taught a good lesson. Don’t forgive me, don’t forgive me for any reason, even though I humbly beg your forgiveness . . .

page 141 / After: a woman’s punished me . . . — It’s about time, they’ve been pampering me for far too long . . .

page 141 / Before: I was free — Another day or so left, I’d be going to trial . . . Triletsky would make a speech to the point. Grekova would cry her eyes out at the trial . . . After the trial peace and drunkenness, of course . . . Ech! . . .

page 141 / After: poor Voinitsevs! — Your friend and eccentric Platonov cost you dear . . . When will you sic the law on me? . . .

page 142 / After: Everything . . . — Especially about the things you’ll learn about in the not too distant future and which . . . I would ask you not to mention, if you know them already . . .

page 146 / After: and the scoundrel Platonov — don’t look for him when he disappears, don’t ask about him

page 146 / After: fade into the background . . . — Until the time when the name Platonov will be only a hollow sound for you, until he is obscured in your memory by a dense fog, until the time when we will never meet again!

page 148 / After: I’m a drunkard, Platonov . . . — When my General was alive, I drank an awful lot . . . Drank, drank, drank . . . And I shall go on drinking!

page 149 / After: and I won’t see you! — I’m a goner!

page 149 / After: A new life . . . Get angry, don’t get angry, but . . .

page 156 / After: I’ll make a man of him! — I shall show him the way, I shall teach him how to redeem my sinful life and the life of my fathers! Day and night I shall sanctify him . . .

page 156 / After: your delight! — Nikolay Mikhailov Platonov will go far!

page 156 / After: You’re laughing . . . — I’ve tickled your maternal vanity . . .

page 158 / After: I’m really sorry! — I’ll stay with you . . .

page 159 / After: My God! — (Bites the pillow.)

page 159 / Replace: (Lies on the sofa.)

with:(Looks out the window.)

page 159 / Replace: VOINITSEV enters and stops in the doorway. . . . can’t manage to beat you down!

with: She’s getting in the cart.

Pause.

After all this is my wife, my family, warmth . . . Where is she going? What will become of it? Incredible! (Shouts.) Help her get in! What are you looking at? (Quietly.) She’s covered her face with a kerchief and is looking over here out of the corner of her eye . . . She’s driven off . . . How will it all end, I should like to know? What more is to come? It’s dreadful! (Shouts.) He’s here!?

Pause.

He’s here . . . Where’s he going? Here. No, no, not here . . . Why is he coming to me? (Quickly lies down.) He’s taking a walk . . . This is his usual time for taking a walk . . . Are you trembling? Aaaah . . . (Lends an ear.) Anyway, I’d better get ready . . . I’ll face him boldly and ask no quarter . . . I’ll let him call me names, cover me with abuse . . . Footsteps? His? Hm . . . I’m sleeping, I’m sleeping . . . (Covers his face.) He’s coming . . . What a pity the door isn’t locked.

VOINITSEV appears in a window.

PLATONOV. He walked up to the window . . . Maybe it isn’t him!

VOINITSEV (in the window). He isn’t here? Strolling somewhere in the forest, dreaming about happiness and convincing the whole universe of how right he is? (Leans over the windowsill.) Your happiness doesn’t belong to you! What’s to be done? (Thinks.) I’ll go inside and write him a challenge to a duel . . . He prides himself on his chivalrous actions, now let him come and fight! I’ll offer him satisfaction . . . I won’t give her up to him without a fight, I won’t, even if all rights, opinions and convictions put together took her away from me! Whether he’s right or not — has nothing to do with me! I can’t discuss it! I’m suffering and . . . I want revenge! That’s what! I’ve gone crazy!

PLATONOV coughs slightly.

VOINITSEV (on seeing Platonov). Is that him? He’s asleep . . . Wouldn’t you know . . . He can sleep! If the rat felt even a tenth part of the humiliation inflicted on me, he wouldn’t sleep! (Looks around.) Right now . . . For the first time in my life I feel hatred and . . . I’ll kill. Right now . . . Right now . . . (Raises a dagger.)

PLATONOV (jumps up). Get back!

VOINITSEV quickly leaps back out of the window and hides.

SCENE X

PLATONOV (alone).

I beg of you! For heaven’s sake! What are you doing? Get back! I’ll kill myself, if my death is what you’re after! (Stamps his feet.) Get away! O wretched, pathetic man! . . . Is that him? Vanished? (Slaps himself on the head.) He was trying to kill me! He, Sergey Voinitsev, a cultured, honorable, noble, loving man! It’s smashed, cracked everything that I believed in, that I loved! The head God gave me is cursed! I’ve brought this sensitive soul to the point of murder! I did it! I was disastrous for people, people were disastrous for me! (Sobs.) Keep away from people!

page 159 / After: not overly talented . . . — How will I end? It’s common knowledge . . . If I don’t die of consumption, I’ll end by becoming a mystic.

page 160 / Replace: (whistles)

with: (sobs)

page 160 / After: Stands to reason . . . — (Sobs.) Damn you.

page 160 / After: I’ll go at once . . . — stage direction: Pause.

page 161 / After: filthy . . . — (Weeps.)

ACT FOUR

page 162 / Before: SOFYA YEGOROVNA. Don’t get so excited! —

KATYA. He ain’t nowheres, mistress!

SOFYA YEGOROVNA. Where did you look for him?

KATYA. Everywheres, everywheres I could . . . At the schoolhouse I poked my nose in every corner. Doors and windows all broke in, but he ain’t there . . . I even went down cellar . . . A carpenter was sitting by the cellar, I asked him whether he seen him . . . and he says I ain’t seen ‘im. I thought if I go through the woods . . .

SOFYA YEGOROVNA. Did you stop by the priest’s?

KATYA. I sure did . . . The holy father says that they ain’t seen Mikhail Vasilich a whole week . . . Went by the deacon’s . . . Went by Aleksey Makarych the clerk’s, and he don’t know . . . I figured the gent might be taking a hike in the woods . . . so I went through the woods . . . I looked and looked . . .

page 163 / After: Go out again, Katya! — Go back to the holy father, to that carpenter . . .

page 164 / After: He doesn’t love me! — All right! He doesn’t love me . . . Otherwise he wouldn’t torture me this way . . . Maybe the school inspector called him to town for some reason . . . No, no . . . He didn’t come yesterday, doesn’t come today . . . (Gets up.)

page 166 / After: look down your nose at me like that! — My mind can’t grasp it! It’s horrible to remember! You know what happened yesterday? Yesterday I almost killed Platonov! I almost cut his throat! If he hadn’t woken up, I would have killed him! I crept over to him with a knife, like a highway robber, to a sleeping, unarmed man!

SOFYA YEGOROVNA. When?

VOINITSEV. Last night! He saw me!

SOFYA YEGOROVNA (sits and covers her face). What happened?

VOINITSEV. I wanted to kill him because he stole my wife! I didn’t want to let him have you without a fight! If he hadn’t woke up, I would have killed him outright with that damned dagger!

page 166 / After: Where is he? — Did he get scared of your knife and run away? He can’t have run away!

page 166 / Before: Where is he? — You were willing to kill him when he was asleep, why didn’t you kill him when he woke up? Stab him in the back? A man awake is more dangerous than a man asleep?

page 173 / After: Good morning, Sergey Pavlovich! — Ah, you can’t imagine!

page 174 / After: I’m not wrong! — (Slaps himself on the forehead.)

page 174 / After: I should shoot myself. — (Sobs.)

Pause.

page 175 / Replace: do not . . . kill yourself! . . . Grief will do you in . . .

with: but don’t sully your hands with a crime . . . Are you the one to be killed? You? A bitter insult! God will see that I believe in your unhappiness and that it makes me no less unhappy than you! Why be the cause of another crime? You want revenge? Hm . . . But revenge is stupid, isn’t it, as stupid as a savage! What would become of you if you succeeded in . . . a murder? You . . . you would be ruined! In any case murder is the lowest ebb of all human vulgarity! Now, let’s assume, I did something despicable . . . Why should you defile yourself, yourself, for that?

Pause.

Nothing to say? Hm . . . You don’t understand me . . . In any case, if your thirst for revenge is that great, if the desire for vengeance has got the upper hand over your human dignity, if grief has disabled your reason because you always were a reasonable man, then tell me . . .

page 175 / Replace: VOINITSEV. I don’t want anything.

with: VOINITSEV. I want you to.

PLATONOV. Fine. I’ll shoot myself. I’ll shoot myself with pleasure. (Claps him on the shoulder.) Cultivated people aren’t worth a good goddam . . . It’s no great honor to live with such gee . . . gentlemen . . .

page 176 / After: bother maman? — I came to a cultivated, humane opponent of capital punishment to advise him and ask him not to kill . . . Ech! The lower you stoop, the further you have to turn away your face!

page 176 / After: The end has come! — Now a person can creep in with a knife, a person can put a bullet through his brain, insult a man, insult all holy feeling!

page 176 / Replace: since you left!

with: you jumped through the window! If you had seen me that night, you with your thirst for revenge would have had a gullet full of it!

page 177 / Before: I am sorry that I spoke to you — The hell—with you!

page 177 / Replace: ANNA PETROVNA (wrings her hands).

with: ANNA PETROVNA (runs over to Voinitsev). Serzhel . . . What is he . . . what was he referring to? You were with him yesterday?

Pause.

Speak! Don’t torment me, speak!

VOINITSEV. There’s no need . . .

ANNA PETROVNA (shakes him by the shoulders). Speak! What happened?

VOINITSEV. Spare me . . . You at least should have some compassion!

ANNA PETROVNA. Speak!

Pause.

VOINITSEV. I wanted to kill him . . . I crept in to him with a knife . . . If he hadn’t woke up . . . He was asleep . . .

ANNA PETROVNA. Aah . . . Now I get it . . . And after that you dared to call

him a bastard? Fine! What’ll become of this, what’ll become of this . . . (Wrings her hands.)

page 178 / After: insult people! — To creep up on a sleeping man with a knife and then . . . then to call him a bastard, and kick him out! . . . You’re not worth this man’s tiniest finger, you little brat!

page 179 / After: Go on! — God grant we shall make peace somehow . . .

page 180 / After: I don’t need anything! — I’m worn out, Sofya, honest to God, I’m worn out! There’s a lot of you, but I’m on my own . . . Take pity on me, please!

NOTES

1 French: my angel.

2 Latin: a healthy mind in a healthy body.

3 First lines of a ballad by K. Frantz, “The Dart,” popular in Russia in the 1870s and early 1880s.

4 French: your excellency. As the widow of a general, Anna Petrovna is entitled to her husband’s form of address.

5 Presumably from bandages.

6 Literally, arzamasy. Arzamas, named after a provincial town, was a group of Russian noblemen, men of letters, and army officers who gathered together ca. 1815–1840, for literary and political iscussions; they supported Romanticism against more conservative movements.

7 Literally, the same patchouli that Gaev complains about; see The Cherry Orchard, note 23.

8 Vershinin is to repeat this argument in Three Sisters.

9 See Three Sisters, note 7.

10 The rest of the page of the manuscript is missing.

11 In Southern Russia, this would consist of a blouse (rubakha) worn under an ankle-high, paneled skirt (ponyova) and apron (perednik), all heavily embroidered. It might also include a beaded, horned cap (kichka), which hid the hair of married women.

12 The old Russian greeting was an embrace and an exchange of three kisses on the cheeks.

13 By Thomas Mayne Reid, English novelist (1818–1883), who wrote adventure stories for boys, set in the most exotic places on the globe.

14 Latin: Speak well of the dead, or say nothing. This is garbled by Shamraev in The Seagull.

15 Latin: Speak the truth of everything, or say nothing.

16 Innovative ordnance with a sliding breech mechanism, developed in the German factories of Alfred Krupp.

17 On the Orthodox calendar, June 29.

18 Diana, the Roman goddess of hunting, equivalent of the Greek Artemis.

19 Hannibal (247–182 B.C.), Carthaginian general, who led the forces against Rome in the Second Punic War. His father, Hamilcar Barcas (d. 228 B.C.), was a commander-in-chief of the Carthaginians in the First Punic War.

20 French: probably, no doubt.

21 Latin: silver nitrate; distilled water.

22 Latin: a simple product.

23 Russky kuryor, a Moscow daily newspaper in circulation from 1879 to 1891.

24 A reference to Hamlet’s “O frailty, thy name is woman!”

25 George Gordon, Lord Byron, English poet and lover (1788–1824), the paragon of the Romantic rebel, an influence on Pushkin and Lermontov.

26 Sofya Yegorovna’s ideals are those of the Russian university student of the period, devoted to the cause of freedom and progress, which she wishes to see propagated in elementary schools.

27 Shcherbuk means that the General taught him to lead the quadrille figure known as the ladies’ polonaise.

28 He spits to avert the evil eye attracted by his praise.

29 Roman god of love, son of Venus, equivalent to the Greek Eros.

30 Beelzebub is a demon. Bucephalos was the charger of Alexander the Great. The joking name is a roundabout way of saying that Shcherbuk is a malicious horse’s ass.

31 Bad French: quelque chose, in this context, quite an eyeful.

32 Literally, “the stolid Starodums and saccharine Milonovs, who ate cabbage soup all their lives from the same bowl as the Skotinins and the Prostakovs.” Characters in the comedy The Minor (1782), by Denis Fonvizin (1745–1792): Starodum (Oldsense), the prosy raisonneur; Milonov (Charmer), the sentimental love interest; the Skotinins (Beastlys) and Prostakovs (Simpletons), the crude and rapacious serf owners.

33 A line from Pushkin’s poem “The Winter Road” (1826).

34 “The number of the beast; for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.” The Revelation of John the Divine, 13:18.

35 One of the paladins or bogatyrs of Russian epic, the son of a peasant who roamed through Kievan Rus in the reign of Vladimir (980–1015), protecting it from giants and enemies. Heroes of these legendary times were supposed to be of enormous size and matchless strength.

36 Nightingale (Solovey) the Bandit, hero of Russian folk poetry, a sort of Robin Hood.

37 For the most serious crimes, criminals in tsarist Russia were exiled to prison colonies in Siberia; they were made to walk there, chained together.

38 The great seducer was familiar to Russians from both Mozart’s Don Giovanni, frequently produced on the operatic stage, and Pushkin’s rarely staged but much read verse tragedy The Stone Guest (1830).

39 Reference to a fable by Ivan Krylov (1768–1844), the La Fontaine of Russia. A flock of geese, devoid of any personal worth, boasts of its ancestors who saved Rome. The moral goes, “ ’Twould not be hard to make my moral yet more clear, / But that means vexing geese, I fear!”

40 Protagonist of Aleksandr Griboedov’s classic comedy Woe from Wit, an “angry young man” and critic of Russian high society, the odd man out who both rejects and is rejected by his peers.

41 The names of peasant girls. Platonov is emphasizing Sasha’s earthbound lack of sophistication.

42 An attempted invasion of Turkey in 1853 failed and led to the Crimean War (1853–1855), which, despite the bravery of its soldiers, Russia lost through the incompetence of its bureaucracy and serious fraud by contractors.

43 Vladimir third class, one of the medals bestowed on military and civilians for service to the state.

44 Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov (1810–1881), a Russian surgeon and anatomist, famous for a style of amputation carried out on the battlefield.

45 Capital of the Ukraine.

46 Mispronunciation of the German Stoff und Kraft, Matter and Strength, the title of a book of popular science (1855) by Ludwig Büchner, so successful it remained in print until 1902. Karl Marx condemned it as materialist philistinism.

47 Latin: nothing.

48 In nineteenth-century Europe, baron was the lowest order of nobility, often conferred on successful financiers from obscure backgrounds who had done service to the state. The Jewish Baron Rothschild was the paradigm.

49 Triletsky misquotes Psalm 137:6.

50 Italian: Abandon all hope—the motto over the portal to Hell, according to Dante (Divine Comedy, Canto 3).

51 Latin: Hail Vengerovich.

52 French: my father.

53 French: a thousand pardons, madam.

54 Latin: a brain wave.

55 Mispronunciation of French mon cher, my dear.

56 The week between Palm Sunday and Easter.

57 Trinity Monastery was located in Zagorsk, north of Moscow. New Jerusalem was a monastery in the Zvenigorod district of Moscow guberniya, founded in 1636. Kharkov is the university town in Ukraine which, in Chekhov, usually stands for provincial boredom.

58 Russians required identity papers when traveling internally. The mispronunciation “patchport” comes from Gogol’s Dead Souls.

59 The fourteenth and lowest rank in the bureaucratic hierarchy. As a public-school teacher, Platonov has to belong to the civil service.

60 Although Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch (1835–1895) is best known for lending his name to the concept of “masochism,” he also wrote works of social criticism, including the one Sasha is reading: Ideals of Our Time, translated into Russian in 1877. Chekhov knew his play These Slavs of Ours (Unsere Sclaven). Sacher-Masoch’s attempt to describe the sexual instinct without moralizing may be what leads Platonov to recommend him to his wife.

61 A protozoa found in decaying animal or vegetable matter. Platonov is calling Sasha a tiny creature that battens on his rotting flesh. “Maggot” might serve as a substitute.

62 Literally, “let the world stand on whales and the whales on pitchforks,” a medieval Russian belief.

63 A reference to the plays of Aleksandr Ostrovsky, which depicted the typical Russian merchant as a samodur, a term that conflates “homegrown tyrant” with “complacent fool.”

64 Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin (1799–1837) and Mikhail Yurevich Lermontov (1814–1841) are considered Russia’s greatest lyric poets.

65 Berthold Auerbach (1812–1882), prolific German writer on Judaism and freedom of religion; Heinrich Heine (1797–1856), Germany’s greatest lyric poet; and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), the towering figure of German literature and culture.

66 From the chorus of the “gypsy” ballad “In a fatal hour.”

67 On his travels home to Ithaca from the Trojan War, Odysseus was menaced by the sirens, sea creatures who sang men to their doom. Odyssey, Book XII.

68 A misquoted line from G. R. Derzhavin’s poem “Chorus for a quadrille,” written in 1791 to celebrate the taking of Izmail and set to music by O. A. Kozlovsky.

69 French: let’s go!

70 Nikolay Alekseevich Nekrasov (1821–1878), Russian lyric poet, devoted to radical reform of the social structure; Petrin is paraphrasing a line from the poem “The Beggar Girl and the Fashion Plate.” Nekrasov also makes an appearance in The Wood Goblin, Act Four, The Seagull, Act One, and The Cherry Orchard, Act Two.

71 A Mongolian living on the Caspian sea. Ethnic Russians held them in contempt for their flat faces.

72 A river in northern Italy, once the border between Cisalpine Gaul and Italy. By crossing the Rubicon in 49 B.C., Julius Caesar began a civil war; so the phrase “crossing the Rubicon” has come to mean “taking a decisive step.”

73 Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804–1857), Russian composer, who wrote the first national Rus sian operas, A Life for the Tsar (1836) and Ruslan and Lyudmila (1841).

74 Voinitsev is quoting from a Russian translation that corresponds only roughly to Shakespeare’s “Could you on this mountain leave to feed, / And batten on this moor?” (Act III, scene 4). Or else “O shame! where is thy blush! Rebellious hell, / If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones, / To flaming youth let virtue be as wax, / And melt in her own fire.”

75 Possibly a paraphrase of “Give me that man that is not passion’s slave. . . .” The “nymph” line is misquoted by Lopakhin in Act Two of The Cherry Orchard.

76 Nicholas I (1796–1855), an absolutist monarch, militarized all Russia and instituted the reactionary “Holy Alliance”; he waged wars against Persia, Turkey, Polish insurgents, and, finally, in the Crimean War, against England and France as well.

77 Sebastopol, a port city on the Black Sea, played a major role in the Crimean War (1853–1856); after a siege of one year, later described by Lev Tolstoy, it fell to the enemy.

78 The Russian for tip is na chay, literally, for tea, but it is assumed that the recipient will spend it on something stronger.

79 Latin: I love, thou lovest, he loves . . . One of the first declensions learned in a Latin class; see Three Sisters, note 57.

80 The ten plagues visited on the Egyptians by God to persuade them to let the Hebrews go. See Exodus 7–10.

81 Quotations from Macbeth and Hamlet. Platonov still doesn’t take Osip seriously.

82 A constellation of Russian literary geniuses: besides the poet Pushkin, Ivan Krylov (1768–1844), the great fabulist, and Nikolay Gogol (1809–1852), the great comic prose writer and dramatist.

83 German: Send for him, my dear.

84 To call her solely by her first name implies intimacy. To use both first name and patronymic is more formal.

85 The method was to steep the matches in water to release the sulphur in their tips, and then drink the water.

86 Greek physician (480–377 B.C.), whose oath is still administered to doctors of medicine.

87 Correctly, chininum sulphuricum, sulphate of quinine, an alkaloid found in cinchona bark, used in treating malaria. Later in life, Chekhov named his dachshund Quinine.

88 The Greek philosopher Socrates (470–399 B.C.) remained impassive in the face of his death at the hands of the Athenian state.

89 French: flying blister-flies.

90 Italian: the comedy is over! Chekhov also puts it in Astrov’s mouth in Uncle Vanya.

91 A square in central Moscow, bounded by the Bolshoy and Maly theaters.

92 In Sophocles’ tragedy, Oedipus blinds himself when he becomes aware that he has murdered his father and wed his mother.

NOTES for Variants

1 Latin: in a healthy body.

2 Demosthenes (383–322 B.C.), Greek orator, was famous for his political speeches against Philip of Macedon.

3 Yiddish: So must one live in this world, my dear sir!

4 French: And I rub, rub, / And look there / Some company’s come / To the house.

5 See Untitled Play, note 42.

6 Latin: in full, Suum cuique pulcrum, Everyone thinks his own is most beautiful.

7 In Greek mythology, a Gorgon whose hideous face and glaring eyes could turn men to stone.

8 In the Old Testament, the wife of Potiphar, the Pharaoh’s butler, tried to seduce his slave Joseph and, when he resisted, accused him of rape. See Genesis 39.

9 A comic juxtaposition of the seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher and a contemporary Russian news commentator.

10 Bad pronunciation of the French, Je vous salue!, So long!