The Complete Plays

UNCLE VANYA

Many of Chekhov’s contemporaries considered Uncle Vanya to be simply The Wood Goblin revised. For that reason, the Society for Russian Dramatic Authors denied it a prestigious prize in 1901. Scholars assume that Chekhov finished the play sometime in late 1896, after he had written The Seagull, but before that comedy had suffered the hapless opening that turned him off playwriting for years. When, in 1897, Nemirovich-Danchenko requested Uncle Vanya for the Moscow Art Theatre, which was fresh from its success with The Seagull, Chekhov had to explain that he had already promised it to the Maly Theatre. The literary-advisory committee there, whose members included a couple of professors, was offended by the slurs on Sere-bryakov’s academic career and what it saw as a lack of motivation, and demanded revisions. Chekhov coolly withdrew Uncle Vanya and turned it over to the Art Theatre, which opened it on October 26, 1899. The opening night audience was less than enthusiastic, but the play gained in favor during its run. It became immensely popular in the provinces, where the audiences could identify with the plight of Vanya and Astrov. Gorky wrote to Chekhov, “I do not consider it a pearl, but I see in it a greater subject than others do; its subject is enormous, symbolic, and in its form it’s something entirely original, something incomparable.”¹

A useful way of approaching Uncle Vanya, and indeed all of Chekhov’s late plays, is that suggested by the poet Osip Mandelshtam in an unfinished article of 1936: starting with the cast list.

What an inexpressive and colorless rebus. Why are they all together? How is the privy counselor related to anybody? Try and define the kinship or connection between Voinitsky, the son of a privy counselor’s widow, the mother of the professor’s first wife and Sofiya, the professor’s young daughter by his first marriage. In order to establish that somebody happens to be somebody else’s uncle, one must study the whole roster . . .

A biologist would call this Chekhovian principle ecological. Combination is the decisive factor in Chekhov. There is no action in his drama, there is only propinquity with its resultant unpleasantness.²

What Mandelshtam calls “propinquity” is more important than causal connections usually demanded by dramatic necessity, and distinct from naturalistic “environment.” Chekhov brings his people together on special occasions to watch their collisions and evasions. Conjugal or blood ties prove to be a lesser determinant of the characters’ behavior than the counter-irritants of their proximity to one another. They are rarely seen at work in their natural habitats: Arkadina was not on stage or Trigorin at his desk; the officers in Three Sisters are not in camp; here the Professor has been exiled from his lecture hall.

The principle is especially conspicuous in Uncle Vanya, where Chekhov stripped his cast down to the smallest number in any of his full-length plays. He achieved this primarily by conflating the cast of The Wood Goblin, combining the traits of two characters into one. By limiting the dramatis personae to eight (if we exclude the workman), Chekhov could present doublets of each character, to illustrate contrasting reactions to circumstances. Take the Serebryakov/Waffles dyad: the Professor, fond of his academic honors and perquisites, is an old man married to a young woman too repressed to betray him, yet he jealously tyrannizes over her. Waffles, whose pompous language aspires to erudition, and whose wife abandoned him almost immediately after their wedding, responded with loving generosity. His life, devoid of honors, is devoted to others. He feels strongly the opprobrium of being a “freeloader,” while the Professor is oblivious to his own parasitism.

Of the old women, Marina is earthy, stolid in her obedience to the natural cycle, her life narrowly focused on the practical matters of barnyard and kitchen. Still, she is capable of shrewd comment on human behavior. Mariya Vasilyevna is equally static and narrow, but her eyes never rise from the pages of a pamphlet; she is totally blind to what goes on inside her fellow men. Her reading and Marina’s knitting are both palliatives. One, meant for the betterment of all mankind, is sterile, while the other, meant for the comfort of individuals, is not.

The contrasts are more complex but just as vivid in the younger characters. Sonya and Yelena are both unhappy young women on the threshold of wasted lives; both are tentative and withdrawn in matters of the heart. Sonya, however, indulges in daydreams while eagerly drugging herself with work. Yelena is too inhibited to yield to her desires, managing to be both indolent and clumsily manipulative in her dealings with others. She declares her affinity to Vanya because they are both “exasperating” people.

Astrov and Vanya are the only two “educated persons in the district”; they started, like Ivanov, with exceptional promise, but grew disillusioned. Astrov’s disillusionment was gradual, over years of drudgery as a country doctor; he has turned into a toper and a cynic but can still compartmentalize vestiges of his idealism in his reforestation projects. Vanya’s disillusionment came as a thunderclap with the Professor’s arrival; its suddenness negated any possibility of maintaining an ideal. Instead, he is diverted to fantasies of bedding Yelena and, even at a moment of crisis, considering himself a potential Dostoevsky or Schopenhauer. His impossible dreams are regularly deflated by Astrov’s sarcasm, but both men are, to use a word repeated throughout the play, “crackpots” (chudaki).

Thus, the propinquity of the characters brings out their salient features: the existence of each puts the other in relief. As in The Seagull, they have been located by Chekhov on an estate where they are displaced persons. It has been in the family for little more than a generation. Vanya relinquished his patrimony to provide his sister’s dowry, gave up his own career to cut expenses and work the estate on the Professor’s behalf, taking his mother with him. They are acclimatized without being naturalized. The Professor and Yelena are obvious intruders, who disrupt the estate’s settled rhythms and cannot accommodate themselves to it. Even Astrov seldom pays a call; he prefers his forests. Only Sonya, Marina, and Waffles are rooted in the estate’s soil.

Again, the physical progression of the stage setting serves as an emblem of the inner development of the action. The play begins outside the house, with a tea table elaborately set to greet the Professor, who, on his entrance, walks right past it to closet himself in his study. The eruption of these dining room accessories into a natural setting suggests the upheaval caused by the Petersburgers’ presence. Moreover, the samovar has gone cold during the long wait; it fails to serve its purpose. As is usual with Chekhov, the play begins with a couple of characters on stage, waiting for the others to precipitate an event. When it comes, the event—the tea party—is frustrated.

The second act moves indoors, its sense of claustrophobia enhanced by the impending storm and Yelena’s need to throw open the window. The dining room too has been usurped by the Professor, who has turned it into a study cum sickroom, his medicine littering the sideboard. No family gathers to share a meal: midnight snacks, a clandestine glass of wine, tête-a-têtes rather than group encounters are standard. Nanny, who has already grumbled at the altered meal times, complains that the samovar has still not been cleared. Later, she will rejoice that plain noodles have replaced the Professor’s spicy curries.

In Act Three, the Professor thrusts the family into unfamiliar surroundings when he convenes them in a rarely used reception room. Cold, formal, empty, it suits the Professor’s taste for his missing podium and further disorients the others. Nanny, cowed by the ambience, must be asked to sit down; for the sake of the occasion, she was prepared to stand by the door like a good servant. Anyone can wander through, like Vanya, who intrudes upon Astrov and Yelena with his bunch of roses. Another prop is rendered useless by circumstance.

Finally, in Act Four, we move, for the first time, to a room actually lived in, Vanya’s combination bedchamber and estate office. The real life of the house has migrated to this small, cluttered area where day-to-day tasks are carried out, where Astrov keeps his drawing table, Sonya her ledgers. There is even a mat for peasants to wipe their feet on. Vanya, like Treplyov, has no personal space that is not encroached on, and none of his objects bespeaks a private being. Once the Professor and Yelena, the disruptive factor, are gone, the family comes together in this atmosphere of warmth generated by routine. For them to do so, however, Vanya must abandon his personal desires and ambitions; for good reason a caged starling chirps by the worktable. The absence of conversation is noteworthy is this symbiosis. Except for Vanya’s impassioned outburst and Sonya’s attempts to console him, the characters write, yawn, read, and strum the guitar voicelessly, with no need to communicate aloud, bound together by propinquity.

The more inward the play moves in terms of locale, the more the sense of oppression mounts. Chekhov uses weather and seasons along with certain verbal echoes to produce this feeling. In the first few lines of dialogue, Astrov declares, “It’s stifling” (dushno), and variations on that sentiment occur with regularity. Vanya repeats it and speaks of Yelena’s attempt to muffle her youth; the Professor begins Act Two by announcing that he cannot breathe, and Vanya speaks of being choked by the idea that his life is wasted. Astrov admits he would be suffocated if he had to live in the house for a month. The two young women fling open windows to be able to breathe freely. During the first two acts, a storm is brewing and then rages; and Vanya spends the last act moaning, Tyazhelo mene, literally “It is heavy on me,” “I feel weighed down.” At the very end, Sonya’s “We shall rest” (My otdokhnyom), or “We’ll be at peace,” is etymologically related to dushno and connotes “breathing freely.”

Yelena’s repeated assertion that she is “shy,” zastenchivaya, suggests etymologically that she is “hemmed in, walled up,” and might, in context, be better translated “inhibited.” The references to the Professor’s gout, clouded vision, blood poisoning, and morphine contribute to the numbing atmosphere. This is intensified by the sense of isolation: constant reference is made to the great distances between places. Only Lopakhin the businessman in The Cherry Orchard is as insistent as Astrov on how many miles it takes to get somewhere. The cumulative effect is one of immobility and stagnation, oppression and frustration.

Time also acts as pressure. “What time is it?” or a statement of the hour is voiced at regular intervals, along with mention of years, months, seasons, mealtimes. The play begins with Astrov’s asking Marina, “How long have we known one another?” — simple exposition but also an initiation of the motif of lives eroded by the steady passage of time. (Chekhov was to reuse this device to open Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard.) Uncle Vanya opens at summer’s end, proceeds through a wet and dismal autumn, and concludes with a bleak winter staring the characters in the face. The suggestion of summer’s evanescence, the equation of middle age with the oncoming fall may seem hackneyed. Vanya certainly leaps at the obvious, with his bouquet of “mournful autumn roses” and his personalization of the storm as the pathetic fallacy of his own despair. Chekhov, however, used storms in his short stories as a premonition of a character’s mental turmoil, and, in stage terms, the storm without and the storm within Vanya’s brain effectively collaborate.

The play ends with Sonya’s vision of “a long, long series of days, no end of evenings” to be lived through before the happy release of death. The sense of moments ticking away inexorably is much stronger here than in Chekhov’s other plays, because there are no parties, balls, theatricals, railway journeys, or fires to break the monotony. The Professor and Yelena have destroyed routine, supplanting it with a more troubling sense of torpid leisure. Without the narcotic effect of their daily labor, Astrov, Vanya, and Sonya toy with erotic fantasies that make their present all the grimmer.

Beyond these apparent devices, Chekhov is presenting a temporal sequence that is only a segment of a whole conspectus of duration. The action of Uncle Vanya really began when Vanya gave up his inheritance for his sister’s dowry years before; the consequences of that action fill Acts One through Four, but the further consequences remain unrevealed. How will the Professor and Yelena get along in the provincial university town of Kharkov? (In Chekhov, Kharkov is a symbol of nowhere: in The Seagull it acclaims Arkadina’s acting and in The Cherry Orchard it is one of Lopakhin’s destinations.) How will Astrov manage to avoid dipsomania without the balm of Vanya’s conversation and Sonya’s solicitude? How will Vanya and Sonya salve their emotional wounds over the course of a lifetime? These questions are left to our imaginations.

Samuel Beckett, describing habit as a blissful painkiller, referred to “the perilous zones in the life of an individual, dangerous, precarious, painful, mysterious and fertile, when for a moment the boredom of living is replaced by the suffering of being.³ Throughout Uncle Vanya, the characters, divorced from habit, suffer painful confrontations with being and, by the final curtain, must try hard to return to the humdrum but safe addiction to living.

Although the tautness of the play’s structure, its triangles and confidants, might suggest neoclassic tragedy, Uncle Vanya comes closer to comedy, because no passion is ever pushed to an irremediable fulfillment. Yelena’s name may refer to Helen of Troy, but, if so, Chekhov had Offenbach, not Homer, in mind. He may also have been thinking of the Russian fairy tale Yelena the Fair, a Cinderella story in which the sniveling booby Vanya woos and wins the beautiful princess with the aid of his dead father. Folklore has other echoes here: the Russian version of Snow White is quoted (“the fairest in the land”) and Vanya characterizes Yelena as a rusalka, a water nymph of voluptuous beauty and destructive tendencies. Others may regard her as a dynamic force in their life, but she describes herself as a “secondary character,” without any real impact. Her acceptance of a fleeting kiss and a souvenir pencil as trophies of a romantic upsurge is comically reductive.

The antitragic tendency of the play is apparent in the title. Most serious Russian drama at the turn of the nineteenth century bore titles of symbolic import or else the name of its protagonist or a central relationship. As a rule, Chekhov follows this convention. In Uncle Vanya, though, the title reveals that the center of attention is not Astrov, whose attractive qualities can upstage the title role in performance, but the self-pitying Voinitsky. Our Uncle Jack, as he might be in English, sounds peripheral, the archetype of mediocrity. Such a man is not serious enough to be called by a grownup name; he counts chiefly in his relationship to others. But who calls him Uncle Vanya? To the Professor, Yelena, and Astrov he is Ivan Petrovich, except when they mean to be slighting. “That Uncle Vanya” is how Yelena dismisses him in Act Three, and in Act Four Astrov flippantly calls for an embrace before “Uncle Vanya” comes in. To his mother, he is Jean, the “shining light” of his youth. He is Vanya primarily to Sonya and Waffles, who love him. Therefore, if Voinitsky matters most when he is Uncle Vanya, his self-realization lies not in competing with the Professor or winning Yelena but in his dealings with his dependents. He gave up trying to be Jean long ago; when he stops trying to be Ivan Petrovich and fulfills himself as Uncle Vanya, a new life might commence.

NOTES

1 M. Gorky and A. Chekhov, Stati, vyskazyvaniya, perepiska (Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1951), pp. 6365.

2 O. Mandelshtam, “O pyese A. Chekhova ‘Dyadya Vanya,’” Sobranie sochineniya (Paris: YMCA Press), IV, 107–109.

3 Samuel Beckett, Proust (London: Chatto and Windus, 1931), p. 8.

UNCLE VANYA

Дя‰я Baня

Scenes from Country Life¹

in Four Acts

[Bracketed footnote numerals refer to footnotes in The Wood Goblin.]

CHARACTERS ²

SEREBRYAKOV, ALEKSANDR VLADIMIROVICH, retired professor

YELENA ANDREEVNA, his wife

SOFIYA ALEKSANDROVNA (SONYA), his daughter by his first marriage

VOINITSKAYA, MARIYA VASILYEVNA, widow of a government official,³ and mother of the Professor’s first wife

VOINITSKY, IVAN PETROVICH, her son

ASTROV, MIKHAIL LVOVICH, a physician⁴

TELEGIN, ILYA ILYICH, an impoverished landowner

MARINA, an old nanny⁵

A WORKMAN

The action takes place on Serebryakov’s country estate.

ACT ONE

The garden. Part of the house and its veranda are visible. Along the path beneath an old poplar there is a table set for tea. Benches, chairs; a guitar lies on one of the benches. Not far from the table is a swing.—Between two and three in the afternoon. Overcast.

MARINA, a corpulent, imperturbable old woman, sits by the samovar knitting a stocking, while ASTROV paces nearby.

MARINA (pours a glass of tea). Have a bite to eat, dearie.

ASTROV (reluctantly takes the glass). Somehow I don’t feel like it.

MARINA. Maybe, you’ll have a nip of vodka?

ASTROV. No. I don’t drink vodka all the time. Besides, it’s stifling.

Pause.

Nanny old girl, how long have we known one another?

MARINA (thinking it over). How long? God help my memory . . . You came here, to these parts . . . when? . . . Vera Petrovna was still alive, dear little Sonya’s mother. In her time you visited us two winters . . . Well, that means nigh onto eleven years have gone by. (After giving it some thought.) Could be even more . . .

ASTROV. Have I changed terribly since then?

MARINA. Terribly. In those days you were young, good-looking, and now you’re old. And your good looks are gone too. And it’s got to be said — you like a nip of vodka.

ASTROV. Yes . . . In ten years’ time I’ve turned into another man. And what’s the reason? I’ve been working too hard, nanny old girl. Morning to night always on my feet, not a moment’s rest, at night you lie under the blanket afraid you’ll be hauled off to some patient.⁶ In all the time we’ve known one another, I haven’t had a single day to myself. Why wouldn’t a man grow old? Besides, life itself is dreary, silly, filthy . . . It drags you down, this life. You’re surrounded by crackpots, nothing but crackpots; you live with them for two, three years and, little by little, without noticing it, you turn into a crackpot yourself. (Twirling his long moustache.) Look at this interminable moustache I’ve been cultivating. A silly moustache. I’ve turned into a crackpot, nanny old girl . . . Speaking of silly, I’m still in my right mind, thank God, my brain’s still intact, but my feelings are sort of numb. There’s nothing I want, nothing I need, no one I love . . . Present company excepted. (Kisses her on the head.) When I was a child I had a dear old nanny just like you.

MARINA. Maybe you’d like a bite to eat?

ASTROV. No. In Lent, third week, I went to Malitskoe to deal with an epidemic . . . Spotted typhus⁷. . . In the huts the peasants were packed side by side . . . Mud, stench, smoke, bull calves on the floor right next to the sick . . . Piglets too . . . I was at it all day long, never sat down for a second, not a blessed drop passed my lips, and when I did get home, they wouldn’t let me rest—they brought over a signalman from the railway; I put him on the table to operate, and he goes and dies on me under the chloroform. And just when they’re least wanted, my feelings came back to life, and I felt a twinge of conscience, just as if I’d killed him on purpose . . . Down I sat, closed my eyes—just like this, and started thinking: the people who’ll live one or two hundred years from now, the people we’re blazing a trail for, will they remember us, have a kind word for us? Nanny old girl, they won’t remember a thing!

MARINA. People won’t remember, but God will remember.

ASTROV. Thank you for that. Just the right thing to say.

VOINITSKY emerges from the house; he has been napping after lunch and looks rumpled; he sits on the bench, adjusts his fancy tie.⁸

VOINITSKY. Yes . . .

Pause.

Yes . . .

ASTROV. Had enough sleep?

VOINITSKY. Yes . . . Plenty. (Yawns.) Ever since the Professor and his lady have been living here, our life’s been shunted on to a siding . . . I sleep at odd hours, for lunch and dinner eat all kinds of spicy food,⁹ drink wine . . . unhealthy, that’s what I call it! Before, there wasn’t a moment’s leisure, Sonya and I were always at work—now, lo and behold, Sonya does the work on her own and I sleep, eat, drink . . . It’s not right!

MARINA (after shaking her head.) No sense to it! The Professor gets up at twelve o’clock, though the samovar’s¹⁰ been boiling away from early morning, waiting on him. Before they came we always had dinner between noon and one, like everybody else, but now they’re here it’s going on seven. At night the Professor reads and writes, and all of a sudden, round about two, the bell rings . . . What’s the matter, goodness gracious? Tea! Wake folks up for him, set up the samovar . . . No sense to it!

ASTROV. And how much longer are they staying here?

VOINITSKY (whistles). A century. The Professor has decided to take root here.

MARINA. Just like now. The samovar’s on the table two hours, and they go off for a walk.

VOINITSKY. Here they come, here they come . . . Don’t fret yourself.

Voices are heard: from the bottom of the garden, returning from a walk, come SEREBRYAKOV, YELENA ANDREEVNA, SONYA, and TELEGIN.

SEREBRYAKOV. Beautiful, beautiful . . . Magnificent vistas.

TELEGIN. Outstanding, Your Excellency.

SONYA. Tomorrow we’ll go to the forest preserve, Papa. Would you like that?

VOINITSKY. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s tea time!

SEREBRYAKOV. My dear friends, send my tea to the study, if you’ll be so kind! I have something more to do today.

SONYA. And you’re sure to enjoy a visit to the forest preserve . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA, SEREBRYAKOV, and SONYA go into the house; TELEGIN goes to the table and sits beside MARINA.

VOINITSKY. The weather’s hot, stifling, but our prodigy of learning wears an overcoat and galoshes with an umbrella and gloves.¹¹

ASTROV. Which shows he takes care of himself.

VOINITSKY. But isn’t she fine! Really fine! In all my life I’ve never seen a more beautiful woman.

TELEGIN. I may be riding in the fields, Marina Timofeevna, or strolling in a shady garden, or looking at this table, and I have this feeling of inexplicable bliss!¹² The weather is enchanting, the birdies are singing, we live, all of us, in peace and harmony—what more could we ask? (Accepting a glass.) My heartfelt thanks!

VOINITSKY (dreamily). Her eyes . . . Wonderful woman!

ASTROV. Talk about something else, Ivan Petrovich.

VOINITSKY (listlessly). What am I supposed to talk about?

ASTROV. Nothing new?

VOINITSKY. Not a thing. The same old stuff. I’m just the same as ever I was, no, worse, I’ve got lazy, all I do is growl like an old grouch. My old magpie of a maman goes on babbling about women’s rights; one eye peers into the grave, while the other pores over her high-minded pamphlets, looking for the dawn of a new life.

ASTROV. And the Professor?

VOINITSKY. And the Professor as usual sits alone in the study from morn to darkest night and writes. “With straining brain and furrowed brow, We write for nights and days, Yet all our poetry somehow Can never meet with praise.”^[5] I feel sorry for the paper! He’d be better off writing his autobiography. What a first-rate subject that is! A retired professor, you know what that means, a pedantic old fossil, a guppy with a terminal degree . . . Gout,^[3] rheumatism, migraine, his poor old liver’s bloated with envy and jealousy . . . Now this guppy lives on his first wife’s estate, lives there reluctantly because he can’t afford to live in town — Endlessly griping about his bad luck, although as a matter of fact he’s incredibly lucky. (Jittery.) Just think about the luck he’s had! The son of a humble sexton, a seminary student on a tuition scholarship, he’s acquired academic degrees and chairs, the title “Your Excellency,” married the daughter of a senator,^[7] and so on and so forth. That’s not the important thing, though. Check this out. For precisely twenty-five years the man reads and writes about art, although he understands absolutely nothing about art. For twenty-five years he chews over other people’s ideas about realism, naturalism, and the rest of that rubbish; for twenty-five years he reads and writes about stuff that intelligent people have known for ages and fools couldn’t care less about—which means, for twenty-five years he’s been pouring the contents of one empty bottle into another, emptier bottle. And add to that, his conceit! His pretensions! He’s gone into retirement and not a single living soul has ever heard of him, he is totally obscure; which means, for twenty-five years he took up someone else’s place. But look at him! he struts about like a demigod!

ASTROV. Sounds like you’re jealous.

VOINITSKY. Of course I’m jealous! Look at his success with women! Not even Don Juan enjoyed such unqualified success! His first wife, my sister, a beautiful, gentle creature, pure as that blue sky overhead, noble, open-hearted, with more admirers than he had students, — loved him as only pure angels can love beings as pure and beautiful as themselves. My mother, his mother-in-law, adores him to this day, and to this day he inspires her with awe and reverence. His second wife, a woman with looks, brains—you saw her just now—married him when he was an old man, made him a gift of her youth, beauty, independence, her brilliance. What for? Why?

ASTROV. She’s faithful to the professor?

VOINITSKY. Sorry to say she is.

ASTROV. Why sorry?

VOINITSKY. Because this faithfulness is phony from start to finish. It’s all sound and no sense. To cheat on an old husband you can’t stand — that’s immoral; to try and stifle the vestiges of pathetic youth and vital feeling in yourself—that’s not immoral.

TELEGIN (in a plaintive voice). Vanya, I don’t like it when you say things like that. Why, now, honestly . . . Anybody who cheats on a wife or husband is, I mean, a disloyal person, someone who might even betray his country!

VOINITSKY (annoyed). Turn off the waterworks, Waffles!^[8]

TELEGIN. Excuse me, Vanya. My wife ran away with the man she loved the day after our wedding on account of my unprepossessing looks. I didn’t shirk my duty despite it all. I love her to this day, and I’m faithful to her, I help however I can, and sold my estate to educate the kiddies she bore to the man she loved. Happiness was denied me, but what I did have left was my pride. What about her? Her youth has gone now, her beauty, subject to the laws of nature, has faded, the man she loved has passed away . . . What does she have left?

Enter SONYA and YELENA ANDREEVNA; after a while, enter MARIYA VASILYEVNA with a book; she sits and reads; they give her tea and she drinks it without looking.

SONYA (hastily, to the nanny). Nanny dear, some peasants have come. Go and talk to them, and I’ll do the tea . . . (Pours tea.)

MARINA exits. YELENA ANDREEVNA takes her cup and sits in the swing, as she drinks.

ASTROV (to Yelena Andreevna). I came here to treat your husband. You wrote that he’s very ill, rheumatism and something else, but it turns out he’s as healthy as a horse.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Last night he was moping, complaining of pains in his legs, but today they’re gone . . .

ASTROV. And I was breaking my neck, forty-five miles at a gallop. Well, never mind, it’s not the first time. So it won’t be a total loss, I’ll stay the night here, at least I’ll get some sleep “to be taken as needed.”¹³

SONYA. Why, that’s lovely. It’s so seldom you stay over with us. I don’t suppose you’ve had dinner?

ASTROV. No, ma’am, I have not.

SONYA. Then you’re just in time for some. Nowadays we dine between six and seven. (Drinks.) Tea’s cold!

TELEGIN. There’s been a perceptible drop in temperature in the samovar.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Never mind, Ivan Ivanych, we’ll drink it cold.

TELEGIN. Excuse me, ma’am . . . Not Ivan Ivanych, but Ilya Ilyich, ma’am . . . Ilya Ilyich Telegin, or, as some call me on account of my pockmarked face, Waffles. I once stood godfather to little Sonya, and His Excellency, your spouse, knows me very well. I’m now living with you, ma’am, on this estate, ma’am¹⁴ . . . . If you will kindly notice, I dine with you every day.

SONYA. Ilya Ilyich is our assistant, our right-hand man. (Affectionately.) Here, Godfather, I’ll pour you some more.

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. Ah!

SONYA. What’s the matter, Granny?

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. I forgot to tell Alexandre¹⁵ . . . I must be losing my memory . . . today I got a letter from Kharkov from Pavel Alekseevich . . . He sent his new pamphlet.

ASTROV. Interesting?

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. Interesting, but rather peculiar. He opposes the very thing he was promoting seven years ago. It’s appalling!

VOINITSKY. It’s not at all appalling. Drink your tea, maman.

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. But I want to talk!

VOINITSKY. For fifty years now we’ve been talking and talking, and reading pamphlets. It’s high time we stopped.

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. For some reason you don’t like to listen when I talk. Pardon me, Jean, but this last year you have changed so much that I utterly fail to recognize you . . . You used to be a man of steadfast convictions, a shining light . . .

VOINITSKY. Oh, yes! I was a shining light but no one ever basked in my rays . . .

Pause.

I was a shining light . . . Don’t rub salt in my wounds! Now I’m forty-seven. Before last year I was the same as you, deliberately trying to cloud my vision with this book learning of yours, to keep from seeing real life — and I thought I was doing the right thing. And now, if you had the least idea! I don’t sleep nights out of frustration, out of spite for having wasted my time so stupidly when I could have had everything that’s withheld from me now by my old age!

SONYA. Uncle Vanya, this is boring!

MARIYA VASILYEVNA (to her son). You seem to be blaming your former convictions for something . . . But they aren’t to blame, you are. You have forgotten that convictions per se mean nothing, they’re a dead letter . . . One must take action.¹⁶

VOINITSKY. Take action! Not everyone is capable of being a perpetual-motion writing machine like your Herr Professor.

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. What’s that supposed to mean?

SONYA (pleading). Granny! Uncle Vanya! For pity’s sake!

VOINITSKY. I’m mute. I’m mute and I apologize.

Pause.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Lovely weather today . . . Not too hot . . .

Pause.

VOINITSKY. Good weather for hanging oneself . . .

TELEGIN strums his guitar. MARINA walks near the house and calls chickens.

MARINA. Chick, chick, chick . . .

SONYA. Nanny dear, what did the peasants come for?

MARINA. The same old thing, still on about those untilled fields. Chick, chick, chick . . .

SONYA. Who’re you calling?

MARINA. Speckles’s gone off with her chicks . . . The crows might get ‘em. (Exits.)

TELEGIN plays a polka; all listen in silence. Enter a WORKMAN.

WORKMAN. Is Mister Doctor here? (To Astrov.) ‘Scuse me, Dr. Astrov, there’s some folks here to fetch you.

ASTROV. Where from?

WORKMAN. The factory.¹⁷

ASTROV (vexed). Thanks a lot. That’s that, got to go . . . (Looking around for his peaked cap.) What a nuisance, damn it . . .

SONYA. How unpleasant, honestly . . . After the factory you’ll come to dinner.

ASTROV. No, it’ll be too late. Now where in the world . . . where, oh where?¹⁸. . . (To the Workman.) Listen, my boy, bring me a shot of vodka, anyway.

WORKMAN exits.

Now where in the world . . . where, oh where . . . (He has found his cap.) In one of Ostrovsky’s plays there’s a man who’s long on moustache and short on brains¹⁹. . . That’s me all over. Well, my respects, ladies and gents . . . (To Yelena Andreevna.) If you drop in on me some time, along with Sofiya Aleksandrovna, of course, I’d be really delighted. I have a smallish estate, no more than eighty acres in all, but if you’re interested, there’s an experimental orchard and a tree nursery the like of which you’ll not find a thousand miles around. Next door I’ve got the State forest preserve . . . The forest ranger there is old, always ailing, so, as a matter of fact, I do all the work.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. I’ve been told you’re very fond of forests. Of course, they may be admirable, but really, don’t they get in the way of your true calling? After all, you are a doctor.

ASTROV. God alone know what our true calling is.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. And is it interesting?

ASTROV. Yes, the work is interesting.

VOINITSKY (sarcastically). Very!

YELENA ANDREEVNA (to Astrov). You’re still a young man, you look . . . well, thirty-six, thirty-seven . . . and I don’t suppose it’s as interesting as you say. Nothing but forest and more forest. I suppose it’s monotonous.

SONYA. No, it’s remarkably interesting. Mikhail Lvovich plants a new forest every year, and they’ve already honored him with a bronze medal and a testimonial. He’s had a hand in preventing them from destroying the old-growth areas. If you hear him out, you’ll agree with him completely. He says that forests beautify the land, that they teach people to understand beauty and inspire them with a sense of grandeur. Forests alleviate a harsh climate. In lands where the climate is mild, less energy is spent on the struggle with nature and therefore human beings there are milder and more delicate; there people are beautiful, athletic, very sensitive, their speech is refined, their movements graceful. There art and sciences flourish, their philosophy is not gloomy, their attitude to women is full of exquisite chivalry . . .

VOINITSKY (laughing). Bravo, bravo! . . . Which is all very charming, but not convincing, so (To Astrov.) allow me, my friend, to go on stoking my stoves with logs and building my sheds out of wood.

ASTROV. You can stoke your stoves with peat²⁰ and build sheds of stone. Well, all right, chop down forests when it’s absolutely necessary, but why destroy them? Russian forests are toppling beneath the axe, the habitats of birds and beasts are dwindling, tens of thousands of trees are perishing, rivers are running shallow and drying up, gorgeous natural scenery is disappearing irretrievably, and all because lazy human beings can’t be bothered to bend down and pick up fuel from the earth. (To Yelena Andreevna.) Am I right, madam? A person has to be an unreasoning barbarian to destroy what cannot be re-created. Human beings are endowed with reason and creative faculties in order to enhance what is given to them, but so far they have not created but destroyed. Forests are ever fewer and fewer, rivers dry up, wildlife is wiped out, the climate is spoiled, and every day the earth grows more impoverished and ugly. (To Voinitsky.) There you go, staring at me sarcastically, nothing I say is taken seriously, and . . . and, maybe I am talking like a crackpot, but, when I walk through the peasants’ forests that I have saved from being chopped down, or when I hear the wind rustling in my stand of saplings, planted by my own hands, I realize that the climate is to some slight degree in my control, and if, a thousand years from now, humanity is happy, then even I will be partially responsible. When I plant a birch tree, and then see how it grows green and sways in the wind, my soul swells with pride, and I . . . (Having seen the WORKMAN, who brings in a shot of vodka on a tray.) Anyway . . . (Drinks.) My time’s up. This is, most likely, crackpot talk, when’s all said and done. And so I take my leave! (Goes to the house.)

SONYA (takes him by the arm and accompanies him). When are you coming back to see us?

ASTROV. Don’t know . . .

SONYA. A whole month again? . . .

ASTROV and SONYA go into the house. MARIYA VASILYEVNA and TELEGIN remain near the table. YELENA ANDREEVNA and VOINITSKY walk toward the veranda.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Well, Ivan Petrovich, you behaved impossibly again. You had to provoke Mariya Vasilyevna with talk about perpetual motion! And today after lunch you picked a fight with Aleksandr again. It’s all so petty!

VOINITSKY. And what if I hate him?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. There’s no point in hating Aleksandr, he’s the same as anybody else. No worse than you.

VOINITSKY. If you could see your face, your movements . . . What an indolent life you lead! Ah, the indolence of it!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Ah, indolent and boring as well! Everyone insults my husband, everyone is so sympathetic with me: unhappy creature, she’s got an old husband! This compassion for me — oh, how well I understand it! It’s what Astrov was saying just now: you all recklessly chop down forests, and soon nothing will be left on earth. The very same way you recklessly destroy a human being, and soon, thanks to you, there won’t be any loyalty or purity or capacity for self-sacrifice left on earth. Why can’t you look at a woman with indifference if she isn’t yours? Because — that doctor’s right— inside all of you there lurks a demon of destruction. You have no pity for forests or birds or women or one another . . .

VOINITSKY. I don’t like this philosophizing!

Pause.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. That doctor has a weary, sensitive face. An interesting face. Sonya, it’s obvious, likes him, she’s in love with him, and I understand why. Since I’ve been here, he’s dropped by three times now, but I’m inhibited and haven’t once had a proper chat with him, haven’t shown him much affection. He went away thinking I’m ill tempered. No doubt, Ivan Petrovich, that’s why we’re such friends, you and I, we’re both exasperating, tiresome people! Exasperating! Don’t look at me that way, I don’t like it.

VOINITSKY. How else can I look at you if I love you? You’re my happiness, life, my youth! I know, my chances of reciprocity are minute, practically nil, but I don’t want anything, just let me look at you, hear your voice . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Hush, they can hear you!

Goes into the house.

VOINITSKY (following her). Let me talk about my love, don’t drive me away, and that alone will be my greatest joy . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA. This is agony . . .

They go into the house.

TELEGIN strums the strings and plays a polka; MARIYA VASILYEVNA jots a note in the margin of the pamphlet.

Curtain

ACT TWO

Dining room in Serebryakov’s house. — Night.—We can hear the WATCHMAN tapping in the garden.^[19]

SEREBRYAKOV sits in an armchair before an open window and drowses, and YELENA ANDREEVNA sits beside him and drowses too.

SEREBRYAKOV (waking). Who’s there? Sonya, you?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. I’m here.

SEREBRYAKOV. You, Lenochka . . . The pain’s unbearable!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Your lap rug’s fallen on the floor. (Wraps up his legs.) Aleksandr, I’ll close the window.

SEREBRYAKOV. No, I’m suffocating . . . I just now started to doze off and dreamed that my left leg belonged to somebody else. I woke up with the agonizing pain. No, it isn’t gout, more like rheumatism. What’s the time now?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Twenty past twelve.

Pause.

SEREBRYAKOV. In the morning see if we’ve got a Batyushkov^[20] in the library. I think we have him.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Huh? . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. Look for Batyushkov’s poems in the morning. I seem to remember we had a copy. But why am I finding it so hard to breathe?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. You’re tired. Second night without sleep.

SEREBRYAKOV. They say that Turgenev had gout that developed into angina pectoris.^[21] I’m afraid I may have it too. Wretched, repulsive old age. Damn it to hell. When I got old, I began to disgust myself. Yes, and all the rest of you, I daresay, are disgusted to look at me.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. You talk about your old age as if it was our fault you’re old.

SEREBRYAKOV. You’re the first one to be disgusted by me.

YELENA ANDREEVNA moves away and sits at a distance.

Of course, you’re in the right. I’m no fool and I understand. You’re young, healthy, beautiful, enjoy life, while I’m an old man, practically a corpse. That’s it, isn’t it? Have I got it right? And, of course, it was stupid of me to live this long. But wait a while, I’ll soon liberate you all. I can’t manage to hang on much longer.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. I’m worn out . . . For God’s sake, be quiet.

SEREBRYAKOV. It turns out that thanks to me you’re all worn out, bored, wasting your youth, I’m the only one enjoying life and having a good time. Oh, yes, of course!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Do be quiet! You’ve run me ragged!

SEREBRYAKOV. I’ve run all of you ragged. Of course.

YELENA ANDREEVNA (through tears). This is unbearable! Say it, what do you want from me?

SEREBRYAKOV. Not a thing.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Well then, be quiet. For pity’s sake.

SEREBRYAKOV. Funny, isn’t it: let Ivan Petrovich start talking or that old she-idiot Mariya Vasilyevna — and nothing happens, everyone listens, but let me say just one word, watch how they all start feeling sorry for themselves. Even my voice is disgusting. Well, suppose I am disgusting, I’m selfish, I’m a tyrant—but surely in my old age haven’t I got a right to be selfish? Surely I’ve earned it? Surely, I ask you, I’ve earned the right to a peaceful old age, to have people pay me some attention?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. No one is disputing your rights.

The window rattles in the wind.

The wind’s rising, I’ll close the window. (Closes it.) It’ll rain presently. No one is disputing your rights.

Pause. The WATCHMAN in the garden taps and sings a song.

SEREBRYAKOV. To labor all one’s life in the cause of learning, to grow accustomed to one’s study, to the lecture hall, to esteemed colleagues—and suddenly, for no rhyme or reason, to find oneself in this mausoleum, to spend every day seeing stupid people, listening to trivial chitchat . . . I want to live, I love success, I love celebrity, fame, and here — it’s like being in exile. Every minute yearning for the past, watching the successes of others, fearing death . . . I can’t do it! I haven’t got the strength! And on top of that they won’t forgive me my old age!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Wait, be patient! In five or six years I too shall be old.

Enter SONYA.

SONYA. Papa, you specifically asked us to send for Doctor Astrov and when he came, you refused to let him in. That is discourteous. To disturb a man for no reason . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. What do I care about your Astrov? He understands as much about medicine as I do about astronomy.

SONYA. Just for your gout we can’t send for a whole medical school.

SEREBRYAKOV. I won’t even give that maniac^[23] the time of day.

SONYA. Have it your way. (Sits.) It’s all the same to me.

SEREBRYAKOV. What’s the time now?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Past twelve.

SEREBRYAKOV. It’s stifling . . . Sonya, get me the drops from the table!

SONYA. Right away. (Gives him the drops.)

SEREBRYAKOV (aggravated). Ah, not those! A person can’t ask for a thing!

SONYA. Please don’t be crotchety. Some people may care for it, but don’t try it on me, for goodness sake! I do not like it. And I have no time, I have to get up early tomorrow, I have hay to mow.

Enter VOINITSKY in dressing gown, holding a candle.

VOINITSKY. Outside there’s a storm brewing.

Lightning.

Clear out now! Hélène and Sonya, go to bed. I’ve come to take over for you.

SEREBRYAKOV (terrified). No, no! Don’t leave me with him! No. He’ll talk me blue in the face.

VOINITSKY. But they’ve got to get some rest! This is the second night they’ve had no sleep.

SEREBRYAKOV. Let them go to bed, but you go away too. Thank you. I implore you. For the sake of our former friendship, don’t protest. We’ll talk later.

VOINITSKY (with a sneer). Our former friendship . . . Former . . .

SONYA. Be quiet, Uncle Vanya.

SEREBRYAKOV (to his wife). My dear, don’t leave me alone with him! He’ll talk me blue in the face!

VOINITSKY. This is starting to get ridiculous.

Enter MARINA with a candle.

SONYA. You should be in bed, Nanny dear. It’s very late.

MARINA. The samovar’s not cleared from the table. Not likely a body’d be in bed.

SEREBRYAKOV. Nobody sleeps, everybody’s worn out, I’m the only one who’s deliriously happy.

MARINA (walks over to Serebryakov; tenderly). What is it, dearie? Achy? These legs o’ mine got twinges too, such twinges. (Adjusts the lap rug.) This complaint o’ yours goes back a long ways. Vera Petrovna, rest in peace, little Sonya’s mother could never sleep nights, wasting away . . . Oh, how she loved you.

Pause.

Old folks’re like little ‘uns, they want a body to feel sorry for ‘em, but old folks got no one to feel sorry for ‘em. (Kisses Serebryakov on the shoulder.)²¹ Let’s go, dearie, bedtime . . . Let’s go, my sunshine . . . Some lime-flower tea I’ll brew for you, your li’l legs I’ll warm . . . God I’ll pray to for you . . .

SEREBRYAKOV (moved). Let’s go, Marina.

MARINA. These legs o’ mine got twinges too, such twinges. (Leads him with SONYA’s help.) Vera Petrovna never stopped wasting away, never stopped crying . . . You, Sonya darlin’, were just a little ‘un then, a silly . . . Come, come, dearie . . .

SEREBRYAKOV, SONYA, and MARINA leave.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. I’ve worried myself sick over him. Can hardly stand on my feet.

VOINITSKY. He makes you sick and I make myself sick. This is the third night now I haven’t slept.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. There’s something oppressive about this house. Your mother hates everything except her pamphlets and the Professor; the Professor is irritable, won’t trust me, is afraid of you; Sonya’s nasty to her father, nasty to me, and hasn’t spoken to me for two weeks now; you hate my husband and openly despise your mother; I’m irritable and today some twenty times I was ready to burst into tears . . . There’s something oppressive about this house.

VOINITSKY. Let’s drop the philosophizing!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Ivan Petrovich, you’re an educated, intelligent man, I should think you’d understand that the world is being destroyed not by criminals, not by fires, but by hatred, animosities, all this petty bickering . . . You shouldn’t be growling, you should be bringing everyone together.

VOINITSKY. First bring the two of us together! My darling . . . (Clutches her hand.)

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Stop it! (Extricates her hand.) Go away!

VOINITSKY. Any moment now the rain will end, and everything in nature will be refreshed and breathe easy. I’ll be the only thing not refreshed by the storm. Day and night, like an incubus,²² the idea chokes me that my life has been wasted irretrievably. I’ve got no past, it’s been stupidly squandered on trivialities, and the present is horrible in its absurdity. Here, take my life and my love; what am I to do with them? My better feelings are fading away for no reason at all, like a sunbeam trapped at the bottom of a mineshaft, and I’m fading along with them.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Whenever you talk to me about your love, it’s as if I go numb and don’t know what to say. Forgive me, there’s nothing I can say to you. (About to go.) Goodnight.

VOINITSKY (blocks her path). And if only you had any idea how I suffer at the thought that right beside me in this house another life is fading away— yours! What are you waiting for? What damned philosophizing stands in your way? Seize the day, seize it . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA (stares fixedly at him). Ivan Petrovich, you’re drunk!

VOINITSKY. Could be, could be . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Where’s the doctor?

VOINITSKY. He’s in there . . . spending the night in my room. Could be, could be . . . Anything could be!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. So you were drinking today? What for?

VOINITSKY. It makes me feel alive somehow . . . Don’t stop me, Hélène!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. You never used to drink and you never used to talk so much . . . Go to bed! You’re boring me.

VOINITSKY (clutching her hand). My darling . . . wonderful woman!

YELENA ANDREEVNA (annoyed). Leave me alone. Once and for all, this is disgusting. (Exits.)

VOINITSKY (alone). She walked out on me . . .

Pause.

Ten years ago I met her at my poor sister’s. Then she was seventeen and I was thirty-seven. Why didn’t I fall in love with her then and propose to her? After all it could have been! And now she’d be my wife . . . Yes . . . Now both of us would be awakened by the storm; she’d be frightened by the thunder and I’d hold her in my arms and whisper, “Don’t be afraid, I’m here.” Oh, marvelous thoughts, wonderful, it makes me laugh . . . but, my God, the thoughts are snarled up in my head . . . Why am I old? Why doesn’t she understand me? Her speechifying, indolent morality, indolent drivel about destroying the world — it makes me profoundly sick.

Pause.

Oh, how I’ve been cheated! I idolized that professor, that pathetic martyr to gout, I worked for him like a beast of burden! Sonya and I squeezed every last drop out of this estate; like grasping peasants we drove a trade in vegetable oil, peas, cottage cheese, stinted ourselves on crumbs so we could scrape together the pennies and small change into thousands and send them to him. I was proud of him and his learning, I lived, I breathed for him! Everything he wrote or uttered seemed to me to emanate from a genius . . . God, and now? Now that he’s retired you can see what his whole life adds up to: when he goes not a single page of his work will endure, he is utterly unknown, he’s nothing! A soap bubble! And I’ve been cheated . . . I see it—stupidly cheated . . .

Enter ASTROV in a frockcoat without a waistcoat or necktie; he is tipsy; TELEGIN follows him with a guitar.

ASTROV. Play!

TELEGIN. They’re all asleep, sir!

ASTROV. Play!

TELEGIN plays quietly.

ASTROV (to Voinitsky). You alone here? No ladies? (Arms akimbo, sings softly.) “My shack is fled, my fire is dead, I’ve got no place to lay my head . . .”²³ Well, the storm woke me up. An impressive little downpour. What’s the time now?

VOINITSKY. How the hell should I know.

ASTROV. Could have sworn I heard the voice of Yelena Andreevna.

VOINITSKY. She was here a moment ago.

ASTROV. Magnificent woman. (Spots the medicine bottles on the table.) Medicine. Prescriptions galore! From Kharkov, from Moscow, from Tula . . . Every town in Russia must be fed up with his gout. Is he sick or faking?

VOINITSKY. Sick.

Pause.

ASTROV. Why’re you so sad today? Sorry for the Professor or what?

VOINITSKY. Leave me alone.

ASTROV. Or else, maybe, in love with Mrs. Professor?

VOINITSKY. She’s my friend.

ASTROV. Already?

VOINITSKY. What’s that mean — already?

ASTROV. A woman can be a man’s friend only in the following sequence: first, an acquaintance, next, a mistress, and thereafter a friend.

VOINITSKY. A vulgar philosophy.

ASTROV. What? Yes . . . Have to admit—I am turning vulgar. Y’see, I’m even drunk. Ordinarily I drink like this once a month. When I’m in this state, I become insolent and impertinent to the nth degree. Then nothing fazes me! I take on the most intricate operations and perform them beautifully; I outline the broadest plans for the future; at times like that I stop thinking of myself as a crackpot and believe that I’m doing humanity a stupendous favor . . . stupendous! And at times like that I have my own personal philosophy, and all of you, my little brothers, seem to me to be tiny insects . . . microbes. (To Telegin.) Waffles, play!

TELEGIN. Dearest friend, I’d be glad to play for you with all my heart, but bear in mind — the family’s asleep!

ASTROV. Play!

TELEGIN plays quietly.

ASTROV. A drink’s what I need. Let’s go back in, I think we’ve still got some cognac left. And when it’s light, we’ll head over to my place. Want to go for a rod? I’ve got an orderly²⁴ who never says “ride,” always says, “rod.”²⁵ Terrible crook. So, want to go for a rod? (Seeing SONYA enter.) ‘Scuse me, I’m not wearing a tie. (Quickly exits; TELEGIN follows him.)

SONYA. So, Uncle Vanya, you and the Doctor got drunk together again. Birds of a feather flock together. Well, he’s always been like that, but why should you? At your age it doesn’t suit you at all.

VOINITSKY. Age has nothing to do with it. When life has no reality, people live on illusions. After all it’s better than nothing.

SONYA. All our hay is mown, it rains every day, everything’s rotting, and you’re obsessed with illusions. You’ve given up farming for good . . . I’m the only one working, I’m completely worn out . . . (Alarmed.) Uncle, there are tears in your eyes!

VOINITSKY. What tears? Nothing of the sort . . . don’t be silly . . . Just now the way you looked like your poor mother. My precious . . . (Avidly kisses her hands and face.) My dear sister . . . my darling sister . . . Where is she now? If only she knew! Ah, if only she knew!

SONYA. What? Uncle, knew what?

VOINITSKY. Oppressive, wrong . . . Never mind . . . Later . . . Never mind . . . I’m going . . . (Goes.)

SONYA (knocks on the door). Mikhail Lvovich! Are you asleep? May I see you for a moment!

ASTROV (behind the door). Right away! (After a slight delay, he enters; he is now wearing a waistcoat and a necktie.) What can I do for you?

SONYA. Go ahead and drink, if it doesn’t make you sick, but, please, don’t let Uncle drink. It’s no good for him.

ASTROV. Fine. We won’t drink any more.

Pause.

I’ll go home right now. No sooner said than done. By the time the horses are hitched, dawn’ll be coming up.

SONYA. It’s raining. Wait till morning.

ASTROV. The storm’s passing over, we’ll only catch the tail end of it. I’m going. And, please, do not invite me to visit your father any more. I tell him it’s gout, and he says it’s rheumatism; I ask him to lie down, he sits up. And today he wouldn’t even see me.

SONYA. He’s spoiled. (Looks in the sideboard.) Would you like a bite to eat?

ASTROV. I suppose so, sure.

SONYA. I love midnight snacks. I think there’s something in the sideboard. In his lifetime, they say, he was a great success with women, and the ladies have spoiled him. Here, have some cheese.

Both stand at the sideboard and eat.

ASTROV. I didn’t eat a thing today, just drank. Your father has a oppressive nature. (Gets a bottle from the sideboard.) May I? (Drinks a shot.) There’s nobody around, so a man can speak frankly. You know, I have the feeling I wouldn’t last a month in your house, I’d suffocate in this atmosphere . . . Your father, all wrapped up in his gout and his books, Uncle Vanya with his biliousness, your grandmother, lastly your stepmother . . .

SONYA. What about my stepmother?

ASTROV. Everything about a human being ought to be beautiful: face, dress, soul, ideas. She’s the fairest in the land,²⁶ no argument there, but . . . all she does is eat, sleep, go for walks, enchant us all with her beauty—and that’s it. She has no responsibilities, others work for her . . . Am I right? And a life of idleness cannot be pure.

Pause.

Anyway, maybe I’m being too hard on her. I’m dissatisfied with life same as your Uncle Vanya, and we’re both turning into grouches.

SONYA. So you’re dissatisfied with life?

ASTROV. Life in the abstract I love, but our life, rural, Russian, humdrum, I cannot stand, and I despise it with every fiber of my being. And as to my own private life, honest to God, there’s absolutely nothing good about it. You know how, when you walk through a forest on a dark night, if all the time in the distance there’s a glimmer of light, you don’t mind the fatigue or the dark or the prickly branches hitting you in the face . . . I work—as you know—harder than anyone else in the district, fate never stops hitting me in the face, at times I suffer unbearably, but in the distance there’s no light glimmering for me. I’ve stopped expecting anything for myself, I don’t love people . . . For a long time now I’ve loved no one.

SONYA. No one?

ASTROV. No one. I do feel a certain affection for your dear old nanny—for old time’s sake. The peasants are very monotonous, backward, live in filth, and it’s hard to get on with educated people. They’re tedious. All of them, our good friends and acquaintances, think petty thoughts, feel petty feelings, and don’t see beyond their noses—fools, plain and simple. And the ones who are a bit cleverer and a bit more earnest are hysterical, hung up on categories and clichés . . . Their sort whines, foments hatred, spreads contagious slander, they sidle up to a man, peer at him out of the corner of their eye and decide, “Oh, he’s a psychopath!” or “He’s a windbag!” And when they don’t know what label to stick on my brow, they say, “He’s peculiar, really peculiar!” I love forests — that’s peculiar; I don’t eat meat—that’s peculiar too. A spontaneous, unpolluted, open relationship to nature and human beings no longer exists . . . Oh no, no! (is about to drink.)

SONYA (stops him). No, for my sake, please, don’t drink any more.

ASTROV. Why not?

SONYA. It’s so out of character for you! You’re refined, you have such a gentle voice . . . Besides, you, unlike anyone I know—you’re beautiful. Why do you want to be like ordinary people who drink and play cards? Oh, don’t do that, for my sake! You’re always saying that people don’t create, they only destroy what is given them from on high. Why then are you destroying yourself? You mustn’t, you mustn’t, I beg you, I implore you.

ASTROV (extends a hand to her). I won’t drink any more.

SONYA. Give me your word.

ASTROV. Word of honor.

SONYA (squeezes his hand firmly). Thank you!

ASTROV. Basta!²⁷ I’ve sobered up. You see, I’m quite sober and will remain so to the end of my days. (Looks at his watch.) Well now, let’s proceed. As I was saying: my time’s long gone, it’s too late for me . . . I’m growing old, overworked, coarsened, all my feelings are numb, and I don’t believe I could form an attachment to anyone any more. I love no one and . . . have stopped falling in love. What still gets through to me is beauty. I’m not indifferent to it. It seems to me that if Yelena Andreevna here wanted to, she could turn my head in no time at all . . . But of course that’s not love, not affection . . . (Covers his eyes with his hand and shudders.)

SONYA. What’s wrong?

ASTROV. Just . . . In Lent a patient of mine died under the chloroform.

SONYA. It’s time to forget that.

Pause.

Tell me, Mikhail Lvovich . . . If I happened to have a girlfriend or a younger sister, and you were to learn that she . . . well, let’s suppose, she loves you, how would you deal with that?

ASTROV (with a shrug). I don’t know, nohow, I suppose. I’d let her understand that I could not love her . . . besides, it’s not the sort of thing that’s on my mind. Anyway, if I’m to go, the time’s come. Good-bye, my dear, otherwise we’ll be at it till morning. (Presses her hand.) I’ll go through the parlor, if you don’t mind, or else I’m afraid your uncle will detain me.

Exits.

SONYA (alone). He didn’t say anything to me . . . His heart and soul are still hidden from me, so why do I feel so happy? (Laughs with delight.) I said to him: you’re refined, noble, you have such a gentle voice . . . Was that uncalled for? His voice throbs, caresses . . . I can feel it here in the air. And when I mentioned a younger sister, he didn’t understand . . . (Wringing her hands.) Oh, it’s an awful thing to be unattractive! Simply awful! And I know I’m unattractive, I know, I know . . . Last Sunday, when we were coming out of church, I heard the way they talked about me, and one woman said, “She’s kind and good-natured, what a pity she’s so unattractive . . .” Unattractive . . .

Enter YELENA ANDREEVNA.

YELENA ANDREEVNA (opens a window). The storm has passed. What lovely air!

Pause.

Where’s the doctor?

SONYA. Gone.

Pause.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Sophie!

SONYA. What?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. How long are you going to go on glowering at me? We haven’t done one another any harm. Why do we have to be enemies? Enough is enough.

SONYA. I wanted to myself . . . (Embraces her.) No more tantrums.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Splendid.

Both are agitated.

SONYA. Is Papa in bed?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. No, he’s sitting in the parlor . . . We don’t talk to one another for weeks on end and God knows why . . . (Noticing the open sideboard.) What’s this?

SONYA. Mikhail Lvovich had some supper.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. And there’s some wine . . . Let’s pledge one another as sisters.^[27]

SONYA. Let’s.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Out of the same glass . . . (Pours.) That’s better. Well, here goes — friends?

SONYA. Friends.^[28]

They drink and kiss.

For a long time now I’ve wanted to make it up, but somehow I was embarrassed . . .

Weeps.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. What are you crying for?

SONYA. No reason, it’s the way I am.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Well, never mind, never mind . . . (Weeps.) You little crackpot,²⁸ now you’ve got me crying . . .

Pause.

You’re angry with me because you think I married your father for ulterior motives . . . If you’ll believe an oath, I’ll swear to you—I married him for love. I was attracted to him as a scholar and a celebrity. The love was unreal, artificial, but at the time I thought it was real. It’s not my fault. But from the day we got married you’ve gone on punishing me with your shrewd, suspicious eyes.

SONYA. Well, truce, truce! We’ll put it behind us.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. You mustn’t look at people that way— it doesn’t suit you. You must trust everyone, otherwise life becomes unliveable.

Pause.

SONYA. Tell me truthfully, friend to friend . . . Are you happy?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. No.

SONYA. I knew that. One more question. Tell me frankly—would you like to have a young husband?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. What a little girl you are still. Of course I would! (Laughs.) Go on, ask me something else, ask me . . .

SONYA. Do you like the doctor?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Yes, very much.

SONYA (laughs). I must look funny . . . don’t I? Now he’s gone, but I keep hearing his voice and footsteps, and I look out the dark window—and his face appears to me. Let me say what’s on my mind . . . But I can’t say it out loud, I’m embarrassed. Let’s go to my room, we’ll talk there. Do you think I’m being silly? Admit it . . . Tell me something about him . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Such as?

SONYA. He’s intelligent . . . He knows how to do everything, can do everything . . . He practices medicine and plants forests . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Forests and medicine have nothing to do with it . . . Darling, what you have to understand is, he’s got talent! Do you know the meaning of talent?^[29] Daring, an uncluttered mind, breadth of vision . . . He plants a tree and already he’s planning ahead, what the result will be in a thousand years, he’s already imagining the happiness of generations to come. People like that are rare, one must love them . . . He drinks, he’s uncouth — but what’s the harm in that? A talented man in Russia cannot be a puritan. Just consider the life this doctor leads! Mud up to his waist on the roads, frosts, blizzards, vast distances, coarse, savage people, all around poverty, disease, and it’s hard for a man working and struggling in surroundings like that day after day to reach the age of forty spotless and sober . . . (Kisses her.) I wish you happiness from the bottom of my heart, you deserve it . . . (Rises.) But mine is a dreary walk-on part . . . In the field of music and in my husband’s house, in any of life’s dramas—no matter where, in short, I’ve only had a walk-on part. Personally speaking, Sonya, when you think about it, I’m very, very unhappy! ((Walks nervously around the stage.) No happiness for me in this world. No! Why are you laughing?

SONYA (laughs, covering her face). I’m so happy . . . happy!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. I’d like to play the piano . . . I want to play something right now.

SONYA. Do play. (Embraces her.) I can’t sleep. Play.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Presently. Your father isn’t asleep. When he’s ill, music irritates him. Go and ask. If he doesn’t object, I’ll play. Go on.

SONYA. Right this minute. (Exits.)

In the garden the WATCHMAN is tapping.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. It’s been a long time since I played. I’ll play and weep, weep like a fool. (Out the window.) Is that you tapping, Yefim?

WATCHMAN’S VOICE. It’s me!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Don’t tap, the master’s not well.

WATCHMAN’S VOICE. I’ll go right now! (Whistles under his breath.) Here, boys, Blacky, Laddy! Blacky!^[30]

Pause.

SONYA (returning). The answer’s no!

Curtain

ACT THREE

Parlor in Serebryakov’s house. Three doors: right, left, and center.—Daytime.

VOINITSKY, SONYA are sitting; YELENA ANDREEVNA walks about the stage with something on her mind.

VOINITSKY. Herr Professor has graciously expressed the desire that today we all congregate in this parlor at one o’clock P.M.(Looks at his watch.) A quarter to one. He’s got something he wants to tell the world.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Probably some business matter.

VOINITSKY. He has no business. He writes drivel, moans and groans and oozes envy, that’s all.

SONYA (reproachfully). Uncle!

VOINITSKY. All right, sorry. (Indicates Yelena Andreevna.) Wonder at her: she can’t walk, without tottering from sheer indolence. Very charming! Very!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. All you do all day is buzz, buzz—how come you don’t get sick of it! (Languorously.) I’m dying of boredom, I don’t know what I’m to do.

SONYA (shrugging). How about a little work? Only the lady has to make an effort.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. For instance?

SONYA. Get involved in running the farm, teach, tend the sick. Isn’t that enough? Around here, before you and Papa arrived, Uncle Vanya and I used to go to the fair ourselves to market the flour.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. I don’t know how. Besides, it’s not interesting. Only in social-purpose novels do people teach and tend peasants, and how am I, out of the blue, supposed to go tend them or teach them?

SONYA. But then I can’t understand what prevents you from going and teaching them. After a while it’ll become second nature. (Embraces her.) Don’t be bored, dear. (Laughs.) You’re bored, you can’t find a niche for yourself, but boredom and idleness are catching. Look: Uncle Vanya does nothing but follow you around, like a shadow, I’ve given up my chores and come running to you for a chat. I’ve got lazy, I can’t help it! The Doctor used to stay with us very seldom, once a month, it wasn’t easy to ask him, but now he rides over every day, he’s abandoned his forests and his medicine. You must be a witch.

VOINITSKY. Why are you mooning about? (Vigorously.) Come, my elegant darling, show how clever you are! The blood of water nymphs courses through your veins, be a water nymph!^[33] Satisfy your desires at least once in your life, fall in love as fast as you can, head over heels, with some water sprite — plop! take a nosedive into the millrace, so that Herr Professor and the rest of us throw up our hands in amazement!

YELENA ANDREEVNA (angrily). Leave me alone! This is sadistic! (About to go.)

VOINITSKY (doesn’t let her go). There, there, my sweet, forgive me . . . I apologize. (Kisses her hands.) Truce.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. You’d try the patience of a saint, you must admit.

VOINITSKY. As a token of peace and harmony, I’ll bring you a bouquet of roses this very minute; I put it together for you this morning . . . Autumnal roses—superb, mournful roses . . . (Exits.)

SONYA. Autumnal roses—superb, mournful roses . . .

Both women look out the window.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Here it is September already. How are we to get through the winter here?

Pause.

Where’s the doctor?

SONYA. In Uncle Vanya’s room. He’s writing something. I’m glad Uncle Vanya went out, I have to talk to you.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. What about?

SONYA. What about? (Lays her head on Yelena’s breast.).

YELENA ANDREEVNA. There, there . . . (Smooths Sonya’s hair.) That’ll do.

SONYA. I’m unattractive.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. You have beautiful hair.

SONYA. No! (Looks round to view herself in a mirror.) No! Whenever a woman’s unattractive, they tell her, “You have beautiful eyes, you have beautiful hair!” . . . I’ve loved him now for six years, love him more than my own mother; every minute I can hear him, feel the pressure of his hand; and I stare at the door and wait, I get the sense he’s just about to walk in. There, you see, I keep coming to you to talk about him. He’s here every day now, but he doesn’t look at me, doesn’t see . . . It’s so painful! There’s no hope at all, no, none! (in despair.) Oh, God, my strength is gone . . . I was up all night praying . . . Lots of times I’ll walk up to him, start to speak, look him in the eyes . . . I’ve got no pride left, no willpower . . . I couldn’t help it and yesterday I confessed to Uncle Vanya that I love him . . . Even all the servants know I love him. Everyone knows.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Does he?

SONYA. No. He doesn’t notice me.

YELENA ANDREEVNA (musing). A peculiar sort of man . . . You know what? Let me talk to him . . . I’ll be discreet, I’ll hint . . .

Pause.

Honestly, how long can a person go on not knowing . . . Let me!

SONYA nods her head Yes.

That’s splendid. Whether or not he’s in love shouldn’t be too hard to find out. Now don’t be embarrassed, my pet, don’t be upset—I’ll question him discreetly, he won’t even notice. All we have to find out is: yes or no?

Pause.

If no, then he should stop coming here. Right?

SONYA nods her head Yes.

It’s easier when you don’t see him. We won’t file-and-forget it, we’ll question him right now. He was planning to show me some drawings . . . Go and tell him I’d like to see him.

SONYA (intensely excited). You’ll tell me the whole truth?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Yes, of course. I should think that the truth, whatever it turns out to be, is nowhere near as awful as not knowing. Depend on me, my pet.

SONYA. Yes, yes . . . I’ll say that you want to see his charts . . . (Goes but stops near the door.) No, not knowing is better . . . Then there’s hope . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA. What’s that?

SONYA. Nothing. (Exits.)

YELENA ANDREEVNA (alone). Nothing’s worse than knowing someone else’s secret and being unable to help. (Pondering.) He’s not in love with her—that’s obvious, but why shouldn’t he marry her? She’s no beauty, but for a country doctor, at his age, she’d make a fine wife. A good head on her shoulders, so kind, unspoiled . . . No, that’s not it, that’s not it . . .

Pause.

I understand the poor girl. In the midst of howling boredom, when all she sees prowling around her are gray blurs, not people, all she hears are banalities, all they know is eating, drinking, sleeping, once in a while he’ll show up, different from the others, handsome, interesting, attractive, like a full moon emerging from dark clouds . . . To yield to the embrace of such a man, to forget oneself . . . Apparently I’m a wee bit attracted myself. Yes, when he’s not here, I’m bored, look, I’m smiling as I think about him . . . Uncle Vanya was saying the blood of water nymphs courses through my veins. “Satisfy your desires at least once in your life” . . . Should I? Maybe I have to . . . If I could fly like an uncaged bird away from you all, from your drowsy expressions, from idle chatter, forget your very existence on earth . . . But I’m a coward, inhibited . . . I’m having an attack of conscience . . . There, he shows up every day, I can guess why he’s here, and I’m starting to feel guilty, any minute now I’ll drop to my knees and beg Sonya’s forgiveness, burst into tears . . .

ASTROV (enters with a diagram). Good afternoon! (Shakes her hand.) You wanted to see my drawing?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Yesterday you promised to show me your work . . . You’re free?

ASTROV. Oh, definitely. (Unrolls the diagram on a card table and fastens it with thumbtacks.) Where were you born?

YELENA ANDREEVNA (helping him). In Petersburg.

ASTROV. And educated?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. At the Conservatory.²⁹

ASTROV. Then you’ll probably find this uninteresting.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Why? True, I’m not familiar with country life, but I’ve read quite a lot.

ASTROV. Here in the house I have my own table . . . In Ivan Petrovich’s room. When I’m utterly exhausted, to the point of total lethargy, I drop everything and hurry over here, and then I amuse myself with this stuff for an hour or two . . . Ivan Petrovich and Sofiya Aleksandrovna plug away at the accounts, while I sit next them at my table and putter—and I feel warm, relaxed, and the cricket chirps. But I don’t allow myself this indulgence very often, once a month . . . (Pointing to the diagram.)³⁰ Now look at this. A picture of our district, as it was fifty years ago. The dark-green and light-green indicate forest; half the total area is covered with forest. Where the green is cross-hatched with red lines, there used to be elks, goats . . . I show both flora and fauna on this. In this lake lived swans, geese, ducks and, as the oldtimers say, a power of birds of every description, more than the eye could see: they sailed by like a cloud. Besides hamlets and villages, you see, scattered here and there are different settlements, little farmsteads, monasteries of Old Believers,³¹ water mills . . . Horned cattle and horses were numerous. The light-blue tells us that. For instance, in this county, the light-blue is laid on thick; there were whole herds of cattle, and in every stable there was an average of three horses.

Pause.

Now let’s look further down. What it was like twenty-five years ago. Now only one-third the total area is under forestation. There are no more goats, but there are elks. The green and light-blue are much fainter. And so on and so on. Let’s move to Part Three: a picture of the district at the present moment. The green is there in patches; the elks and swans and wood grouse have disappeared . . . Of the earlier settlements, small farmsteads, monasteries, mills, not a trace. Over all, a picture of gradual and indisputable decline, which will apparently take another ten or fifteen years to be complete. You will say that this is the result of civilization, that the old life must naturally give way to the new. Yes, I’d understand that, if these depleted forests were replaced by paved highways, railroads, if there were factories, mills, schools, — if the lower classes had become healthier, more prosperous, more intelligent, but there’s certainly nothing like that here! In the district there’re the same swamps, mosquitoes, the same impassable roads, indigence, typhus, diphtheria, fires . . . Here we’re dealing with decline resulting from a struggle for survival beyond human strength; it’s a decline caused by stagnation, ignorance, the most total absence of self-awareness, when a frostbitten, starving, sickly man, to preserve the last vestiges of life, to protect his children, instinctively, unthinkingly grabs hold of whatever can possibly satisfy his hunger, to warm himself he destroys everything, with no thought of the morrow . . . The destruction to date has been almost total, but to make up for it nothing has yet been created. (Coldly.) I see from your face that you find this uninteresting.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. But I understand so little of it.

ASTROV. There’s nothing to understand, it’s simply uninteresting.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. To tell the truth, my mind wasn’t on it. Forgive me, I have to subject you to a slight interrogation, and I’m embarrassed, I don’t know how to begin . . .

ASTROV. Interrogation?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Yes, interrogation, but . . . quite a harmless one. Let’s sit down.

They sit.

This concerns a certain young person. Let’s talk openly, like friends, and not beat around the bush. All right?

ASTROV. All right.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. It concerns my stepdaughter Sonya. Do you like her?

ASTROV. Yes, I respect her.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Do you like her as a woman?

ASTROV (not immediately). No.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. A few words more — and it’s all over. Have you noticed anything?

ASTROV. No.

YELENA ANDREEVNA (takes him by the hand). You don’t love her, I see it in your eyes . . . She is suffering . . . Understand that and . . . stop coming here.

ASTROV (rises). My time’s up now . . . Actually, there’s never any time . . . (After a shrug. ) When could I? (He is embarrassed. )

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Oof! what a disagreeable conversation! I’m as relieved as if I’d been lugging around a twenty-ton weight. Well, thank goodness, that’s over. We’ll forget we ever had a talk and . . . and you will go away. You’re an intelligent man, you understand . . .

Pause.

I’m blushing all over.

ASTROV. If you had said something a month or two ago, maybe I might have considered it, but now . . . (Shrugs.) But if she’s suffering, well, of course . . . The only thing I don’t understand is: why did you have to conduct this interrogation? (Stares her in the face and wags his finger at her.) You are a sly fox!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. What’s that supposed to mean?

ASTROV (laughing). A sly fox! Suppose Sonya is suffering, I’m ready to accept that, but what’s the point of your interrogation? (Not letting her speak, energetically.) Come now, don’t act so surprised, you know perfectly well why I’m here every day . . . Why and for whose sake I’m here, you know very well indeed. Cunning little vixen, don’t look at me like that, this chicken’s an old hand . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA (bewildered). Cunning vixen? I don’t understand.

ASTROV. A beautiful, fluffy weasel . . . You need victims! For a whole month now I’ve done nothing, let everything slide, seek you out greedily—and you’re awfully pleased by it—awfully . . . Well, what of it? I’m beaten, you knew that even without an interrogation. (Crossing his hands over his chest and bowing his head.) I surrender. Go ahead, eat me up.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. You’re out of your mind!

ASTROV (laughs through his teeth). You’re inhibited . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Oh, I’m a better, more decent person than you think! I swear to you. (About to go.)

ASTROV (blocking her path). I will go today, I won’t come here any more, but . . . (takes her by the arm, looks around) where shall we get together? Tell me quickly: where? Here someone might come in, tell me quickly . . . (Passionately.) What a wonderful, elegant . . . One kiss . . . Just let me kiss your fragrant hair . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA. I swear to you . . .

ASTROV (not letting her speak). Why swear? There’s no need to swear. There’s no need for more words . . . Oh, what a beauty! What hands! (Kisses her hands.)

YELENA ANDREEVNA. That’s enough, once and for all . . . go away . . . (Extricates her hands.) You’re out of control.

ASTROV. Then tell me, tell me where we’ll get together tomorrow? (Takes her by the waist.) You see, it’s inevitable, we have to get together. (Kisses her; at that moment VOINITSKY enters with a bouquet of roses and stops in the doorway.)

YELENA ANDREEVNA (not seeing Voinitsky). For pity’s sake . . . let go of me . . . (Puts her head on Astrov’s chest.) No! (Tries to go.)

ASTROV (restraining her by the waist). Drive tomorrow to the forest preserve . . . around two o’clock . . . Yes? Yes? Will you?

YELENA ANDREEVNA (having seen Voinitsky). Let go! (in intense embarrassment walks over to the window.) This is horrible.

VOINITSKY (puts the bouquet on a chair; agitated, wipes his face and the inside of his collar with a handkerchief). Never mind . . . Yes . . . never mind . . .

ASTROV (peeved). Today, my dear Mr. Voinitsky, the weather’s not too bad. It was overcast this morning, as if it was going to rain, but now it’s sunny. To tell the truth, autumn’s turned out lovely . . . and the winter wheat’s doing all right. (Rolls the diagram into a cylinder.) Only trouble is: the days are getting shorter. (Exits.)

YELENA ANDREEVNA (quickly goes over to Voinitsky). You will make every effort, you will use all your influence to get my husband and me to leave here this very day! You hear? This very day!

VOINITSKY (mopping his brow). Huh? Well, yes . . . fine . . . Hélène, I saw it all, all of it . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA (on edge). You hear? I must leave here this very day!

Enter SEREBRYAKOV, SONYA, TELEGIN, and MARINA.

TELEGIN. Your Excellency, I’m not in the best of health either. Why, for two days now, I’ve been under the weather. My head feels sort of, y’know . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. Where are the others? I do not like this house. Just like a labyrinth. Twenty-six enormous rooms, everyone scatters, and you can never find anyone. (Rings.) Request Mariya Vasilyevna and Yelena Andreevna to come here!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. I’m here.

SEREBRYAKOV. Please, ladies and gentlemen, be seated.

SONYA (going over to Yelena Andreevna, impatiently). What did he say?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Later.

SONYA. You’re trembling? You’re upset? (Looks searchingly into her face.) I understand . . . He said he won’t come here any more . . . Right?

Pause.

Tell me: am I right?

YELENA ANDREEVNA nods her head Yes.

SEREBRYAKOV (to Telegin). Ill health one might be reconciled to, if the worst came to the worst, but what I cannot stomach is this regimen of rustication. I have the feeling I’ve dropped off the earth on to some alien planet. Sit down, ladies and gentlemen, please. Sonya!

SONYA does not hear him, she stands with her head bowed in sorrow.

Sonya!

Pause.

She’s not listening. (To Marina.) And you sit down too, Nanny.

The NANNY sits down and knits a stocking.

Please, my friends. Lend me your ears, as the saying goes. (Laughs.)

VOINITSKY (getting excited). Maybe I’m not needed? I can go?

SEREBRYAKOV. No, you are needed here more than anyone.

VOINITSKY. What do you want from me, sir?^[36]

SEREBRYAKOV. Sir? . . . Why are you getting angry?

Pause.

If I’ve offended you in any way, then please forgive me.

VOINITSKY. Drop that tone. Let’s get down to business . . . What do you want?

Enter MARIYA VASILYEVNA.

SEREBRYAKOV. And here’s Maman. I shall begin, ladies and gentlemen.

Pause.

I have invited you here, my friends, to inform you that we are about to be visited by an Inspector General.’^37- However, joking aside. The matter is a serious one. Ladies and gentlemen, I have convened you in order to solicit your aid and advice and, knowing your customary civility, I trust to receive them. I am a man of learning, a bookworm, and have ever been a stranger to practical life. I cannot do without the counsel of informed individuals, and so I ask you, Ivan Petrovich, and you too, Ilya Ilyich, you, Maman . . .. What it comes down to is manet omnes una nox,^[38] we are all mortal in the sight of God; I am old, ill, and therefore deem it appropriate to regulate my material concerns insofar as they relate to my family. My life is over now, it’s not myself I’m thinking of, but I have a young wife, an unmarried daughter.

Pause.

To go on living in the country I find impossible. We were not made for country life. To live in town on those funds which we earn from this estate is equally impossible. If we were to sell, say, our forest, that is an extraordinary measure which could not be repeated annually. We must seek out measures that will guarantee us a regular, more or less fixed amount of income. I have thought of one such measure and I have the honor to submit it for your discussion. Leaving aside the details, I set it forth in its general outlines. Our estate yields on average no more than two percent. I propose to sell it. If we turn the money thus acquired into interest-bearing securities, we shall receive from four to five percent, and I think there may even be a surplus of a few thousand, which will enable us to buy a small cottage in Finland.^[39]

VOINITSKY. Hold on . . . my ears seem to be deceiving me. Repeat what you just said.

SEREBRYAKOV. Turn the money into interest-bearing securities and with the surplus left over buy a cottage in Finland.

VOINITSKY. Not Finland . . . You said something else.

SEREBRYAKOV. I propose to sell the estate.

VOINITSKY. There, that’s it. You’ll sell the estate, splendid, good thinking . . . And where do you propose I go with my old mother and Sonya there?

SEREBRYAKOV. All that will be discussed in due time. Not everything at once.

VOINITSKY. Hold on. Obviously, up to now I didn’t have a grain of common sense. Up to now I was stupid enough to think that this estate belongs to Sonya. My late father bought this estate as a dowry for my sister. Up to now I was naive, I didn’t interpret the laws like a heathen, and I thought the estate passed from my sister to Sonya.

SEREBRYAKOV. Yes, the estate belongs to Sonya. Who disputes it? Without Sonya’s consent I will not resolve to sell it. Besides, I’m proposing to do this on Sonya’s behalf.

VOINITSKY. This is incomprehensible, incomprehensible! Either I’ve gone out of my mind, or . . . or . . .

MARIYA VASILYEVNA. Jean, don’t contradict Alexandre. Believe me, he knows better than we what is right and what is wrong.

VOINITSKY. No, give me some water. (Drinks water.) Say what it is you want, what do you want!

SEREBRYAKOV. I don’t understand why you’re getting so worked up. I don’t say my project is ideal. If everyone finds it infeasible, I shall not insist.

Pause.

TELEGIN (embarrassed). Your Excellency, I cherish for learning not just reverence, but even a kindred feeling. My brother Grigory’s wife’s brother, maybe you deign to know him, Konstantin Trofimovich Spartakov,³² had a master’s degree . . .

VOINITSKY. Hold on, Waffles, we’re talking business . . . Wait, later . . . (To Serebryakov.) You go ahead and ask him. This estate was bought from his uncle.

SEREBRYAKOV. Ah, why should I ask him? What for?

VOINITSKY. This estate was bought at that time for ninety-five thousand. Father paid only seventy down, so there was a mortgage of twenty-five thousand left. Now listen . . . This estate would not be free and clear if I hadn’t relinquished an inheritance in favor of my sister, whom I loved devoutly. Moreover, for ten years I worked like an ox and paid off the whole debt . . .

SEREBRYAKOV. I’m sorry I brought up the subject.

VOINITSKY. The estate is clear of debt and turning a profit thanks only to my personal efforts. And now, when I’m growing old, they want to throw me out of here on my ear!

SEREBRYAKOV. I can’t understand what you’re driving at!

VOINITSKY. For twenty-five years I ran this estate, worked hard, sent you money like the most conscientious bookkeeper, and in all that time not once did you thank me. The whole time — both in my youth and now— you paid me a salary of five hundred rubles a year—a pittance! — and not once did you have the decency to raise it by even one ruble!

SEREBRYAKOV. Ivan Petrovich, how was I to know? I’m not a man of business and I have no head for such things. You could have raised it yourself as much as you liked.

VOINITSKY. Why didn’t I steal? Why don’t you all despise me because I didn’t steal? That would have been the thing to do! and now I wouldn’t be a pauper!

MARIYA VASILYEVNA (sternly). Jean!

TELEGIN (getting upset). Vanya, dear friend, you mustn’t, you mustn’t . . . . I’m all a-tremble . . . Why spoil good relations? (Kisses him.) You mustn’t.

VOINITSKY. For twenty-five years I and my mother here, like moles, sat between these four walls . . . All our thoughts and feelings concerned no one but you. Days we talked about you, about your work, took pride in you, uttered your name with reverence; nights we wasted reading periodicals and books, which I now deeply despise!

TELEGIN. You mustn’t, Vanya, you mustn’t . . . I can’t take it . . .

SEREBRYAKOV (angrily). I don’t understand, what do you want?

VOINITSKY. To us you were a creature of a higher order, and we learned your articles by heart . . . But now my eyes have been opened! I see it all! You write about art, but not one thing do you understand about art! All your work, which I loved, isn’t worth a tinker’s dam! You bamboozled us!

SEREBRYAKOV. My friends! Try and calm him down, once and for all! I’m going!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Ivan Petrovich, I insist that you keep quiet! You hear me?

VOINITSKY. I won’t keep quiet! (Blocking Serebryakov’s path.) Stop, I haven’t finished! You ruined my life! I haven’t lived, I haven’t lived! Thanks to your charity I blighted, destroyed the best years of my life! You are my deadliest enemy!

TELEGIN. I can’t take it . . . can’t take it . . . I’m going. (Exits in extreme consternation.)

SEREBRYAKOV. What do you want from me? And what right do you have to take such a tone with me? A nobody! If the estate is yours, then take it, I have no use for it!

YELENA ANDREEVNA. I’m getting out of this hellhole this very minute! (Screams.) I can’t take any more of this!

VOINITSKY. My life is wasted! I’m talented, intelligent, audacious . . . If I had had a normal life, I might have evolved into a Schopenhauer, a Dos-toevsky^[40] . . . What a damn fool thing to say! I’m losing my mind . . . Mommy, I’m desperate! Mommy!

MARIYA VASILYEVNA (sternly). Do as Aleksandr says!

SONYA (kneels before the nanny and clings to her). Nanny dear! Nanny dear!

VOINITSKY. Mommy! What am I to do? Don’t, don’t say anything! I know what I have to do! (To Serebryakov.) You’re going to remember me! (Goes to the center door.)

MARIYA VASILYEVNA goes after him.

SEREBRYAKOV. Ladies and gentlemen, what is all this, I mean really? Get that madman away from me! I cannot live under the same roof with him! He lives right there (indicates the center door), practically on top of me . . . Move him into the village, to the servants’ quarters, or I’ll move, but to stay in the same house with him is out of the question . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA (to her husband). We will leave here today! It is imperative you arrange it this very minute.

SEREBRYAKOV. The most insignificant creature!

SONYA (kneeling, turns to her father; nervously, through tears). Open your heart, Papa! Uncle Vanya and I are so unhappy! (Mastering her despair.) Open your heart!³³ Remember when you were younger, Uncle Vanya and Granny would spend nights translating books for you, copying out your writings . . . every night, every night! Uncle Vanya and I worked without a rest, afraid to spend a penny on ourselves, and sent everything to you . . . We had to pay our own way! I’m not saying this right, it’s not what I mean, but you understand us, Papa. Open your heart!

YELENA ANDREEVNA (distraught, to her husband). Aleksandr, for heaven’s sake, have it out with him . . . Please.

SEREBRYAKOV. Very well, I’ll have it out with him . . . I’m not accusing him of anything, I’m not angry, but, you must agree, his behavior is just the slightest degree peculiar. If you insist, I’ll go to him. (Goes out the center door.)

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Be gentler with him, calm him down . . . (Goes out behind him.)

SONYA (clinging to the nanny). Nanny dear! Nanny dear!

MARINA. Never mind, child. Honk, honk, go the geese — and then they stop . . . Honk, honk, honk—then they stop . . .

SONYA. Nanny dear!

MARINA (smooths her hair). You’re shivery-shaky, just like you had a chill! Well, well, little orphan, God is merciful. Some lime-flower tea or raspberry, it’ll pass . . . Don’t grieve, little orphan . . . (Looking at the center door, angrily.) Fly off the handle, will you, you geese, dern ya all!

Offstage a gunshot; we hear YELENA ANDREEVNA scream; SONYA shudders.

Ooh, what’re you up to!

SEREBRYAKOV (runs in, stumbling in fear). Restrain him! Restrain him! He’s gone out of his mind!

YELENA ANDREEVNA and VOINITSKY are struggling in the doorway.

YELENA ANDREEVNA (trying to wrest the revolver away from him). Give it to me! Give it to me, I tell you!

VOINITSKY. Let go, Hélène! Let go of me! (Pulling loose, he runs in and looks around for Serebryakov.) Where is he? Ah, there he is? (Fires at him.) Bang!

Pause.

Missed him? Another fiasco?! (Angrily.) Oh, hell, hell . . . damn it to hell . . . (Throws the revolver on the floor and sits exhausted on a chair.)

SEREBRYAKOV is stunned; YELENA ANDREEVNA is leaning against the wall, feeling faint.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Take me away from here! Take me away, kill me, but . . . I cannot stay here, I cannot!

VOINITSKY (in desperation). Oh, what am I doing! What am I doing!

SONYA (quietly). Nanny dear! Nanny dear!

Curtain

ACT FOUR

Ivan Petrovich’s room; it is both his bedroom and the office of the estate. By the window are a large table with ledgers and papers of all sorts, a writing desk, cupboards, scales. A somewhat smaller table for Astrov; on this table implements for drawing, paints; beside it a cardboard portfolio. A starling in a cage. On the wall a map of Africa, apparently of no use to anyone here. An enormous divan, covered in oilcloth. At left a door leading to the bedroom; at right a door in the wall. Beneath the right door is a doormat to keep the peasants from tracking in mud. —Autumn evening. Stillness.

TELEGIN and MARINA are seated face to face, winding a ball of knitting yarn.

TELEGIN. You be quick, Marina Timofeevna, or before you know it they’ll call us to say good-bye. They’ve already ordered the horses brought round.

MARINA (trying to wind more quickly). There’s just a bit left.

TELEGIN. Kharkov’s where they’re going.³⁴ That’s where they’ll live.

MARINA. Good riddance.

TELEGIN. They got a scare . . . Yelena Andreevna says, “not one more hour,” she says, “will I live here . . . let’s go, let’s go . . . We’ll live,” she says, “in Kharkov, we’ll give it the once-over and then we’ll send for our things . . .” Traveling light. Which means, Marina Timofeevna, they weren’t destined to live here. Not destined . . . Preordained by fate.

MARINA. Good riddance. Just now they were raising a rumpus, shooting guns—a downright disgrace!

TELEGIN. Yes, a scene that deserves treatment by a painter of shipwrecks and tempests.^[43]

MARINA. That my eyes should see such a sight. (Pause.) Once again we’ll live as we used to, the old way. Tea in the morning between seven and eight, dinner between noon and one, sit down to supper in the evening; everything in its place, the way folks do it . . . like Christians. (With a sigh.) It’s a long time, bless my soul, since I’ve had noodles.

TELEGIN. Yes, it’s quite a little while since they served us noodles.

Pause.

Quite a little while . . . This morning, Marina Timofeevna, I go to the village and the shopkeeper yells at me, “Hey, you freeloader!” And it made me feel so bitter!

MARINA. You pay it no mind, dearie. We’re all freeloaders on God. You and Sonya and Ivan Petrovich — no one sits idle, everyone gets down to work! Everyone . . . where is Sonya?

TELEGIN. In the garden. She and the doctor are on the move, looking for Ivan Petrovich. They’re afraid he might lay hands on himself.

MARINA. And where’s the pistol?

TELEGIN (in a whisper). I hid it in the cellar!

MARINA (with a broad grin). Bless us sinners!

Enter from outside VOINITSKY and ASTROV.

VOINITSKY. Leave me alone. (To Marina and Telegin.) Get out of here, leave me alone for just an hour! I can’t stand being spied on.

TELEGIN. This minute, Vanya. (Tiptoes out.)

MARINA. Goosie-goosie-gander, honk, honk, honk! (Gathers up the yarn and exits. )

VOINITSKY. Leave me alone!

ASTROV. With the greatest of pleasure, I should have left here long ago, but, I repeat, I will not leave until you return what you took from me.

VOINITSKY. I took nothing from you.

ASTROV. I’m in earnest—don’t detain me. It was time for me to leave hours ago.

VOINITSKY. Nothing, that’s what I took from you.

Both sit down.

ASTROV. Is that so? All right, I’ll wait a little longer, and then, sorry, I’ll have to use force. We’ll tie you up and frisk you. I mean this quite seriously.

VOINITSKY. Whatever you like.

Pause.

To act like such a fool; to shoot twice and miss both times! That’s something I’ll never forgive myself for!

ASTROV. When the urge to shoot came over you, you should have blown your brains out.

VOINITSKY (after a shrug). ‘S funny. I attempted murder, but they don’t arrest me, they don’t put me on trial. Which means they think I’m insane. (A malicious smile.) I am insane, and the sane are the ones who pass themselves off as professors, learned sages, to conceal their lack of talent, their obtuseness, their blatant heartlessness. The sane are the ones who marry old men and then cheat on them in broad daylight, I saw, I saw the way you embraced her!

ASTROV. Yes, sir, embraced, sir,³⁵ what’s it to you? (Thumbs his nose at him.)

VOINITSKY (glancing at the door). No, the earth is insane for supporting you.

ASTROV. Now, that’s just stupid.

VOINITSKY. So what, I’m insane, not responsible in the eyes of the law. I have the right to say stupid things.

ASTROV. An old trick. You’re not insane, you’re just a crackpot. A baggy-pants clown.³⁶ There was a time when I considered every crackpot to be psychotic, abnormal, but now I’m of the opinion that the normal human condition is to be a crackpot.³⁷ You’re perfectly normal.

VOINITSKY (covers his face with his hands). The shame! If you only knew the shame I feel! This stabbing sense of shame can’t be compared to any pain there is. (Plaintively.) It’s unbearable. (Leans on the table.) What am I to do? What am I to do?

ASTROV. Not a thing.

VOINITSKY. Give me something! Oh my God . . . I’m forty-seven; suppose I live to be sixty, I still have another thirteen years to get through. A long time! How can I live through those thirteen years! What will I do, how will I fill them? Oh, you understand . . . (convulsively squeezes Astrov’s hand) you understand, if only one could live out the rest of one’s life in a new way somehow. If one could wake up on a bright, still morning and feel that life had begun anew, that all the past is forgotten, has blown away like smoke. (Weeps.) To begin a new life . . . Write me a prescription, how to begin . . . where to begin . . .

ASTROV (annoyed). Aw, cut it out! What new life! Our condition, yours and mine, is hopeless.

VOINITSKY. Is it?

ASTROV. I’m convinced of it.

VOINITSKY. Give me something . . . (Indicating his heart.) It’s searing inside.

ASTROV (shouts in anger). Stop it! (Assuaging him.) Those who will live a hundred, two hundred years from now and who will despise us because we lived our lives so stupidly and so gracelessly,—they may find a way to be happy, but we . . . For you and me there’s only one hope. The hope that when we lie in our coffins, we’ll be haunted by visions, maybe even pleasant ones. (After a sigh.) Yes, my boy. In the whole district there were only two decent, cultured men: you and I. But it took no more than ten years for humdrum life, despicable life to drag us down; its pestilential fumes poisoned our blood, and we became just as vulgar as everybody else. (Vigorously.) But don’t try to charm away the toothache with talking. You give back what you took from me.

VOINITSKY. I didn’t take anything from you.

ASTROV. What you took out of my portable medicine chest was a little jar of morphine.

Pause.

Listen, if you insist on putting an end to your life, no matter what, go out in the forest and shoot yourself there. But give back the morphine or else there’ll be talk, inquests, they’ll think I gave it to you . . . It’ll be bad enough having to perform your autopsy . . . You think that’ll be interesting?

Enter SONYA.

VOINITSKY. Leave me alone.

ASTROV (to Sonya). Sofiya Aleksandrovna, your uncle pilfered a little jar of morphine from my medicine chest and won’t give it back. Tell him that it is . . . basically, not an intelligent thing to do.

SONYA. Uncle Vanya, did you take the morphine?

Pause.

ASTROV. He took it. I’m sure of it.

SONYA. Give it back. Why do you terrorize us? (Tenderly.) Give it back, Uncle Vanya. I may be just as unhappy as you are, but I don’t give in to despair. I am patient and will be patient until my life comes to an end on its own . . . You be patient too.

Pause.

Give it back! (Kisses his hands.) Dear, wonderful uncle, dearest, give it back! (Weeps.) You’re kind, you’ll feel sorry for us and give it back. Have patience, uncle! Have patience!

VOINITSKY (gets a little jar from the table and gives it to Astrov). Go on, take it! (To Sonya.) But we must go to work quickly, do something quickly, or else I can’t . . . I can’t . . .

SONYA. Yes, yes, to work. As soon as we see them off, we’ll get down to work . ..(Nervously riffles through papers on the table.) We’ve let everything go.

ASTROV (puts the jar in the medicine chest and straps it tightly shut). Now a man can be on his way.

YELENA ANDREEVNA (enters). Ivan Petrovich, you’re here? We’re leaving right away. Go to Aleksandr, he has something to say to you.

SONYA. Go, Uncle Vanya. (Takes Voinitsky by the arm.) Let’s go. Papa and you ought to be reconciled. That’s absolutely necessary.

SONYA and VOINITSKY leave.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. I’m leaving. (Gives Astrov her hand.) Good-bye.

ASTROV. So soon?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. The horses have already been brought round.

ASTROV. Good-bye.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. You promised me today that you would leave here.

ASTROV. I remember. I’m just leaving.

Pause.

Was the lady frightened? (Takes her by the hand.) Is this really so terrifying?

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Yes.

ASTROV. Otherwise the lady would have stayed! Ah? Tomorrow in the forest preserve . . .

YELENA ANDREEVNA. No . . . it’s been settled . . . And that’s why I can look at you so fearlessly, because our departure is definite . . . All I ask of you is: have a higher opinion of me. I would like you to respect me.

ASTROV. Ay! (Gesture of impatience.) Do stay, please. Admit it, you’ve got nothing to do in this world, no purpose in life, nothing to engage your attention, and, sooner or later, make no mistake, you’ll give in to your feelings — it’s inevitable. So it’s far better not to let it happen in Kharkov or somewhere like Kursk but here, in the lap of nature . . . Poetically speaking, at least, autumn is a beautiful season . . . There are forest preserves, half-dilapidated manor houses out of a Turgenev novel . . .³⁸

YELENA ANDREEVNA. What a funny man you are . . . I’m angry with you, but still . . . I’ll remember you with pleasure. You’re an interesting, original person. Never again will we meet, and so—why hide it? I was attracted to you a little . . . Well, let’s shake hands and part as friends. Keep a kind thought for me.

ASTROV (has shaken her hand). Yes, go away . . . (Pensively.) You seem to be a decent, sincere person, but there also seems to be something odd about your basic nature. You and your husband show up, and everyone around here who used to work or putter or create things was compelled to lay aside his work and all summer long concentrate on nothing but your husband’s gout and you. The two of you infected all the rest of us with your idleness. I was attracted, did nothing for a whole month, while people were falling ill, peasants grazed their cattle in my forest and stands of young trees . . . And so, wherever you and your husband set foot, destruction follows in your wake . . . I’m joking, of course, but all the same . . . it’s odd, and I’m convinced that if you were to stay, the havoc wreaked would be stupendous. I would perish, and you would . . . wouldn’t get off scot-free. Well, go away. Finita la commedia!³⁹

YELENA ANDREEVNA (takes a pencil from the table and quickly conceals it). I’ll take this pencil to remember you by.

ASTROV. It’s kind of strange . . . We were getting to know one another and all of a sudden for no good reason . . . we’ll never meet again. It’s the way of the world . . . While nobody’s here, before Uncle Vanya comes in with a bouquet, let me . . . kiss you . . . As a farewell . . . All right? (Kisses her on the cheek.) There now . . . Well done.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. I wish you the best of everything. (Looking around.) Whatever the cost, for once in my life! (Embraces him impulsively, and both immediately and rapidly move away from one another.) It’s time to go.⁴⁰

ASTROV. Go quickly. Now that the horses have been brought round, you’ll be off.

YELENA ANDREEVNA. Here they come, I think.

Both listen hard.

ASTROV. Finita!

Enter SEREBRYAKOV, VOINITSKY, MARIYA VASILYEVNA with a book, TELEGIN, and SONYA.

SEREBRYAKOV (to Voinitsky). Let the dead past bury its dead.⁴¹ After what has occurred in these last few hours, I have experienced so much and done so much thinking that I believe I could write a whole treatise on the art of living for the edification of posterity. I gladly accept your apologies and in turn ask you to forgive me. Good-bye! (He and Vanya exchange kisses three times.)

VOINITSKY. You will punctually receive the same amount as before. Everything will be as it was before.

YELENA ANDREEVNA embraces SONYA.

SEREBRYAKOV (kisses Mariya Vasilyevna’s hand). Maman . . .

MARIYA VASILYEVNA (kissing him). Alexandre, have another picture taken and send me your photograph. You know how dear you are to me.

TELEGIN. Good-bye, Your Excellency! Don’t forget us!

SEREBRYAKOV(after kissing his daughter). Good-bye . . . Good-bye, all! (Giving his hand to Astrov.) Thank you for your pleasant company . . . I respect your way of thinking, your enthusiasms, effusions, but allow an old man to add to his valediction this one observation: one must take action, my friends! One must take action! (Bows all round.) My very best wishes! (Exits, followed by MARIYA VASILYEVNA and SONYA.)

VOINITSKY (soundly kisses Yelena Andreevna’s hand). Good-bye . . . Forgive me . . . We’ll never meet again.

YELENA ANDREEVNA (moved). Good-bye, my pet. (Kisses him on the head and exits.)

ASTROV (to Telegin). Waffles, tell them to bring round my horses too while they’re at it.

TELEGIN. Right you are, dear friend. (Exits.)

Only ASTROV and VOINITSKY are left.

ASTROV (takes the paints from the table and stuffs them into his suitcase). Why don’t you go and see them off?

VOINITSKY. Let them go, but I . . . I cannot. I feel depressed. Have to hurry and get involved in something . . . To work, to work! (Burrows into the papers on the table.)

Pause. The sound of harness bells.

ASTROV. They’re gone. The Professor’s relieved, I’ll bet. You couldn’t lure him back here again for all the tea in China.

MARINA (enters). They’re gone. (Sits in the easy chair and knits a stocking.)

SONYA (enters). They’re gone. (Wipes her eyes.) Pray God it’s for the best. (To Uncle.) Well, Uncle Vanya, let’s do something.

VOINITSKY. To work, to work . . .

SONYA. It’s been ever so long since we sat together at this table. (Lights a lamp on the table.) There doesn’t seem to be any ink . . . (Takes the inkwell to the cupboard and fills it.) But I feel down now that they’re gone.

MARIYA VASILYEVNA (enters slowly). They’re gone! (Sits and gets absorbed in reading.)

SONYA (sits at the table and leafs through the ledgers). First of all, Uncle Vanya, let’s write up all the accounts. It’s funny the way we’ve let things go. They sent for a bill again today. Write. You write one bill, I’ll do another . . .

VOINITSKY (writes). “Account . . . of Mister . . .”

Both write in silence.

MARINA (yawns). Beddie-bye for me . . .

ASTROV. Stillness. The pens scratch, the cricket chirps. Warm, cozy . . . I don’t feel like leaving here. (The sound of harness bells.) There, they’ve brought the horses . . . All that’s left, therefore, is to say good-bye to you, my friends, to say good-bye to my table and — off we go! (Places the diagram in the portfolio.)

MARINA. Now what are you fussing for? You should sit a while.

ASTROV. Can’t be done.

VOINITSKY (writes). “And carried over from the old debt two seventy-five . . . “

Enter the WORKMAN.

WORKMAN. Mikhail Lvovich, the horses are ready.

ASTROV. I heard. (Gives him the medicine chest, suitcase, and portfolio.) Here, take this. See that you don’t crumple the portfolio.

WORKMAN. Yes, sir. (Exits.)

ASTROV. Well, now . . . (Goes to say good-bye.)

SONYA. When shall we see you again?

ASTROV. Not until summer, I should think. Hardly this winter . . . Naturally, if anything comes up, let me know—I’ll stop by. (Shakes hands.) Thanks for the hospitality, the kindness . . . everything, in short. (Goes to the nanny and kisses her on the head.) Good-bye, old woman.

MARINA. So you’re going without tea?

ASTROV. I don’t want any, Nanny old girl.

MARINA. Maybe you’d like a nip of vodka?

ASTROV (hesitantly). Could be . . .

MARINA exits.

ASTROV (after a pause). For some reason my trace horse⁴² started limping. I noticed it again yesterday, when Petrushka was leading him to water.

VOINITSKY. Needs a new shoe.

ASTROV. Have to stop at Rozhdestvennoe and look in at the blacksmith’s. Can’t be helped . . . (Walks over to the map of Africa and looks at it.) I suppose there must be a heat-wave over in Africa right now—something awful!

VOINITSKY. I suppose so.

MARINA (returning with a saucer holding a shotglass of vodka and a little piece of bread). Here you are. (ASTROV drinks the vodka.) Your health, dearie. (Bows low.) But you should have a bit o’ bread.

ASTROV. No, this’ll do . . . So, the best of everything! (To Marina.) Don’t see me off, Nanny old girl, there’s no need.

He leaves. SONYA follows with a candle to see him off; MARINA sits in her easy chair.

VOINITSKY (writes). “February second vegetable oil twenty pounds . . . February sixteenth another twenty pounds vegetable oil . . . buckwheat groats . . .”

Pause. The sound of harness bells.

MARINA. He’s gone!

Pause.

SONYA (returning, puts the candle on the table). He’s gone . . .

VOINITSKY (checking over the accounts and making notations). Total . . . fifty . . . twenty-five . . .

SONYA sits and writes.

MARINA (yawns). Uh, bless us sinners . . .

TELEGIN tiptoes in, sits by the door, and quietly strums the guitar.

VOINITSKY (to Sonya, running his hand through her hair). Dearest child, how hard it is! Oh, how hard it is!

SONYA. What can be done, we have to go on living!

Pause.

Uncle Vanya, we will go on living. We will live through a long, long series of days, no end of evenings; we will patiently bear the ordeals that Fate sends us; we will labor for others both now and in our old age, knowing no rest, but when our time comes, we will die meekly and beyond the grave we will tell how we suffered, how we wept, how bitter we felt, and God will take pity on us, and you and I, Uncle Vanya, dear Uncle, shall see a life bright, beautiful, exquisite, we shall rejoice and look upon our present unhappi-ness with forbearance, with a smile — and we’ll be at peace.⁴³ I believe, Uncle, I believe intensely, passionately . . . (Kneels before him and lays her head on his hands; in a weary voice. ) We’ll be at peace!

TELEGIN quietly plays the guitar.

We’ll be at peace! We shall hear the angels, we shall see heaven all diamonds, we shall see how all earthly woes, all our suffering will be submerged in a compassion that will fill up the world, and our life will grow serene, tender, sweet as a caress. I believe, believe . . . (Wipes his tears away with a handkerchief.) Poor, poor Uncle Vanya, you’re crying . . . (Through tears.) You’ve known no joy in your life, but wait, Uncle Vanya, wait . . . We’ll be at peace . . . (Embraces him.) We’ll be at peace!

The WATCHMAN taps. TELEGIN quietly goes on playing; MARIYA VASILYEVNA writes in the margin of a pamphlet; MARINA knits a stocking.

We’ll be at peace!

Curtain slowly falls.

VARIANT TO

Uncle Vanya

Lines come from Plays (1897).

ACT ONE

page 829 / After: My time’s up —

VOINITSKY (to Yelena Andreevna). He doesn’t eat meat either.

ASTROV. Yes, I consider it a sin to kill living things.

NOTES

1 The subtitle of Turgenev’s earlier play A Month in the Country.

2 The names are suggestive but not explicit in their meanings. Serebryakov, “silvery”; Voinitsky, “warrior”; Astrov, “starry”; Telegin, “cart”; “Yelena” is Helen, with hints at Helen of Troy (Offenbach’s rather than Homer’s); and Sofiya is Greek for “wisdom.”

3 Privy councillor, a relatively high civilian position in the table of official ranks, equivalent to a lieutenant-general in the army.

4 “Of course, the doctor has to be played suavely, nobly, in accord with the words of Sonya, who in Act Two calls him beautiful and refined” (Chekhov to his brother Mikhail, February 4, 1897).

5 The nyanya was the children’s nursemaid, who would live in the household until her death, even when the children were grown up, and might care for their children in turn. Compare with Anfisa in Three Sisters and the deceased Nanny in The Cherry Orchard. Astrov banteringly calls her nyanka, a mildly folksy form.

6 In the early 1890s the rural boards increased the number of medical outposts in the small villages, with several beds for in-patients and a dispensary for out-patients. Doctors were expected to look after all the peasants in a given district.

7 A highly contagious fever distinguished by purple spots, extreme prostration, and delirium.

8 According to Aleksandr Vishnevsky,

Chekhov got very angry when a certain provincial theatre depicted Uncle Vanya as a land owner on the skids, i.e., dirty, tattered, in greased boots.

“Well, what should he be like?” he was asked.

“It’s all written down in my play!” he replied.

And this is in the stage direction with the remark that Uncle Vanya is wearing a fancy necktie. Chekhov considered that this was quite enough to designate his dress.

(Scraps of Memory, 1928)

Chekhov described Voinitsky as “an elegant cultivated man. It is counter to the truth to say that our country squires walk around in boots that stink of grease” (Stanislavsky, My Life in Art, 1924). The tie is mentioned specifically, because it is put on to impress Yelena Andreevna.

9 Kabuli, highly spiced Caucasian stews, similar to curries. Evidently, the Professor’s biliousness derives in part from his diet.

10 A metal urn, heated by charcoal, to keep water on the boiling point for making tea. The pot with leaves is kept warm on top of the samovar, and filled with water from the tap as necessary.

11 Chekhov wrote, in a notebook entry of August 20, 1896: “M[enshikov] in dry weather goes around in galoshes, carries an umbrella, so as not to die of sunstroke, is afraid to wash with cold water, complains about heart trouble.”

12 Telegin’s flowery way of speaking is typical of the old-fashioned landowner, trying to seem courtly and well educated. Chekhov uses a similar device in his first published story of 1879: “Letter of a Landowner to His Learned Neighbor Dr. Friedrich.” Telegin’s remark may be another of Chekhov’s parodies of the famous Pushkin poem, “Whether I walk noisy streets . . .”

13 In the original, he uses a Latin term often found in prescriptions: quantum satis, “as much as necessary.”

14 Ma’am is to indicate that Telegin adds an s for sudar (sir) or sudarinya (madam) to his words, an old-fashioned and obsequious manner of speaking.

15 Mariya Vasilyevna belongs to a generation of educated persons who conversed in French and referred to one another by the French forms of their names: hence, Alexandre, Jean.

16 Nado delo delat, “one must do something,” “be active,” “committed,” “get involved.” A motto of liberalism in the 1860s, it does not mean “One must work,” as it is often translated.

17 Between 1887 and 1900 the number of factory workers in Russia increased from 1.5 to 2.1 million. Sanitary and housing conditions were very bad, since employers were not compelled to protect workers against dangerous machinery, and few factories provided medical attention.

18 Astrov is imitating the manner of speaking of Anfusa Tikhonovna in Ostrovsky’s 1875 comedy Wolves and Sheep.

19 The popular dramatist Aleksandr Ostrovsky (1823–1886). The character is Paratov in The Girl without a Dowry (1879), who, in Act Two, scene ix, says, “We already know one another. (Bows.) A man long on moustache and short on abilities.”

20 In The Wood Goblin, the title character, Dr. Khrushchov, a liberal ecologist, says much the same thing.

21 A traditional form of greeting used by inferiors to their betters; a survival from the days of serfdom.

22 Vanya uses the term domovoy, house goblin, which, like the English nightmare or European incubus, is reputed to interfere with the breathing of those who are sleeping. It connects with his reference to water sprites in Act Three.

23 A folksong.

24 Feldsher (from the German, Feldscher, an assistant medical officer), a medical attendant without a doctor’s degree; in rural areas of Russia, the feldsher often stood in for a licensed physician.

25 In Russian, the wordplay is on idet, colloquially “shall we go,” and idyot, which sounds like idiot, “imbecile,” a pun Chekhov often used privately, especially in letters to his brother Aleksandr.

26 Literally, “Fair is she,” an allusion to the “Tale of the Tsar’s Dead Daughter and the Seven Warriors,” a Russian version of “Snow White,” by Aleksandr Pushkin (1833); the evil Tsarina turns to her mirror with the question whether she is really the fairest in the land. The mirror replies: “Fair art thou, no contest there; but the Tsar’s daughter’s still more fair . . .”

27 Italian: enough.

28 Yelena has picked one of Astrov’s favorite words; she’s clearly been listening to him.

29 The St. Petersburg Conservatory, founded in 1862 by Anton Rubinstein, was an outstanding nursery of brilliant musicians.

30 “The Art Theatre is putting on my Uncle Vanya; in the third act they need a survey map. Be so kind as to pick out a suitable one and lend it or promise to donate a suitable one, when you find one among those you don’t need” (Chekhov to Dr. P. I. Kurkin, May 24, 1899). Kurkin sent him a survey map of the Serpukhov region with the village of Melikhovo, where Chekhov lived, in the middle.

31 Schismatics from the Russian Orthodox church, persecuted by the authorities from the seventeenth century, sought refuge in the countryside, and split into many sects.

32 In the original, Lakedaimonov, a joke name based on Lacedæmon, land of the Spartans.

33 According to Nadezhda Butova:

Anton Pavlovich was once watching Uncle Vanya.

In the third act Sonya, at the words “Papa, open your heart,” got on her knees and kissed her father’s hand.

“She mustn’t do that, that’s really not drama,” said Anton Pavlovich. “All the sense, all the drama of a human being is inward, and not expressed in outward manifestations. There was drama in Sonya’s life up to that moment, there will be drama after that, but this is simply an incident, the consequence of the gunshot. And a gunshot is really not drama, but an incident.”

(“From Memories of A. P. Chekhov at the Art Theatre,” Shipovnik Almanac 23 [1914])

34 Capital of the Kharkov guberniya in the Ukraine, a university town of 220,000 inhabitants, famous for its annual cattle and wool market. In the view of a Petersburger: back of the beyond. Chekhov often uses it to suggest a humdrum way of life.

35 Astrov picks up Telegin’s affected style of talking.

36 Gorokhy shut, literally “a pea-green jester,” a generic term for a buffoon, like Shakespeare’s “motley fool.”

37 Compare Chekhov’s notebooks: “He used to consider that a ridiculous crackpot was ill, but now he is of the opinion that it is the normal condition of mankind to be a ridiculous crackpot.”

38 Allusion to such novels of Ivan Turgenev as A Nest of Gentry, which were proverbial by Chekhov’s time.

39 Italian: “The play is over,” an expression Chekhov often used in his letters to mean “it’s all played out.”

40 On September 30, 1899, Chekhov wrote Olga Knipper:

At your command, I hasten to answer your letter in which you ask me about Astrov’s last scene with Yelena. You write that Astrov addresses Yelena in that scene like the most passionate lover, “clutches at his feeling like a drowning man at a straw.” But that’s not right, not right at all! Astrov likes Yelena, she captivates him by her beauty, but in the last act he already knows that nothing will come of it, that Yelena is vanishing from him forever—and he talks to her in that scene in the same tone as about the heat in Africa, and kisses her quite casually, with nothing better to do. If Astrov carries on that scene tempestuously, the whole mood of the fourth act—quiet and despondent—will be lost.”

41 I have chosen a quotation from Longfellow (from his Psalm of Life) to indicate the hackneyed nature of the Professor’s remark. In the original Russian, Serebryakov quotes a proverb, “He who bears a grudge should have an eye plucked out.”

42 A troika consists of three horses harnessed together; the two harnessed by straps or traces to the outside shafts are called trace horses.

43 The Russian, My otdokhnyom, connotes, “We shall breathe easily” and is connected etymologically to words such as dushno, used by characters to say they are being stifled. The literal English translation, “We shall rest,” with its harsh dental ending, fails to convey Sonya’s meaning sonically or spiritually.