"The Cherry Orchard" is Tchekhof's prophetic song. In this play he
depicts three stages of social development and their reflex in
literature.
_Mme. Ranevsky_, the owner of the cherry orchard, an estate celebrated
far and wide for its beauty and historic traditions, is deeply attached
to the family place. She loves it for its romanticism: nightingales sing
in the orchard, accompanying the wooing of lovers. She is devoted to it
because of the memory of her ancestors and because of the many tender
ties which bind her to the orchard. The same feeling and reverence is
entertained by her brother _Leonid Gayef_. They are expressed in the
_Ode to an Old Family Cupboard_:
_Gayef._ Beloved and venerable cupboard; honor and glory to your
existence, which for more than a hundred years has been directed to
the noble ideals of justice and virtue. Your silent summons to
profitable labor has never weakened in all these hundred years. You
have upheld the courage of succeeding generations of human kind; you
have upheld faith in a better future and cherished in us ideals of
goodness and social consciousness.
But the social consciousness of _Gayef_ and of his sister is of a
paternal nature: the attitude of the aristocracy toward its serfs. It is
a paternalism that takes no account of the freedom and happiness of the
people,--the romanticism of a dying class.
_Mme. Ranevsky_ is impoverished. The cherry orchard is heavily mortgaged
and as romance and sentiment cannot liquidate debts, the beautiful
estate falls into the cruel hands of commercialism.
The merchant _Yermolai Lopakhin_ buys the place. He is in ecstasy over
his newly acquired possession. He the owner--he who had risen from the
serfs of the former master of the orchard!
_Lopakhin._ Just think of it! The cherry orchard is mine! Mine! Tell
me that I'm drunk; tell me that I'm off my head; tell me that it's
all a dream!... If only my father and my grandfather could rise from
their graces and see the whole affair, how their Yermolai, their
flogged and ignorant Yermolai, who used to run about barefooted in
the winter, how this same Yermolai had bought a property that hasn't
its equal for beauty anywhere in the whole world! I have bought the
property where my father and grandfather were slaves, where they
weren't even allowed into the kitchen.
A new epoch begins in the cherry orchard. On the ruins of romanticism
and aristocratic ease there rises commercialism, its iron hand yoking
nature, devastating her beauty, and robbing her of all radiance.
With the greed of rich returns, _Lopakhin_ cries, "Lay the ax to the
cherry orchard, come and see the trees fall down! We'll fill the place
with villas."
Materialism reigns supreme; it lords the orchard with mighty hand, and
in the frenzy of its triumph believes itself in control of the bodies
and souls of men. But in the madness of conquest it has discounted a
stubborn obstacle--the spirit of idealism. It is symbolized in _Peter
Trophimof_, "the perpetual student," and _Anya_, the young daughter of
_Mme. Ranevsky_. The "wonderful achievements" of the materialistic age
do not enthuse them; they have emancipated themselves from the Lopakhin
idol as well as from their aristocratic traditions.
_Anya._ Why is it that I no longer love the cherry orchard as I did?
I used to love it so tenderly; I thought there was no better place
on earth than our garden.
_Trophimof._ All Russia is our garden. The earth is great and
beautiful; it is full of wonderful places. Think, Anya, your
grandfather, your great-grandfather and all your ancestors were
serf-owners, owners of living souls. Do not human spirits look out
at you from every tree in the orchard, from every leaf and every
stem? Do you not hear human voices?... Oh! it is terrible. Your
orchard frightens me. When I walk through it in the evening or at
night, the rugged bark on the trees glows with a dim light, and the
cherry trees seem to see all that happened a hundred and two hundred
years ago in painful and oppressive dreams. Well, well, we have
fallen at least two hundred years beyond the times. We have achieved
nothing at all as yet; we have not made up our minds how we stand
with the past; we only philosophize, complain of boredom, or drink
vodka. It is so plain that, before we can live in the present, we
must first redeem the past, and have done with it.
_Anya._ The house we live in has long since ceased to be our house;
I shall go away.
_Trophimof._ If you have the household keys, throw them in the well
and go away. Be free, be free as the wind.... I am hungry as the
winter; I am sick, anxious, poor as a beggar. Fate has tossed me
hither and thither; I have been everywhere, everywhere. But
everywhere I have been, every minute, day and night, my soul has
been full of mysterious anticipations. I feel the approach of
happiness, Anya; I see it coming ... it is coming towards us, nearer
and nearer; I can hear the sound of its footsteps.... And if we do
not see it, if we do not know it, what does it matter? Others will
see it.
The new generation, on the threshold of the new epoch, hears the
approaching footsteps of the Future. And even if the Anyas and
Trophimofs of to-day will not see it, others will.
It was not given to Anton Tchekhof to see it with his bodily eyes. But
his prophetic vision beheld the coming of the New Day, and with powerful
pen he proclaimed it, that others might see it. Far from being a
pessimist, as charged by unintelligent critics, his faith was strong in
the possibilities of liberty.