THE PLAYS OF ANTON TCHEKOV
Anton Tchekov is chiefly known in Russia as a writer of short
stories.[24] He is a kind of Russian Guy de Maupassant, without the
bitter strength of the French writer, and without the quality which the
French call “cynisme,” which does not mean cynicism, but ribaldry.
Tchekov’s stories deal for the greater part with the middle classes,
the minor landed gentry, the minor officials, and the professional
classes. Tolstoy is reported to have said that Tchekov was a
photographer, a very talented photographer, it is true, but still only
a photographer. But Tchekov has one quality which is difficult to find
among photographers, and that is humour. His stories are frequently
deliciously droll. They are also often full of pathos, and they
invariably possess the peculiarly Russian quality of simplicity and
unaffectedness. He never underlines his effects, he never nudges the
reader’s elbow. Yet there is a certain amount of truth in Tolstoy’s
criticism. Tchekov does not paint with the great sweeping brush
of a Velasquez, his stories have not the great broad colouring of
Maupassant, they are like mezzotints; and in some ways they resemble
the new triumphs of the latest developments of artistic photography in
subtle effects of light and shade, in delicate tones and half-tones, in
elusive play of atmosphere.
Apart from its artistic merits or defects, Tchekov’s work is
historically important and interesting. Tchekov represents the extreme
period of stagnation in Russian life and literature. This epoch
succeeded to a period of comparative activity following after the
Russo-Turkish war. For in Russian history one will find that every war
has been followed by a movement, a renascence in ideas, in political
aspirations, and in literature. Tchekov’s work represents the reaction
of flatness subsequent to a transitory ebullition of activity; it
deals with the very class of men which naturally hankers for political
activity, but which in Tchekov’s time was as naturally debarred from it.
The result was that the aspirations of these people beat their grey
wings ineffectually in a vacuum. The middle class being highly
educated, and, if anything, over-educated, aspiring towards political
freedom, and finding its aspirations to be futile, did one of two
things. It either moped, or it made the best of it. The moping
sometimes expressed itself in political assassination; making the best
of it meant, as a general rule, dismissing the matter from the mind,
and playing vindt. Half the middle class in Russia, a man once said to
me, has run to seed in playing vindt. But what else was there to do?
Tchekov, more than any other writer, has depicted for us the attitude
of mind, the nature and the feelings of the whole of this generation,
just as Tourgeniev depicted the preceding generation; the aspirations
and the life of the men who lived in the sixties, during the tumultuous
epoch which culminated in the liberation of the serfs. And nowhere can
the quality of this frame of mind, and the perfume, as it were, of
this period be better felt and apprehended than in the plays of Anton
Tchekov; for in his plays we get not only what is most original in his
work as an artist, but the quintessence of the atmosphere, the attitude
of mind, and the shadow of what the _Zeitgeist_ brought to the men of
his generation.
Before analysing the dramatic work of Tchekov, it is necessary to say a
few words about the Russian stage in general. The main fact about the
Russian stage that differentiates it from ours, and from that of any
other European country, is the absence of the modern French tradition.
The tradition of the “well-made” French play, invented by Scribe, does
not, and never has existed in Russia.
Secondly, reformers and demolishers of this tradition do not exist
either, for they have nothing to reform or demolish. In Russia it was
never necessary for naturalistic schools to rise with a great flourish
of trumpets, and to proclaim that they were about to destroy the
conventions and artificiality of the stage, and to give to the public,
instead of childish sentimentalities and impossible Chinese puzzles
of intrigue, slices of real life. Had anybody behaved thus in Russia
he would simply have been beating his hands against a door which was
wide open. For the Russian drama, like the Russian novel, has, without
making any fuss about it, never done but one thing--to depict life as
clearly as it saw it, and as simply as it could.
That is why there has never been a naturalist school in Russia. The
Russians are born realists; they do not have to label themselves
realists, because realism is the very air which they breathe, and the
very blood in their veins. What was labelled realism and naturalism in
other countries simply appeared to them to be a straining after effect.
Even Ibsen, whose great glory was that, having learnt all the tricks
of the stagecraft of Scribe and his followers, he demolished the whole
system, and made Comedies and Tragedies just as skilfully out of the
tremendous issues of real life--even Ibsen had no great influence in
Russia, because what interests Russian dramatists is not so much the
crashing catastrophes of life as life itself, ordinary everyday life,
just as we all see it. “I go to the theatre,” a Russian once said, “to
see what I see every day.” And here we have the fundamental difference
between the drama of Russia and that of any other country.
Dramatists of other countries, be they English, or French, or German,
or Norwegian, whether they belong to the school of Ibsen, or to that
which found its temple in the Théâtre Antoine at Paris, had one thing
in common; they were either reacting or fighting against something--as
in the case of the Norwegian dramatists--or bent on proving a
thesis--as in the case of Alexandre Dumas _fils_, the Théâtre Antoine
school, or Mr. Shaw--; that is to say, they were all actuated by some
definite purpose; the stage was to them a kind of pulpit.
On the English stage this was especially noticeable, and what the
English public has specially delighted in during the last fifteen years
has been a sermon on the stage, with a dash of impropriety in it. Now
the Russian stage has never gone in for sermons or theses: like the
Russian novel, it has been a looking-glass for the use of the public,
and not a pulpit for the use of the playwright. This fact is never more
strikingly illustrated than when the translation of a foreign play is
performed in Russia. For instance, when Mr. Bernard Shaw’s play, _Mrs.
Warren’s Profession_, was performed in December, 1907, at the Imperial
State-paid Theatre at St. Petersburg, the attitude of the public and
of the critics was interesting in the extreme. In the first place,
that the play should be produced at the Imperial State-paid Theatre
is an interesting illustration of the difference of the attitude of
the two countries towards the stage. In England, public performance
of this play is forbidden; in America it was hounded off the stage by
an outraged and indignant populace; in St. Petersburg it is produced
at what, in Russia, is considered the temple of respectability, the
home of tradition, the citadel of conservatism. In the audience were a
quantity of young, unmarried girls. The play was beautifully acted, and
well received,[25] but it never occurred to any one that it was either
daring or dangerous or startling; it was merely judged as a story of
English life, a picture of English manners. Some people thought it was
interesting, others that it was uninteresting, but almost all were
agreed in considering it to be too stagey for the Russian taste; and as
for considering it an epoch-making work, that is to say, in the region
of thought and ideas, the very idea was scoffed at.
These opinions were reflected in the press. In one of the newspapers,
the leading Liberal organ, edited by Professor Milioukov, the
theatrical critic said that Mr. Bernard Shaw was the typical
middle-class Englishman, and satirised the faults and follies of his
class, but that he himself belonged to the class that he satirised,
and shared its limitations. “The play,” they said, “is a typical
middle-class English play, and it suffers from the faults inherent to
this class of English work: false sentiment and melodrama.”
Another newspaper, the _Russ_, wrote as follows: “Bernard Shaw is
thought to be an _enfant terrible_ in England. In Russia we take
him as a writer, and as a writer only, who is not absolutely devoid
of advanced ideas. In our opinion, his play belongs neither to the
extreme right nor to the extreme left of dramatic literature; it is an
expression of the ideas of moderation which belong to the centre, and
the proof of this is the production of it at our State-paid Theatre,
which in our eyes is the home and shelter of what is retrograde and
respectable.”[26]
Such was the opinion of the newspaper critic on Mr. Bernard Shaw’s
play. It represented more or less the opinion of the man in the street.
For nearly all European dramatic art, with the exception of certain
German and Norwegian work, strikes the Russian public as stagey and
artificial. If a Russian had written _Mrs. Warren’s Profession_, he
would never have introduced the scene between Crofts and Vivy which
occurs at the end of Act III., because such a scene, to a Russian,
savours of melodrama. On the other hand, he would have had no
hesitation in putting on the stage (at the Imperial State-paid Theatre)
the interior, with all its details, of one of the continental hotels
from which Mrs. Warren derived her income. But, as I have already
said, what interests the Russian dramatist most keenly is not the huge
catastrophes that stand out in lurid pre-eminence, but the incidents,
sometimes important, sometimes trivial, and sometimes ludicrous, which
happen to every human being every day of his life. And nowhere is this
so clearly visible as in the work of Tchekov; for although the plays of
Tchekov--which have not yet been discovered in England, and which will
soon be old-fashioned in Russia--are not a reflection of the actual
state of mind of the Russian people, yet as far as their artistic aim
is concerned, they are more intensely typical, and more successful
in the achievement of their aim than the work of any other Russian
dramatist.[27]
Tchekov has written in all eleven plays, out of which six are farces
in one act, and five are serious dramas. The farces, though sometimes
very funny, are not important; it is in his serious dramatic work that
Tchekov really found himself, and gave to the world something new and
entirely original. The originality of Tchekov’s plays is not that they
are realistic. Other dramatists--many Frenchmen, for instance--have
written interesting and dramatic plays dealing with poignant
situations, happening to real people in real life. Tchekov’s discovery
is this, that real life, as we see it every day, can be made just as
interesting on the stage as the catastrophes or the difficulties which
are more or less exceptional, but which are chosen by dramatists as
their material because they are dramatic. Tchekov discovered that it is
not necessary for real life to be dramatic in order to be interesting.
Or rather that ordinary everyday life is as dramatic on the stage, if
by dramatic one means interesting, as extraordinary life. He perceived
that things which happen to us every day, which interest us, and affect
us keenly, but which we would never dream of thinking or of calling
dramatic when they occur, may be made as interesting on the stage as
the most far-fetched situations, or the most terrific crises. For
instance, it may affect us keenly to leave for ever a house where we
have lived for many years. It may touch us to the quick to see certain
friends off at a railway station. But we do not call these things
dramatic. They are not dramatic, but they are human.
Tchekov has realised this, and has put them on the stage. He has
managed to send over the footlights certain feelings, moods, and
sensations, which we experience constantly, and out of which our life
is built. He has managed to make the departure of certain people from a
certain place, and the staying on of certain others in the same place,
as interesting behind the footlights as the tragic histories of Œdipus
or Othello, and a great deal more interesting than the complicated
struggles and problems in which the characters of a certain school
of modern dramatists are enmeshed. Life as a whole never presents
itself to us as a definite mathematical problem, which needs immediate
solution, but is rather composed of a thousand nothings, which together
make something vitally important. Tchekov has understood this, and
given us glimpses of these nothings, and made whole plays out of these
nothings.
At first sight one is tempted to say that there is no action in the
plays of Tchekov. But on closer study one realises that the action is
there, but it is not the kind usually sought after and employed by men
who write for the stage. Tchekov is, of course, not the first dramatic
writer who has realised that the action which consisted in violent
things happening to violent people is not a whit more interesting,
perhaps a great deal less interesting, than the changes and the
vicissitudes which happen spiritually in the soul of man. Molière knew
this, for _Le Misanthrope_ is a play in which nothing in the ordinary
sense happens. Rostand’s _L’Aiglon_ is a play where nothing in the
ordinary sense happens.[28] But in these plays in the extraordinary
sense everything happens. A violent drama occurs in the soul of the
Misanthrope, and likewise in that of the Duke of Reichstadt. So it
is in Tchekov’s plays. He shows us the changes, the revolutions,
the vicissitudes, the tragedies, the comedies, the struggles, the
conflicts, the catastrophes, that happen in the souls of men, but he
goes a step further than other dramatists in the way in which he shows
us these things. He shows us these things as we ourselves perceive
or guess them in real life, without the help of poetic soliloquies
or monologues, without the help of a Greek chorus or a worldly
_raisonneur_, and without the aid of startling events which strip
people of their masks. He shows us bits of the everyday life of human
beings as we see it, and his pictures of ordinary human beings, rooted
in certain circumstances, and engaged in certain avocations, reveal
to us further glimpses of the life that is going on inside these
people. The older dramatists, even when they deal exclusively with the
inner life of man, without the aid of any outside action, allow their
creations to take off their masks and lay bare their very inmost souls
to us.
Tchekov’s characters never, of their own accord, take off their masks
for the benefit of the audience, but they retain them in exactly
the same degree as people retain them in real life; that is to say,
we sometimes guess by a word, a phrase, a gesture, the humming of a
tune, or the smelling of a flower, what is going on behind the mask;
at other times we see the mask momentarily torn off by an outbreak of
inward passion, but never by any pressure of an outside and artificial
machinery, never owing to the necessity of a situation, the demands of
a plot, or the exigencies of a problem; in fact, never by any forces
which are not those of life itself. In Tchekov’s plays, as in real
life, to use Meredith’s phrase, “Passions spin the plot”; he shows us
the delicate webs that reach from soul to soul across the trivial
incidents of every day.
I will now analyse in detail two of the plays of Tchekov. The first is
a drama called _Chaika_. “Chaika” means “Sea-gull.” It was the first
serious play of Tchekov that was performed; and it is interesting to
note that when it was first produced at the Imperial Theatre at St.
Petersburg it met with no success, the reason being, no doubt, that the
actors did not quite enter into the spirit of the play. As soon as it
was played at Moscow it was triumphantly successful.
The first act takes place in the park in the estate belonging to
Peter Nikolaievitch Sorin, the brother of a celebrated actress,
Irina Nikolaievna, whose stage name is Arkadina. Preparations have
been made in the park for some private theatricals. A small stage
has been erected. The play about to be represented has been written
by Constantine, the actress’s son, who is a young man, twenty-five
years old. The chief part is to be played by a young girl, Ina, the
daughter of a neighbouring landowner. These two young people are in
love with each other. Irina is a successful actress of the more or
less conventional type. She has talent and brains. “She sobs over a
book,” one of the characters says of her, “and knows all Russian poetry
by heart; she looks after the sick like an angel, but you must not
mention Eleanora Duse in her presence, you must praise her only, and
write about her and her wonderful acting in _La Dame aux Camélias_. In
the country she is bored, and we all become her enemies, we are all
guilty. She is superstitious and avaricious.” Constantine, her son, is
full of ideals with regard to the reform of the stage; he finds the old
forms conventional and tedious, he is longing to pour new wine into the
old skins, or rather to invent new skins.
There is also staying in the house a well-known writer, about forty
years old, named Trigorin. “He is talented and writes well,” one of the
other characters says of him, “but after reading Tolstoy you cannot
read him at all.” The remaining characters are a middle-aged doctor,
named Dorn; the agent of the estate, a retired officer, his wife and
daughter, and a schoolmaster. The characters all assemble to witness
Constantine’s play; they sit down in front of the small extemporised
stage, which has a curtain but no back cloth, since this is provided
by nature in the shape of a distant lake enclosed by trees. The sun
has set, and it is twilight. Constantine begs his guests to lend their
attention. The curtain is raised, revealing a view of the lake with
the moon shining above the horizon, and reflected in the water. Ina is
discovered seated on a large rock dressed all in white. She begins to
speak a kind of prose poem, an address of the Spirit of the Universe
to the dead world on which there is supposed to be no longer any living
creature.
Arkadina (the actress) presently interrupts the monologue by saying
softly to her neighbour, “This is decadent stuff.” The author, in a
tone of imploring reproach, says, “Mamma!” The monologue continues, the
Spirit of the World speaks of his obstinate struggle with the devil,
the origin of material force. There is a pause. Far off on the lake two
red dots appear. “Here,” says the Spirit of the World, “is my mighty
adversary, the devil. I see his terrible glowing eyes.” Arkadina once
more interrupts, and the following dialogue ensues:
_Arkadina_: It smells of sulphur; is that necessary?
_Constantine_: Yes.
_Arkadina_ (_laughing_): Yes, that is an effect.
_Constantine_: Mamma!
_Ina_ (_continuing to recite_): He is lonely without man.
_Paulin_ (_the wife of the agent_): (_To the doctor_): You have taken
off your hat. Put it on again, you will catch cold.
_Arkadina_: The doctor has taken off his hat to the devil, the father
of the material universe.
_Constantine_ (_losing his temper_): The play’s over. Enough! Curtain!
_Arkadina_: Why are you angry?
_Constantine_: Enough! Pull down the curtain! (_The curtain is let
down._) I am sorry I forgot, it is only certain chosen people that may
write plays and act. I infringed the monopoly, I ... (_He tries to say
something, but waves his arm and goes out._)
_Arkadina_: What is the matter with you?
_Sorin_ (_her brother_): My dear, you should be more gentle with the
_amour propre_ of the young.
_Arkadina_: What did I say to him?
_Sorin_: You offended him.
_Arkadina_: He said himself it was a joke, and I took his play as a
joke.
_Sorin_: All the same ...
_Arkadina_: Now it appears he has written a masterpiece! A
masterpiece, if you please! So he arranged this play, and made a
smell of sulphur, not as a joke, but as a manifesto! He wished to
teach us how to write and how to act. One gets tired of this in
the long-run,--these insinuations against me, these everlasting
pin-pricks, they are enough to tire any one. He is a capricious and
conceited boy!
_Sorin_: He wished to give you pleasure.
_Arkadina_: Really? Then why did he not choose some ordinary play, and
why did he force us to listen to this decadent rubbish? If it is a
joke I do not mind listening to rubbish, but he has the pretension to
invent new forms, and tries to inaugurate a new era in art; and I do
not think the form is new, it is simply bad.
Presently Ina appears; they compliment her on her performance.
Arkadina tells her she ought to go on to the stage, to which she
answers that that is her dream. She is introduced to Trigorin the
author: this makes her shy. She has read his works, she is overcome at
seeing the celebrity face to face. “Wasn’t it an odd play?” she asks
Trigorin. “I did not understand it,” he answers, “but I looked on with
pleasure--your acting was so sincere, and the scenery was beautiful.”
Ina says she must go home, and they all go into the house except the
doctor. Constantine appears again, and the doctor tells him that he
liked the play, and congratulates him. The young man is deeply touched.
He is in a state of great nervous excitement. As soon as he learns
that Ina has gone he says he must go after her at once. The doctor is
left alone. Masha, the daughter of the agent, enters and makes him a
confession: “I don’t love my father,” she says, “but I have confidence
in you. Help me.” “What is the matter?” he asks. “I am suffering,” she
answers, “and nobody knows my suffering. I love Constantine.” “How
nervous these people are,” says the doctor, “nerves, all nerves! and
what a quantity of love. Oh, enchanted lake! But what can I do for you,
my child, what, what?” and the curtain comes down.
The second act is in the garden of the same estate. It is a hot noon.
Arkadina has decided to travel to Moscow. The agent comes and tells
her that all the workmen are busy harvesting, and that there are no
horses to take her to the station. She tells him to hire horses in the
village, or else she will walk. “In that case,” the agent replies, “I
give notice, and you can get a new agent.” She goes out in a passion.
Presently Constantine appears bearing a dead sea-gull; he lays it at
Ina’s feet.
_Ina_: What does this mean?
_Constantine_: I shot this sea-gull to-day to my shame. I throw it at
your feet.
_Ina_: What is the matter with you?
_Constantine_: I shall soon shoot myself in the same way.
_Ina_: I do not recognise you.
_Constantine_: Yes, some time after I have ceased to recognise you.
You have changed towards me, your look is cold, my presence makes you
uncomfortable.
_Ina_: During these last days you have become irritable, and speak
in an unintelligible way, in symbols. I suppose this sea-gull is a
symbol. Forgive me, I am too simple to understand you.
_Constantine_: It all began on that evening when my play was such
a failure. Women cannot forgive failure. I burnt it all to the
last page. Oh, if you only knew how unhappy I am! Your coldness is
terrifying, incredible! It is just as if I awoke, and suddenly saw
that this lake was dry, or had disappeared under the earth. You have
just said you were too simple to understand me. Oh, what is there to
understand? My play was a failure, you despise my work, you already
consider that I am a thing of no account, like so many others! How
well I understand that, how well I understand! It is as if there
were a nail in my brain; may it be cursed, together with the _amour
propre_ which is sucking my blood, sucking it like a snake! (_He sees
Trigorin, who enters reading a book._) Here comes the real genius. He
walks towards us like a Hamlet, and with a book too. “Words, words,
words.” This sun is not yet come to you, and you are already smiling,
your looks have melted in its rays. I will not be in your way. (_He
goes out rapidly._)
There follows a conversation between Trigorin and Ina, during which she
says she would like to know what it feels like to be a famous author.
She talks of his interesting life.
_Trigorin_: What is there so very wonderful about it? Like a
monomaniac who, for instance, is always thinking day and night of the
moon, I am pursued by one thought which I cannot get rid of, I must
write, I must write, I must ... I have scarcely finished a story, when
for some reason or another I must write a second, and then a third,
and then a fourth. I write uninterruptedly, I cannot do otherwise.
What is there so wonderful and splendid in this, I ask you? Oh, it is
a cruel life! Look, I get excited with you, and all the time I am
remembering that an unfinished story is waiting for me. I see a cloud
which is like a pianoforte, and I at once think that I must remember
to say somewhere in the story that there is a cloud like a pianoforte.
_Ina_: But does not your inspiration and the process of creation give
you great and happy moments?
_Trigorin_: Yes, when I write it is pleasant, and it is nice to
correct proofs; but as soon as the thing is published, I cannot bear
it, and I already see that it is not at all what I meant, that it is
a mistake, that I should not have written it at all, and I am vexed
and horribly depressed. The public reads it, and says: “Yes, pretty,
full of talent, very nice, but how different from Tolstoy!” or, “Yes,
a fine thing, but how far behind _Fathers and Sons_; Tourgeniev is
better.” And so, until I die, it will always be “pretty and full of
talent,” never anything more; and when I die my friends as they pass
my grave will say: “Here lies Trigorin, he was a good writer, but he
did not write as well as Tourgeniev.”
Ina tells him that whatever he may appear to himself, to others he
appears great and wonderful. For the joy of being a writer or an
artist, she says, she would bear the hate of her friends, want,
disappointment; she would live in an attic and eat dry crusts. “I would
suffer from my own imperfections, but in return I should demand fame,
real noisy fame.” Here the voice of Arkadina is heard calling Trigorin.
He observes the sea-gull; she tells him that Constantine killed it.
Trigorin makes a note in his notebook. “What are you writing?” she
says. “An idea has occurred to me,” he answers, “an idea for a short
story: On the banks of a lake a young girl lives from her infancy
onwards. She loves the lake like a sea-gull, she is happy and free like
a sea-gull; but unexpectedly a man comes and sees her, and out of mere
idleness kills her, just like this sea-gull.” Here Arkadina again calls
out that they are not going to Moscow after all. This is the end of the
second act.
At the third act, Arkadina is about to leave the country for Moscow.
Things have come to a crisis. Ina has fallen in love with the author,
and Constantine’s jealousy and grief have reached such a point that
he has tried to kill himself and failed, and now he has challenged
Trigorin to a duel. The latter has taken no notice of this, and is
about to leave for Moscow with Arkadina. Ina begs him before he goes
to say good-bye to her. Arkadina discusses with her brother her son’s
strange and violent behaviour. He points out that the youth’s position
is intolerable. He is a clever boy, full of talent, and he is obliged
to live in the country without any money, without a situation. He is
ashamed of this, and afraid of his idleness. In any case, he tells
his sister, she ought to give him some money, he has not even got an
overcoat; to which she answers that she has not got any money. She is
an artist, and needs every penny for her own expenses. Her brother
scoffs at this, and she gets annoyed. A scene follows between the
mother and the son, which begins by an exchange of loving and tender
words, and which finishes in a violent quarrel. The mother is putting
a new bandage on his head, on the place where he had shot himself.
“During the last few days,” says Constantine, “I have loved you as
tenderly as when I was a child; but why do you submit to the influence
of that man?”--meaning Trigorin. And out of this the quarrel arises.
Constantine says, “You wish me to consider him a genius. His works
make me sick.” To which his mother answers, “That is jealousy. People
who have no talent and who are pretentious, have nothing better to
do than to abuse those who have real talent.” Here Constantine flies
into a passion, tears the bandage off his head, and cries out, “You
people only admit and recognise what you do yourselves. You trample
and stifle everything else!” Then his rage dies out, he cries and asks
forgiveness, and says, “If you only knew, I have lost everything. She
no longer loves me; I can no longer write; all my hopes are dead!” They
are once more reconciled. Only Constantine begs that he may be allowed
to keep out of Trigorin’s sight. Trigorin comes to Arkadina, and
proposes that they should remain in the country. Arkadina says that she
knows why he wishes to remain; he is in love with Ina. He admits this,
and asks to be set free.
Up to this point in the play there had not been a syllable to tell
us what were the relations between Arkadina and Trigorin, and yet
the spectator who sees this play guesses from the first that he is
her lover. She refuses to let him go, and by a somewhat histrionic
declaration of love cleverly mixed with flattery and common sense she
easily brings him round, and he is like wax in her fingers. He settles
to go. They leave for Moscow; but before they leave, Trigorin has a
short interview with Ina, in which she tells him that she has decided
to leave her home to go on the stage, and to follow him to Moscow.
Trigorin gives her his address in Moscow. Outside--the whole of this
act takes place in the dining-room--we hear the noise and bustle of
people going away. Arkadina is already in the carriage. Trigorin and
Ina say good-bye to each other, he gives her a long kiss.
Between the third and fourth acts two years elapse. We are once more
in the home of Arkadina’s brother. Constantine has become a celebrated
writer. Ina has gone on the stage and proved a failure. She went to
Moscow; Trigorin loved her for a while, and then ceased to love her.
A child was born. He returned to his former love, and in his weakness,
played a double game on both sides. She is now in the town, but her
father will not receive her. Arkadina arrives with Trigorin. She has
been summoned from town because her brother is ill. Everything is going
on as it was two years ago. Arkadina, the agent, and the doctor sit
down to a game of Lotto before dinner. Arkadina tells of her triumphs
in the provincial theatres, of the ovations she received, of the
dresses she wore. The doctor asks her if she is proud of her son being
an author. “Just fancy,” she replies, “I have not yet read his books, I
have never had time!” They go in to supper. Constantine says he is not
hungry, and is left alone. Somebody knocks at the glass door opening
into the garden. Constantine opens it; it is Ina. Ina tells her story;
and now she has got an engagement in some small provincial town, and
is starting on the following day. Constantine declares vehemently that
he loves her as much as ever. He cursed her, he hated her, he tore up
her letters and photographs, but every moment he was forced to admit
to himself that he was bound to her for ever. He could never cease to
love her. He begs her either to remain, or to let him follow her. She
takes up her hat, she must go. She says she is a wandering sea-gull,
and that she is very tired. From the dining-room are heard the voices
of Arkadina and Trigorin. She listens, rushes to the door, and looks
through the keyhole. “He is here, too,” she says, “do not tell him
anything. I love him, I love him more than ever.” She goes out through
the garden. Constantine tears up all his MSS. and goes into the next
room. Arkadina and the others come out of the dining-room, and sit
down once more to the card-table to play Lotto. The agent brings to
Trigorin the stuffed sea-gull which Constantine had shot two years ago,
and which had been the starting-point of Trigorin’s love episode with
Ina. He has forgotten all about it; he does not even remember that the
sea-gull episode ever took place. A noise like a pistol shot is heard
outside. “What is that?” says Arkadina in fright. “It is nothing,”
replies the doctor, “one of my medicine bottles has probably burst.”
He goes into the next room, and returns half a minute later. “It was
as I thought,” he says, “my ether bottle has burst.” “It frightened
me,” says Arkadina, “it reminded me of how....” The doctor turns over
the leaves of the newspaper. He then says to Trigorin, “Two months ago
there was an article in this Review written from America. I wanted to
ask you....” He takes Trigorin aside, and then whispers to him, “Take
Irina Nikolaievna away as soon as possible. The fact of the matter is
that Constantine has shot himself.”
Of all the plays of Tchekov, _Chaika_ is the one which most resembles
ordinary plays, or the plays of ordinary dramatists. It has, no doubt,
many of Tchekov’s special characteristics, but it does not show them
developed to their full extent. Besides which, the subject is more
dramatic than that of his other plays; there is a conflict in it--the
conflict between the son and the mother, between the older and the
younger generation, the older generation represented by Trigorin and
the actress, the younger generation by Constantine. The character of
the actress is drawn with great subtlety. Her real love for her son
is made just as plain as her absolute inability to appreciate his
talent and his cleverness. She is a mixture of kindness, common sense,
avarice, and vanity. Equally subtle is the character of the author,
with his utter want of wit; his absorption in the writing of short
stories; his fundamental weakness; his egoism, which prevents him
recognising the existence of any work but his own, but which has no
tinge of ill-nature or malice in it. When he returns in the last act,
he compliments Constantine on his success, and brings him a Review
in which there is a story by the young man. Constantine subsequently
notices that in the Review the only pages which are cut contain a
story by Trigorin himself.
If _Chaika_ is the most dramatically effective of Tchekov’s plays,
the most characteristic is perhaps _The Cherry Garden_. It is notably
characteristic in the symbolical and historical sense, for it depicts
for us the causes and significance of the decline of the well-born,
landed gentry in Russia.
A slightly Bohemian lady belonging to this class, Ranievskaia--I will
call her Madame Ranievskaia for the sake of convenience, since her
Christian name “Love” has no equivalent, as a name, in English--is
returning to her country estate with her brother Leonidas after an
absence of five years. She has spent this time abroad in Nice and
Paris. Her affairs and those of her brother are in a hopeless state.
They are heavily in debt. This country place has been the home of her
childhood, and it possesses a magnificent cherry orchard. It is in the
south of Russia.
In the first act we see her return to the home of her childhood--she
and her brother, her daughter, seventeen years old, and her adopted
daughter. It is the month of May. The cherry orchard is in full
blossom; we see it through the windows of the old nursery, which is
the scene of the first act. The train arrives at dawn, before sunrise.
A neighbour is there to meet them, a rich merchant called Lopachin.
They arrive with their governess and their servant, and they have been
met at the station by another neighbouring landowner. And here we see
a thing I have never seen on the stage before: a rendering of the
exact atmosphere that hangs about such an event as (_a_) the arrival
of people from a journey, and (_b_) the return of a family to its home
from which it has long been absent. We see at a glance that Madame
Ranievskaia and her brother are in all practical matters like children.
They are hopelessly casual and vague. They take everything lightly and
carelessly, like birds; they are convinced that something will turn up
to extricate them from their difficulties.
The merchant, who is a nice, plain, careful, practical, but rather
vulgar kind of person, is a millionaire, and, what is more, he is the
son of a peasant; he was born in the village, and his father was a
serf. He puts the practical situation very clearly before them. The
estate is hopelessly overloaded with debt, and unless these debts are
paid within six months, the estate will be sold by auction. But there
is, he points out, a solution to the matter. “As you already know,” he
says to them, “your cherry orchard will be sold to pay your debts. The
auction is fixed for the 22nd of August, but do not be alarmed, there
is a way out of the difficulty.... This is my plan. Your estate is
only 15 miles from the town, the railway is quite close, and if your
cherry orchard and the land by the river is cut up into villa holdings,
and let for villas, you will get at the least 25,000 roubles (£2500) a
year.” To which the brother replies, “What nonsense!” “You will get,”
the merchant repeats, “at the very least twenty-five roubles a year a
desiatin,”--a desiatin is about two acres and a half: much the same as
the French hectare,--“and by the autumn, if you make the announcement
now, you will not have a single particle of land left. In a word, I
congratulate you; you are saved. The site is splendid, only, of course,
it wants several improvements. For instance, all these old buildings
must be destroyed, and this house, which is no use at all, the old
orchard must be cut down.”
_Madame Ranievskaia_: Cut down? My dear friend, forgive me, you do not
understand anything at all! If in the whole district there is anything
interesting, not to say remarkable, it is this orchard.
_Lopachin_: The orchard is remarkable simply on account of its size.
_Leonidas_: The orchard is mentioned in the Encyclopædia.
_Lopachin_: If we do not think of a way out of the matter and come to
some plan, on the 22nd of August the cherry orchard and the whole
property will be sold by auction. Make up your minds; there is no
other way out, I promise you.
But it is no good his saying anything. They merely reply, “What
nonsense!” They regard the matter of splitting up their old home into
villas as a sheer impossibility. And this is the whole subject of
the play. The merchant continues during the second act to insist on
the only practical solution of their difficulties, and they likewise
persist in saying this solution is madness, that it is absolutely
impossible. They cannot bring themselves to think of their old home
being turned into a collection of villas; they keep on saying that
something will turn up, an old aunt will die and leave them a legacy,
or something of that kind will happen.
In the third act, the day of the auction has arrived, there is a dance
going on in the house. The impression is one of almost intolerable
human sadness, because we know that nothing has turned up, we know that
the whole estate will be sold. The whole picture is one of the ending
of a world. At the dance there are only the people in the village, the
stationmaster, the post-office officials, and so forth. The servant
they have brought from abroad gives notice. An old servant, who belongs
to the house, and is in the last stage of senile decay, wanders
about murmuring of old times and past brilliance. The guests dance
quadrilles through all the rooms. Leonidas has gone to the auction, and
Madame Ranievskaia sits waiting in hopeless suspense for the news of
the result. At last he comes back, pale and tired, and too depressed
to speak. The merchant also comes triumphantly into the room; he is
slightly intoxicated, and with a triumphant voice he announces that he
has bought the cherry garden.
In the last act, we see them leave their house for ever, all the
furniture has been packed up, all the things which for them are so full
of little associations; the pictures are off the walls, the bare trees
of the cherry garden--for it is now autumn--are already being cut down,
and they are starting to begin a new life and to leave their old home
for ever. The old house, so charming, so full of old-world dignity and
simplicity, will be pulled down, and make place for neat, surburban
little villas to be inhabited by the new class which has arisen in
Russia. Formerly there were only gentlemen and peasants, now there is
the self-made man, who, being infinitely more practical, pushes out the
useless and unpractical gentleman to make way for himself. The pathos
and naturalness of this last act are extraordinary. Every incident that
we know so well in these moments of departure is noted and rendered.
The old servant, who belongs to the house, is supposed to be in the
hospital, and is not there to say good-bye to them; but when they
are all gone, he appears and closes the shutters, saying, “It is all
closed, they are gone, they forgot me; it doesn’t matter, I will sit
here. Leonidas Andreevitch probably forgot his cloak, and only went in
his light overcoat, I wasn’t there to see.” And he lies motionless in
the darkened, shuttered room, while from outside comes the sound of the
felling of the cherry orchard.
Of course, it is quite impossible in a short analysis to give any idea
of the real nature of this play, which is a tissue of small details,
every one of which tells. Every character in it is living; Leonidas,
the brother, who makes foolish speeches and is constantly regretting
them afterwards; the plain and practical merchant; the good-natured
neighbour who borrows money and ultimately pays it back; the governess;
the clerk in the estate office; the servants, the young student who is
in love with the daughter,--we learn to know all these people as well
as we know our own friends and relations, and they reveal themselves
as people do in real life by means of a lifelike representation of the
conversation of human beings. The play is historical and symbolical,
because it shows us why the landed gentry in Russia has ceased to have
any importance, and how these amiable, unpractical, casual people must
necessarily go under, when they are faced with a strong energetic
class of rich, self-made men who are the sons of peasants. Technically
the play is extraordinarily interesting; there is no conflict of wills
in it, nothing which one could properly call action or drama, and yet
it never ceases to be interesting; and the reason of this is that the
conversation, the casual remarks of the characters, which seem to be
about nothing, and to be put there anyhow, have always a definite
purpose. Every casual remark serves to build up the architectonic
edifice which is the play. The structure is built, so to speak, in air;
it is a thing of atmosphere, but it is built nevertheless with extreme
care, and the result when interpreted, as it is interpreted at Moscow
by the actors of the artistic theatre, is a stage triumph.
The three other most important plays of Tchekov are _Ivanoff_, _Three
Sisters_, and _Uncle Vania_,--the latter play has been well translated
into German.
_Three Sisters_ is the most melancholy of all Tchekov’s plays. It
represents the intense monotony of provincial life, the grey life which
is suddenly relieved by a passing flash, and then rendered doubly
grey by the disappearance of that flash. The action takes place in a
provincial town. A regiment of artillery is in garrison there. One of
the three sisters, Masha, has married a schoolmaster; the two others,
Irina and Olga, are living in the house of their brother, who is a
budding professor. Their father is dead. Olga teaches in a provincial
school all day, and gives private lessons in the evening. Irina is
employed in the telegraph office. They have both only one dream and
longing, and that is to get away from the provincial corner in which
they live, and to settle in Moscow. They only stay on Masha’s account.
Masha’s husband is a kind and well-meaning, but excessively tedious
schoolmaster, who is continually reciting Latin tags. When Masha
married him she was only eighteen, and thought he was the cleverest man
in the world. She subsequently discovered that he was the kindest, but
not the cleverest man in the world. The only thing which relieves the
tedium of this provincial life is the garrison.
When the play begins, we hear that a new commander has been appointed
to the battery, a man of forty called Vershinin. He is married, has
two children, but his wife is half crazy. The remaining officers in
the battery are Baron Tuzenbach, a lieutenant; Soleny, a major; and
two other lieutenants. Tuzenbach is in love with Irina, and wishes to
marry her; she is willing to marry him, but she is not in the least in
love with him, and tells him so. Masha falls passionately in love with
Vershinin. The major, Soleny, is jealous of Tuzenbach. Then suddenly
while these things are going on, the battery is transferred from the
town to the other end of Russia. On the morning it leaves the town,
Soleny challenges the Baron to a duel, and kills him. The play ends
with the three sisters being left alone. Vershinin says a passionate
good-bye to Masha, who is in floods of tears, and does not disguise her
grief from her husband. He, in the most pathetic way conceivable, tries
to console her, while the cheerful music of the band is heard gradually
getting fainter and fainter in the distance. Irina has been told of the
death of the Baron, and the sad thing about this is that she does not
really care. The three sisters are left to go on working, to continue
their humdrum existence in the little provincial town, to teach the
children in the school; the only thing which brought some relief to
their monotonous existence, and to one of the sisters the passion of
her life, is taken away from them, and the departure is made manifest
to them by the strains of the cheerful military band.
I have never seen anything on the stage so poignantly melancholy as
this last scene. In this play, as well as in others, Tchekov, by the
way he presents you certain fragments of people’s lives, manages to
open a window on the whole of their life. In this play of _Three
Sisters_ we get four glimpses. A birthday party in the first act;
an ordinary evening in the second act; in the third act a night of
excitement owing to a fire in the town, and it is on this night that
the love affair of Vershinin and Masha culminates in a crisis; and in
the fourth act the departure of the regiment. Yet these four fragments
give us an insight, and open a window on to the whole life of these
people, and, in fact, on to the lives of many thousand people who have
led this life in Russia.
Tchekov’s plays are as interesting to read as the work of any
first-rate novelist. But in reading them, it is impossible to guess
how effective they are on the stage, the delicate succession of
subtle shades and half-tones, of hints, of which they are composed,
the evocation of certain moods and feelings which it is impossible
to define,--all this one would think would disappear in the glare
of the footlights, but the result is exactly the reverse. Tchekov’s
plays are a thousand times more interesting to see on the stage
than they are to read. A thousand effects which the reader does not
suspect make themselves felt on the boards. The reason of this is that
Tchekov’s plays realise Goethe’s definition of what plays should be.
“Everything in a play,” Goethe said, “should be symbolical, and should
lead to something else.” By symbolical, of course, he meant morally
symbolical,--he did not mean that the play should be full of enigmatic
puzzles, but that every event in it should have a meaning and cast a
shadow larger than itself.
The atmosphere of Tchekov’s plays is laden with gloom, but it is a
darkness of the last hour before the dawn begins. His note is not in
the least a note of despair: it is a note of invincible trust in the
coming day. The burden of his work is this--life is difficult, there is
nothing to be done but to work and to continue to work as cheerfully as
one can; and his triumph as a playwright is that for the first time he
has shown in prose,--for the great poets have done little else,--behind
the footlights, what it is that makes life difficult. Life is too
tremendous, too cheerful, and too sad a thing to be condensed into
an abstract problem of lines and alphabetical symbols; and those who
in writing for the stage attempt to do this, achieve a result which
is both artificial and tedious. Tchekov disregarded all theories and
all rules which people have hitherto laid down as the indispensable
qualities of stage writing; he put on the stage the things which
interested him because they were human and true; things great or
infinitesimally small; as great as love and as small as a discussion as
to what are the best _hors d’œuvres_; and they interest us for the same
reason.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] Two volumes of selections from his stories have been admirably
translated by Mr. Long.
[25] It proved a success.
[26] The dramatic critics of these newspapers are not the Mr. William
Archers, the Mr. Walkleys, not the Faguets or the Lemaîtres of Russia,
if any such exist. I have never come across anything of interest in
their articles; on the other hand, they are perhaps more representative
of public opinion.
[27] Since this was written Mr. Shaw’s genius has had greater justice
done to it in Russia. His _Cæsar and Cleopatra_ has proved highly
successful. It was produced at the State Theatre of Moscow in the
autumn of 1909 and is still running as I write. Several intelligent
articles were written on it in the Moscow press.
[28] Not to mention many modern French comedies, such as those of
Lemaître, Capus, etc.
_Printed by_
MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED
_Edinburgh_
Transcriber’s Notes
A few minor omissions and inconsistencies in punctuation have been
fixed.
The chapter on Dostoievky was properly renumbered to VI instead of IV.