CHAPTER VIITHE 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. Yetthere 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 befutile, 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 theZeitgeistbrought 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 justas 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 Dumasfils, the Théâtre Antoine school, orMr.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 forthe 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, whenMr.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-makingwork, 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 thatMr.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, theRuss, wrote as follows: “Bernard Shaw is thought to be anenfant terriblein 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 onMr.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 writtenMrs. Warren’s Profession, he would never have introduced the scene between Crofts and Vivy which occurs at the end of ActIII., 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 achievementof 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, butwhich 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, forLe Misanthropeis a play in which nothing in the ordinary sense happens. Rostand’sL’Aiglonis 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 worldlyraisonneur, 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 fromsoul 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 calledChaika. “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 notmention Eleanora Duse in her presence, you must praise her only, and write about her and her wonderful acting inLa 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 kindof 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 theamour propreof 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.
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 theamour propreof 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 sameestate. 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 lakewas 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 theamour proprewhich 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.)
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 lakewas 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 theamour proprewhich 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 allthe 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 behindFathers 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.”
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 allthe 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 behindFathers 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 thesea-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 evengot 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. Trigorincomes 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; Trigorinloved 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, andthat 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 ofthe matter is that Constantine has shot himself.”
Of all the plays of Tchekov,Chaikais 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 pageswhich are cut contain a story by Trigorin himself.
IfChaikais the most dramatically effective of Tchekov’s plays, the most characteristic is perhapsThe 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 wholeproperty will be sold by auction. Make up your minds; there is no other way out, I promise you.
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 wholeproperty 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 andpast 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 tobe 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 necessarilygo 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 areIvanoff,Three Sisters, andUncle Vania,—the latter play has been well translated into German.
Three Sistersis 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, areliving 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 whilethese 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 ofThree Sisterswe get four glimpses. A birthday party in the first act; an ordinary evening in the second act; in thethird 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 befull 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 besthors d’œuvres; and they interest us for the same reason.