(Ïðèìå÷àíèå: Îòäåëàííûé âàðèàíò ýòîé ðàáîòû ó ìåíÿ íàïèñàí íà àíãëèéñêîì ÿçûêå. Íà ðóññêîì -íàïèñàíà áîëüøàÿ ðàáîòà, íî õàîòè÷åñêàÿ è íå äîâåä¸ííàÿ äî ïðèëè÷íîãî óðîâíÿ. Ïîýòîìó ÿ õî÷ó ïîïðîáîâàòü ïîìåñòèòü çëåñü êîðîòêóþ ðàáîòó íà àíãëèéñêîì â íàäåæäå, ÷òî ìíîãèå èì âëàäåþò õîðîøî è ëó÷øå, ÷åì ÿ. Ìíå èíòåðåñíî áûëî áû óçíàòü ÷ü¸-ëèáî ìíåíèå î ÷åõîâñêîé ïüåñå, êîòîðóþ òàê ìíîãî èíòðåðïðåòèðîâàëè â ïîñëåäíèå ãîäû íà ñöåíå è â êèíî. Ñïàñèáî)
Uncle Vanya: the Value of Aesthetics
In the famous Chekhov play "Uncle Vanya," the 47-year-old title character, an estate resident and manager, is a morally positive character, or, at any rate was before the play begins. His goodness has not made him, or anyone else, happy, however. Chekhov was often asked what he wanted to say by his play and through the protagonist. Leo Tolstoy expressed his bewilderment at being presented by the mediocre Ivan as the positive title character. Peter Vail, the Radio Svoboda journalist, in 2007, stating that "Uncle Vanya" is the most enigmatic and elusive among Chekhov’s plays, suggested that Chekhov “created a working matrix,” on which anyone can draw for his own purpose. In spite of a plethora of interpretations, it is tempting to add another one. The Gradovsky – Dostoevsky polemics of the 1880s about the immorality of master-slave relationships may offer a new perspective on "Uncle Vanya" – as Chekhov’s artistic response to the then frequently debated issue of a moral perfection as a path to progress for Russia.
The overall theme of "Uncle Vanya" is the loss of ontological security in a previously meaningful life, at least a life perceived as meaningful. Chekhov creates a situation, in which disillusionment is personified by the professor, writer, and art critic Alexander Serebryakov. Serebryakov is not a genius, but was able to inspire various people around him with the notion that he was; his colleagues and especially women were duped. To his relatives: his daughter Sonya, and his brother-in-law, the Uncle Vanya of the eponymous play, as well as his (Vanya’s) aged mother, Serebryakov became an idol to worship. They trusted their Alexander without question and struggled to make enough of an income to subsidize his living in the capital in order for him to be in the centre of cultural life. The fact that Serebryakov is not a first-rate genius is hinted at by his last name, which contains the root “silver” (serebro), intimating that he is not “golden” (zolotoi). Coming to see the object of his veneration as a false idol, his brother-in-law Ivan Voinitsky – Uncle Vanya – starts to do battle with Serebryakov. The plot development of the play is expressed through the growing emotional tensions between Uncle Vanya – and eventually all the main characters – and Serebryakov. Chekhov subtitled his play “scenes from village life,” which implies that it does not deal with just the destiny of one family, but also typical events and circumstances of everyday provincial life.
Performing Chekhov’s plays, some theaters have begun to use quotations from Chekhov’s letters and diaries to help their audience understand the author’s hidden and merely hinted at message by the atmosphere of his plays. Thus Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre Company issued a program "Uncle Vanya," in which they gave a quotation from a 1902 Chekhov letter to his fellow writer Alexander Tikhonov:
“You tell me that people cry at my plays. I've heard others say the same. But that was not why I wrote them. It is Stanislavsky who made my characters into cry-babies. All I wanted was to say honestly to people: “Have a look at yourselves and see how bad and dreary your lives are!” The important thing is that people should realize that, for when they do, they will most certainly create another and better life for themselves. I will not live to see it, but I know that it will be quite different, quite unlike our present life. And so long as this different life does not exist, I shall go on saying to people again and again, “Please, understand that your life is bad and dreary!” What is there to cry about? (A. P. Chekhov)”
How does the play "Uncle Vanya" relate to these words of Chekhov’s? What should the characters created by Chekhov in the play do to improve their lives? The answer may well refer directly to the tragedy of Voinitsky (Uncle Vanya), who realizes his fatal mistake of wasting his productive years to serve his relative, professor Serebryakov. But, ultimately, nothing can be done except for the characters returning to their individual duties, as the end of the play demonstrates.
Chekhov depicts good people, who uphold ideals about serving the goal of a better and happier life, but find themselves stewing in “dreary” daily routines where they have to perform their dull duties. The main event in the play is marked by the change that the main characters begin to neglect their routines upon the arrival of Alexander Serebryakov and his beautiful wife Elena Andreevna (which takes place off stage) – each subsequent episode evolves from the guests’ presence, impacting the routines of the residents. Everyone stops working and gets into a personalized space which contains the potential for self-realization: Uncle Vanya wants to be in love with Elena Andreevna; Elena Andreevna, previously a musician, wants to play the piano again and to be in love with a man younger and stronger than her aged and ailing husband; Serebryakov wants to move with Elena Andreevna to more artistic surroundings (an artist colony) by purchasing “a dacha in Finland”; Dr. Astrov wants to be in love with a beauty like Elena Andreevna; Sonya dreams of Astrov loving her. But all of these scenarios are impossible because they all are at cross-purposes. The impossibility of exchanging one’s “bad” personal destiny for a “better” one causes the desperate feeling of having lost out on a full and meaningful life. All actions for positive change create ever more destruction, and all previous achievements and lofty spiritual experiences (devoted love, struggle to support a noble cause) have provided no guarantee against disaster. Everyone feels misplaced or disappointed and surrounded by irrational chaos in relation to their own needs and wishes.
Only one person, the art critic Serebryakov, does not yield to change but continues to do his work by relying on his profession and individual career ambitions: “The professor sits in his study from morning till night, as usual and writes.” He continues his own self-realization in the countryside, in spite of his “gout, headaches, and rheumatism;” nevertheless, Serebryakov is the only character in Chekhov’s play, who does not excite anyone’s sympathies including ours as readers or viewers. We explain this phenomenon in moral terms: the professor’s egocentrism, selfishness, pretentiousness, hypocrisy and in a variety of other ways, Chekhov’s play may indeed convey all of these judgments. However, it is Serebryakov whose behavior connotes the earlier quote from Chekhov (“Have a look at yourselves and see how bad and dreary your lives are”) and whose words mock the author’s intention (as stated in the letter quoted above) in the play itself: “I have gone through so much in the last few hours that I feel capable <…> to instruct posterity.” The professor’s image could have been one of the most controversial matters in the play, if his reputation had not been tarnished from the very beginning. By creating the not quite enough talented (“silver”) Serebryakov, Chekhov challenges aesthetically deaf mentors who instruct others how to live. These kinds of men inspire others with a sense of their own significance – at least for a time. They shape others’ views and morals and, by doing so, they consume the uniqueness of their followers’ aesthetic perceptions. "Uncle Vanya" explores the topic of aesthetics and reveals the supreme worth of sensation in human experience. And the Chekhov quote (“Please, understand that your life is bad and dreary!”) actually can lead to misinterpretation because that is, in fact, also Serebryakov’s message. By showing Voinitsky’s unsuccessful life Chekhov seems to say: “Please, acquire confidence to pursue your knowledge about life.” Ultimately, the play addresses the issue of aesthetics in relation to the intelligentsia’s conscience and sense of responsibility for the life around them.
Talent is a very important concept in Chekhov’s works and in "Uncle Vanya" too. It sets the criterion for “usefulness.” According to one of Chekhov’s most talented characters (the professor from "A Dreary Story"), talent does not mean the “usefulness and power of endurance of a camel”; instead, it is opposed to “the narrow outlook sharply limited by a specialty.” Serebryakov, who (in Chekhov’s words from "A Dreary Story") “worked from morning to night” and “in that way [was] not a man, but pure gold,” “outside his special branch” is “simple as a child.” The professor is created as the man in a shell, stewed in his own juice, and worthless for a non-scholarly life. Moreover, with his Serebryakov, Chekhov creates something of a living “half-corpse” (Serebryakov’s own words about himself): an art critic who has become disconnected from life, lacks aesthetic sensitivity, and is unable to expand the souls of his readers. He was praised and admired by his colleagues for his hard work and intellect (according to Serebryakov’s own words), but he finds himself unexpectedly retired and forced to return to his remote village and country estate far from the capital.
Living on his estate (his deceased first wife’s property), Serebryakov drives his passionate devotee Uncle Vanya to despair; his young beautiful wife feels suffocated by the aura of constant plaintiveness he spreads, his daughter Sonya is hurt by his arrogant treatment of the local doctor Astrov (“yurodivy“ ), and so forth. However, Serebryakov’s consciousness is dim: he truly believes in his own superiority. He clearly feels entitled to advise people: “Do something! Work!” and “I feel capable of writing a whole treatise on the conduct of life.” Therefore, he is like “a counterfeit” – the art critic has ceased to feel the language of feeling and gained a feeling for instructing instead. He does not know that the effect of his influence is not to ennoble sensation, but to degrade beauty. Therefore, in the play, he becomes responsible for provoking one mental crisis after another: feelings of emptiness, meaninglessness, nervousness, and irritability.
In his play, Chekhov actually deals with a hallmark question of Russian culture; the question being a quest for paths to a more meaningful and authentic existence in which aesthetics and the concept of beauty play the central role. "Uncle Vanya" explores sensory-emotional values (aesthetics) and promotes the senses over intellectuality and morality. Yet, it does not mean that moral principles play no role in the play. Morality is indeed the subject of the play and Russian in nature. It is conservative, sticks to traditions and makes arbitrary meaning out of images of good and evil. Moreover, the traditional morality bears a load of contemporary moral assumptions originated from current fiction. The supporting characters confess only this moral mixture.
Maria Vasilievna Voinitskaya, for example, who blindly admires her son-in-law (Alexander Serebryakov) created a halo of sanctity around his name and writings and uses them as an inspirational source for her spiritual life. But he actually calls her “Old idiot!” Ilya Ilyich Telegin (Waffle) is transfixed with pride because during his life he never cheated on his wife and, “consequently,” never betrayed his country. But he is a “humiliated and insulted” sponger: “Hi! You hanger-on!” – shouts follow him. The old nurse Marina, who continues to take care of everything in the Voinitsky household, wants everyone “to have tea at eight and dinner at one,” believing that God will take care of everything else. All these characters feel “saved,” as if their lives had been already merged with eternity. In contrast to them, Voinitsky, who experiences reappraisal of values and feels unbearable pain, tries to “free himself from a shell” by crossing the barriers of existing morality.
The climax of Voinitsky’s confrontation with Serebryakov occurs in Act Three when the professor, inspired by the idea to sell the family estate and to purchase a dacha near St. Petersburg “in Finland,” gathers his relatives to a family meeting to discuss his plan which seems to him to be marked by genius. The climax solves no problems and does not prove anything. Instead of the intelligent discussion that the literary and art critic expected, Uncle Vanya starts cursing Serebryakov as an insensible tyrant. He repeats what he has already said, namely, that Sonya and he sacrificed themselves caring for this house, suffered for Serebryakov’s fame, and were proud to read and translate his articles, but that he had deceived them! If the Voinitskys sell the house, where will the old mother and Serebryakov’s own daughter go? Uncle Vanya, seething with resentment, gets a pistol and shoots twice at the professor. Serebryakov and his wife depart to Kharkov. Uncle Vanya feels as if he is going insane. With Sonya’s help, he returns a stolen bottle of morphine to Astrov and promises to continue sending money to Serebryakov. Astrov soothes himself by assuring himself that he avoided personal devastation due to Elena Andreevna departure and that he can start working again. Maria Vasilievna did not understand what exactly happened. Telegin and Marina feel relief that things are going back to normal, and they will have “tea at eight and dinner at one.” Devastated, Voinitsky and Sonya get back to business.
If we recall Chekhov’s words from The Soulpepper Theatre program (“The important thing is that people should realize that, for when they do, they will most certainly create another and better life for themselves”), then it would seem that it is Serebryakov who had created another and better life for himself, working, but also married to a beauty. Dr. Astrov works all the time, occasionally finding comfort in the beauty of nature, but also registering its devastation. Uncle Vanya and Sonya devotedly work for the estate “squeezing every last drop out of it for” Serebryakov. However, something is going in the wrong direction for them in spite of their hard work. Did Chekhov really make the old professor so unbearable that the characters feel it is impossible to be around him? The professor writes the whole day in his study and still they feel so disturbed they cannot continue to work themselves. The professor’s image is disturbing, insulting and restricting. It enslaved Uncle Vanya when he, his mother and Sonya glorified his genius, “lived and breathed for him.” His image empowered Elena Andreevna to sacrifice herself for his genius. Now the very image of the self-centered, retired, and sick professor argues against the validity of their sacrifices. This is unbearable and therefore Voinitsky puts a lot of energy into exposing the professor and shooting at him to emotionally free himself and “Elena the Beautiful.”
The play emphasizes the captivity of imagination with images traditionally perceived as good or evil, genius or hack; the fettered imagination breeds untalented art critics and makes talented Uncle Vanyas needlessly acknowledge their own insignificance. The main evil in the play has been born off stage and it is “idolatry” that causes the irreparable losses and lack of meaningful authentic existence. The work that Chekhov’s characters has to “realize” and do “to create another and better life for themselves” is (in Chekhov’s words) “to squeeze the slave out of themselves” by stopping to worship idols.
In "Uncle Vanya" Chekhov speaks in the name of desired reality because the actual reality exhibits imperfections requiring reform from the standpoint of an ideal. However, the ideal is a highly controversial topic of discussion in Chekhov’s world. Chekhov’s characters love to speak about future ideal life, but Chekhov himself prefers to show moments of reality as artistic polemical responses to images of a future Russian life. In the program cited above, he says that he “will not live a better life but shall go on saying to people something about this life.” Through the play "Uncle Vanya" Chekhov sought to disclose the cultural realities that objectively inform subjective awareness of life.
Chekhov reveals what is true about the innermost essence of his characters in their relation to the Russian cultural world. Successful Serebryakov, who worked a lot, in order to be famous, forgot about other people’s emotional lives. He has no empathy for those who loved him. Uncle Vanya, who feels angry because he idealized his brother-in-law, creating an image that suited his own imagination, is sincere and emphatic. Beautiful Elena Andreevna, living without love and completely dependent on her husband financially and socially, involuntarily cheats Sonya of her love. Dr. Astrov, who is chronically tired from working all the time and tormented by his conscience (one of his patients died and he cannot stop feeling guilty), seeks aesthetic experience and wants to enjoy sensual beauty.
Through his "Uncle Vanya" Chekhov says that human beings who blindly and unquestioningly followed images of what is moral, good or evil have been trapped by illusions. Old and untalented Serebryakov represents a traditional idol – most likely the utilitarian aesthetics of the school of the Itinerants: worn-out images and false values. (He is almost a symbol, a token character). In the play, genuine aesthetic perception provides the basic process for cognition of life. The sensible cognition determines a character’s individual consciousness and conscience and shapes our views as readers or viewers.
Furthermore, Chekhov demonstrates that the ideas of usefulness and moral perfection that had been so powerfully presented in the works of many great Russian writers and religious thinkers (such as Gogol’, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy) do not necessarily provide ways to conduct one’s own life and to guarantee usefulness or moral health. Instead, as "Uncle Vanya" indicates, the great ideas, separated from individual life, deceive; they begin to function in society as cultural banality (poshlost’) which traps someone’s imagination. The great ideas become social cliches, some use them in order to instruct and others in order to follow them, and the followers have no personal authentic life. The words that one has to work (“nado delo delat’) in the Russian cultural world is the message of the rogue Chichikov (in Gogol’s "Dead Souls"). In "Uncle Vanya" Serebryakov says these words to Dr. Astrov, which sounds completely absurd, being uttered to a man who really does useful work. Ugly-looking Telegin (Waffle), the former landowner, has fulfilled the ideal of Leo Tolstoy. Waffle gave away all his belongings and became a hanger-on and subject for humiliation. But most of all Chekhov’s play tests the consequences of Dostoevsky’s ideas in everyday life.
It looks like Chekhov artistically responded to the Gradovsky – Dostoevsky polemics of the 1880s, the ideas of which gained currency in the 1890-s. The liberal professor A.D. Gradovsky in his article “Mechty i deistvitel’nost’” ["Dreams and Reality," 1880], reproached Dostoevsky for “relying on moral reform as the road to progress.” Gradovsky argued that “social betterment can never be realized solely by improving the personal qualities of individuals,” because, as life has shown, the immoral institution of slavery (masters and slaves) remains in force among perfect Christians. In his response to Gradovsky, Dostoevsky said (in his "A Writer’s Diary") that in the ideal Russian state of “genuine Christianity,” “the masters will no longer be masters and the servants will not be slaves.” Dostoevsky draws on the images of Kepler, Kant and Shakespeare, who are “engaged in great work for all.” “But Shakespeare has no time to break off writing a work of genius, tidy up around him, clean his room and carry out the trash.” “Some other citizen will come of his own free will and will carry out Shakespeare’s trash” and he will never feel humiliated, acknowledging that “Shakespeare is infinitely more useful and superior” to him in genius, but “by moral human worth the citizen is his equal.”
Chekhov named his title character Voinitsky which may point to Dostoevsky characters, who fought for their dignity against social determination and humiliation. Chekhov’s remark in Act Two (“A thunderstorm is coming up and the lightning flashes”) and the following pathetic monologue by Serebryakov, in which he asks for empathy with his sufferings, may be a literary allusion to Shakespeare’s "King Lear" (“Howl! O, you are people of stones!”). Voinitsky, who has another name – Uncle Vanya – can be seen as a typically Dostoevsky character – a child of Christ (“a pure soul”). Uncle Vanya used to believe that his brother-in-law was a genius, e.g. a Shakespeare, and infinitely superior to him and much more useful to society. He served “Shakespeare” loyally for years, uncertain about his own creativity and letting his brother-in-law be free to apply his creative forces. He felt morally equal to his “brother.” When Voinitsky recognizes that Serebryakov is not a Shakespeare (“retired, absolutely unknown to any living soul!”), he looses his “pure soul” – becomes envious – and begins to behave brutally (a reversal of the image when compared to Dostoevsky’s “child of Christ”). “The perfect Christian” (and Sonya – the name of the famous Dostoevsky heroine – certainly is a perfect Christian, too) realizes that a false image prevented him from “becoming another Schopenhauer or Dostoyevsky” – here Chekhov’s irony is aimed toward Dostoevsky’s image of doubling (“another”) in contrast to one’s uniqueness. The very disposition of the play’s characters (Serebryakov, who is served, and all the others, who serve him, “masters and slaves”) also suggests the Dostoevsky and Gradovsky polemics. And if Chekhov indeed had in mind the Dostoyevsky’s solution to the master-slave problem (and other’s social concerns about future betterment in Russian society), then in his play he presented the controversial case: blindly believing that they serve a Shakespeare, people may serve a “hack.” – There is no way to predict who will be “another Shakespeare” and recognition of genuine merit is difficult. Images of (apparent) success influence judgment; no one can say who would be more useful and where until one develops one’s own way of life; moral equality seems possible only if people feel really equal and not vulnerable by self-unrealization; loosing belief in their Shakespeare, people loose their ideal and the model to follow; they hate a deceiver as a counterfeit, and this is “fair relationships” for their subjective perception of reality. What should be done, according to the play, is to stop worshipping the ideas of others and find the confidence to build one’s own vision of life.
Chekhov in "Uncle Vanya" might have supported Dostoevsky at least in a couple ways: in the defense of beauty, which is itself a human need, according to Dostoevsky; and in moral uncertainty because Dostoevsky in his works also constantly emphasized that people do not know the consequences of their actions and cannot foresee unforeseen circumstances. But even in respect to these two palpable similarities "Uncle Vanya" is different and can be named a comedy. Firstly, Uncle Vanya, like we as readers and viewers, could have predicted that his confrontation and repeated accusations of the professor would solve no problems; the everyday life in Chekhov’s provinces is very predictable. Secondly, the prophetic beauty of Dostoevsky’s (“Beauty will save the world”) in "Uncle Vanya" cannot save anyone because the “beauty” (symbolically represented by forests and the beautiful woman, Elena Andreevna) needs to be saved from devastation – she is indeed “profaned beauty.” Uncle Vanya (as Dostoevsky’s Christian type of a character) devotedly tries to save beautiful Elena Andreevna from her husband, the “old tyrant,” but he fails and perishes because his ways are naive and poetically-irrational. He knows the ideas and ideals but does not see what one needs to do in life in order to build the path from the unfair to the fair. Hard-working and devastated Dr. Astrov, who strives for conservation of beauty in life (forests), needs to enjoy sensual “beauty” (Elena Andreevna) to save himself emotionally. But the helpless “beauty” leaves for Kharkov with her worn-out, but outwardly more successful, husband. And Christian Sonya, who might have saved Astrov by her love, is not beautiful.
The message implied in "Uncle Vanya" is that Dostoevsky’s prophesies do not help the Russian world of that day. The highly moral, but naive, become either envious and perish (the Uncle Vanyas) or are doomed to live without any possibility for meaningful self-realization on earth (Sonya). First of all, talented men are needed to diminish the immorality of life, men who would be acting on the basis of a conscious and independent perception of it, in order to help its existing beauty to survive against senseless destruction, very often inspired by utilitarians who see no value in beauty for beauty’s sake. This is “the important thing that people should realize” and do and if they would, then “they will most certainly create another and better life for themselves.”
Footnotes:
Chekhov’s "Uncle Vanya" can be compared with Dostoevsky’s short novel "The Village of Stepanchikovo and its Inhabitants" (1859) which became very popular only after Dostoevsky's death. There are many similarities between Dostoevsky’s novel and Chekhov’s play. Dostoevsky created a situation to parody a pseudo-genius’s moral teaching; it is set on the estate of the storyteller’s uncle Egor Rostanev, and the text of his parody was to a great extent based on Gogol’s "Selected Passages from the Correspondence with Friends." Chekhov in "Uncle Vanya" also depicted a conflict between a pseudo-genius and an “uncle” – Uncle Vanya. However, Gogol’s main ideas about the true path to Christian perfection have been replaced, I believe, by Dostoevsky’s. In contrast to Uncle Rostanev, Uncle Vanya is unable to enjoy love and his own life, he cannot stop exposing his deceiver for his ruined life and finally he looses all his hopes.
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"Uncle Vanya" was published in 1897. It was thoroughly reworked from his early play "The Wood Demon" (1889-1890). Chekhov himself dated "Uncle Vanya" at 1890, the time when he made his trip to Sakhalin (April – October 1890). This suggests, I believe, that his impressions of Sakhalin were very important for the semantics of the play.