Act I
Garden. Part of the house can be seen with the verandah. In the avenue under an old poplar there is a table set for tea. Garden seats and chairs; on one of the seats lies a guitar. Not far from the table there is a swing. Between two and three o’clock on a cloudy afternoon.
| Marina, a heavy old woman, slow to move, is sitting by the samovar, knitting a stocking, and Astrov is walking up and down near her. | |
| Marina | Pours out a glass of tea. Here, drink it, my dear. |
| Astrov | Reluctantly takes the glass. I don’t feel much like it. |
| Marina | Perhaps you would have a drop of vodka? |
| Astrov | No. I don’t drink vodka every day. Besides, it’s so sultry a pause. Nurse, how many years have we known each other? |
| Marina | Pondering. How many? The Lord help my memory. … You came into these parts … when? Vera Petrovna, Sonitchka’s mother, was living then. You came to see us two winters before she died. … Well, that must be eleven years ago. After a moment’s thought. Maybe even more. … |
| Astrov | Have I changed much since then? |
| Marina | Very much. You were young and handsome in those days, and now you have grown older. And you are not as good-looking. There’s another thing too—you take a drop of vodka now. |
| Astrov | Yes. … In ten years I have become a different man. And what’s the reason of it? I am overworked, nurse. From morning till night I am always on my legs, not a moment of rest, and at night one lies under the bedclothes in continual terror of being dragged out to a patient. All these years that you have known me I have not had one free day. I may well look old! And the life in itself is tedious, stupid, dirty. … This life swallows one up completely. There are none but queer people about one—they are a queer lot, all of them—and when one has lived two or three years among them, by degrees one turns queer too, without noticing it. It’s inevitable twisting his long moustache. Ough, what a huge moustache I’ve grown … a stupid moustache. … I’ve turned into a queer fish, nurse. I haven’t grown stupid yet, thank God! My brains are in their place, but my feelings are somehow blunter. There is nothing I want, nothing I care about, no one I am fond of … except you, perhaps—I am fond of you kisses her on the head. I had a nurse like you when I was a child. |
| Marina | Perhaps you would like something to eat? |
| Astrov | No. In the third week of Lent I went to Malitskoe, where there was an epidemic … spotted typhus … in the huts the people were lying about in heaps. There was filth, stench, smoke … calves on the ground with the sick … little pigs about too. I was hard at work all day, did not sit down for a minute, and hadn’t a morsel of food, and when I got home they wouldn’t let me rest. They brought me a signalman from the line. I laid him on the table to operate upon him, and he went and died under the chloroform. And just when they weren’t wanted, my feelings seemed to wake up again, and I was as conscience-stricken as though I had killed him on purpose. I sat down, shut my eyes like this, and thought: those who will live a hundred or two hundred years after us, for whom we are struggling now to beat out a road, will they remember and say a good word for us? Nurse, they won’t, you know! |
| Marina | Men will not remember, but God will remember. |
| Astrov | Thank you for that. That’s a good saying. |
| Enter Voynitsky. | |
| Voynitsky | Comes out of the house; he has had a nap after lunch and looks rumpled; he sits down on the garden-seat and straightens his fashionable tie. Yes … a pause. Yes. |
| Astrov | Had a good sleep? |
| Voynitsky | Yes … very yawns. Ever since the Professor and his wife have been here our life has been turned topsy-turvy. I sleep at the wrong time, at lunch and dinner I eat all sorts of messes, I drink wine—it’s not good for one! In old days I never had a free moment. Sonya and I used to work in grand style, but now Sonya works alone, while I sleep and eat and drink. It’s bad! |
| Marina | Shaking her head. Such goings-on! The Professor gets up at twelve o’clock, and the samovar is boiling all the morning waiting for him. Before they came we always had dinner about one o’clock, like other people, and now they are here we have it between six and seven. The Professor spends the night reading and writing, and all at once, at two o’clock in the morning, he’ll ring his bell. Goodness me! What is it? Tea! People have to be waked out of their sleep to get him the samovar. What goings-on! |
| Astrov | And will they be here much longer? |
| Voynitsky | Whistles. A hundred years. The Professor has made up his mind to settle here. |
| Marina | Look now! The samovar has been on the table for the last two hours, and they’ve gone for a walk. |
| Voynitsky | They are coming. They are coming! Don’t worry. |
| There is a sound of voices; from the farther part of the garden enter Serebryakov, Yelena Andreyevna, Sonya and Telyegin returning from a walk. | |
| Serebryakov | Lovely, lovely! … Exquisite views! |
| Telyegin | Remarkable, your Excellency. |
| Sonya | We’ll go to the plantation tomorrow, father. Shall we? |
| Voynitsky | Tea is ready! |
| Serebryakov | My friends, be so kind as to send my tea into the study for me. I have something more I must do today. |
| Sonya | You will be sure to like the plantation. |
| Yelena Andreyevna, Serebryakov, and Sonya go into the house. Telyegin goes to the table and sits down beside Marina. | |
| Voynitsky | It’s hot, stifling; but our great man of learning is in his greatcoat and goloshes, with an umbrella and gloves too. |
| Astrov | That shows that he takes care of himself. |
| Voynitsky | And how lovely she is! How lovely! I’ve never seen a more beautiful woman. |
| Telyegin | Whether I drive through the fields, Marina Timofyevna, or walk in the shady garden, or look at this table, I feel unutterably joyful. The weather is enchanting, the birds are singing, we are all living in peace and concord—what more could one wish for? Taking his glass. I am truly grateful to you! |
| Voynitsky | Dreamily. Her eyes … an exquisite woman! |
| Astrov | Tell us something, Ivan Petrovitch. |
| Voynitsky | Listlessly. What am I to tell you? |
| Astrov | Is there nothing new? |
| Voynitsky | Nothing. Everything is old. I am just as I always was, perhaps worse, for I have grown lazy. I do nothing but just grumble like some old crow. My old magpie Maman is still babbling about the rights of women. With one foot in the grave, she is still rummaging in her learned books for the dawn of a new life. |
| Astrov | And the Professor? |
| Voynitsky |
The Professor, as before, sits in his study writing from morning till dead of night.
“With furrowed brow and racking brains,
Poor paper! He had much better be writing his autobiography. What a superb subject! A retired professor, you know—an old dry-as-dust, a learned fish. Gout, rheumatism, migraine, envy and jealousy have affected his liver. The old fish is living on his first wife’s estate, living there against his will because he can’t afford to live in the town. He is forever complaining of his misfortunes, though, as a matter of fact, he is exceptionally fortunate. Nervously. Just think how fortunate! The son of a humble sacristan, he has risen to university distinctions and the chair of a professor; he has become “your Excellency,” the son-in-law of a senator, and so on, and so on. All that is no great matter, though. But just take this. The man has been lecturing and writing about art for twenty-five years, though he knows absolutely nothing about art. For twenty-five years he has been chewing over other men’s ideas about realism, naturalism, and all sorts of nonsense; for twenty-five years he has been lecturing and writing on things all intelligent people know about already and stupid ones aren’t interested in—so for twenty-five years he has been simply wasting his time. And with all that, what conceit! What pretensions! He has retired, and not a living soul knows anything about him; he is absolutely unknown. So that for twenty-five years all he has done is to keep a better man out of a job! But just look at him: he struts about like a demigod! |
| Astrov | Come, I believe you are envious. |
| Voynitsky | Yes, I am. And the success he has with women! Don Juan is not in it. His first wife, my sister, a lovely, gentle creature, pure as this blue sky, noble, generous, who had more suitors than he has had pupils, loved him as only pure angels can love beings as pure and beautiful as themselves. My mother adores him to this day, and he still inspires in her a feeling of devout awe. His second wife, beautiful, intelligent—you have just seen her—has married him in his old age, sacrificed her youth, her beauty, her freedom, her brilliance, to him. What for? Why? |
| Astrov | Is she faithful to the Professor? |
| Voynitsky | Unhappily, she is. |
| Astrov | Why unhappily? |
| Voynitsky | Because that fidelity is false from beginning to end. There is plenty of fine sentiment in it, but no logic. To deceive an old husband whom one can’t endure is immoral; but to try and stifle her piteous youth and living feeling—that’s not immoral. |
| Telyegin | In a tearful voice. Vanya, I can’t bear to hear you talk like that. Come, really! Anyone who can betray wife or husband is a person who can’t be trusted and who might betray his country. |
| Voynitsky | With vexation. Dry up, Waffles! |
| Telyegin | Excuse me, Vanya. My wife ran away from me with the man she loved the day after our wedding, on the ground of my unprepossessing appearance. But I have never been false to my vows. I love her to this day and am faithful to her. I help her as far as I can, and I gave all I had for the education of her children by the man she loved. I have lost my happiness, but my pride has been left to me. And she? Her youth is over, her beauty, in accordance with the laws of nature, has faded, the man she loved is dead. … What has she left? |
| Enter Sonya and Yelena Andreyevna and a little later, Marya Vassilyevna with a book; she sits down and reads. They hand her tea, and she drinks it without looking at it. | |
| Sonya | Hurriedly to the nurse. Nurse, darling, some peasants have come. Go and speak to them. I’ll look after the tea. |
| Exit Nurse. Yelena Andreyevna takes her cup and drinks it sitting in the swing. | |
| Astrov | To Yelena Andreyevna. I’ve come to see your husband. You wrote to me that he was very ill—rheumatism and something else—but it appears he is perfectly well. |
| Yelena | Last night he was poorly, complaining of pains in his legs, but today he is all right. … |
| Astrov | And I have galloped twenty miles at breakneck speed! But there, it doesn’t matter! it’s not the first time. I shall stay with you till tomorrow to make up for it, and anyway I shall sleep quantum satis. |
| Sonya | That’s splendid! It’s not often you stay the night with us. I expect you’ve not had dinner? |
| Astrov | No, I haven’t. |
| Sonya | Oh, well, you will have some dinner, then! We have dinner now between six and seven drinks tea. The tea is cold! |
| Telyegin | The temperature in the samovar has perceptibly dropped. |
| Yelena | Never mind, Ivan Ivanitch; we will drink it cold. |
| Telyegin | I beg your pardon, I am not Ivan Ivanitch, but Ilya Ilyitch—Ilya Ilyitch Telyegin, or, as some people call me on account of my pockmarked face, Waffles. I stood godfather to Sonetchka, and his Excellency, your husband, knows me very well. I live here now on your estate. If you’ve been so kind as to observe it, I have dinner with you every day. |
| Sonya | Ilya Ilyitch is our helper, our right hand. Tenderly. Let me give you another cup, godfather. |
| Marya | Ach! |
| Sonya | What is it, grandmamma? |
| Marya | I forgot to tell Alexandr—I am losing my memory—I got a letter today from Harkov, from Pavel Alexeyevitch … he has sent his new pamphlet. |
| Astrov | Is it interesting? |
| Marya | It’s interesting, but it’s rather queer. He is attacking what he himself maintained seven years ago. It’s awful. |
| Voynitsky | There’s nothing awful in it. Drink your tea, maman. |
| Marya | But I want to talk. |
| Voynitsky | But we have been talking and talking for fifty years and reading pamphlets. It’s about time to leave off. |
| Marya | You don’t like listening when I speak; I don’t know why. Forgive my saying so, Jean, but you have so changed in the course of the last year that I hardly know you. You used to be a man of definite principles, of elevating ideas. |
| Voynitsky | Oh, yes! I was a man of elevating ideas which elevated nobody a pause. … A man of elevating ideas … you could not have made a more malignant joke! Now I am forty-seven. Till last year I tried, like you, to blind myself with all your pedantic rubbish on purpose to avoid seeing life as it is—and thought I was doing the right thing. And now, if only you knew! I can’t sleep at night for vexation, for rage that I so stupidly wasted the time when I might have had everything from which my age now shuts me out. |
| Sonya | Uncle Vanya, it’s so dreary! |
| Marya | To her son. You seem to be blaming your former principles. It is not they that are to blame, but yourself. You forget that principles alone are no use—a dead letter. You ought to have been working. |
| Voynitsky | Working? It is not everyone who can be a writing machine like your Herr Professor. |
| Marya | What do you mean by that? |
| Sonya | In an imploring voice. Grandmamma! Uncle Vanya! I entreat you! |
| Voynitsky | I’ll hold my tongue—hold my tongue and apologise. |
| A pause. | |
| Yelena | What a fine day! It’s not too hot. |
| A pause. | |
| Voynitsky | A fine day to hang oneself! |
| Telyegin tunes the guitar. Marina walks to and fro near the house, calling a hen. | |
| Marina | Chook, chook, chook! |
| Sonya | Nurse, darling, what did the peasants come about? |
| Marina | It’s the same thing—about the waste land again. Chook, chook, chook! |
| Sonya | Which is it you are calling? |
| Marina | Speckly has gone off somewhere with her chickens. … The crows might get them walks away. |
| Telyegin plays a polka; they all listen to him in silence. Enter a Labourer. | |
| Labourer | Is the doctor here? To Astrov. If you please, Mihail Lvovitch, they have sent for you. |
| Astrov | Where from? |
| Labourer | From the factory. |
| Astrov | With vexation. Much obliged to you. Well, I suppose I must go looks round him for his cap. What a nuisance, hang it! |
| Sonya | How annoying it is, really! Come back from the factory to dinner. |
| Astrov | No. It will be too late. “How should I? … How could I? …” To the Labourer. Here, my good man, you might get me a glass of vodka, anyway. Labourer goes off. “How should I? … How could I? …” Finds his cap. In one of Ostrovsky’s plays there is a man with a big moustache and little wit—that’s like me. Well, I have the honour to wish you all goodbye. To Yelena Andreyevna. If you ever care to look in upon me, with Sofya Alexandrovna, I shall be truly delighted. I have a little estate, only ninety acres, but there is a model garden and nursery such as you wouldn’t find for hundreds of miles round—if that interests you. Next to me is the government plantation. The forester there is old and always ill, so that I really look after all the work. |
| Yelena | I have been told already that you are very fond of forestry. Of course, it may be of the greatest use, but doesn’t it interfere with your real work? You are a doctor. |
| Astrov | Only God knows what is one’s real work. |
| Yelena | And is it interesting? |
| Astrov | Yes, it is interesting work. |
| Voynitsky | Ironically. Very much so! |
| Yelena | To Astrov. You are still young—you don’t look more than thirty-six or thirty-seven … and it cannot be so interesting as you say. Nothing but trees and trees. I should think it must be monotonous. |
| Sonya | No, it’s extremely interesting. Mihail Lvovitch plants fresh trees every year, and already they have sent him a bronze medal and a diploma. He tries to prevent the old forests being destroyed. If you listen to him you will agree with him entirely. He says that forests beautify the country, that they teach man to understand what is beautiful and develop a lofty attitude of mind. Forests temper the severity of the climate. In countries where the climate is mild, less energy is wasted on the struggle with nature, and so man is softer and milder. In such countries people are beautiful, supple and sensitive; their language is elegant and their movements are graceful. Art and learning flourish among them, their philosophy is not gloomy, and their attitude to women is full of refined courtesy. |
| Voynitsky | Laughing. Bravo, bravo! That’s all charming but not convincing; so to Astrov allow me, my friend, to go on heating my stoves with logs and building my barns of wood. |
| Astrov | You can heat your stoves with peat and build your barns of brick. Well, I am ready to let you cut down wood as you need it, but why destroy the forests? The Russian forests are going down under the axe. Millions of trees are perishing, the homes of wild animals and birds are being laid waste, the rivers are dwindling and drying up, wonderful scenery is disappearing never to return; and all because lazy man has not the sense to stoop down and pick up the fuel from the ground. To Yelena Andreyevna. Am I not right, madam? One must be an unreflecting savage to burn this beauty in one’s stove, to destroy what we cannot create. Man is endowed with reason and creative force to increase what has been given him; but hitherto he has not created but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, the rivers are drying up, the wild creatures are becoming extinct, the climate is ruined, and every day the earth is growing poorer and more hideous. To Voynitsky. Here you are looking at me with irony, and all I say seems to you not serious and—perhaps I really am a crank. But when I walk by the peasants’ woods which I have saved from cutting down, or when I hear the rustling of the young copse planted by my own hands, I realise that the climate is to some extent in my power, and that if in a thousand years man is to be happy I too shall have had some small hand in it. When I plant a birch tree and see it growing green and swaying in the wind my soul is filled with pride, and I … seeing the Labourer, who has brought a glass of vodka on a tray. However drinks, it’s time for me to go. Probably the truth of the matter is that I am a crank. I have the honour to take my leave! Goes towards the house. |
| Sonya | Takes his arm and goes with him. When are you coming to us? |
| Astrov | I don’t know. |
| Sonya | Not for a month again? |
| Astrov and Sonya go into the house; Marya Vassilyevna and Telyegin remain at the table; Yelena Andreyevna walks towards the verandah. | |
| Yelena | You have been behaving impossibly again, Ivan Petrovitch. Why need you have irritated Marya Vassilyevna and talked about a writing machine! And at lunch today you quarrelled with Alexandr again. How petty it is! |
| Voynitsky | But if I hate him? |
| Yelena | There is no reason to hate Alexandr; he is like everyone else. He is no worse than you are. |
| Voynitsky | If you could see your face, your movements! You are too indolent to live! Ah, how indolent! |
| Yelena | Ach! indolent and bored! Everyone abuses my husband; everyone looks at me with compassion, thinking, “Poor thing! she has got an old husband.” This sympathy for me, oh, how well I understand it! As Astrov said just now, you all recklessly destroy the forests, and soon there will be nothing left on the earth. In just the same way you recklessly destroy human beings, and soon, thanks to you, there will be no fidelity, no purity, no capacity for sacrifice left on earth! Why is it you can never look with indifference at a woman unless she is yours? Because—that doctor is right—there is a devil of destruction in all of you. You have no feeling for the woods, nor the birds, nor for women, nor for one another! |
| Voynitsky | I don’t like this moralising. |
| A pause. | |
| Yelena | That doctor has a weary, sensitive face. An interesting face. Sonya is evidently attracted by him; she is in love with him, and I understand her feeling. He has come three times since I have been here, but I am shy and have not once had a proper talk with him, or been nice to him. He thinks I am disagreeable. Most likely that’s why we are such friends, Ivan Petrovitch, that we are both such tiresome, tedious people. Tiresome! Don’t look at me like that, I don’t like it. |
| Voynitsky | How else can I look at you, since I love you? You are my happiness, my life, my youth! I know the chances of your returning my feeling are nil, nonexistent, but I want nothing, only let me look at you, listen to your voice. … |
| Yelena | Hush, they may hear you! They go into the house. |
| Voynitsky | Following her. Let me speak of my love, don’t drive me away—that alone will be the greatest happiness for me. … |
| Yelena | This is agonising. |
| Both go into the house. Telyegin strikes the strings and plays a polka. Marya Vassilyevna makes a note on the margin of a pamphlet. | |
| Curtain. |