A garden. Part of the house and terrace are visible. On an alley under an old poplar a table has been set for tea. Benches, chairs; a guitar lies on one of the benches. Not far from the table, a swing. It is between two and three in the afternoon. Overcast.
Marina, a doughy, sedentary old woman, sits by the samovar knitting a stocking. Astrov is pacing around.
MARINA
(Pouring a glass of tea) Take it, dear heart.
ASTROV
(Reluctantly accepting the glass) I don’t really want it.
MARINA
A nip of vodka, maybe?
ASTROV
No. I don’t drink vodka every day. Besides, it’s stifling.
How long have we known each other, nanny?
MARINA
(Reflecting) How long? O Lord, let me see … You came to these parts … when? Vera Petrovna, Sonechka’s mother, was still alive. You visited us two winters with her here … So that makes it eleven years now. (Reflects) Maybe even more …
ASTROV
And since then, have I changed much?
MARINA
Very much. Then you were young, handsome. Now you’ve aged. And not so handsome anymore. And let’s just say you do like your nip of vodka.
ASTROV
Yeah … In ten years I’ve become a different man. And why is that? I work too much, nanny. I’m on my feet morning till night, I get no peace, and at night I lie under the blanket afraid I’ll be dragged off to some sickbed. In all the time we’ve known each other, I haven’t had a single day to myself. Of course I’ve aged! And the life here is boring, stupid, squalid … It sucks you in. You’re surrounded by misfits, nothing but misfits; you live with them for two or three years and gradually, imperceptibly, turn into a misfit yourself. An inescapable fate. (Twisting his long mustache) See what an enormous mustache I’ve grown … A stupid mustache. I’ve turned into a misfit, nanny. Not that I’ve become stupid; thank God, my brain’s still in place; but my feelings have sort of gone numb. I don’t want anything, I don’t need anything, I don’t love anybody … Or maybe just you. (Kisses her head) I had a nanny like you when I was little.
MARINA
Maybe you want to eat?
No. The third week of Lent I went to Malitskoe … An epidemic … Typhus … Cottages full of people lying everywhere … Filth, stench, smoke, calves on the floor beside the sick … Pigs, too … I spent a whole day working in that mess, never sat down, never had a bite to eat, and when I got back home, no rest—they brought a railroad switchman; I put him on the table to operate, and he up and dies on me under the chloroform. And just when I didn’t need it, feelings woke up in me, and my conscience was stung, as if I’d deliberately killed him … I sat down, closed my eyes—like this—and thought: those who live one or two hundred years after us, and whose path we’re laying out—will they remember us kindly? No, they won’t, nanny!
MARINA
People won’t remember, but God will.
ASTROV
Thanks. You put it nicely.
Voinitsky enters. He comes from the house. He took a nap after lunch and has a rumpled look. He sits down on a bench and straightens his fancy tie.
VOINITSKY
Yeah …
Pause.
Yeah …
ASTROV
Good nap?
VOINITSKY
Yeah … Very. (Yawns) Since the professor came to live here with his spouse, life has gone haywire … I sleep at the wrong time, eat spicy kabuli for lunch and dinner, drink wine … it’s all unhealthy! Used to be there wasn’t a free moment, Sonya and I worked—and how we worked!—but now only Sonya works, and I sleep, eat, drink … It’s not good!
MARINA
(Shaking her head) What a life! The professor gets up at noon, and the samovar’s been boiling since morning, waiting for him. Before them we always had lunch at midday, like people everywhere, but with them it’s at six. During the night the professor reads and writes, then at two o’clock the bell suddenly rings … Good Lord, what’s this? Tea! Wake up the servants for him, start the samovar … What a life!
ASTROV
Are they staying long?
VOINITSKY
(Whistles) A hundred years. The professor’s decided to settle in here.
MARINA
And this. The samovar’s already been on the table for two hours, and they go for a walk.
VOINITSKY
They’re coming, they’re coming … Don’t make a fuss.
Voices are heard. From the depths of the garden, Serebryakov, Elena Andreevna, Sonya, and Telegin come back from their stroll.
SEREBRYAKOV
Beautiful, beautiful … Wonderful scenery.
TELEGIN
Extraordinary, Your Excellency.
Tomorrow we’ll go to the forest reserve, papa. Would you like to?
VOINITSKY
Ladies and gentlemen, tea is ready!
SEREBRYAKOV
My friends, be so kind as to have my tea sent to the study! I still have some things to do today.
SONYA
I’m sure you’ll like the forest reserve …
Elena Andreevna, Serebryakov, and Sonya go into the house; Telegin goes to the table and sits down next to Marina.
VOINITSKY
It’s hot, stifling, and our great scholar wears a coat, galoshes, gloves, and carries an umbrella.
ASTROV
So he takes good care of himself.
VOINITSKY
And how good-looking she is! How good-looking! In all my life I’ve never seen a more beautiful woman.
TELEGIN
When I ride over a field, Marina Timofeevna, or stroll through a shady garden, or look at this table, I experience an inexplicable bliss! The weather is delightful, the birds are singing, we all live in peace and harmony—what more do we want? (Accepting a glass of tea) My heartfelt thanks!
VOINITSKY
(In reverie) Those eyes … A marvelous woman!
Tell me something, Ivan Petrovich.
VOINITSKY
(Listlessly) What can I tell you?
ASTROV
Is there anything new?
VOINITSKY
Nothing. It’s all old. I’m the same as I was, or maybe worse, because I’ve grown lazy, I don’t do anything, I just grumble like an old fart. My old crow, maman, keeps on babbling about women’s emancipation; she’s got one foot in the grave, and yet she still searches in her clever books for the dawn of the new life.
ASTROV
And the professor?
VOINITSKY
The professor, as usual, sits in his study and writes from morning till late at night. “With a strained mind, and with a furrowed brow, / In writing, writing odes we spend our days, / And neither they nor we win any praise.”1 The poor paper! He’d do better to write his autobiography. There’s a superlative subject! A retired professor, you see, an old crust, an educated codfish … Gout, rheumatism, migraine, liver bloated with jealousy and envy … This dried codfish lives on his first wife’s estate, is forced to live here, because he can’t afford to live in town. He complains eternally about his bad luck, though in fact he’s been incredibly lucky. (Tensely) Just think how lucky! The son of a simple sexton, a seminarian,2 earned advanced degrees and a department chair, became “His Excellency,” a senator’s son-in-law, and so on, and so forth. Though that’s not what matters. But get this. For exactly twentyfive years the man’s been lecturing and writing about art, and he knows exactly nothing about art. For twenty-five years he’s been rehashing other people’s ideas about realism, naturalism, and the rest of that nonsense; for twenty-five years he’s been lecturing and writing about what intelligent people have long known and stupid people aren’t interested in: meaning that for twenty-five years he’s been pouring from empty into void. And all the while such selfimportance! Such pretensions! He retired, and now not one living soul knows about him, he’s completely forgotten; meaning that for twenty-five years he was sitting where he didn’t belong. But look at him, striding around like a demigod!
ASTROV
Well, it sounds like you’re envious.
VOINITSKY
Yes, I’m envious! And what success with women! No Don Juan ever had such complete success! His first wife, my sister—a beautiful, meek creature, pure as this blue sky, noble, magnanimous, who had more suitors than he had students—loved him as only pure angels can love those as pure and beautiful as themselves. My mother, his mother-in-law, adores him to this day, and to this day he inspires a sacred awe in her. His second wife—intelligent, a beauty; you just saw her—married him when he was already old, bestowing on him her youth, beauty, freedom, her radiance. What for? Why?
ASTROV
Is she faithful to the professor?
VOINITSKY
Yes, unfortunately.
ASTROV
Why unfortunately?
VOINITSKY
Because this faithfulness is false from beginning to end. There’s a lot of rhetoric in it, but no logic. To betray an old husband she can’t stand—that’s immoral; but to try and stifle her poor youth and living feeling—that’s not immoral.
TELEGIN
(In a tearful voice) Vanya, I don’t like to hear you talk like that. Well, look, really … If somebody betrays a wife or a husband, it means this is an unfaithful person, who might also betray the fatherland!
VOINITSKY
(With annoyance) Turn off the fountain, Waffle!
TELEGIN
Allow me, Vanya. My wife ran off with the man she loved the day after our wedding, on account of my unattractive appearance. Since then I’ve never failed in my duty. I still love her and am faithful to her, I help her however I can, and I’ve given my own property for the upbringing of the children she had with the man she loved. I was deprived of happiness, but I’ve kept my pride. And she? Her youth is gone, her beauty, following the laws of nature, has faded, the man she loved is dead … What has she kept?
Sonya and Elena Andreevna enter. Shortly afterward Marya Vassilyevna enters with a book, sits down, and begins to read. Tea is served to her, and she drinks without looking up.
SONYA
(Hurriedly, to the nanny) Some peasants have come, nanny. Go and talk to them. I’ll serve the tea … (Pours the tea)
The nanny exits. Elena Andreevna takes her cup and drinks, sitting on the swing.
ASTROV
(To Elena Andreevna) I came here for your husband. You wrote he was very sick, rheumatism and something else, but it turns out he’s perfectly well.
Last night he was moping, complained about pains in his legs, but today he’s all right …
ASTROV
And I nearly broke my neck galloping twenty miles. Well, never mind, it’s not the first time. I’ll stay with you till tomorrow and at least get to sleep quantum satis.3
SONYA
Wonderful. You so rarely stay the night with us. I suppose you haven’t eaten?
ASTROV
No, ma’am, I haven’t.
SONYA
So, you’ll also eat. We now have dinner at seven. (Drinks) The tea’s cold!
TELEGIN
The temperature in the samovar has decreased significantly by now.
ELENA ANDREEVNA
Never mind, Ivan Ivanych, we’ll drink it cold.
TELEGIN
Excuse me, ma’am … I’m not Ivan Ivanych, I’m Ilya Ilyich, ma’am … Ilya Ilyich Telegin—or Waffle, as some call me on account of my pockmarked face. I’m Sonechka’s godfather, and His Excellency, your spouse, knows me very well. I’ve been living here, ma’am, on your estate. You may notice that I dine with you every day.
SONYA
Ilya Ilyich is our helper, our right-hand man. (Tenderly) Here, little godfather, I’ll pour you some more.
Ah!
SONYA
What’s wrong, grandma?
MARYA VASSILYEVNA
I forgot to tell Alexandre … my memory’s going … I received a letter today from Pavel Alexeevich in Kharkov … He sent his new pamphlet …
ASTROV
Interesting?
MARYA VASSILYEVNA
Interesting, but sort of strange. He refutes something he himself defended seven years ago. It’s terrible!
VOINITSKY
There’s nothing terrible. Drink your tea, maman.
MARYA VASSILYEVNA
But I want to talk!
VOINITSKY
But for fifty years now we’ve been talking and talking and reading pamphlets. It’s time we stopped.
MARYA VASSILYEVNA
For some reason you find it unpleasant to listen when I talk. Forgive me, Jean, but you’ve changed so much over the last year that I hardly recognize you … You were a man of firm convictions, a shining light …
VOINITSKY
Oh yes! I was a shining light, who never shone on anybody …
I was a shining light … There couldn’t be a more venomous joke! I’m forty-seven now. Until last year I deliberately tried to blind myself, as you do, with this scholasticism of yours, so as not to see real life—and I thought I was doing the right thing. But now, if you only knew! I don’t sleep at night out of resentment, out of anger at having so stupidly fiddled the time away, when I could have had everything my old age now denies me!
SONYA
Uncle Vanya, it’s boring!
MARYA VASSILYEVNA
(To her son) It’s as if you’re accusing your former convictions … But the fault isn’t theirs, it’s yours. You forgot that convictions are nothing in themselves, a dead letter … There were deeds to be done.
VOINITSKY
Deeds? Not everybody is capable of being a scribbling perpetuum mobile like your Herr Professor.
MARYA VASSILYEVNA
What do you mean by that?
SONYA
(Pleadingly) Grandma! Uncle Vanya! I beg you!
VOINITSKY
I’ll shut up. Shut up and apologize.
Pause.
ELENA ANDREEVNA
And the weather’s nice today … Not hot …
VOINITSKY
In such weather it’d be nice to hang yourself …
Telegin tunes the guitar. Marina walks around the house calling the chickens.
MARINA
Here chick, chick, chick …
SONYA
Nanny, what did the peasants come for?
MARINA
Same old thing, about the empty fields. Here chick, chick, chick …
SONYA
Which one are you calling?
MARINA
The speckled one went off with her chicks … The crows might get them … (Exits)
Telegin plays a polka; everybody listens silently; a workman enters.
WORKMAN
Is the doctor here? (To Astrov) Excuse me, Mikhail Lvovich, they’ve come for you.
ASTROV
Where from?
WORKMAN
The factory.
(Vexed) Much obliged. Well, so, I’ll have to go … (Looks around for his visored cap) It’s annoying, damn it …
SONYA
What a shame, really … Do come for dinner after the factory.
ASTROV
No, it’ll be too late. No … Can’t do it … (To the workman) I tell you what, my dear fellow, go get me a glass of vodka. (The workman exits) No … Can’t do it … (Finds his visored cap) In one of Ostrovsky’s plays there’s a man with a big mustache and small ability …4 That’s me. Well, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to … (To Elena Andreevna) If you ever stop by my place, you and Sofya Alexandrovna, I’ll be really glad. My estate is small, only about eighty acres, but, if you’re interested, there’s an exemplary orchard and nursery, such as you won’t find for a thousand miles around. Next to me there’s the state forest reserve … The forester is old, always sick, so essentially I’m in charge of it all.
ELENA ANDREEVNA
I’ve already been told that you like forests very much. Of course, that might be of great use, but doesn’t it interfere with your real calling? You’re a doctor, after all.
ASTROV
God alone knows what our real calling is.
ELENA ANDREEVNA
And is it interesting?
ASTROV
Yes, it’s interesting work.
VOINITSKY
(Ironically) Very!
(To Astrov) You’re still a young man, you look … oh, thirty-six, thirty-seven … and it really can’t be as interesting as you say. Forest, and more forest. Monotonous, I’d think.
SONYA
No, it’s extremely interesting. Mikhail Lvovich plants new forests every year, and he’s already received a bronze medal and a diploma. He works to keep the old forests from being destroyed. If you hear him out, you’ll agree with him completely. He says that forests adorn the earth, that they teach man to understand beauty and inspire a lofty feeling in him. Forests make a harsh climate milder. In countries with a mild climate less effort is spent in the struggle with nature, and therefore human beings are more mild and gentle there; people there are beautiful, supple, responsive; their speech is refined, their movements are graceful. With them learning and the arts flourish, their philosophy is not gloomy, their relations with women are refined and noble …
VOINITSKY
(Laughing) Bravo, bravo! … That’s all very nice, but not convincing, so (To Astrov) allow me, my friend, to go on stoking my stoves with firewood and building my barns with lumber.
ASTROV
You can stoke your stoves with peat and build your barns of stone. Well, all right, cut wood when you need to, but why destroy whole forests? Russian forests are groaning under the ax, billions of trees are perishing, the homes of beasts and birds are devastated, the rivers grow shallow and dry up, wonderful landscapes disappear beyond recall, and all that because lazy man isn’t smart enough to bend down and pick up fuel from the ground. (To Elena Andreevna) Isn’t that so, madam? You have to be a senseless barbarian to burn this beauty in your stove, to destroy what we cannot create. Man is endowed with reason and creative power to increase what’s been given to him, but so far he’s been destroying, not creating. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife is disappearing, the climate is ruined, and with every day the earth becomes poorer and uglier. (To Voinitsky) You’re looking at me ironically; everything I say seems unimportant to you, and … and maybe I am in fact a misfit, but when I go past a peasants’ forest that I’ve saved from being cut down, or when I hear the rustle of the young trees I’ve planted with my own hands, I’m aware that in a small way the climate is in my power, too, and that if, in a thousand years, mankind becomes happy, I’ll have had a small share in that as well. When I plant a birch tree and then see how it turns green and sways in the wind, my soul is filled with pride, and I … (Seeing the workman bringing a glass of vodka on a tray) Anyhow … (Drinks) my time’s up. All of this is probably just the misfit in me. Allow me to bow out! (Goes to the house)
SONYA
(Takes him under the arm and goes with him) When will you come to see us?
ASTROV
I don’t know …
SONYA
In a month again? …
Astrov and Sonya go inside; Marya Vassilyevna and Telegin remain at the table; Elena Andreevna and Voinitsky go to the terrace.
ELENA ANDREEVNA
And you behaved impossibly again, Ivan Petrovich. What need was there to annoy Marya Vassilyevna, talking about a perpetuum mobile? And today at lunch you argued with Alexander again. It’s so petty!
VOINITSKY
But what if I hate the man!
There’s no reason to hate Alexander, he’s the same as everybody else. No worse than you.
VOINITSKY
If only you could see your face, the way you move … You’re too lazy to live your life! Much too lazy!
ELENA ANDREEVNA
Lazy and bored! Everybody criticizes my husband, everybody looks at me with pity: poor thing, she’s got an old husband! This sympathy for me—oh, how I understand it! It’s what Astrov said just now: you’re all recklessly destroying the forests, and soon there’ll be nothing left on earth. You destroy human beings just as recklessly, and because of you, soon there won’t be any faithfulness, or purity, or capacity for self-sacrifice left on earth. Why can’t you look dispassionately at a woman who isn’t yours? Because—this doctor’s right—there’s a demon of destruction sitting in you all. You have no pity for the forests, or the birds, or women, or each other.
VOINITSKY
I don’t like this philosophy!
Pause.
ELENA ANDREEVNA
This doctor has a tired, nervous face. An interesting face. Sonya obviously likes him, she’s in love with him, and I understand her. He’s already come three times since I’ve been here, but I’m timid, I’ve never really talked to him, haven’t been nice to him. He thinks I’m wicked. You and I are such good friends, Ivan Petrovich, probably because we’re both dull, boring people! Dull! Don’t look at me like that, I don’t like it.
How can I look at you any other way, if I love you? You’re my happiness, my life, my youth! I know the chances of you returning my feelings are slim, precisely zero, but I don’t need anything, just let me look at you, let me hear your voice …
ELENA ANDREEVNA
Shh, somebody may hear you!
They go toward the house.
VOINITSKY
(Following her) Let me speak about my love, don’t drive me away, and that alone will be a great happiness for me …
ELENA ANDREEVNA
This is really painful …
They both go into the house. Telegin strikes the strings and plays a polka; Marya Vassilyevna notes something down on the margin of the pamphlet.
Curtain.