Cloudy autumn day. In the garden, on an alley under an old poplar, a table is set for tea. At the samovar - the old nanny Marina. “Eat, father,” she offers tea to Dr. Astrov. “I don’t want something,” he replies.
Telegin appears, an impoverished landowner nicknamed Waffle, who lives on the estate in the position of taking root: “The weather is charming, the birds are singing, we all live in peace and harmony - what else do we need?” But there is no agreement and peace in the estate. “It’s unfavorable in this house,” Elena Andreevna, the wife of Professor Serebryakov, who arrived at the estate, will say twice.
These fragmentary replicas, outwardly not addressed to each other, enter, echoing each other, into a dialogic dispute and highlight the meaning of the intense drama experienced by the characters in the play.
Earned for ten years lived in the county, Astrov. “I don’t want anything, I don’t need anything, I don’t love anyone,” he complains to the nanny. Voinitsky has changed, broken. Previously, he, managing the estate, did not know a free minute. And now? “I got worse because I got lazy, I don’t do anything and just grumble like an old horseradish ...”
Voinitsky does not hide his envy of the retired professor, especially his success with women. Voinitsky's mother, Maria Vasilievna, simply adores her son-in-law, the husband of her late daughter. Voinitsky despises Serebryakov's academic pursuits: "A person reads and writes about art, understanding absolutely nothing about art." Finally, he hates Serebryakov, although his hatred may seem very biased: after all, he fell in love with his beautiful wife. And Elena Andreevna reasonably reprimands Voinitsky: “There is nothing to hate Alexander for, he is the same as everyone else.”
Then Voinitsky exposes deeper and, as it seems to him, irresistible reasons for his intolerant, implacable attitude towards the ex-professor - he considers himself cruelly deceived: “I adored this professor ... I worked for him like an ox ... I was proud of him and its science, I lived and breathed it! God, what about now? ...he is nothing! Soap bubble!"
Around Serebryakov, an atmosphere of intolerance, hatred, enmity is thickening. He irritates Astrov, and even his wife can hardly stand him. Everyone somehow listened to the stated diagnosis of the disease, which struck both the heroes of the play, and all their contemporaries: "... the world is dying not from robbers, not from fires, but from hatred, enmity, from all these petty squabbles." They, including Elena Andreevna herself, somehow forgot that Serebryakov is “just like everyone else” and, like everyone else, can count on indulgence, on a merciful attitude towards himself, especially since he suffers from gout, suffers from insomnia, is afraid of death. “Really,” he asks his wife, “I don’t have the right to a late old age, to people’s attention to myself?” Yes, one must be merciful, says Sonya, Serebryakov's daughter from her first marriage. But only the old nanny will hear this call and show genuine, sincere concern for Serebryakov: “What, father? Hurt? Old, that small, I want someone to feel sorry, but no one feels sorry for the old. (He kisses Serebryakova on the shoulder.) Let's go to bed, father... Let's go, little one... I'll give you linden tea to drink, I'll warm your feet... I'll pray to God for you..."
But one old nanny could not and could not, of course, defuse the oppressive atmosphere fraught with misfortune. The conflict knot is tied so tightly that there is a climactic explosion. Serebryakov gathers everyone in the living room to propose for discussion the “measure” he invented: sell the low-income estate, turn the proceeds into interest-bearing papers, which would make it possible to purchase a dacha in Finland.
Voinitsky is indignant: Serebryakov allows himself to dispose of the estate, which actually and legally belongs to Sonya; he did not think about the fate of Voinitsky, who managed the estate for twenty years, receiving beggarly money for it; I didn’t even think about the fate of Maria Vasilievna, who was so selflessly devoted to the professor!
Outraged, enraged, Voinitsky shoots Serebryakov, shoots twice and misses both times.
Frightened by the mortal danger that only accidentally passed him, Serebryakov decides to return to Kharkov. He leaves for his small estate, Astrov, in order, as before, to treat peasants, to take care of the garden and forest nursery. Fade out love affairs. Elena Andreevna lacks the courage to respond to Astrov's passion for her. When parting, she, however, admits that she was carried away by the doctor, but "a little". She hugs him "impulsively", but with an eye. And Sonya is finally convinced that Astrov will not be able to love her, so ugly.
Life in the estate returns to normal. “We will live again, as it was, in the old way,” the nanny dreams. The conflict between Voinitsky and Serebryakov also remains without consequences. “You will accurately receive the same that you received,” Professor Voinitsky reassures. “Everything will be the same.” And the Astrovs and Serebryakovs did not have time to leave, as Sonya hurries Voinitsky: "Well, Uncle Vanya, let's do something." The lamp lights up, the inkwell fills up, Sonya leafs through the account book, Uncle Vanya writes one account, another: “On the second of February, twenty pounds of lean butter ...” The nanny sits in an armchair and knits, Maria Vasilievna plunges into reading another brochure ...
It would seem that expectations came true old nanny: everything is back to normal. But the play is built in such a way that it constantly - both in big and small - deceives the expectations of both its heroes and readers. You are waiting, for example, for music from Elena Andreevna, a graduate of the conservatory (“I want to play ... I haven’t played for a long time. I will play and cry ...”), but Waffle plays the guitar ... The characters are arranged like this, the move plot events takes such a direction, dialogues and remarks are soldered by such semantic, often subtextual roll-calls that the traditional question “Who is to blame?” Is pushed to the periphery from the proscenium, giving way to the question “What is to blame?”. It seems to Voynitsky that Serebryakov ruined his life. He hopes to start new life". But Astrov dispels this “elevating deceit”: “Our position, yours and mine, is hopeless. There were only two decent ones in the whole county, intelligent person: me and you. For some ten years, the philistine life, the despicable life, has dragged us out; she poisoned our blood with her rotten fumes, and we became the same vulgar as everyone else.
At the end of the play, however, Voinitsky and Sonya dream of the future, but Sonya’s final monologue exudes hopeless sadness and a sense of a life lived aimlessly: “We, Uncle Vanya, will live, we will patiently endure the trials that fate will send us; we will die humbly, and there, behind the grave, we will say that we suffered, that we cried, that we were bitter, and God will take pity on us. We will hear the angels, we will see the whole sky in diamonds... We will rest! (The watchman knocks. Telegin plays softly; Maria Vasilievna writes in the margins of a pamphlet; Marina knits a stocking.) We'll rest! (The curtain is slowly lowering.)"
3. After the creation of The Seagull, it became completely clear to Chekhov that the content not only differs from the form, but that it is immeasurably more important than it. But then he had to stand before him new question– what is the content? Apparently, it was this theme that Chekhov dominated in his next "big" play - "Uncle Vanya", in which the general ontological line of the writer received another round of development. We will show this through consideration of the main characters of the play.
a) Astrov is a doctor, wonderful person, hard worker. He does an important job - honestly treats people. In addition, he takes care of the forest, which he loves and appreciates. Astrov believes that through beautiful forest could be improved human soul. At the same time, he does not suffer from delusions of grandeur, but he simply wants his work to be useful to all people in the future. In other words, his work has a deep benefit, is highly valued, therefore, it is endowed and deep meaning. And the fact that he does not pay attention to external, formal assessments of his work indicates that he personifies pure content unencumbered by form. At the same time, it, the content, is deep, real. This is expressed in Astrov's liveliness, which appears everywhere he goes. Everywhere around him there is movement, he infects everything with his vitality, which sweeps away the established deadly rules and creates new, original, non-standard ones. So, in his cartographic works, he emphasizes changes in nature. In relations with women, he changes the standard norms of behavior, acts in accordance with his ideas about what is needed and what is unnecessary, and does not pay attention to the opinion of the townsfolk. Indeed, he does not like Sophia and he rejects her, although, if you argue with the philistine mind of Telegin, who is floating with the flow of life, you should have married her. But to the married beauty Elena Sergeevna, he frankly pesters, flirts with her. It seems that this should characterize him with negative side because here he swung at the foundations of public morality. Maybe this is so, but it should be borne in mind that Astrov, as a pure content, does not have to be a white and fluffy honey, but must carry out activity that benefits and there is no real harm. Flirting with Elena Sergeevna does no harm to anyone, not only because it actually failed, but also because Elena Sergeevna's marriage to Professor Serebryakov is fictitious and unnecessary to anyone. Even if Astrov's courtship had been crowned with success, nothing significant would have changed in the life of the Serebryakovs. At the same time, the benefits from Astrov are quite real. He does not forget about the vital necessity, does not hover in the clouds, and if the need arises to go to a distant patient, he goes.
In general, we repeat, Astrov personifies a deep, vital content.
b) In contrast to Astrov, Professor Serebryakov is presented. But this opposition is given not as a simple antithesis, but as a special one. What is this feature?
Serebryakov is old, and even decrepit, sick with either rheumatism or gout, constantly grumbling and harassing everyone around. But somehow it is not possible to identify him with death, since he works even after being dismissed from the department (apparently due to old age). For a long time he selflessly worked for science, once enjoyed success with women and now he himself is tormented by his own shortcomings. Apparently, Serebryakov is opposed to Astrov not in the sense of deprivation of any right to exist. No, he has a completely complete right to exist and cannot be disputed by anyone. Another thing is that all his previous activities, supposedly important and decorated in all sorts of titles, in reality turn out to be useless to anyone and therefore useless. This professor worked, but as a result of this work, nothing essential was done, but there was only one glory. It turns out that he worked for external success, and not for real benefit. Consequently, Serebryakov can be represented as the form that is devoid of any content. When the form was beautiful (he was young, handsome, had influence in the scientific world), then other beautiful forms were identical to it, i.e. clung to him beautiful women. When he grew old and his form, so to speak, ceased to be relevant, i.e. ceased to be fashionable, then even the woman who became his last wife(Elena Andreevna), fell out of love with him, although she was next to him due to her own emptiness: an empty form of one type does not differ from an empty, empty form of another type. Perhaps, with this character, the writer ridiculed the cult of the “university man” of that time as one of the illusions of a part of the Russian intelligentsia, but it seems that this social context is completely secondary. Not a professor, but another hero could act as a form. It's just that the image of a decrepit professor who wrote mountains of useless writings fits very well into the structure of the main opposition, the opposition of content and form.
Thus, if Astrov is the content, then Serebryakov is the form.
c) Two threads come from the formal Serebryakov - his daughter Sophia and his young wife Elena Andreevna. But since only something similar can come out of a form that is not burdened with meaning, the images of these two young women also denote forms, and nothing but a form. This is quite obvious for Elena Andreevna, but also applies to Sophia. In general, she is quite good, kind, hardworking, and there may be a false impression that she personifies something bright and more than positive. However, one must understand that in Chekhov's plays people are not people at all, but symbols pointing to certain meanings. Here Sophia points to something that stands behind her. What is behind it? Exactly what does it mean?
We repeat, the fact that Sophia is the daughter of Serebryakov means that her roots come from the form. Further, she became friends with Elena Andreevna. This is also not accidental and additionally emphasizes its closeness to something empty, meaningless. And here she is, such as she is, in love with Astrov, reaching out to him. A certain form wants to correspond to a deep content. But does it happen? No, this does not happen, but from The Seagull we know that it happens just the opposite - when the content (the content of life or artwork) for its expression chooses the form through which it appears itself. Therefore, Sophia's desire for Astrov ends in nothing: he rejects her.
But why then, let me ask, Astrov did not find support from Elena Andreevna? Here, it would seem, Astrov-content saw his Elena-form. According to our logic, a connection between them should have arisen without fail, but it did not. The answer here is simple. Astrov, as a deep content, of course, needs an appropriate, beautiful form through which he will show himself, so he strives for the formal Elena Andreevna. However, he realizes that this shell is not what he needs. She is the shell of Serebryakov, therefore, not his. Strictly speaking, Astrov's drama lies in the fact that he cannot find a form adequate to his essence: Elena Andreevna is a stranger, and Sophia is ugly. She, of course, is internally beautiful with her soul - pure and innocent, but these qualities are not suitable for the role of form, external, direct beauty is required here.
As a result, Sophia has no choice but to join Voynitsky - Uncle Vanya.
d) Voynitsky - who is he? It seems to work, but it works for the glory of Serebryakov. He has no talents, but he has ambitions to be attached to glory. This is clearly heard in his conversation with his mother in the first act. To the reproach "It was necessary to do something," he justifies himself "Not everyone is capable of writing perpetuum mobile, like your Herr Professor." Obviously, in order to join in some greatness, he once decided to lean on the glory of Serebryakov. He believed that if you work for a professor and be his slave, then this will automatically make his life filled with content. But when it turned out that the glory of the "owner" ended simultaneously with his dismissal, i.e. that this glory was formal and empty, along with this, the worthlessness of Voinitsky's work was revealed. It turns out that his work did not bring either fame (like Serebryakov's) or benefit (like Astrov's), and thus he turns out to be distant from both form and content, turning into a continuous categorical nothingness - insignificance. He is so insignificant that even the empty windy Elena Andreevna does not consider it possible to favor him, that she cannot even kill the hated "master" - Serebryakov, that she cannot even commit suicide (Astrov takes morphine away from him). Uncle Vanya can do nothing, he is nothing. Imagine for a moment that the whole world consists of such uncles Van. Then everything will collapse and nothing will happen. The only thing he can do is be a slave and go with the flow, doing some standard everyday things. Voinitsky is like a mechanism that is programmed to perform certain actions, and in which there is not a single gram of life. He does not live, but only exists for nothing. Appearing in the play sleepy and lethargic, like an amorphous amoeba, he ends it in the same state - lethargic, whiny, almost dead, dreaming of some kind of calm - inactivity after death. At the same time, Sophia turns out to be with him: a form that has not found content turns out to be just nothing, emptiness. Both of them go with the flow and their stupid, useless work turns out to be nothing more than a trick with which they hide their insignificance from prying eyes - isolation from meaningfulness and, at the same time, detachment from external gloss. Both of them are tormented by the fact that they have no place either there or here, that they are hovering between the two poles of the universe. In this torment, their break is manifested: being essentially insignificant, they nevertheless exist in fact. Such ontological two-facedness of their lives can be removed only through death, which they are forced to dream about. Only death will eliminate their contradiction and finally give them peace: “We will rest! We will hear the angels, we will see the whole sky in diamonds, we will see how all earthly evil, all our suffering will be drowned in mercy, which will fill the whole world with itself, and our life will become quiet, gentle, sweet, like a caress. I believe, I believe... Poor, poor Uncle Vanya, you are crying... You did not know joys in this life, but wait, Uncle Vanya, wait... We will rest... We will rest!". The only thing left for them is how to believe in paradise, sweet life after leaving the world.
This feeling of approaching death is reinforced by the fact that next to Sophia and Uncle Vanya they remain: Telegin, who can only fulfill an unnecessary, stupid, far-fetched duty towards his slut wife, who cheated on him the very next day after the wedding; Voinitsky's mother, the meaning of which is in the orientation of her son to the meaningless Serebryakov, i.e. in reminding us of his slave nature; the old nanny Marina, knitting her eternal stocking (or what does she have?) and pointing to the monotony and routine of life.
Thus, the structure of the characters in the play "Uncle Vanya" is designed to identify the identity of a meaningless life with uselessness, and, on the contrary, a meaningful life with usefulness: of course, "you have to work", but work not for the sake of work, but for the real benefit of people, then life acquires meaning . The simple doing of something, for the sake of some mythical, invented duty by someone, is not necessary to anyone, it is insignificant. Such a semblance of a deed destroys itself and devastates those who plunge into it.
The main backbone of Chekhov's drama is formed by the plays "The Seagull" (1896), "Uncle Vanya" (1897), "Three Sisters" (1901), " The Cherry Orchard» (1904). All these plays were performed at the Moscow Art Theatre, staged by K. S. Stanislavsky and Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, and had historical significance both in the fate of Chekhov the playwright and in the fate of Russian and world theater. Chekhov had a “small dramaturgy” that was immediately successful for him - jokes in one act: “The Bear” (1888), “The Proposal” (1889), “The Tragedian Willy-nilly” (1889). Even during the life of the author, the theater community was tempted to stage Chekhov's stories. Chekhov himself remade his stories into dramatic sketches, jokes and scenes. From the story "Calchas" he made a dramatic study "Swan Song" (1887). A brilliant scene came out of the story "The Wedding with the General", perhaps the best of Chekhov's "small dramaturgy" - "The Wedding" (1890). From the story "Defenseless Creature" - no less famous Chekhov's joke "Jubilee" (1892).
But Chekhov's play Ivanov (1889) occupies a particularly important place as an approach to great dramaturgy; the previous lithographed edition was in 1887. The play "Ivanov" was written by Chekhov somehow unexpectedly for himself. "Ivanov" had many advantages. There are purely Chekhovian features in this play, which were noticed by critics who prophesied a reform in Russian dramaturgy and in the theater.
In the 1990s, disputes began to boil about the theatricality and non-theatricality of Chekhov's "strange" dramaturgy. The first who began to truly comprehend the emerging innovative dramaturgy of Chekhov was Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko.
"Uncle Ivan"
The glory of the play will come after the success of Chekhov's dramaturgy, which will begin with the production of The Seagull in Moscow. It is likely that Chekhov wrote Uncle Vanya between the end of the first version of The Seagull (November 1895) and before its production at the Alexandrinsky Theater on October 17, 1896. In essence, a play with a new ideological sound was born, which then joined the masterpieces of Chekhov the playwright. But "The Seagull" still made its way for her ... "Uncle Vanya" was published in 1897 in a collection of Chekhov's plays.
The meaning of "Uncle Vanya" is not that good people quarrel. The point is to denounce the "Serebryakovism", the liberal populist "rulers of thoughts", who turned out to be a nonentity, an imaginary value. Here is the collapse of the authority, which was considered a sage who knows the secrets of life.
The "little man" who sacrificed himself to the idol protests. Voinitsky is a hard worker, a creator of beauty and useful work. The name of the hero - Uncle Vanya - is deliberately everyday. These are the Ivans on whom the world rests. According to M. Gorky, here "realism rises to a spiritualized and deeply thought-out symbol." Such is the niece of Voinitsky - Sonya. The happiness of the privileged is based on their work and unrequitedness. But such injustice must someday be eliminated.
Dr. Astrov is Uncle Vanya's friend. They complement each other. In Astrov, the desire for beauty is more sharply emphasized. It belongs to him the words: "Everything should be beautiful in a person ...". Astrov is a doctor of an artistic warehouse. But Astrov's life in the county passed almost aimlessly. He served here from his youth and achieved nothing, although he is versatile in his interests and full of love for life. There was no service to an idol, there was no idol either... Astrov suffers, he has nowhere to apply his strength and no one with. One dream is about the happiness of free labor. This idea will pass into Chekhov's next plays: a person must work.
Voynitsky - big child, he is naive, spontaneous, sometimes cries. But Astrov whistles. He is a skeptic.
The behavior of Maria Vasilievna, an enthusiastic woman, explains why Serebryakov, in his youth, could fall in love with her daughter so much, and her son made sacrifices for him. It was Maria Vasilievna who prepared the ground for idolatry before Serebryakov.
Astrov lacks sobriety to understand the hopelessness of his and Voinitsa's situation. The philistine overcomes them. Astrov drinks. He passes by Sonya, who loves him. His skepticism often turns into cynicism. The worship of talent turned out to be a lie, as was the worship of beauty. These are misdirected forces.
In "Uncle Vanya" Chekhov again captures a hidden, delayed, suffering dissatisfaction with life, which deafly torments (his heroes) everyone under the surface of a common, even life. The focus of the play is the horror of life for those who have realized the uselessness and emptiness of their life, when it has already been lived, when by age itself any possibilities, prospects and dreams of joys that could have been experienced in due time are tightly cut off. . Here, from the very beginning, the characters have no new perspectives, no goals, no actions with a definitely conscious final will, no struggle, not only in the sense of a struggle experienced with each other, but also in the sense of overcoming any obstacles in order to achieve some new in the perspective of a liberating position. All that remains is the naked horror of contemplation of the trap, into which a person has found himself and from where there is no way out.
The play uses a ring composition: the end of the work, as it were, returns us to its beginning. Let us recall the author's remark at the end of the first act: “Telegin strikes the strings and plays the polka; Maria Vasilievna writes something in the margins of the pamphlet. And here is how the last, fourth act ends: “Telegin plays quietly; Maria Vasilievna writes on the margins of the pamphlet; Marina is knitting a stocking. The situation completely coincides, and this, of course, is not an accident.
What will change in the life of Sonya, Uncle Vanya, Astrov after the departure of Professor Serebryakov with his young wife? Uncle Vanya tells Serebryakov at the end: “You will carefully receive the same that you received before. Everything will be the same.”
Yes, life is ruthless, dreams are destroyed, hopes disappear... And it's not just about the specific circumstances of the life of Chekhov's heroes. Chekhov is not a primitive life writer; he is preoccupied with problems of universal significance. Nature is being destroyed, the human community is being destroyed; occurs, according to Dr. Astrov, "degeneration from inertia, from ignorance, from a complete lack of self-consciousness ...". What is left for people to do? To understand the terrible danger when “a person, in order to save the rest of his life, in order to save his children, instinctively, unconsciously grabs at everything that can satisfy his hunger, warm himself, destroys everything, not thinking about tomorrow ...”.
Meaning Chekhov's creativity in general, and “Uncle Vanya” in particular, consists in a constant call: we must always think about the future, about our responsibility to it, think about tomorrow ...
For Astrov, for example, taking care of forests is an opportunity to leave a mark on the earth, to do something for posterity - after all, forests grow slowly ... “... When I hear the noise of a young forest planted by my hands - says Astrov, - I realize that the climate is a little bit in my power, and that if in a thousand years a person is happy, then I will be a little to blame for this. When I plant a birch and then see how it turns green and sways from the wind, my soul is filled with pride ... "
The peculiarity of the heroes of Chekhov the playwright is that they are all ordinary people. None of them can claim to be a hero of their time. Each of them has their weaknesses, and each of them is immersed in a routine to one degree or another. Everyday life. Almost all of them are unhappy people, disappointed, dissatisfied with their lives. main topic A.P. Chekhov's play "Uncle Vanya" is also the theme of a modest, little worker, a life lived in vain. Ivan Petrovich Voinitsky, the protagonist of Uncle Vanya, sacrificed his entire life to Professor Serebryakov, who had once been his ideal.
The best representatives of the intelligentsia are shown by Chekhov as suffering. But Astrov, and Voinitsky, and Sonya - looking people trying to fight. With their suffering, they reject the vulgar and ugly happiness of the well-fed, they are capable of a sacrificial feat. Voinitsky is set off by Astrov. The consciousness of its uselessness, emptiness and joylessly tediously lived life also lives in it. Unlike Voinitsky, Astrov does not lose his composure. Awareness of the irreparability of one's position in it is more solid and already settled, as it were. Common sense does not leave him.
Thus, Chekhov's entire play is permeated with a sense of bitterness for a miserable and aimlessly lived life. Uncle Vanya and Sonya thought they were serving the great scientist. They not only managed the estate and sent money, they also copied the professor's manuscripts. And here is a bitter insight: life is given to a mediocre monster, an inhuman egoist. Life perishes and beauty disappears. Astrov talks about the destruction of forests - and this theme sounds in unison with the theme of the futility of serving the "chosen ones". Elena Andreevna is a beautiful predator who destroyed the possible love of Sonya and Astrov. He and the professor leave without losing their self-satisfaction and without understanding anything. And yet, in the finale, the music of hope sounds - hope for a bright life, which is truly worthy of all who honestly work.
Chekhov reveals all situations and collisions of people in the play in such a way as to more sharply show the absence of regularity, unity, connection (hence the definition of the genre of the play "Uncle Vanya" as "scenes"). Refusing to be entertaining, Chekhov strove to give in the play a more conspicuous generalizing idea of modern life, of its defining content. Without creating a chain of events logically following one from the other, he revealed life in its deeply hidden layers, echoing on the surface with deaf, random and unexpected shocks for the “acting” persons themselves: Uncle Vanya’s shot, Serebryakov’s departure, random explanations, unexpected quarrels. Thus, in the composition and in the genre of "Uncle Vanya" the unreasonable modern life with her whimsical capricious "logic".
Nature enters the mind of the viewer, organizing the mood of both him and the characters. Chekhov constantly turns to her actors of his play: “Here a thunderstorm is gathering ... Here it is raining, and everything is refreshed ... It is already September. It was cloudy this morning, but now it's sunny. Chekhov thus forces the viewer to mentally go beyond the Serebryakov estate, to see not only a piece of the garden alley, but the whole garden, and, in the future, Astrov's exemplary nursery, and forestry, and all the nature of this region, and Russian forests, rivers, fields. The landscape in "Uncle Vanya", as in other works of Chekhov, helps to understand the main problem of the play: beauty, wealth, expediency, humanism of the world (in the possibility) and ugliness, winglessness, limitation, poverty of social reality.
"Unhappy in this house" is one of the insistent motives of the play. There is no coherence, no harmony, no happiness. Love is either absent, or it is not shared (Sonya - Astrov), or unsuccessful (Voynitsky - Elena Andreevna; Elena Andreevna - Astrov). Each person lives by his own system of feelings, not understanding the other, or only for short moments experiencing contact with the other, and for the most part remaining deeply alien to him.
This alienation of people from each other is exposed by Chekhov the psychologist in the dialogues of the characters, especially clearly revealed in the scene (left unchanged) of the explanation of Sonya and Elena Andreevna. Both sensitive, subtle and smart women, softened and refreshed by a thunderstorm that has just passed, they reconcile and express their innermost feelings and experiences to each other. They seem to achieve complete unanimity and mutual understanding, but it is precisely at the moment of the greatest external contact that a splitting is revealed, parallel, alien and even tactless in relation to the other series of feelings and thoughts. So, Elena Andreevna, having listened to Sonya's confession, immediately forgets about him, thinking about her fate. She, perhaps for the first time, expresses aloud what constantly tormented her: “Actually, Sonya, if you think about it, I am very, very unhappy ... I have no happiness in this world. No". This deeply intimate confession of Elena Andreevna is interrupted by Sonya's laughter (she has already lost contact with her interlocutor and lives in the world of her experiences): "I am so happy ... happy." Chekhov succinctly ends this scene with the word "no", expanding the already created idea of the alienation of people: this is Serebryakov, who does not care about the feelings of two young women, forbids Elena Andreevna to play.
In the same direction of revealing mutual misunderstanding, alienation, Chekhov changes the scene into Act III. Serebryakov gathers everyone to decide " general question- about the fate of the estate. And this "discussion" leads to complete confusion, inconsistency, mutual insults, almost to murder. Everyone comes to the "family council" with some of his own, dominating over all feeling and suffering: Voynitsky with the consciousness of a life lived in vain and with acute pain: he had just been an accidental witness to the explanation of Elena Andreevna with Astrov. Elena Andreyevna arrives in a heightened, nervous, confused state, with a vague, ever-growing desire to "leave here as soon as possible"; Sonya - with the just realized loss of hope for personal happiness.
1. The play "Uncle Vanya" as a continuation and aggravation of the theme.
2. A new type of drama.
3. The theme of philistinism and vulgarity in the drama.
4. Chekhov's dream of the inner liberation of the individual.
Everything should be beautiful in a person: face, clothes, soul, and thoughts. She is beautiful, there is no doubt, but ... after all, she only eats, sleeps, walks, enchants us all with her beauty - and nothing more. She has no responsibilities, others work for her. .. It is so? And an idle life cannot be pure.
A. P. Chekhov
The first line of this excerpt from Dr. Astrov's monologue from A.P. Chekhov's play "Uncle Vanya" became winged. In the broad context of the entire statement, it is rarely used. But it is precisely in these words that the main idea of one of the best, in my opinion, works of the writer lies. Reflections on this play and I have chosen to reveal the theme of the composition.
The theme of a wasted personality, missed opportunities, barren beauty, a senselessly spent life, blind service to an “idol” is the main theme in the play. It continues and deepens the ideological component of Chekhov the writer.
Each of the heroes of the play suffers from the inability or inability to change his life, each understands that he is doing wrong, but he can do nothing about it. Disappointment, helplessness and hopelessness are the main moods of the work. A small family conflict escalates into internal conflict each hero with himself and has no permission. In the end, everything remains the same.
In "Uncle Vanya" (1899) and a little later "Three Sisters" (1901), Chekhov creates new type drama. Before him, the center was a clash of actors, ideas, or insoluble contradictions. In his works everyday life becomes the main and only source of dramatic conflict. All the eternal Russian questions: who is to blame? (A. I. Herzen), what to do? (N. G. Chernyshevsky) and when the real one will come day? (N. A. Dobrolyubov) - find their own ideological embodiment in the plot of Chekhov's plays. As G. A. Vyaly notes, “.. in the world Chekhov's drama everyone or almost everyone suffers, and no one in particular is to blame for this. A.P. Skaftymov deepens this remark: “... it is not individual people but the entire composition of life as a whole.”
Indeed, nothing tragic happens in the lives of the heroes, they are all - some in anguish, some in impotent rage, some in lazy boredom, some in idleness. The established order of life made them worse than they could be. People become vulgarized, like Dr. Astrov, become embittered, like Voinitsky, degenerate like Serebryakov, stay in idleness, like Elena Andreevna, devote their lives to people who do not deserve it, and at the same time patiently bear “their cross” to the end, like Sonya. As a result, they become unfair, indifferent to each other, and most importantly - in relation to themselves. And that's how life goes...
In each of the heroes, the thought is latently ripening that life must certainly change, they talk a lot about this, but there is only one ending - everything returns to its place. The very title of the play indicates the simplicity, everyday ordinariness of what is happening in the life of the characters, themselves. This is a favorite technique of Chekhov the artist. Consider each of the main characters in more detail. Main character Uncle Vanya works on the estate of her late sister's husband, together with his niece Sonya. Almost all his life, he, and now Sonya, have been working to create material well-being Sonya's father - Professor Serebryakov. This subjugation of one's life to someone else's they will explain lofty goal- serving science, helping a “big” person who, it would seem, has achieved a lot in life on his own. In fact, it turns out that Serebryakov is a rather ordinary, mediocre person who was lucky enough to easily take Right place in life. He knows how to speak beautifully, to carry along, to show himself. But at the same time, he lives all his life by someone else's work and does not think about it. Now he is old, sick, irritated, pestering both those around him and his second wife Elena Andreevna with his whims and nit-picking. This beautiful, young woman, whose life is also wasted. She misses, suffers, but nevertheless spends her life in idleness. She is able to captivate. Both Uncle Vanya and Dr. Astrov fall in love with her, but she herself is no longer able to get carried away by anything. The theme of empty beauty is continued in this work. Chekhov's beauty is very different from the beauty of F. M. Dostoevsky, which can save the world. Elena Andreevna is not the embodiment of evil, she is a victim herself, but at the same time she passively destroys the lives of others. Uncle Vanya is torn between hatred for the professor and love for his young wife. Dr. Astrov, who planned to connect his life with the meek and hardworking Sonya, leaves her forever.
The tension rises when Serebryakov decides to sell the estate in order to spend the rest of his life quietly in the capital. The indifference and callousness with which he decides the fate of people close to him is shocking. He is not interested in what will happen to them, those who provided everything necessary and worked for his well-being. The culmination of the play is Uncle Vanya's "rebellion", a shot sounds that does not kill anyone and leads to nothing. Rebellion is useless, just as the whole way of life is meaningless.
Dead and dying beauty is another important leitmotif of the play. "Eccentricity" of Dr. Astrov - in his concern for the thoughtless elimination of forests, the destruction of their majestic age-old beauty. He, who has become a cynic over the years, an indifferent, down-to-earth person, reveals himself in his experiences about nature with better side. This longing is not only about nature, but also about the departing beauty of the earth, integrity and truth in life, human relationships. He dreams of a different order, where “... people are beautiful, flexible ... their speech is elegant, their movements are graceful. Their sciences and arts flourish, their philosophy is not gloomy, their attitude towards women is full of elegant nobility ... ". Elena Andreevna also feels this and regrets this, believing that in all people there is a "demons of destruction" and soon "there will be no loyalty, no purity, no ability to sacrifice oneself on earth."
Astrov himself is also an image of perishing beauty. Smart, gifted, intellectually developed person, capable of deeds, deep feelings, is itself destroyed both externally and internally.
The finale of the play is not comforting: Serebryakov leaves the estate with his wife, Sonya Astrov dies forever, uncle Vanya calms down and returns to his daily activities.
The heroes of this play, like Chekhov's others, talk, think, and argue a lot. But this is the dispute in which truth is not born. The situation has been restored, but this leaves an imprint of tragedy, because along with this, the hope for a better meaningful life forever disappears from the lives of these people.
Chekhov is a master of details, he managed to convey the whole depth of grief, which, according to him own words, "it won't be long before they learn to understand and describe, and which it can convey, it seems only music."
The mention of this pure, bright and elegant life, which the heroes yearn for, is a kind of ideal that the author himself does not know. He only makes it clear that those who work honestly and live their lives common man deserve a different share.
And here Chekhov's dream of a life when everything will be fine both in a person and in his life sounds with particular poignancy. A well-known researcher of the writer's work, G. A. Byaly, rightly noted: “... all his work paved the way and created the prerequisites for the inner liberation of the individual. Chekhov considered this the most important task of art.
