Anton Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard
Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard has become his last will. Eight months before his imminent death, he
sent his play to the Moscow Art Theater, six months before his demise he was present at the
premiere, and a month before his departure to Badenweiler a separate edition of the play came
out. A widespread opinion of the play, shortly after its publication, was expressed by Vladimir
Korolenko, “The Cherry Orchard” by the late Chekhov has already generated a lot of literary
reviews. This time he linked his anguish to the old motif – the nobility’s carelessness and the
nobility’s impoverishment. That is why the impression of this play is much weaker compared to
his other plays let alone his stories. Isn’t it surprising that a whole generation was born and died
after the disaster had befallen the shadowy orchards, cozy parks and dreamy alleys, and now
again, all of a sudden, we are invited to sigh sympathetically about the shadows of the past
which used to inhabit this present-day oblivion? Well, we should save our sighs.” So this theme
goes on and on: ruin and decay after the abolition of serfdom, impoverished estates of the
landed gentry, and the young generation.”
The Chekhovian problem was posed most acutely by some anonymous school-boy who had
read too many text-books, “Chekhov greeted future with his one foot in the past.” The first
paradox of The Cherry Orchard is that practically none of the characters can be fitted into the
customary theatrical and literary roles; they constantly fall out of their social métier:
Ranevskaya and Gayev are presented outside the Turgenevian or Tolstovian poetry of life on
the estate. But such characters also lack satirical spite and the hopelessness of vision typical of
Saltykov-Shchedrin. “You owned living souls! This has transformed all of you, both living before
and now…,” Peter Trofimov accuses. But wait! What and who can Ranevskaya own if she is not
even a master of her own emotions!
Her brother who has “eaten all his substance” in, as he himself admits, sugar-candies is even
less fit for the role of an owner. “I think, Ermolai Alexeyevich, that you’re a rich man, and you’ll
soon be a millionaire, just as the wild beast which eats everything it finds is needed for changes
to take place in matter, so you are needed too,” – the same Trofimov castigates Lopakhin. But
this is just an on-the-spot opinion which is hard to believe. A little later, Trofimov notices
something different in the “wild beast”: “You have thin and delicate fingers, like an artist; you
have a subtle and delicate soul.” In his letter, Chekhov put it quite definitely: “Lopakhin must be
played not by a loud-mouth. This should not necessarily be a merchant. This is somebody with a
gentle soul.” Thus Chekhov’s merchant was conceived in defiance of the tradition outlined by
Ostrovsky or Saltykov-Schedrin.
And the “eternal student” and the “decayed gentleman” who is Petya Trofimov with his dreams
of a brighter future and his vision of “Russia as an orchard” is far for the canonical depiction of
the new man in any sense – in the Turgenev style, as a hero from a novel about new people, or
in the Gorkov style such as Niel in “The Philistines.” On the outside, the play rather shows a
clash between social exceptions than between social types. Individual traits in Chekhov’s
characters – their eccentricity, whims, psychological nuances – are far more important than
social guises which they are sometimes eager to put on. In The Cherry Orchard, through the
whims and contingencies of individual reactions, through the web of the verbiage we see the
iron law of social necessity, the silent tread of history. True, Ranevskaya and her brother are
kind, charming, and they are personally not guilty of the sins of serfdom of which the “eternal
student” accuses them. Still the servants in the kitchen are fed with a pea-slop. Fiers, “the last
of the Mohicans,” is left alone to die in the abandoned house, and Yasha, the footman, is the
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hideous product of this life. True, Lopakhin is a merchant with a subtle soul and delicate fingers.
He tries to break from the straight-jacket of the role imposed on him: he persuades, he
reminds, he coaxes, he lends money. In the end, however, he does exactly what Shchedrin’s
Kolupayev or Razuvayev did without unnecessary pondering and emotions - he becomes an axe
in the hands of the fate – he buys and chops the cherry orchard, “the one unrivaled in the world
in its beauty.” Meanwhile the “eternal student” with receding hair, hungry, like a rolling stone
which gathers no moss, but full of inexplicable premonitions, manages to walk away with yet
another bride like one in the last Chekhov’s story. He looks into the future but is unable to find
his tattered galoshes like the old philosopher who fell into a pit because he had been looking at
the stars in the sky.
Thus Chekhov attests to the logic of history without being downright social: the world is
changing, the orchard is doomed and no merchant is able to change anything – for any
Lopakhin there is a Deriganov. This, however, is not the focal point of this strange Chekhov’s
comedy. Shadowed by the old motifs, deep down in the simple, run-of-the mill and boring story
of the gentry’s bankruptcy and of the estate that changes hands, there is a “strong-willed
intention and another drama.” The peculiar character of the conflict in Chekhov’s play was
most deeply and precisely defined some time ago by Alexander Pavlovich Skaftymov. Chekhov’s
drama and conflict are not in the intentionality of the opposing parties but in the objective
contradictions which make individual will effortless. Every play pronounces: it is not individual
people who are to blame but life in general. While dwelling on this subject, it is customary to
speak about the outside and inside movement, about the outer and inner plot of Chekhov’s
stories and plays. Multifarious themes, motifs, comparisons and cross-talks in The Cherry
Orchard make up a whimsical yet an utterly logical pattern. No wonder that critics mention not
only the narrative character of Chekhov’s drama but also its lyrical nature and musical
structure. Indeed, the principle of reiteration, of regular reminder and flashbacks here is as
important as in poetry.
Almost every character in the play has its regular theme: Epikhodov is forever complaining
about some misfortunes, Simeonov-Pishchik is feverishly hunting for money, Ranevskaya
mentions three times the telegram from Paris, Varya’s and Lopakhin’s relationship is mentioned
a few times; Gayev, Ranevskaya, Charlotta and Lopakhin reminisce their childhood. But mostly
these characters are engaged in musing over the passing and slipping life. The principal
character which is invisible in Chekhov’s plays as well as in his other works is the mercilessly
passing time. This phrase by Maria Alexandrovna Kallash was particularly appreciated by Bunin
who, in fact, did not like Chekhov’s plays. The fate of man in the stream of time – this is how
the inner plot of The Cherry Orchard can be defined, lyrically and abstractedly but, it seems,
precisely. Indeed, the play is crammed with temporal signs, milestones, rings and signals. Here
is the time-frame of the first act: the train is two hours late, Ranevskaya had left the estate five
years before; Lopakhin recollects when he was fifteen years old, he is going to take the five
o’clock train to Kharkov and plans to come back in three weeks; he speculates about “the villa
resident who in twenty years will be all over the place” while Fiers recollects his days of yore –
forty or fifty years ago. Anya recalls her father who died six years ago and her little brother who
was drowned a few months later. Gayev presents himself as a man from the eighties and
suggests celebrating a centenary of the “much respected book-case.” Immediately the fatal
date of the auction – August 22 – is announced.
The time-frame of characters is of varied nature. It is measured in minutes, months, years, i.e. it
has different bench-marks. Fiers’s is almost fabled, it is all in the past and does not seem to
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have well-defined contours – “I have lived long.” Lopakhin’s is precise to the hour and minute.
Trofimov’s is all in the future. It is as vast and undefined as Fiers’s past. Being winners or losers
in the outer plot, the characters of The Cherry Orchard look strikingly similar in the inner plot.
At different moments, seemingly unfit, amidst their mundane interlocution, they come across
the unconceivable phenomenon of life and human existence. Their words are as simple as
bleating, there is neither wisdom in them nor any philosophy of time if we judge them from the
standpoint of the objective logic of drama. There is, however, something different in them – the
profound truth of a lyrical state which is similar to the simple Pushkin’s verse, “ Day after day,
and every hour carries away a particle of existence. And we, two of us, intend to live on and
then we’ll die.” Almost every character, even the most absurd one, with the exception of Yasha,
the new footman overly contented with himself, has his moment of truth, the moment of a
sober perception of himself. This is a painful perception because it reveals solitude, failures,
slipping life and missed opportunities. But this perception is also healing because it reveals,
behind the merry vaudeville disguise, living and anguished souls.
Chekhov’s characters were popularly called “sullen people” after the titles of collected short
stories of the 1880’s. Probably a more general and precise definition would be “nervous
people.” The word “nervous” got into Russian dictionaries in the early 19th century, but in
literature it was virtually unknown. In Pushkin’s works it appears only once, in a critical article
at that. Then we see two words – the “nerves” and “neurotic” – in the “Unfinished Novel in
Letters.” Nervousness is just a peripheral feature in the world of Pushkin and his
contemporaries, it occasionally surfaces in the description of certain characters, say,
sentimental young ladies of society. The world itself inhabited by Pushkin’s, Gogol’s and later
Turgenev’s, Goncharov’s and Tolstoy’s heroes may be tragic, but basically it is stable and
steady. Suddenly everything around was shattered, the bottom fell out. Screams, hysteria, fits
of uncontrollable emotions from something exceptional turned into a norm. “How neurotic
everybody is, how nervous,” pronounces his diagnosis Doctor Dorn in The Seagull. “He felt that
the nerves of this crying and shuddering girl responded his ached and twitchy nerves, like iron
responds magnet,” – this is how love between the characters of The Cherry Orchard is
described. Nervousness is the measure of the artistic world for Dr Chekhov. In The Cherry
Orchard it becomes a universal form of existence, it is in the composite atmosphere of the play.
The atmosphere of frailty, instability, nervousness and “living apart” becomes a dominant
feature, the soul and heart of The Cherry Orchard, “My hands are shaking. I shall faint.”
(Dunyasha); “I didn’t get any sleep for four nights on the train. I was so bothered.” (Anya);
“Glad to be at home? I can’t get over it.” (Ranevskaya); “My hands are shaking: I haven’t been
playing the billiards for a long while.” (Gayev); “My heart is pounding.” (Varya); “Wait, ladies
and gentlemen, do me a favor, my head is going round, I can’t talk.” (Lopakhin).
Still, the central character of Chekhov’s comedy that falls out of the general atmosphere of
nervousness and “living apart” does exist, though this character is not always noticed.
Korolenko, whose opinion was given above, was one of the first to see a particular place of this
character in the comedy. According to Korolenko, “The principal character of this last drama, its
center which probably invites most sympathy, is the cherry orchard which had grown over in
the oblivion of serfdom and now is doomed to be cut down because of the careless immorality,
egotism and maladjustment to life of the proponents of serfdom.” Some time before, in the
late 1880’s, Chekhov chose “the steppe which was lost” as the principal character of his short
novel. Human fates in it were checked by nature. The landscape was more important than the
genre. The structure of the last comedy is similar to the novel, so is the poetics of the title
which pushes to the foreground their central characters – the steppe and the cherry orchard.
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Like other characters, the cherry orchard belongs to two plots. Its empirical and mundane signs
are present: the windows of the house open onto the trees in blossom, in the past it used to
bring rich crops, there is an article about this orchard in some encyclopedia, in the end merry
woodcutters cut the trees down. In the inner plot, however, the orchard turns into a simple yet
a profound symbol which makes it possible to combine various motifs of the play and to
disclose its characters outside a direct conflict. Speculations of the characters about time, past
and future are linked to the orchard. It is the orchard that prompts confessional monologues
and marks the turning points of the plot, “I am at home! I will get up tomorrow in the morning
and run to the orchard.” (Anya); “The location is wonderful, the river is deep. What we need is
to clean and, for instance, to pull down these old structures, this old house which is good for
nothing, to cut down the cherry orchard.” (Lopakhin); “Cut down? My dear man, you must
excuse me, but you don’t understand anything at all. If there is anything interesting or
remarkable in the whole province, it’s this cherry orchard of ours.” (Ranevskaya); “The only
remarkable thing about the orchard is that it’s very large.” (Lopakhin); “The orchard is all white.
You haven’t forgotten, Lyuba, have you? This long alley goes straight on, just as a stretched
belt, it is bright at nights under the moon. Do you remember? You haven’t forgotten?” (Gayev);
“All Russia is our orchard. The land is great and beautiful, there are many marvelous places in
it.” (Trofimov); “Come and look at Ermolai Lopakhin laying his axe to the cherry orchard, come
and look at the trees falling! We'll build villas here, and our grandsons and great-grandsons will
see a new life here.” (Lopakhin); “My dear, my gentle, beautiful cherry orchard! My life, my
youth, my happiness, good-bye! Good-bye!” (Ranevskaya)
Chekhov’s image was toughly rebuffed by Ivan Bunin who considered himself to be an expert in
garden culture. The author of The Antonov Apples saw in the play only its outer plot and
reproached Chekhov for an inaccuracy, “Contrary to Chekhov, in Russia there have never been
orchards all planted with cherry trees only: in the gardens on estates there were only parts,
sometimes quite spacious, with cherry trees, and again, contrary to Chekhov, these trees have
never grown near the owner’s house; for there has never been anything remarkable about
cherry trees, not beautiful at all and, as it is known, quite gnarled, with small leafs and small
flowers at the time of blossom (quite different from what blossoms so handsomely and lavishly
right under the windows of the mansion of the Art theater.)” Contemporary theater director
Anatoly Efros has a different opinion, “With the coming of Chekhov’s play this truth of Bunin
(he might be right in part) stopped to look veritable. Such theaters now exist in our minds even
if they did not exist never existed in reality.” This cherry orchard is similar to the Moscow from
Three Sisters – one cannot get there even though it is just out the window. This is a place of
dreams, reminiscences, recumbence, and futile hopes. A second key symbol of the play is the
sound of the breaking string. It seems this string first emerged in Gogol’s Diary of a Madman,
“The bluish-gray mist spreading underfoot; the string reverberating in the mist; the sea from
one side, Italy from another; and there are Russian log cabins. Is it my house that looks blue in
the distance?” Parallels to Chekhov’s image can be found in different works by Heinrich Heine,
Anton Delvig, Ivan Turgenev, Alexander Kuprin, and in Russian translations of Hamlet. Still Leo
Tolstoy turns out to be closest in this respect. In the epilogue to War and Peace he speaks
about the crossroads of different epochs, about the end of one convolution of the historical
spiral and the beginning of another one. Pierre Bezukhov muses, “All that is young and honest
is crushed! Everything is strained to such a degree that it will certainly break.” Some time later
he says, “When you stand expecting the overstrained string to snap at any moment, when
everyone is expecting the inevitable catastrophe, as many as possible must join hands as closely
as they can do to withstand the general calamity.” The overstrained string snapped at the end
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of the play though no one heard it with the exception of the author. General calamity is taken
by the characters as their personal loss or success.
If the cherry orchard is the focal point of the depicted world, the sound of the breaking string is
the sign and symbol of its end; the end in its totality without dividing the world into the sinners
and the righteous, the guilty and not guilty. The characters, almost all of them, escape from the
present reality. And this is its sentence the sentence. On the other hand, the end of the cherry
orchard is the sentence, in different measure, of course, to those who could not or would not
save it. At the beginning of the 20th century Chekhov discerned a new form of human existence:
escaping from the shadows of the past, the loss of the house and the demise of the orchard and
starting on a new and broad road which frightens with future and “living apart.” The
abandoned house is like a paradise lost, “Life has gone as if I had not lived, and there is no
protection from the fate.” “The distant sound is heard, as if from the sky, of a breaking string,
dying away sadly. Silence follows it and only the sound is heard, some way away in the orchard,
of the axes falling on the trees. Curtain.” This is how Chekhov’s comedy ends.
Fifteen years later a man of letters who familiarly called Chekhov “our Antosha Chekhonte” in
his version of the Divine Comedy substituted the sound of the breaking string with the rumbling
noise of iron and thus dropped his own curtain behind Russia’s past. “With clanging, screeching
and clattering the iron curtain is falling over Russian history. End of show, the audience has
stood up from the chairs. Time to put on fur coats and get back home. But it looks like there are
neither coats nor homes to be found.” (Vassily Rozanov, The Apocalypse of Our Time)
Quotes from the play are from Julius West’s translation of
The Cherry Orchard, 1916.
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