The originality of the comedy The Cherry Orchard. Ideological and artistic originality of the play “The Cherry Orchard”
The play was written in 1903. The action takes place in the spring on the estate of Lyubov Andreevna Ranevskaya. She is ruined, she has squandered her fortune, the estate with a beautiful cherry orchard may soon be sold for debts. The merchant Lopakhin (who has loved Ranevskaya since his youth) proposes to divide the land into plots and rent them out to summer residents in order to save them from sale. Lyubov Andreevna cannot imagine how it is possible to cut down the cherry orchard and let summer residents-tenants onto the land where she grew up, where her youth and happiness were. Summer passes in inactivity. At the end, Ermolai Lopakhin buys the estate at auction. He is happy because... his father and grandfather were serfs on this estate, and he is now a rich merchant and owner of a beautiful estate. The former owners (Ranevskaya and Gaev - brother and sister) are leaving to live in poverty. They forgot!!! in the empty house of the old man - the servant Firs. The theme of the play is the change of masters of life in Russia, and not just the owners of the estate. The play is a tragic biography of a dying era. “I wrote a comedy! Why did you make a tearful drama?” - said Chekhov. There is a lot of humor and irony in the play; the remark “everyone is laughing” is often found. The ending of the play is ambiguous. On the one hand, the young heroes are filled with optimism and faith in a new life, with whom the author’s hopes for the future are connected. On the other hand, Firs is forgotten, the garden is being cut down - the play ends with the sad sound of a broken string and blows of an ax. Comedy? Tragedy? There is no definite answer; this is the genre uniqueness of the work.
16. Trilogy about case life. Analysis of stories by A.P. Chekhov
The “little trilogy” included 3 stories: “The Man in a Case”, “Gooseberry”, “About Love”. They are united by plot, composition, and ideas. A.P. Chekhov touches on the problem of case life here. The word “case” itself is symbolic. It personifies not only a specific object, but also a narrow, closed, destructive way of life. At the same time, a person may not even be aware of what exists in the case, trying to close himself off from the big outside world, moving away from real life.
Each of the three characters tells 1 story. Teacher Burkin talks about his colleague Belikov (“Man in a Case”). Belikov was always afraid of breaking any prohibition or order and terrorized everyone with this. Belikov hid all his things in a case. Once he liked Varenka Kovalenko, the sister of the geography teacher, but when he saw her on a bicycle, Belikov was indignant. For him this was unheard of audacity. After the hero was lowered down the stairs, Belikov went to bed and never got up again. Only now a semblance of a smile appeared on his face. This image is depicted grotesquely and symbolically. Only in death does Belikov finally find his eternal case. It’s amazing how such an insignificant person could keep the entire city in fear?! Why did everyone else indulge his fears and not resist? The solution to this issue lies in the social atmosphere of violence of that time.
Ivan Ivanovich talks about his brother (“Gooseberry”) who spent his life to buy a small estate. The landowner Alyokhin talks about his failed love due to the conventions of society (“About Love”).
All the stories are united by the problem of “caseness” (isolation, fear).
The play does not have a classical plot, climax and dramatic action in the classical understanding of these concepts. “The Cherry Orchard,” like all of Chekhov’s plays, is different from the usual dramatic works. It is devoid of spectacular scenes and external variety. The main event - the sale of the estate with the cherry orchard - takes place not in front of the audience, but behind the scenes. On stage, the viewer sees scenes of everyday life (people talk about everyday trifles, quarrel and make up, rejoice at the meeting, sad about the upcoming separation).
In a comedy there are 4 actions that are not divided into phenomena. The time frame for the play is from May to October. The composition is circular - the play begins with Ranevskaya’s arrival from Paris and ends with her departure to Paris. The composition itself reflects the meaningless, dull and uneventful life of the nobles. To understand the author’s attitude to what is happening and the characters, you need to pay close attention to the carefully thought-out system of images, the arrangement of characters, the alternation of mise-en-scène, the coupling of monologues and dialogues, and individual remarks and the author’s remarks.
Act one
Exposition. Characters awaiting Ranevskaya's arrival from Paris. Viewer
sees the situation in the house, where everyone talks and thinks about their own things, where an atmosphere of alienation and disunity reigns.
The beginning. Ranevskaya appears with her daughter. It turns out that the estate is up for auction. Lopakhin suggests giving it away as a dacha, but Gaev and Ranevskaya are unable to make such a decision. This is the beginning of a conflict, but not so much between people, but between generations, past and present. The Cherry Orchard- a metaphor for the beautiful past of the nobles who are unable to preserve it. Time itself carries conflict.
Act two
Development of action. The fate of the cherry orchard and Ranevskaya's estate is being decided.
Act three
Climax. Somewhere behind the scenes the estate and cherry orchard are being sold, and
stage - an absurd ball organized by Ranevskaya with her last money.
Act four
Denouement. After the problem is resolved, everyone calms down and rushes to the future - they leave. The blows of an ax can be heard - this is the cherry orchard being cut down. In the final scene, the old servant Firs remains in the boarded up house.
The originality of the composition lies in the natural development of the action, complicated
parallel lines, digressions, everyday trifles, extra-plot
motives, in the nature of dialogues. The dialogues are varied in content (everyday, comic, lyrical, dramatic). The author often interrupts them with something insignificant and trivial, trying to convey the spontaneity of real life. Chekhov's innovation is that the play is extremely close to life.
The events in the play can only be called a rehearsal for a conflict that will happen in the future. It is unknown what will happen to the characters in the play next and how their lives will turn out.
Features of the genre of the play by A.P. Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard"
The remarkable merits of the play “The Cherry Orchard” and its innovative features have long been unanimously recognized by progressive critics. But when it comes to the genre features of the play, this unanimity gives way to differences of opinion. Some see the play “The Cherry Orchard” as a comedy, others as a drama, and others as a tragicomedy. What is this play - drama, comedy, tragicomedy?
Before answering this question, it is necessary to note that Chekhov, striving for truth in life, for naturalness, created plays that were not purely dramatic or comedic, but of a very complex form.
In his plays, “the dramatic is realized in an organic mixture with the comic” [Byaly, 1981:48], and the comic is manifested in an organic interweaving with the dramatic.
Chekhov's plays are unique genre formations that can be called dramas or comedies, only bearing in mind their leading genre tendency, and not the consistent implementation of the principles of drama or comedy in their traditional understanding.
A convincing example of this is the play “The Cherry Orchard.” Already completing this play, Chekhov wrote to Vl on September 2, 1903. To I. Nemirovich-Danchenko: “I’ll call the play a comedy”
On September 15, 1903, he reported to M. P. Alekseeva (Lilina): “What came out of me was not a drama, but a comedy, in some places even a farce.”
Calling the play a comedy, Chekhov relied on the comic motifs prevailing in it. If, when answering the question about the genre of this play, we keep in mind the leading tendency in the structure of its images and plot, then we will have to admit that it is based not on a dramatic, but on a comedic principle. Drama presupposes the drama of the positive heroes of the play, that is, those to whom the author gives his main sympathies.
In this sense, such plays by A.P. Chekhov as “Uncle Vanya” and “Three Sisters” are dramas. In the play “The Cherry Orchard,” the author’s main sympathies belong to Trofimov and Anya, who do not experience any drama.
To recognize “The Cherry Orchard” as a drama means to recognize the experiences of the owners of the cherry orchard, the Gaevs and Ranevskys, as truly dramatic, capable of evoking deep sympathy and compassion of people who go not back, but forward, into the future.
But this could not have happened in the play. Chekhov does not defend, does not affirm, but exposes the owners of the cherry orchard; he shows their emptiness and insignificance, their complete incapacity for serious experiences.
The play “The Cherry Orchard” cannot be recognized as a tragicomedy. To do this, it lacks either tragicomic heroes or tragicomic situations that run through the entire play and determine its end-to-end action. Gaev, Ranevskaya, Pischik are too small as tragicomic heroes. Yes, in addition, the leading optimistic idea, expressed in positive images, clearly emerges in the play. It is more correct to call this play a lyrical comedy.
The comedy of The Cherry Orchard is determined, firstly, by the fact that its positive images, such as Trofimov and Anya, are not shown dramatically. Drama is not characteristic of these images, either socially or individually. Both in their inner essence and in the author’s assessment, these images are optimistic.
The image of Lopakhin is also clearly undramatic, which, in comparison with the images of local nobles, is shown as relatively positive and major. The comedy of the play is confirmed, secondly, by the fact that of the two owners of the cherry orchard, one (Gaev) is presented primarily comically, and the second (Ranevskaya) in such dramatic situations that mainly contribute to showing their negative essence.
The comic basis of the play is clearly visible, thirdly, in the comic-satirical depiction of almost all the minor characters: Epikhodov, Pishchik, Charlotte, Yasha, Dunyasha.
“The Cherry Orchard” also includes obvious motifs of vaudeville, even farce, expressed in jokes, tricks, jumping, and Charlotte’s dressing up. In terms of its themes and the nature of its artistic interpretation, “The Cherry Orchard” is a deeply social play. It has very strong accusatory motives.
Here the most important questions for that time are raised: the liquidation of the noble-estate economy, its final replacement with capitalism, the growth of democratic forces, etc.
With a clearly expressed socio-comedy basis in the play “The Cherry Orchard”, lyrical-dramatic and socio-psychological motives are clearly manifested: lyrical-dramatic and socio-psychological motives are most fully expressed in the depiction of Ranevskaya and Varya; lyrical and socio-psychological, especially in the depiction of Anya.
The originality of the genre of “The Cherry Orchard” was very well revealed by M. Gorky, who defined this play as a lyrical comedy.
"A.P. Chekhov,” he writes in the article “0 plays,” “created... a completely original type of play - a lyrical comedy” (M. Gorky, Collected Works, vol. 26, Goslitizdat, M. , 1953, p. 422).
But the lyrical comedy “The Cherry Orchard” is still perceived by many as a drama. For the first time such an interpretation of “The Cherry Orchard” was given by the Art Theater. October 20, 1903 K.S. Stanislavsky, after reading “The Cherry Orchard,” wrote to Chekhov: “This is not a comedy... this is a tragedy, no matter what outcome to a better life you discover in the last act... I was afraid that during the second reading the play would not captivate me. Where to go!! I cried like a woman, I wanted to, but I couldn’t hold it in” (K, S. Stanislavsky, Articles. Speeches. Conversations. Letters, “Iskusstvo” publishing house, M., 1953 , pp. 150 -- 151).
In his memoirs about Chekhov, dating back to around 1907, Stanislavsky characterizes The Cherry Orchard as “a difficult drama of Russian life” (Ibid., p. 139).
K.S. Stanislavsky misunderstood and underestimated the power of the accusatory pathos directed against the representatives of the then departing world (Ranevskaya, Gaev, Pishchik), and in connection with this, in his directorial decision of the play, he overemphasized the lyrical-dramatic line associated with these characters.
Taking the drama of Ranevskaya and Gaev seriously, wrongfully putting forward a sympathetic attitude towards them and to some extent muting the accusatory and optimistic orientation of the play, Stanislavsky staged “The Cherry Orchard” in a dramatic manner. Expressing the erroneous point of view of the leaders of the Art Theater on The Cherry Orchard, N. Efros wrote:
“... no part of Chekhov’s soul was with Lopakhin. But part of his soul, rushing into the future, also belonged to “mortuos”, “The Cherry Orchard”. Otherwise, the image of a doomed, dying, leaving historical scene it wouldn’t be so tender” (N. Efros, “The Cherry Orchard” staged by the Moscow Art Theater, Pg., 1919, p. 36).
Based on the dramatic key, evoking sympathy for Gaev, Ranevskaya and Pischik, emphasizing their drama, all their first performers played these roles - Stanislavsky, Knipper, Gribunin. So, for example, characterizing the play of Stanislavsky - Gaev, N. Efros wrote: “this is a big child, pitiful and funny, but touching in its helplessness... There was an atmosphere of the subtlest humor around the figure. And at the same time she radiated great touching... everything in auditorium together with Firs, they felt something tender for this stupid, decrepit child, with signs of degeneration and spiritual decline, the “heir” of a dying culture... And even those who are not at all prone to sentimentality, to whom the harsh laws of historical necessity and class changes are sacred figures on the historical stage - even they probably gave moments of some compassion, a sigh of sympathetic or sympathetic sadness to this Gaev" (Ibid., pp. 81 - 83).
In the performance of the artists of the Art Theater, the images of the owners of the cherry orchard turned out to be clearly larger, nobler, more beautiful, and spiritually complex than in Chekhov’s play. It would be unfair to say that the leaders of the Art Theater did not notice or ignored the comedy of “The Cherry Orchard.”
By staging this play, K.S. Stanislavski made such extensive use of its comedic motifs that it aroused strong objections from those who considered it a consistently pessimistic drama.
Critic N. Nikolaev also expressed dissatisfaction with the excessive, deliberate comedy of the stage embodiment of “The Cherry Orchard” at the Art Theater. “When,” he wrote, “the oppressive present foreshadows an even more difficult future, Charlotte Ivanovna appears and passes, leading a little dog on a long ribbon and with her entire exaggerated, highly comic figure causes laughter in the auditorium... For me, this laughter is - was a tub of cold water... The mood turned out to be irreparably spoiled
But the real mistake of the first producers of The Cherry Orchard was not that they played up many of the play’s comic episodes, but that they neglected comedy as the leading principle of the play. Revealing Chekhov's play as a heavy drama of Russian life, the leaders of the Art Theater gave space to its comedy, but only subordinately; secondary.
M.N. Stroeva is right in defining the stage interpretation of the play “The Cherry Orchard” at the Art Theater as a tragicomedy
Interpreting the play in this regard, the direction of the Art Theater showed the representatives of the passing world (Ranevskaya, Gaev, Pishchik) as more internally rich and positive than they really are, and excessively increased sympathy for them. As a result, the subjective drama of the departing people sounded more deeply in the performance than was necessary.
As for the objective-comic essence of these people, the exposure of their inconsistency, this side was clearly not sufficiently revealed in the play. Chekhov could not agree with such an interpretation of The Cherry Orchard. S. Lyubosh remembers Chekhov at one of the first performances of “The Cherry Orchard” - sad and detached. “There was a roar of success in the packed theater, and Chekhov sadly repeated:
Not that, not that...
What's wrong?
Everything is wrong: both the play and the performance. I didn't get what I wanted. I saw something completely different, and they couldn’t understand what I wanted” (S. Lyubosh, “The Cherry Orchard.” Chekhov’s Anniversary Collection, M., 1910, p. 448).
Protesting against the false interpretation of his play, Chekhov, in a letter to O.L. Knipper wrote on April 10, 1904: “Why is my play so persistently called a drama on posters and in newspaper advertisements? Nemirovich and Alekseev positively see in my play something other than what I wrote, and I am ready to give any word - that both of them have never read my play carefully” (A.P. Chekhov, Complete collection works and letters, vol. 20, Goslitizdat, M., 1951, p. 265).
Chekhov was outraged by the purely slow pace of the play, especially the painfully drawn out IV act. “You have an act that should last 12 minutes maximum,” he wrote to O.L. Knipper, it takes 40 minutes. I can say one thing: Stanislavsky ruined my play” (Ibid., p. 258).
In April 1904, talking with the director of the Alexandrinsky Theater, Chekhov said:
“Is this my “Cherry Orchard”?.. Are these my types?.. With the exception of two or three performers, all this is not mine... I write life... This is a gray, ordinary life... But this is not boring whining... Sometimes they make me a crybaby, sometimes they just boring writer...And I wrote several volumes funny stories. And criticism casts me as some kind of mourner... They invent for me from their own heads what they themselves want, but I didn’t even think about it, and never saw it in a dream... It’s starting to make me angry.”
This is understandable, since the perception of the play as a drama dramatically changed its ideological orientation. What Chekhov laughed at, with such a perception of the play, already required deep sympathy.
By defending his play as a comedy, Chekhov, in fact, defended the correct understanding of its ideological meaning. The leaders of the Art Theater, in turn, could not remain indifferent to Chekhov’s statements that they were embodying “The Cherry Orchard” in a false way. Thinking about the text of the play and its stage embodiment, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko were forced to admit that they misunderstood the play. But it is misunderstood, in their opinion, not in its fundamental sense, but in its particulars. The performance underwent changes along the way.
In December 1908, V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko wrote: “Look at The Cherry Orchard, and you will not at all recognize in this lacy, graceful picture the heavy and heavy drama that the Orchard was in the first year” (V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, Letter to N.E. Efros (second half of December 1908), “Theater”, 1947, No. 4, p. 64).
In 1910, in a speech to the artists of the Art Theater K.S. Stanislavsky said:
“Let many of you admit that you did not immediately understand “The Cherry Orchard.” Years passed, and time confirmed Chekhov was right. It became clearer and clearer to the leaders of the Art Theater that the need for more decisive changes in the performance in the direction indicated by Chekhov became clearer and clearer.
Resuming the play “The Cherry Orchard” after a ten-year break, the directors of the Art Theater introduced into it major changes: significantly accelerated the pace of its development; the first act was comedically enlivened; they removed excessive psychologism in the main characters and increased their exposure. This was especially reflected in the play of Stanislavsky - Gaev, “His image,” noted in Izvestia, “is now revealed primarily from a purely comedic side. We would say that idleness, lordly daydreaming, the complete inability to take on any work and truly childish carelessness were completely exposed by Stanislavsky. Stanislavsky's new Gaev is a most convincing example of harmful worthlessness. Knipper-Chekhova began to play even more openly, even easier, revealing her Ranevskaya in the same plane of “exposure” (Yur. Sobolev, “The Cherry Orchard” at the Art Theater, “Izvestia” dated May 25, 1928, No. 120).
The fact that the initial interpretation of “The Cherry Orchard” at the Art Theater was the result of a misunderstanding of the text of the play was acknowledged by its directors not only in correspondence, in a narrow circle of artists of the Art Theater, but also before the general public. V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, speaking in 1929 in connection with the 25th anniversary of the first performance of “The Cherry Orchard,” said: “And this wonderful work was not understood at first... maybe our performance will require some changes, some rearrangements, at least in particulars; But regarding the version that Chekhov wrote vaudeville, that this play should be staged in a satirical context, I say with complete conviction that this should not happen. There is a satirical element in the play - both in Epikhodov and in other persons, but pick up the text and you will see: there is “crying”, in another place - “crying”, but in vaudeville they will not cry! Vl.I. Ne mirovich-Danchenko, Articles. Speeches. Conversations. Letters, ed. "Art", 1952, pp. 108 - 109).
It is true that The Cherry Orchard is not a vaudeville act. But it’s unfair that they supposedly don’t cry in vaudeville, and based on the presence of crying people, “The Cherry Orchard” is considered a heavy drama. For example, in Chekhov’s vaudeville “The Bear” the landowner and her lackey cry, and in his vaudeville “The Proposal” Lomov cries and Chubukova groans. In the vaudeville “Az and Fert” by P. Fedorov, Lyubushka and Akulina cry. In the vaudeville “Teacher and Student” by A. Pisarev, Lyudmila and Dasha cry. In the vaudeville "Hussar Girl" Kony Laura cries. The point is not in the presence or even in the number of people crying, but in the nature of the crying.
When, through tears, Dunyasha says: “I broke the saucer,” and Pishchik says, “Where is the money?”, this evokes not a dramatic, but a comic reaction. Sometimes tears express joyful excitement: for Ranevskaya at her first entry into the nursery upon returning to her homeland, for the devoted Firs, who was waiting for his mistress to arrive.
Often tears signify special cordiality: in Gaev, when addressing Anya in the first act (“my little one. My child”...); in Trofimov, calming Ranevskaya (in the first act) and then telling her: “after all, he robbed you” (in the third act); at Lopakhin, calming Ranevskaya (at the end of the third act).
Tears as an expression are acute dramatic situations in The Cherry Orchard are very rare. These moments can be recounted: in Ranevskaya in the first act, when meeting with Trofimov, who reminded her of her drowned son, and in the third act, in an argument with Trofimov, when she remembers her son again; at Gaev's - upon returning from the auction; in Varya - after a failed explanation with Lopakhin (fourth act); at Ranevskaya and Gaev - before the last exit from the house. But at the same time, the personal drama of the main characters in “The Cherry Orchard” does not evoke such sympathy from the author, which would be the basis for the drama of the entire play.
Chekhov strongly disagreed that there were a lot of people crying in his play. "Where are they? - he wrote to Nemirovich-Danchenko on October 23, 1903. - Only Varya, but this is because Varya is a crybaby by nature, and her tears should not arouse sad feelings in the viewer. I often see “through tears,” but this only shows the mood of the faces, not the tears” (A. P. Chekhov, Complete Works and Letters, vol. 20, Goslitizdat, M., 1951, pp. 162 - 163) .
It is necessary to understand that the basis of the lyrical pathos of the play “The Cherry Orchard” is created by representatives not of the old, but of the new world - Trofimov and Anya, their lyricism is optimistic. The drama in the play “The Cherry Orchard” is obvious. This is the drama experienced by representatives of the old world and is fundamentally associated with the protection of dying forms of life.
Drama associated with the defense of passing, selfish forms of life cannot evoke the sympathy of advanced readers and viewers and is unable to become positive pathos progressive works. And naturally, this drama did not become the leading pathos of the play “The Cherry Orchard.”
But in the dramatic states of the characters in this play there is also something that can evoke a sympathetic response from any reader and viewer. One cannot sympathize with Ranevskaya mainly - in the loss of the cherry orchard, in her bitter love wanderings. But when she remembers and cries about her seven-year-old son who drowned in the river, she feels humanly sorry. One can sympathize with her when she, wiping away tears, tells how she was drawn from Paris to Russia, to her homeland, to her daughter, and then when she says goodbye forever to the home where she passed away. happy years her childhood, adolescence, youth...
The drama of “The Cherry Orchard” is private, not defining, not leading. The stage embodiment of “The Cherry Orchard”, given by the Art Theater in a dramatic manner, does not correspond to the ideological pathos and genre originality of this play. To achieve this compliance, not partial amendments are required, but fundamental changes to the first edition of the play.
Revealing the fully optimistic pathos of the play, it is necessary to replace the dramatic basis of the performance with a comedy-no-lyric one. The prerequisites for this are found in the statements of K.S. himself. Stanislavsky. Emphasizing the importance of a more vivid stage transfer of Chekhov's dream, he wrote:
"IN fiction the end of the past and the beginning this century he was one of the first to sense the inevitability of the revolution, when it was only in its infancy and society continued to wallow in excesses. He was one of the first to give a wake-up call. Who, if not he, began to cut down a beautiful, blooming cherry orchard, realizing that his time had passed, that the old life was irrevocably condemned to be scrapped... Give Lopakhin in “The Cherry Orchard” the scope of Chaliapin, and young Anya the temperament of Yermolova, and let the first, with all his might, chops down the obsolete, and the young girl, anticipating, together with Petya Trofimov, the approach of a new era, will shout to the whole world: “Hello, new life! - and you will understand that “The Cherry Orchard” is a living, close, modern play for us, that Chekhov’s voice sounds cheerful and fiery in it, for he himself looks not back, but forward.”
There is no doubt that the first theatrical edition of The Cherry Orchard did not have the pathos that sounds in Stanislavsky’s just quoted words. These words already contain a different understanding of “The Cherry Orchard” than that which was characteristic of the leaders of the Art Theater in 1904. But while affirming the comedic-lyrical beginning of The Cherry Orchard, it is important, in an organic fusion with comic-satirical and major-lyrical motifs, to fully reveal the lyrical-dramatic, elegiac motifs embodied in the play with such amazing subtlety and power. Chekhov not only denounced and ridiculed the heroes of his play, but also showed their subjective drama.
Chekhov's abstract humanism, associated with his general democratic position, limited his satirical possibilities and determined certain notes of sympathetic portrayal of Gaev and Ranevskaya.
Here you need to beware of one-sidedness and simplification, which, by the way, have already happened (for example, in the production of “The Cherry Orchard” by director A. Lobanov in the studio theater under the direction of R. Simonov in 1934).
As for the Art Theater itself, changing the dramatic key to a comedic-lyrical one should not cause a decisive change in the interpretation of all roles. A lot of things in this wonderful production, especially in its latest edition, get it right. One cannot help but recall that, while sharply rejecting the dramatic solution of his play, Chekhov found even in the first, far from mature performances at the Art Theater, a lot of beauty, carried out correctly.
Essay
“The Cherry Orchard” by A.P. Chekhov: the meaning of the name and features of the genre
Head: Petkun Lyudmila Prokhorovna
Tver, 2015
Introduction
3.2 Genre features
3.4 Heroes and their roles
Introduction
Chekhov as an artist can no longer be
compare with previous Russians
writers - with Turgenev,
Dostoevsky or with me. Chekhov's
its own shape, like
impressionists. Look how
like a person without anything
parsing smears with paints, what
fall into his hand, and
no relationship between each other
these smears do not. But you'll move away
to some distance,
look, and in general
it gives a complete impression.
L. Tolstoy
Chekhov's plays seemed unusual to his contemporaries. They differed sharply from the usual dramatic forms. They did not have the seemingly necessary beginning, climax and, strictly speaking, dramatic action as such. Chekhov himself wrote about his plays: People are just having lunch, wearing jackets, and at this time their destinies are being decided, their lives are being shattered. . IN Chekhov's plays oh there is a subtext that takes on special artistic significance
"The Cherry Orchard" - last piece Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, completing it creative biography, his ideological and artistic quests. The new stylistic principles he developed, new “techniques” for plotting and composition were embodied in this play in such figurative discoveries, which elevated the realistic depiction of life to broad symbolic generalizations, to an insight into future forms of human relations.
Abstract objectives:
.Get acquainted with the work of A.P. Chekhov “The Cherry Orchard”.
2.Highlight the main features of the work and analyze them.
.Find out the meaning of the title of the play.
Draw a conclusion.
cherry orchard of chekhov
1. “The Cherry Orchard” in the life of A.P. Chekhov. History of the play
Encouraged by the excellent productions of The Seagulls, Uncle Vanya, and Three Sisters at the Art Theater, as well as the enormous success of these plays and vaudevilles in the capital and provincial theaters, Chekhov plans to create a new “ funny play, where the devil would go with a yoke." “...For minutes at a time I feel a strong desire to write a 4-act vaudeville or comedy for the Art Theatre. And I will write, if no one interferes, but I will give it to the theater no earlier than the end of 1903.”
The news of the plan for a new Chekhov play, reaching the artists and directors of the Art Theater, caused great excitement and a desire to speed up the work of the author. “I said to the troupe,” reports O. L. Knipper, “everyone picked it up, they’re noisy and thirsty.”
Director V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, who, according to Chekhov, “demands plays,” wrote to Anton Pavlovich: “I remain firmly convinced that you should write plays. I go very far: to give up fiction for plays. You have never unfolded as much as you did on stage.” "ABOUT. L. whispered to me that you are decisively taking up comedy... The sooner your play is done, the better. There will be more time for negotiations and eliminating various mistakes... In a word... write plays! Write plays!” But Chekhov was in no hurry, he nurtured, “experienced within himself” the idea, did not share it with anyone until the right time, pondered the “magnificent” (in his words) plot, not yet finding forms of artistic embodiment that satisfied him. The play “slightly dawned in my brain, like the earliest dawn, and I still don’t understand what it is like, what will come out of it, and it changes every day.”
In my notebook Chekhov introduced some details, many of which were later used by him in “The Cherry Orchard”: “For the play: a liberal old woman dresses like a young woman, smokes, cannot live without company, is pretty.” This recording, although in a transformed form, was included in Ranevskaya’s description. "From actor it smells like fish, everyone tells him so.” This will be used for the image of Yasha and Gaev’s attitude towards him. The word “klutz” found and written in the notebook will become the leitmotif of the play. Some facts written in the book will be reproduced with changes in the comedy in connection with the image of Gaev and the off-stage character - Ranevskaya’s second husband: “The wardrobe has been standing for a hundred years, as can be seen from the papers; officials are seriously celebrating his anniversary,” “The gentleman owns a villa near Menton, which he bought with the money he received from the sale of an estate in the Tula province. I saw him in Kharkov, where he came on business, lose a villa, then serve on the railway, then die.”
On March 1, 1903, Chekhov told his wife: “For the play, I have already laid out the paper on the table and written the title.” But the writing process was made difficult and slowed down by many circumstances: Chekhov’s serious illness, the fear that his method was “already outdated” and that he would not be able to successfully process the “difficult plot.”
K. S. Stanislavsky, “languishing” for Chekhov’s play, informs Chekhov about the loss of all taste for other plays (“Pillars of Society”, “Julius Caesar”) and about the director’s preparation for the future play that he began “gradually”: “Keep in mind that I recorded the shepherd's pipe into the phonograph just in case. It turns out wonderful."
O. L. Knipper, like all the other artists of the troupe, who was “with hellish impatience” waiting for the play, also in her letters to Chekhov dispels his doubts and fears: “As a writer, you are needed, terribly needed... Every phrase of yours is needed, and ahead you are needed even more... Drive unnecessary thoughts out of yourself... Write and love every word, every thought, every soul that you nurse, and know that all this is necessary for people. There is no such writer as you... They are waiting for your play like manna from heaven.”
In the process of creating the play, Chekhov shared with his friends - members of the Art Theater - not only doubts and difficulties, but also further plans, changes and successes. They learn from him that he has difficulty managing “one main character”, it is still “insufficiently thought out and gets in the way”, that he is reducing the number of characters (“more intimate”), that the role of Stanislavsky - Lopakhin - “came out wow” , the role of Kachalov - Trofimov is “good”, the end of the role of Knipper - Ranevskaya is “not bad”, and Lilina will “be satisfied” with her role of Varya, that Act IV, “meager, but effective in content, is written easily, as if smoothly “, and in the whole play, “no matter how boring it is, there is something new,” and, finally, that its genre qualities are both original and fully defined: “The whole play is cheerful, frivolous.” Chekhov also expressed concerns that some passages might be “crossed out by censorship.”
At the end of September 1903, Chekhov finished the play in draft and began rewriting it. His attitude towards “The Cherry Orchard” fluctuates at this time, then he is satisfied, the characters seem to him “living people”, then he reports that he has lost all appetite for the play, the roles, except for the governess, “don’t like”. The rewriting of the play proceeded slowly; Chekhov had to redo, rethink, and write again some passages that particularly dissatisfied him.
October the play was sent to the theater. After the first emotional reaction to the play (excitement, “awe and delight”), intense creative work began in the theater: “trying on” roles, choosing the best performers, searching for a common tone, thinking about the artistic design of the performance. They animatedly exchanged opinions with the author, first in letters, and then in personal conversations and at rehearsals: Chekhov arrived in Moscow at the end of November 1903. This creative communication did not, however, give complete, unconditional unanimity; it was more complex. On some points, the author and the theater workers came to a common opinion, without any “bargaining with conscience”; on some things, one of the “sides” was doubted or rejected, but the one that did not consider the issue fundamental for itself made concessions; There are some discrepancies.
Having sent the play, Chekhov did not consider his work on it completed; on the contrary, fully trusting the artistic instincts of the theater managers and artists, he was ready to make “all the alterations that are required to comply with the scene,” and asked for critical comments: “I will correct it; It’s not too late, you can still redo the whole act.” In turn, he was ready to help directors and actors who approached him with requests to find the right ways stage embodiment of the play, and therefore rushed to Moscow for rehearsals, and Knipper asked that she “not learn her role” before his arrival and not order dresses for Ranevskaya before consulting with him.
The distribution of roles, which was the subject of passionate discussion in the theater, also worried Chekhov very much. He proposed his own distribution option: Ranevskaya-Knipper, Gaev-Vishnevsky, Lopakhin-Stanislavsky, Varya-Lilina, Anya-young actress, Trofimov-Kachalov, Dunyasha-Khalutina, Yasha-Moskvin, passer-by-Gromov, Firs-Artem, Pischik-Gribunin , Epikhodov-Luzhsky. His choice in many cases coincided with the wishes of the artists and the theater management: Kachalov, Knipper, Artem, Gribunin, Gromov, Khalyutina, after the “trying on”, were given the roles assigned to them by Chekhov. But the theater did not blindly follow Chekhov’s instructions; it put forward its own “projects,” and some of them were willingly accepted by the author. The proposal to replace Luzhsky in the role of Epikhodov with Moskvin, and in the role of Yasha Moskvin with Alexandrov, evoked the full approval of Chekhov: “Well, this is very good, the play will only benefit from it.” “Moskvin will make a magnificent Epikhodov.”
Chekhov is less willing, but still agrees to rearrange the performers of the two female roles: Lilina is not Varya, but Anya; Varya - Andreeva. Chekhov does not insist on his desire to see Vishnevsky in the role of Gaev, since he is quite convinced that Stanislavsky will be “a very good and original Gaev,” but with pain he gives up the idea that Lopakhin will not be played by Stanislavsky: “When I wrote Lopakhin, then I thought that this was your role” (vol. XX, p. 170). Stanislavsky, captivated by this image, as well as other characters in the play, only then finally decides to transfer the role to Leonidov when, after searching, “with doubled energy in Lopakhin,” he does not find a tone and design that satisfies him. Muratova in the role of Charlotte also does not delight Chekhov: “she may be good,” he says, “but she’s not funny,” but, however, in the theater, opinions about her, as well as about Varya’s performers, differed, of firm conviction, There was no chance that Muratova would succeed in this role.
Issues of artistic design were discussed lively with the author. Although Chekhov wrote to Stanislavsky that he relied entirely on the theater for this (“Please, don’t be shy about the scenery, I obey you, I am amazed and usually sit in your theater with my mouth open,” but still both Stanislavsky and the artist Somov called Chekhov to In the process of their creative quest, they exchanged opinions, clarified some of the author’s remarks, and proposed their projects.
But Chekhov sought to transfer all the viewer’s attention to the internal content of the play, to social conflict, so he was afraid of being carried away by the setting part, the detailing of everyday life, and sound effects: “I reduced the setting part of the play to a minimum; no special scenery is required.”
Act II caused a disagreement between the author and director. While still working on the play, Chekhov wrote to Nemirovich-Danchenko that in the second act he “replaced the river with an old chapel and a well. It's calmer this way. Only... You will give me a real green field and a road, and a distance unusual for the stage.” Stanislavsky also introduced into the scenery of Act II a ravine, an abandoned cemetery, a railway bridge, a river in the distance, a hayfield on the proscenium and a small haystack on which a walking group is having a conversation. “Allow me,” he wrote to Chekhov, “to let a train with smoke pass during one of the pauses,” and reported that at the end of the act there would be a “frog concert and corncrake.” In this act, Chekhov wanted to create only the impression of space; he did not intend to clutter the viewer’s consciousness with extraneous impressions, so his reaction to Stanislavsky’s plans was negative. After the performance, he even called the scenery of Act II “terrible”; at the time the theater was preparing the play, Knipper writes that Stanislavsky “needs to be kept” from “trains, frogs and corncrakes,” and in letters to Stanislavsky himself, he expresses his disapproval in a delicate form: “Haymaking usually occurs on June 20-25, at this time the corncrake, it seems, is no longer screaming, the frogs are also falling silent by this time... There is no cemetery, it was a very long time ago. Two or three slabs lying randomly are all that remains. The bridge is very good. If the train can be shown without noise, without a single sound, then go ahead.”
The most fundamental discrepancy between the theater and the author was found in the understanding of the genre of the play. While still working on The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov called the play a “comedy.” In the theater it was understood as “true drama.” “I hear you say: “Excuse me, but this is a farce,” Stanislavsky begins an argument with Chekhov -... No, for common man This is a tragedy."
The theater directors' understanding of the play's genre, which diverged from the author's understanding, determined many essential and particular aspects of the stage interpretation of The Cherry Orchard.
2. The meaning of the title of the play “The Cherry Orchard”
Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky in his memoirs about A.P. Chekhov wrote: “Listen, I found a wonderful title for the play. Wonderful! - he announced, looking at me point-blank. "Which? - I got worried. "In and ?auger garden (with emphasis on the letter “and” ), - and he burst into joyful laughter. I did not understand the reason for his joy and did not find anything special in the name. However, in order not to upset Anton Pavlovich, I had to pretend that his discovery made an impression on me... Instead of explaining, Anton Pavlovich began to repeat in different ways, with all sorts of intonations and sound colors: “Vi ?auger garden. Listen, this is a wonderful name! In and ?auger garden. In and ?screw! Several days or a week passed after this meeting... Once during the performance, he came into my dressing room and sat down at my table with a solemn smile. "Listen, don't you ?shnevy, and the Cherry Orchard “,” he announced and burst into laughter. At first I didn't even understand what it was about we're talking about, but Anton Pavlovich continued to savor the title of the play, emphasizing the gentle sound e in the word “cherry” , as if trying with his help to caress the former beautiful, but now unnecessary life, which he destroyed with tears in his play. This time I understood the subtlety: “Vi ?auger garden is a business, commercial garden that generates income. Such a garden is still needed now. But "The Cherry Orchard" does not bring any income, it preserves in itself and in its blooming whiteness the poetry of the former lordly life. Such a garden grows and blooms for whim, for the eyes of spoiled aesthetes. It’s a pity to destroy it, but it is necessary, since the process of economic development of the country requires it.”
The title of A.P. Chekhov’s play “The Cherry Orchard” seems quite logical. The action takes place on an old noble estate. The house is surrounded by a large cherry orchard. Moreover, the development of the plot of the play is connected with this image - the estate is being sold for debts. However, the moment the estate passes to a new owner is preceded by a period of senseless trampling in the place of the previous owners, who do not want to manage their property in a businesslike manner, who do not even really understand why this is necessary, how to do it, despite detailed explanations Lopakhin, a successful representative of the emerging bourgeois class.
But the cherry orchard in the play also has a symbolic meaning. Thanks to the way the characters in the play relate to the garden, their sense of time, their perception of life is revealed. For Lyubov Ranevskaya, the garden is her past, a happy childhood and a bitter memory of her drowned son, whose death she perceives as punishment for her reckless passion. All Ranevskaya’s thoughts and feelings are connected with the past. She just can’t understand that she needs to change her habits, since the circumstances are different now. She is not a rich lady, a landowner, but a bankrupt extravagant who will soon have neither a family nest nor a cherry orchard if she does not take any decisive action.
For Lopakhin, a garden is, first of all, land, that is, an object that can be put into circulation. In other words, Lopakhin argues from the point of view of the priorities of the present time. A descendant of serfs, who has become a public figure, thinks sensibly and logically. The need to make his own way in life taught this man to appreciate the practical usefulness of things: “Your estate is located only twenty miles from the city, near the Railway, and if the cherry orchard and the land along the river are divided into dacha plots and then rented out as dachas, then you will have at least twenty-five thousand a year in income.” Ranevskaya and Gaev's sentimental arguments about the vulgarity of dachas and the fact that the cherry orchard is a landmark of the province irritate Lopakhin. In fact, everything they say has no practical value in the present, does not play a role in the decision specific problem- if no action is taken, the garden will be sold, Ranevskaya and Gaev will lose all rights to their family estate, and other owners will manage it. Of course, Lopakhin’s past is also connected with the cherry orchard. But what kind of past is this? Here his “grandfather and father were slaves,” here he himself, “beaten, illiterate,” “ran barefoot in the winter.” A successful business man has not very bright memories associated with the cherry orchard! Maybe that’s why Lopakhin is so jubilant after becoming the owner of the estate, and that’s why he speaks with such joy about how he “will hit the cherry orchard with an ax”? Yes, in the past, in which he was a nobody, did not mean anything in his own eyes and in the opinions of those around him, probably any person would be happy to take an ax like that...
“...I don’t like the cherry orchard anymore,” says Anya, Ranevskaya’s daughter. But for Anya, as well as for her mother, childhood memories are connected with the garden. Anya loved the cherry orchard, despite the fact that her childhood impressions were far from being as cloudless as Ranevskaya’s. Anya was eleven years old when her father died, her mother became interested in another man, and soon her little brother Grisha drowned, after which Ranevskaya went abroad. Where did Anya live at this time? Ranevskaya says that she was drawn to her daughter. From the conversation between Anya and Varya, it becomes clear that Anya only went to her mother in France at the age of seventeen, from where both returned to Russia together. It can be assumed that Anya lived on her native estate, with Varya. Despite the fact that Anya’s entire past is connected with the cherry orchard, she parts with it without much melancholy or regret. Anya’s dreams are directed to the future: “We will plant a new garden, more luxurious than this one...”.
But in Chekhov’s play one can find another semantic parallel: the cherry orchard - Russia. “All of Russia is our garden,” Petya Trofimov declares optimistically. The outdated noble life and the tenacity of business people - after all, these two poles of worldview are not just a special case. This is truly a feature of Russia at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the society of that time, there were many projects on how to equip the country: some recalled the past with a sigh, others briskly and busily proposed to “clean up, clean up,” that is, to carry out reforms that would put Russia on a par with the leading powers peace. But, as in the story of the cherry orchard, at the turn of the era in Russia there was no real force capable of positively influencing the fate of the country. However, the old cherry orchard was already doomed... .
Thus, you can see that the image of the cherry orchard has a completely symbolic meaning. He is one of the central images of the work. Each character relates to the garden in his own way: for some it is a memory of childhood, for others it is just a place to relax, and for others it is a means of earning money.
3. The originality of the play “The Cherry Orchard”
3.1 Ideological features
A.P. Chekhov sought to force the reader and viewer of The Cherry Orchard to recognize the logical inevitability of the ongoing historical “change” of social forces: the death of the nobility, the temporary dominance of the bourgeoisie, the triumph in the near future of the democratic part of society. The playwright more clearly expressed in his work his belief in a “free Russia” and the dream of it.
The democrat Chekhov had sharp accusatory words that he threw at the inhabitants of the “noble nests.” Therefore, choosing to be depicted in “The Cherry Orchard” was subjectively not bad people of the nobles and abandoning the burning satire, Chekhov laughed at their emptiness and idleness, but did not completely deny them the right to sympathy, and thereby somewhat softened the satire.
Although in The Cherry Orchard there is no open, sharp satire on the nobles, there is undoubtedly a (hidden) denunciation of them. The commoner democrat Chekhov had no illusions; he considered the revival of the nobles impossible. Having staged in the play “The Cherry Orchard” a theme that worried Gogol in his time ( historical fate nobility), Chekhov, in his truthful portrayal of the life of the nobles, turned out to be the heir of the great writer. The ruin, lack of money, idleness of the owners of noble estates - Ranevskaya, Gaev, Simeonov-Pishchik - remind us of the pictures of impoverishment, the idle existence of noble characters in the first and second volumes of Dead Souls. A ball during an auction, reliance on a Yaroslavl aunt or other random favorable circumstance, luxury in clothing, champagne for basic needs in the house - all this is close to Gogol’s descriptions and even to individual eloquent Gogol’s realistic details, which, as time itself has shown, generalized meaning. “Everything was based,” Gogol wrote about Khlobuev, “on the need to suddenly get a hundred or two hundred thousand from somewhere,” they were counting on the “three-million-dollar aunt.” In Khlobuev’s house “there is no piece of bread, but there is champagne,” and “the children are taught to dance.” “It seems like he’s lived through everything, he’s in debt all around, there’s no money coming from him, but he’s asking for lunch.”
However, the author of “The Cherry Orchard” is far from Gogol’s final conclusions. On the verge of two centuries, historical reality itself and the writer’s democratic consciousness prompted him more clearly that it was impossible to revive the Khlobuevs, Manilovs and others. Chekhov also realized that the future does not belong to entrepreneurs like Kostonzhoglo or to the virtuous tax farmers Murazovs.
In the most general form, Chekhov guessed that the future belongs to democrats and working people. And he appealed to them in his play. The uniqueness of the position of the author of “The Cherry Orchard” lies in the fact that he seemed to have gone to a historical distance from the inhabitants of the noble nests and, having made his allies the audience, people of a different working environment, people of the future, together with them from the “historical distance” he laughed at the absurdity, injustice, emptiness of people who have passed away and are no longer dangerous, from his point of view. Chekhov found this unique angle of view, an individual creative method of depiction, perhaps not without reflecting on the works of his predecessors, in particular Gogol and Shchedrin. “Don’t get bogged down in the details of the present,” Saltykov-Shchedrin urged. - But cultivate in yourself the ideals of the future; for these are a kind of sun rays... Look often and intently at the luminous points that flicker in the perspective of the future” (“Poshekhon Antiquity”).
Although Chekhov did not consciously come to either a revolutionary-democratic or social-democratic program, life itself, the strength of the liberation movement, the influence of the advanced ideas of the time caused him the need to prompt the viewer to the need for social transformations, the proximity of a new life, i.e. forced him not not only to catch the “luminous points that flicker in the perspective of the future,” but also to illuminate the present with them.
Hence the peculiar combination in the play “The Cherry Orchard” of lyrical and accusatory principles. To critically show modern reality and at the same time express patriotic love for Russia, faith in its future, in the great possibilities of the Russian people - such was the task of the author of The Cherry Orchard. Wide open spaces home country(“gave”), giant people who “would be so becoming” for them, the free, working, fair, creative life that they will create in the future (“new luxurious gardens”) - this is the lyrical principle that organizes the play “The Cherry Orchard”, that author’s norm that is opposed to the “norms” of modern ugly unfair life dwarf people, “klutzes”. This combination of lyrical and accusatory elements in “The Cherry Orchard” constitutes the specificity of the genre of the play, which M. Gorky accurately and subtly called “lyrical comedy.”
3.2 Genre features
“The Cherry Orchard” is a lyrical comedy. In it, the author conveyed his lyrical attitude towards Russian nature and indignation at the theft of its wealth: “Forests are cracking under the ax,” rivers are shallowing and drying up, magnificent gardens are being destroyed, luxurious steppes are perishing.
The “delicate, beautiful” cherry orchard is dying, which they could only contemplatively admire, but which the Ranevskys and Gaevs could not save, whose “wonderful trees” were roughly “grabbed with an ax by Ermolai Lopakhin.” In the lyrical comedy, Chekhov sang, as in “The Steppe,” a hymn to Russian nature, “ beautiful homeland", expressed a dream about creators, people of work and inspiration, who think not so much about their own well-being, but about the happiness of others, about future generations. "Man is gifted with reason and creative power“to multiply what was given to him, but until now he has not created, but destroyed,” these words are uttered in the play “Uncle Vanya,” but the thought expressed in them is close to the thoughts of the author of “The Cherry Orchard.”
Outside of this dream of a human creator, outside of the generalized poetic image of the cherry orchard, one cannot understand Chekhov’s play, just as one cannot truly feel Ostrovsky’s “The Thunderstorm” or “Dowry” if one remains insensitive to the Volga landscapes in these plays, to the Russian open spaces, alien " cruel morals"The dark kingdom."
Chekhov's lyrical attitude towards the Motherland, towards its nature, the pain for the destruction of its beauty and wealth constitute, as it were, the “undercurrent” of the play. This lyrical attitude is expressed either in the subtext or in the author’s remarks. For example, in the second act the vastness of Russia is mentioned in the stage directions: a field, a cherry orchard in the distance, the road to the estate, a city on the horizon. Chekhov specifically directed the filming of the directors of the Moscow Art Theater to this remark: “In the second act you will give me a real green field and a road, and a distance unusual for the stage.”
The remarks relating to the cherry orchard (“it’s already May, the cherry trees are blooming”) are full of lyricism; sad notes are heard in the remarks marking the approaching death of the cherry orchard or this death itself: “the sound of a broken string, fading, sad,” “the dull knock of an ax on a tree, sounding lonely and sad.” Chekhov was very jealous of these remarks; he was worried that the directors would not exactly fulfill his plan: “The sound in the 2nd and 4th acts of The Cherry Orchard should be shorter, much shorter, and be felt very far away...”
Expressing his lyrical attitude towards the Motherland in the play, Chekhov condemned everything that interfered with its life and development: idleness, frivolity, narrow-mindedness. “But he,” as V.E. Khalizev rightly noted, “was far from a nihilistic attitude towards the former poetry of noble nests, towards noble culture“, feared the loss of such values as cordiality, goodwill, gentleness in human relations, and without delight noted the coming dominance of the dry businesslike nature of the Lopakhins.
“The Cherry Orchard” was conceived as a comedy, as “a funny play where the devil would walk like a yoke.” “The whole play is cheerful and frivolous,” the author told friends while working on it in 1903.
This definition of the genre of a comedy play was deeply important for Chekhov; it was not for nothing that he was so upset when he learned that on the posters of the Art Theater and in newspaper advertisements the play was called a drama. “What I came out with was not a drama, but a comedy, sometimes even a farce,” wrote Chekhov. In an effort to give the play a cheerful tone, the author indicates about forty times in the stage directions: “joyfully,” “cheerfully,” “laughing,” “everyone is laughing.”
3.3 Compositional features
A comedy has four acts, but there is no division into scenes. Events take place over several months (from May to October). The first act is exposition. Here we present a general description of the characters, their relationships, connections, and also here we learn the entire background of the issue (the reasons for the ruin of the estate).
The action begins in the Ranevskaya estate. We see Lopakhin and the maid Dunyasha, awaiting the arrival of Lyubov Andreevna and her youngest daughter Ani. For the last five years, Ranevskaya and her daughter lived abroad, but Ranevskaya’s brother, Gaev, and her adopted daughter, Varya, remained on the estate. We learn about the fate of Lyubov Andreevna, the death of her husband, son, and we learn the details of her life abroad. The landowner's estate is practically ruined; the beautiful cherry orchard must be sold for debts. The reasons for this are the extravagance and impracticality of the heroine, her habit of wasting money. The merchant Lopakhin offers her the only way to save the estate - to divide the land into plots and rent them out to summer residents. Ranevskaya and Gaev resolutely reject this proposal; they do not understand how a beautiful cherry orchard, the most “wonderful” place in the entire province, can be cut down. This contradiction that has emerged between Lopakhin and Ranevskaya-Gaev forms the plot of the play. However, this plot excludes both the external struggle of the characters and the acute internal struggle. Lopakhin, whose father was a serf of the Ranevskys, only offers them a real, reasonable, from his point of view, way out. At the same time, the first act develops at an emotionally increasing pace. The events that take place in it are extremely exciting for all the characters. This is the anticipation of the arrival of Ranevskaya, who is returning to her home, a meeting after a long separation, a discussion between Lyubov Andreevna, her brother, Anya and Varya about measures to save the estate, the arrival of Petya Trofimov, who reminded the heroine of her deceased son. In the center of the first act, therefore, is the fate of Ranevskaya, her character.
In the second act, the hopes of the owners of the cherry orchard are replaced by an alarming feeling. Ranevskaya, Gaev and Lopakhin are again arguing about the fate of the estate. Internal tension here the tension grows, the characters become irritable. It is in this act that “a distant sound is heard, as if from the sky, the sound of a broken string, fading, sad,” as if foreshadowing a coming catastrophe. At the same time, in this act Anya and Petya Trofimov are fully revealed; in their remarks they express their views. Here we see the development of action. The external, social and everyday conflict here seems to be a foregone conclusion, even the date is known - “the auction is scheduled for the twenty-second of August.” But at the same time, the motif of ruined beauty continues to develop here.
The third act of the play contains the climactic event - the cherry orchard is sold at auction. It is characteristic that the culmination here is an off-stage action: the auction takes place in the city. Gaev and Lopakhin go there. While waiting for them, the others hold a ball. Everyone dances, Charlotte shows tricks. However, the anxious atmosphere in the play is growing: Varya is nervous, Lyubov Andreevna is impatiently waiting for her brother to return, Anya passes on a rumor about the sale of the cherry orchard. Lyrical-dramatic scenes alternate with comic ones: Petya Trofimov falls down the stairs, Yasha enters into a conversation with Firs, we hear the dialogues of Dunyasha and Firs, Dunyasha and Epikhodov, Varya and Epikhodov. But then Lopakhin appears and reports that he bought an estate in which his father and grandfather were slaves. Lopakhin's monologue is the pinnacle of dramatic tension in the play. The culminating event in the play is given in the perception of the main characters. Thus, Lopakhin has a personal interest in buying the estate, but his happiness cannot be called complete: the joy of making a successful transaction fights in him with regret and sympathy for Ranevskaya, whom he has loved since childhood. Lyubov Andreevna is upset by everything that is happening: the sale of the estate for her means loss of shelter, “parting with the house where she was born, which for her became the personification of her usual way of life (“After all, I was born here, my father and mother, my grandfather, I lived here.” I love this house, I don’t understand my life without the cherry orchard, and if you really need to sell, then sell me along with the orchard...").” For Anya and Petya, the sale of the estate is not a disaster; they dream of a new life. For them, the cherry orchard is a past that is “already finished.” However, despite the difference in the characters’ worldviews, the conflict never turns into a personal clash.
The fourth act is the denouement of the play. The dramatic tension in this act weakens. After the problem is resolved, everyone calms down, rushing into the future. Ranevskaya and Gaev say goodbye to the cherry orchard, Lyubov Andreevna returns to her old life - she is preparing to leave for Paris. Gaev calls himself a bank employee. Anya and Petya welcome the “new life” without regretting the past. At the same time, the love conflict between Varya and Lopakhin is resolved - the matchmaking never took place. Varya is also preparing to leave - she has found a job as a housekeeper. In the confusion, everyone forgets about old Firs, who was supposed to be sent to the hospital. And again the sound of a broken string is heard. And in the finale the sound of an ax is heard, symbolizing sadness, the death of a passing era, the end of an old life. Thus we have in the play ring composition: in the finale the theme of Paris appears again, expanding the artistic space of the work. The basis of the plot in the play becomes the author's idea about the inexorable passage of time. Chekhov's heroes as if lost in time. For Ranevskaya and Gaev, real life seems to have remained in the past, for Anya and Petya it lies in a ghostly future. Lopakhin, who has become the owner of the estate in the present, also does not experience joy and complains about his “uncomplicated” life. And the very deep motives of this character’s behavior lie not in the present, but also in the distant past.
In the composition of “The Cherry Orchard” itself, Chekhov sought to reflect the meaningless, sluggish, boring nature of the existence of his noble heroes, their uneventful life. The play is devoid of “spectacular” scenes and episodes, external variety: the action in all four acts is not carried outside the boundaries of Ranevskaya’s estate. The only significant event - the sale of the estate and the cherry orchard - takes place not in front of the viewer, but behind the scenes. On stage - everyday life in the estate. People talk about everyday little things over a cup of coffee, during a walk or an impromptu “ball”, quarrel and make up, rejoice at the meeting and are saddened by the upcoming separation, remember the past, dream about the future, and at this time “their destinies are formed”, their destinies are ruined "nest".
In an effort to give this play a life-affirming, major key, Chekhov sped up its tempo, in comparison with previous plays, in particular, he reduced the number of pauses. Chekhov was especially concerned that the final act would not be drawn out and that what was happening on stage would not give the impression of “tragedy” or drama. “It seems to me,” wrote Anton Pavlovich, “that in my play, no matter how boring it is, there is something new. Not a single shot was fired in the entire play, by the way.” “How terrible this is! An act that should last 12 minutes maximum, takes you 40 minutes.”
4 Heroes and their roles
Consciously depriving the play of “events,” Chekhov directed all attention to the state of the characters, their attitude to the main fact - the sale of the estate and garden, to their relationships and clashes. The teacher should draw students' attention to the fact that in a dramatic work author's attitude, the author's position turns out to be the most hidden. To clarify this position, in order to understand the playwright’s attitude to the historical phenomena of the life of the homeland, to the characters and events, the viewer and reader need to be very attentive to all components of the play: the system of images carefully thought out by the author, the arrangement of characters, the alternation of mise-en-scenes, the coupling of monologues, dialogues, individual lines of characters, author's remarks.
At times Chekhov deliberately exposes the clash of dreams and reality, the lyrical and comic principles in the play. So, while working on “The Cherry Orchard,” he introduced into the second act, after Lopakhin’s words (“And living here, we ourselves should truly be giants...”) Ranevskaya’s response: “You needed giants. They’re only good in fairy tales, but they’re so scary.” To this, Chekhov added another mise-en-scène: the ugly figure of the “klutz” Epikhodov appears at the back of the stage, clearly contrasting with the dream of giant people. Chekhov specifically attracts the audience's attention to Epikhodov's appearance with two remarks: Ranevskaya (thoughtfully) “Epikhodov is coming.” Anya (thoughtfully) “Epikhodov is coming.”
In new historical conditions Chekhov the playwright, following Ostrovsky and Shchedrin, responded to Gogol’s call: “For God’s sake, give us Russian characters, give us ourselves, our rogues, our eccentrics! Take them to the stage, to everyone's laughter! Laughter is a great thing!” (“Petersburg Notes”). Chekhov strives to bring “our eccentrics”, our “klutzes” to the ridicule of the public in the play “The Cherry Orchard”.
The author's intention to make the viewer laugh and at the same time make him think about modern reality is most clearly expressed in the original comic characters - Epikhodov and Charlotte. The function of these “klutzes” in the play is very significant. Chekhov forces the viewer to grasp their internal connection with the central characters and thereby exposes these eye-catching faces of comedy. Epikhodov and Charlotte are not only funny, but also pathetic with their unfortunate “fortune” full of inconsistencies and surprises. Fate, in fact, treats them “without regret, like a storm treats a small ship.” These people are disfigured by life. Epikhodov is shown as insignificant in his penny ambitions, pathetic in his misfortunes, in his claims and in his protest, limited in his “philosophy.” He is proud, painfully proud, and life has put him in the position of a lackey and a rejected lover. He claims to be “educated,” sublime feelings, strong passions, but life has “prepared” for him daily “22 misfortunes,” petty, ineffective, offensive.”
Chekhov, who dreamed of people in whom “everything would be beautiful: face, clothes, soul, and thoughts,” still saw many freaks who had not found their place in life, people with complete confusion of thoughts and feelings, actions and words which are devoid of logic and meaning: “Of course, if you look from the point of view, then you, if I may put it this way, excuse the frankness, have completely brought me into a state of mind.”
The source of Epikhodov's comedy in the play also lies in the fact that he does everything inopportunely, at the wrong time. There is no correspondence between his natural data and behavior. Close-minded, tongue-tied, he is prone to lengthy speeches and reasoning; awkward, untalented, he plays billiards (breaking his cue in the process), sings “terribly, like a jackal” (according to Charlotte’s definition), gloomily accompanying himself on the guitar. He declares his love for Dunyasha at the wrong time, inappropriately asks thoughtful questions (“Have you read Buckle?”), inappropriately uses many words: “Only people who understand and are older can talk about this”; “And so you look, something extremely indecent, like a cockroach,” “let me put it this way, you can’t exact it from me.”
The function of Charlotte's image in the play is close to the function of Epikhodov's image. Charlotte's fate is absurd and paradoxical: a German, circus actress, acrobat and magician, she ended up in Russia as a governess. Everything is uncertain, random in her life: Ranevskaya’s appearance on the estate is random, and her departure from it is also random. There are always surprises waiting for Charlotte; How her life will be determined further after the sale of the estate, she does not know, how incomprehensible the purpose and meaning of her existence are: “Everyone is alone, alone, I have no one and... who I am, why I am is unknown.” Loneliness, unhappiness, confusion constitute the second, hidden basis of this comic character plays.
It is significant in this regard that, while continuing to work on the image of Charlotte during rehearsals of the play at the Art Theater, Chekhov did not retain the previously planned additional comic episodes (tricks in Acts I, III, IV) and, on the contrary, strengthened the motif of Charlotte’s loneliness and unhappy fate: at the beginning of Act II, everything from the words: “I really want to talk, and not with anyone...” to: “Why I am unknown” - was included by Chekhov in the final edition.
"Happy Charlotte: Singing!" - says Gaev at the end of the play. With these words, Chekhov emphasizes Gaev’s misunderstanding of Charlotte’s position and the paradoxical nature of her behavior. At a tragic moment in her life, even as if aware of her situation (“so please, find me a place. I can’t do this... I have nowhere to live in the city”), she performs tricks and sings. Serious thought, awareness of loneliness and misfortune are combined with buffoonery, buffoonery, and the circus habit of amusing.
In Charlotte’s speech there is the same bizarre combination of different styles and words: along with purely Russian - distorted words and constructions (“I want to sell. Does anyone want to buy?”), foreign words, paradoxical phrases (“These smart guys are all so stupid,” “You, Epikhodov, are a very smart person and very scary; women should love you madly.” Brrr !..").
Chekhov attached great importance to these two characters (Epikhodov and Charlotte) and was concerned that they would be correctly and interestingly interpreted in the theater. The role of Charlotte seemed to the author the most successful, and he advised the actresses Knipper and Lilina to take it, and wrote about Epikhodov that this role was short, “but the most real.” With these two comic characters, the author, in fact, helps the viewer and reader understand not only the situation in the lives of the Epikhodovs and Charlotte, but also extend to the rest of the characters the impressions that he receives from the convex, pointed image of these “klutzes”, makes him see the “wrong side” of life phenomena, to notice in some cases what is “unfunny” in the comic, in other cases to guess what is funny behind the outwardly dramatic.
We understand that not only Epikhodov and Charlotte, but also Ranevskaya, Gaev, Simeonov-Pishchik “exist for unknown reasons.” To these idle inhabitants of ruined noble nests, living “at someone else’s expense,” Chekhov added persons not yet acting on the stage and thereby strengthened the typicality of the images. The serf-owner, the father of Ranevskaya and Gaev, corrupted by idleness, Ranevskaya’s morally lost second husband, the despotic Yaroslavl grandmother-countess, showing class arrogance (she still cannot forgive Ranevskaya that her first husband was “not a nobleman”) - all these “types,” together with Ranevskaya, Gaev, Pishchik, “have already become obsolete.” To convince the viewer of this, according to Chekhov, neither evil satire nor contempt was needed; It was enough to make them look at them through the eyes of a person who had gone a considerable historical distance and was no longer satisfied with their living standards.
Ranevskaya and Gaev do nothing to preserve or save the estate and garden from destruction. On the contrary, it is precisely thanks to their idleness, impracticality, and carelessness that their “sacredly beloved” “nests” are ruined, their poetic beautiful cherry orchards are destroyed.
This is the price of these people’s love for their homeland. “God knows, I love my homeland, I love it dearly,” says Ranevskaya. Chekhov forces us to confront these words with her actions and understand that her words are impulsive, do not reflect a constant mood, depth of feeling, and are at odds with her actions. We learn that Ranevskaya left Russia five years ago, that from Paris she was “suddenly drawn to Russia” only after a catastrophe in her personal life (“there he robbed me, abandoned me, got in touch with someone else, I tried to poison myself...”). , and we see in the finale that she still leaves her homeland. No matter how much Ranevskaya regrets the cherry orchard and the estate, she soon “calmed down and became cheerful” in anticipation of leaving for Paris. On the contrary, Chekhov says throughout the entire course of the play that the idle, antisocial nature of the lives of Ranevskaya, Gaev, and Pishchik testifies to their complete oblivion of the interests of their homeland. He creates the impression that, despite all the subjectively good qualities, they are useless and even harmful, since they contribute not to creation, not to “increasing the wealth and beauty” of the homeland, but to destruction: Pischik thoughtlessly rents out a plot of land to the British for 24 years for the predatory exploitation of Russian natural resources, The magnificent cherry orchard of Ranevskaya and Gaev is dying.
Through the actions of these characters, Chekhov convinces us that we cannot trust their words, even those spoken sincerely and excitedly. “We will pay the interest, I am convinced,” Gaev bursts out without any reason, and he is already exciting himself and others with these words: “On my honor, whatever you want, I swear, the estate will not be sold! .. I swear on my happiness! Here's my hand, call me trashy then dishonest person, if I make it to the auction! I swear with all my being!” Chekhov compromises his hero in the eyes of the viewer, showing that Gaev “allows the auction” and the estate, contrary to his vows, turns out to be sold.
In Act I, Ranevskaya resolutely tears up, without reading, telegrams from Paris from the person who insulted her: “It’s over with Paris.” But in the further course of the play, Chekhov shows the instability of Ranevskaya’s reaction. In the following acts, she already reads telegrams, is inclined to reconcile, and in the finale, calmed down and cheerful, willingly returns to Paris.
Uniting these characters on the basis of kinship and social affiliation, Chekhov, however, shows both similarities and individual traits of each. At the same time, he forces the viewer not only to question the words of these characters, but also to think about the justice and depth of other people’s reviews about them. “She is good, kind, nice, I love her very much,” Gaev says about Ranevskaya. “She is a good person, an easy-going, simple person,” Lopakhin says about her and enthusiastically expresses his feelings to her: “I love you like my own... more than my own.” Anya, Varya, Pischik, Trofimov, and Firs are attracted to Ranevskaya like a magnet. She is equally kind, delicate, affectionate with her own and adopted daughter, and with her brother, and with the “man” Lopakhin, and with the servants.
Ranevskaya is warm-hearted, emotional, her soul is open to beauty. But Chekhov will show that these qualities, combined with carelessness, spoiledness, frivolity, very often (albeit regardless of Ranevskaya’s will and subjective intentions) turn into their opposite: cruelty, indifference, negligence towards people. Ranevskaya will give the last gold to a random passer-by, and at home the servants will live from hand to mouth; she will say to Firs: “Thank you, my dear,” kiss him, sympathetically and affectionately inquire about his health and... leave him, a sick, old, devoted servant, in a boarded-up house. With this final chord in the play, Chekhov deliberately compromises Ranevskaya and Gaev in the eyes of the viewer.
Gaev, like Ranevskaya, is gentle and receptive to beauty. However, Chekhov does not allow us to completely trust Anya’s words: “Everyone loves and respects you.” “How good you are, uncle, how smart.” Chekhov will show that Gaev’s gentle, gentle treatment of close people (sister, niece) is combined with class disdain for the “grimy” Lopakhin, “a peasant and a boor” (by his definition), with a contemptuous and disgusting attitude towards servants (from Yasha “smells like chicken”, Firs is “tired”, etc.). We see that along with lordly sensitivity and grace, he absorbed lordly swagger, arrogance (Gaev’s word is typical: “who?”), conviction in the exclusivity of the people of his circle (“white bone”). More than Ranevskaya, he feels himself and makes others feel his position as a master and the associated advantages. And at the same time he flirts with his closeness to the people, claims that he “knows the people”, that “the man loves” him.
Chekhov clearly makes one feel the idleness and idleness of Ranevskaya and Gaev, their habit of “living in debt, at someone else’s expense.” Ranevskaya is wasteful (“spends money”) not only because she is kind, but also because money comes easily to her. Like Gaev, she does not count on her labors and siush, but only on random help from outside: she will either receive an inheritance, or Lopakhin will lend it, or the Yaroslavl grandmother will send her to pay off the debt. Therefore, we do not believe in the possibility of Gaev’s life outside the family estate, we do not believe in the prospect of the future, which captivates Gaev like a child: he is a “bank servant.” Chekhov hopes that, like Ranevskaya, who knows her brother well, the viewer will smile and say: What a financier and official he is! “Where are you! Just sit down!”
Having no idea about work, Ranevskaya and Gaev go completely into the world of intimate feelings, refined, but confused, contradictory experiences. Ranevskaya not only devoted her entire life to the joys and sufferings of love, but she attaches decisive importance to this feeling and therefore feels a surge of energy whenever she can help others experience it. She is ready to act as a mediator not only between Lopakhin and Varya, but also between Trofimov and Anya (“I would willingly give Anya for you”). Usually soft, compliant, passive, she only reacts actively once, revealing both sharpness, anger, and harshness, when Trofimov touches this world that is sacred to her and when she recognizes in him a person of a different nature, deeply alien to her in this regard: “In your years you need to understand those who love and you need to love yourself... you need to fall in love! (angrily). Yes Yes! And you have no purity, and you are just a clean person, a funny eccentric, a freak... “I am above love!” You are not above love, but simply, as our Firs says, you are a klutz. Don't have a mistress at your age! .."
Outside the sphere of love, Ranevskaya’s life turns out to be empty and aimless, although in her statements, frank, sincere, sometimes self-flagellation and often verbose, there is an attempt to express interest in general issues. Chekhov puts Ranevskaya in a funny position, showing how her conclusions, even her teachings, diverge from her own behavior. She reproaches Gaev for being “inappropriate” and talking a lot in the restaurant (“Why talk so much?”). She instructs those around her: “You... should look at yourself more often. How you all live in a gray way, how much you say unnecessary things.” She herself also says a lot and inappropriately. Her sensitive, enthusiastic appeals to the nursery, to the garden, to the house are quite consonant with Gaev’s appeal to the closet. Her verbose monologues, in which she tells close people her life, that is, what they have known for a long time, or exposes her feelings and experiences to them, are usually given by Chekhov either before or after she reproaches those around her for their verbosity . This is how the author brings Ranevskaya closer to Gaev, whose need to “speak out” is most clearly expressed.
Gaev’s anniversary speech in front of the closet, his farewell speech in the finale, discussions about decadents addressed to restaurant servants, generalizations about people of the 80s expressed by Anya and Varya, a word of praise to “Mother Nature” pronounced in front of a “walking company” - all this breathes inspiration, ardor, sincerity. But behind all this, Chekhov makes us see empty liberal phrase-mongering; hence in Gaev’s speech such vague, traditionally liberal expressions as: “bright ideals of goodness and justice.” The author shows the admiration of these characters for themselves, the desire to quench the insatiable thirst to express “beautiful feelings” in “beautiful words”, their focus only on their inner world, their experiences, isolation from “external” life.
Chekhov emphasizes that all these monologues, speeches, honest, disinterested, sublime, are unnecessary, pronounced “inappropriately.” He draws the viewer’s attention to this, forcing Anya and Varya to constantly, albeit gently, interrupt Gaev’s beginning rantings. The word inopportunely turns out to be the leitmotif not only for Epikhodov and Charlotte, but also for Ranevskaya and Gaev. Inopportunely speeches are made, inopportunely they throw a ball at the very time when the estate is being sold at auction, inopportunely at the moment of departure they start an explanation between Lopakhin and Varya, etc. And not only Epikhodov and Charlotte, but also Ranevskaya and Gaev turn out to be “klutzes”. Charlotte’s unexpected remarks no longer seem surprising to us: “My dog even eats nuts.” These words are no more inappropriate than the “reasonings” of Gaev and Ranevskaya. Revealing in the central characters features of similarity with the “minor” comedic figures - Epikhodov and Charlotte - Chekhov subtly exposed his “noble heroes”.
The author of The Cherry Orchard achieved the same thing by bringing Ranevskaya and Gaev closer to Simeonov-Pishchik, another comedic character in the play. The landowner Simeonov-Pishchik is also kind, gentle, sensitive, impeccably honest, childishly trusting, but he is also inactive, a “klutz.” His estate is also on the verge of destruction and the plans for preserving it, just like those of Gaev and Ranevskaya, are not viable, they feel calculated on chance: his daughter Dashenka will win, someone will give him a loan, etc.
Giving Pischik another option in his fate: he is saving himself from ruin, his estate is not yet being sold at auction. Chekhov emphasizes both the temporary nature of this relative well-being and its unstable source, which does not at all depend on Pishchik himself, i.e., he emphasizes even more the historical doom of the owners noble estates. In the image of Pishchik, the isolation of the nobles from “external” life, their limitations, and emptiness are even clearer. Chekhov deprived him of even his external cultural gloss. Pishchik’s speech, reflecting his wretchedness inner world, is brought closer by Chekhov in a subtle mocking manner to the speech of other noble characters and, thus, the tongue-tied Pischik is equated with the eloquent Gaev. Pishchik’s speech is also emotional, but these emotions also only cover up the lack of content (it’s not for nothing that Pishchik himself falls asleep and snores during his “speeches”). Pischik constantly uses epithets in superlatives: “a man of enormous intelligence”, “most worthy”, “greatest”, “most remarkable”, “most respectable”, etc. The poverty of emotions is revealed primarily in the fact that these epithets apply equally to Lopakhin, Nietzsche, and Ranevskaya, and to Charlotte, and to the weather. Gaev’s exaggerated “emotional” speeches, addressed to the closet, to sex, to Mother Nature, are neither give nor take. Pishchik's speech is also monotonous. “Just think!” - with these words Pishchik reacts to both Charlotte’s tricks and philosophical theories. His actions and words also turn out to be inappropriate. Inopportunely, he interrupts Lopakhin’s serious warnings about the sale of the estate with questions: “What’s in Paris? How? Did you eat frogs? Inopportunely asks Ranevskaya for a loan of money when the fate of the owners of the cherry orchard is being decided, inopportunely, obsessively constantly refers to the words of his daughter Dashenka, unclearly, vaguely, conveying their meaning.
Strengthening the comedic nature of this character in the play, Chekhov, in the process of working on him, additionally introduced episodes and words into the first act that created a comic effect: an episode with pills, a conversation about frogs.
Denouncing the ruling class - the nobility - Chekhov persistently thinks for himself and makes the viewer think about the people. This is the strength of Chekhov's play The Cherry Orchard. We feel that the author has such a negative attitude towards the idleness and idle talk of the Ranevskys, Gaevs, Simeonovs-Pishchikovs, because he guesses the connection of all this with the difficult situation of the people, and defends the interests of the broad masses of working people. It was not for nothing that the censorship at one time removed from the play: “The workers eat disgustingly, sleep without pillows, thirty or forty in one room, there are bedbugs and stench everywhere.” “To own living souls - after all, this has reborn all of you, who lived before and are now living, so that your mother, you, uncle no longer notice that you are living in debt, at someone else’s expense, at the expense of those people whom you do not allow further front."
In comparison with Chekhov’s previous plays, in “The Cherry Orchard” the theme of the people is much stronger, and it is clearer that the author denounces the “lords of life” in the name of the people. But the people here are mainly “off-stage”.
Without making the working man either an open commentator or a positive hero of the play, Chekhov, however, sought to provoke thought about him, about his situation, and this is the undoubted progressiveness of The Cherry Orchard. The constant mentions of the people in the play, the images of servants, especially Firs, acting on stage, make you think.
Showing only just before his death a glimpse of consciousness in the slave - Firs, Chekhov deeply sympathizes with him and gently reproaches him: “Life has passed, as if you had never lived... You don’t have Silushka, there’s nothing left, nothing... Eh, you... klutz."
IN tragic fate Firsa Chekhov blames his masters even more than he himself. He speaks of the tragic fate of Firs not as a manifestation of the evil will of his masters. Moreover, Chekhov shows that good people - the inhabitants of the noble nest - even seem to care that the sick servant Firs is sent to the hospital. - “Firs was sent to the hospital?” - “Have they taken Firs to the hospital?” - “Did they take Firs to the hospital?” - “Mom, Firs has already been sent to the hospital.” Outwardly, the culprit turns out to be Yasha, who answered the question about Firs in the affirmative, as if he had misled those around him.
Firs was left in a boarded-up house - this fact can also be considered as a tragic accident for which no one is to blame. And Yasha could be sincerely confident that the order to send Firs to the hospital had been carried out. But Chekhov makes us understand that this “accident” is natural, it is an everyday phenomenon in the lives of the frivolous Ranevskys and Gaevs, who are not deeply concerned about the fate of their servants. In the end, the circumstances would have changed little if Firs had been sent to the hospital: all the same, he would have died, lonely, forgotten, far from the people to whom he gave his life.
There is a hint in the play that Firs' fate is not unique. The life and death of the old nanny and servants Anastasius were just as inglorious and also passed by the consciousness of their masters. The soft, loving Ranevskaya, with her characteristic frivolity, does not react at all to the message about the death of Anastasia, about leaving the estate for the city of Petrushka Kosoy. And the death of the nanny did not make a big impression on her, not one kind words she doesn't remember her. We can imagine that Ranevskaya will respond to the death of Firs with the same insignificant, vague words with which she responded to the death of her nanny: “Yes, the kingdom of heaven. They wrote to me."
Meanwhile, Chekhov makes us understand that remarkable possibilities are hidden in Firs: high morality, selfless love, folk wisdom. Throughout the play, among idle, inactive people, he - an 87-year-old old man - is shown alone as an eternally preoccupied, troublesome worker (“alone for the whole house”).
Following his principle of individualizing the speech of the characters, Chekhov gave the words of the old man Firs, for the most part, a fatherly, caring and grumpy intonation. Avoiding pseudo-folk expressions, without abusing dialectisms (“lackeys should speak simply, without let and without now” vol. XIV, p. 362), the author endowed Firs with pure folk speech, which is not devoid of specific words characteristic only of him: “klutz” , "to pieces."
Gaev and Ranevskaya pronounce long, coherent, sublime or sensitive monologues, and these “speeches” turn out to be “inappropriate.” Firs, on the other hand, mutters incomprehensible words that seem incomprehensible to others, which no one listens to, but it is his words that the author uses as apt words reflecting the experience of life, the wisdom of a person from the people. Firs's word "klutz" is heard many times in the play; it characterizes all the characters. The word “in pieces” (“now everything is in pieces, you won’t understand anything”) indicates the nature of post-reform life in Russia. It defines the relationships between people in the play, the alienation of their interests, and misunderstanding of each other. The specificity of the dialogue in the play is also connected with this: everyone talks about his own, usually without listening, without thinking about what his interlocutor said:
Dunyasha: And to me, Ermolai Alekseich, I must admit, Epikhodov made an offer.
Lopakhin: Ah!
Dunyasha: I don’t know how... He’s an unhappy person, something happens every day. They tease him like that: twenty-two misfortunes...
Lopakhin (listens): Looks like they’re coming...
For the most part the words of one character are interrupted by the words of others, leading away from the thought just expressed.
Chekhov often uses the words of Firs to show the movement of life and the loss at the present time of the former strength, the former power of the nobles as a privileged class: “Before, generals, barons, admirals danced at our balls, but now we send for the postal official and the station master, and even those They’re not going out to hunt.”
Firs, with his every minute concern for Gaev as a helpless child, destroys the viewer’s illusions that might arise based on Gaev’s words about his future as a “bank official”, “financier”. Chekhov wants to leave the viewer with the consciousness of the impossibility of reviving these unworking people to any kind of activity. Therefore, Gaev has only to utter the words: “They are offering me a place in the bank. Six thousand a year...”, as Chekhov reminds the viewer of Gaev’s lack of viability, his helplessness. Firs appears. He brings a coat: “If you please, sir, put it on, it’s damp.”
By showing other servants in the play: Dunyasha, Yasha, Chekhov also denounces the “noble” landowners. He makes the viewer understand the pernicious influence of the Ranevskys and Gaevs on people in the working environment. The atmosphere of idleness and frivolity has a detrimental effect on Dunyasha. From the gentlemen she learned sensitivity, hypertrophied attention to her “delicate feelings” and experiences, “refinement”... She dresses like a young lady, is absorbed in issues of love, constantly listens warily to her “refined-tender” organization: “I have become anxious, I’m still worried... She has become tender, so delicate, noble, I’m afraid of everything...” “My hands are shaking.” “The cigar gave me a headache.” “It’s a little damp in here.” “Dancing makes you dizzy, your heart beats,” etc. Like her masters, she developed a passion for “beautiful” words, for “beautiful” feelings: “He loves me madly,” “I fell in love with you passionately.”
Dunyasha, like her masters, does not have the ability to understand people. Epikhodov seduces her with sensitive, albeit incomprehensible, words, Yasha with “education” and the ability to “reason about everything.” Chekhov exposes the absurd comedy of such a conclusion about Yasha, for example, by forcing Dunyasha to express this conclusion between two of Yasha’s remarks, testifying to Yasha’s ignorance, narrow-mindedness and inability to think, reason and act at all logically:
Yasha (kisses her): Cucumber! Of course, every girl must remember herself, and what I don’t like most is if a girl has bad behavior... In my opinion, it’s like this: if a girl loves someone, then she is immoral...
Like her masters, Dunyasha speaks inappropriately and acts inappropriately. She often says about herself what people, like Ranevskaya and Gaev, think about themselves and even let others feel, but do not directly express in words. And this creates a comic effect: “I’m such a delicate girl, I really love gentle words.” In the final version, Chekhov strengthened these features in the image of Dunyasha. He added: “I’m going to faint.” “Everything went cold.” “I don’t know what will happen to my nerves.” "Now leave me alone, now I'm dreaming." "I am a gentle creature."
Chekhov attached great importance to the image of Dunyasha and was worried about the correct interpretation of this role in the theater: “Tell the actress playing the maid Dunyasha to read The Cherry Orchard in the Knowledge edition or in proof; there she will see where she needs to powder, and so on. and so on. Let him read it without fail: everything in your notebooks is mixed up and smeared.” The author makes us think more deeply about the fate of this comic character and see that this fate, in essence, also by the grace of the “masters of life,” is tragic. Cut off from her working environment (“I’m unaccustomed to simple life”), Dunyasha lost her ground (“she doesn’t remember herself”), but did not acquire a new support in life. Her future is predicted in the words of Firs: “You will spin.”
Chekhov also shows the destructive impact of the world of the Ranevskys, Gaevs, Pischikov in the image of the lackey Yasha. Witnessing the easy, carefree and vicious life of Ranevskaya in Paris, he is infected with indifference to his homeland, people and a constant desire for pleasure. Yasha expresses more directly, sharply, more rudely what, in essence, is the meaning of Ranevskaya’s actions: the attraction to Paris, the careless and contemptuous attitude towards the “uneducated country”, “ignorant people”. He, like Ranevskaya, is bored in Russia (“yawns” is the author’s insistent remark for Yasha). Chekhov makes it clear to us that Yasha was corrupted by Ranevskaya’s careless recklessness. Yasha robs her, lies to her and others. An example of Ranevskaya's easy life, her mismanagement developed in Yasha claims and desires beyond his capabilities: he drinks champagne, smokes cigars, orders expensive dishes in a restaurant. Yasha’s intelligence is just enough to adapt to Ranevskaya and take advantage of her weaknesses for personal gain. Outwardly, he remains devoted to her and behaves politely and helpfully. He adopted a “well-mannered” tone and words when dealing with a certain circle of people: “I can’t disagree with you,” “let me make a request to you.” Valuing his position, Yasha strives to create about himself best experience than he deserves, he is afraid of losing Ranevskaya’s trust (hence the author’s remarks: “looks around”, “listens”). Hearing, for example, that “the gentlemen are coming,” he sends Dunyasha home, “otherwise they will meet and think of me as if I’m on a date with you. I can’t stand it.”
Chekhov thus simultaneously exposes both the deceitful lackey Yasha and the gullible, thoughtless Ranevskaya, who keeps him close to her. Chekhov blames not only him, but also the masters, for the fact that Yasha found himself in the absurd position of a man who “does not remember his kinship” and who has lost his environment. For Yasha, who is removed from his native element, men, servants, and a peasant mother are already people of a “lower order”; he is harsh or selfishly indifferent towards them.
Yasha is infected by his masters with a passion to philosophize, to “speak out,” and, like them, his words are at odds with his life practice, with his behavior (relationship with Dunyasha).
A.P. Chekhov saw in life and reproduced in the play another version of the fate of a man from the people. We learn that Lopakhin's father - a peasant, a serf, who was also not even allowed into the kitchen - after the reform he “made himself into the people”, became rich, became a shopkeeper, an exploiter of the people.
In the play, Chekhov shows his son - a bourgeois of the new formation. This is no longer a “grimy”, not a tyrant merchant, despotic, rude, like his father. Chekhov specifically warned the actors: “Lopakhin, it’s true, is a merchant, but a decent person in every sense, he must behave quite decently, intelligently.” “Lopakhin should not be played as a loudmouth... He is a gentle person.”
While working on the play, Chekhov even enhanced the features of gentleness and external “decency, intelligence” in the image of Lopakhin. Thus, he included in the final edition Lopakhin’s lyrical words addressed to Ranevskaya: “I would like... for your amazing, touching eyes to look at me as before.” Chekhov added to the description given to Lopakhin by Trofimov the words: “After all, I still love you. You have thin, delicate fingers, like an artist, you have a subtle, gentle soul...”
In Lopakhin’s speech, Chekhov emphasizes sharp, commanding and didactic intonations when he addresses the servants: “Leave me alone. I'm tired of it." “Bring me some kvass.” “We must remember ourselves.” In Lopakhin’s speech, Chekhov crosses various elements: it senses both the life practice of Lopakhin the merchant (“he gave forty”, “the least”, “net income”) and peasant origin (“if”, “that’s it”, “played the fool”, “to tear his nose”, “with a pig’s snout in a row of guns”, “hanging out with you”, “was drunk”), and the influence of lordly, pathetically sensitive speech: “I think: “Lord, you gave us... vast fields , the deepest horizons...” “I just wish that you would still believe me, that your amazing, touching eyes would look at me as before.” Lopakhin's speech takes on different shades depending on his attitude towards the listeners, towards the very subject of the conversation, depending on his state of mind. Lopakhin speaks seriously and excitedly about the possibility of selling the estate, warns the owners of the cherry orchard; his speech at this moment is simple, correct, clear. But Chekhov shows that Lopakhin, feeling his strength, even his superiority over the frivolous, impractical nobles, is a little flirtatious with his democracy, deliberately contaminates book expressions (“a figment of your imagination, covered in the darkness of the unknown”), and deliberately distorts the grammatical and stylistic forms perfectly known to him. By this, Lopakhin simultaneously ironizes those who “seriously” use these cliched or incorrect words and phrases. So, for example, along with the word: “farewell,” Lopakhin says “goodbye” several times; along with the word “enormous” (“Lord, you gave us enormous forests”) he pronounces “enormous” - (“the cone, however, will jump up huge”), and the name Ophelia is probably deliberately distorted by Lopakhin, who memorized Shakespeare’s text and almost who paid attention to the sound of Ophelia’s words: “Ophmelia, O nymph, remember me in your prayers.” “Okhmelia, go to the monastery.”
When creating the image of Trofimov, Chekhov experienced certain difficulties, understanding possible censorship attacks: “I was mainly frightened by ... the unfinished state of the student Trofimov. After all, Trofimov is constantly in exile, he is constantly expelled from the university, but how do you portray these things? In fact, student Trofimov appeared before the viewer at a time when the public was agitated by student “unrest.” Chekhov and his contemporaries witnessed the fierce but inconclusive struggle waged against the “disobedient citizens” for several years by “... the Russian government... with the help of its numerous troops, police and gendarmes.”
In the image of the “eternal student” commoner, the son of a doctor - Trofimov, Chekhov showed the superiority of democracy over the noble-bourgeois “lordship”. Chekhov contrasts the antisocial, antipatriotic idle life of Ranevskaya, Gaev, Pischik, and the destructive “activity” of the acquirer-owner Lopakhin with the search for social truth by Trofimov, who fervently believes in the triumph of a just social life in the near future. When creating the image of Trofimov, Chekhov wanted to preserve a measure of historical justice. Therefore, on the one hand, he opposed the conservative noble circles, which saw modern democratic intellectuals as immoral, mercantile, ignorant “grimy”, “cook’s children” (see the image of the reactionary Rashevich in the story “On the Estate”); on the other hand, Chekhov wanted to avoid idealizing Trofimov, since he perceived a certain limitation of the Trofimovs in creating a new life.
In accordance with this, the democratic student Trofimov is shown in the play as a man of exceptional honesty and selflessness; he is not constrained by established traditions and prejudices, mercantile interests, or an addiction to money and property. Trofimov is poor, suffers hardships, but categorically refuses to “live at someone else’s expense” or borrow money. Trofimov’s observations and generalizations are broad, intelligent and objectively fair: nobles “live in debt, at someone else’s expense”, temporary “masters”, “beasts of prey” - the bourgeoisie makes limited plans for the reconstruction of life, intellectuals do nothing, look for nothing, workers they live badly, “they eat disgustingly, they sleep... thirty to forty in one room.” Trofimov’s principles (work, live for the sake of the future) are progressive and altruistic; His role - as a herald of the new, as an educator - should evoke the respect of the viewer.
But with all this, Chekhov shows in Trofimov some traits of limitation and inferiority, and the author finds in him the traits of a “klutz” that brings Trofimov closer to other characters in the play. The breath of the world of Ranevskaya and Gaev also affects Trofimov, despite the fact that he fundamentally does not accept their way of life and is confident in the hopelessness of their situation: “there is no going back.” Trofimov speaks indignantly about idleness, “philosophizing” (“We only philosophize,” “I’m afraid of serious conversations”), and he himself also does little, talks a lot, loves teachings, ringing phrases. In Act II, Chekhov forces Trofimov to refuse to continue the idle, abstract “yesterday’s conversation” about the “proud man”; in Act IV, he forces Trofimov to name himself proud man. Chekhov shows that Trofimov is not active in life, that his existence is subject to elemental forces (“fate drives him”), and he himself unreasonably denies himself even personal happiness.
In the play “The Cherry Orchard” this does not happen positive hero, which would be fully consistent with the pre-revolutionary era. The time required a writer-propagandist whose loud voice would sound both in open denunciation and in the positive beginning of his works. Chekhov's distance from the revolutionary struggle muffled his authorial voice, softened his satire, and was expressed in the lack of specificity of his positive ideals.
Thus, in “The Cherry Orchard” the distinctive features of the poetics of Chekhov the playwright appeared: a departure from an elaborate plot, theatricality, external eventlessness, when the basis of the plot is the author’s thought, which lies in the subtext of the work, the presence of symbolic details, subtle lyricism.
But still, with the play “The Cherry Orchard,” Chekhov made a contribution to the progressive liberation movement of his era. Showing “a clumsy, unhappy life”, “clums” people, Chekhov forced the viewer to say goodbye to the old without regret, awakened in his contemporaries faith in a happy, humane future for their homeland (“Hello, new life!”), and contributed to the approach of this future.
List of used literature
.M. L. Semanova “Chekhov at school”, 1954
2.M.L. Semanova “Chekhov the Artist”, 1989
.G. Berdnikov “The Life of Remarkable People. A.P.Chekhov", 1974
.V. A. Bogdanov “The Cherry Orchard”
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The features of Chekhov's dramaturgy were noted as innovative by many artists. V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko and K. S. Stanislavsky were the first to see in the dramatic movement of Anton Pavlovich’s plays an “undercurrent” that, behind the external ordinariness of what is happening, hides a continuous internal intimate and lyrical flow. It was they who made every effort to bring a fresh interpretation of Chekhov's plays to the audience. Using the example of the dramas “The Cherry Orchard”, “The Seagull”, “Uncle Vanya” we will consider artistic originality works of this author.
Description of life
The features of Chekhov's dramaturgy are clearly visible in one of his most famous plays - “The Cherry Orchard”. Its main principle was to overcome the theatrical conventions traditional for theatrical works XVIII century. It is known that Anton Pavlovich strove to ensure that everything on stage was the same as in life. For example, “The Cherry Orchard” is based on the most ordinary event - the sale of a country estate for debts, and not a choice between duty and feeling, tearing apart the character’s soul, not a fatal clash of peoples and kings, villains and heroes. The playwright completely abandoned the externally entertaining plot in favor of simple and uncomplicated events, trying to prove that the hero’s everyday state is no less conflicting.
Ambiguous heroes
The features of Chekhov's dramaturgy (grade 10 studies this topic in detail) are also observed in the description of the characters. For example, in the play “The Cherry Orchard” there is not a single convinced scoundrel or villain. The merchant Lopakhin, who buys his master's estate for debts, is a sincere and sensitive person. He did not forget how warmly Ranevskaya treated him since childhood. From the bottom of his heart, he offers her and Gaev help to save the estate - he offers to divide the garden into separate summer cottages. Also, without any second thought, he gives Lyubov Andreevna a loan, probably knowing that she will not return it. However, it is Lopakhin who buys the estate and gives the order to cut down the cherry trees, without waiting for the old owners to leave. At the same time, he does not even realize the pain this causes to Ranevskaya and Gaev. The merchant, however, recalls with admiration the beauty of the poppy fields, from which he managed to earn 40 thousand. In the character of this hero, the low and the high, the desire for beauty and the thirst for profit, noble impulses and cruelty coexist. Viewers have a contradictory attitude towards him. But even in life there are no absolutely bad or good people. Maximum authenticity of characters is another feature of Chekhov's dramaturgy.
"Undercurrent"
In his works, Anton Pavlovich completely abandons some theatrical techniques. For example, it excludes voluminous monologues, since people do not pronounce them in everyday life. The features of Chekhov's dramaturgy in the story “The Cherry Orchard” clearly demonstrate this. Instead of deliberate remarks “to the side,” the author uses a special one, which Nemirovich-Danchenko dubbed subtext or “undercurrent.” First of all, this is the “double sound” of each character, that is, the ambiguity of his character. An example of such a “sound” can be the description of Lopakhin’s character proposed above. In addition, Chekhov builds the dialogue of his characters in a special way, that is, he makes sure that the audience can understand what the characters are thinking about while discussing everyday issues. The conversation between Lopakhin and Varya in the fourth act is an example of such an ambiguous explanation. They want to talk about their feelings for each other, but they talk about unrelated things. Varya is looking for some object, and Lopakhin shares his plans for the coming winter. As a result, the declaration of love between the characters never happens.
Significant pauses
The features of Chekhov's dramaturgy can be listed endlessly. If in most dramatic works the heroes are revealed through the commission of actions, then in Anton Pavlovich they manifest themselves in experiences. That is why it is so important to trace the “undercurrent” in his plays. Ordinary pauses are filled with deep content. For example, after a failed explanation between Varya and Lopakhin, the heroine is left alone and crying. When Ranevskaya enters the room, she asks her one single question: “What?” After all, tears can be caused by both joy and grief. There is a pause between the interlocutors. Lyubov Andreevna understands everything without explanation and begins to rush to leave. Or in the last act of Trofimov, Petya begins to reason about his happy fate and says that “Humanity is moving towards the highest truth, towards the highest happiness that is possible on earth, and I am in the forefront!” To Yermolai Alekseevich’s sarcastic question: “Will you get there?”, Petya responds with conviction: “I’ll get there.” (Pause) I’ll get there or I’ll show others the way to get there.” This silence between phrases indicates that the hero does not feel the irony of his interlocutor and is speaking completely seriously.
Remarks
The peculiarities of Chekhov's dramaturgy (of course, it is quite difficult to describe all the nuances briefly) also lie in the active use of seemingly minor theatrical techniques - the author's stage directions, sound recording, and symbols. For example, in the first act of “The Cherry Orchard,” the author describes in detail the scenery - the room where everyone is waiting for Lyubov Andreevna’s arrival. Particular attention in this remark is paid to the garden, which is visible from the window - its trees are strewn with snow-white flowers. The viewer and reader immediately have a sad feeling that all this splendor will soon perish. And the remark, anticipating the second act, contains the remark that the outskirts of the city and telegraph poles are visible from the garden. In addition to its direct meaning, this decoration also has symbolic meaning- the new century dictates its own rules, and there is no place in it for the cherry orchard. The “noble nest” of the Ranevsky-Gayevs will certainly be destroyed.
Sounds
Sounds play an important role in the works of Anton Pavlovich. The features of Chekhov's dramaturgy, using the example of the play “The Cherry Orchard,” directly indicate this. A sad waltz playing at the ball, which, contrary to all logic, is arranged by Lyubov Andreevna on the day of the auction; the sound of billiard balls, reminiscent of Gaev’s favorite pastime; the grinding sound of a broken string, irrevocably disrupting the charm and peace of a summer evening. He amazes Ranevskaya so much that she immediately begins to get ready to go home. Although Gaev and Lopakhin immediately give a reliable explanation for the unpleasant sound (the cry of a bird, the breakage of a tub in a mine), Lyubov Andreevna perceives it in her own way. She believes that the sound of a broken string indicates the end of her former life. Of course, the sound of the ax at the end of the play is also symbolic: the beauty of the earth - the cherry orchard - will be destroyed by order of Lopakhin.
Details
The features of Chekhov's dramaturgy are especially clearly revealed in the details. Varya always appears on stage in a dark dress with a bunch of keys at her belt. When at the ball Ermolai Alekseevich announces that he has bought an estate, she defiantly throws her keys at Lopakhin’s feet. Thus, she shows that she gives him the entire household. The ending of the play is also a sad symbol of the end of the era of manor Russia: everyone leaves the house, Ermolai Alekseevich locks the front door until spring, and the old sick servant Firs appears from the back room, lies down on the sofa and freezes. It becomes clear to everyone that local Russia is gradually disappearing along with its last guardian.
"Weakened" plot
Not all of the author’s contemporaries were able to appreciate the features of A.P. Chekhov’s dramaturgy. The insufficiently expressive plot in his works was especially criticized. Before Anton Pavlovich, the plot of the play was built, as a rule, on one external conflict. A cross-cutting event, built on the collision of several heroes, determined the essence of the work. For example, in “Woe from Wit” the action is based on the contradictions between Chatsky and the “Famus society” surrounding him. The traditional conflict decides the fate of the characters and demonstrates the victory of some heroes over others. The situation is completely different in Chekhov's plays. The main event (the sale of the estate for debts) is generally relegated to the background. The inexpressive plot of this work is difficult to divide into the usual supporting elements (culmination, denouement, etc.). The pace of the action constantly slows down, and the drama consists of scenes that interact very little with each other.
The peculiarities of the dramaturgy of A.P. Chekhov (grade 10 in literature lessons become quite deeply acquainted with the writer’s work) lie in the deep psychologism of his creations. The author does not seek to show the external clash of heroes, replacing it internal conflict a situation unpleasant for his characters. Contradictions develop in the souls of the characters and do not consist in a battle for property (it practically never happens), but in the incompatibility of dreams and reality, the characters’ dissatisfaction with themselves and the world around them. Therefore, at the end of the play we see not a triumphant Lopakhin, but an unhappy man who exclaims in sadness: “Oh, if only all this would pass, if only our awkward, unhappy life would somehow change.” There are no main characters in Chekhov's works, and the blame for what is happening falls on each of them. In Anton Pavlovich's plays, both central and secondary characters are equally important.
Unusual genre
The genre originality also contains the features of Chekhov's dramaturgy. “The Cherry Orchard” is a lyrical work, however, the author managed to weave comic elements into it. M. Gorky called this play a “new drama”, which combined both tragic pathos (regret about the death of the cherry orchard and the collapse of the destinies of some heroes) and comic overtones (explicit in the description of the characters of Charlotte, Simeonov-Pishchik, Epikhodov, etc. .; veiled - in the characters of Lopakhin, Gaev, Ranevskaya, etc.). Outwardly, the heroes are passive, but behind their inertia lies an internal complex action-thought.
"Gull"
All the features of Chekhov’s dramaturgy were briefly outlined by us using the example of only one work - the drama “The Cherry Orchard”. This last play Anton Pavlovich, in which he summarized his creative achievements. However, all of the above applies to other works of the author. For example, for some reason Chekhov called his disturbing “The Seagull”, permeated with languid spirit, a comedy. This mystery of the playwright still excites the minds of researchers, but who will argue with the fact that he is a master of creating sad comedies? Anton Pavlovich knew how to extract poetry from the very disorder of life and compose works that were unusual in their genre. Just like in The Cherry Orchard, in the play The Seagull there is no central characters. All the heroes in it are equal in rights, side and main destinies do not exist, so there is no main character in it. The title of this work is very symbolic. The seagull, according to the author, personifies an anxious flight, a rush into the distance, a stimulus for movement. This drama does not have a banal plot; it reveals a broad theme of bitter dissatisfaction with one’s fate, the dream of a better life. But the meaning of this play is conveyed to the audience through ordinary, everyday details that have a deep meaning, that very “undercurrent”. These are the features of Chekhov's dramaturgy. "The Seagull" is a typical work of this author.
"Uncle Ivan"
This is another innovative work by Anton Pavlovich. It also clearly demonstrates the features of Chekhov's dramaturgy. “Uncle Vanya” is a play in which the author focuses not on the external contradictions between the characters, but on their internal experiences. Everyday everyday life is here the only source conflict. Nothing tragic in fate Chekhov's characters, indeed, does not happen, but they are all not satisfied with their lives. Some spend their days in lazy idleness, others in impotent anger, others in despondency. The established way of life makes people worse than they could be. Doctor Astrov became vulgar, Voinitsky became angry with the whole world, Serebryakov became ingloriously degraded. They all became callous and indifferent towards each other and, most importantly, towards themselves. Their life is meaningless and useless. And who is to blame for this? As always with Anton Pavlovich - everything at once. The responsibility lies with every hero.
Conclusion
Summarizing all of the above, I would like to outline all the features of Chekhov’s dramaturgy point by point:
- Almost all of the author’s works are built on a detailed description of everyday life, through which readers and viewers are conveyed the characteristics of the characters’ characters, feelings, and moods.
- There are no bright dramatic events in the plot of Chekhov's plays; the main source of conflict is the internal experiences of the characters.
- The heroes in Anton Pavlovich's works are ambiguous; each of them has negative and positive traits.
- Dialogues in the author's works often consist of fragmentary meaningful phrases through which the vital well-being of the characters is conveyed.
- Stage directions, sounds, symbolic details are of great importance in Chekhov's plays.
- Anton Pavlovich's dramaturgy is distinguished by its genre originality. Dramatic events in it are intertwined with comic overtones, which makes the depiction of events more lively and reliable.
Now you know everything about the features of A.P.’s dramatic skill. Chekhov. His work is rightfully included in the golden fund of world classics.
