LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: Have they taken all the luggage?
LOPAKHIN : Everything, I think. [To Yepikhodov, who is helping him into his coat] Yepikhodov, you see that everything’s all right.
YEPIKHODOV [speaking in a hoarse voice]: Don’t worry, Yermolay Alekseich!
LOPAKHIN : Why is your voice like that?
YEPIKHODOV: I drank some water just now, I swallowed something.
YASHA [scornfully]: What ignorance ...
LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: We’ll go — and there won’t be a soul left here ...
LOPAKHIN : No one, till the spring.
VARYA [pulling an umbrella out of a bundle with a movement as if she’s going to hit someone; LOPAKHIN pretends to be frightened.] There, there ... I wasn’t going to.
TROFIMOV : Ladies and gentlemen, let’s go and get in the carriages ... It’s time now! The train will be coming!
VARYA: Petya, here are your galoshes, by the suitcase. [In tears] And what dirty, old ones you have ...
TROFIMOV [putting on the galoshes]: Let’s go, ladies and gentlemen! ...
GAYEV [very upset, afraid ofcrying]: The train ... the station ... Cross shot into the centre, double the white into the corner pocket ...
LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: Let’s go!
LOPAKHIN: Is everyone here? Is there anyone in there? [Locks the side door on the left.] Things are stored there, we must lock up. Let’s go! ...
ANYA: Farewell, house! Farewell, old life!
TROFIMOV : Hail, new life! ... [Goes out with Anya.]
[VARYA looks round the room and slowly goes out. YASHA and CHARLOTTA with the little dog go out.]
LOPAKHIN: So, till the spring. Come on out ... Goodbye! ... [Exit.]
[LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA and GAYEV are left alone together. As if they had been waiting for it, they fall on each other’s necks and sob gently and quietly, afraid of being heard.]
GAYEV [desperately]: My sister, my sister ...
LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: Oh my darling, my sweet, beautiful orchard! ... My life, my youth, my happiness, farewell! ... farewell! ...
[ANYA’s voice, cheerfully calling: ’Mama! ...‘TROFIMOV’s voice, cheerful and excited: ‘Hallo-o! ...’]
To look at these walls, these windows one last time ... Our mother used to love walking about this room ...
GAYEV : My sister, my sister! ...
[ANYA‘s voice: ‘Mama! ...’ TROFIMOV’svoice:‘Hallo-o!...’]
LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: We’re coming! ...
[Exeunt.]
[The stage is empty. There is the sound of all the doors being locked with keys, then the carriages leaving. It becomes quiet. The silence is broken by the hollow striking of an axe against a tree, sounding solitary and sad. There are footsteps. FIRS appears at the right-hand door. He is dressed as usual in a jacket and white waistcoat and slippers. He is ill.]
FIRS [going to the door, trying the handle]: Locked. They’ve gone ... [Sits down on the sofa.] They’ve forgotten about me ... It doesn’t matter ... I’ll sit here a moment ... And Leonid Andreich probably didn’t put on his fur coat but went off in his light one ... [Sighs worriedly.] I didn’t look ... Young people! [Mumbles something unintelligible.] Life has gone by, as if I hadn’t lived. [Lies down.] I’ll lie down a moment ... You’ve got no strength, nothing is left, nothing ... Oh you ... big booby! ... [Lies motionless.]
[There is the distant sound of a string breaking, as if in the sky, a dying, melancholy sound. Silence falls, and the only thing to be heard is a tree being struck with an axe far off in the orchard.]
[Curtain.]
NOTES
Ivanov
CHARACTERS
1 Sara Abramson:These names indicate, without its being spelt out, that Anna Petrovna is a Jew who has converted to Christianity and been given a Christian first name and patronymic.
2 District Council: The ʐemstvo, the regional council in Russia which was the main unit of local government from 1864 to 1917.
3 landowner: This word (pomeshchik, masculine, pomeshchitsa, feminine) is as much an indication of class as a statement of fact. Merchants (kuptsy) were members of one of the classes (others being nobles and peasants) in a class system defined by law: while merchants very largely led Russia’s business and also artistic expansion at the turn of the nineteenth century, they were also popularly regarded as embodiments of reaction and vulgarity.
4 hanger-on: The size of Russian country houses and the poor communications of the country attracted a population of resident nakhlebniki (hangers-on), a word difficult to translate since there isn’t an English-language social parallel.
5 Districts: Imperial Russia was divided into gubernii (governments or provinces), which were subdivided in turn into uyeʐdy (districts).
ACT ONE
1 troika: A carriage or sleigh, drawn by three horses.
2 Nicolas-voilà: ‘Nikolay here he is’ (French) - from a popular ditty of the 1880s. The conversation of the upper classes in Chekhov’s plays, as in life, was peppered with French names and words.
3 . papers: Scented papers were chewed to sweeten the breath.
4 melanchondria: An attempt at a concocted word of Chekhov’s - merle-khlyundiya.
5 Kommen Sie hier:‘Come here’ (German).
6 Madame Angot or Ophelia: Heroines from C. Lecoq’s operetta La Fille de Madame Angot and Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
7 Qui est-ce que c‘est: 0Who is this ...’ (inaccurate French).
8 swine in a skullcap: An allusion to the corrupt officials of The Government Inspector, V.8, by Nikolay Vasilevich Gogol (1809-52). His satiric comedy of 1836 is probably the most famous Russian play.
9 Tartuffe: The eponymous hero of Molière’s comedy of 1664, the archetype of lust masked by hypocritical piety and virtue.
10 Nicolas: The aristocratic Count uses the French form of the name.
11 Yes, sir: Slushayu, literally ‘I listen’ — the standard response of military subordinates.
12 Gevalt!: Yiddish exclamation, expressing astonishment, protest, fear, from the German Gewalt, ‘force’.
13 The knock ofthewatchman: Nightwatchmen in big houses and country estates knocked on a piece of wood as they did their rounds to indicate their passing.
ACT TWO
1 . covers: In pre-revolutionary Russia furniture of all kinds in rooms that received little use was kept under covers against light and dirt. That the furniture in the Lebedevs’ house was kept thus during a party is a tribute to the miserliness of the hostess.
2 lottery issues: In 1887 there had been a significant increase in the stock market prices for the Government lottery issues of 1864 and 1866.
3 Flicks his throat with a finger: Signifying that they would get drunk.
4 entre nous: ‘Between ourselves’ (French).
5 ... my dead youth ... : He is quoting (slightly inaccurately) from a famous poem by Mikhail Yurevich Lermontov (1814 — 41), later set to music, ‘No, it’s not you I love so ardently ...’ (1841).
6 plumper: The ideal of merchant beauty, indeed often of Russian beauty during the period, inclined towards the plump.
7 Your Highness: Counts and princes were entitled to be addressed as ‘Your Highness’.
8 Aesculapius:Latin form of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine.
9 . Dobrolyubov: Nikolay Aleksandrovich Dobrolyubov (1836 — 61), radical social and literary critic.
10 kulak: Free, sometimes wealthy farmers, kulaks were often resented and had the reputation of exploiting poorer peasants — one that Stalin made use of in the repressions of the 1920s.
11 serfdom: This had been abolished in 1861, to the distress of many nobles. Of course, Shabelsky and the other older characters in this play had grown up with it.
12 Chatsky: The outspoken hero of A. S. Griboyedov’s comedy Woefrom Wit(1822 — 23).
13 Hegelian: Influenced, like many Russians, by the ideas of the German idealist philosopher Georg Hegel (1770-1831).
14 Francis Bacon: English politician, philo
sopher and essayist (1561-1626).
15 MichelMichelich:A French version of Borkin’s first name and patronymic.
16 Manfred: Byron’s romantic hero, from his poem of that name (1817).
17 superfluous man’: The classic hero of much Russian nineteenth-century literature, from Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin and Lermontov’s Pechorin onward.
ACT THREE
1 Germany ... France: The German Empire’s aggressive policies at this time had led to a deterioration in its relations with France, bad in any case ever since the Franco-Prussian War.
2 rabies: In 1880 Louis Pasteur (1822 — 95) had begun his experiments on rabies which culminated in his development of an anti-rabies vaccine in 1885.
3 Jomini ... vodka’: A quotation from the romantic poet Denis Davydov’s ‘Song of an Old Hussar’ (it is also the epigraph to Tolstoy’s novella Two Hussars, 1855). H. Jomini (1779 — 1869) was a French general and military theorist.
4 Repetatur: ‘Let it be repeated’ — so, ‘again’ (Latin).
5 ʐakuski: The Russian hors d‘oeuvres served with vodka to introduce a meal, sometimes in a separate dining-room.
6 Aesculapius: See note 8 to Act Two.
7 whist: Actually vint, a whist-related game.
8 alma mater: ‘Dear mother’ — Latin cliché for ‘university’.
9 George Sand: Pseudonym of Aurore Dupin, French writer and feminist (1804 — 76).
10 Gymnasium: High school or grammar school modelled on the German Gymnasium.
11 old man: Perceptions of age change. Ivanov is only in his middle thirties!
12 house goblin: The guardian house-spirit of Russian folklore.
ACT FOUR
1 blessing: A Russian Orthodox marriage involves a blessing that is separate from the actual wedding ceremony.
2 . In Gogol the two rats ... : In Gogol’s The Government Inspector (I.i) the Mayor says he’s had a dream about two black rats ‘who came, sniffed — and went off’.
3 yellow house: A lunatic asylum in pre-revolutionary Russia was colloquially known as ‘the yellow house’.
4 Schopenhauer: Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 — 1860), German philosopher.
5 best man: In a Russian Orthodox wedding both bride and groom have ‘best men’ who escort them and hold the crowns above the couple in church.
The Seagull
ACT ONE
1 . Nekrasov: Nikolay Alekseyevich Nekrasov (1821 — 77), Russian lyric poet and radical.
2 Duse: Eleonora Duse (1858 — 1924), famous Italian classical actress who toured in Russia in the 1890s.
3 La Dame aux Camélias: A play of 1852 by Alexandre Dumas, fils (1824 — 95) and a dramatization of his novel of the same title (1848), which also provided the storyline of Verdi’s opera La Traviata (1853), of the film Camillewith Greta Garbo (1937), and of Frederick Ashton’s ballet Marguerite and Armand (1963).
4 Life’s Hell: Chad ʐhiʐni, a play by B. M. Markevich (1822-84).
5 Maupassant: Guy de Maupassant (1850 — 93), French short-story writer and novelist.
6 petty bourgeois: a meshchanin, a member of the meshchanstvo, the lower urban bourgeoisie, one of the social estates defined by law.
7 Tolstoy: Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828 — 1910), Russian novelist and thinker.
8 Zola: Emile Zola (1840 — 1902), French Naturalist novelist and journalist.
9 ‘To France two grenadiers ...’: A setting by Schumann of the poem ‘The Grenadiers’ (1827) by Heinrich Heine (1797 — 1856).
10 Rasplyuyev: A leading role in A. V. Sukhovo-Kobylin’s Krechinsky’s Wedding, a popular play of the 1850s.
11 De gustibus ... nihil: Literally, ‘About taste, either good or nothing.’ Shamrayev has got confused between two Latin tags.
12 ‘O Hamlet...’: From Hamlet’s exchange with his mother Gertrude, Hamlet III.4. The Russians have long been obsessed with Hamlet.
13 jeune premier: ‘romantic lead’ (French).
ACT TWO
1 ‘Tell her, flowers mine ...’: The opening words of Siebel’s aria from Gounod’s opera Faust (1859), III.1.
2 comme il faut: ‘Proper’, ‘properly done’ (French).
3 Maupassant’s ‘Sur l’eau’: Arkadina is reading Maupassant’s non-fictional account of a boat journey, On the Water, which had been translated into Russian in 1896.
4 valerian drops: From the plant, much prescribed as a stimulant among other uses in early medicine.
5 Your Excellency: Having reached a rank in the higher reaches of the civil service, Sorin is entitled to the title of Excellency which went with it.
6 ‘Words, words, words ...’: Hamlet 11.2.
7 ... post-horses: i.e. with relays of horses which served the post and also express travellers.
8 Poprishchin: The crazy civil servant narrator of Gogol’s Notes of a Madman (1835). See also note 10 to Three Sisters, Act Three.
9 Fathers and Sons: The most famous novel (1862) of Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-83).
ACT THREE
1 decoration: As a Full State Councillor (see note 1 to Act 4) Sorin will have been awarded an imperial order (conceivably of St Anna); he will be wearing its cross on a ribbon round his neck.
2 . Zemstvo: See note 2 to Ivanov, Characters.
3 The Post Office Robbery: A popular French play.
4 Slavyansky Baʐaar: One of the best Moscow hotels.
ACT FOUR
1 Full State Councillor: Sorin was a civil servant in Grade 4 of the Table of Ranks originally instituted by Peter the Great in 1722 and modified over the next two centuries. This established a formal hierarchy for the civil service, the armed services, the imperial court and the clergy. So Sorin was equivalent in rank to a rear-admiral and an archimandrite.
2 Genoa: Chekhov had visited the Italian city in the autumn of 1894.
3 Rusalka: Treplyov is referring to the Miller’s aria in A. S. Dargomyzhsky’s opera Rusalka (after Pushkin).
4 the Man in the Iron Mask: A political prisoner in the reign of Louis XIV of France who always wore a mask when being transferred from one prison to another; the mystery was the subject of one of Dumas père’s novels.
5 lotto: A board game played with cards and numbered discs drawn on the principle of a lottery — a domestic ancestor of bingo.
6 ‘Luckyishe ... warm nest’: The quotation is from the epilogue to Turgenev’s novel Rudin (1856).
Uncle Vanya
CHARACTERS
1 . nyanya: ‘Nanny’ or ‘nurse’ is an inadequate translation for the nyanyas attached to Russian households in pre-revolutionary Russia who played a significant role in literature and in life; cf. Pushkin’s attachment to his old nyanya.
ACT ONE
1 Your Excellency: Serebryakov is a retired Professor. His rank in the civilian grades of the Table of Ranks (see note 1 to The Seagull, Act Four) gave him the right to be addressed as Your Excellency.
2 Maman: ‘Mama’ or ‘Mother’ (French).
3 ‘With straining mind ... nor do we’: From a satire by the classical poet and satirist Ivan Ivanovich Dimitriyev (1760 — 1837).
4 Turn off the tap ... : Voynitsky is adapting a well-known Russian aphorism: ‘If you have a fountain, put a tap on it.’
5 quantum satis: ‘As much as I need’ (Latin).
6 Jean: French for Ivan or John.
7 Tsyp, tsyp, tsyp: The Russian version of ‘cluck, cluck, cluck’.
8 In some play of Ostrovsky’s there’s a character: Paratov in The Girl with No Dowry (1879) by Nikolay Aleksandrovich Ostrovsky (1823-86).
ACT TWO
1 Batyushkov: Konstantin Nikolayevich Batyushkov (1787 — 1855), lyric poet of the so-called ‘Anacreontic’ school.
2 Turgenev: See note 9 to The Seagull, Act Two.
3 holy fool: ‘Holy fools’ — the mentally retarded, often tramps — were traditionally regarded in Russia as touched by God and founts of wisdom.
4 Kisses ... on the shoulder: To kiss someone on the shoulde
r was an antiquated form of greeting, the salutation of a superior by a social inferior.
5 devil: More precisely, a house goblin. See note 12 to Ivanov, Act Three.
6 kulaks: See note 10 to Ivanov, Act Two.
7 Basta: ‘That’s enough’ (Italian).
8 ty: ‘Thou’. They are now on the intimate terms of using the second person singular to one another.
9 Zhuchka, Malchik: Dogs’ names - literally Beetle and Boy.
ACT THREE
1 the Conservatoire: The St Petersburg Conservatoire, founded in 1862.
2 abacus: As used for accounts and by cashiers in Russia until very recently, perhaps still in remote areas.
3 ‘Serebryakov’...Vanya: These forms here correspond to the use of the formal second person plural and the intimate ‘thou’ respectively.
4 I’ve asked you to come here ... coming to us: Serebryakov is quoting here, somewhat inaccurately, the opening sentence of Gogol’s famous play The Government Inspector.
5 manet omnes una nox: ‘One night awaits all’: from an ode of Horace (I.28).
6 dacha: The traditional Russian summer villa, usually within reach of towns and built of wood.
7 Finland: Part of the Russian Empire until 1917. The Finnish countryside near St Petersburg was classic dacha country (it is now again part of Russia — since the war of 1939/40).
ACT FOUR
1 Ayvaʐovsky: Ivan Ayvazovsky (1817 — 1900), a popular nineteenth-century artist, who painted an astonishing number of pictures, mostly of marine subjects. An obviously fatuous remark.
The Plays of Anton Chekhov Page 37