Artistic time and characters of the play “The Seagull. "The Seagull" Chekhov main characters Symbols in the play The Seagull
“Herolessness” and “inaction” of Chekhov’s dramaturgy. Features of the genre (see ticket 15)
“The Seagull” (1896) is the most autobiographical and personal work for Chekhov himself (we are not talking about direct everyday correspondences between the characters in the play and people close to Chekhov, not about certain prototypes that literary criticism is so persistently trying to establish today, but rather about the lyrical self-expression of the author). In the play, written in the small Melikhovo outbuilding, Chekhov, perhaps for the first time, so openly expressed his life and aesthetic position. This is a play about people of art, about the torments of creativity, about restless, restless young artists and about the smug, well-fed older generation guarding their conquered positions. Treplev's play remains unplayed. Treplev's mother, the famous actress Arkadina, demonstratively does not want to listen to this “decadent nonsense.” The show has been cancelled. This reveals the incompatibility of two worlds, two views on life and two positions in art. “You, routinists, have seized primacy in art and consider legitimate and real only what you do yourself, and you oppress and strangle the rest!” Treplev rebels against his mother and successful writer Trigorin. “I don’t recognize you! I don’t recognize you either, not him!"
In this conflict, a crisis situation emerges in Russian art and in life at the end of the 19th century, when “the old art went wrong, but the new one has not yet improved” (N. Berkovsky). The old classical realism, in which “imitation of nature” turned into an end in itself (“people eat, drink, love, walk, wear their jackets”), degenerated into nothing more than a clever technical craft.
The art of the new, coming century is born in pain, and its path is not yet clear. “We must portray life not as it is, and not as it should be, but as it appears in dreams” - this Treplev program still sounds like a vague and pretentious declaration. With his talent, he pushed off from the old shore, but has not yet landed on the new one. And life without a “certain worldview” turns for the young seeker into a chain of continuous torment.
The loss of the “common idea - the god of a living person” divides people. Contacts are broken, everyone exists on their own, alone, incapable of understanding the other. That is why the feeling of love is so especially hopeless here: everyone loves, but everyone is unloved and everyone is unhappy. Nina can neither understand nor love Treplev, he, in turn, does not notice Masha’s devoted, patient love. Nina loves Trigorin, but he leaves her. Arkadina, with her last effort of will, keeps Trigorin near her, but there is no love between them for a long time. Polina Andreevna constantly suffers from Dorn's indifference, teacher Medvedenko - from Masha's callousness.
The province and the capital in the play are contrasted as sincerity and falsehood.
In the literature about The Seagull, the various plans of the play are often called subtexts. There have been attempts to classify them, but inaccurate definitions and the basis for classification sometimes lead to confusion. A striking example of this is the question of dramatic subtext, which is closely related to the problem of action.
N.I. Bakhmutova identifies the “technique of depicting the hero’s internal state” as one of the types of “undercurrent” and believes that this semantic plan is manifested “in the deep psychological motivation of the remarks” 1 , that is, it is part of the action. However, the latter circumstance was left unattended in many works; moreover, the hero’s state began to be contrasted with action.
For example, N.Ya. Berkovsky not only significantly narrows the interpretation of subtext given by Vakhtangov, understanding it only as deliberately hidden: “the usual subtext of dialogues is some kind of politics and diplomacy,” in Ibsen’s dramas “characters keep their secrets, as befits, before face of the enemy,” but also contrasts it with the subtext of Chekhov’s plays, where, in his opinion, there is no struggle and the characters are not distinguished by secrecy, but by strange frankness. N.Ya. Berkovsky explains the true meaning of confessional speeches as follows: “Lone people secretly cry out and secretly hope that they will still be heard, that those around them are not forever indifferent. Through their frank speeches they recruit interlocutors and friends.” Even if we completely agree with this, it will remain unclear what the fundamental difference is in Chekhov’s subtext, except that his heroes set different goals for themselves and achieve them by different means than Ibsen’s heroes.
A change in the original meaning of Stanislavsky’s terminology can be seen in V.E. Khalizev, who uniquely understands the division of “internal” and “external” action. Stanislavsky singled out “internal” action in order to emphasize the need to justify any physical action, including verbal, by feeling, volitional desire. The word “feeling” indicates the non-speculative nature of justification; it needs to be translated from the language of concepts into the language of images: “...we need a continuous line of not simple, but illustrated proposed circumstances”, “... our every movement on stage, every word must be the result of a faithful life of imagination.” Stanislavsky contrasted internally justified action with mechanical, pseudo-stage action.
A special merit of Chekhov the playwright can be considered the creation of a new phenomenon for dramaturgy, such as images-symbols. They help the reader and viewer to most fully and accurately understand the mental state of the characters and their relationships.
At the end of 1880 - beginning. 1890s In Russian culture, a new phenomenon - symbolism - is increasingly making itself known. Chekhov's “The Seagull” is also perceived in the context of the ideological and aesthetic searches of the era. The very title of the play carries a figurative beginning. It is artistically polysemantic and irreplaceable. Reading the play, we feel how this very word - “seagull” - is filled with more and more new meaning. The unclear distinction between the concepts of image and symbol leads to an ambiguous interpretation of the seagull. This is where the problem lies, the attempt to resolve which this work is devoted to. In the study, the author proves that the seagull is a symbol, reveals its semantic meaning, traces its evolution in the play, its correlation with its theme and other symbols. A symbol is the embodiment of an idea. The main idea of “The Seagull” is the affirmation of the idea of the need to merge the human soul with another’s soul “in beautiful harmony.” The dramatic situation arises in the play due to a lack of love. Heroes in art seek the fullness of being, which the surrounding reality has denied them. Art and love drive the destinies of the heroes. And the “seagull” symbolizes the fates of Nina Zarechnaya, Treplev and Trigorin. The evolution of the seagull symbol can be traced through the example of the fate of Nina Zarechnaya. In her confused monologue in Act 4, Nina tries to find a final answer to the question: is she really a shot seagull? And then he firmly declares: “I am an actress.” The symbol of the seagull can also be attributed to Treplev - as a tragic prediction of his “interrupted flight.” If Treplev is a lonely soul, detached from life and dying, then Trigorin is art that is losing its soul, looking like a beautiful but lifeless scarecrow. Considering the “seagull” as a living symbol of true poetry, beauty, love in art and life, we come to the conclusion that neither Treplev, who kills a living seagull, nor Trigorin, with his cruel indifference to the “seagull” - in art and life - are consistent. The symbol serves as an important means of revealing the mental content of individuals. The symbol of the seagull is correlated with other symbols in the play. The joint functioning of symbols promotes readers to understand the images of heroes, their inner world, provides the key to solving the Seagull conflict. In the context of the entire play, the symbol of the seagull is the center of emotional impact. Its function is “to enhance the meaning of what is happening,” that is, the symbol acts as an equivalent replacement for the verbal expression of the central idea of the play. In the course of the study, the author became convinced of the semantic multi-layered structure of the symbol and traced the features of its functioning in the play.
An interesting symbol is the deliberate literary nature of the play, which appears, in particular, in dialogues built on numerous reminiscences, for example in the work of Shakespeare. So Arkady repeatedly reads the queen’s filial monologues from Hamlet, and he answers her as if for fun with Hamlet’s lines. Nina’s speech, poetic and abrupt, seems to illustrate the forgetfulness not so much of herself as of their heroes. This is a symbol of the most intense search for the meaning of life, as for the heroine, who must be remembered in the scene of her last conversation with Treplev.
From the confused, abrupt sentences, one symbol emerges - the cross and the responsibility that everyone must bear.
2.2 “The pangs of creativity” by Trigorin
Chekhov dramaturgy play The Seagull
Trigorin is much older than Treplev, he belongs to a different generation and in his views on art he acts as an antipode to Treplev. He seems to be the opposite pole to him.
Trigorin is undoubtedly more significant and interesting as a writer than as a person. He is a well-known writer, half-jokingly or half-seriously they say about him that he cannot be compared only with Tolstoy and Zola, and many consider him to be right after Turgenev. Of course, it should not be seriously compared with the classics. From the small evidence that is scattered throughout the pages of the play, one can judge that Trigorin is indeed talented. However, for him creativity is not just bread, fun and fans, as for Arkadina, for him it is both a painful illness and an obsession, but also synonymous with life. Trigorin is one of the few who realizes the inadequacy of his role existence: “I don’t like myself as a writer. The worst thing is that I’m kind of in a daze and often don’t understand what I’m writing.” But this awareness does not become a genuine dramatic excess of his “I”.
How to interpret Trigorin’s conversations at the very beginning of his acquaintance with Nina about his writing craft? They are conducted quite simply, seriously, and confidentially. One feels that the author of the play gives both Trigorin, Treplev, and Nina Zarechnaya his favorite thoughts about art. But somehow, on the verge of involuntary authorial irony, Trigorin’s confessions about his “torments of creativity” remain: after attacks of divine inspiration that visit him God knows when and where, he likes to sit with fishing rods and not take his eyes off the float.
And yet he, apparently still an average figure in art, makes the statement that he is an enemy of stereotypes: he knows how to caustically ridicule “commonplaces.” His style of creativity is not innovative, but he is also looking for new forms, for example, he draws attention to the fact that a cloud looks like a “grand piano,” and even Turgenev would not have dared to make such a comparison. The seeker of new forms, Treplev, enviously notices in some of Trigorin’s stories a laconic description of a moonlit night, where it is said that the neck of a bottle glittered on the dam of a mill - that’s the whole night for you.
Trigorin is blind and deaf to everything except his notebooks, he sees only images. He is Salieri, unable to realize that he is dissolving music like a corpse. Taking landscapes into talented, even ingenious miniatures, he turns them into still lifes, natur mort - dead nature. Even understanding the civic tasks of his work, the responsibility for the word to the reader, the “educational function of art,” he does not feel the ability to do anything in this field - this is not the right talent. But a poet in Russia is more than a poet.
Trigorin's suffering is more significant, deep, and meaningful than Treplev's suffering. An experienced master, Trigorin painfully feels the weight of talent that is not inspired by a great goal. He feels his talent as a cast-iron core to which he is attached, like a convict, and not as a “divine gift.”
Chekhov connected a lot of his own personal thoughts with Trigorin’s writings. This is especially clearly felt in those tragic words with which Trigorin responds to Nina’s childhood delights, to her admiration for his success and fame.
“What success? - Trigorin is sincerely surprised. - I never liked myself. I don’t like myself as a writer... I love this water, trees, sky, I feel nature, it arouses in me a passion, an irresistible desire to write. But I’m not just a landscape painter, I’m still a citizen, I love my homeland, the people, I feel that if I’m a writer, then I have to talk about the people, about their suffering, about their future, talk about science, about human rights, and so on. and so on, and I talk about everything, I’m in a hurry, they’re pushing me from all sides, they’re angry, I’m rushing from side to side, like a fox hunted by dogs, I see that life and science are moving forward and forward, and I’m still falling behind and falling behind , like a man who missed the train, and, in the end, I feel that I can only paint a landscape, and in everything else I am false, and false to the core.” Trigorin feels his duty to his homeland as a writer; he feels the need to convey high civic feelings to people. In Russian literature, the theme of “poet and citizen” is raised most loudly by N. A. Nekrasov. But the need for it echoed in the soul of every creator.
Trigorin is in danger of losing creative inspiration, passion, pathos, a danger arising from the lack of a common idea. The artist's difficulties appear in the image of Trigorin in a much more serious version than Treplev's version. Treplev was not tormented by the search for a worldview, the consciousness of the writer’s duty and responsibility to his homeland and people.
From the fact that Trigorin is in danger of losing his creative fire, it would, of course, be wrong to conclude that Trigorin is the cold artisan, the indifferent routinist that Treplev presents him as. Would an indifferent routinist suffer as much from the awareness of the weaknesses and shortcomings of his art as Trigorin suffers?
Another big theme that has tormented many artists is connected with the image of Trigorin. Art so absorbs and eats up Trigorin that for ordinary human life he has neither the will nor even the ability for great and integral feelings. This is the general problem of the artist in bourgeois society, in which, as Marx pointed out, the victories of art are achieved at the cost of a certain moral inferiority of the artist. Trigorin complains to Nina: “...I feel that I am eating my own life, that for the honey that I give to someone in space, I pick dust from my best flowers, tear up the flowers themselves and trample on their roots. Am I not crazy?
But be that as it may, Trigorin also does not deserve the deep, “eternal” love of art. He himself leaves this love. Despite all his advantages, he has eaten too much of Treplev, but still does not have a big, strong soul, or the ability for integral feelings. And his creative possibilities are limited. He feels his talent not as freedom, but rather as slavery, keeping his personality on a leash.
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The comedy of The Cherry Orchard is inherent in the very structure of the play. Each character is absorbed in his own truth,” immersed in his experiences and does not notice those around him: their pain, their melancholy, their joys and hopes. Each of the characters is, as it were, playing his own one-man show. These one-man performances make up the action, which is so complex in sound. This is at the same time and polyphony (polyphony, a specially organized choir of independent voices), and dissonance, an inconsistent, discordant sound, where each voice strives to be unique.
Where does this self-absorption of the heroes of The Cherry Orchard come from? What prevents them from hearing each other: after all, they are all close people trying to help, support and receive support from each other? Let us pay attention: each of the characters confesses, but in the end all these confessions turn out to be addressed to the audience, and not to their partners on stage. At some point, the confessor realizes that he cannot explain the most important thing. So, Anya will never understand her mother’s drama, and Lyubov Andreevna herself will never understand her passion for Petya’s ideas. What “doesn’t allow” the characters in the play to see each other? The fact is that, according to the author’s plan, each of them is not only a person, but also a performer of a certain socio-historical role: what can be called a “hostage of History.” A person can, to a certain extent, adjust his personality and his relationships with others. But he cannot change his role, no matter how alien it may be to him. The discrepancy between the hero's inner essence and the socio-historical role that he is forced to play is the dramatic essence of The Cherry Orchard.
“An old woman, nothing in the present, everything in the past,” is how Chekhov characterized Ranevskaya in his letters to Stanislavsky, who staged the play. What's in her past? Her youth family life, a blooming and fruit-bearing cherry orchard - all this ended several years ago, it ended tragically. The husband died, the estate fell into disrepair, and a new tormenting passion arose. And then the irreparable happened: Grisha died - drowned in the river. The death of a son is the worst tragedy. For Ranevskaya, the horror of loss was combined with a feeling of guilt: infatuation with her lover, absorption in love, it seems to her, alienated her from her son. Perhaps the absurd death could have been prevented? Perhaps Grisha's death is a punishment for her, her mother, for her inadmissible passion? And Ranevskaya runs away from home - from the cherry orchard, from her daughters, from her brother, from that river where her son drowned - from her entire previous life, from her past, which turned into an irreparable disaster. He runs so as never to return, he runs so that somewhere he can end his sinful and absurd life - after the death of the boy.
Ranevskaya ends up in Paris. The acute pain dulled, the first wave of despair subsided. Ranevskaya was saved by love. Feelings for a person unworthy of her, for a scoundrel... But is it really given to us to choose whom to love? Yes, he is a scoundrel, her last lover, he robbed and abandoned her, and then returned again - again a beggar. And Lyubov Andreevna knows everything about him, understands everything - and does not want to know or remember it. For the feeling itself is valuable, because for her there is nothing in life higher than love.
This the only heroine“The Cherry Orchard”, living in an aura of love: it is no coincidence that her very name is Love. Past and present loves are intertwined in her soul, the ability to love unselfishly and recklessly, completely surrendering to feeling - this is the “key” to the image of Ranevskaya. “This is a stone around my neck, I am going to the bottom with it, but I love this stone and cannot live without it.” Which other Russian heroine was so frank?!
Her current strange Parisian existence is, in essence, life after life. Nothing of the past has been forgotten. The terrible wound has not healed and will never heal. The connection with one’s home and loved ones becomes more and more elusive. It is increasingly impossible to become “one of our own” in Paris, or to return to the cherry orchard... The illusory nature, the absurdity of existence, longing for home, the feeling of guilt before my daughter and stepdaughter - for leaving them, for wasting their fortune - Lyubov Andreevna is tormented. And now, before our eyes, a decisive step is taken: Ranevskaya returns home. She tears up telegrams from her lover, tears them up without reading: she’s finished with Paris! She is happy: “I want to jump, wave my arms... God knows, I love my homeland, I love it dearly, I couldn’t watch from the carriage, I kept crying.” “If only I could take the heavy stone off my chest and shoulders, if only I could forget my past!”
Ranevskaya returns to the house where everyone loves her, where they are waiting for her - and have been faithfully waiting for her for five “Parisian” years. And where everyone condemns her for something: for “viciousness”, for frivolity... No one wants to accept her for who she is; they love her, condemning and laughing. And Ranevskaya herself acutely feels this, accepts the justice of the reproaches, and constantly feels guilty. But along with the feeling of guilt, alienation grows in her: why does everyone demand from her something that she cannot give, why do they expect her to change, to become what others want her to be, to stop being herself?! The further we go, the clearer it becomes: she is a stranger here.
On the list characters Ranevskaya is designated by one word: “landowner”. But this is a landowner who never knew how to manage her estate, who loved it passionately - and was unable to save it. Her flight from the estate after Grisha's death, mortgaging and remortgaging this estate... Nominally, she is a landowner. In fact, he is a child of this cherry orchard, unable to save him from ruin and death.
The role of the landowner for Ranevskaya has been “played out” for a long time. The role of the mother is also: Anya leaves for a new life, where there is no place for Lyubov Andreevna; Varya arranges herself in her own way... Having returned to stay forever, Ranevskaya only ends her previous life and becomes convinced that it is impossible to enter the same river twice. All hopes turn into a memorial service for the old life: the past has died, gone forever. She lived through all the “plots” possible in Russia. The homeland did not accept the prodigal daughter: the return did not take place. And the ghostly Parisian “life after life” turns out to be the only reality. Ranevskaya returns to Paris - and in Russia, in her cherry orchard, the ax is already knocking.
The element of love, painful passions, sin and repentance in which Ranevskaya lives is alien to the other heroes of the comedy. Here is her brother and the same age, Gaev. Leonid Andreevich, a middle-aged man who has already lived most of his life, thinks and acts like an old boy. But Gaev’s inexhaustible youth is not like his sister’s gullibility and lightness. He is simply infantile. It was not youth with its rebellious passions that remained in him - Gaev, it seems, never grew up to it, never crossed the threshold of the nursery. Helpless, talkative, shallow, not really loving anything or anyone. “Croise... Yellow in the middle...” The sound of billiard balls completely cures his suffering after the loss of the cherry orchard... But even in him, a stupid, spiritually undeveloped man, Chekhov sees something sweet: he is one of the eccentric county landowners , in their own way adorned the province in the old days, giving the Russian noble nests a peculiar charm. Gaev is a figure born of his time; comical, ridiculous and pathetic in the new era.
The comedy intertwines several storylines. The line of the failed romance between Lopakhin and Varya ends before anyone else. It is built on Chekhov’s favorite technique: they talk most and most readily about what does not exist, discuss details, argue about trifles - non-existent things, without noticing or deliberately hushing up what exists and is essential. By the way, let us pay attention: Gogol also loves this technique very much. Let's remember how the whole city in " Dead souls" tastefully discussed Chichikov's peasants, who were no longer in the world, how they argued about what kind of "Chichikov's peasant" was, whether the newly-minted Kherson landowner would be able to cope with this peasant. And how Chichikov himself, with pleasure, almost believing in the reality of his own invention, discusses the problems his Kherson estate. But in Gogol this technique is designed to greatly enhance the interaction of his real and unreal layers. art world, a fusion of phantasmagoria and reality. Chekhov surrounds with endless conversations the non-existent, the apparent, in order to emphasize the very illusory nature of sober calculations, logical plans that his heroes build in an unstable and unreliable world. Convinced, as if it had been decided long ago, Ranevskaya talks about her break with “that man” - and leaves for him... Projects for saving the garden are confidently discussed... They talk about the romance of Lopakhin and Varya. But why didn’t this romance take place? Why didn’t the destinies of the hard worker Varya and the business man Lopakhin unite? And here it is permissible to ask: was there an affair? Was it wishful thinking?
Let's take a closer look at the image of Lopakhin. Chekhov himself considered his role “central” in the comedy, writing to Stanislavsky that “if it fails, then the whole play will fail.” Chekhov asked Stanislavsky to play the role of Lopakhin himself; he believed that no other actor could do it: he “would either play it very pale, or act out, make Lopakhin a clown... After all, this is not a merchant in the vulgar sense of the word, you have to understand this.” However, the Moscow Art Theater team did not heed the author’s requests and staged “The Cherry Orchard” in their own way. And, although the play was a great success, Chekhov was extremely dissatisfied with the production, responded sharply negatively, claiming that the theater did not understand the play and failed everything. The theater had the right to its own interpretation, but what did the playwright himself put into the comedy, why not Ranevskaya and Gaeva, as Stanislavsky played, but he placed Lopakhin at the center of the figurative system.
The figure of the merchant has attracted Russian literature for half a century. Along with dark tyrants and absurd nouveau riche, they were looking for the traits of a new, intelligent merchant, a wise and honest entrepreneur. It is this combination of unselfish love for beauty - and a merchant's spirit, peasant simplicity - and a subtle artistic soul that Chekhov strives to capture and embody in the image of Lopakhin.
Lopakhin is the only one who offers a real plan for saving the cherry orchard. And this plan is realistic, first of all, because Lopakhin understands: the garden cannot be preserved in its previous form, its time has passed, and now the garden can only be saved by reorganizing it, re-creating it in accordance with the requirements of the new era.
Indeed, the garden was once an important part of the landowner's economy: “In the old days, about forty to fifty years ago, cherries were dried, soaked, pickled, jam was made, and it used to be...dried cherries were sent by cartload to Moscow and Kharkov. There was money ! And the dried cherries were soft, juicy, sweet, fragrant... They knew the method then..." recalls Firs. Now this method is forgotten. There is a catastrophic lack of money, but they save on food for the servants, while there is nowhere to put the cherries, they fall off and disappear. The garden turned into a symbol and ceased to be a reality: for everyone except Lopakhin, it is the abode of the ghosts of the past. Here Ranevskaya sees her deceased mother walking through the garden. Here Petya explains to Anya: “...don’t human beings look at you from every cherry tree in the garden, from every leaf, from every trunk, don’t you really hear voices...”
Lopakhin strives to bring life back to the garden - even if he breathes new life into it, almost negating the old one. “Dividing the garden into summer cottages - the idea that Lopakhin is running around with - is not just the destruction of the cherry orchard, but its reconstruction, the creation, so to speak, of a publicly accessible cherry orchard. With that former, luxurious garden, which served only a few, this new, thinned out and accessible to anyone at a reasonable price, the Lopakhinsky garden correlates like the democratic urban culture of Chekhov's era with the marvelous estate culture of the past." (Kataev V.B. Literary connections of Chekhov. - M.: Moscow State University Publishing House, 1989). V.B. Kataev very cleverly and subtly comments on the essence of Lopakhin’s idea. For him, a peasant son, a peasant, Ranevskaya’s garden is part of an elite aristocratic culture, its quintessence. What was inaccessible twenty years ago is now almost “lying on the road”: and this feeling intoxicates Lopakhin. On the other hand, the garden is dying - and only he, Lopakhin, can save this treasure. All his attempts to save the garden lead to nothing for Ranevskaya: she does not hear Lopakhin, does not understand his simple and clear arguments. After all, for Lyubov Andreevna, the cherry orchard exists only in its original form, in its integrity. The garden, divided into plots and given over to dachas, is still lost and destroyed: “...sell me along with the garden...”
Lopakhin convinces Ranevskaya and Gaev, explains, proves, offers money: he is sincerely trying to preserve the garden for the owner. And in the end he himself turns out to be the owner of the garden - unexpectedly, unexpectedly for himself and those around him. He is at the same time happy - and dejected, discouraged by what happened: “Hey, musicians, play, I want to listen to you! Come everyone and watch how Ermolai Lopakhin will hit the cherry orchard with an ax, how the trees will fall to the ground! We will set up dachas, and our grandchildren and great-grandchildren they will see a new life here... Music, play!.. Why, why didn’t you listen to me, my poor dear, you won’t come back now (With tears.) Oh, if only all this would pass, if only you would change somehow. our awkward, unhappy life."
Let's think about Lopakhin's last desperate words. He - the only one in the play - is given the opportunity to get closer to the real truth, to a deep understanding of the essence of the era. Lopakhin sees not just someone’s individual sins and guilt, but the deep troubles of the whole modern life: “We must say frankly, our life is stupid... We make a fool of each other, but life just goes by...” It is this understanding of the global absurdity of modern life, its illogicality, the impossibility of living the way you want, in harmony with himself and the world, and pushes Lopakhin to a central place in the comedy.
Now let’s think: could Lopakhin be attracted to Varya - gray, narrow-minded, caught up in petty economic calculations? Does Varya love Lopakhina? How does she understand love? Remember, Petya is still angry that Varya is spying on him and Anya, he is afraid that an affair might turn out between them, that something illegal might happen. And the point is not that Petya and Anya are far from love, but in Varya’s principles and views, in her petty, rational, petty-bourgeois perception of any human relationship - including her relationship with Lopakhin. Varya does not wonder whether she loves Ermolai Alekseevich and whether he loves her. She sees a suitable match (especially since there are no other contenders for her hand, even those around her have no one else to gossip about). She wants to get married. And she is waiting for a declaration of love and a proposal from Lopakhin - and the fact that Lopakhin does not utter the long-awaited words, Varya attributes to his businesslike nature": "He has a lot to do, he has no time for me," and "he is getting rich, he is busy with business... "Varya is waiting for a simple and logical course of life: since Lopakhin often visits a house where there is unmarried girls, of which only she, Varya, is “suitable” for him, which means he must marry. And only being busy prevents him from noticing her merits. Varya doesn’t even have a thought to look at the situation differently, to think whether Lopakhin loves her, is she interesting to him? All Varina’s expectations are based on the conversations of others that this marriage would be successful, on idle gossip!
It is not shyness or busyness that prevents Lopakhin from explaining things to Varya. Understanding what everyone expects from him, and understanding that Varya is a “decent match” for him, Ermolai Alekseevich still hesitates and in the end does not make an offer. Well, he doesn’t love Varya, he’s bored with her! In parallel with the alleged affair with Varya, about which everyone is talking so much, another thread runs through Lopakhin: he “like his own, more than his own,” loves Ranevskaya. This line is perfectly revealed by V.B. Kataev: “This would seem unthinkable, absurd to Ranevskaya and everyone around him, and he himself, apparently, is not fully aware of his feelings. But it is enough to observe how Lopakhin behaves, say, in the second act, after Ranevskaya tells him so that he proposes to Varya. It is after this that he talks with irritation about how good it was before, when men could be fucked, and begins tactlessly teasing Petya. All this is the result of a decline in his mood after he clearly sees that Ranevskaya. and it doesn’t even occur to us to take his feelings seriously. And later in the play this unrequited tenderness of Lopakhin will break through several more times.
A dying garden and failed, even unnoticed love are two cross-cutting, internally connected themes of the play" (Kataev V.B. Chekhov's Literary Connections. - M.: Moscow State University Publishing House, 1989).
A man, a peasant son, who owes his success in life only to himself, to his abilities and hard work, Lopakhin becomes the owner of a cherry orchard. It is to him that the most ardent recognition belongs: “...an estate, the most beautiful of which is nothing in the world.” None of the characters in the play spoke more soulfully and enthusiastically about the garden! A man of the people, he takes into his own hands what until now belonged only to the aristocracy and what the aristocracy was unable to keep. Does Chekhov rely on Lopakhin? Yes, of course. But the author does not delude himself about the new men who, like Lopakhin, have broken away from their circle. Next to Ermolai Alekseevich there is a very “important figure - the lackey Yasha. He is the same peasant son, he also feels the gap between his current position (lived in Paris! saw civilization! joined!) and his past. And this arrogant, disgusting boor clearly sets off Lopakhin, with all its essence opposes him. Not only Ranevskaya’s Russia and Petya Trofimov’s Russia look at each other, but also Lopakhin’s Russia and the Russia of the lackey Yasha.
"... Lopakhin at the end of the play, having achieved success, is shown by Chekhov by no means as a winner. The entire content of “The Cherry Orchard” reinforces the words of this hero about “an awkward, unhappy life”, which “you know it’s passing.” In fact, a man who alone is able to truly appreciate what a cherry orchard is, is forced (after all, there are no other ways out of the current situation) to destroy it with his own hands. With merciless sobriety, Chekhov shows in “The Cherry Orchard” the fatal discrepancy between personalities. good qualities person, subjectively good "his intentions - and the results of his social activities"(Kataev V.B. Literary connections of Chekhov. - M.: Moscow State University Publishing House, 1989). And here again one cannot help but remember" Dead souls"Gogol. The intrigue of "The Cherry Orchard" mirrors Gogol's mirage intrigue. Chichikov, who strained all his strength to accumulate wealth and become the master of life, absurdly and unexpectedly breaks down from the "highest point" of each of his scams, when, it would seem, happiness is just a stone's throw away Lopakhin, who was desperately trying to save it for Ranevskaya, also unexpectedly and inevitably receives a cherry orchard - “an estate, the most beautiful of which there is nothing in the world.”
The unexpectedness of such a turn strengthens those around him in the opinion that he is a merchant, a money-grubber, thinking only about profit. And the abyss separating Lopakhin from the rest of the characters in the play becomes deeper and deeper. Three ideological and compositional centers are united in the play: Ranevskaya, Gaev and Varya - Lopakhin - Petya and Anya. Please note: among them only Lopakhin is absolutely alone. The rest form stable groups. We have already comprehended the first two “centers,” now let’s think about the third center - about Pete Trofimov and Anya.
Petya certainly plays the leading role. This figure is contradictory, and the attitude of the author of the comedy and the inhabitants of the estate towards him is contradictory. A stable theatrical tradition forced us to see Petya as a progressive thinker and activist: this began with Stanislavsky’s first production, where V. Kachalov played Petya as Gorky’s “petrel”. This interpretation was also supported in most literary works, where researchers relied on Petya’s monologues and did not correlate them with the actions of the hero, with the entire structure of his role. Meanwhile, let us remember that Chekhov’s theater is a theater of intonation, not text, therefore the traditional interpretation of Trofimov’s image is fundamentally incorrect.
First of all, literary roots are clearly felt in the image of Petya. He is correlated with the hero of Turgenev's "Novi" Nezhdanov and with the hero of Ostrovsky's play "Talents and Admirers" Pyotr Meluzov. And Chekhov himself spent a long time researching this historical and social type - the type of Protestant-enlightener. Such are Solomon in "The Steppe", Pavel Ivanovich in "Gusev", Yartsev in the story "Three Years", Doctor Blagovo in "My Life". The image of Petya is especially closely connected with the hero of “The Bride” Sasha - researchers have repeatedly noted that these images are very close, that the roles of Petya and Sasha in the plot are similar: both of them are needed to captivate the young heroines into a new life. But the constant, intense interest with which Chekhov peered into this type that appeared in the era of timelessness, returning to him in various works, led to the fact that from secondary and episodic heroes, in the last play he became a central hero - one of the central ones.
Lonely and restless, Petya wanders around Russia. Homeless, shabby, practically a beggar... And yet he is happy in his own way: he is the freest and most optimistic of the heroes of The Cherry Orchard. Looking at this image, we understand: Petya lives in a different world than the other characters in the comedy - he lives in a world of ideas that exists in parallel with the world of real things and relationships. Ideas, grandiose plans, social and philosophical systems - this is Petya’s world, his element. Such a happy existence in another dimension interested Chekhov and made him look more and more closely at this type of hero.
Petya's relationship with real world very tense. He does not know how to live in it, for those around him he is absurd and strange, ridiculous and pitiful: “a shabby gentleman,” “an eternal student.” He cannot complete his course at any university - he is expelled from everywhere for participating in student riots. He is not in harmony with things - everything always breaks, gets lost, falls. Even poor Petya’s beard doesn’t grow! But in the world of ideas he soars! There everything turns out deftly and smoothly, there he subtly grasps all the patterns, deeply understands the hidden essence of phenomena, and is ready and able to explain everything. And all of Petya’s arguments about the life of modern Russia are very correct! He truly and passionately speaks about the terrible past, which still vividly influences the present and does not let go of its convulsive embrace. Let us remember his monologue in the second act, where he convinces Anya to take a fresh look at the cherry orchard and at her life: “To own living souls - after all, this has reborn all of you, who lived before and are now living...” Petya is right! Something similar was passionately and convincingly argued by A.I. Herzen: in the article “The Meat of Liberation” he wrote that serfdom poisoned the souls of people, that no amount of decrees can abolish the most terrible thing - the habit of selling one’s own kind... Petya speaks of the necessity and inevitability of redemption: “It’s so clear to start living in present, we must first redeem our past, put an end to it, and it can only be redeemed through suffering, only through extraordinary, continuous labor.” And this is absolutely true: the idea of repentance and atonement is one of the purest and most humane, the basis of the highest morality.
But then Petya begins to talk not about ideas, but about their real embodiment, and his speeches immediately begin to sound pompous and absurd, the entire system of beliefs turns into simple phrase-mongering: “All of Russia is our garden,” “humanity is moving toward the highest truth, toward the highest happiness.” , which is only possible on earth, and I am in the forefront! "
Petya speaks just as shallowly about human relationships, about what is not subject to logic, what contradicts the harmonious system of the world of ideas. Remember how tactless his conversations with Ranevskaya are about her lover, about her cherry orchard, which Lyubov Andreevna longs for and cannot save, how funny and vulgar Petya’s famous words sound: “We are above love!..” For him, love is for the past, to a person, to a home, love in general, this very feeling, its irrationality, is inaccessible. And therefore spiritual world Petit for Chekhov is flawed, inferior. And Petya, no matter how correctly he reasoned about the horror of serfdom and the need to atone for the past through labor and suffering, is just as far from a true understanding of life as Gaev or Varya. It is no coincidence that Anya is placed next to Petya - a young girl who does not yet have her own opinion about anything, who is still on the threshold of real life.
Of all the inhabitants and guests of the estate, only Anya managed to captivate Petya Trofimov with his ideas; she alone takes him absolutely seriously. “Anya is, first of all, a child, cheerful to the end, not knowing life and never crying...” Chekhov explained to the actors at rehearsals. So they walk in pairs: Petya, hostile to the world of things, and the young, “not knowing life” Anya. And Petya has a goal - clear and definite: “forward - to the star.”
Chekhov's irony is brilliant. His comedy amazingly captured all the absurdity of Russian life at the end of the century, when the old was over and the new had not yet begun. Some heroes confidently, in the forefront of all humanity, step forward - towards the star, leaving the cherry orchard without regret. What to regret? After all, all of Russia is our garden! Other heroes painfully experience the loss of the garden. For them, this is the loss of a living connection with Russia and their own past, with their roots, without which they can only somehow live out the allotted years, already forever fruitless and hopeless... The salvation of the garden lies in its radical reconstruction, but new life means, first of all, the death of the past, and the executioner turns out to be the one who most clearly sees the beauty of the dying world.
For a snack…….. about the Image of the Cherry Orchard.
The Cherry Orchard is a complex and ambiguous image. This is not only a specific garden, which is part of the estate of Gaev and Ranevskaya, but also a symbolic image. It symbolizes not only the beauty of Russian nature, but, most importantly, the beauty of the life of the people who nurtured this garden and admired it, that life that perishes with the death of the garden.
The image of the cherry orchard unites all the characters in the play. At first glance, it seems that these are only relatives and old acquaintances who, by chance, have gathered at the estate to solve their everyday problems. But that's not true. The writer brings together characters of different ages and social groups, and they will have to decide one way or another the fate of the garden, and therefore their own fate.
The owners of the estate are Russian landowners Gaev and Ranevskaya. Both brother and sister are educated, smart, sensitive people. They know how to appreciate beauty, they feel it subtly, but due to inertia they cannot do anything to save it. For all their development and spiritual wealth, Gaev and Ranevskaya are deprived of a sense of reality, practicality and responsibility, and therefore are not able to take care of themselves or their loved ones. They cannot follow Lopakhin’s advice and rent out the land, despite the fact that this would bring them a substantial income: “Dachas and summer residents - it’s so vulgar, sorry.” They are prevented from taking this measure by special feelings that connect them with the estate. They treat the garden as a living person with whom they have a lot in common. The cherry orchard for them is the personification past life, lost youth. Looking out the window at the garden, Ranevskaya exclaims: “Oh my childhood, my purity! I slept in this nursery, looked at the garden from here, happiness woke up with me every morning, and then he was exactly the same, nothing has changed.” And further: “Oh my garden! After a dark, stormy autumn and a cold winter, you are young again, full of happiness, the heavenly angels have not abandoned you...” Ranevskaya speaks not only about the garden, but also about herself. She literally compares her life with a “dark stormy autumn” and a “cold winter.” Returning to her native estate, she again felt young and happy.
Lopakhin does not share the feelings of Gaev and Ranevskaya. Their behavior seems strange and illogical to him. He wonders why they are not influenced by the arguments for a prudent way out of a difficult situation, which are so obvious to him. Lopa-khin knows how to appreciate beauty: he is delighted by the garden, “there is nothing more beautiful in the world.” But he is an active and practical person. He cannot simply admire the garden and feel sorry for it without trying to do something to save it. He sincerely tries to help Gaev and Ranevskaya, constantly convincing them: “Both the cherry orchard and the land must be rented out for dachas, do it now, as soon as possible - the auction is coming! Understand! But they don't want to listen to him. Gaev is only capable of empty oaths: “On my honor, whatever you want, I swear, the estate will not be sold!... I swear on my happiness!... then call me a trashy, dishonest person if I allow it to go to auction! I swear with all my being!”
However, the auction took place, and Lopakhin bought the estate. For him, this event has a special meaning: “I bought an estate where my grandfather and father were slaves, where they were not even allowed into the kitchen. I’m dreaming, I’m only imagining this, it’s only seeming...” Thus, for Lopakhin, the purchase of an estate becomes a kind of symbol of his success, a reward for many years of work. He would like his father and grandfather to rise from the grave and rejoice at how their son and grandson succeeded in life. For Lopakhin, a cherry orchard is just land that can be sold, mortgaged or bought. In his joy, he does not even consider it necessary to show a basic sense of tact towards the former owners of the estate. He begins to cut down the garden without even waiting for them to leave. In some ways, he is akin to the soulless lackey Yasha, who completely lacks such feelings as kindness, love for his mother, or attachment to the place where he was born and raised. In this he is the direct opposite of Firs, in whom these qualities are unusually developed. Firs is the oldest person in the house. He has faithfully served his masters for many years, sincerely loves them and, like a father, is ready to protect them from all troubles. Perhaps Firs is the only character in the play endowed with this quality - devotion. Firs is a very integral person, and this integrity is fully manifested in his attitude towards the garden. For the old footman, the garden is a family nest, which he strives to protect in the same way as his masters.
Petya Trofimov is a representative of the new generation. He doesn't care about the fate of the cherry orchard at all. “We are above love,” he declares, thereby admitting his inability to have serious feelings. Petya looks at everything too superficially: not knowing real life, he tries to rebuild it on the basis of far-fetched ideas. Outwardly, Petya and Anya are happy. They want to move towards a new life, making a decisive break with the past. For them, the garden is “all of Russia,” and not just this cherry orchard. But is it possible to love the whole world without loving your home? Both heroes rush to new horizons, but lose their roots. Mutual understanding between Ranevskaya and Trofimov is impossible. If for Petya there is no past and memories, then Ranevskaya deeply grieves: “After all, I was born here, my father and mother, my grandfather lived here, I love this house, without the cherry orchard I don’t understand my life...”
The cherry orchard is a symbol of beauty. But who will save beauty if people who are able to appreciate it are unable to fight for it, and energetic and active people look at it only as a source of profit and profit?
The Cherry Orchard is a symbol of a past and home that is dear to the heart. But is it possible to move forward when the sound of an ax is heard behind you, destroying everything that was previously sacred? The cherry orchard is a symbol of goodness, and therefore expressions such as “cut off the roots”, “trample the flower” or “hit the tree with an ax” sound blasphemous and inhumane.
Reflecting on the characters and actions of the heroes of the play, we think about the fate of Russia, which is for us the very “cherry orchard”.
New times were coming. The era of reaction, the period of violence against the individual, the brutal suppression of all free thought, was going back. In the mid-90s of the 19th century, it was sometimes replaced by periods of social upsurge, revival of the liberation movement, and the awakening of spring premonitions of imminent changes. A.
P. Chekhov felt that Russia stood at the rift of eras, on the verge of the collapse of the old world, and heard the clear noise of voices of renewal of life. The birth of Chekhov’s mature dramaturgy, those four great works for the stage - “The Seagull”, “Uncle Vanya”, “Three Sisters”, “The Cherry Orchard” is connected with this new atmosphere of frontiers, transition, the end and beginning of eras on the verge of the 19th-20th centuries. , - which revolutionized world drama. “The Seagull” (1896) is the most autobiographical and personal work for Chekhov himself (we are not talking about direct everyday correspondences between the characters in the play and people close to Chekhov, not about certain prototypes that literary criticism is so persistently trying to establish today, but rather about the lyrical self-expression of the author). In the play, written in the small Melikhovo outbuilding, Chekhov, perhaps for the first time, so openly expressed his life and aesthetic position. This is a play about people of art, about the torments of creativity, about restless, restless young artists and about the smug, well-fed older generation guarding their conquered positions. This is a play about love (“a lot of talk about literature, little action, five pounds of love,” Chekhov joked), about unrequited feelings, about mutual misunderstanding of people, the cruel disorder of personal destinies.
Finally, this is a play about the painful search for the true meaning of life, the “general idea,” the purpose of existence, “a certain worldview,” without which life is “a complete mess, horror.” Using the material of art, Chekhov speaks here about the entire human existence, gradually expanding the circles of artistic research into reality. The play develops as a polyphonic, polyphonic, “multi-engine” work in which different voices sound and intersect different topics, plots, destinies, characters. All heroes coexist equally: there are no main or secondary destinies; first one or the other hero comes to the fore and then fades into the shadows. Obviously, therefore, it is impossible, and it is hardly necessary, to single out the main character of “The Seagull”.
This question is not indisputable. There was a time when Nina Zarechnaya was undoubtedly the heroine; later Treplev became the hero. In some performances, the image of Masha comes forward; in others, Arkadina and Trigorin steal the show. With all this, it is quite obvious that all of Chekhov’s sympathies are on the side of the young, seeking generation, those who are just entering life. Although here too he sees different, non-merging paths. A young girl who grew up in an old noble estate on the shore of the lake, Nina Zarechnaya and a dropout student in a shabby jacket, Konstantin Treplev, both strive to get into the wonderful world of art.
They start together: the girl plays in a play written by a talented young man in love with her. The play is strange, abstract, it talks about the eternal conflict of spirit and matter.
“New forms are needed!” Treplev proclaims. “New forms are needed, and if they are not there, then nothing better is needed!” In the evening garden, a stage was hastily put together. “There are no decorations - the view opens directly onto the lake.”
Empty, empty, empty..." Maybe this is a new work of art being born... But the play remains unfinished.
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