Uncle Vanya, You Are Out of Time
oedipus, aristotle, tragedy in the modern age
“In structural terms, the problem with your script is that you haven’t written a story, you’ve written The Neverending Act I. Let me tell you a little secret: in movies the big battles are in Act III, but in real life the body count is in Act I. Most people never make it out of there alive.” – Sadly, Porn
“Why cannot you look calmly at a woman unless she is yours? Because, the doctor was right, you are all possessed by a devil of destruction; you have no mercy on the woods or the birds or on women or on one another.” – Helena, Uncle Vanya
Did Oedipus feel guilt or shame? A difficult question. What about Uncle Vanya? What did he feel?
When Serebryakov, the retired, self-important professor whom Ivan “Vanya” Voynitsky has spent his life supporting, proposes to sell his dead sister’s estate, Vanya explodes. He shouts, screams, breaks down, accuses Serebryakov of having ruined his life, and finally he tries to shoot Serebryakov twice – both offstage and on. He misses both times. This is both comic and tragic – Vanya stares in disillusionment at the pistol and says, “I missed again?” You feel bad for him.
But why is he so upset? Why here, why now? What has happened? Vanya isn’t famous for taking action, so his outburst is strange. It’s the third act of the play, and this outburst is the first real action he’s taken. He’s spent the past two acts doing nothing but talking, largely complaining – about the professor, about Helena, the professor’s young wife with whom he is in love, about his life generally. The professor is his dead sister’s ex-husband, and was once a shining, proud star for the Voinitskys. He was worshipped for his intelligence, loved as an educated, gifted man who had married Vanya’s sister and raised up the Voinitsky family by his greatness. For this, Vanya has spent his life supporting the professor monetarily, so that the professor could pursue his academic career. For twenty-five docile years – Vanya tells us so himself – he has managed the Voinitsky estate happily, quietly, taking a small salary for himself and sending every other penny from his farming to the professor. But suddenly, at the announcement that the Professor wishes to sell the estate, he comes apart.
Sudden, frantic action, a wild outburst of energy in response to change. What is it that fills Vanya with rage? His arguments are incoherent. He asks where he himself, his mother, and all the other hanger-ons who live at the Voinitsky’s will go if the estate is sold. This is funny because he’s spent the entirety of the play up to now wishing he was anywhere but the estate. He argues against the sale legally – shouldn’t the estate go to Sonya, his niece and the rightful inheritor of the land? The land was his sisters whcih means it should go to her daughter. The professor can’t just sell it! The professor says certainly, the estate can only be sold with Sonya’s consent. Finally, Vanya gives up on his pretenses and we see the white-hot rage – Vanya tells us that for 25 years he has managed the place…
…and have sent you the returns from it like the most honest of servants, and you have never given me one single word of thanks for my work, not one—neither in my youth nor now. You allowed me a meagre salary of five hundred roubles a year, a beggar's pittance, and have never even thought of adding a rouble to it… For twenty-five years I have been sitting here with my mother like a mole in a burrow. Our every thought and hope was yours and yours only. By day we talked with pride of you and your work, and spoke your name with veneration; our nights we wasted reading [your] books and papers which my soul now loathes.
He tells the professor his books are garbage, that the professor knows nothing of art, his subject of study. He says that the professor has fooled them all. The professor tries to leave, Vanya stops him, and finally tells him how he feels: “Wait! I have not done yet! You have wrecked my life. I have never lived. My best years have gone for nothing, have been ruined, thanks to you. You are my most bitter enemy!”
The professor is shocked by the entire outburst and has no idea how to take it. Shocked, literally: he genuinely has no idea where this outburst is coming from. As far as he’s concerned, selling the estate is a great idea. He has come up with a plan to solve their monetary issues, and for some reason now Vanya hates him. He doesn’t understand. Vanya leaves the room, says that he knows now what to do, says ominously that Serebryakov will soon understand him. But Serebryakov spends the whole act telling everyone around him, again and again, that he has no idea what’s going on. This is as much from him being, as he says, “not a worldly man” – that is, an old, naïve professor who has never left the ivory tower – but just as much out of actual bewilderment. This is important. In a rivalry, only one rival – Vanya – is ever aware that there is a rivalry at all. For the other, no competition ever existed.
The play centers on romantic rivalry. The obvious rivalry is between the professor and Vanya for his hot young waif of a wife, Helena. Its directly written into the text: in Act I, Vanya says outright that he envies the professor. No special analysis required there. Helena is young, comparatively, she’s 27, the perfect age to be a beauty bored with life. She lays around on the couch all day being sexy and nihilistic, complaining about her ennui. The other characters discuss her beauty and her idleness. Vanya is in love with her. His love is never expressed in action, but he does spend a great deal of time calling her beautiful, lovely and otherworldly. Frequently he kisses her hands and goes down on his knees before her in devotion. This is interesting because I can’t imagine a man doing this in any time period, ever, unless he was gay and/or asexual. Vanya never makes a pass at her, he doesn’t even discuss with the other ineligible bachelor, the young drunk doctor Astroff, how much he would love to sleep with her – he has no such thoughts. He is as chaste as a flower and talks about Helena not as sexy (Astroff calls her a tigress) but as “otherworldly”.
You may be tempted to tell me that this is just how men interacted with women back then, with chivalry and chastity, but I’ve been reading 19th century Russian fiction for years now and I can tell you for a fact they were in no way virtuous with their women. Chekhov had something like 20+ confirmed casual gfs, and his accolades, besides revolutionizing theatre, include a threesome with two bisexual French actresses, I’m not kidding, read Rayfield’s biography and weep.
Astroff, the drunk doctor and our more active male, makes a crude comment while discussing Helena with Vanya, saying you can only be friends with a woman after you’ve fucked her. This illustrates how he feels about women. Astroff doesn’t love Helena at all, but when given the opportunity in the third act he jumps at the chance to get laid. The 1800s were not a time of sexual repression in the way you wish was true, they were a time when syphilis was so common they assume that it killed Nietzsche, who was a volcel. Voinitsky in his chaste relations to Helena is an abnormality. You protest – perhaps he’s a moral example? Maybe in Tolstoy, in Dostoyevsky, sure, but Chekhov is more honest; Chekhov comes not from their line but from Turgenev, he doesn’t preach and he doesn’t care about your ideology, what you believe doesn’t matter at all to him besides how you will use it to lie about your actions later. He doesn’t care what you claim you want, he cares about how you want.
We’ve established that sexual relations exist between men and woman as they always have and always will. So why is Voinitsky… not horny? In one pivotal late-night conversation in Act II, he falls to his knees before his beloved Helena, and here, alone with her at last, he can speak:
VOINITSKY. [Barring the way] If you only knew how I am tortured by the thought that beside me in this house is another life that is being lost forever—it is yours! What are you waiting for? What accursed philosophy stands in your way? Oh, understand, understand——
HELENA. [Looking at him intently] Ivan, you are drunk!
VOINITSKY. Perhaps. Perhaps.
HELENA. Where is the doctor?
VOINITSKY. In there, spending the night with me. Perhaps I am drunk, perhaps I am; nothing is impossible.
HELENA. Have you just been drinking together? Why do you do that?
VOINITSKY. Because in that way I get a taste of life. Let me do it, Helena!
HELENA. You never used to drink, and you never used to talk so much. Go to bed, I am tired of you.
VOINITSKY. [Falling on his knees before her] My sweetheart, my beautiful one——
HELENA. [Angrily] Leave me alone! Really, this has become too disagreeable.
What he’s worried about isn’t sleeping with her, no, he’s worried about how she’s wasting her life being married to the professor. This is what’s on Vanya’s mind while he’s stumbling drunk. I understand that an expression of love doesn't have to be sexual, but this clearly isn’t an expression of love, its something else. Helena certainly knows it, she’s detected the stench of a liar, which is why she leaves in disgust. There’s more to his idolization of her than meets the eye. The fact that he isn’t trying to have sex with her makes him worse, at least that’s a motivation she could understand. Vanya wants something else.
We have a supposed rivalry between Vanya and the professor for Helena, except the professor is an old man with gout and rheumatism. He clearly isn’t laying any pipe, he seems interested in Helena in the same way he’s interested in the rest of the family, that is, uninterested, able to see them only as props that adorn or hold up his life. His wife doesn’t love him either, she married him because he was… fascinating, according to her.
HELENA. I was fascinated by his fame and learning. I know now that it was not real love, but it seemed real at the time.
You might see something misogynistic in this, Chekhov playing Helena off as dumb silly woman with nothing going on in her life, but read the rest of the play, Helena is a viper in the grass fully aware of what she’s doing. Later on she’ll steal the doctor from Sonya not because she wants him but only because she enjoys depriving others. Like the Helen of Troy she’s named after by the end of the play she’ll have drawn all the men to their doom. In this case, we should take her at her word – the love seemed real at the time. She was carried away; she didn’t say no so she ended up saying yes. In order to say no she would have to have… acted. The momentum was headed towards marriage, and to reverse that momentum she would have to have done something, applied an opposite force. The other option was to do nothing, to remain passive. This is her non-choice. Later on, she’ll let the doctor seduce her – that is, she won’t say no – mostly because he whines less than the other men in the house, and because he’s the only one that actually tries.
The rivalry between the professor and Vanya is not a true romantic rivalry, it is a farce of one. Our coveted, hard won prize is an aimless woman who won’t even pretend to say no, the rivals vying for her love are a 47-year-old who is impotent and a geriatric with gout. Perhaps the professor is not the real rival, maybe the rivalry is between Vanya and the young doctor Astroff? Astroff is young and horny, he’s more active than Vanya, and he actually does succeed with Helena in the end. This rivalry is certainly set up in the play, but then why doesn’t Vanya shoot Astroff? Why is his rage directed towards the professor, the non-competition? Throughout the play Astroff is the only one who poses a sexual threat, but he doesn’t really start trying anything until Act III. Vanya has plenty of time to go after the love of his life, but he doesn’t. Seducing Helena from the professor should have been no trouble at all. So what was stopping him?
In Act 2, after the drunk on-his-knees soliloquy that Helena retreats from in disgust, Vanya says something revealing:
VOYNITSKY. [Alone] She is gone! I met her first ten years ago, at her sister's house, when she was seventeen and I was thirty-seven. Why did I not fall in love with her then and propose to her? It would have been so easy! And now she would have been my wife. Yes, we would both have been waked to-night by the thunderstorm, and she would have been frightened, but I would have held her in my arms and whispered: "Don't be afraid! I am here." Oh, enchanting dream, so sweet that I laugh to think of it…
At 17, she wasn’t his sweetheart, his beautiful one – no, not back then. But suddenly, now that he’s old and not horny and she approaches middle age, she’s otherworldly levels of attractive, but not in a sexual way; suddenly, though he had opportunity all those years ago, he wants her, but makes no move on her besides impotent pleas. She is attractive now not out of some change in Vanya’s heart; she is attractive because she is the professor’s wife. That is the only reason.
Vanya’s rivalry is with the professor, but its not a rivalry over his wife. What Vanya wants and is envious of is not Helena – he makes no real attempt at her – but how the professor is desired:
ASTROFF. I believe you envy [the professor].
VOYNITSKY. Yes, I do. Look at the success he has had with women! Don Juan himself was not more favoured. His first wife, who was my sister, was a beautiful, gentle being, as pure as the blue heaven there above us, noble, great-hearted, with more admirers than he has pupils, and she loved him as only beings of angelic purity can love those who are as pure and beautiful as themselves. His mother-in-law, my mother, adores him to this day, and he still inspires a sort of worshipful awe in her. His second wife is, as you see, a brilliant beauty; she married him in his old age and has surrendered all the glory of her beauty and freedom to him. Why? What for?
He doesn’t envy the professor’s wife, when she was single he didn’t take a second glance at her. He envies the way the professor is desired. Vanya wants to be desired as the professor is. First his sister, then his mother, then Helena all loved and admired the professor. Note how he describes his sister and Helena – his sister as having many admirers, Helena as a brilliant beauty (=desired) – both these women are described in terms of how desirable they are to others. This is the only way Vanya can find something desirable – if it first desirable to another. This is what makes Helena attractive; she is not the prize, Vanya was never attracted to her before. The prize, what would satisfy Vanya, is to deprive the professor. Vanya is envious, and what satisfies envy is not getting the prize but depriving the rival. Vanya is an underground man, he’s sick, his liver is bursting with jealousy and envy. Helena is a tool, a pretense, for deprivation, because for Vanya that is the only thing that can satisfy. Helena knows all this. This is why she doesn’t trust his “love” of her. This is why she is disgusted.
Vanya goes on and on about how the professor understands nothing, how, for 25 years “he has been chewing on other men's thoughts about realism, naturalism, and all such foolishness; for twenty-five years he has been reading and writing things that clever men have long known and stupid ones are not interested in…” Then, in his big freakout, Vanya states absurdly that he could have been “another Dostoyevsky, another Schopenhauer.” What Vanya is upset about is first that the professor is desired by others who are themselves desirable; second, that the professor can act. Despite now being an old, useless man, the professor is able to act and has done what he wanted with his life. Vanya has not. This means the professor has power. According to Vanya, the professor is omnipotent, he has power but no self-knowledge - he doesn’t know his books and his life have been worthless. Vanya, who is impotent, has knowledge – he knows that the professor is a talentless, obscure scholar, he sees the truth that no one else can – but he has no power.
What does Vanya want? “He wants Helena.” He had an entire decade to make a move and he didn’t. He floundered around the estate instead. Only now has he decided he wants Helena, now that she’s the professors wife, and the way he decides to get her is the least direct possible. “Everyone in the play says Vanya is intelligent, illuminating. He wants to be a famous author, except for…” The professor? What has the professor done to stop him? Why wasn’t our stunted Dostoyevsky writing during his 25-year exile in the countryside? When the cattle and the fields were dealt with, he would have had plenty of time to kill. When Vanya shouts at the professor that he has only ever paid him 500 roubles a year, a paupers salary, the professor naively says “well you could have taken more,” Vanya becomes even more enraged. He’s right – Vanya could have taken as much as he wanted, he was the one handling the money and sending it to the professor, he could have cooked the books, and the professor even admits he’s not a worldly man and wouldn’t have known anyway. But that’s besides the point: why didn’t Vanya ask for a raise? Why didn’t he say, hey, jackass, I’m worth more than 500? What does Vanya even want money for? He tells us himself - he doesn’t want money, or a raise, he wants the professor to give him a raise. He wants the professor to thank him, which he hasn’t done. He wants the professor to recognize him. He wants to be desired.
Vanya tells us he hates his life, that he would do anything to be able to start again, and yet when the professor suggests selling the estate Vanya explodes. This should be his chance for a new life. The only thing truly stopping him from moving on are his obligations to the estate and the people who live on it. If it were gone he could finally live as he wants. But instead he rails against this change with more energy than he does anything else at any other time in the play. Take Vanya at his word: the professor is his most bitter enemy, not because the professor has wasted Vanya’s life – Vanya has had 25 years to do something about that, and up until now I guess it just hasn’t bothered him – but because the professor is about to disrupt the status quo. Despite his loud, whining protests, the last thing Vanya wants is change. He will fight desperately, violently against change, it is the only thing he will fight for. If things change, Vanya can no longer feel cheated, he can no longer feel resentful, he would be free to act which means all the potential he thinks he has would have to be actualized. In a bought of frantic, impulsive action, the only way Vanya can act, he is ready to kill so that change does not occur. Note carefully the form of his protest. Loud, intelligent complaints that subtly indicate the speaker is smarter than the omnipotent entity that oppresses him, but simultaneously express that change is impossible; witticisms, feelings of being cheated, feelings of resentment, envy. Finality, the clear sense that the outcome is - inevitable. You will see this pattern repeated by people everywhere in your life, people who want to be ruled, followed by frantic, violent action who’s only outcome is the preservation of the status quo.
What is necessary for Vanya is the tyranny of the professor, it is necessary to his psychology that the professor is all powerful, so that Vanya can be knowledgeable but impotent. Vanya understands his oppression, oh yes, he’s smarter than it, but he can’t change it. This tyranny is necessary for this entire misbegotten house of drifting people, Helena, Astroff, all of them. Everyone gives up their lives for the professor, but bondage is happily accepted because now all the glorious potential they feel within themselves never has to be actualized; they can dream and imagine what they could have been, if only for the professor; and they can spend their decades sitting in the drawing room drinking tea. Vanya wants this tyranny, he needs it so that he can feel superior to it, his resentment and his self-knowledge are the same thing. The tyranny relieves him of responsibility, of power; with the professor’s tyranny, he is never responsible for his own life.
Vanya doesn’t want to be a great author, he wants to be Dostoyevsky, or Schopenhauer, he doesn’t want to fall in love, he wants the professor’s wife, he has the imagination of a five-year-old. He cannot, literally is incapable of, imagining anything else. He cannot plot his own course; he is incapable of imagining anything different than the life he has lived. His fantasies are in passive voice: to be thanked by the professor, to be desired by the professor’s wife, to be made a Dostoyevsky or a Schopenhauer. He doesn’t want to rule, he wants someone else to crown him King because he is so knowledgeable.
The name Vanya is a nickname for Ivan, a name so common in Russia that translators give the equivalent as Jack or Johnny. This is because Ivan is an everyman, he is me and he is you. The Greek actors wore masks so that the audience could not imagine a particular Vanya, a particular Oedipus, but a universal one who they could project themselves onto:
“You weren’t supposed to learn about Oedipus and his motivations, you’re supposed to fantasize your Oedipus and motivations into the concrete story. There’s nothing universal in the character of Oedipus, what’s universal is the story of Oedipus. In order for your Oedipus to feel guilty, it had to be for something that could make you feel guilty. Not the shameful act of incest, but the repressed guilts each individual would have that could safely manifest in the play as incest.” – Sadly, Porn
The purpose of tragedy is to arouse pity and fear. Pity for the miserable lives of the characters; fear that this could be you, this could be your life.
“The point [of tragedy] is catharsis, the readers aren't meant to imagine what they w/should do, tragedy is a political art, it's purpose is not individual elevation but cultivation of nature by human art for a definite purpose; it is how to serve the group; it isn't “there but for the grace of God go I” and certainly never “if that were me, I'd...” but about training the audience of prospective citizens how to feel and think by pairing context to emotions, or erections, depending on need.” – Sadly, Porn
Why does tragedy matter? Why should anyone care? The goal of tragedy is to train your feelings. It isn’t about what to want but how to want. How does Vanya want? He can only want what others already desire – he cannot want on his own. He cannot fantasize. He wants the same wife as the professor, he wants not to become a famous writer but to become a Dostoyevsky or a Schopenhauer. He wants to be desired. He wants to be wanted by someone powerful or at least desirable not for anything worthy he’s done but for his unrealized potential that only they can see. He doesn’t want to act, he wants to be led. He doesn’t want power, because then he would be responsible; he wants knowledge.
Look around and see that this is the form of every story in our culture today, except not as tragedy, our stories are aspirational. A person full of potential that no one else can see is finally recognized by someone with power; he’s given the Call to Adventure, a powerful Mentor, told where to go and what to do and what to want; and finally, after several set pieces and cool action shots the main character is guided and prodded into completing the goal and can Return back to the normal world, knowing finally who he is. But he hasn’t returned with power. Look closely. Our hero has been crowned King, certainly, but he doesn’t rule, he doesn’t perform kingly acts. Power has extracted from him whatever it may have needed, for what purposes the gods only know; and now the hero can look forward to decades on the couch, satisfied that he knows who he is.
This is how we have been trained to want. We are being raised to be conquered. Memes tell you how to interpret them, we need community notes on twitter in order to form an opinion, we watch people play video games so we can know how to feel. Reddit, am I the asshole? Offload the superego onto the collective, you cannot act or desire on your own, what you want desperately is to be told what to do, what you want is to be led.
Catharsis is the aim of tragedy, but it isn’t “letting go,” “blowing off steam,” catharsis is a rebalancing of the humors, catharsis is concerned with balancing pity and fear in the right proportions, and here the catharsis increases them. Chekhov saw in his Russia an entire population wishing to be ruled. Chekhov was the son of a serf; his father was a slave until Grandpa Chekhov purchased the family’s freedom through his own sweat and blood and tears. Father Chekhov ran a general store that constantly lost money. He was a taskmaster, he forced his children to spend their childhoods working that store, swore at them, beat them when he was drunk or angry. Chekhov knew slavery and ignorance and lies in his blood. And everywhere he looked, people only wanted to know more and never to act. Fin de siècle ennui and exhaustion after a century of wars, peasant revolts, new ideologies, famines, disaster after disaster, consumption, death. They didn’t want power anymore, all they wanted was to know; they were waiting to be conquered. They wanted tyranny to free them from responsibility so they spend their time smugly asserting how bad the tyranny is. For context, Chekhov dies in 1904, and the next big thing that happens in Russian history is communism.
What Vanya felt was guilt. He was a coward. He was intelligent, talented, well spoken and industrious, he could have become someone had he only acted. He was full of potential and knowing this stopped him dead in his tracks. If he had taken responsibility - for his life, for the lives of others around him, if he had shouldered that cross and bore it - he could have been a human being. The moment he realizes this – the moment of recognition and reversal of fortune necessary to a tragedy – comes directly before his screaming match with the professor. Vanya has gone off to get flowers for Helena, and Astroff and Helena have been left alone in the drawing room. She is questioning the doctor about Sonya, Vanya’s niece, about if he loves her. Astroff misinterprets this as a come on, as her secretly revealing her desire for him. Now that he knows she desires him (he would never have been able to act of his own volition) he makes his move:
HELENA. You have gone mad!
ASTROFF. You are afraid!
HELENA. I am a better and stronger woman than you think me. Good-bye. [She tries to leave the room.]
ASTROFF. Why good-bye? Don't say good-bye, don't waste words. Oh, how lovely you are—what hands! [He kisses her hands.]
HELENA. Enough of this! [She frees her hands] Leave the room! You have forgotten yourself.
ASTROFF. Tell me, tell me, where can we meet to-morrow? [He puts his arm around her] Don't you see that we must meet, that it is inevitable?
He kisses her. VOYNITSKY comes in carrying a bunch of roses, and stops in the doorway.
“A better and stronger woman than you think me”. She doesn’t say no, of course she doesn’t. Astroff is right, Helena, can’t you see that this is - inevitable?
I have to imagine that even up until this moment Vanya believed that he might succeed with Helena, until the second he saw Astroff tongue deep in his beautiful one he thought he could still win by his extensive campaign of existing in the same place as her, calling her beautiful, and waiting. A lot of guys seem to believe that simply being around a pretty girl for long enough will somehow through osmosis inevitably make her fall in love with you and also miraculously cause the first move to happen (passive voice). I can assure you by personal experience that this doesn’t work. For the whole month Helena and the professor have been at the Voynitsky estate this has been Vanya’s plan. Vanya has thought about her, imagined her, imagined them together. Seeing Astroff, on a whim, achieve what he so long desired, merely by the fact that he acted first – seeing Astroff being desired by someone desirable – seeing this, Vanya finally understands. Finally he awakens from the dream. He has ruined his own life. All his self-knowledge, all his potential and intelligence have not miraculously led to change, but directly back to the repetition ad nauseum of the very same. Serebryakov comes in a moment later with his announcement to sell the estate, and Vanya explodes.
The last act of the play is a series of exits. First Serebryakov and Helena leave, and eventually Astroff. Before the professor can leave he and Vanya make up, despite Vanya’s attempts moments ago to kill him. Vanya assures him of his income: “You will receive exactly what you used to receive. Everything will be as it was.” Astroff has a glass of vodka, just as he did in the first act, despite in the second act assuring everyone he was going to quit drinking. Eventually, he leaves too. Finally, we are left with the old inhabitants of the house as it was before the professor’s arrival: Vanya, Sonya, the old nurse, Vanya’s mother. Vanya laments that he is sure he will be dead by 60, but how he will occupy himself for the next 13 years, he doesn’t know.
VOYNITSKY. [To SONIA, stroking her hair] Oh, my child, I am miserable; if you only knew how miserable I am!
SONIA. What can we do? We must live our lives. [A pause] Yes, we shall live, Uncle Vanya. We shall live through the long procession of days before us, and through the long evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials that fate imposes on us; we shall work for others without rest, both now and when we are old; and when our last hour comes we shall meet it humbly, and there, beyond the grave, we shall say that we have suffered and wept, that our life was bitter, and God will have pity on us. Ah, then dear, dear Uncle, we shall see that bright and beautiful life; we shall rejoice and look back upon our sorrow here; a tender smile—and—we shall rest. I have faith, Uncle, fervent, passionate faith. [SONIA kneels down before her uncle and lays her head on his hands. She speaks in a weary voice] We shall rest. [TELEGIN plays softly on the guitar] We shall rest. We shall hear the angels. We shall see heaven shining like a jewel. We shall see all evil and all our pain sink away in the great compassion that shall enfold the world. Our life will be as peaceful and tender and sweet as a caress. I have faith; I have faith. [She wipes away her tears] My poor, poor Uncle Vanya, you are crying! [Weeping] You have never known what happiness was, but wait, Uncle Vanya, wait! We shall rest. [She embraces him] We shall rest. [The WATCHMAN'S rattle is heard in the garden; TELEGIN plays softly; MME. VOYNITSKY writes something on the margin of her pamphlet; MARINA knits her stocking] We shall rest.
The curtain slowly falls.
Poorer critics like to take this as the “message”, the “what to believe” of Chekhovs play, that Chekhov believed only in work, tireless work, but I know Chekhov and what he didn’t believe in was telling you what to believe. He was concerned only with how you believed. He insisted that this last scene was always played too dramatically, with too much gravitas, when in reality it is a farce – the blubbering Vanya can only be consoled with childish visions of a beautiful future of rest. The members of the house have been mummified. They have been turned to stone. Vanya can only listen and weep. “It was fate, it was inevitable!” Note the watchman’s rattle in the garden. In Chekhov, this noise always signifies the relentless passage of time.
“Guilt, not for incest but for being a coward: [Oedipus] was born with power, or he could have taken power; but he preferred to be appointed king so he wouldn't have to act, like the idiots he ruled he wanted to be ruled like an idiot. He didn't want power, he wanted knowledge; he wanted to be desired, and in him power found an easy puppet. Then years later on an otherwise random day, power decided he could now best serve them as a symbolic sacrifice, not as a scapegoat but as escapist tragedy, for what greater purpose the gods only know; but for multiple generations of Theban kings the gods evidently took advantage of facts on the ground.
A real man, let alone a man with power, let alone a tyrannosaurus, would have listened to the accusations, looked around incredulously at all the hysterical herbivores and wondered if he wasn't trapped in someone else's dream. “The prophecy foretold this would happen? The gods said I have no choice? Maybe I souvlaki everything from here to Delphi over the smoky charcoals of the Oracle and see if the gods can prophecy what I eat next.” And he would have acted. “But no one is more powerful than the gods.” I don't know why you of all people keep saying that. The gods do not exist.” – Sadly, Porn
Famously Chekhovs works are regarded as “plotless.” I’ve read all Chekhovs plays, all his short novels, a large collection of his short stories, and after hearing such a great deal about the plotless writer I was shocked to find that not a single one of his works was plotless. Most of them are tragedies that conform exactly to what Aristotle wrote 2000 years ago. Pity and fear, pity for the characters fate, fear that it may be yours. Because no one commits suicide or get married the critics can’t seem to figure out what is going on; but Chekhov’s plays, like those of the ancients, are psychological. Uncle Vanya is, like Oedipus Tyrannus, a play about a man who cannot act, and all the ways he will blind himself so that he isn’t responsible. Look carefully at the results.
Even if it truly were not possible to change, even if from every corner Vanya was hemmed in, he would still be responsible, it would still be up to him, because there isn’t anyone else. There is never anyone else. It is up to you. Listen carefully - you can hear the watchman’s rattle.
Absolutely brilliant review.....
Wherever TLP has been impenetrable, you have been lucid. Thank you for writing