Lyubov Andreevna lived abroad for five years, I don’t know what she has become now ... She is a good person. Easy, simple person. I remember when I was a boy of about fifteen, my late father - he then traded here in the village in a shop - hit me in the face with his fist, blood came out of my nose ... Then we came together for some reason to the yard, and he was drunk. Lyubov Andreevna, as I remember now, still young, so thin, led me to the washstand, in this very room, in the nursery. “Don’t cry, he says, little man, he will heal before the wedding ...”

Little man ... My father, however, was a man, but here I am in a white waistcoat, yellow shoes. With a pig's snout in a kalashny row ... Only now he is rich, there is a lot of money, but if you think and figure it out, then a peasant is a peasant ... (Flips through the book.) I read the book and didn't understand anything. Read and fell asleep.

You can hear two carriages pulling up to the house. Lopakhin and Dunyasha leave quickly. The stage is empty. There is noise in the neighboring rooms. Through the stage, leaning on a stick, Firs hastily passes, who went to meet Lyubov Andreevna; he is in an ancient livery and a tall hat; something speaks to itself, but not a single word can be made out. The background noise gets louder and louder. Voice: "Let's go here..." Lyubov Andreevna, Anya and Charlotte Ivanovna with a dog on a chain, dressed in a travel way. Varya in a coat and scarf, Gaev, Simeonov-Pishchik, Lopakhin, Dunyasha with a bundle and an umbrella, servants with things - they all go across the room.

She looked back at him.

I will only bow to you and leave immediately. (He kisses his hand warmly.) I was ordered to wait until morning, but I did not have the patience...

If a lot of remedies are offered against any disease, it means that the disease is incurable. I think, I strain my brains, I have a lot of funds, a lot, and, therefore, in essence, not a single one. It would be nice to receive an inheritance from someone, it would be nice to marry our Anya to a very rich person, it would be nice to go to Yaroslavl and try your luck with the aunt countess. My aunt is very, very rich.

Anya appears at the door.

She married a non-nobleman and behaved, one might say, very virtuously. She is good, kind, nice, I love her very much, but no matter how you think of mitigating circumstances, nevertheless, I must admit, she is vicious. It is felt in her slightest movement.

Surprisingly, something got into my right eye ... I began to see badly. And on Thursday, when I was in the county court...

The goal of the theater at all times has been and will be:
hold a mirror before nature,
show virtue its true colors
and its true - baseness,
and every age of history -
his unadorned appearance.

Shakespeare. Hamlet

Prologue

OPHELIA. It's short, my prince.
HAMLET. Like a woman's love.

Shakespeare. Hamlet

We got lost, what should we do
In the field the demon leads us, apparently
And circling around...

Part I
tender soul

Dedicated to two geniuses of Russian theater

In memory of Anatoly Efros, who staged The Cherry Orchard at Taganka in 1975

In memory of Vladimir Vysotsky, who played Lopakhin

FIRS. The method was then known.
RANEVSKAYA. Where is this method now?
FIRS. Forgot. Nobody remembers.

Chekhov. The Cherry Orchard

Characters

RANEVSKAYA LYUBOV ANDREEVNA, landowner.
ANIA, her daughter, 17 years old.
VARYA, her adopted daughter, 24 years old.
GAYEV LEONID ANDREEVICH, brother of Ranevskaya.
LOPAKHIN YERMOLAI ALEKSEEVICH, merchant.
TROFIMOV PETER SERGEEVICH, student.
SIMEONOV-PISHCHIK BORIS BORISOVICH, landowner.
CHARLOTTA IVANOVNA, governess.
EPIKHODOV SEMYON PANTELEEVICH, clerk.
DUNYASHA, the maid.
FIRS, footman, old man 87 years old.
YASHA, a young footman.

Size matters

Theatrical liberties

In addition to the huge space that no one noticed, the Cherry Orchard has two secrets. They have not yet been unraveled.
... For those who have forgotten the plot. First year of the twentieth century. The noblewoman Ranevskaya returns from Paris to her estate. Her brother and her two daughters, Anya and Varya (adopted), live here. The entire estate is being auctioned for debts. A family friend, the merchant Lopakhin, seemed to be trying to teach the owners how to get out of debt, but they did not listen to him. Then Lopakhin, unexpectedly for everyone, bought it himself. And Petya Trofimov is a thirty-year-old eternal student, a beggar, a homeless man, Anya's boyfriend. Petya considers it his duty to cut the truth in the eyes of everyone. He asserts himself so much... The Cherry Orchard is sold, everyone is leaving in all directions; Finally, the aged Firs is slaughtered. Not baseball bats, of course, but nails; board up doors, shutters; downtrodden in an empty house, he will simply die of hunger.
What are the mysteries in the old play? For a hundred years, thousands of theaters have staged it; everything has long been dismantled to the bone.
And yet there are secrets! - do not hesitate, reader, the evidence will be presented.
Secrets!.. And what are real secrets? For example, was Ranevskaya Lopakhin's mistress? Or how old is she?
Such life truth(which gossips discuss on the benches) is entirely in the hands of the director and actors. In a scholarly way, it is called interpretation. But most often it is rudeness, smuttyness, vulgarity, antics, or that simplicity that is worse than theft.
Here the landowner Ranevskaya was left alone with the eternal student.
RANEVSKAYA. I can shout now ... I can do stupid things. Save me, Petya.
She prays for spiritual sympathy, for consolation. But without changing a word - only facial expressions, intonation, body movements - it is easy to show that she asks to satisfy her lust. It is enough for the actress to lift up her skirt or simply pull Petya towards her.
The theater is a rough, old, square art, in Russian - a shame.
The adventures of the body are much more spectacular than the work of the soul, and they are a million times easier to play.

* * *

CHEKHOV TO NEMIROVICH-DANCHENKO
September 2, 1903. Yalta
I'll call the play a comedy. The role of the mother will be taken by Olga, and who will play the daughter of 17 years old, a girl, young and thin, I do not presume to decide.

CHEKHOV TO OLGA KNIPPER
October 14, 1903. Yalta
You will play Lyubov Andreevna. Anna must play certainly young actress.

CHEKHOV TO NEMIROVICH-DANCHENKO
November 2, 1903. Yalta
Anya can be played by anyone, even a completely unknown actress, as long as she is young, and looks like a girl, and speaks in a young, sonorous voice.

Peter and the wolf

In The Cherry Orchard, we repeat, there are two mysteries that have not been solved so far.
First secret- why did Petya Trofimov decisively and completely change his mind about Lopakhin?
Here is their dialogue (in the second act):
LOPAKHIN. Let me ask you, how do you understand me?
TROFIMOV. I, Yermolai Alekseevich, so understand: you are a rich man, you will soon be a millionaire. This is how, in terms of metabolism, you need a predatory beast that eats everything that comes in its way, so you are needed. (Everyone laughs.)
This is very rude. It looks like rudeness. Yes, even in the presence of ladies. In the presence of Ranevskaya, whom Lopakhin idolizes. Moreover, this transition from “you” to “you” to demonstrate frank contempt. And he didn’t just call him a predator and a beast, but he also added about the metabolism, tightened the gastrointestinal tract.
A beast of prey - that is, a nurse of the forest. Okay, I didn't say "worm" or "dung beetle", which are also needed for metabolism.
And three months later (in the last act, in the final):
TROFIMOV(Lopakhin) . You have thin, tender fingers, like an artist, you have a thin, tender soul ...
This “you” is completely different, admiring.
Both times Trofimov is absolutely sincere. Petya is not a hypocrite, he speaks out directly and is proud of his directness.
One might suspect that he is flattering the millionaire for some purpose. But Petya does not ask for money. Lopakhin, hearing about the tender soul, immediately melted; offers money and even imposes. Petya refuses resolutely and stubbornly.
LOPAKHIN. Take my money for the journey. I'm offering you a loan because I can. Why tear up your nose? I'm a man... simply. (Pulls out wallet.)
TROFIMOV. Give me at least two hundred thousand, I won't take it.
“Beast of Prey” is not a compliment, it is very insulting and no one can like it. Even a banker, even a bandit. For brutality, predation are not considered positive qualities even now, and even more so a hundred years ago.
"Beast of Prey" excludes "gentle soul" altogether.
Has Lopakhin changed? No, we don't see it. His character does not change at all from beginning to end.
So, Petya's view has changed. Yes, how radical - 180 degrees!
And Chekhov? Maybe the author changed his mind about the character? Did the heroes follow the author?
Chekhov's view of Lopakhin cannot change. For Lopakhin exists in Chekhov's brain. That is, Chekhov knows everything about him. Knows from the start. Knows before the start.
And Petya - learns Lopakhin gradually, on this path he can be mistaken, deceived.
And we?
An illustrative example of the difference between the knowledge of the author, the viewer and the character:
Othello doesn't know that Iago is a scoundrel and a slanderer. Othello will understand this with horror only in the finale, when it is already too late (he has already strangled his wife). Had he known from the very beginning, there would have been no trust, betrayal, there would have been no play.
Shakespeare knows about Iago all the way to the beginning.
The viewer recognizes the essence of Iago very quickly - as quickly as Shakespeare wants.
The author needs the reaction of both the characters and the audience: oh, that's it! Ah, here he is! It happens that they draw a terrible villain on purpose, and in the end - lo and behold - he is a universal benefactor.

* * *

Do not despair, my dear, there is a way out!

Dedicated to two geniuses of the Russian theater.
memory Anatoly Efros,
who staged The Cherry Orchard at Taganka in 1975.
memory Vladimir Vysotsky, who played Lopakhin.

FIRS. The method was then known.
RANEVSKAYA. Where is this method now?
FIRS. Forgot. Nobody remembers.

Characters

Ranevskaya Lyubov Andreevna, landowner.
Anya, her daughter, 17 years old.
Varya, her adopted daughter, 24 years old.
Gaev Leonid Andreevich, brother of Ranevskaya.
Lopakhin Ermolai Alekseevich, merchant.
Trofimov Petr Sergeevich, student.
Simeonov-Pishchik, landowner.
Charlotte Ivanovna, governess.
Epikhodov Semyon, clerk.
Dunyasha, maid.
Firs, footman, old man 87 years old.
Yasha, a young footman.

SIZE HAS THE MEANING

“The Cherry Orchard” is an old play, it is 102 years old. What she is about, no one knows.
Some remember that the estate of the noblewoman Ranevskaya is being sold for debts, and the merchant Lopakhin teaches how to get out - it is necessary to cut the land into plots and rent it out for summer cottages.
How big is the estate? I ask my friends, I ask the actors who play The Cherry Orchard, and the directors who staged the play. The only answer is “I don't know”.
- It is clear that you do not know. But you guess.
The questioner groans, mumbles, then uncertainly:
- Two hectares, perhaps?
- No. The estate of Ranevskaya is more than a thousand and a hundred hectares.
- Can't be! Where did you get it from?
- It's in the play.

LOPAKHIN. If the cherry orchard and the land along the river are divided into summer cottages and leased out for summer cottages, then you will have at least 25 thousand a year income. You will charge the summer residents at least 25 rubles a year for a tithe. I vouch for anything - you will not have a single free shred left until the fall, everything will be sorted out.

It means a thousand acres. A tithe is 1.1 hectares.
In addition to the garden and “land along the river,” they also have hundreds of acres of forest.
It would seem, what a trouble if the directors are mistaken a thousand times. But it's not just arithmetic. There is a transition from quantity to quality.
It's so wide that you can't see the edge. More precisely: everything that you see around you is yours. Everything is on the horizon.
If you have a thousand hectares, you see Russia. If you have several acres, you see a fence.
The poor man sees a fence ten meters from his house. The rich man is a hundred meters from his mansion. From the second floor of his mansion, he sees many fences.
Director R., who not only staged The Cherry Orchard, but also wrote a book about this play, said: "Two hectares." Director P. (wonderful, subtle) said: "One and a half."
A thousand hectares is a different feeling of life. This is your boundless expanse, boundless expanse. With what to compare? The poor man has a shower, the rich man has a jacuzzi. And there is - the open sea, the ocean. Does it matter how many square kilometers there are? It is important that the coast is not visible.
... Why don't Ranevskaya and her brother act according to such a simple, such a profitable plan of Lopakhin? Why don't they agree? Who plays - that they are out of laziness, who - out of stupidity, because of their inability (they say, the nobles are a dying class) to live in the real world, and not in their fantasies.
But for them, the vast expanse is a reality, and fences are a disgusting fantasy.
If the director does not see a huge estate, then the actors will not play, and the audience will not understand. Our familiar landscape - the walls of houses, fences, billboards.
After all, no one thought what would happen next. If you hand over a thousand plots, a thousand dachas will appear. Summer residents are family people. Four or five thousand people will settle next to you. Families of friends will come to them overnight from Saturday to Sunday. In total, it means that under your nose there will be ten or twelve thousand people - songs, drunken cries, the crying of children, the squeal of bathing girls - hell.

CHEKHOV TO NEMIROVICH-DANCHENKO

August 22, 1903. Yalta
No special decorations are required. Only in the second act will you give me a real green field and a road and an extraordinary distance for the stage.

You go - fields, meadows, copses - endless expanses! The soul is filled with high feelings. Who walked, who traveled around Russia - knows this delight. But this is if the view opens for kilometers.
If you walk between high fences (barbed wire on top), then the feelings are low: annoyance, anger. Fences are higher, feelings are lower.

LOPAKHIN. Lord, you gave us vast forests, vast fields, the deepest horizons, and living here, we ourselves should really be giants ...

It didn't come true.

CHEKHOV TO Suvorin

August 28, 1891. Bogimovo
I looked at several estates. There are small ones, but there are no large ones that would be suitable for you. There are small ones - one and a half, three and five thousand. For one and a half thousand - 40 acres, a huge pond and a house with a park.

We have 15 acres is considered a large area. For Chekhov, 44 hectares is small. Pay attention to the prices: 4400 acres, a pond, a house, a park - for one and a half thousand rubles.

... Under us is still Central Russian elevation. But what a wretch she has become.

LOPAKHIN. Until now, there were only gentlemen and peasants in the village, and now there are more gardeners. All towns, even the smallest ones, are now surrounded by dachas. And we can say that in twenty years the summer resident will multiply to extraordinary.

It came true.
The wall is tall, and behind it is a patch of 6-12 acres, a crow's settlement, tightness. Previously, there was a wooden house on such a piece of land and there was relatively much room for radishes. And now on such a patch stands a concrete three-story freak. Instead of loophole windows; you can only walk sideways between the house and the fence.
Landscapes destroyed. Yesterday you go - on both sides of the highway there are endless fields, forests, meadows, hills. Today - five-meter fences have risen on both sides. It's like going through a tunnel.
Five meters is the same as hundred meters: the earth disappears. All you have left is the sky above the barbed wire.
Someone grabbed the land, and our homeland was gone. Gone is the species that forms the personality more than the banner and the anthem.

theatrical liberties

Except for the vast space that no one noticed, There are two secrets in The Cherry Orchard. They have not yet been unraveled.
...For those who have forgotten the plot. First year of the twentieth century. The noblewoman Ranevskaya returns from Paris to her estate. Here live her brother and her two daughters - Anya and Varya (adopted). The entire estate is being auctioned for debts. A family friend, the merchant Lopakhin, seemed to be trying to teach the owners how to get out of debt, but they did not listen to him. Then Lopakhin, unexpectedly for everyone, bought it himself. And Petya Trofimov is a 30-year-old eternal student, a beggar, a homeless man, Anya's boyfriend. Petya considers it his duty to cut the truth in the eyes of everyone. He asserts himself so much... The Cherry Orchard is sold, everyone is leaving in all directions; Finally, the aged Firs is slaughtered. Not baseball bats, of course, but nails; board up doors, shutters; downtrodden in an empty house, he will simply die of hunger.
What are the mysteries in the old play? For 100 years, thousands of theaters have staged it; everything has long been dismantled to the bone.
And yet there are secrets! - Do not hesitate, reader, evidence will be presented.
Secrets!.. And what are real secrets? For example, was Ranevskaya Lopakhin's mistress? Or how old is she?
Such life truth(which gossips discuss on the benches) is entirely in the hands of the director and actors. Scientifically called interpretation. But most often it is rudeness, smuttyness, vulgarity, antics, or that simplicity that is worse than theft.
Here the landowner Ranevskaya was left alone with the eternal student.

RANEVSKAYA. I can shout now ... I can do stupid things. Save me, Petya.

She prays for spiritual sympathy, for consolation. But without changing a word - only facial expressions, intonation, body movements - it is easy to show that she asks to satisfy her lust. It is enough for the actress to lift up her skirt or simply pull Petya towards her.
The theater is a rough, old, square art, in Russian - a shame.
The adventures of the body are much more spectacular than the work of the soul, and they are a million times easier to play.

* * *
How old is the heroine? The play does not say, but usually Ranevskaya is played “from 50”. It happens that the role is played by a famous actress over 70 (she saw Stanislavsky as a child!). The great old woman is led out onto the stage by the arms. The audience greets the living (half-living) legend with applause.
The famous Lithuanian director Nyakroshyus gave this role to Maksakova. Her Ranevskaya is under 60 (in the West, women over 80 look like this). But Nyakroshyus came up with not only age for Ranevskaya, but also a diagnosis.
She barely walks, barely speaks, and most importantly, she doesn’t remember anything. And the viewer immediately understands: aha! the Russian mistress Ranevskaya in Paris had a stroke (in our opinion - a stroke). An ingenious find brilliantly justifies many of the lines of the first act.

LOPAKHIN. Lyubov Andreevna lived abroad for five years. Will she recognize me?

Strange. Has Lopakhin changed so much in 5 years? Why does he doubt whether he will “know”? But if Ranevskaya has a stroke, then it's understandable.
Justified and the first words of Anya and Ranevskaya.

ANYA. Do you remember what room this is?
RANEVSKAYA (joyfully, through tears). Children's!

The question is stupid. Ranevskaya was born and lived all her life in this house, grew up in this nursery, then her daughter Anya grew up here, then her son Grisha, who drowned at the age of 7.
But if Ranevskaya is insane, then the daughter’s question is justified, and with difficulty, with tears, the answer found, and the patient’s joy that she could remember.
If the play ended here - bravo, Nyakroshus! But after 10 minutes, Gaev will talk about his sister with indecent frankness.

GAEV. She is vicious. It is felt in her slightest movement.

Sorry, in all the movements of Ranevskaya-Maksakova we see paralysis, not depravity.
Yes, of course, the director has the right to any interpretation. But you can't turn too hard. The play, having lost its logic, collapses like a train derailed.
And it becomes boring to watch. Nonsense is boring.
Features of the interpretation can be associated with age, and with gender, and with the orientation of the director, and even with nationality.
The world-famous German, director Peter Stein, staged "Three Sisters", was a resounding success. Muscovites watched with curiosity as Ferapont, the watchman of the zemstvo council, brought papers to the master's house (office) to be signed. Winter, so the old man comes in with earflaps, in a sheepskin coat, in felt boots. Snow on the cap and on the shoulders. Foreign tourists are delighted - Russia! And that the watchman cannot enter the master in a hat and sheepskin coat, that the old man would have been stripped and taken off at the distant approaches (in the hallway, in the people's room) - this the German does not know. He does not know that a Russian, Orthodox, automatically takes off his hat when entering the rooms, even if not to the master, but to the hut. But Stein wanted to show icy Russia (Europe's eternal nightmare). If “Three Sisters” had been staged in a German circus, the snow-covered Ferapont would have entered the master’s office on a bear. In a rich circus - on a polar bear.
Chekhov is not a symbolist, not a decadent. It has subtext, but no substitutions.
When Varya says to Trofimov: “Petya, here they are, your galoshes. (With tears.) And how dirty and old you have, ”- the subtext, of course, is: “How tired you are of me! How unhappy I am!” But the substitutions are kind of flirtatious: “You can take your galoshes, and if you want, you can take me too”- this is not. And it can't be. And if they play like that (which is not excluded), then the image of Varya will be destroyed. And for what? - for a few teenagers to chuckle in the last row?
Interpretations have a limit. You can't argue against direct meanings, direct indications of the text. Here in "Three Sisters" Andrey's wife worries:

NATASHA. I think Bobik is unwell. Bobik has a cold nose.

You can, of course, give her a lap dog named Bobik. But if the play clearly states that Bobik is the child of Andrei and Natasha, then:
a) Bobik is not a dog;
b) Natasha is not a disguised man; not a transvestite.
... So how old is Ranevskaya? The play doesn't say, but the answer is simple. Chekhov wrote the role for Olga Knipper, his wife, adjusted it to her data and talent. He knew all her habits, knew her as a woman and as an actress, sewed exactly to measure, so that she would sit “in a slip”. The play was completed in the autumn of 1903. Olga Knipper was 35 years old. So, Ranevskaya is the same; she got married early (at 18 she already gave birth to Anya, her daughter's age is indicated - 17). She is, as her brother says, vicious. Lopakhin, waiting, is worried like a man.
Chekhov really wanted both the play and his wife to be a success. Adult children age their parents. The younger Anya looks, the better for Olga Knipper. The playwright struggled to assign roles by mail.

CHEKHOV TO NEMIROVICH-DANCHENKO

September 2, 1903. Yalta
I'll call the play a comedy. The role of the mother will be taken by Olga, and who will play the daughter of 17 years old, a girl, young and thin, I do not presume to decide.

CHEKHOV - OLGA KNIPPER

October 14, 1903. Yalta
You will play Lyubov Andreevna. Anna must play certainly young actress.

CHEKHOV TO NEMIROVICH-DANCHENKO

Alexander Minkin

tender soul

The goal of the theater at all times has been and will be:

hold a mirror before nature,

show virtue its true colors

and its true - baseness,

and every age of history -

his unadorned appearance.

Shakespeare. Hamlet

OPHELIA. It's short, my prince.

HAMLET. Like a woman's love.

Shakespeare. Hamlet

What was the first thing Papa Carlo bought for his wooden son? More precisely: not the first, but the only one (for Pope Carlo did not buy anything else for Pinocchio). Book!

The beggar old fool sold his only jacket for this gift. He acted like a man. Because a person became a real person only when the book became the most important thing.

And why did Pinocchio sell his only book? For the sake of going to the theater once.

To poke a curious nose into a dusty piece of old canvas, into a dusty old play - a stunningly interesting world opens up there ... Theater.

"The goal of the theater at all times" - but who says it? An actor in London four hundred years ago or Hamlet in Elsinore a thousand and two hundred years ago?

And how does he want to show Claudius (a high-ranking meanness) his true face? What kind of mirror sticks under your nose? Hecuba! Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides...

This is the goal of classical education, which included (until 1917) Latin and Greek. Dead languages ​​carried a living culture.

Shakespeare (through Hamlet) says: "The purpose of the theater is to show the century its unadorned appearance, its real face."

Show age? - And if the age does not understand? What if you're blind? And if he looks, but does not understand that he sees himself? Do not heed! see - and do not know! Covered with bribes(Derzhavin).

To show baseness its true face? But baseness refuses to recognize itself. Moreover, in ceremonial portraits she is depicted as the Greatest Valor.

... And every century of history - his unadorned look. We, staging Hamlet, must, therefore, show the twenty-first century, and not the seventeenth (Shakespearean) and not the ninth (Hamletian). The theater is not a museum; costumes are not important. Boyars in fur coats? No, they are in armored Mercedes. And Hamlet shows Claudius his unadorned appearance, and not Hecuba and not Baptista. He uses ancient texts like an X-ray machine, like a laser - it burns through.

And the X-ray already then (and always) existed.

KING. I wish you only the best. You wouldn't doubt it if you could see our thoughts.

HAMLET. I see a cherub who sees them.

Tom Sawyer does not study the Bible for the sake of Faith (he believes in a dead cat, in ghosts). This provincial boy in wild slave-owning America thinks in terms of chivalrous times. He has stories of dukes and kings on his lips...

Benvenuto Cellini, Henry of Navarre, Duke of Northumberland, Guildford Dudley, Louis XVI, Casanova, Robin Hood, Captain Kidd - ask a twelve-year-old boy next door: which of them does he know (and not only by name, but life events, exploits, famous phrases). And Tom Sawyer, in his historical and geographical outback, knows all of them: someone is an example to follow, someone is an object of contempt. But they are all guidelines.

People do not always need a common language to understand each other. Yum-yum - clearly without translation. What about emotional experiences? Painful choice: what to do? The basis for understanding is a common book, common heroes.

Huck understands Tom as they discuss what to eat and where to run. But the release of Negro Jim ... Tom operates on the experience of dukes and kings, and Gek does not understand what is happening and why complicate it.

Tom, having read nonsense, what is he doing? He frees a slave, Negro. And in the country where it was considered a shame, not a feat. Tom is aware of his crime, but he does. What pushes him?

Of course, Tom Sawyer plays. But what he plays - that's what is infinitely important. Release the prisoner!

The moral law is within us, not outside. Book concepts of honor and nobility (concepts read, learned from books) were stronger and more important for Tom than those among which he grew up. He acts like a Don Quixote, endlessly complicating the simplest situations, trying on himself to great models, obeying not profit and not customs, but the movements of the soul. Crazy. Nearby (on a bookshelf) is another madman. Hamlet tries himself on Hecuba, who died thousands of years ago. Here is the connection of times: Hecuba (1200 BC) - Hamlet (IX century) - Shakespeare (1600) - and we, holding our breath in the XXI century - thirty-three centuries!

General concepts are needed to understand common book. People die, but she remains. She is a concept carrier.

The Bible worked. But now a lot of people don't have a common book. What is it today? Pushkin? In Russia, it exists only as a name, as a school name “green oak near the seashore” - that is, as Eniki-Beniks.

To understand, one needs not just a common (formally) language, but also the same understanding of common words.

These notes (including those on power, theater and time) stand, as if on a foundation, on the texts of Pushkin, Shakespeare ... And there is hope that the reader knows both these texts (that is, the fate of the characters), and the fate of the authors, and the fate of the texts , and why the Politburo was written with a big one, and God - with a small one.

We got lost, what should we do

In the field the demon leads us, apparently

And circling around...

... Let not the foundation, but the texts of the great ones stick out like landmarks - from the snow, from the swamp, into the darkness, into the storm, into the fog - and lead you.

Why a stupid book about old well-known plays, about performances that don't exist?

Why has Hamlet been staged in Australia, Germany, Russia, France, Japan (in alphabetical order) for more than four hundred years? An old English play about a prince, in addition, for some reason, Danish. Why has the whole world staged The Cherry Orchard for more than a hundred years?

We look at old plays as in a mirror - we see ourselves and our age.

tender soul

Dedicated to two geniuses of Russian theater

In memory of Anatoly Efros, who staged The Cherry Orchard at Taganka in 1975

In memory of Vladimir Vysotsky, who played Lopakhin

FIRS. The method was then known.

RANEVSKAYA. Where is this method now?

FIRS. Forgot. Nobody remembers.

Chekhov. The Cherry Orchard

Characters

RANEVSKAYA LYUBOV ANDREEVNA, landowner.

ANIA, her daughter, 17 years old.

VARYA, her adopted daughter, 24 years old.

GAYEV LEONID ANDREEVICH, brother of Ranevskaya.

LOPAKHIN YERMOLAI ALEKSEEVICH, merchant.

TROFIMOV PETER SERGEEVICH, student.

SIMEONOV-PISHCHIK BORIS BORISOVICH, landowner.

CHARLOTTA IVANOVNA, governess.

EPIKHODOV SEMYON PANTELEEVICH, clerk.

DUNYASHA, the maid.

FIRS, footman, old man 87 years old.

YASHA, a young footman.

Size matters

The Cherry Orchard is an old play, over a hundred years old. What she is about, no one knows.

Some remember that the estate of the noblewoman Ranevskaya is being sold for debts, and the merchant Lopakhin teaches how to get out - it is necessary to cut the land into plots and rent it out for summer cottages.

How big is the estate? I ask my friends, I ask the actors who play The Cherry Orchard, and the directors who staged the play. The only answer is “I don't know”.

“Obviously you don’t know. But you guess.

The questioner groans, mumbles, then uncertainly:

- Two hectares, perhaps?

- No. The estate of Ranevskaya is more than a thousand a hundred hectares.

- Can't be! Where did you get it from?

- It's in the play.

LOPAKHIN. If you divide the cherry orchard and the land along the river into summer cottages and then lease them out for summer cottages, then you will have at least twenty-five thousand a year income. You will charge the summer residents at least twenty-five rubles a year for a tithe. I vouch for anything, you won’t have a single free piece left until the fall, everything will be sorted out.

It means a thousand tithes. A tithe is 1.1 hectares.

In addition to the garden and "land along the river," they also have hundreds of acres of forest.

It would seem, what a trouble if the directors are mistaken a thousand times. But it's not just arithmetic. There is a transition from quantity to quality.

It's so wide that you can't see the edge. More precisely: everything that you see around you is yours. Everything is on the horizon.

If you have a thousand hectares, you see Russia. If you have several acres, you see a fence.

The poor man sees a fence five meters from his shack. The rich man is a hundred meters from his mansion. From the second floor of his mansion, he sees many fences.

Director R., who not only staged The Cherry Orchard, but also wrote a book about this play, said: "Two hectares." Director P. (wonderful, subtle) said: "One and a half."

A thousand hectares is a different feeling of life. This is your boundless expanse, boundless expanse. With what to compare? The poor man has a shower, the rich man has a jacuzzi. And there is the open sea, the ocean. Does it matter how many square kilometers there are? It is important that the coast is not visible.

... Why don't Ranevskaya and her brother act according to such a simple, such a profitable plan of Lopakhin? Why don't they agree? Who plays - that they are out of laziness, who - out of stupidity, because of their inability (they say, the nobles are a dying class) to live in the real world, and not in their fantasies.

But for them, the vast expanse is a reality, and the fences are a disgusting fantasy.

If the director does not see a huge estate, then the actors will not play, and the audience will not understand. Our usual landscape is the walls of houses, fences, billboards.

After all, no one thought what would happen next. If you hand over a thousand plots, a thousand dachas will appear. Summer residents are family people. Four or five thousand people will settle next to you. Families of friends will come to them overnight from Saturday to Sunday. In total, it means that you will have ten to twelve thousand people under your nose - songs, drunken cries, crying children, screeching girls bathing - hell.

CHEKHOV TO NEMIROVICH-DANCHENKO

No special decorations are required. Only in the second act will you give me a real green field and a road and an extraordinary distance for the stage.

You go - fields, meadows, copses - endless expanses! The soul is filled with high feelings. Who walked, who traveled around Russia - knows this delight. But this is if the view opens for kilometers.

If you walk between high fences (barbed wire on top), then the feelings are low: annoyance, anger. Fences are higher, feelings are lower.

L O P A H I N. Lord, you have given us vast forests, vast fields, the deepest horizons, and living here, we ourselves should really be giants ...

It didn't come true.

CHEKHOV TO Suvorin

I looked at several estates. There are small ones, but there are no large ones that would be suitable for you. There are small ones - one and a half, three and five thousand. For one and a half thousand - 40 acres, a huge pond and a house with a park.

We have 15 acres is considered a large area. For Chekhov, 44 hectares is small. (Pay attention to the prices: 4400 acres, a pond, a house, a park - for one and a half thousand rubles.)

... Under us is still Central Russian elevation. But what a wretch she has become.

LOPAKHIN. Until now, there were only gentlemen and peasants in the village, but now there are more summer residents. All towns, even the smallest ones, are now surrounded by dachas. And we can say that in twenty years the summer resident will multiply to extraordinary.

The wall is tall, and behind it is a patch of six or twelve acres, a crow's settlement, tightness. Previously, there was a wooden house on such a piece of land and there was relatively much room for radishes. And now on such a patch stands a concrete three-story freak. Instead of loophole windows; you can only walk sideways between the house and the fence.

Landscapes destroyed. Yesterday you go - on both sides of the highway there are endless fields, forests, meadows, hills. Today, five-meter fences have risen on both sides. It's like going through a tunnel.

Five meters is the same as hundred meters: the earth disappears. All you have left is the sky above the barbed wire.

Someone grabbed the land, and our homeland was gone. Gone is the species that forms the personality more than the banner and the anthem.

Theatrical liberties

In addition to the huge space that no one noticed, the Cherry Orchard has two secrets. They have not yet been unraveled.

... For those who have forgotten the plot. First year of the twentieth century. The noblewoman Ranevskaya returns from Paris to her estate. Her brother and her two daughters, Anya and Varya (adopted), live here. The entire estate is being auctioned for debts. A family friend, the merchant Lopakhin, seemed to be trying to teach the owners how to get out of debt, but they did not listen to him. Then Lopakhin, unexpectedly for everyone, bought it himself. And Petya Trofimov is a thirty-year-old eternal student, a beggar, a homeless man, Anya's boyfriend. Petya considers it his duty to cut the truth in the eyes of everyone. He asserts himself so much... The Cherry Orchard is sold, everyone is leaving in all directions; Finally, the aged Firs is slaughtered. Not baseball bats, of course, but nails; board up doors, shutters; downtrodden in an empty house, he will simply die of hunger.

What are the mysteries in the old play? For a hundred years, thousands of theaters have staged it; everything has long been dismantled to the bone.

And yet there are secrets! - do not hesitate, reader, the evidence will be presented.

Secrets!.. And what are real secrets? For example, was Ranevskaya Lopakhin's mistress? Or how old is she?

Such life truth(which gossips discuss on the benches) is entirely in the hands of the director and actors. In a scholarly way, it is called interpretation. But most often it is rudeness, smuttyness, vulgarity, antics, or that simplicity that is worse than theft.

Here the landowner Ranevskaya was left alone with the eternal student.

RANEVSKAYA. I can shout now ... I can do stupid things. Save me, Petya.

She prays for spiritual sympathy, for consolation. But without changing a word - only facial expressions, intonation, body movements - it is easy to show that she asks to satisfy her lust. It is enough for the actress to lift up her skirt or simply pull Petya towards her.

The theater is a rough, old, square art, in Russian - a shame.

The adventures of the body are much more spectacular than the work of the soul, and they are a million times easier to play.

How old is the heroine? The play does not say, but usually Ranevskaya is played "from fifty". It happens that the role is played by a famous actress over seventy (she saw Stanislavsky as a child!). The great old woman is led out onto the stage by the arms. The audience greets the living (half-living) legend with applause.

The famous Lithuanian director Nyakroshyus gave this role to Maksakova. Her Ranevskaya is under sixty (in the West, women over eighty look like this). But Nyakroshyus came up with not only age for Ranevskaya, but also a diagnosis.

She barely walks, barely speaks, and most importantly, she doesn’t remember anything. And the viewer immediately understands: aha! the Russian mistress Ranevskaya in Paris had a stroke (in our opinion - a stroke). An ingenious find brilliantly justifies many of the lines of the first act.

LOPAKHIN. Lyubov Andreevna lived abroad for five years. Will she recognize me?

Strange. Has Lopakhin changed so much in five years? Why does he doubt, “will he know”? But if Ranevskaya has a stroke, then it’s understandable.

Justified and the first words of Anya and Ranevskaya.

ANYA. Do you remember what room this is?

RANEVSKAYA(joyfully, through tears) . Children's!

The question is stupid. Ranevskaya was born and lived all her life in this house, grew up in this nursery, then her daughter Anya grew up here, then her son Grisha, who drowned at the age of seven.

But if Ranevskaya is insane, then the daughter’s question is justified, and with difficulty, with tears, the answer found, and the patient’s joy that she could remember.

If the play had ended here, bravo, Nyakroshus! But in ten minutes Gaev will speak about his sister with indecent frankness.

GAEV. She is vicious. It is felt in her slightest movement.

Sorry, in all the movements of Ranevskaya-Maksakova we see paralysis, not depravity.

Yes, of course, the director has the right to any interpretation. But you can't turn too hard. The play, having lost its logic, collapses like a train derailed.

And it becomes boring to watch. Nonsense is boring.

Features of the interpretation can be associated with age, and with gender, and with the orientation of the director, and even with nationality.

The world-famous German director Peter Stein directed The Three Sisters and was a resounding success. Muscovites watched with curiosity as Ferapont, the watchman of the zemstvo council, brought papers to the master's house (office) to be signed. Winter, so the old man comes in with earflaps, in a sheepskin coat, in felt boots. Snow on the cap and on the shoulders. Foreign tourists are delighted - Russia! And that the watchman cannot enter the master in a hat and sheepskin coat, that the old man would have been undressed and taken off at the distant approaches (in the hallway, in the people's room) - this the German does not know. He does not know that a Russian, Orthodox, automatically takes off his hat when entering the rooms, even if not to the master, but to the hut. But Stein wanted to show icy Russia (Europe's eternal nightmare). If “Three Sisters” had been staged in a German circus, the snow-covered Ferapont would have entered the master’s office on a bear. In a rich circus - on a polar bear.

Chekhov is not a symbolist, not a decadent. It has subtext, but no substitutions.

When Varya says to Trofimov:

VARYA. Petya, here they are, your galoshes.(With tears.) And how dirty, old you have them ... -

the subtext, of course, is: “How tired of you! How unhappy I am! But the substitutions are kind of flirtatious: “You can take your galoshes, and if you want, you can take me”- this is not. And it can't be. And if they play like that (which is not excluded), then the image of Varya will be destroyed. And for what? - for a few teenagers to chuckle in the last row?

Interpretations have a limit. You can't argue against direct meanings, direct indications of the text. Here in "Three Sisters" Andrey's wife worries:

NATASHA. I think Bobik is unwell. Bobik has a cold nose.

You can, of course, give her a lap dog named Bobik. But if the play clearly states that Bobik is the child of Andrei and Natasha, then:

a) Bobik is not a dog;

b) Natasha is not a disguised man; not a transvestite.

... So how old is Ranevskaya? The play doesn't say, but the answer is simple. Chekhov wrote the role for Olga Knipper, his wife, adjusted it to her data and talent. He knew all her habits, knew her as a woman and as an actress, sewed exactly to measure, so that she would sit “in a slip”. The play was completed in the autumn of 1903. Olga Knipper was 35 years old. So, Ranevskaya is the same; she got married early (at 18 she already gave birth to Anya, her daughter's age is indicated - 17). She is, as her brother says, vicious. Lopakhin, waiting, is worried like a man.

Chekhov really wanted both the play and his wife to be a success. Adult children age their parents. The younger Anya looks, the better for Olga Knipper. The playwright struggled to assign roles by mail.

CHEKHOV TO NEMIROVICH-DANCHENKO

I'll call the play a comedy. The role of the mother will be taken by Olga, and who will play the daughter of 17 years old, a girl, young and thin, I do not presume to decide.

CHEKHOV TO OLGA KNIPPER

You will play Lyubov Andreevna. Anna must play certainly young actress.

CHEKHOV TO NEMIROVICH-DANCHENKO

Anya can be played by anyone, even a completely unknown actress, as long as she is young, and looks like a girl, and speaks in a young, sonorous voice.

It didn't work out. Stanislavsky gave Anya to his wife, Marya Petrovna, who at that time was thirty-seven. Stage Anya became two years older than her mother. And Chekhov insisted in the following letters: Anya does not care who - as long as she is young. Corset and makeup do not save. The voice and plasticity at thirty-seven are not the same as at seventeen.

Ranevskaya is pretty, worries. Lopakhin hastily explains to her:

LOPAKHIN. You are still just as amazing. Your brother says about me that I'm a boor, I'm a kulak, but I absolutely don't care. I only wish that you believed me as before, that your amazing, touching eyes looked at me as before. Merciful God! My father was a serf of your grandfather and father, but you once did so much for me that I forgot everything and love you like my own ... more than my own.

Such a passionate explanation, and even in the presence of her brother and servants. How would Lopakhin behave if they were alone? There was something between them. What does “I forgot everything and love you more than my own” mean? "I forgot everything" sounds like "I forgave everything." What did he forgive? Serfdom? or change? After all, she lived in Paris with her lover, everyone knows that, even Anya.

Ranevskaya is a young, passionate woman. And Lopakhin’s remark “does she recognize me?” - not her stroke, but his fear: how will she look at him? Is there any hope for the resumption of an exciting relationship?

Or was he aiming to take over the estate?

Peter and the wolf

In The Cherry Orchard, we repeat, there are two mysteries that have not been solved so far.

First secret- why did Petya Trofimov decisively and completely change his mind about Lopakhin?

Here is their dialogue (in the second act):

LOPAKHIN. Let me ask you, how do you understand me?

TROFIMOV. I, Yermolai Alekseevich, so understand: you are a rich man, you will soon be a millionaire. This is how, in terms of metabolism, you need a predatory beast that eats everything that comes in its way, so you are needed. (Everyone laughs.)

This is very rude. It looks like rudeness. Yes, even in the presence of ladies. In the presence of Ranevskaya, whom Lopakhin idolizes. Moreover, this transition from “you” to “you” to demonstrate frank contempt. And he didn’t just call him a predator and a beast, but he also added about the metabolism, tightened the gastrointestinal tract.

A beast of prey - that is, a nurse of the forest. Okay, I didn't say "worm" or "dung beetle", which are also needed for metabolism.

And three months later (in the last act, in the final):

TROFIMOV(Lopakhin) . You have thin, tender fingers, like an artist, you have a thin, tender soul ...

This “you” is completely different, admiring.

Both times Trofimov is absolutely sincere. Petya is not a hypocrite, he speaks out directly and is proud of his directness.

One might suspect that he is flattering the millionaire for some purpose. But Petya does not ask for money. Lopakhin, hearing about the tender soul, immediately melted; offers money and even imposes. Petya refuses resolutely and stubbornly.

LOPAKHIN. Take my money for the journey. I'm offering you a loan because I can. Why tear up your nose? I'm a man... simply. (Pulls out wallet.)

TROFIMOV. Give me at least two hundred thousand, I won't take it.

“Beast of Prey” is not a compliment, it is very insulting and no one can like it. Even a banker, even a bandit. For brutality, predation are not considered positive qualities even now, and even more so a hundred years ago.

"Beast of Prey" excludes "gentle soul" altogether.

Has Lopakhin changed? No, we don't see it. His character does not change at all from beginning to end.

So, Petya's view has changed. Yes, how radical - 180 degrees!

Chekhov's view of Lopakhin cannot change. For Lopakhin exists in Chekhov's brain. That is, Chekhov knows everything about him. Knows from the start. Knows before the start.

And Petya - learns Lopakhin gradually, on this path he can be mistaken, deceived.

Othello doesn't know that Iago is a scoundrel and a slanderer. Othello will understand this with horror only in the finale, when it is already too late (he has already strangled his wife). Had he known from the very beginning, there would have been no trust, betrayal, there would have been no play.

Shakespeare knows about Iago all the way to the beginning.

The viewer recognizes the essence of Iago very quickly - as quickly as Shakespeare wants.

Lopakhin is a merchant, a nouveau riche (a rich man in the first generation). He pretended to be a friend of the family, threw up little by little ...

RANEVSKAYA. Yermolai Alekseich, give me another loan!

LOPAKHIN. I'm listening.

... and then - Petya is right - the predator took over, seized the moment and - grabbed it; everyone freaked out.

RANEVSKAYA. Who bought?

LOPAKHIN. I bought! Hey, musicians, play, I want to listen to you! Everyone come and watch how Yermolai 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 will see a new life here! Music, play it distinctly! Let everything as I wish! I can pay for everything! My cherry orchard! My!

Correctly Gaev speaks with disgust about Lopakhin: "Ham." (It is strange that Efros took the Poet - Vysotsky - a rude man with the finest, ringing soul for the role of a boor-merchant.)

Lopakhin ingenuously admits:

LOPAKHIN(maid Dunyasha) . I read the book and didn't understand anything. Reading and falling asleep...(Gaev and Ranevskaya) . My dad was a peasant, an idiot, he didn’t understand anything ... In fact, I’m the same blockhead and idiot. Didn't learn anything.

Often a rich man speaks of books with contempt, haughtily. Braves: “I read and did not understand” - it sounds like this: they say, all this is nonsense.

Lopakhin is a predator! At first, of course, he pretended to care, empathized, and then revealed himself - grabbed and swaggered in a frenzy: come, they say, to see how I grab an ax through a cherry orchard.

Subtle soul? And Varya (Ranevskaya's adopted daughter)? He was a generally recognized groom, showed hope and - he deceived, did not marry, and before that, it is possible that he took advantage - there she is, crying ... Subtle soul? No - a beast, a predator, a male.

Maybe there was something good in him, but then instinct, the grabber took over. See how he yells: “My cherry orchard! My!"

What happened? Why Petya turned around so sharply?

This mystery has not been unraveled in any performance. Or maybe the directors did not see any mystery here. For most, the main thing is to create an atmosphere, there is no time for logic.

Having already guessed, he called Smelyansky - the largest theorist, connoisseur of theatrical history, head of the Art Theater:

What happened to Petya? Why first "predator" and then "tender soul"?

- This is, you know, a sharp complication of the image.

“The complication of the image” is a luxurious, literary and theatrical expression, but does not explain anything.

Why complicate Petya at the last minute? The final is not dedicated to him. It’s already over, now they’ll disperse forever, this will no longer have any development; it is impossible to force us to re-evaluate everything that has been so far, there are seconds left.

Poetry of selfishness

Second secret- why does Ranevskaya take all the money for herself (in order to squander it in Paris), and no one - neither her brother nor her daughter - protests, remaining poor and homeless?

... When the auction came close, the rich "Yaroslavl grandmother-countess" sent fifteen thousand to buy the estate in the name of Anya, but this money would not have been enough to pay interest. Bought Lopakhin. Grandma's money remained intact.

And here is the final: the hosts are leaving, things are collected, in five minutes they will score Firs.

RANEVSKAYA(But not) . My girl ... I'm leaving for Paris, I will live there ( with a wicked lover. - A.M.) with the money that your Yaroslavl grandmother sent to buy the estate - long live grandmother! “But that money won’t last long.

ANYA. You, mother, will be back soon, soon, won't you?(Kisses mother's hands.)

This is great! Anya is not three years old, she is seventeen. She already knows what's what. The grandmother sent money to her, her beloved granddaughter (the rich countess does not like Ranevskaya). And mommy takes everything clean and - to Paris to the boyfriend. He leaves his brother and daughters in Russia without a single penny.

Anya - if we are ashamed to talk about herself - could say: “Mom, what about uncle?”. Gaev - if you are ashamed to talk about yourself - could say to his sister: "Lyuba, but what about Anya?" No, nothing like that happens. No one is outraged, although this is robbery in broad daylight. And the daughter even kisses her mother's hands. How to understand their humility?

Varya is an adopted daughter, her rights are less. But she was not silent when it came to just five rubles.

RANEVSKAYA. There is no silver ... It doesn't matter, here's a gold one for you ...

PASSERER. Thank you very much!

VARYA. I'll leave... Oh, Mommy, people have nothing to eat at home, and you gave him a gold one.

Varya publicly reproached her mother for giving the beggar too much. And about fifteen thousand is silent.

And how to understand Ranevskaya? - this is some kind of monstrous, transcendent egoism, heartlessness. However, her high feelings exist next to dessert.

RANEVSKAYA. God knows, I love my homeland, I love dearly, I could not look from the car, I kept crying.(Through tears.) However, you need to drink coffee.

When suddenly these secrets were unraveled, the first thing that came was doubts: it is impossible that no one had noticed this before. Are all the directors of the world, including such geniuses as Stanislavsky, Efros...

Can't be! Didn't he see the thinnest, magical Efros? But if he saw it, it would be in his performance. So, we would have seen it on stage. But it wasn't. Or was it, but I overlooked, overlooked, did not understand?

Efros did not see?! He saw so much that I flew home from the theater to check whether such written by Chekhov? Yes, it's written. I did not see, I did not understand until Efros opened my eyes. And many, many.

His performance "The Cherry Orchard" turned the opinion about the actors of Taganka. Someone considered them Lyubimov's puppets, but here they revealed themselves as the finest masters of psychological theater.

... It became so unbearable that I wanted to know immediately. It was midnight. Ephros in the other world. Vysotsky (who played Lopakhin in the play Efros) in the next world. Who to call?

Demidova! She brilliantly played Ranevskaya at Efros. The time is late, the last time we talked was ten years ago. Will they understand who is calling? Will he get angry at the midnight call or think he's crazy?.. Time passed, it got late, more and more indecent (in addition, the middle name flew out of my head), and it's impossible to wait until tomorrow. Eh, was not:

- Alla, hello, sorry, for God's sake, for the late call.

Yes, Sasha. What's happened?

"I'm talking about The Cherry Orchard." You played Ranevskaya with Efros and ... But if it’s inconvenient now, maybe I will tomorrow ...

- About the "Cherry Orchard" I'm ready to talk until the morning.

I said about fifteen thousand, about my grandmother, about my daughters and brother, who are left without a penny, and asked: “How could you take all the money and go to Paris? Such selfishness! And why did they endure? Demidova answered without hesitation:

- Ah, Sasha, but this is a poetic theater!

Poetic theatre? But the whole play is endless talk about money, debts, interest.

ANIA ... not a penny<…>gives flunkeys a ruble for tea<…>paid interest?

VARYA. The estate will be sold in August<…>Pass you off as a rich man.

LOPAKHIN. The cherry orchard is being sold for debts. Auction scheduled for August 22nd<…>if you lease the land for summer cottages, you will have twenty-five thousand a year income<…>twenty-five rubles a year for a tithe.

PISCHIK. Lend me two hundred and forty rubles<…>pay the mortgage...

GAEV. The garden will be sold for debts<…>It would be nice to pass Anya off as a rich man<…>It would be nice to borrow against a bill.

RANEVSKAYA. Varya, out of savings, feeds everyone with one pea<…>My husband drank terribly<…>Unfortunately, I fell in love with another, agreed<…>I sold my dacha near Menton. He robbed me, left me, got together with another ...

A noblewoman could say “ruined”, but “robbed”, “got together” is not at all poetic.

PISCHIK. The day after tomorrow three hundred and ten rubles to pay ...

RANEVSKAYA. Grandma sent fifteen thousand.

VARYA. At least a hundred rubles, I would have thrown everything, I would have left ...

PISCHIK. One hundred and eighty rubles, lend me.

GAEV(Ranevskaya) . You gave them your wallet, Lyuba! You can not do it this way!

PISCHIK. A horse is a good animal, a horse can be sold.

For him, the horse is just money.

LOPAKHIN. Eight rubles a bottle.

PISCHIK. Get four hundred rubles ... Eight hundred and forty remain behind me.

LOPAKHIN. I have now earned forty thousand ...

I'm afraid to get tired. If you write out all the remarks about money and interest, there will not be enough space.

The main theme of The Cherry Orchard is the menacingly impending sale of the estate. And a disaster - sold!

Ten years earlier, Chekhov wrote Uncle Vanya. There is only words about the proposed sale the estate caused an ugly, ugly-natural scandal, insults, screams, sobs, hysterics, even a direct attempt to kill the professor for intention sell. Uncle Vanya shoots - twice! - as a professor. And misses twice. And in the poetic theater they always hit and - on the spot. (Poor Lensky.)

... Chekhov is a practicing doctor, and often in a poor, impoverished environment.

CHEKHOV TO Suvorin

During this summer, I got so used to treating diarrhea, vomiting, and all sorts of cholerins that I even get excited myself: I’ll start in the morning, and by the evening it’s ready - the patient asks to eat.

The doctor knows how a person works and what affects his behavior. Because behavior is influenced not only by high thoughts, but also by low diseases (for example, bloody diarrhea).

Do not be shy in front of the doctor. Before the doctor are exposed (in all senses and angles). He does not need to invent; he looked and listened.

CHEKHOV - ROSSOLIMO

The medical sciences had serious influences on my literary activity; enriched me with knowledge, the true value of which for me, as a writer, can only be understood by someone who is a doctor himself ... Thanks to my closeness to medicine, I managed to avoid many mistakes. Acquaintance with the natural sciences always kept me on my guard, and I tried, where possible, to consider scientific data, and where it was impossible, I preferred not to write at all.

Poetic theater - what is it? Fluttering lyricism, moon baths, awkward feelings, curls, lack of everyday logic, buttercups instead of logic?

If you get to the bottom of logic, fragile poetry will not survive.

So you don’t have to search, otherwise it will turn out to be a domestic theater. Moreover, if the great ones have not been found, then it is not necessary.

Poetic? Did Chekhov write high tragedy? pathetic drama? No, The Cherry Orchard is a comedy. Chekhov insisted: comedy with elements of farce. And he was afraid (in his letters) that Nemirovich-Danchenko would get angry at the farce. So Salieri was angry at Mozart's frivolity: "You, Mozart, are God, and you yourself don't know it." That is, like a sparrow - he chirped, not understanding what.

"The Cherry Orchard" is an everyday play. Why be afraid? Household does not mean small. Life is tragic. The majority does not die in the embrasure, not in a duel, not on the Varyag, not even on the stage - in everyday life.

Blok - yes, poetic theater. That's why they don't put it anywhere. And Chekhov is meat!

CHEKHOV TO LEIKIN

I opened it together with the county doctor in the field, on a country road. The deceased is “not local”, and the peasants, on whose land the body was found, by Christ God, with tears prayed to us that we would not open it in their village ... The murdered man was a factory man. He walked from the Tukhlov tavern with a barrel of vodka. Tukhlovsky innkeeper, who does not have the right to sell takeaway, in order to obscure evidence, stole a keg from a dead man ...

You are outraged by the examination of wet nurses. And inspection of prostitutes? If the medical police can testify apples and hams without offending the identity of the merchant, then why can't they look at the goods of wet nurses or prostitutes? Whoever is afraid of offending, let him not buy.

"Money?! - fi! No, not "fi". Chekhov in his letters constantly worries about money, asks for money, scrupulously calculates: how much an apartment, how much per line, interest, debts, prices. (Many of Pushkin's letters are full of the same torments; they are not poetic; debts are stifling.)

CHEKHOV TO Suvorin

Thank you for the five bucks. Alas, she will not correct my affairs. To emerge from the abyss of penny worries and petty fears, there was only one way left for me - immoral. Marry rich. And since this is impossible, I waved my hand at my affairs.

And he is also a professional in buying and selling estates. I bought several times, searched for a long time, asked the price, bargained. I bought something not crazy - earned.

CHEKHOV TO Suvorin

When buying the estate, I owed the former owner three thousand and gave him a mortgage for the same amount. In November I received a letter: if I pay off the mortgage now, they will give me 700 rubles. The offer is profitable. Firstly, the estate costs not 13 thousand, but 12,300, and secondly, no interest is paid.

Seeing "poetry" where there is none, the theater makes life easier for itself.

Why does the heroine do this?

- And the devil knows! This is, you see, poetic theater.

What about Little Tragedies? "The Miserly Knight" - isn't it a poetic theater? And there everyone talks only about money, counts money, poisons and kills for money. Mozart and Salieri is a recognized masterpiece of poetry. And there they poison and kill out of envy - is this a poetic feeling? How to play envy poetically? Like haze, pink mist? Howling like a bad Baba Yaga at a children's party?

Chekhov did not consider himself engaged in poetic theater. He was extremely concerned about the logic of images. And very soberly (as only doctors can) looked at his contemporaries - at all classes and strata. To call his plays poetic means to state directly: Chekhov did not understand what he was doing. Unconscious genius; or, as Salieri says of Mozart, an idle reveler.

times and manners

In the center of Moscow, a woman (seemingly non-Russian, with an accent) confessed:

I don't have a real passport.

She said it loudly; and not during interrogation by the police, not drunk, not asking for alms (although it is unlikely that a person of a foreign nationality will pity a Muscovite with a message that he lives on false documents). Many have heard.

Strange. For some reason, this sad aunt with the awkward name Charlotte was completely sure that no one would inform. And what a stupid frankness she will not find herself in ten minutes in the “funnel”, where she will have to pay off with money, and maybe something else (if she is considered pretty enough).

And, indeed, no one informed, although several hundred people heard it.

Charlotte traveled to Paris with a fake passport - from Russia (from the prison of nations, from the police state) to France and back.

Charlotte - on stage; the 19th century had just ended there. We are in the hall; we started the twenty-first. In Moscow, in four Cherry Orchards theaters at once. Sometimes two or three coincide in one evening. Why do we need them?

CHEKHOV TO Suvorin

…why lie to the people? Why assure him that he is right in his ignorance and that his gross prejudices are holy truth? Can a bright future redeem this vile lie? If I were a politician, I would never have dared to disgrace my present for the sake of the future, at least for my spool vile lies were promised a hundred poods of bliss.

We have become different. Life is different, time is different, life, upbringing, attitude towards children, women, the elderly. Everything became in Yasha's way: rudely, in a lackey way.

FIRS. In the old days, forty or fifty years ago, cherries were dried, soaked, pickled, jam was cooked ... And, it used to be, dried cherries were sent by carts to Moscow and Kharkov. There was money! And dried cherries were then soft, juicy, sweet, fragrant… The method was then known…

God! this is what a garden should be like, to send dried (!) wagons ... And the old people are not needed, of course.

In the old days, people talked, read aloud in the evenings, played home performances ... Now they watch others chatting (falsely and rudely) on TV.

Pushkin rode one from Moscow to St. Petersburg, to Odessa, to the Caucasus, to Orenburg in the footsteps of Pugachev ... If he sat in the Red Arrow, a showman, newsmaker, producer Khlestakov would immediately sit next to him:

- Alexander Sergeyevich! Well, brother?

Pushkin rode alone. Not only that, he thought, he had nothing more to do; not to speak with the driver's back.

Fellow travelers, radio and TV do not leave the opportunity to think.

Chekhov did part of the road to Sakhalin with fellow lieutenants and suffered greatly from empty talk (complained in letters).

... The characters of The Cherry Orchard are nobles, merchants ... For Chekhov, these were friends, acquaintances - the environment. Then she was gone.

Nobles and merchants died 90 years ago. They were cancelled.

There are nobles in the play, but not in life. What will they be like on stage? Fictitious. It's like the fish would play a play about birds. They would talk about flights, moving their gills.

In Bulgakov's Theatrical Novel, a young playwright examines portraits of the founders, luminaries, artists in the foyer of the Art Theater ... Suddenly, with amazement, he stumbles upon a portrait of a general.

"- And who is this?

- Major General Claudius Alexandrovich Komarovsky-Echappard de Bioncourt, commander of the Life Guards of His Majesty's Lancers Regiment.

What roles did he play?

- Kings, commanders and valets in rich houses ... Well, naturally, we have manners, you yourself understand. And he knew everything through and through, whether the lady needed a handkerchief, whether to pour wine, spoke French perfectly, better than the French.

“We have manners, you understand…” The conversation takes place in the 1920s, but the general entered the theater under the tsar. Even then, it was necessary to show the actors how the aristocrats served the headscarf.

Today, entering our theater (whether big or small), Russian boyars would not recognize themselves. So Ivan the Terrible did not recognize himself in the cowardly house manager. After all, we do not recognize ourselves (Russian, Soviet) in stupid clumsy idiots from Hollywood films.

For almost a hundred years there were no nobles, merchants. They remained in the textbooks - once and for all approved school prints. The merchant is a greedy, cruel, rude tyrant of the Wild (spiritual movements are unknown to him, he rejects marriage for love). The noblewoman is a cutesy, hypocritical, stupid, empty doll.

Merchants and nobles were gone, but lackeys remained. And everyone was judged according to themselves - in a lackey way. These lackeys, wishing to please the new masters (also lackeys), portrayed the destroyed (abolished) mockingly, vulgarly, caricatured. And from these interpretations - and since the 1930s they have already been driven in from kindergarten - no one was free.

And the merchant in the Soviet theater has always been Wild and never Tretyakov (whose gallery).

We still use it: the Botkin hospital, the Morozov hospital (and many more) were built by merchants for the poor, not VIP clubs and fitness centers. Not every king built so much for the people.

Soviet power ended in 1991. Capitalism is back. What about nobles and merchants? They did not wait behind the scenes for the command “to the stage!”. They died. And their culture is dead.

The language remained almost Russian. But notions… The very word “notions” a hundred years ago referred to honor and justice, and now to robbery and murder.

In 1980, Yuri Lotman wrote "Commentary on "Eugene Onegin" - a guide for teachers." At the beginning it says:

“To explain what the reader already understands means, firstly, it is useless to increase the volume of the book, and secondly, to offend the reader with a pejorative idea of ​​\u200b\u200bhis literary horizons. It is useless and insulting for an adult and a specialist to read explanations designed for a fifth grade student.

warning that understandable will not explain, Lotman continues:

“A large group of words lexically incomprehensible to the modern reader in “Eugene Onegin” refers to objects and phenomena of everyday life, both material (household items, clothing, food, wine, etc.) and moral (the concept of honor).”

So, even (or already) then it was necessary to explain teachers what is mentic, cliquot and honor.

Over the same years, the water in the Moscow River was polluted, the fish changed beyond recognition, to horror: claws, fangs, blind eyes ... Are we the same?

CHEKHOV TO Suvorin

God's light is good. Only one thing is not good: we. How little justice and humility we have, how badly we understand patriotism! We, they say in the newspapers, love our great motherland, but how is this love expressed? Instead of knowledge - impudence and conceit beyond measure, instead of labor - laziness and disgusting, there is no justice, the concept of honor does not go beyond the "honor of the uniform", the uniform that serves as an ordinary decoration of our docks for defendants. ("Werewolves". - A.M.) You have to work, and everything else is to hell. The main thing is to be fair, and everything else will follow.

Or maybe we're still the same?

... Then the pendulum swung - they began to poeticize the nobility.

All the ladies of the 19th century became the wives of the Decembrists. All men - Andrey Bolkonsky. Whom did Pushkin call "secular mob", "secular bastard"? Who lost at slave cards? Who poisoned peasant children with dogs, kept harems? Who drove the peasants to such anger that, having caught a white officer, instead of humanely slapping them, they impaled him on a stake?

The inner, sometimes unconscious protest of the Soviet people against the Soviet ideology gave rise to admiration for the nobles. Exactly according to Okudzhava:

... Followed by duelists, aide-de-camp.

Epaulets flash.

They are all handsome, they are all talents,

They are all poets.

Not all. In 1826, when five Decembrists were hanged and 121 driven to hard labor, there were 435,000 male nobles in Russia. Heroes and poets made up three hundredths of a percent (0.03%) of the aristocracy. Let's not count their share in the people's sea.

Chekhov did not poeticize his contemporaries. No nobles, no people, no intelligentsia, no brothers in the pen.

CHEKHOV TO Suvorin

Today's best writers, whom I love, serve evil because they destroy. One of them… ( rude words. - A.M.) Others ... ( rude words. - A.M.) Not satiated with the body, but already satiated with the spirit, they sharpen their imagination to the green devils. They compromise science in the eyes of the crowd, they treat conscience, freedom, love, honor, morality from the height of writer's greatness, instilling in the crowd the confidence that everything that restrains the beast in it and distinguishes it from the dog and that is obtained through centuries of struggle with nature, is easy may be discredited. Do such authors make you look for something better, make you think and admit that what is bad is really bad? No, in Russia they help the devil breed slugs and wood lice, which we call intellectuals. Sluggish, apathetic, lazy-philosophizing, cold intelligentsia, which is not patriotic, dull, colorless, which grumbles and willingly denies EVERYTHING, since it is easier for a lazy brain to deny than to affirm; who does not marry and refuses to raise children, etc. And all this is due to the fact that life does not make sense, what women have ... ( rude word. – A.M.) and that money is evil.

Where there is degeneration and apathy, there is sexual perversion, cold depravity, miscarriages, early old age, grumbling youth, there is a fall in the arts, indifference to science, there is INJUSTICE in all its form. A society that does not believe in God, but is afraid to accept the devil, does not even dare to stutter that it is familiar with justice.

CHEKHOV TO LEONTIEV

I cannot understand that you mean some kind of sophisticated, higher morality, since there are neither lower, nor higher, nor average moralities, but there is only one, namely the one that gave us Jesus Christ and which now prevents me from stealing, insulting, lying, and so on.

In The Cherry Orchard, the dilapidated Firs dreamily recalls serfdom, abolished forty years ago.

FIRS. Before the disaster, too, was ...

LOPAKHIN. Before what misfortune?

FIRS. Before will. Then I did not agree to freedom, I remained with the masters ... And I remember, everyone is happy, but what they are happy about, they themselves don’t know ... And now everything is scattered, you won’t understand anything.

A typical Soviet person - mourns for order, for the times of Brezhnev, Stalin, mourns for the decline.

FIRS. Before, generals, barons, admirals danced at our balls, but now we send for the postal clerk and the head of the station, and even they are not willing to go.

YASHA. You're tired, grandfather. If only you would die sooner.

Yes, it was an honor to visit the professor before. And the delicacies in his family did not surprise anyone. And a can of caviar could not achieve success (let alone delight).

Then for seventy years they were taught that there are two classes: workers and peasants (collective farmers), and the intelligentsia is a stratum. There is no doubt that the intelligentsia is extremely small. But why is she a layer between worker and collective farmer, it is impossible to understand.

The professors (layer) were not able to get the serverat. As long as it's out, it's good. They stopped giving out - the refrigerator was empty. And the thug blonde around the corner stuns the professorial family with a cervelat stick, a piece of brisket - the fruits of a body kit, a cheat.

Now delicacies are no longer scarce. Now these capable blondes and blonds have come around the corner. They knew how to solve their gastronomic problems in Soviet times. It turned out - in the new conditions - that in the same way you can arrange a career, right up to the Kremlin.

CHEKHOV TO Suvorin

What a horror to deal with liars! Seller artist ( Chekhov bought an estate from him. - A.M.) lies, lies, lies unnecessarily, stupidly - as a result of daily disappointments. Every minute you expect new deceptions, hence the irritation. They used to write and say that only merchants measure and weigh, but they would have looked at the nobles! Look disgusting. These are not people, but ordinary kulaks, even worse than kulaks, for the kulak peasant takes and works, but my artist takes and only eats and scolds the servants. Can you imagine, from the very summer the horses have not seen a single grain of oats, not a patch of hay, and they eat only straw, although they work for ten. The cow does not give milk because she is hungry. Wife and mistress live under the same roof. Children are dirty and ragged. The stink of cats. Bed bugs and giant cockroaches. The artist pretends to be devoted to me with all his heart, and at the same time teaches peasants to deceive me. Generally nonsense and vulgarity. It's disgusting that all this hungry and dirty bastard thinks that I'm just as trembling over a penny as she is, and that I'm also not averse to cheating.

Long lived under socialism. Weaned from capitalism. But now everything that used to be - debts, auctions, interest, bills - came to life.

A huge layer of people was ready for a new life.

TROFIMOV. Im free person. I am strong and proud. Humanity is moving towards the highest truth, the highest happiness possible on earth, and I am in the forefront!

LOPAKHIN. Will you get there?

TROFIMOV. I will reach ... or I will show others the way how to reach.

ANYA(joyfully). Farewell, old life!

TROFIMOV(joyfully). Hello new life!

Young people run away, holding hands, a minute later they kill Firs.

... Gaev and Ranevskaya cry from hopelessness. Youth is behind, they don’t know how to work, their world is literally collapsing (Lopakhin ordered to demolish the old house).

But others are young, healthy, educated. Why hopelessness and poverty, why can't they support the estate? Can't work?

The world has changed, rents have risen, teachers are paid little, engineers are not needed.

Life pushes them out. Where? It is customary to say "on the sidelines." But we understand that if life displaces someone - she displaces into death, to the grave. Not everyone can adapt, not everyone is able to become a shuttle or a guard.

Readers are dying. The world's best readers have died: 25 million in 25 years. The rest forgot no one remembers”), that one could live differently: read other books, watch other films.

Below us is the same Central Russian Upland. But what a wretch she has become.

The territory does not decide. Okudzhava, evicted from the Arbat, once walked along his former street and saw that everything was still here. Except people.

Occupiers, fauna - this is not about the Germans. And not about the Soviet, not about the Russians, and not even about the new Russians. These are poems from 1982. This is about the nomenklatura, it is not people.

The territory is the same, but the people are not.

They do not want to live in a new way

…May. (I act.) Cherry blossoms. Ranevskaya returned from Paris. The family is broken.

LOPAKHIN. Don't worry, my dear, there is a way out! If you divide the cherry orchard and the land along the river into suburban areas, you will have at least twenty-five thousand a year income. You will charge the summer residents at least twenty-five rubles a year for a tithe, I can guarantee anything, you will not have a single free patch left until the autumn, everything will be sorted out. The location is wonderful, the river is deep. Just need to demolish this house, which is no longer good for anything, cut down the old cherry orchard ...

RANEVSKAYA. Cut down?! My dear, I'm sorry, you do not understand anything.

The garden is alive for them. Chop - how to cut off a hand. Trees for them are part of life, part of the body, part of the soul. Therefore, they imagine:

RANEVSKAYA. Look, the late mother in a white dress is walking through the garden ... No, it seemed to me that there was a tree covered with white flowers at the end of the alley.

How to cut it out? How can you agree that all this has become unnecessary? And the garden is not needed, and people are not needed - the time of young cannibals is coming.

…July. (II act.) The catastrophe is approaching.

LOPAKHIN. They speak Russian to you, your estate is for sale, but you definitely do not understand.

Notes

Ten years before the premiere of The Cherry Orchard.

Four grams.

Slap - shoot without trial or investigation.

In the film "Blonde around the corner" the heroine - a sassy (without complexes) grocery store saleswoman - charms a modest research assistant and his professor parents.

End of free trial.

Why would I talk about dachas? Well, first of all, summer and hot. Secondly, I came across a nice "dacha" exhibition in Melikhovo.

Lopakhin. Your estate is only twenty versts from the city, there is a railway nearby, and if the cherry orchard and the land along the river are divided into summer cottages and then leased out for summer cottages, then you will have at least twenty-five thousand a year income.

Gaev. Sorry, what nonsense! (…)

Lyubov Andreevna. Dachas and summer residents - it's so vulgar, sorry.

Melikhovo is a museum-estate of Chekhov. So you involuntarily recall the "Cherry Orchard". The play was written in 1903, by which time the “dacha” culture had already expanded.

And where did it start? The word itself is etymologically clear - it comes from the verb "give". And at first it was simply about land or forest plots granted by a prince or tsar (there was a lot of land in Rus', little money in the treasury - this is the way to reward worthy close associates).

The concept of a suburban - or rather, even a suburban - small estate appeared in the Petrine era. The tsar began to distribute the lands under the newly built St. Petersburg to high officials - as it was alleged, so that they would not go to distant estates for the summer, but would remain at the monarch’s hand just in case.

However, the meaning of the term continued to be modified - and already in the 1820s we see "Her Imperial Majesty's own dacha Alexandria." And here, of course, we mean simply a suburban ensemble, something like a European villa.

But those dachas that Chekhov's character spoke about were still far away. The changes brought with them two things: the peasant reform of Alexander II (which, having launched many economic transformations, at the same time destroyed the very principle of the noble estate as a large complex, primarily agricultural land) and the railway.

The last one is important. After all, wealthy townspeople existed before - and some even acquired or built small estates for summer holidays (Chekhov's Melikhovo itself, after all, is one of those). But before the advent of railroad communication, leaving for your summer residence meant equipping a large - and slowly creeping - wagon train and already setting off, so for several months at once.

The dacha of the second half of the 19th century is, in a certain sense, a reproduction of a manor, an estate, but in miniature. Not just landless and not related to agriculture, but also not requiring a large number of servants. And also not too far from the city - unlike the owners of traditional estates, who only twice a year made an arbitrarily long journey from the village to the city and back, the "summer residents" were tied to the city by service or professional activity. For such people, the slowly creeping estate convoy was not suitable. And the townspeople, as a rule, no longer kept their own horses. And with the advent of the train, the issue was resolved.

Of course, some dachas were built "for themselves" - as a rule, according to an individual project and often even with the involvement of serious architects. But more often, entire summer cottages were lined up for rent. And so they begin to appear precisely around the railway stations - so that the father of the family (whose vacation was, as a rule, the shortest summer period) could go to the city in the morning to work, and return in the evening.

Judging by the ads of that time, it was still not about 30 square meters prescribed as a limit on the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe house for the Soviet owner of six acres, but about more impressive buildings, designed for both the largest family and servants.

In general, let's quote Chekhov's play once again:

Lopakhin. Until now, there were only gentlemen and peasants in the village, but now there are more summer residents.

And with summer residents, a special country style appeared. These were, indeed, no longer those "gentlemen" who spent considerable time looking after agricultural work. The summer resident was resting - adults from the affairs of the service or from urban secular life, children from gymnasium science. And they all drank tea together on the veranda (and also brewed jam at the peak of the season, and cooking jam under the trees in a copper basin is generally a separate, namely country ritual).

Along with traditional (including for urban leisure) board games, sports games also appeared. Among which, the now forgotten (and in some places with difficulty, but stubbornly revived) croquet stood out.

Other types of suburban leisure, one must think, are familiar to everyone - walks, picnics, mushrooms, fishing, swimming, boats ... Why summer cottages quickly acquired a kind of leisure infrastructure.

And summer theaters sprang up everywhere. Somewhere completely capitally built, suitable for inviting professional singers and actors. Somewhere adapted from a barn or a barn - for amateur performances.

How important the dacha theme became at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries is evidenced by numerous printed publications devoted only to it. With advice like "when to go to the country" and "how rational baths should be arranged." And also with numerous cartoons and humorous stories (and to be honest, not only Teffi or Averchenko, but Anton Pavlovich himself managed to pay tribute to the dacha theme in this context).

Well, as you know, there have always been problems with country roads - and this is also an age-old Russian story.

Well, it's funny that in Chekhov's play one can also subtract something like a prediction - only it concerns the "dachas" of the second half of the 20th century.

Lopakhin. All towns, even the smallest ones, are now surrounded by dachas. And we can say that in twenty years the summer resident will multiply to extraordinary. Now he only drinks tea on the balcony, but it may happen that on his one tithe he will take care of the household.

Well, this time I ended up in the Chekhov estate itself on the occasion of another theatrical premiere at the Melikhovsky Theater. What those interested can read about.