New generation, young Russia in the play. A.P. Chekhov. The Cherry Orchard. Text of the work. Act three We will plant a new garden

There is no one in the hall and living room except Lyubov Andreevna, who is sitting, cowering all over and crying bitterly. Music plays quietly. Anya and Trofimov quickly enter. Anya approaches her mother and kneels in front of her. Trofimov remains at the entrance to the hall.

“Promenade in couples!”... “Big circle, balance!”... “Gentlemen, kneel down and thank the ladies” (French). Good man, but bad musician (German).

This work has entered the public domain. The work was written by an author who died more than seventy years ago, and was published during his lifetime or posthumously, but more than seventy years have also passed since publication. It may be freely used by anyone without anyone's consent or permission and without payment of royalties.

The door to the billiard room is open; the sound of balls and Yasha’s voice are heard: “Seven and eighteen!” Gaev’s expression changes, he no longer cries.

I'm terribly tired. Let me, Firs, change my clothes. (He goes home through the hall, followed by Firs.)

Pischik. What's up for auction? Tell me!

Lyubov Andreevna. Is the cherry orchard sold?

Lopakhin. Sold.

Lyubov Andreevna. Who bought it?

Lopakhin. I bought.

Pause.

Lyubov Andreevna is depressed; she would have fallen if she had not been standing near the chair and table. Varya takes the keys from her belt, throws them on the floor in the middle of the living room, and leaves.

I bought! Wait, gentlemen, do me a favor, my head is clouded, I can’t speak... (Laughs.) We came to the auction, Deriganov was already there. Leonid Andreich had only fifteen thousand, and Deriganov immediately gave thirty thousand on top of the debt. I see this is the case, I tackled him and gave him forty. He's forty-five. I'm fifty-five. That means he adds five, I add ten... Well, it’s over. I gave ninety over and above my debt; that was left to me. The cherry orchard is now mine! My! (Laughs.) My God, my God, my cherry orchard! Tell me that I’m drunk, out of my mind, that I’m imagining all this... (Stamps his feet.) Don't laugh at me! If only my father and grandfather would get out of their graves and look at the whole incident, like their Ermolai, the beaten, illiterate Ermolai, who ran barefoot in the winter, how this same Ermolai bought an estate, the most beautiful of which there is nothing in the world. I bought an estate where my grandfather and father were slaves, where they were not even allowed into the kitchen. I’m dreaming, I’m only imagining this, it’s only seeming... This is a figment of your imagination, covered in the darkness of the unknown... (He picks up the keys, smiling affectionately.) She threw away the keys, she wants to show that she is no longer the mistress here... (Ringles keys.) Well, it doesn't matter.

You can hear the orchestra tuning up.

Hey musicians, play, I want to listen to you! Come and watch how Ermolai Lopakhin takes an ax to the cherry orchard and how the trees fall to the ground! We will set up dachas, and our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will see a new life here... Music, play!

Music is playing. Lyubov Andreevna sank into a chair and cried bitterly.

(Reproachfully.) Why, why didn’t you listen to me? My poor, good one, you won’t get it back now. (With tears.) Oh, if only all this would pass, if only our awkward, unhappy life would somehow change.

Pischik(takes him by the arm, in a low voice). She's crying. Let's go to the hall, let her be alone... Let's go... (Takes him by the arm and leads him into the hall.)

Lopakhin. What is it? Music, play clearly! Let everything be as I wish! (With irony.) A new landowner is coming, the owner of the cherry orchard! (I accidentally pushed the table and almost knocked over the candelabra.) I can pay for everything! (Leaves with Pishchik.)

There is no one in the hall and living room except Lyubov Andreevna, who is sitting, cowering all over and crying bitterly. Music plays quietly. Anya and Trofimov quickly enter, Anya approaches her mother and kneels in front of her, Trofimov remains at the entrance to the hall.

Anya. Mom!.. Mom, are you crying? My dear, kind, good mother, my beautiful, I love you... I bless you. The cherry orchard has been sold, it’s no longer there, it’s true, it’s true, but don’t cry, mom, you still have a life ahead of you, your good, pure soul remains... Come with me, let’s go, dear, from here, let’s go!.. We’ll plant a new orchard , more luxurious than this, you will see him, you will understand, and joy, quiet, deep joy will descend on your soul, like the sun in the evening hour, and you will smile, mom! Let's go, honey! Let's go to!..

A curtain.

The scenery of the first act. There are no curtains on the windows, no paintings, there is only a little furniture left, which is folded in one corner, as if for sale. It feels empty. Suitcases, travel items, etc. are stacked near the exit door and at the back of the stage. To the left, the door is open, and the voices of Varya and Anya can be heard from there. Lopakhin stands, waits. Yasha holds a tray with glasses filled with champagne. In the hallway, Epikhodov is tying up a box. There's a rumble in the background behind the stage. The men came to say goodbye. Gaev’s voice: “Thank you, brothers, thank you.”

Yasha. The common people came to say goodbye. I am of this opinion, Ermolai Alekseich: the people are kind, but they understand little.

The hum subsides. Lyubov Andreevna and Gaev enter through the front; she is not crying, but she is pale, her face is trembling, she cannot speak.

Gaev. You gave them your wallet, Lyuba. You can not do it this way! You can not do it this way!

Lyubov Andreevna. I could not! I could not!

Both leave.

Lopakhin(at the door, following them). Please, I humbly ask! A glass of goodbye. I didn’t think to bring it from the city, but at the station I found only one bottle. You're welcome!

Pause.

Well, gentlemen! Wouldn't you like it? (Moves away from the door.) If I had known, I wouldn't have bought it. Well, I won’t drink either.

Yasha carefully places the tray on the chair.

Have a drink, Yasha, at least you.

Yasha. With those departing! Stay happily? (Drinks.) This champagne is not real, I can assure you.

Lopakhin. Eight rubles a bottle.

Pause.

It's damn cold here.

Yasha. We didn't heat it today, we're leaving anyway. (Laughs.)

Lopakhin. What you?

Yasha. From pleasure.

Lopakhin. It's October, but it's sunny and quiet, like summer. Build well. (Looking at the clock, at the door.) Gentlemen, keep in mind that there are only forty-six minutes left before the train! That means we’ll be heading to the station in twenty minutes. Hurry up.

Trofimov comes in from the yard wearing a coat.

Trofimov. I think it's time to go. The horses have been served. The devil knows where my galoshes are. Gone. (In the door.) Anya, my galoshes are gone! Have not found!

Lopakhin. I need to go to Kharkov. I'll go on the same train with you. I will live in Kharkov all winter. I kept hanging around with you, tired of doing nothing. I can’t live without work, I don’t know what to do with my hands; hanging out somehow strangely, like strangers.

Trofimov. We’ll leave now, and you’ll get back to your useful work.

Lopakhin. Have a glass.

Trofimov. I won't.

Lopakhin. So, to Moscow now?

Trofimov. Yes, I’ll take them to the city, and tomorrow to Moscow.

Lopakhin. Yes... Well, professors don’t give lectures, I guess everyone is waiting for you to arrive!

Trofimov. None of your business.

Lopakhin. How many years have you been studying at university?

Trofimov. Come up with something new. It's old and flat. (Looks for galoshes.) You know, we probably won’t see each other again, so let me give you one parting piece of advice: don’t wave your arms! Get out of the habit of swinging. And, too, to build dachas, to count on the fact that the dacha owners will eventually emerge as separate owners, to count like this also means to wave... After all, I still love you. You have thin, gentle fingers, like an artist, you have a thin, gentle soul...

Lopakhin(hugs him). Goodbye, my dear. Thanks for all. If necessary, take money from me for the trip.

Bryusov’s poem “Creativity,” dated March 1, 1895, is a manifesto of early symbolism. It was intended to be shocking and caused a scandal: the author was accused of nonsense. In fact, on the contrary, it is constructed extremely rationally.

We see that the images of the last stanza vary the images of the first stanza with a very significant difference: in the first stanza it says “The Shadow of Uncreated Creatures,” in the last stanza it says “The Secrets of Created Creatures.” Comparing this with the title, we can come to the conclusion that the poem represents the creative process: the author describes how he creates this very poem.

Shadow of the Uncreated Creatures
sways in his sleep,
Like patching blades
On an enamel wall.

The mysterious word “patching” is a palm tree, and the enamel wall is the wall of a stove. The lyrical hero is half asleep in the room where the stove is heated, and sees palm leaves-blades reflected in the tiles.

Purple hands
On the enamel wall
Half-asleeply draw sounds
In a ringing silence.

The shadows of the palm trees begin to remind him of his hands: the world is divided into two: the real one and the one that the half-asleep poet creates with his imagination. Ringing silence is an oxymoron, referring to the common expression “ringing silence.”

And transparent kiosks
In the ringing silence,
They grow like sparkles
Under the azure moon.

Kiosks are gazebos; Of course, the hero cannot see any kiosks from the room, which means he expands the world of the poem. This imaginary world becomes militantly exciting, it conquers the real world.

The moon rises naked
Under the azure moon...
The sounds roar half asleep,
Sounds caress me.

Parodists mocked Bryusov for this stanza, offering to put him in a madhouse or suggesting that the poet was drunk. However, in reality, a month under the moon is just a reflection of the moon in the enamel. The word “caress” is very important in the stanza: the imaginary world of the poem is a world in which the poet is the demiurge and everything obeys him.

Secrets of the Created Creatures
They caress me with affection,
And the shadow of patches trembles
On an enamel wall.

The last stanza is triumphant: the poet-demiurge has completed his creation of his world. The poem is full of phonetic and syntactic repetitions, which makes it even more like a spell.

Abstract

“Have you noticed that Chekhov’s last play is decidedly different from all the previous ones? How were “Ivanov”, “Chaika”, “Three Sisters”, “Uncle Vanya” built? Schematically speaking, they are all built the same way: arrival, shooting and departure. And nothing changes, everything goes back to the beginning.”

Lev Sobolev

Most similar to this is the end of the third, penultimate act of “The Cherry Orchard,” when Anya says: “Mom!.. Mom, are you crying? My dear, kind, good mother, my beautiful, I love you... I bless you. The cherry orchard has been sold, it’s no longer there, it’s true, it’s true, but don’t cry, mom, you still have a life ahead of you, your good, pure soul remains... Come with me, let’s go, dear, from here, let’s go!.. We’ll plant a new orchard , more luxurious than this, you will see him, you will understand, and joy, quiet, deep joy will descend on your soul, like the sun in the evening hour, and you will smile, mom! Let's go, honey! Let's go!..” The third act ends in August, and the fourth begins in October.

“What is the fourth act? The fourth act of “The Cherry Orchard” says that there is no turning back, as in “Three Sisters”, as in “Uncle Vanya”, as in “The Seagull”, and there cannot be. Must go. And Gaev, a bank employee, as he speaks of himself with pleasure, says: “Before the sale of the cherry orchard, we were all worried, suffering, and then, when the issue was resolved finally, irrevocably, everyone calmed down, even cheered up...” Yes, parting with the orchard It’s hard for Ranevskaya, Gaev, Firs. But they part with him, life ends.”

Lev Sobolev

The death of the garden becomes for Chekhov a symbol of the death of the old culture: he soberly understands that it is impossible to go back, and the death of old Firs in this sense is very significant.

“It seems to me that at the beginning of the 20th century a new period began in Chekhov’s work. This applies to both prose and drama. Both in prose and drama of the 19th century, Chekhov ended up where he began; his stories and plays were closed, closed. In later prose - for example, in “The Lady with the Dog”, “The Bride” - there are completely different endings. Both prose and drama are open, there is life ahead, unknown, mysterious and, perhaps, beautiful. Everything is in the hands of man. How this period in Chekhov’s work would have gone, how Chekhov would have developed, we, unfortunately, will never know.”

Lev Sobolev 

Abstract

“The Aristocrat” is a story by thirty-year-old Zoshchenko, who was extremely popular in the 1920s. However, his reputation among critics was complex and ambivalent. Official Soviet criticism was dissatisfied with his characters, his language, his mundane everyday plots, declaring him a mouthpiece of philistinism, full of remnants of the dark bourgeois or petty bourgeois past. The enlightened liberal academic criticism that defended him explained that he, on the contrary, was a satirist and fellow traveler sympathetic to the party’s cause, exposing the harmful birthmarks of the past in the bourgeoisie he ridiculed.

“Only during perestroika in the USSR was his psychoanalytic story from his own life, Before Sunrise, finally published in full, casting new light on the picture of his work as a whole. Suddenly it turned out that the autobiographical hero of this story is in many ways similar to those philistines whom the author ridiculed in his famous comic stories. Only there Zoshchenko’s character is presented in a detached comic manner, but here in a tragic and farcical sympathetic way, he is seriously concerned about the problems of his personality.
But then both accepted interpretations are correct and incorrect. Zoshchenko is, indeed, in a sense a philistine, a person in general who is both ridiculous and pitiful, but with whom the author sympathizes, and we are with him. But which he also sees in a critical light.”

Alexander Zholkovsky

In “Before Sunrise,” Zoshchenko focused on identifying his basic, childhood traumas, from which he derived his future phobias—fear of thunder, gunshots, fear of water, fear of food, fear for one’s territorial boundaries and the boundaries of one’s body, fear of women as sources feeding and as sexual objects, your Oedipal fear, hatred of paternal authority figures.

What do we see in “The Aristocrat” in the light of Zoshchenko’s invariants, identified by him himself in “Before Sunrise”? The fear of a woman is obvious, especially an aristocrat with a gold castrating tooth, a theater lover. However, we will never know which play we are talking about - this is another invariant, an inability to respond to a cultural challenge. He also has problems with food (the hero does not get it at all), problems with personal boundaries (the hero is forced to symbolically undress in public when he turns out his pockets). Finally, he has a conflict with the petty authorities in the person of the barman, which goes back to the Oedipal fear of his father. And last but not least, this is a conflict with society, in particular with language - one of the most powerful institutions of human life. By saying the illiterate and idiotic “Lie back,” the hero demonstrates a complete failure of social integration.

Between “The Aristocrat” and “Before Sunrise” one can find several literal parallels that prove the validity of the comparison.

“All of Zoshchenko’s work is permeated with a single theme of distrust, fear, fear of invasion and the touch of foreign hostile forces. Zoshchenko grew up in a large and not entirely prosperous family and, as if from childhood, was programmed to become the anti-poet of a communal apartment. Not only in a literal, but also in a high, symbolic, existential sense. A threatening society, distrust of it, unsuccessful attempts to control it, complete failure of interaction - this is Zoshchenko’s typical arch-plot.”

Alexander Zholkovsky 

Abstract

Fiction has long been used for propaganda purposes, but the very idea that some ideas can be propagated through texts is associated with the 20th century, and above all with the Soviet regime; Tsars generally did not really like to explain things to the people.

Mayakovsky’s poem “Khrenov’s Story about Kuznetskstroy and the People of Kuznetsk” was written in 1929. Everyone remembers his refrain - “In four years there will be a garden city here” - and the ending: “I know - there will be a city, I know - the garden will bloom, when there are such people in the Soviet country!” The creators of the garden city were the builders of a metallurgical plant in the Siberian city of Kuznetsk (later Novokuznetsk).

The poem was written on a specific occasion: the authorities came to Kuznetsk and “fluffed it to smithereens” for being behind schedule. It’s clear why they couldn’t keep up: the working conditions are terrible, as Mayakovsky writes, “water both under and above.”

It is curious that this specificity and topicality in Mayakovsky is superimposed on the use of one concept from urban studies of that time - the concept of the garden city. It was introduced by the Englishman Ebenezer Howard, who published the book “Garden Cities of Tomorrow” in 1902. In this utopian book, Howard proposed combining the advantages of city life with the delights of the countryside, so that man lived in harmony with nature. The city was to become a conglomerate of microdistricts interspersed with forest parks; several such cities were built in America and England.

The idea was also accepted in Russia. Board of Kazan railway intended to build garden cities for its employees, for which the latter had to chip in. They were skeptical about this, and a series of lectures were organized on why this was correct. In the fall of 1913, the newspaper “Morning of Russia” (and not only it) wrote about this. This time is a period of storm and stress in the history of Russian futurism: poets stage scandalous performances, newspapers write a lot about them, and they follow the newspapers. It is quite logical that in the same newspaper Mayakovsky could have come across the concept of a garden city.

Abstract

Nikolai Zabolotsky’s poem “Passerby” is written in an emphatically simple style, but few people understand it.

Filled with mental anxiety
In a three-hatted coat, with a soldier's bag,
On railroad sleepers
He walks at night.

Extremely simple words, but a million questions arise. Who is “he”? Why is this “he” walking along the railway sleepers in the night landscape? Why is this unnamed man wearing three hats? Why does he have a soldier's bag? If it were 1945, it would be clear: a man was returning from the front. But the poem was written in 1948. Maybe it's a prisoner? We know that Zabolotsky, having returned from exile, and before that from imprisonment, was very wary of his own fate, all the time expecting a new arrest. But all this is our guess.

The hero finds himself in an extremely specific landscape - Peredelkino - and walks towards the cemetery.

There's a pilot at the edge of the alley
Resting in a heap of ribbons,
And the dead propeller, turning white,
It is crowned with a monument.

However, we do not know why he is moving towards this particular grave. The comparison “pine trees, leaning towards the graveyard, stand like a gathering of souls” suddenly begins to unfold from a metaphor into some metaphysical reality, and someone who comes to this grave suddenly feels involved in eternal life. It would seem that eternal peace is an image that points to the theme of death. But in the world of Zabolotsky’s poems, this is an image that rather points to eternal life.

“A certain person, perhaps a prisoner, as if he had gone through the war, before ending up in places not so remote, moves on foot to the cemetery and goes to a specific grave. Perhaps this is the one with whom he fought together, the one who died, leaving him in this life. Why did you leave in this life? For suffering. The one who died is freed from suffering and is already involved in the world of eternity, in which there are no worries left to the lot of the survivor.
And Zabolotsky begins to emphasize the theme of death not as suffering, but as deliverance from suffering, death not as the cessation of life, but death as an exit to eternity. This is not the peace that deprives us of the opportunity to breathe, feel, experience, but the peace that makes us forever involved in these experiences.”

Alexander Arkhangelsky

From the indication of the last train, you can guess that the time is around midnight, when one day gives way to another. According to the indication of the cracking and rustling of the buds, this is happening in the spring, when the rebirth of new life begins.

“And the victory over anxiety, over that life that is worse than death, has already been achieved, as the last stanza says:

And the body wanders along the road,
Walking through thousands of troubles,
And his grief and anxiety
They run after him like dogs.

Lotman called this state “time with signs of precision.” And the space here has signs of precision. And life with signs of precision. Not submitting to this precision and slipping away to where the “invisible young pilot” is located and where for a moment, but for a lasting, long moment, the soul of the lyrical hero of this poem ends up.”

Alexander Arkhangelsky 

Abstract

The fate of the Strugatskys' works is as mysterious as the fate of their heroes. For example, the blatantly anti-Soviet “Snail on the Slope” was, in general, accessible to readers, and “Roadside Picnic,” which does not contain a single Soviet reality, barely made it through censorship and was not republished for a very long time. This once again proves that Soviet censorship had an uncanny sense of smell and guessed what “Picnic” was really about before the Strugatskys themselves. The story of Redrick Shewhart, his family and friends is the Strugatskys’ prediction about the Soviet project, which began to come true 30 years later.

“What exactly is Roadside Picnic about? This is a reincarnation of the Strugatskys’ old story “The Forgotten Experiment.” There is a certain artificially fenced area, a certain monstrous scientific experiment is taking place there, and the result of this experiment is mutant animals: sometimes with a white film instead of eyes, sometimes with membranes between their paws, sometimes consisting of two bodies. They throw themselves at this grate from the inside and beg to be let out.
This is the first insight into the nature of the Soviet experiment. A great experiment was carried out, and terrible mutants appeared in it. Now these mutants are hidden from the whole world. Or maybe these mutants understand more than healthy ones, maybe they are better than healthy ones. But they are forever surrounded by this terrible net.
And the most important, key words in the story are spoken by Redrick Shewhart already in the first part, when at the bar they pour him two fingers of peeled water. He orates in front of correspondents and says: yes, we have a Zone, we are dirty, we are scared, but the wind from the future is blowing through our Zone.
So, the Soviet project is terrible, but the future shines through the Soviet project, because, by and large, all other models of the world are doomed. But we don’t know anything about this one yet.”

Dmitry Bykov

The zone of the forgotten experiment very accurately conveys the entire Soviet reality. This is a dirty, cluttered place, where traces of great victories, great conquests, grandiose unfulfilled plans are scattered. There is a cemetery in the Zone, and the main characters of the Soviet project are dead. In the book there is a terrible scene of the dead acquiring flesh - but such a country of the living dead was also Soviet Union and exactly the same phantoms of past great ideas walked around it and tried to somehow remind us of the great past. One of the terrible inventions of the Zone is “witch’s jelly,” which penetrates the skin and flesh, and the leg remains a leg without a bone. And this is also a Soviet invention, because the boneless inhabitants are the vast majority of those who experienced the Soviet experience.

There is also a main deception in the Zone - the Golden Ball, which grants wishes. It is the eternal dream that the great social reshuffle in Russia will bring happiness to everyone. The hero of the book asks Shar specifically about communism: “Happiness for everyone, for free, and let no one leave offended!” But for this happiness you have to pay with someone else’s life, because what leads to the Golden Ball is a “meat grinder” - an invisible unit that twists a person in the air like laundry, and only some black drops spill onto the ground.

“Today the Strugatskys’ metaphor is even more obvious, even more terrible. We all go to our Soviet zone for swag - for stories, for old songs about the main thing, for patriotic concepts. The zone, which has long been gone, continues to supply us with ideas of our cosmic dominance, cementing the nation’s ideas of a great victory, and so on. The main source of identity - this most expensive swag today - is becoming the Soviet zone, and the Strugatskys predicted this flawlessly. However, this zone also has its own deceptions, and you have to pay for it - in that the stalkers grow up with mutated children.”

Dmitry Bykov