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(I read the translation by Ann Dunnigan, but the quotes in this article will be of Julius West.)


"Lopakhin: It's true. To speak the straight truth, we live a silly life. [Pause] My father was a peasant, an idiot, he understood nothing, he didn't teach me, he was always drunk, and always used a stick on me. In point of fact, I'm a fool and an idiot too. I've never learned anything, my handwriting is bad, I write so that I'm quite ashamed before people, like a pig!"

"Trofimov: All Russia is our orchard. The land is great and beautiful, there are many marvellous places in it. [Pause] Think, Anya, your grandfather, your great-grandfather, and all your ancestors were serf-owners, they owned living souls; and now, doesn't something human look at you from every cherry in the orchard, every leaf and every stalk? Don't you hear voices . . . ? Oh, it's awful, your orchard is terrible; and when in the evening or at night you walk through the orchard, then the old bark on the trees sheds a dim light and the old cherry-trees seem to be dreaming of all that was a hundred, two hundred years ago, and are oppressed by their heavy visions. Still, at any rate, we've left those two hundred years behind us. So far we've gained nothing at all--we don't yet know what the past is to be to us--we only philosophize, we complain that we are dull, or we drink vodka. For it's so clear that in order to begin to live in the present we must first redeem the past, and that can only be done by suffering, by strenuous, uninterrupted labour. Understand that, Anya."

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This is the last play from my book The Major Plays, a book I have had since at least 2009. The impact of this play was what I was looking for when I was reading The Three Sisters. This play is often called Chekhov's best work...and now I can see why. It is the first true modern dramedy. Chekhov considered it a straight comedy but, it obviously is not (unless you are a Bolshevik).
What it is, is a prophetic examination of the end of Imperial Russia, and the aristocracy's inability to adjust. , the old-order that had been a way of life in Russia for centuries came to an end and the birth of the Russian middle-class (though not as prosperous as western Europe) began.

The main family of aristocrats cannot seem to realize that the "old wealth" that they have lived on for centuries has been drained away and the old estate, which includes a vast cherry orchard, is all they have left. One of their former serfs, Lopakhin, has meanwhile become a millionaire and is trying, to no avail, to convince them to act immediately to save what they have left of the estate (mainly by selling the orchard and paying the debt off for the house. The family, too captured in their old ways and nostalgia, ignore him and refuse to contemplate selling the orchard. I will spoil the ending with the final quotation, but we see the whole of the allegory play itself out. This is one of the few works of Russian literature where, I feel, the good guy got a definite win. I remember watching the movie documentary version of The Story of Film. The actor Amitabh Bachchan relates a anecdote: after the success of the film , he asked his father why he likes Bollywood films so much? his father tells, him that it is because "it is poetic justice in 2 and a half hours, most people go a lifetime without justice." I feel that here.

This play is the best I have read by Chekhov, maybe the crowning achievement of his career. I was amazed by the character of Pyotr Trofimov. He is the most Dostoevskian character in all of Chekhov's work. He pretty much is an allegorical representation of the handwriting-on-the-wall. I cannot go much further without spoiling the whole of the plot, so spoiler ahead below....


"Lopakhin: I bought it! Wait, ladies and gentlemen, please, my head's going round, I can't talk. . . . [Laughs] When we got to the sale, Deriganov was there already. Leonid Andreyevitch had only fifteen thousand roubles, and Deriganov offered thirty thousand on top of the mortgage to begin with. I saw how matters were, so I grabbed hold of him and bid forty. He went up to forty-five, I offered fifty-five. That means he went up by fives and I went up by tens. . . . Well, it came to an end. I bid ninety more than the mortgage; and it stayed with me. The cherry orchard is mine now, mine! [Roars with laughter] My God, my God, the cherry orchard's mine! Tell me I'm drunk, or mad, or dreaming. . . . [Stamps his feet] Don't laugh at me! If my father and grandfather rose from their graves and looked at the whole affair, and saw how their Ermolai, their beaten and uneducated Ermolai, who used to run barefoot in the winter, how that very Ermolai has bought an estate, which is the most beautiful thing in the world! I've bought the estate where my grandfather and my father were slaves, where they weren't even allowed into the kitchen. I'm asleep, it's only a dream, an illusion. . . . It's the fruit of imagination, wrapped in the fog of the unknown. . . . [Picks up the keys, nicely smiling] She threw down the keys, she wanted to show she was no longer mistress here. . . . [Jingles keys] Well, it's all one! [Hears the band tuning up] Eh, musicians, play, I want to hear you! Come and look at Ermolai Lopakhin laying his axe to the cherry orchard, come and look at the trees falling! We'll build villas here, and our grandsons and great-grandsons will see a new life here. . . . Play on, music! [The band plays. LUBOV ANDREYEVNA sinks into a chair and weeps bitterly. LOPAKHIN continues reproachfully] Why then, why didn't you take my advice? My poor, dear woman, you can't go back now. [Weeps]] Oh, if only the whole thing was done with, if only our uneven, unhappy life were changed!" Amen.