"uncle vanya": chekhov's vision of human dignity

"Uncle Vanya": Chekhov's Vision of Human DignityAuthor(s): John WestonSource: The English Journal, Vol. 56, No. 9 (Dec., 1967), pp. 1276-1279+1287Published by: National Council of Teachers of EnglishStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/812412 .

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Uncle Vanya: Chekhov's Vision of Human Dignity

John Weston

Formerly in Department of English Rincon High School Tucson, Arizona

W HEN a writer chooses consciously to write of the dignity of man, and

of beauty, his natural inclination may be to search not for human dignity, but for dignified humans; yet there is a difference. He may search for beauty in the studied creations of men-august cathedrals, white-billowed ships, a pre- cious canvas in a museum-or he may search for it in a tourist's panoramic view of some grand spectacle of nature's creation. He will write eloquent sen- tences filled with pomposity and glitter and little else. Others will flock behind him to spill their own eloquence, and then rush on to view the next pre- meditated wonder in hope that life lies there, surely.

Anton Chekhov saw life, with its comedies and its tragedies, where few others before him had ever seen it. He found evil to rest precisely in the midst of idle talk, everyday pettiness, and people with nothing to distinguish them: neither vice nor virtue. But he found inviolable beauty too, strangely, among these same people when they were honest and courageous, and when they were

not idle. Chekhov saw an ethical- aesthetic beauty that the people he wrote of could not see. The result on the Chekhovian stage is a meandering stream of people searching for love, or excitement, or contentment, or dignity, when all the while it is directly at hand if one only could see and understand.

The idle bickering and chatter of Chekhov's characters intrude upon the reader at first-even the informed reader who realizes that Chekhov's point in having them talk of their own self- conscious trivialities is to show, as Mirsky says, "the mutual . . . strangeness of human beings, who cannot and do not want to understand each other."' The key to Chekhovian characters' use of banalities, of trivial talk, is to be found in consideration of image, however. What a character says, in itself, is subordinate to who says it. Despite the apparent casualness with which Chekhov gives voice to his people, each speech is a minute insight into that character

ID. S. Mirsky, A History of Russian Litera- ture (New York: Vintage Books, 1958), p. 331.

1276



CHEKHOV'S VISION OF HUMAN DIGNITY 1277

and what sort of person he is, and what sorts of reactions can be expected of him under various pressures. These brush strokes which Chekhov paints from a nearly monochromatic pallet are what

Stanislavsky referred to as the "intuition of feeling," the basis of the Moscow Art Theater's success with Chekhov

plays. Obviously, when the development of a character depends so heavily on minute ideas-hardly ideas at all-and

tiny, significant speeches, much will be lost in translation, a fact which no doubt contributed to the Art Theater's failures with Ibsen and Shakespeare. What Stanislavsky (by his own admission, in- articulate when off stage) called "intuition of feeling," is what is commonly called "mood." And Chekhovian mood is rendered through subtle images in the

dialogue, which appears to be one of the chief developments in Chekhov's dramatic maturity between The Wood Demon of 1888 and the revised version, Uncle Vanya, of ten years later.

T HE "everydayness" of Chekhov's characters, none of whom is essen-

tially either bad or good, and how they go about their business lead critics such as Mirsky to state with resounding fi- nality that there is no subject matter in Chekhov's plays, nor any plot or action. It is true that Chekhov elevated other things above plot: the atmosphere about which we have just been speaking, for instance. But to say there is no subject matter, no plot, no action, is an attempt to judge Chekhov by theatrical standards which are outside the realm of his world view. No doubt such judg- ment is predicated on the acceptance of Chekhov the realist and the notion that real life holds no plots. For the sake of avoiding an argument that has no place here, it is granted that life has no plots. However, as soon as a writer has a plan to present, albeit only a "slice of life," he has molded, by the physical limitations of his art, if nothing

else, a framework. Within that framework there is a beginning, there are conflicts, a climax, and there is an ending. The dramatic conflict in Chekhov is shifted to an inner plane and is not to be voiced in the exceptional, but in the com- monplace. The conflict amounts to one of good but ineffectual people with the harsh crudeness of real life, a clash of the dream and the reality of an ordinary life. It is true that these conflicts are seldom revealed through highly dramatic action, but they are there and they are con-

veved through the emotions, thoughts, and the attitude of the characters for one another. These complicated human

relationships seldom resolve anything, seldom mean a radical change in the life of a character, but they do expose what Chekhov set out to expose: the contradictions and the contrariness of ordinary life.

The subject matter of Chekhov's plays is the subject matter of life, and is as complicated and at the same time as simple as in real life. His two principal themes, according to Magarshack,2 are courage and hope, and the destruction of beauty by those who are blind to it. Both can be found in Uncle Vanya and, in less successful degree, in The Wood Demon. It is a spiritual beauty, not a physical one that Chekhov endorses, however. That is not to say there are no physically beautiful people in Chekhov's world, nor is it to say that the spiritually beautiful always come out better than the others. The criterion of beauty is best expressed by Astrov in Uncle Vanya. Speaking of Helena Andreyevna, he says:

A human being should be entirely beautiful: the face, the clothes, the mind, the thoughts. She is, of course, beautiful to look at, but... she does nothing but sleep and eat and walk and bewitch us,

2David Magarshack, Chekhov the Dramatist (London: John Lehmann, 1952), p. 165.



1278 ENGLISH JOURNAL

and that is all. She has no responsi- bilities, everything is done for her . . . and an idle life can never be a pure one.3

Astrov says this to Sonya who in The Wood Demon was herself beautiful, but who is plain in Uncle Vanya. He says it to Sonya, the embodiment of courage and spiritual beauty, for whom Chekhov wrote his most radiant passage at the end of Uncle Vanya. As he talks, Astrov is blind to the very qualities of beauty about which he speaks.

Y ET who survives in Uncle Vanya? Everyone does. Helena, the phys-

ically beautiful, does. She will follow her husband, other men will fall in love with her, she will continue to be bored and idle. Despite the destructive spirit of which Astrov accuses her, she above all others must be given credit for main-

taining human dignity because she more than anyone else was most often tempted to fall.

Astrov survives, because he comes to his senses. He goes back, a cynic, to nature which he trusts. He mistrusts people, but leaves with a flippant remark, "E finita la commedia!"-so ends the comedy. Nothing can surprise him any- more; he will not again run the risk of losing his head or his dignity in the complicated relationships of human beings.

Sonya survives, and the same faith and courage which sustain her will sustain her Uncle Vanya. His dejection and broken heart will be mended by continued honest work, and patience and faith. These three, Astrov, Sonya, and Vanya, will never be the same after the Serebrakoffs' visit, their relations with each other will be changed, but life will go on, and they will continue to live it.

In the melodramatic Wood Demon, nearly everyone will live "happily ever

after," although it took the suicide of Voynitsky (Uncle Vanya) to bring them to their senses. Perhaps Chekhov's strongest intent in The Wood Demon was to show that life does go on, despite the shocking death of a member of the family. However, the picnic in the final scene, and the reunion of Elena and Serebrakoff are somewhat too brazen and flippant for these sensitive people. Con- versely, in such a play it is just as logical that the people find happiness for them- selves as it is for Chekhov to show that their unhappiness was a result of defects in their character. But this kind of logic was not what Chekhov had intended, as he attested to by withdrawing the play immediately. In Uncle Vanya it is not so much the personal defects of character that cause unhappiness as it is the pressures and tensions on everyday country life created by economic and social conditions of the time. It is the boring, stupifying, and vulgar life in the country which drags down talented and intelligent people like Astrov and Uncle Vanya and Sonya and Serebrakoff to the level of pettiness and selfishness. Only when the truth is out does the character of a person show itself-in the frustration of Uncle Vanya, in the cynicism of Astrov, in the retreat to faith of Sonya, in the retreat per se of the professor.

Professor Serebrakoff is not a villain. He is unable to deal with life and can live only in the belief that his work is contributing to the general good of hu- manity. Chekhov did have a villain in The Wood Demon, Fyodor Orlovsky, but removed him in the revised version. He did not entirely discard Fyodor, however. He is recognizable as Von Korin in the short novel "The Duel" written between the two versions of the play.

fHEKHOV was caught between two opposing forces of Russian eco-

nomic society which he was as unable to resolve as were the people he wrote of.

3Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya from The Plays of Anton Chekhov, trans., Constance Garnett (New York: Random House), p. 209. Hereafter, all quotations from the plays refer to this edition.



CHEKHOV'S VISION OF HUMAN DIGNITY 1279

On the one hand, there were the dreamers, the preservers of beauty, and on the other hand there were those who strived for progress and a better Russia. The two points of view are incompatible and evidently caused Chekhov (a be- liever in progress and a lover of natural

beauty) much consternation. The play that most strongly voiced the social and economic sentiment of Russia at the time was The Cherry Orchard. The sale of the lovely cherry orchard is at once a

symbol of the destruction of beauty, and the progress needed in the country at the hands of a new class of people, the

Lopakhins. Chekhov was here at odds with Tolstoy who idealized the peasant and country life. As much as he may have hated to see the orchards and forests cut down, Chekhov realized a new era was beginning and so long as he had set himself the task of presenting rural life realistically, he had to depict the rising of the capitalistic Lopakhins and the Natasha Ivanovnas (Three Sisters), and the waning of the intelligentsia and the Ranevskys and the high-born girls of provincial towns who dream of a creative life in Moscow but whose cul- tured breeding renders them impotent to do anything about it.

The continued survival of Chekhov in Soviet Russia is expressed in the mono- logues of Astrov and Tusenbach about the forests and orchards that will trans- form Russia and make her beautiful, and in the lines of the three sisters about Moscow, dreaming of the free, creative life.

Three Sisters, written two years after Uncle Vanya, although generally con- sidered more nearly a masterpiece, repeats much of what was begun in the earlier play. There are the themes of work and faith, somehow inextricably entwined in life. Irina, one of the three sisters, says, "A man ought to work, to toil in the sweat of his brow," and is answered by Tusenbach: "The yearning for work, oh dear, how well I understand

it! ... I shall work,... everyone will have to work." Another time Irina bolsters her

failing spirits: "I must work, I must work. The reason we are depressed and take such a gloomy view is that we know nothing of work." Vershinin repeats the theme: "We must work and work. .. ." Yet Tusenbach dies before he can work, and work for the gentle Irina is boring and difficult. In the end she is comforted by an elusive faith expressed by Olga: " . . . our sufferings will pass into joy. .... We shall live! ... a little more and we shall know what we are living for, why we are suffering. . . If we only knew-if we only knew!" Compare this to Sonya's final speech in Uncle Vanya: "We shall live through the long procession of days . . ., we shall rejoice and look back on our sorrow here; I have faith. .... .We shall rest." Although Sonva has resigned herself to live, and Olga has not yet, the same germ of faith prevails.

Another faith, that which Astrov ex- presses in Uncle Vanya, is repeated in Three Sisters by Vershinin: "In two or three hundred years ... a new, happy life will come. . .. We shall have no share in that life ... but we are working ... and suffering for it, we are creating it." But what Vershinin and the three sisters and the Ranevskys of The Cherry Orchard cannot cope with is the fact that creation means progress, and progress means cutting down cherry trees and firs and pines, and having to give up ancestral homes and lives of idleness.

The people who survive such progress are the ones, Chekhov seems to say reluctantly, who work, who have faith in a good life ahead, and who replace what they destroy with something better. But these qualities give no assurance of an easier life, or life at all, for that matter. Baron Tusenbach, ready to fore- go the idleness his baronage entitled him to historically, dies at the last moment in a petty duel-the victim of a noble

(Continued on page 1287)



ARCHITECTURE OF WALTER MITTY'S SECRET LIFE 1287

real world through his hands, in what direction does his Gestalt usually move? His center of activity would become mental, I think, rather than physical. Chesterton could not successfully tie a

string around a box. He compensated for this physical deficiency by projecting his active center onto the world of lit- erary imagination. The difference between Chesterton and Mitty is that the former channeled his imagination out- ward upon the world and turned it topsy-turvy with his artist's wand, while the latter focused his imagination inward upon himself and is about to reform the world therein, according to his own egocentric fancy.

Walter obviously has an antipathy for the real world. Society seems to reject him, not as a despicable outcast, but in curt little ways which, piled one on another in the daily struggle, have reached crystallization in Walter's mind as veritable slings and arrows of external reality. He flees from the imagined enemy by entering his dream world every few minutes. There the situation is reversed. There he is the man who can do anything and does everything. But Walter's flights of fancy have reached the danger point. Notice his disregard for the real world during his dreams. He ignores the safe speed limit, the red light turned green, and unknow- ingly enters a lane marked "Exit Only." Notice, too, that he purchases his rubbers but instead of putting them on before leaving the store he has them wrapped in

a box, apparently oblivious to the ele- ments outside.

T HURBER accentuates .Walter's con- fusion of his public and secret life

by making him borrow objects from the real world and use them as props in his dreams. The resolution to wear his arm in a sling next time he brings his car to the garage for removal of tire chains is carried into the courtroom scene where he is exonerated for complicity in a homicide because of his injured arm. Again, waiting for his wife in the hotel lobby, Mitty scans newspaper photos of German bombed cities; in the following dream he is Captain Mitty, ace pilot of World War II fame.

Young people read "The Secret Life" and revel in its adventurous exploits and comic irony. Thurber certainly meant that kind of an appreciation. But I think it was to his credit, as it was to Salinger's, that beneath the narrative there runs the thread of a tragic envelopment which is touchingly pathetic. We do not know for sure, but it is not hard to suspect that one day the public and secret life of Walter Mitty will merge and for him become indistinguishable. The charm of his personality is that he has not learned to face reality (and we delight in es- caping reality with him). He is wrapped in childlike subjectivity. But the tragedy of the man is that he will almost surely grow down and be locked, maybe once and for all, in the dark, secret, and lower depths.

Uncle Vanya: Chekhov's Vision of Human Dignity (Continued from page 1279) sense of honor which no longer has a place in the world of Natasha Ivanovnas. He is killed by the most vulgar and rude of all Chekhov's dramatic characters, Vassily Solyony. As in the case of Konstantin Treplev in The Sea Gull,

there is no point in making resolutions about life. People fall in love, or they hate, or they succumb to the dictates of their breeding. The insensitive people, the toughened ones, will rise to the top to survive only until life, ordinary, everyday life, plays some quirk on them.



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