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Classical Ideas of Fate in Chekhov’s Dramaturgy
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Chekhov for the 21st Century. Carol Apollonio and Angela Brintlinger, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2012, 79–87. Classical Ideas of Fate in Chekhov’s Dramaturgy Anatoly Sobennikov The concept of fate plays a very particular role in the philosophical content of Chekhov’s plays.1 In the texts themselves it is mentioned infrequently. In Uncle Vanya, for example, Sonya says: “We shall bear patiently the trials fate has in store for us” (Plays 167).2 In the first act of The Three Sisters, Vershinin says: “Yes, we’ll be forgotten. Such is our fate, and we can’t do anything about it” (Plays 179).3 However, the significance of this concept is not defined by the frequency with which the characters mention it. Rather, its importance is determined by the specific relationship between human life and time that represents Chekhov’s artistic gnosis. As one contemporary philosopher has noted: “The alchemy of art is the transformation of life into fate.”4 How does this process of transformation of life into fate happen in Chekhov’s plays? First and foremost, the actions of individual characters re-‐‑ treat to the periphery, and the characters’ efforts to change something in their lives have no result. In The Seagull Masha gets married in order to forget Treplev (“I simply decided to wrench this love out of my heart and uproot it”; Plays 92).5 However, even in the fourth act she still loves Konstantin. Treplev can kill a seagull and place it at the feet of the girl he loves, stand under her window like a beggar, tear up her letters and photographs, and declare his love. But Nina Zarechnaya doesn’t love him; she loves Trigorin. Nina Zarech-‐‑ naya also takes action; she moves away to Moscow and becomes an actress. But her destiny is to act before an audience of “the more educated local 1 This article first appeared as “Dramaturgiia Chekhova v svete antichnykh pred-‐‑ stavlenii o roke,” in Sud’ba zhanra v literaturnom protsesse: Sbornik nauchnykh statei (Irkutsk: Irkutskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 1996), 157–65. 2 The English texts used are from Chekhov, Five Plays, trans. Ronald Hingley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), cited parenthetically in the text as Plays followed by the page number. (“Будем терпеливо сносить испытания, какие пошлёт нам судь-‐‑ ба”; Works 13: 115). Uncredited translations from the Russian are by the translator of this article.—A.K.B. 3 “Да. Забудут. Такова уж судьба наша, ничего не поделаешь” (Works 13: 128). 4 M. Epshtein, “Postupok i proisshestvie: K teorii sud’by,” Voprosy filosofii, no. 9 (2000): 68. 5 “Вот взяла и решила: вырву эту любовь из своего сердца, с корнем вырву” (Works 13: 33). 80 ANATOLY SOBENNIKOV businessmen” (Plays 113)—in the provinces. In Uncle Vanya the characters’ will, the efforts that they make, are all in vain. Serebryakov wanted to sell the estate, but it remains unsold. Astrov wanted to arrange a rendezvous with Elena Andreevna in his forest lodge, but it does not occur. Voinitsky’s shot does not change anything in the hero’s fate; even his relationship with Sere-‐‑ bryakov remains unchanged. In the words of the play’s author, “after all, a shot is not a drama, it is an occurrence,”6 which is to say it does not follow from the logic of the character or of the situation. In Chekhov, the action which should be fate-‐‑changing loses its status. In the fourth act of The Three Sisters, Baron Tuzenbakh retires and resigns his commission, but he might as well not have bothered, since in the second act Solyony had declared: “By God I mean it, if there’s anybody else I’ll kill him” (Plays 205).7 The hero’s death is explained not by his action, not by the strict laws of reason and consequences, but by an existential situation: his love for Irina. In The Cherry Orchard, all efforts to save the estate are bound to fail. Gaev says to Anya in the first act: “I give you my word of honour, I swear by anything you like, this estate isn’t going to be sold” (Plays 256).8 But neither Lopakhin, nor the Yaroslavl grandmother, nor a mortgage loan can help Gaev and Ranevskaya. In the first act, we learn that the auction is set for 22 August, and it is on this very day that Lopakhin buys the estate, in his words “the most beautiful thing on earth.” One of the motifs connected to the philosopheme of fate that runs through Chekhov is the distance between the existential expectations of an in-‐‑ dividual and what life has to offer. The classic example is the sisters...