THE CHERRY ORCHARD
A monologue from the
play by Anton
Chekhov
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from Two Plays of Tchekhof. Trans. George Calderon. London:
Grant Richards Ltd., 1912. |
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TROPHIMOF: Barbara's afraid we shall go and fall in
love with each other. Day after day she never leaves us alone.
With her narrow mind she cannot understand that we are above
love. To avoid everything petty, everything illusory, everything
that prevents one from being free and happy, that is the whole
meaning and purpose of our life. Forward! We march on irresistibly
towards that bright star which burns far, far before us! Forward!
Don't tarry, comrades! All Russia is our garden. The earth is
great and beautiful; it is full of wonderful places. [A pause]
Think, Anya, your grandfather, your great-grandfather and all
your ancestors were serf-owners, owners of living souls. Do not
human spirits look out at you from every tree in the orchard,
from every leaf and every stem? Do you not hear human voices?
. . . Oh! it is terrible. Your orchard frightens me. When I walk
through it in the evening or at night, the rugged bark on the
trees glows with a dim light, and the cherry-trees seem to see
all that happened a hundred and two hundred years ago in painful
and oppressive dreams. Well, well, we have fallen at least two
hundred years behind the times. We have achieved nothing at all
as yet; we have not made up our minds how we stand with the past;
we only philosophize, complain of boredom, or drink vodka. It
is so plain that, before we can live in the present, we must
first redeem the past, and have done with it; and it is only
by suffering that we can redeem it, only by strenuous, unremitting
toil. If you have the household keys, throw them in the well
and go away. Be free, be free as the wind. Believe what I say,
Anya; believe what I say. I'm not thirty yet; I am still young,
still a student; but what I have been through! I am hungry as
the winter; I am sick, anxious, poor as a beggar. Fate has tossed
me hither and thither; I have been everywhere, everywhere. But
wherever I have been, every minute, day and night, my soul has
been full of mysterious anticipations. I feel the approach of
happiness, Anya; I see it coming. . . .
MORE
MONOLOGUES BY ANTON CHEKHOV |
