Genre of the play “The Cherry Orchard”

7. Genre of the play “The Cherry Orchard”

The remarkable merits of the play “The Cherry Orchard” and its innovative features have long been unanimously recognized by progressive critics. But when it comes to the genre features of the play, this unanimity gives way to differences of opinion. Some see the play “The Cherry Orchard” as a comedy, others as a drama, and others as a tragicomedy. What is this play - drama, comedy, tragicomedy?
Before answering this question, it is necessary to note that Chekhov, striving for truth in life, for naturalness, created plays that were not purely dramatic or comedic, but of a very complex form.
In his plays, the dramatic is realized in an organic mixture with the comic, and the comic is manifested in an organic interweaving with the dramatic.
Chekhov's plays are unique genre formations that can be called dramas or comedies, only bearing in mind their leading genre tendency, and not the consistent implementation of the principles of drama or comedy in their traditional understanding.
A convincing example of this is the play “The Cherry Orchard.” Already completing this play, Chekhov wrote to Vl on September 2, 1903. To I. Nemirovich-Danchenko: “I will call the play a comedy” (A. P. Chekhov, Complete Works and Letters, vol. 20, Goslitizdat, M., 1951, p. 129).
On September 15, 1903, he reported to M.P. Alekseeva (Lilina): “What came out of me was not a drama, but a comedy, in some places even a farce” (Ibid., p. 131).
Calling the play a comedy, Chekhov relied on the comic motifs prevailing in it. If, when answering the question about the genre of this play, we keep in mind the leading tendency in the structure of its images and plot, then we will have to admit that it is based not on a dramatic, but on a comedic principle. Drama presupposes the dramatic nature of the positive heroes of the play, that is, those to whom the author gives his main sympathies.
In this sense, such plays by A.P. Chekhov as “Uncle Vanya” and “Three Sisters” are dramas. In the play “The Cherry Orchard,” the author’s main sympathies belong to Trofimov and Anya, who do not experience any drama.
To recognize “The Cherry Orchard” as a drama means to recognize the experiences of the owners of the cherry orchard, the Gaevs and Ranevskys, as truly dramatic, capable of evoking deep sympathy and compassion of people who go not back, but forward, into the future.
But this could not have happened in the play. Chekhov does not defend, does not affirm, but exposes the owners of the cherry orchard; he shows their emptiness and insignificance, their complete incapacity for serious experiences.
The play “The Cherry Orchard” cannot be recognized as a tragicomedy. To do this, it lacks either tragicomic heroes or tragicomic situations that run through the entire play and determine its end-to-end action. Gaev, Ranevskaya, Pischik are too small as tragicomic heroes. Yes, in addition, the leading optimistic idea, expressed in positive images, clearly emerges in the play. It is more correct to call this play a lyrical comedy.
The comedy of The Cherry Orchard is determined, firstly, by the fact that its positive images, such as Trofimov and Anya, are not shown dramatically. Drama is not characteristic of these images, either socially or individually. Both in their inner essence and in the author’s assessment, these images are optimistic.
The image of Lopakhin is also clearly undramatic, which, in comparison with the images of local nobles, is shown as relatively positive and major. The comedy of the play is confirmed, secondly, by the fact that of the two owners of the cherry orchard, one (Gaev) is presented primarily comically, and the second (Ranevskaya) in such dramatic situations that mainly contribute to showing their negative essence.
The comic basis of the play is clearly visible, thirdly, in the comic-satirical depiction of almost all the minor characters: Epikhodov, Pishchik, Charlotte, Yasha, Dunyasha.
“The Cherry Orchard” also includes obvious motifs of vaudeville, even farce, expressed in jokes, tricks, jumping, and Charlotte’s dressing up. In terms of its themes and the nature of its artistic interpretation, “The Cherry Orchard” is a deeply social play. It has very strong accusatory motives.
Here the most important questions for that time are raised: the liquidation of the noble-estate economy, its final replacement with capitalism, the growth of democratic forces, etc.
With a clearly expressed socio-comedy basis in the play “The Cherry Orchard”, lyrical-dramatic and socio-psychological motives are clearly manifested: lyrical-dramatic and socio-psychological motives are most fully expressed in the depiction of Ranevskaya and Varya; lyrical and socio-psychological, especially in the depiction of Anya.
The originality of the genre of “The Cherry Orchard” was very well revealed by M. Gorky, who defined this play as a lyrical comedy.
"A. P. Chekhov,” he writes in the article “0 plays,” “created... a completely original type of play - a lyrical comedy” (M. Gorky, Collected Works, vol. 26, Goslitizdat, M., 1953, p. 422).
But the lyrical comedy “The Cherry Orchard” is still perceived by many as a drama. For the first time such an interpretation of “The Cherry Orchard” was given by the Art Theater. On October 20, 1903, K. S. Stanislavsky, after reading “The Cherry Orchard,” wrote to Chekhov: “This is not a comedy... this is a tragedy, no matter what outcome to a better life you discover in the last act... I was afraid that in the second act The play will not captivate me while reading it. Where to go!! I cried like a woman, I wanted to, but I couldn’t hold it in” (K, S. Stanislavsky, Articles. Speeches. Conversations. Letters, “Iskusstvo” publishing house, M., 1953 , pp. 150 - 151).
In his memoirs about Chekhov, dating back to around 1907, Stanislavsky characterizes The Cherry Orchard as “a difficult drama of Russian life” (Ibid., p. 139).
K.S. Stanislavsky misunderstood and underestimated the power of the accusatory pathos directed against the representatives of the then departing world (Ranevskaya, Gaev, Pishchik), and in connection with this, in his directorial decision of the play, he overemphasized the lyrical-dramatic line associated with these characters.
Taking the drama of Ranevskaya and Gaev seriously, wrongfully putting forward a sympathetic attitude towards them and to some extent muting the accusatory and optimistic orientation of the play, Stanislavsky staged “The Cherry Orchard” in a dramatic manner. Expressing the erroneous point of view of the leaders of the Art Theater on The Cherry Orchard, N. Efros wrote:
“... no part of Chekhov’s soul was with Lopakhin. But part of his soul, rushing into the future, also belonged to “mortuos”, “The Cherry Orchard”. Otherwise, the image of the doomed, dying, leaving the historical stage would not be so tender” (N. Efros, “The Cherry Orchard” staged by the Moscow Art Theater, Pg., 1919, p. 36).
Based on the dramatic key, evoking sympathy for Gaev, Ranevskaya and Pischik, emphasizing their drama, all their first performers played these roles - Stanislavsky, Knipper, Gribunin. So, for example, characterizing the play of Stanislavsky - Gaev, N. Efros wrote: “this is a big child, pitiful and funny, but touching in its helplessness... There was an atmosphere of the finest humor around the figure. And at the same time, she radiated great touching... everyone in the auditorium, along with Firs, felt something tender for this stupid, decrepit child, with signs of degeneration and spiritual decline, the “heir” of a dying culture... And even those who are not at all inclined to sentimentality, to whom the harsh laws of historical necessity and the change of class figures on the historical stage are sacred - even they probably gave moments of some compassion, a sigh of sympathetic or condolent sadness to this Gaev" (Ibid., p. 81 - 83).
In the performance of the artists of the Art Theater, the images of the owners of the cherry orchard turned out to be clearly larger, nobler, more beautiful, and spiritually complex than in Chekhov’s play. It would be unfair to say that the leaders of the Art Theater did not notice or ignored the comedy of “The Cherry Orchard.”
When staging this play, K. S. Stanislavsky used its comedic motifs so widely that he aroused sharp objections from those who considered it a consistently pessimistic drama.
A. Kugel, based on his interpretation of “The Cherry Orchard” as a consistently pessimistic drama (A. Kugel, The Sadness of “The Cherry Orchard,” “Theater and Art,” 1904, No. 13), accused the leaders of the Art Theater of that they overused comedy. “My amazement was understandable,” he wrote, “when The Cherry Orchard appeared in a light, funny, cheerful performance... It was the resurrected Antosha Chekhonte” (A. Kugel, Notes on the Moscow Art Theater, “ Theater and Art", 1904, No. 15, p. 304).
Critic N. Nikolaev also expressed dissatisfaction with the excessive, deliberate comedy of the stage embodiment of “The Cherry Orchard” at the Art Theater. “When,” he wrote, “the oppressive present foreshadows an even more difficult future, Charlotte Ivanovna appears and passes, leading a little dog on a long ribbon and with her entire exaggerated, highly comic figure causes laughter in the auditorium... For me, this laughter was a tub of cold water... The mood turned out to be irreparably spoiled" (N. Nikolaev, At the Artists, "Theater and Art", 1904, No. 9, p. 194).
But the real mistake of the first producers of The Cherry Orchard was not that they played up many of the play’s comic episodes, but that they neglected comedy as the leading principle of the play. Revealing Chekhov's play as a heavy drama of Russian life, the leaders of the Art Theater gave space to its comedy, but only subordinately; secondary.
M. N. Stroeva is right in defining the stage interpretation of the play “The Cherry Orchard” at the Art Theater as a tragicomedy (M. Stroeva, Chekhov and the Art Theater, publishing house “Iskusstvo”, M., 1955, p. 178 and etc.).
Interpreting the play in this regard, the direction of the Art Theater showed the representatives of the passing world (Ranevskaya, Gaev, Pishchik) as more internally rich and positive than they really are, and excessively increased sympathy for them. As a result, the subjective drama of the departing people sounded more deeply in the performance than was necessary.
As for the objective-comic essence of these people, the exposure of their inconsistency, this side was clearly not sufficiently revealed in the play. Chekhov could not agree with such an interpretation of The Cherry Orchard. S. Lyubosh remembers Chekhov at one of the first performances of “The Cherry Orchard” - sad and detached. “There was a roar of success in the packed theater, and Chekhov sadly repeated:
- Not that, not that...
- What’s wrong?
- Everything is wrong: both the play and the performance. I didn't get what I wanted. I saw something completely different, and they couldn’t understand what I wanted” (S. Lyubosh, “The Cherry Orchard.” Chekhov’s Anniversary Collection, M., 1910, p. 448).
Protesting against the false interpretation of his play, Chekhov, in a letter to O. L. Knipper dated April 10, 1904, wrote: “Why is my play so persistently called a drama on posters and in newspaper advertisements? Nemirovich and Alekseev see in my play positively not what I wrote, and I am ready to give any word - that both of them have never read my play carefully” (A. P. Chekhov, Complete Works and letters, vol. 20, Goslitizdat, M., 1951, p. 265).
Chekhov was outraged by the purely slow pace of the play, especially the painfully drawn out IV act. “An act that should last 12 minutes maximum, with you,” he wrote to O. L. Knipper, “lasts 40 minutes. I can say one thing: Stanislavsky ruined my play” (Ibid., p. 258).
In April 1904, talking with the director of the Alexandrinsky Theater, Chekhov said:
“Is this my “Cherry Orchard”?.. Are these my types?.. With the exception of two or three performers, all this is not mine... I write life... This is a gray, ordinary life... But this is not boring whining... They either make me a crybaby or just a boring writer... But I wrote several volumes of funny stories. And criticism casts me as some kind of mourner... They invent for me out of their heads what they themselves want, but I didn’t even think about it, and never saw it in a dream... This is starting to make me angry” (E.P.K a r p o v, Two last meetings with Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, “Yearbook of the Imperial Theaters”, 1909, issue V, p. 7).
According to Stanislavsky himself, Chekhov could not come to terms with the interpretation of the play as a heavy drama “until his death” (K. S. Stanislavsky, Articles. Speeches. Conversations. Letters, ed. "Iskusstvo", M., 1953. p. 139).
This is understandable, since the perception of the play as a drama dramatically changed its ideological orientation. What Chekhov laughed at, with such a perception of the play, already required deep sympathy.
By defending his play as a comedy, Chekhov, in fact, defended the correct understanding of its ideological meaning. The leaders of the Art Theater, in turn, could not remain indifferent to Chekhov’s statements that they were embodying “The Cherry Orchard” in a false way. Thinking about the text of the play and its stage embodiment, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko were forced to admit that they misunderstood the play. But it is misunderstood, in their opinion, not in its fundamental sense, but in its particulars. The performance underwent changes along the way.
In December 1908, V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko wrote: “Look at The Cherry Orchard, and you will not at all recognize in this lacy, graceful picture the heavy and heavy drama that the Orchard was in the first year” (V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, Letter to N. E. Efros (second half of December 1908), “Theater”, 1947, No. 4, p. 64).
In 1910, in a speech to the artists of the Art Theater, K. S. Stanislavsky said:
“Let many of you admit that you did not immediately understand “The Cherry Orchard.” Years passed, and time confirmed Chekhov was right. It became clearer and clearer to the leaders of the Art Theater that the need for more decisive changes in the performance in the direction indicated by Chekhov became clearer and clearer.
Resuming the play “The Cherry Orchard” after a ten-year break, the directors of the Art Theater made major changes to it: they significantly accelerated the pace of its development; the first act was comedically enlivened; they removed excessive psychologism in the main characters and increased their revealing nature. This was especially reflected in the game between Stanislavsky and Gaev. “His image,” noted in Izvestia, “is now revealed primarily from a purely comedic side. We would say that idleness, lordly daydreaming, the complete inability to take on any work and truly childish carelessness were completely exposed by Stanislavsky. Stanislavsky's new Gaev is a most convincing example of harmful worthlessness. Knipper-Chekhova began to play even more openly, even easier, revealing her Ranevskaya in the same plane of “exposure” (Yur. Sobolev, “The Cherry Orchard” at the Art Theater, “Izvestia” dated May 25, 1928, No. 120).
The fact that the initial interpretation of “The Cherry Orchard” at the Art Theater was the result of a misunderstanding of the text of the play was acknowledged by its directors not only in correspondence, in a narrow circle of artists of the Art Theater, but also before the general public. V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, speaking in 1929 in connection with the 25th anniversary of the first performance of “The Cherry Orchard,” said: “And this wonderful work was not understood at first... maybe our performance will require some some changes, some rearrangements, at least in particulars; But regarding the version that Chekhov wrote vaudeville, that this play should be staged in a satirical context, I say with complete conviction that this should not happen. There is a satirical element in the play - both in Epikhodov and in other persons, but pick up the text and you will see: there it is “crying”, in another place it is “crying”, but in vaudeville they will not cry! Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, Articles. Speeches. Conversations. Letters, ed. "Art", 1952, pp. 108 - 109).
It is true that The Cherry Orchard is not a vaudeville act. But it’s unfair that they supposedly don’t cry in vaudeville, and based on the presence of crying people, “The Cherry Orchard” is considered a heavy drama. For example, in Chekhov’s vaudeville “The Bear” the landowner and her lackey cry, and in his vaudeville “The Proposal” Lomov cries and Chubukova groans. In the vaudeville “Az and Fert” by P. Fedorov, Lyubushka and Akulina cry. In the vaudeville “Teacher and Student” by A. Pisarev, Lyudmila and Dasha cry. In the vaudeville "Hussar Girl" Kony Laura cries. The point is not in the presence or even in the number of people crying, but in the nature of the crying.
When, through tears, Dunyasha says: “I broke the saucer,” and Pischik says, “Where is the money?”, this evokes not a dramatic, but a comic reaction. Sometimes tears express joyful excitement: for Ranevskaya at her first entry into the nursery upon returning to her homeland, for the devoted Firs, who was waiting for his mistress to arrive.
Often tears signify special cordiality: in Gaev, when addressing Anya in the first act (“my little one. My child”...); in Trofimov, calming Ranevskaya (in the first act) and then telling her: “after all, he robbed you” (in the third act); at Lopakhin, calming Ranevskaya (at the end of the third act).
Tears as an expression of acutely dramatic situations in The Cherry Orchard are very rare. These moments can be recounted: in Ranevskaya in the first act, when meeting with Trofimov, who reminded her of her drowned son, and in the third act, in an argument with Trofimov, when she remembers her son again; from Gaev - upon returning from the auction; in Varya - after a failed explanation with Lopakhin (act four); at Ranevskaya and Gaev - before the last exit from the house. But at the same time, the personal drama of the main characters in “The Cherry Orchard” does not evoke such sympathy from the author, which would be the basis for the drama of the entire play.
Chekhov strongly disagreed that there were a lot of people crying in his play. "Where are they? - he wrote to Nemirovich-Danchenko on October 23, 1903. - Only Varya, but this is because Varya is a crybaby by nature, and her tears should not arouse sad feelings in the viewer. I often see “through tears,” but this only shows the mood of the faces, not the tears” (A. P. Chekhov, Complete Works and Letters, vol. 20, Goslitizdat, M., 1951, pp. 162 - 163).
It is necessary to understand that the basis of the lyrical pathos of the play “The Cherry Orchard” is created by representatives not of the old, but of the new world - Trofimov and Anya, their lyricism is optimistic. The drama in the play “The Cherry Orchard” is obvious. This is the drama experienced by representatives of the old world and is fundamentally associated with the protection of dying forms of life.
Drama associated with the defense of dying, selfish forms of life cannot evoke the sympathy of progressive readers and spectators and is unable to become the positive pathos of progressive works. And naturally, this drama did not become the leading pathos of the play “The Cherry Orchard.”
But in the dramatic states of the characters in this play there is also something that can evoke a sympathetic response from any reader and viewer. One cannot sympathize with Ranevskaya mainly - in the loss of the cherry orchard, in her bitter love wanderings. But when she remembers and cries about her seven-year-old son who drowned in the river, she feels humanly sorry. You can sympathize with her when she, wiping away tears, tells how she was drawn from Paris to Russia, to her homeland, to her daughter, and when she says goodbye forever to her home, in which the happy years of her childhood, youth, youth passed ...
The drama of “The Cherry Orchard” is private, not defining, not leading. The stage embodiment of “The Cherry Orchard”, given by the Art Theater in a dramatic manner, does not correspond to the ideological pathos and genre originality of this play. To achieve this compliance, not partial amendments are required, but fundamental changes to the first edition of the play.
Revealing the fully optimistic pathos of the play, it is necessary to replace the dramatic basis of the performance with a comedy-no-lyric one. The prerequisites for this are found in the statements of K. S. Stanislavsky himself. Emphasizing the importance of a more vivid stage transfer of Chekhov's dream, he wrote:
“In the fiction of the end of the last and beginning of this century, he was one of the first to feel the inevitability of revolution, when it was only in its infancy and society continued to wallow in excesses. He was one of the first to give a wake-up call. Who, if not he, began to cut down a beautiful, blooming cherry orchard, realizing that his time had passed, that the old life was irrevocably condemned to be scrapped... Give Lopakhin in “The Cherry Orchard” the scope of Chaliapin, and young Anya the temperament of Yermolova, and let the first, with all his might, chops down what has become obsolete, and the young girl, anticipating, together with Petya Trofimov, the approach of a new era, will shout to the whole world: “Hello, new life!” - and you will understand that “The Cherry Orchard” is a living, close, modern play for us, that Chekhov’s voice sounds cheerful and fiery in it, for he himself looks not back, but forward” (K. S. Stan Slavsky, Collected works in eight volumes, vol. 1, publishing house "Iskusstvo", 1954, pp. 275 - 276).
There is no doubt that the first theatrical edition of The Cherry Orchard did not have the pathos that sounds in Stanislavsky’s just quoted words. These words already contain a different understanding of “The Cherry Orchard” than that which was characteristic of the leaders of the Art Theater in 1904. But while affirming the comedic-lyrical beginning of The Cherry Orchard, it is important, in an organic fusion with comic-satirical and major-lyrical motifs, to fully reveal the lyrical-dramatic, elegiac motifs embodied in the play with such amazing subtlety and power. Chekhov not only denounced and ridiculed the heroes of his play, but also showed their subjective drama.
Chekhov's abstract humanism, associated with his general democratic position, limited his satirical possibilities and determined certain notes of sympathetic portrayal of Gaev and Ranevskaya.
Here you need to beware of one-sidedness and simplification, which, by the way, have already happened (for example, in the production of “The Cherry Orchard” by director A. Lobanov in the studio theater under the direction of R. Simonov in 1934).
As for the Art Theater itself, changing the dramatic key to a comedic-lyrical one should not cause a decisive change in the interpretation of all roles. A lot of things in this wonderful production, especially in its latest edition, get it right. One cannot help but recall that, while sharply rejecting the dramatic solution of his play, Chekhov found even in the first, far from mature performances at the Art Theater, a lot of beauty, carried out correctly.
So, for example, they remember that Chekhov, sick, tired, tired of the applause and honor given to him at the first performance of “The Cherry Orchard,” took a moment and whispered in the ear of A. R. Artyom, who played the role of Firs: “Wonderful!” (S. Durylin, Chekhov’s Favorite Actor, “Theater and Drama”, 1935, No. 2, p. 24).
He was very pleased with L. M. Leonidov - Lopakhin (L. M. Leonidov, Past and Present. From Memoirs, published by the Museum of the Gorky Art Academic Theater of the USSR, M., 1948, pp. 102) and found I. M. Moskvin’s performance of the role of Epikhodov wonderful (K. S. Stanislavsky, My life in art. Collected works in eight volumes, vol. 1, ed. "Art", 1954, p. 267).
He liked the performance of M.P. Lilina, who played the role of Anya. To Lilina’s question about the tone of her farewell words, Chekhov answered: “goodbye home, goodbye old life” - you speak exactly as you need to” (A.P. Chekhov, Complete Works and Letters, vol. 20, Goslitizdat, M., 1951, p. 238).
M.P. Lilina conveyed faith in the future well when she listened to Petya Trofimov with widening eyes. It is known that Chekhov liked the last departure of Gaev-Stanislavsky (K. S. Stanislavsky, Complete Works in Eight Volumes, Vol. 1, “Iskusstvo” Publishing House, 1954, p. 272).
Having preserved all the achievements of the first theatrical edition of “The Cherry Orchard” and using all the acquisitions of his subsequent life, which went in the direction of Chekhov’s requirements, the Art Theater, changing the dramatic key to a comedic-lyrical one, will undoubtedly create a performance of enormous social and artistic significance, fully revealing the ideological riches of a wonderful work. Millions of Soviet spectators are eagerly awaiting this performance.