Poetics of the play The Cherry Orchard. Genre problem

EDUCATION AGENCY OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

STATE EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION

HIGHER PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

MOSCOW STATE UNIVERSITY

CULTURE AND ARTS.

Director's analysis of the play

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

"The Cherry Orchard"

course: "History of Russian dramaturgy"

Performed: 2nd year student

group 803

Minenko V.S.

Checked: Lidyaeva S.V.

Naberezhnye Chelny 2010

The play "The Cherry Orchard" is Chekhov's last work. In the eighties, Chekhov conveyed the tragic situation of people who have lost the meaning of their lives. The play was staged at the Art Theater in 1904. The twentieth century is coming, and Russia is finally becoming a capitalist country, a country of factories, plants and railways. This process accelerated with the liberation of the peasantry by Alexander II. The features of the new relate not only to the economy, but also to society, the ideas and views of people are changing, the old system of values ​​is being lost.

Chekhov is characterized by an objective manner of narration; his voice is not heard in prose. In the drama, it is impossible to hear the author's own voice at all. And yet comedy, drama or tragedy "The Cherry Orchard"? Knowing how Chekhov did not like certainty and, consequently, the incompleteness of the coverage of a life phenomenon with all its complexities, one should carefully answer: a little of everything. The theater will still have the last word on this issue.

IDEA AND THEMATIC ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY

Topic:

Chekhov, being the successor of Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, also highlights the problem of the death of noble nests in his play The Cherry Orchard. The main theme of his work is the theme of the outgoing world.

The play takes place on the estate of the landowner Lyubov Andreevna Ranevskaya. The social conflict of the play is the conflict of the outgoing nobility with the bourgeoisie that came to replace it. Another storyline is a socio-romantic one. "All of Russia is our garden" - so Chekhov himself says through the lips of his heroes. But the dream of Anya and Petya Trofimov is shattered by the practicality of Lopakhin, by whose will the cherry orchard is cut down.

Idea:

Chekhov was not a revolutionary. Therefore, he failed to find a real way out of the crisis in which Russia was. The writer deeply sympathizes with the new phenomena taking place in the country, he hates the old way of life. Many writers have continued Chekhov's traditions.

Super task:

The Cherry Orchard is a multifaceted work. Chekhov touched upon many problems in it that have not lost their relevance even today. But the main issue is, of course, the issue of contradictions between the old and new generations. These contradictions underlie the play's dramatic conflict. The outgoing world of nobles is opposed by representatives of the new society.

Chekhov's play "The Cherry Orchard" reflects a turning point - a time when the old has already died, and the new has not yet been born, and now life stopped for a moment, calmed down ... Who knows, maybe this is the calm before the storm? No one knows the answer, but everyone is waiting for something ... In the same way, he waited, peering into the unknown, and Chekhov, anticipating the end of his life, was waiting for the entire Russian society, suffering from uncertainty and being at a loss. One thing was clear: the old life had irretrievably gone, and another was coming to replace it... What would it be like, this new life?

The truth of life in all its sequence and completeness - this is what Chekhov was guided by when creating his images. That is why each character in his plays is a living human character, attracting with great meaning and deep emotionality, convincing with its naturalness, warmth of human feelings.

By the strength of his direct emotional impact, Chekhov is perhaps the most outstanding playwright in the art of critical realism.

Chekhov's dramaturgy, responding to the topical issues of his time, addressing the everyday interests, feelings and worries of ordinary people, awakened the spirit of protest against inertia and routine, called for social activity to improve life. Therefore, it has always had a huge impact on readers and viewers. The significance of Chekhov's dramaturgy has long gone beyond the borders of our homeland, it has become global. Chekhov's dramatic innovation is widely recognized outside our great homeland. I am proud that Anton Pavlovich is a Russian writer, and no matter how different the masters of culture are, they probably all agree that Chekhov prepared the world with his works for a better life, more beautiful, more just, more reasonable.

COMPOSITIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY

Peculiarities of the "new drama" poetics. First of all, Chekhov destroys the "through action", the key event that organizes the plot unity of the classical drama. However, the drama does not fall apart, but is assembled on the basis of a different, internal unity. The fates of the characters, with all their differences, with all their plot independence, “rhyme”, echo each other and merge into a common “orchestral sound”. From many different, parallel developing lives, from the many voices of various heroes, a single “choral fate” grows, a common mood is formed for everyone. That is why they often talk about the "polyphony" of Chekhov's dramas and even call them "social fugues", drawing an analogy with the musical form, where from two to four musical themes, melodies sound and develop simultaneously.

In Chekhov's drama, the speech individualization of the characters' language is deliberately obscured. Their speech is individualized only so much that it does not fall out of the general tone of the drama. For the same reason, the speech of Chekhov's heroes is melodious, melodious, poetically intense: “Anya. I'll go to sleep. Good night, Mom". Let's listen to this phrase: we have before us a rhythmically organized speech, close to pure iambic. The same role is played in dramas by the so often encountered rhythmic repetition: "But it turned out to be all the same, all the same." This weakening of Ostrovsky's favorite speech individualization and the poetic elation of the language are necessary for Chekhov to create a general mood that permeates his drama from beginning to end and reduces the speech diversity and absurdity reigning on the surface into artistic integrity.

PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY

Chekhov's drama permeates the atmosphere of general trouble. There are no happy people in it.

General trouble is complicated and intensified by the feeling of general loneliness. Deaf Firs in this sense is a symbolic figure. Appearing for the first time before the audience in an old livery and in a tall hat, he walks across the stage, talking to himself, but not a single word can be made out. Lyubov Andreevna tells him: "I'm so glad you're still alive," and Firs replies: "The day before yesterday." In essence, this dialogue is a rough model of communication between all the characters in Chekhov's drama. Dunyasha in The Cherry Orchard shares with Anya, who arrived from Paris, a joyful event: “After the Saint, the clerk Epikhodov made me an offer,” Anya answered: “I lost all the hairpins.” In Chekhov's drama there is a special atmosphere of deafness - psychological deafness. People are too absorbed in themselves, their own affairs, their own troubles and failures, and therefore they do not hear each other well. Communication between them hardly turns into a dialogue. With mutual interest and goodwill, they cannot get through to each other in any way, since they “talk to themselves and for themselves” more.

Characteristics of the conflict:

A.P. Chekhov called his work "The Cherry Orchard" a comedy. We, having read the play, attribute it more to tragedy than to comedy. The images of Gaev and Ranevskaya seem tragic to us, their fates are tragic. We sympathize and empathize with them. At first we cannot understand why Anton Pavlovich classified his play as a comedy. But rereading the work, understanding it, we still find the behavior of such characters as Gaev, Ranevskaya, Epikhodov, somewhat comical. We already believe that they themselves are to blame for their troubles, and perhaps we condemn them for this. To what genre does A.P. Chekhov's play "The Cherry Orchard" belong to comedy or tragedy? In the play "The Cherry Orchard" we do not see a bright conflict, everything, it would seem, flows as usual. The heroes of the play behave calmly, there are no open quarrels and clashes between them. And yet we feel the existence of a conflict, but not open, but internal, hidden in the quiet, at first glance, peaceful atmosphere of the play. Behind the usual conversations of the heroes of the work, behind their calm attitude towards each other, we see them. internal misunderstanding of others. We often hear remarks from characters out of place; we often see their distant looks, as if they do not hear others.

But the main conflict of the play "The Cherry Orchard" lies in the misunderstanding of generation by generation. It seems as if three times intersected in the play: past, present and future. These three generations dream of their time, but they only talk and cannot do anything to change their lives. Gaev, Ranevskaya, Firs belong to the past generation; to the present Lopakhin, and representatives of the future generation are Petya Trofimov and Anya.

Lyubov Andreevna Ranevskaya, a representative of the old nobility, constantly talks about her best young years spent in an old house, in a beautiful and luxurious cherry garden. She lives only with these memories of the past, she is not satisfied with the present, and she does not even want to think about the future. And we think her infantilism is ridiculous. And the whole old generation in this play thinks the same way. None of them are trying to change anything. They talk about the "beautiful" old life, but they themselves seem to resign themselves to the present, let everything take its course, give in without fighting for their ideas. And so Chekhov condemns them for this.

Lopakhin is a representative of the bourgeoisie, a hero of the present. He lives for today. We can't help but notice that his ideas are smart and practical. He has animated conversations about how to change lives for the better, and seems to know what to do. But all these are just words. In fact, Lopakhin is not the ideal hero of the play either. We feel his self-doubt. And at the end of the Work, his hands seem to drop, and he exclaims: "Our clumsy, unhappy life would rather change!".

abstract

"The Cherry Orchard" by A.P. Chekhov: the meaning of the name and features of the genre

Head: Petkun Lyudmila Prokhorovna

Tver, 2015

Introduction

3.1 Ideological features

3.2 Genre features

3.4 Heroes and their roles

Introduction

Chekhov as an artist is no longer possible

compare with former Russians

writers - with Turgenev,

Dostoevsky or with me. Chekhov

its own form, like

impressionists. Watch how

like a man without any

parsing smears with paints, which

fall into his hands, and

no relation to each other

these smears do not have. But you will move away

some distance,

look, and in general

gives a complete impression.

L. Tolstoy

Chekhov's plays seemed unusual to his contemporaries. They differed sharply from the usual dramatic forms. They lacked the seemingly necessary opening, climax, and, strictly speaking, dramatic action as such. Chekhov himself wrote about his plays: People only have dinner, wear jackets, and at this time their fates are decided, their lives are broken . There is a subtext in Chekhov's plays, which acquires special artistic significance.

"The Cherry Orchard" is the last work of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, completing his creative biography, his ideological and artistic searches. The new stylistic principles developed by him, new “methods” of plot construction and composition were embodied in this play in such figurative discoveries that elevated the realistic depiction of life to broad symbolic generalizations, to insight into future forms of human relations.

Abstract objectives:

.Get acquainted with the work of A.P. Chekhov "The Cherry Orchard".

2.Select the main features of the work, analyze them.

.Find out the meaning of the title of the play.

Make a conclusion.

Czech cherry orchard

1. "The Cherry Orchard" in the life of A.P. Chekhov. The history of the creation of the play

Encouraged by the excellent performances at the Art Theater of "The Seagulls", "Uncle Vanya", "Three Sisters", as well as the huge success of these plays and vaudevilles in the capital and provincial theaters, Chekhov plans to create a new "funny play, where the devil walks like a yoke." “...For a moment, a strong desire comes over me to write a 4-act vaudeville or a comedy for the Art Theater. And I will write, if no one interferes, only I will give it to the theater not earlier than the end of 1903.

The news about the concept of a new Chekhov play, having reached the artists and directors of the Art Theater, caused a great upsurge and a desire to speed up the work of the author. “I said in the troupe,” says O. L. Knipper, “everyone picked up, clamored and thirsty.”

Director V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, who, according to Chekhov, “demands a play,” wrote to Anton Pavlovich: “I remain firmly convinced that you must write plays. I go very far: to give up fiction for the sake of plays. You have never deployed as much as on stage. "O. L. whispered to me that you are resolutely taking up a comedy ... The sooner your play is done, the better. There will be more time for negotiations and elimination of various mistakes ... In a word ... write plays! Write plays! But Chekhov was in no hurry, nurtured, “experienced in himself” the idea, did not share it with anyone until the time, pondered the “magnificent” (in his words) plot, not yet finding forms of artistic embodiment that would satisfy him. The play “slightly dawned in my brain, like the earliest dawn, and I still don’t understand myself what it is, what will come of it, and it changes every day.”

Chekhov entered some particulars into his notebook, many of which were later used by him in The Cherry Orchard: “For the play: a liberal old woman dresses like a young woman, smokes, cannot live without society, is pretty.” This entry, although in a transformed form, was included in Ranevskaya's characterization. "The character smells like fish, everyone tells him about it." This will be used for the image of Yasha and Gaev's attitude towards him. Found and inscribed in a notebook, the word "stupid" will become the leitmotif of the play. Some of the facts entered in the book will be reproduced with changes in the comedy in connection with the image of Gaev and the off-stage character - the second husband of Ranevskaya: “The cabinet has been standing in the presence of a hundred years, as can be seen from the papers; officials are seriously celebrating his anniversary”, “The gentleman owns a villa near Menton, which he bought with the money he received from the sale of the estate in the Tula province. I saw him in Kharkov, where he came on business, lost a villa, then served on the railway, then died.

On March 1, 1903, Chekhov told his wife: "For the play, I have already laid out the paper on the table and wrote the title." But the process of writing was hampered, hindered by many circumstances: Chekhov's serious illness, the fear that his method was "already outdated" and that he would not be able to successfully process the "difficult plot."

K. S. Stanislavsky, “languished” by Chekhov’s play, informs Chekhov about the loss of any taste for other plays (“Pillars of Society”, “Julius Caesar”) and about the director’s preparation for the future play he began “gradually”: “Keep in mind that, just in case, I recorded the shepherd's flute in the phonograph. It comes out great."

O. L. Knipper, like all the other artists of the troupe, who “with hellish impatience” was waiting for the play, also dispels his doubts and fears in her letters to Chekhov: “You, as a writer, are needed, terribly needed ... Your every phrase is needed, and ahead you are needed even more... Get rid of unnecessary thoughts... Write and love every word, every thought, every soul that you nurse, and know that all this is necessary for people. There is no and no such writer as you... Your plays are waiting like manna from heaven.”

In the process of creating the play, Chekhov shared with his friends - figures of the Art Theater - not only doubts, difficulties, but also further plans, changes and successes. They learn from him that he is having difficulty with “one main character”, it is still “not thought out enough and interferes”, that he reduces the number of actors (“it’s more intimate”), that the role of Stanislavsky - Lopakhin - “came out wow” , the role of Kachalov - Trofimov - is “good”, the end of the role of Knipper - Ranevskaya is “not bad”, and Lilina “will be satisfied” with her role of Varya, that Act IV, “sparse, but effective in content, is written easily, as if smoothly ”, and in the whole play,“ no matter how boring it is, there is something new, ”and, finally, that its genre qualities are both original and completely determined:“ The whole play is cheerful, frivolous. Chekhov also expressed fears that some places would not be "marked by censorship."

At the end of September 1903, Chekhov finished a rough draft of the play and set to work on its correspondence. At that time, his attitude to The Cherry Orchard fluctuates, then he is satisfied, the characters seem to him “living people”, then he reports that he has lost all appetite for the play, he “does not like” roles, except for the governess. The rewriting of the play proceeded slowly, Chekhov had to remake, rethink, rewrite some passages that especially did not satisfy him.

October the play was sent to the theater. After the first emotional reaction to the play (excitement, “awe and delight”), intense creative work began in the theater: “fitting” roles, choosing the best performers, searching for a common tone, thinking about the artistic design of the performance. They exchanged views with the author, first in letters, and then in personal conversations and at rehearsals: Chekhov arrived in Moscow at the end of November 1903. This creative communication did not, however, give complete, unconditional unanimity, it was more difficult. In some respects, the author and theatrical figures came, without any "deals with conscience" to a common opinion, something caused doubt or rejection of one of the "sides", but one of them, which did not consider the issue of principle for itself, made concessions; there were some differences.

Having sent the play away, Chekhov did not consider his work on it finished; on the contrary, fully trusting the artistic instinct of the theater directors and artists, he was ready to make “all the alterations that would be required to maintain the stage,” and asked for critical remarks to be sent to him: “I will correct it; it's not too late, you can still redo the whole act. In turn, he was ready to help directors and actors who turned to him with requests to find the right ways to stage the play, and therefore rushed to Moscow for rehearsals, and Knipper asked her not to “learn her role” before his arrival and not I would order dresses for Ranevskaya before consulting with him.

The distribution of roles, which was the subject of passionate discussion in the theater, was also very exciting for Chekhov. He proposed his own distribution option: Ranevskaya-Knipper, Gaev-Vishnevsky, Lopakhin-Stanislavsky, Varya-Lilina, Anya-young actress, Trofimov-Kachalov, Dunyasha-Khalyutina, Yasha-Moskvin, passerby-Gromov, Firs-Artem, Pishchik-Gribunin , Epikhodov-Luzhsky. His choice in many cases coincided with the desire of the artists and the theater management: for Kachalov, Knipper, Artem, Gribunin, Gromov, Khalyutina, after the “fitting”, the roles intended for them by Chekhov were established. But the theater far from blindly followed Chekhov's instructions, put forward its own "projects", and some of them were willingly accepted by the author. The proposal to replace Luzhsky in the role of Epikhodov with Moskvin, and in the role of Yasha Moskvin with Alexandrov evoked Chekhov's full approval: "Well, this is very good, the play will only benefit from this." "Moskvin will come out magnificent Epikhodov."

With less willingness, but still Chekhov agrees to a rearrangement of the performers of two female roles: Lilina is not Varya, but Anya; Varya - Andreeva. Chekhov does not insist on his desire to see Vishnevsky in the role of Gaev, since he is quite convinced that Stanislavsky will be “a very good and original Gaev”, but he parted with pain with the thought that Lopakhin would not be played by Stanislavsky: “When I wrote Lopakhin, then I thought it was your role” (vol. XX, p. 170). Stanislavsky, carried away by this image, as, indeed, by other characters in the play, only then finally decides to transfer the role to Leonidov, when, after searching, “with redoubled energy in himself for Lopakhin,” he does not find a tone and pattern that satisfies him. Muratova in the role of Charlotte also does not arouse Chekhov's delight: "she may be good," he says, "but not funny," but, by the way, in the theater, opinions about her, as well as about the performers Varya, diverged, of firm conviction, that Muratova will succeed in this role was not.

Issues of artistic design were subjected to a lively discussion with the author. Although Chekhov wrote to Stanislavsky that he completely relies on the theater for this (“Please, do not be shy about the scenery, I obey you, I am amazed and usually sit in your theater with my mouth open”, but still both Stanislavsky and the artist Somov called Chekhov to in the process of their creative search for an exchange of views, clarified some of the author's remarks, and offered their projects.

But Chekhov tried to shift all the attention of the viewer to the inner content of the play, to the social conflict, so he was afraid of being carried away by the setting part, the detailing of everyday life, sound effects: “I reduced the setting part in the play to a minimum, no special scenery is required.”

The disagreement between the author and the director was caused by the second act. While still working on the play, Chekhov wrote to Nemirovich-Danchenko that in the second act he “replaced the river with an old chapel and a well. It's quieter that way. Only ... You will give me a real green field and a road, and an extraordinary distance for the stage. Stanislavsky also added to the scenery of Act II a ravine, an abandoned cemetery, a railway bridge, a river in the distance, a hayfield in the forefront, and a small mop on which a walking company is having a conversation. “Allow me,” he wrote to Chekhov, “to let a train with a smoke pass during one of the pauses,” and said that at the end of the act there would be “a frog concert and a corncrake.” Chekhov wanted in this act to create only the impression of space, he was not going to clutter up the mind of the viewer with extraneous impressions, so his reaction to Stanislavsky's plans was negative. After the performance, he even called the scenery for Act II "terrible"; at the time of the preparation of the play by the theater, Knipper writes that Stanislavsky “needs to be kept” from “the train, frogs and crake”, and in letters to Stanislavsky himself in a delicate form expresses his disapproval: “Haymaking usually happens on June 20-25, at this time The corncrake, it seems, no longer screams, the frogs are also already silent by this time ... There is no cemetery, it was a very long time ago. Two or three slabs lying randomly - that's all that's left. The bridge is very good. If the train can be shown without noise, without a single sound, then go ahead.

The most fundamental discrepancy between the theater and the author was revealed in the understanding of the genre of the play. While still working on The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov called the play a "comedy". In the theater, it was understood as "true drama." “I hear you say: “Excuse me, but this is a farce,” Stanislavsky begins an argument with Chekhov - ... No, for a simple person this is a tragedy.

The theater directors' understanding of the genre of the play, which was at odds with the author's understanding, determined many significant and particular moments of the stage interpretation of The Cherry Orchard.

2. The meaning of the title of the play "The Cherry Orchard"

Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky in his memoirs about A.P. Chekhov wrote: “Listen, I found a wonderful title for the play. Wonderful! he announced, looking straight at me. "Which? I got excited. "In and ?shnevy garden (with emphasis on the letter "and ), and he burst into a joyful laugh. I did not understand the reason for his joy and did not find anything special in the title. However, in order not to upset Anton Pavlovich, I had to pretend that his discovery made an impression on me ... Instead of explaining, Anton Pavlovich began to repeat in different ways, with all sorts of intonations and sound coloring: ?shnevy garden. Look, it's a wonderful name! In and ?shnevy garden. In and ?screw! After this meeting, several days or a week passed ... Once, during a performance, he came to my dressing room and sat down at my table with a solemn smile. "Listen, don't ?shnevy, and the Cherry Orchard he announced and burst out laughing. At first I didn’t even understand what it was about, but Anton Pavlovich continued to savor the title of the play, emphasizing the gentle sound ё in the word “cherry , as if trying with his help to caress the former beautiful, but now unnecessary life, which he destroyed with tears in his play. This time I understood the subtlety: "Vee ?shnevy garden is a business, commercial garden that generates income. Such a garden is needed now. But "The Cherry Orchard does not bring income, he keeps in himself and in his blooming whiteness the poetry of the former lordly life. Such a garden grows and blooms for a whim, for the eyes of spoiled aesthetes. It is a pity to destroy it, but it is necessary, since the process of the country's economic development requires it.

The name of A.P. Chekhov's play "The Cherry Orchard" seems quite natural. The action takes place in an old noble estate. The house is surrounded by a large cherry orchard. Moreover, the development of the plot of the play is connected with this image - the estate is being sold for debts. However, the moment of the transfer of the estate to the new owner is preceded by a period of stupid trampling in the place of the former owners, who do not want to deal with their property in a businesslike manner, who do not even really understand why this is necessary, how to do it, despite the detailed explanations of Lopakhin, a successful representative of the emerging bourgeois class.

But the cherry orchard in the play also has a symbolic meaning. Thanks to the way the characters of the play relate to the garden, their sense of time, their perception of life is revealed. For Lyubov Ranevskaya, the garden is her past, happy childhood and the bitter memory of her drowned son, whose death she perceives as a punishment for her reckless passion. All thoughts and feelings of Ranevskaya are connected with the past. She just can't understand that she needs to change her habits, since the circumstances are now different. She is not a rich lady, a landowner, but a ruined madcap who will soon have neither a family nest nor a cherry orchard if she does not take any decisive action.

For Lopakhin, a garden is, first of all, land, that is, an object that can be put into circulation. In other words, Lopakhin argues from the point of view of the priorities of the present time. A descendant of serfs, who has made his way into the people, argues sensibly and logically. The need to independently pave his own way in life taught this person to evaluate the practical usefulness of things: “Your estate is only twenty miles from the city, a railway passed nearby, and if the cherry orchard and the land along the river are divided into summer cottages and then rented out for summer cottages then you will have at least twenty-five thousand a year income. The sentimental arguments of Ranevskaya and Gaev about the vulgarity of dachas, that the cherry orchard is a landmark of the province, irritate Lopakhin. In fact, everything they say has no practical value in the present, does not play a role in solving a specific problem - if no action is taken, the garden will be sold, Ranevskaya and Gaev will lose all rights to their family estate, and dispose of in it will have other owners. Of course, Lopakhin's past is also connected with the cherry orchard. But what is the past? Here his “grandfather and father were slaves”, here he himself, “beaten, illiterate”, “ran barefoot in winter”. Not too bright memories are associated with a successful business person with a cherry orchard! Maybe that's why Lopakhin is so jubilant, having become the owner of the estate, why he talks with such joy about how he "grabs the cherry orchard with an ax"? Yes, according to the past, in which he was a nobody, he meant nothing in his own eyes and in the opinion of others, probably, any person would be glad to grab an ax just like that ...

“... I no longer like the cherry orchard,” says Anya, Ranevskaya's daughter. But for Anya, as well as for her mother, childhood memories are connected with the garden. Anya loved the cherry orchard, despite the fact that her childhood impressions are far from being as cloudless as those of Ranevskaya. Anya was eleven years old when her father died, her mother became interested in another man, and soon her little brother Grisha drowned, after which Ranevskaya went abroad. Where did Anya live at that time? Ranevskaya says she was drawn to her daughter. From the conversation between Anya and Varya, it becomes clear that Anya only at the age of seventeen went to her mother in France, from where both returned to Russia together. It can be assumed that Anya lived in her native estate, with Varya. Despite the fact that Anya's entire past is connected with the cherry orchard, she parted with him without much longing or regret. Anya's dreams are directed to the future: "We will plant a new garden, more luxurious than this ...".

But one more semantic parallel can be found in Chekhov's play: the cherry orchard is Russia. “The whole of Russia is our garden,” Petya Trofimov says optimistically. The obsolete life of the nobility and the tenacity of business people - after all, these two poles of the worldview are not just a special case. This is indeed a feature of Russia at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the society of that time, many projects were hovering over how to equip the country: someone recalled the past with a sigh, someone smartly and businesslike suggested “clean up, clean up”, that is, to carry out reforms that would put Russia on a par with the leading powers peace. But, as in the story with the cherry orchard, at the turn of the era in Russia there was no real force capable of positively influencing the fate of the country. However, the old cherry orchard was already doomed... .

Thus, it can be seen that the image of the cherry orchard has a completely symbolic meaning. He is one of the central images of the work. Each hero relates to the garden in his own way: for some it is reminiscent of childhood, for some it is just a place to relax, and for some it is a means to earn money.

3. The originality of the play "The Cherry Orchard"

3.1 Ideological features

A.P. Chekhov sought to force the reader and viewer of The Cherry Orchard to recognize the logical inevitability of the ongoing historical “change” of social forces: the death of the nobility, the temporary domination of the bourgeoisie, the triumph in the near future of the democratic part of society. The playwright more clearly expressed in his work the belief in "free Russia", the dream of it.

The democrat Chekhov had sharp accusatory words that he threw to the inhabitants of the "noble nests." Therefore, choosing subjectively not bad people from the nobility for the image in The Cherry Orchard and abandoning burning satire, Chekhov laughed at their emptiness, idleness, but did not completely refuse them in the right to sympathy, and thereby somewhat softened the satire.

Although there is no open sharp satire on the nobles in The Cherry Orchard, there is undoubtedly a (hidden) denunciation of them. Raznochinets Democrat Chekhov had no illusions, he considered it impossible to revive the nobles. Having posed in the play The Cherry Orchard a theme that bothered Gogol in his time (the historical fate of the nobility), Chekhov, in a true depiction of the life of the nobles, turned out to be the heir to the great writer. The ruin, lack of money, idleness of the owners of noble estates - Ranevskaya, Gaev, Simeonov-Pishchik - remind us of the pictures of impoverishment, the idle existence of noble characters in the first and second volumes of Dead Souls. A ball during the auction, counting on the Yaroslavl aunt or some other random favorable circumstance, luxury in clothes, champagne for elementary needs in the house - all this is close to Gogol's descriptions and even to individual eloquent Gogol's realistic details, which, as time itself showed, generalized meaning. “Everything was based,” Gogol wrote about Khlobuev, “on the need to suddenly get one hundred or two hundred thousand from somewhere,” they counted on the “three millionth aunt.” In Khlobuev's house, "there is no piece of bread, but there is champagne," and "children are taught to dance." “Everything seems to have lived, all around in debt, no money from anywhere, but sets dinner.”

However, the author of The Cherry Orchard is far from Gogol's final conclusions. On the verge of two centuries, historical reality itself and the democratic consciousness of the writer suggested to him more clearly that it was impossible to revive the Khlobuevs, Manilovs and others. Chekhov also understood that the future did not belong to entrepreneurs like Kostonzhoglo and not to the virtuous tax-farmers Murazovs.

In the most general form, Chekhov guessed that the future belongs to the democrats, the working people. And he appealed to them in his play. The peculiarity of the position of the author of The Cherry Orchard lies in the fact that he, as it were, went a historical distance from the inhabitants of noble nests and, having made his allies the audience, people of a different - working - environment, people of the future, together with them from the "historical distance" laughed at the absurdity, injustice, emptiness of those who have passed away, and no longer dangerous, from his point of view, people. Chekhov found this peculiar angle of view, an individual creative method of depiction, perhaps not without reflection on the works of his predecessors, in particular, Gogol, Shchedrin. “Don't get bogged down in the details of the present,” Saltykov-Shchedrin urged. - But cultivate in yourself the ideals of the future; for these are a kind of sunbeams... Look often and intently at the luminous dots that flicker in the perspective of the future” (“Poshekhonskaya antiquity”).

Although Chekhov consciously did not arrive at either a revolutionary-democratic or a social-democratic program, life itself, the strength of the liberation movement, the influence of the progressive ideas of the time made him need to suggest to the viewer the need for social transformations, the proximity of a new life, i.e. forced not not only to catch “luminous dots that flicker in the perspective of the future”, but also to illuminate the present with them.

Hence the peculiar combination in the play "The Cherry Orchard" of lyrical and accusatory beginnings. To critically show modern reality and at the same time express patriotic love for Russia, faith in its future, in the great opportunities of the Russian people - such was the task of the author of The Cherry Orchard. The wide expanses of their native country (“gave”), giant people who “would be so to face” them, free, working, fair, creative life that they will create in the future (“new luxurious gardens”) - this is the lyrical beginning , which organizes the play "The Cherry Orchard", that author's norm, which is opposed to the "norms" of the modern ugly unfair life of dwarf people, "stupid". This combination of lyrical and accusatory elements in The Cherry Orchard constitutes the specifics of the genre of the play, accurately and subtly called by M. Gorky “lyrical comedy”.

3.2 Genre features

The Cherry Orchard is a lyrical comedy. In it, the author conveyed his lyrical attitude to Russian nature and indignation at the plunder of her wealth “Forests crack under an axe”, rivers become shallow and dry, magnificent gardens are destroyed, luxurious steppes perish.

The “tender, beautiful” cherry orchard, which they only knew how to admire contemplatively, but which the Ranevskys and Gaevs could not save, is dying, on the “wonderful trees” of which Yermolai Lopakhin was roughly “grabbed with an ax”. In the lyrical comedy, Chekhov sang, as in The Steppe, a hymn to Russian nature, the “beautiful homeland”, expressed the dream of creators, people of labor and inspiration, who think not so much about their own well-being as about the happiness of others, about future generations. “A person is gifted with reason and creative power to increase what is given to him, but so far he has not created, but destroyed,” these words are spoken in the play “Uncle Vanya”, but the thought expressed in them is close to the thoughts of the author "Cherry Orchard".

Outside of this dream of a man-creator, outside of the generalized poetic image of a cherry orchard, one cannot understand Chekhov's play, just as one cannot truly feel Ostrovsky's The Thunderstorm, The Dowry, if one remains immune to the Volga landscapes in these plays, to Russian open spaces, alien "cruel morals" of the "dark kingdom".

Chekhov's lyrical attitude to the motherland, to its nature, the pain for the destruction of its beauty and wealth constitute, as it were, the "undercurrent" of the play. This lyrical attitude is expressed either in the subtext or in the author's remarks. For example, in the second act, the expanses of Russia are mentioned in the remark: a field, a cherry orchard in the distance, a road to the estate, a city on the horizon. Chekhov specifically directed the filming of the Moscow Art Theater directors to this remark: "In the second act, you will give me a real green field and a road, and an extraordinary distance for the stage."

The remarks related to the cherry orchard are full of lyricism (“it's already May, the cherry trees are blooming”); sad notes sound in remarks marking the approaching death of the cherry orchard or this death itself: “the sound of a broken string, fading, sad”, “the dull thud of an ax on a tree, sounding lonely and sad.” Chekhov was very jealous of these remarks, worried that the directors would not quite fulfill his plan: “The sound in the 2nd and 4th acts of The Cherry Orchard should be shorter, much shorter, and be felt from quite afar ...”.

Expressing his lyrical attitude to the Motherland in the play, Chekhov condemned everything that interfered with her life and development: idleness, frivolity, narrow-mindedness. “But he,” as V. E. Khalizev rightly noted, “was far from a nihilistic attitude to the former poetry of noble nests, to noble culture,” he was afraid of losing such values ​​as cordiality, goodwill, gentleness in human relations, without enthusiasm stated the upcoming the dominance of the dry efficiency of the Lopakhins.

"The Cherry Orchard" was conceived as a comedy, as "a funny play, wherever the devil walks like a yoke." “The whole play is cheerful, frivolous,” the author informed friends at the time of work on it in 1903.

This definition of the genre of the comedy play was deeply principled for Chekhov, and it was not for nothing that he was so upset when he learned that on the posters of the Art Theater and in newspaper advertisements the play was called a drama. “I didn’t get a drama, but a comedy, in some places even a farce,” Chekhov wrote. In an effort to give the play a cheerful tone, the author indicates about forty times in remarks: “joyfully”, “fun”, “laughs”, “everyone laughs”.

3.3 Compositional features

There are four acts in the comedy, and there is no division into scenes. Events take place over several months (from May to October). The first action is exposure. Here is a general description of the characters, their relationships, connections, and here we learn the whole background of the issue (the reasons for the ruin of the estate).

The action begins in the estate of Ranevskaya. We see Lopakhin and Dunyasha, the maid, waiting for the arrival of Lyubov Andreevna and her youngest daughter Anya. For the last five years, Ranevskaya and her daughter lived abroad, while Ranevskaya's brother, Gaev, and her adopted daughter, Varya, remained on the estate. We learn about the fate of Lyubov Andreevna, about the death of her husband, son, we learn the details of her life abroad. The estate of the landowner is practically ruined, the beautiful cherry orchard must be sold for debts. The reasons for this are the extravagance and impracticality of the heroine, her habit of overspending. The merchant Lopakhin offers her the only way to save the estate - to break the land into plots and rent them out to summer residents. Ranevskaya and Gaev, however, resolutely reject this proposal, they do not understand how they can cut down a beautiful cherry orchard, the most “wonderful” place in the whole province. This contradiction, emerging between Lopakhin and Ranevskaya-Gaev, constitutes the plot of the play. However, this plot excludes both the external struggle of the actors and the sharp internal struggle. Lopakhin, whose father was a serf of the Ranevskys, only offers them a real, reasonable, from his point of view, way out. At the same time, the first act develops at an emotionally growing pace. The events that take place in it are extremely exciting for all the actors. This is the expectation of the arrival of Ranevskaya, who is returning to her home, a meeting after a long separation, a discussion by Lyubov Andreevna, her brother, Anya and Varya of measures to save the estate, the arrival of Petya Trofimov, who reminded the heroine of her dead son. In the center of the first act, therefore, is the fate of Ranevskaya, her character.

In the second act, the hopes of the owners of the cherry orchard are replaced by a disturbing feeling. Ranevskaya, Gaev and Lopakhin again argue about the fate of the estate. Internal tension grows here, the characters become irritable. It is in this act that “a distant sound is heard, as if from the sky, the sound of a broken string, fading, sad,” as if foreshadowing an impending catastrophe. At the same time, Anya and Petya Trofimov fully reveal themselves in this act, in their remarks they express their views. Here we see the development of the action. The external, social conflict here seems a foregone conclusion, even the date is known - "auctions are scheduled for the twenty-second of August." But at the same time, the motif of ruined beauty continues to develop here.

The third act of the play contains the climactic event - the cherry orchard is sold at auction. Characteristically, the off-stage action becomes the culmination here: the auction takes place in the city. Gaev and Lopakhin go there. In their expectation, the rest arrange a ball. Everyone is dancing, Charlotte is doing magic tricks. However, the disturbing atmosphere in the play is growing: Varya is nervous, Lyubov Andreevna is impatiently waiting for her brother's return, Anya transmits a rumor about the sale of the cherry orchard. Lyrical and dramatic scenes are interspersed with comic ones: Petya Trofimov falls down the stairs, Yasha enters into a conversation with Firs, we hear the dialogues of Dunyasha and Firs, Dunyasha and Epikhodov, Varya and Epikhodov. But then Lopakhin appears and reports that he bought an estate in which his father and grandfather were slaves. Lopakhin's monologue is the pinnacle of dramatic tension in the play. The climactic event in the play is given in the perception of the main characters. So, Lopakhin has a personal interest in buying the estate, but his happiness cannot be called complete: the joy of making a successful deal struggles in him with regret, sympathy for Ranevskaya, whom he has loved since childhood. Lyubov Andreevna is upset by everything that is happening: the sale of the estate for her is a loss of shelter, “parting from the house where she was born, which became for her the personification of her usual way of life (“After all, I was born here, my father and mother lived here, my grandfather, I I love this house, I don’t understand my life without a cherry orchard, and if you really need to sell it, then sell me along with the garden ...”). For Anya and Petya, the sale of the estate is not a disaster, they dream of a new life. The cherry orchard for them is the past, which is “already over”. Nevertheless, despite the difference in the attitudes of the characters, the conflict never turns into a personal clash.

The fourth act is the denouement of the play. The dramatic tension in this act weakens. After the problem is resolved, everyone calms down, rushing to the future. Ranevskaya and Gaev say goodbye to the cherry orchard, Lyubov Andreevna returns to her former life - she is preparing to leave for Paris. Gaev calls himself a bank employee. Anya and Petya welcome the "new life" without regretting the past. At the same time, a love conflict between Varya and Lopakhin is resolved - the matchmaking never took place. Varya is also getting ready to leave - she has found a job as a housekeeper. In the confusion, everyone forgets about old Firs, who was supposed to be sent to the hospital. And again the sound of a broken string is heard. And in the finale, the sound of an ax is heard, symbolizing sadness, the death of the passing era, the end of the old life. Thus, we have a circular composition in the play: in the finale, the theme of Paris reappears, expanding the artistic space of the work. The author's idea of ​​the inexorable course of time becomes the basis of the plot in the play. Chekhov's heroes seem to be lost in time. For Ranevskaya and Gaev, real life seems to have remained in the past, for Anya and Petya it lies in a ghostly future. Lopakhin, who has become the owner of the estate in the present, also does not feel joy and complains about the "awkward" life. And the very deep motives of the behavior of this character do not lie in the present, but also in the distant past.

In the very composition of The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov sought to reflect the empty, sluggish, boring nature of the existence of his noble heroes, their eventful life. The play is devoid of "spectacular" scenes and episodes, external diversity: the action in all four acts is not carried outside the Ranevskaya estate. The only significant event - the sale of the estate and the cherry orchard - takes place not in front of the viewer, but behind the scenes. On the stage - everyday life in the estate. People talk about everyday little things over a cup of coffee, during a walk or an impromptu “ball”, quarrel and make up, rejoice at the meeting and are upset by the upcoming separation, remember the past, dream about the future, and at this time - “their destinies are being formed”, their lives are ruined. "nest".

In an effort to give this play a life-affirming, major tone, Chekhov accelerated its pace, in comparison with previous plays, in particular, reduced the number of pauses. Chekhov was especially concerned that the final act should not be drawn out and that what was happening on the stage would thus not produce the impression of "tragism", drama. “It seems to me,” wrote Anton Pavlovich, “that in my play, no matter how boring it is, there is something new. In the whole play, not a single shot, by the way. “How awful! An act that should last 12 minutes maximum, you have 40 minutes.

4 Heroes and their roles

Deliberately depriving the play of "events", Chekhov directed all his attention to the state of the characters, their attitude to the main fact - the sale of the estate and the garden, to their relationships, collisions. The teacher should draw students' attention to the fact that in a dramatic work the author's attitude, the author's position is the most hidden. In order to clarify this position, in order to understand the attitude of the playwright to the historical phenomena of the life of the motherland, to the characters and the event, the viewer and reader need to be very attentive to all the components of the play: the system of images carefully thought out by the author, the arrangement of characters, the alternation of mise-en-scenes, the interlocking of monologues, dialogues, individual replicas of the characters, author's remarks.

Sometimes Chekhov deliberately exposes the clash of dreams and reality, the lyrical and comic elements in the play. So, while working on The Cherry Orchard, he introduced into the second act after the words of Lopakhin (“And living here we ourselves should really be giants ...”) Ranevskaya’s response: “You needed giants. They are only good in fairy tales, otherwise they frighten. To this Chekhov added another mise-en-scène: the ugly figure of the “klutz” Epikhodov appears in the depths of the stage, clearly contrasting with the dream of giant people. To the appearance of Epikhodov, Chekhov specially attracts the attention of the audience with two remarks: Ranevskaya (thoughtfully) "Epikhodov is coming." Anya (thoughtfully) "Epikhodov is coming."

In the new historical conditions, Chekhov the playwright, following Ostrovsky and Shchedrin, responded to Gogol's call: “For God's sake, give us Russian characters, give us ourselves, our rogues, our eccentrics! To their stage, to the laughter of everyone! Laughter is a great thing! ("Petersburg Notes"). "Our eccentrics", our "stupid" seeks to lead Chekhov to ridicule the public in the play "The Cherry Orchard".

The intention of the author to make the viewer laugh and at the same time make him think about modern reality is most clearly expressed in the original comic characters - Epikhodov and Charlotte. The function of these "clunkers" in the play is very significant. Chekhov makes the viewer catch their inner connection with the central characters and thereby denounces these eye-catching faces of the comedy. Epikhodov and Charlotte are not only ridiculous, but also pathetic with their unfortunate "fortune" full of inconsistencies and surprises. Fate, in fact, treats them "without regret, like a storm to a small ship." These people are ruined by life. Epikhodov is shown as insignificant in his meager ambition, miserable in his misfortunes, in his pretensions and in his protest, limited in his "philosophy". He is proud, painfully proud, and life has put him in the position of a half-lackey and a rejected lover. He claims to be “educated”, lofty feelings, strong passions, and life “prepared” for him daily “22 misfortunes”, petty, ineffectual, offensive.

Chekhov, who dreamed of people in whom “everything would be beautiful: face, clothes, soul, and thoughts,” saw so far many freaks who have not found their place in life, people with a complete confusion of thoughts and feelings, actions and words which are devoid of logic and meaning: “Of course, if you look from the point of view, then you, let me put it this way, excuse my frankness, completely put me in a state of mind.”

The source of Epikhodov's comedy in the play also lies in the fact that he does everything inopportunely, out of time. There is no correspondence between his natural data and behavior. Close-minded, tongue-tied, he is prone to lengthy speeches, reasoning; clumsy, mediocre, he plays billiards (breaking his cue), sings "terribly like a jackal" (by Charlotte's definition), darkly accompanying himself on the guitar. At the wrong time he declares his love to Dunyasha, inappropriately asks thoughtful questions (“Have you read Buckle?”), inappropriately uses many words: “Only people who understand and older can talk about that”; “and so you look, something extremely indecent, like a cockroach”, “recover from me, let me express myself, you cannot.”

The function of Charlotte's image in the play is close to that of Epikhodov's image. The fate of Charlotte is absurd, paradoxical: a German, a circus actress, an acrobat and a conjurer, she turned out to be a governess in Russia. Everything is uncertain, accidental in her life: the appearance at the Ranevskaya estate is accidental, and the departure from it is accidental. Charlotte is always in for the unexpected; how her life will be determined after the sale of the estate, she does not know how incomprehensible the purpose and meaning of her existence is: “All alone, alone, I have no one and ... who I am, why I am unknown.” Loneliness, unhappiness, confusion constitute the second, hidden underlying basis of this comic character of the play.

It is significant in this regard that, while continuing to work on the image of Charlotte during rehearsals of the play at the Art Theater, Chekhov did not retain the previously planned additional comic episodes (tricks in Acts I, III, IV) and, on the contrary, strengthened the motif of Charlotte's loneliness and unhappy fate: at the beginning of Act II, everything from the words: “I so want to talk, but not with anyone ...” to: “why I am unknown” - was introduced by Chekhov into the final edition.

"Happy Charlotte: Sing!" - Gaev says at the end of the play. With these words, Chekhov also emphasizes Gaev's misunderstanding of Charlotte's position and the paradoxical nature of her behavior. At a tragic moment in her life, even as if she were aware of her situation (“so you, please find me a place. I can’t do this ... I have nowhere to live in the city”), she shows tricks, sings. Serious thought, awareness of loneliness, unhappiness is combined in her with buffoonery, buffoonery, a circus habit of amusing.

In Charlotte's speech, there is the same bizarre combination of different styles, words: along with purely Russian ones, there are distorted words and constructions (“I want to sell. Does anyone want to buy?”), foreign words, paradoxical phrases (“These clever people are all so stupid”, "You, Epikhodov, are a very smart man and very scary; women must love you madly. Brrr! ..").

Chekhov attached great importance to these two characters (Epikhodov and Charlotte) and was concerned that they be correctly and interestingly interpreted in the theater. The role of Charlotte seemed to the author the most successful, and he advised the actresses Knipper, Lilina to take her, and wrote about Epikhodov that this role was short, "but the real one." With these two comic characters, the author, in fact, helps the viewer and reader to understand not only the situation in the life of the Epikhodovs and Charlotte, but also to extend to the rest of the characters the impressions that he receives from the convex, pointed image of these "klutzes", makes him see The "wrong side" of life phenomena, to notice in some cases the "unfunny" in the comic, in other cases - to guess the funny behind the outwardly dramatic.

We understand that not only Epikhodov and Charlotte, but also Ranevskaya, Gaev, Simeonov-Pishchik "exist for who knows what". To these idle inhabitants of the ruined noble nests, living "at someone else's expense", Chekhov added faces not yet acting on the stage and thereby strengthened the typicality of the images. The master-serf, the father of Ranevskaya and Gaev, corrupted by idleness, the morally lost second husband of Ranevskaya, the despotic Yaroslavl grandmother-countess, showing class arrogance (she still cannot forgive Ranevskaya that her first husband was "not a nobleman") - all these "types", together with Ranevskaya, Gaev, Pishchik, "have already become obsolete." To convince the viewer of this, according to Chekhov, neither malicious satire nor contempt was needed; it was enough to make them look at them through the eyes of a person who had gone a considerable historical distance and was no longer satisfied with their living standards.

Ranevskaya and Gaev do nothing to save, save the estate and the garden from destruction. On the contrary, it is precisely because of their idleness, impracticality, carelessness that the “nests” so “holy loved” by them are being ruined, poetic beautiful cherry orchards are being destroyed.

Such is the price of these people's love for their homeland. “God knows, I love my homeland, I love dearly,” says Ranevskaya. Chekhov makes us confront these words with actions and understand that her words are impulsive, do not reflect a constant mood, depth of feeling, and are at odds with actions. We learn that Ranevskaya left Russia five years ago, that she was “suddenly drawn to Russia” from Paris only after a catastrophe in her personal life (“there he robbed me, left me, got together with another, I tried to poison myself ...”) , and we see in the finale that she still leaves her homeland. No matter how sorry Ranevskaya is about the cherry orchard and the estate, she pretty soon “calmed down and cheered up” in anticipation of leaving for Paris. On the contrary, Chekhov throughout the play says that the idle anti-social nature of the life of Ranevskaya, Gaev, Pishchik testifies to their complete oblivion of the interests of their homeland. He creates the impression that, with all their subjectively good qualities, they are useless and even harmful, since they contribute not to creation, not to “multiplying the wealth and beauty” of the homeland, but to destruction: thoughtlessly Pishchik rents a piece of land to the British for 24 years for the predatory exploitation of Russian natural wealth, the magnificent cherry orchard of Ranevskaya and Gaev perishes.

By the actions of these characters, Chekhov convinces us that one cannot trust their words, even spoken sincerely, excitedly. “We’ll pay the interest, I’m convinced,” Gaev bursts out without any reason, and he already excites himself and others with these words: “By my honor, whatever you want, I swear, the estate will not be sold! .. I swear by my happiness! Here's my hand, then call me a lousy, dishonorable person if I let you go to the auction! I swear with all my being!” Chekhov compromises his hero in the eyes of the viewer, showing that Gaev "allows the auction" and the estate, contrary to his oaths, is sold.

Ranevskaya in Act I resolutely tears, without reading, telegrams from Paris from the person who insulted her: "It's over with Paris." But Chekhov, in the further course of the play, shows the instability of Ranevskaya's reaction. In the following acts, she is already reading telegrams, tends to reconcile, and in the finale, reassured and cheerful, she willingly returns to Paris.

Combining these characters according to the principle of kinship and social affiliation, Chekhov, however, shows both similarities and individual traits of each. At the same time, he makes the viewer not only question the words of these characters, but also think about the justice, the depth of other people's opinions about them. “She is good, kind, nice, I love her very much,” Gaev says about Ranevskaya. “She is a good person, an easy, simple person,” Lopakhin says about her and enthusiastically expresses his feeling to her: “I love you like my own ... more than my own.” Anya, Varya, Pishchik, Trofimov, and Firs are attracted to Ranevskaya like a magnet. She is equally kind, delicate, affectionate with her own, and with her adopted daughter, and with her brother, and with the "man" Lopakhin, and with the servants.

Ranevskaya is cordial, emotional, her soul is open to beauty. But Chekhov will show that these qualities, combined with carelessness, spoiledness, frivolity, very often (although regardless of the will and subjective intentions of Ranevskaya) turn into their opposite: cruelty, indifference, carelessness towards people. Ranevskaya will give the last gold to a random passerby, and at home the servants will live from hand to mouth; she will say to Firs: “Thank you, my dear,” kiss him, sympathetically and affectionately inquire about his health and ... leave him, a sick, old, devoted servant, in a boarded-up house. With this final chord in the play, Chekhov deliberately compromises Ranevskaya and Gaev in the eyes of the viewer.

Gaev, like Ranevskaya, is gentle and receptive to beauty. However, Chekhov does not allow us to fully trust Anya's words: "Everyone loves you, respects you." "How good you are, uncle, how smart." Chekhov will show that Gaev’s gentle, gentle treatment of close people (sister, niece) is combined with his estate disdain for the “grimy” Lopakhin, “a peasant and a boor” (by his definition), with a contemptuous-squeamish attitude towards servants (from Yasha "smells like chicken", Firs is "tired", etc.). We see that, along with the lordly sensitivity, grace, he absorbed the lordly swagger, arrogance (Gaev’s word is characteristic: “whom?”), Conviction in the exclusivity of people of his circle (“white bone”). He feels more than Ranevskaya himself and makes others feel his position as a gentleman and the advantages associated with it. And at the same time, he flirts with proximity to the people, claims that he “knows the people”, that “the man loves” him.

Chekhov clearly makes one feel the idleness, idleness of Ranevskaya and Gaev, their habit of "living on credit, at someone else's expense." Ranevskaya is wasteful ("littering with money"), not only because she is kind, but also because money easily gets to her. Like Gaev, she does not count on her own labors and siush, but only on occasional help from outside: either she will receive an inheritance, or Lopakhin will lend, or the Yaroslavl grandmother will send to pay her debt. Therefore, we do not believe in the possibility of Gaev's life outside the family estate, we do not believe in the prospect of the future, which captivates Gaev like a child: he is a "bank servant". Chekhov is counting on the fact that, like Ranevskaya, who knows her brother well, the viewer will smile and say: What kind of financier is he, an official! “Where are you! Sit down!"

Having no idea about work, Ranevskaya and Gaev go completely into the world of intimate feelings, refined, but confused, contradictory experiences. Ranevskaya not only devoted her whole life to the joys and sufferings of love, but she attaches decisive importance to this feeling and therefore feels a surge of energy whenever she can help others experience it. She is ready to act as an intermediary not only between Lopakhin and Varya, but also between Trofimov and Anya (“I would gladly give Anya for you”). Usually soft, compliant, passive, she only once actively reacts, revealing both sharpness, and anger, and harshness, when Trofimov touches this holy world for her and when she guesses in him a person of a different, deeply alien to her warehouse in this respect: “In your years you need to understand those who love and you need to love yourself ... you need to fall in love! (angrily). Yes Yes! And you have no cleanliness, and you are just a clean, funny eccentric, freak ... "I am higher than love!" You are not above love, but simply, as our Firs says, you are a klutz. At your age, do not have a mistress! ..".

Outside the sphere of love, Ranevskaya's life turns out to be empty and aimless, although in her statements, frank, sincere, sometimes self-flagellation and often verbose, there is an attempt to express interest in general issues. Chekhov puts Ranevskaya in a ridiculous position, showing how her conclusions, even her teachings, diverge from her own behavior. She reproaches Gaev for being "inopportune" and talking a lot in the restaurant ("Why talk so much?"). She teaches others: “You ... should look at yourself more often. How gray you all live, how much you say unnecessary things. She herself also talks a lot and inopportunely. Her sensitive enthusiastic appeals to the nursery, to the garden, to the house are quite in tune with Gaev's appeal to the closet. Her verbose monologues, in which she tells close people her life, that is, what they have long known, or exposes her feelings and experiences to them, are usually given by Chekhov either before or after she reproached those around her for verbosity . So the author brings Ranevskaya closer to Gaev, in whom the need to “speak out” is most clearly expressed.

Gaev's anniversary speech in front of the closet, farewell speech at the end, reasoning about decadents addressed to restaurant servants, generalizations about people of the 80s expressed by Anya and Varya, a laudatory word to "mother nature" uttered in front of a "walking company" - all this breathes with enthusiasm, ardor, sincerity. But behind all this Chekhov makes us see empty liberal phrase-mongering; hence in Gaev's speech such vague, traditionally liberal expressions as: "bright ideals of goodness and justice." The author shows the self-admiration of these characters, the desire to quench their insatiable thirst to express “beautiful feelings” in “beautiful words”, their appeal only to their inner world, their experiences, isolation from “external” life.

Chekhov emphasizes that all these monologues, speeches, honest, disinterested, sublime, are not needed, they are delivered “inopportunely”. He draws the viewer's attention to this, constantly forcing Anya and Varya, albeit gently, to interrupt Gaev's beginning rantings. The word inopportunely turns out to be a leitmotif not only for Epikhodov and Charlotte, but also for Ranevskaya and Gaev. Inopportunely speeches are made, inopportunely they arrange a ball at the very time when the estate is being sold at auction, inopportunely at the moment of departure they start an explanation of Lopakhin and Varya, etc. And not only Epikhodov and Charlotte, but also Ranevskaya and Gaev turn out to be "stupid". Charlotte's unexpected remarks no longer seem surprising to us: "My dog ​​eats nuts." These words are no more inappropriate than the "arguments" of Gaev and Ranevskaya. Revealing in the central characters the similarities with the "minor" comedic persons - Epikhodov and Charlotte - Chekhov subtly exposed his "noble heroes".

The same was achieved by the author of The Cherry Orchard by the rapprochement of Ranevskaya and Gaev with Simeonov-Pishchik, another comedic character in the play. The landowner Simeonov-Pishchik is also kind, gentle, sensitive, impeccably honest, childishly trusting, but he is also inactive, "stupid". His estate is also on the verge of death, and the plans for preserving it, like those of Gaev and Ranevskaya, are unrealistic, they feel a calculation for chance: Dashenka’s daughter will win, someone will lend, etc.

Giving in the fate of Pishchik another option: he is saved from ruin, his estate is not yet sold at auction. Chekhov emphasizes both the temporary nature of this relative well-being and its unstable source, which is not at all dependent on Pishchik himself, that is, he emphasizes even more the historical doom of the owners of noble estates. In the image of Pishchik, the isolation of the nobles from the "external" life, their limitedness, their emptiness is even clearer. Chekhov deprived him even of the outward cultural gloss. Pishchik's speech, reflecting the squalor of his inner world, is subtly mockingly brought closer by Chekhov to the speech of other noble characters and, thus, the tongue-tied Pishchik is equated with Gaev's rhetoric. Pishchik's speech is also emotional, but these emotions also only cover up the lack of content (it is not without reason that Pishchik himself falls asleep and snores during his "speech"). Pishchik constantly uses epithets in superlatives: “a man of the greatest intelligence”, “the most worthy”, “the greatest”, “the most wonderful”, “the most respectable”, etc. The poverty of emotions is revealed primarily in the fact that these epithets apply equally to Lopakhin , and to Nietzsche, and to Ranevskaya, and to Charlotte, and to the weather. Neither give nor take Gaev's exaggerated "emotional" speeches addressed to the closet, to the genitals, to mother nature. Pishchik's speech is also monotonous. "You think!" - with these words Pishchik reacts both to Charlotte's tricks and to philosophical theories. His actions and words are also out of place. Inopportunely, he interrupts Lopakhin's serious warnings about the sale of the estate with questions: “What's in Paris? How? Have you eaten frogs? Inopportunely he asks Ranevskaya for a loan of money when the fate of the owners of the cherry orchard is being decided, inappropriately, obsessively constantly refers to the words of his daughter Dashenka, vaguely, vaguely, conveying their meaning.

Strengthening the comedic nature of this character in the play, Chekhov, in the process of working on him, added episodes and words to the first act that created a comic effect: an episode with pills, a conversation about frogs.

Revealing the ruling class - the nobility - Chekhov persistently thinks himself and makes the viewer think about the people. This is the strength of Chekhov's play The Cherry Orchard. We feel that the author has such a negative attitude towards the idleness, idle talk of the Ranevskys, Gaevs, Simeonovs-Pishchikov, because he guesses the connection of all this with the difficult situation of the people, defends the interests of the broad masses of working people. No wonder the censors once threw out of the play: "Workers eat disgustingly, sleep without pillows, thirty or forty in one room, bugs everywhere, stench." “To own living souls - after all, this has reborn all of you who lived before and are now living, so that your mother, you, uncle no longer notice that you live in debt, at someone else’s expense, at the expense of those people whom you do not let go on front."

In comparison with Chekhov's previous plays, in The Cherry Orchard the theme of the people sounds much stronger, it is also clearer that the author denounces the "masters of life" in the name of the people. But the people here, too, are mainly “non-stage”.

Without making the working man either an open commentator or a positive hero of the play, Chekhov, however, sought to arouse reflection about him, about his position, and this is the undoubted progressiveness of The Cherry Orchard. The constant references to the people in the play, the images of the servants, especially Firs, acting on the stage, make you think.

Showing just before his death a glimpse of consciousness in the slave - Firs, Chekhov deeply sympathizes with him and gently reproaches him: “Life has passed, as if it had not lived ... You don’t have Silushka, there’s nothing left, nothing ... Eh, you ... silly.

In the tragic fate of Firs, Chekhov blames his masters even more than himself. He speaks of the tragic fate of Firs not as a manifestation of the evil will of his masters. Moreover, Chekhov shows that not bad people - the inhabitants of a noble nest - even seem to take care that the sick servant Firs is sent to the hospital. - "Did Firs go to the hospital?" - "Did Firs get taken to the hospital?" - "Firs was taken to the hospital?" “Mom, Firs has already been sent to the hospital.” Outwardly, Yasha turns out to be the culprit, who answered the question about Firs in the affirmative, as if he misled those around him.

Firs is left in a boarded up house - this fact can also be regarded as a tragic accident in which no one is to blame. And Yasha could be sincerely sure that the order to send Firs to the hospital had been carried out. But Chekhov makes us understand that this “accident” is natural, it is an everyday phenomenon in the life of the frivolous Ranevskys and Gaevs, who are not deeply concerned about the fate of their servants. In the end, the circumstances would have changed little if Firs had been sent to the hospital: all the same, he would have died, alone, forgotten, away from the people to whom he had given his life.

There is a hint in the play that Firs' fate is not isolated. The life and death of the old nanny, the servants of Anastasius were just as inglorious and just as passed by the consciousness of their masters. The soft, loving Ranevskaya, with her characteristic frivolity, does not at all react to the news of the death of Anastasia, about leaving the estate for the city of Petrushka Kosoy. And the death of the nanny did not make a big impression on her, she does not remember a single kind word about her. We can imagine that Ranevskaya will respond to the death of Firs with the same meaningless, vague words that she responded to the death of her nanny: “Yes, the kingdom of heaven. They wrote to me."

Meanwhile, Chekhov gives us to understand that wonderful possibilities are hidden in Firs: high morality, selfless love, folk wisdom. Throughout the play, among idle, inactive people, he is an 87-year-old old man - alone is shown as an eternally preoccupied, troublesome worker ("one for the whole house").

Following his principle of individualizing the speech of the characters, Chekhov gave the words of old Firs, for the most part, paternally caring and grouchy intonations. Avoiding pseudo-folk turns, not abusing dialectisms (“lackeys should speak simply, without letting go and without now” vol. XIV, p. 362), the author endowed Firs with pure folk speech, which is not devoid of specific, characteristic only for him phrases: “stupid” , "scattered".

Gaev and Ranevskaya utter long coherent, elevated or sensitive monologues, and these "speeches" turn out to be "out of place". Firs, on the other hand, mutters incomprehensible words that seem to others, which no one listens to, but it is his words that the author uses as well-aimed words that reflect the experience of life, the wisdom of a person from the people. The word Firs "stupid" is heard many times in the play, it characterizes all the characters. The word “scattered” (“now everything is broken up, you won’t understand anything”) indicates the nature of post-reform life in Russia. It defines the relationship of people in the play, the alienation of their interests, misunderstanding of each other. The specificity of the dialogue in the play is also connected with this: everyone speaks about his own, usually without listening, without thinking about what his interlocutor said:

Dunyasha: And to me, Yermolai Alekseich, to confess, Epikhodov made an offer.

Lopakhin: Ah!

Dunyasha: I don't know how... He's an unhappy man, something happens every day. They tease him like that among us: twenty-two misfortunes ...

Lopakhin (listens): Here, it seems, they are coming ....

For the most part, the words of one character are interrupted by the words of others, leading away from the thought just expressed.

Chekhov often uses the words of Firs to show the movement of life and the current loss of former strength, the former power of the nobles as a privileged class: they don't go hunting."

Firs, with his every-minute concern for Gaev, like a helpless child, destroys the viewer's illusions that he could have based on Gaev's words about his future as a "bank servant", "financier". Chekhov wants to leave the viewer with the consciousness of the impossibility of reviving these unearned people to any kind of activity. Therefore, it is only necessary for Gaev to say the words: “I am offered a place in a bank. Six thousand a year..." as Chekhov reminds the viewer of Gaev's lack of viability, his helplessness. Firs appears. He brings a coat: "If you please, sir, put it on, otherwise it's damp."

Showing other servants in the play: Dunyasha, Yasha, Chekhov also denounces the "noble" landowners. He makes the viewer understand the pernicious influence of the Ranevskys, Gaevs on the people of the working environment. The atmosphere of idleness, frivolity has a detrimental effect on Dunyasha. From the masters, she learned sensitivity, hypertrophied attention to her “delicate feelings” and experiences, “refinement” ... She dresses like a young lady, is absorbed in questions of love, constantly listens warily to her “refined-gentle” organization: “I became anxious, I’m all worried ... I’ve become tender, so delicate, noble, I’m afraid of everything ... ”“ Hands are shaking. "I got a headache from the cigar." "It's a little damp in here." “Dancing makes me dizzy, my heart beats,” etc. Like her masters, she developed a passion for “beautiful” words, for “beautiful” feelings: “He loves me madly,” “I fell in love with you passionately.”

Dunyasha, like her masters, does not have the ability to understand people. Epikhodov seduces her with sensitive, albeit incomprehensible, words, Yasha - "education" and the ability to "talk about everything." Chekhov exposes the absurd comicality of such a conclusion about Yasha, for example, by forcing Dunyasha to express this conclusion between two replicas of Yasha, testifying to Yasha's ignorance, narrow-mindedness and inability to think, reason and act in any way logically:

Yasha (kisses her): Cucumber! Of course, every girl should remember herself, and what I dislike most of all is if a girl has bad behavior ... In my opinion, this is how: if a girl loves someone, then she is immoral ...

Like his masters, Dunyasha both speaks inappropriately and acts inappropriately. She often says about herself what people like Ranevskaya and Gaev think about themselves and even make others feel, but do not directly express in words. And this creates a comic effect: "I'm such a delicate girl, I'm terribly fond of gentle words." In the final version, Chekhov strengthened these features in the image of Dunyasha. He added: "I'm going to faint." "It's all cold." "I don't know what will happen to my nerves." "Now leave me alone, now I'm dreaming." "I am a gentle being."

Chekhov attached great importance to the image of Dunyasha and was worried about the correct interpretation of this role in the theater: “Tell the actress playing the maid Dunyasha to read The Cherry Orchard in the Knowledge edition or in proof; there she will see where to powder, and so on. and so on. Let him read it by all means: in your notebooks everything is mixed up and smeared. The author makes us think more deeply into the fate of this comic character and see that this fate, in essence, is also tragic by the grace of the "masters of life". Torn off from her work environment ("I'm out of the habit of a simple life"), Dunyasha lost ground ("does not remember herself"), but did not acquire a new life support either. Its future is predicted in the words of Firs: "You will spin."

The pernicious influence of the world of the Ranevskys, Gaevs, Pishchikovs is shown by Chekhov in the image of the footman Yasha. A witness to the easy, carefree and vicious life of Ranevskaya in Paris, he is also infected with indifference to his homeland, people and a constant desire for pleasure. Yasha expresses more directly, sharper, more rudely what, in essence, is the meaning of Ranevskaya's actions: gravitation to Paris, a casually contemptuous attitude towards an “uneducated country”, an “ignorant people”. He, like Ranevskaya, is bored in Russia (“yawns” - the author's insistent remark for Yasha). Chekhov makes it clear to us that Yasha was corrupted by Ranevskaya's careless inexperience. Yasha robs her, lies to her and others. An example of Ranevskaya's easy life, her mismanagement was developed in Yasha by claims and desires that are impossible: he drinks champagne, smokes cigars, orders expensive dishes in a restaurant. Yasha's mind is just enough to adapt to Ranevskaya and take advantage of her weaknesses for personal gain. Outwardly, he retains devotion to her, behaves politely and attentively. In dealing with a certain circle of people, he adopted a “well-mannered” tone and the words: “I cannot but agree with you,” “let me ask you.” Valuing his position, Yasha seeks to create a better impression of himself than he deserves, he is afraid of losing Ranevskaya's trust (hence the author's remarks: “looks around”, “listens”). Hearing, for example, that “the gentlemen are coming,” he sends Dunyasha home, “otherwise they will meet and think about me, as if I were on a date with you. I can't stand it."

Chekhov at the same time, thus, exposes both the deceitful lackey Yasha and the gullible, thoughtless Ranevskaya, who keeps him near her. Chekhov accuses not only him, but also the masters, of the fact that Yasha found himself in the absurd position of a man who "does not remember kinship", who lost his environment. The peasants, servants, mother-peasant for Yasha, removed from his native element, are already people of the "lower order"; he is harsh or selfishly indifferent towards them.

Yasha is infected by his masters and has a passion for philosophizing, “speaking out”, and, like theirs, his words diverge from life practice, with behavior (relationship with Dunyasha).

A.P. Chekhov saw in life and reproduced in the play another version of the fate of a man from the people. We learn that Lopakhin's father - a peasant, a serf, who was also not allowed even into the kitchen - after the reform, he "made it into the people", got rich, became a shopkeeper, an exploiter of the people.

In the play, Chekhov shows his son - a bourgeois of a new formation. This is no longer a "grimy", not a tyrant merchant, despotic, rude, like his father. Chekhov specifically warned the actors: "Lopakhin, it is true, is a merchant, but a decent person in every sense, he must behave quite decently, intelligently." “Lopakhin should not be played as a screamer ... He is a gentle person.”

While working on the play, Chekhov even strengthened in the image of Lopakhin the features of softness, external "decency, intelligence." So, he made the final edition of Lopakhin's lyrical words addressed to Ranevskaya: "I would like ... your amazing, touching eyes to look at me as before." Chekhov added to the characterization given to Lopakhin by Trofimov, the words: “After all, I still love you. You have thin, tender fingers, like an artist, you have a thin, tender soul ... "

In Lopakhin's speech, Chekhov emphasizes sharp, commanding and instructive intonations when he addresses the servants: “Leave me alone. Tired." "Bring me kvass." "We must remember ourselves." In Lopakhin’s speech, Chekhov crosses various elements: it also feels the life practice of Lopakhin the merchant (“gave forty”, “the smallest”, “net income”) and peasant origin (“if”, “basta”, “dumped the fool”, “to tear his nose”, “with a pig snout in a row of guns”, “hung out with you”, “he was drunk”), and the influence of the lordly, pathetically sensitive speech: “I think:“ Lord, you gave us ... immense fields , the deepest horizons ... "" I would only like you to believe me as before, so that your amazing, touching eyes look at me as before. Lopakhin's speech takes on various shades depending on his attitude towards the audience, to the very subject of the conversation, depending on his state of mind. Lopakhin speaks seriously and excitedly about the possibility of selling the estate, warns the owners of the cherry orchard; his speech at this moment is simple, correct, clear. But Chekhov shows that Lopakhin, feeling his strength, even his superiority over the frivolous, impractical nobles, flirts a little with his democracy, deliberately contaminates book expressions (“a fruit of your imagination, covered in the darkness of the unknown”), deliberately distorts the grammatical and stylistic forms perfectly known to him. By this, Lopakhin is also ironic at the same time over those who “seriously” use these stamped or incorrect words and phrases. So, for example, along with the word: “goodbye”, Lopakhin says “goodbye” several times; along with the word “huge” (“Lord, you gave us huge forests”) he pronounces “huge” - (“a bump, however, a huge one will jump”), and the name Ophelia is probably deliberately distorted by Lopakhin, who remembered Shakespeare's text and almost who paid attention to the sound of the word Ophelia: "Okhmeliya, O nymph, remember me in your prayers." "Okhmelia, go to the monastery."

Creating the image of Trofimov, Chekhov experienced certain difficulties, understanding the possible censorship attacks: “I was mainly frightened ... by the unfinished business of some student Trofimov. After all, Trofimov is in exile every now and then, he is constantly expelled from the university, but how do you portray these things? In fact, the student Trofimov appeared before the audience at a time when the public was agitated by student "riots". Chekhov and his contemporaries were witnesses to the fierce but fruitless struggle waged against "recalcitrant citizens" for several years by "... the government of Russia... with the help of its numerous troops, police and gendarmes."

In the image of the "eternal student" - raznochinets, the son of the doctor - Trofimov, Chekhov showed the superiority of democracy over the noble-bourgeois "nobility". To the anti-social, anti-patriotic idle life of Ranevskaya, Gaev, Pishchik, the destructive "activity" of the acquirer-owner Lopakhin, Chekhov contrasts the search for social truth by the Trofimovs, who ardently believe in the triumph of a just social life in the near future. Creating the image of Trofimov, Chekhov wanted to preserve the measure of historical justice. Therefore, on the one hand, he opposed the conservative noble circles, which they saw in modern democratic intellectuals - immoral, mercantile, ignorant "grimy", "cook's children" (see the image of the reactionary Rashevich in the story "In the Estate"); on the other hand, Chekhov wanted to avoid idealizing Trofimov, as he perceived a certain limitation of the Trofimovs in creating a new life.

In accordance with this, the democratic student Trofimov is shown in the play as a man of exceptional honesty and disinterestedness, he is not constrained by established traditions and prejudices, mercantile interests, addiction to money, to property. Trofimov is poor, suffers hardships, but categorically refuses to "live at someone else's expense", to borrow. Trofimov's observations and generalizations are broad, intelligent, and objectively fair: the nobles "live on credit, at someone else's expense", temporary "masters", "predatory beasts" - the bourgeois make limited plans for the reorganization of life, the intellectuals do nothing, they do not look for anything, the workers they live badly, "they eat disgustingly, sleep ... thirty - forty in one room." Trofimov's principles (work, live for the sake of the future) are progressive and altruistic; his role - the herald of the new, the enlightener - should arouse the respect of the viewer.

But with all this, Chekhov shows in Trofimov some features of limitation, inferiority, and the author finds in him the features of a “clumsy” that bring Trofimov closer to other characters in the play. The breath of the world of Ranevskaya and Gaev also affects Trofimov, despite the fact that he fundamentally does not accept their way of life and is confident in the hopelessness of their situation: "there is no turning back." Trofimov speaks indignantly about idleness, “philosophizing” (“We only philosophize,” “I’m afraid of serious conversations”), while he himself also does little, talks a lot, loves teachings, a ringing phrase. In Act II, Chekhov forces Trofimov to refuse to continue the idle, abstract "yesterday's conversation" about the "proud man", while in Act IV he forces Trofimov to call himself a proud man. Chekhov shows that Trofimov is also not active in life, that his existence is also subject to elemental forces ("fate is chasing him"), and he himself unreasonably denies himself even personal happiness.

In the play "The Cherry Orchard" there is no such positive hero who would fully correspond to the pre-revolutionary era. Time required a writer-propagandist whose loud voice would sound both in open denunciation and in the positive beginning of works. Chekhov's remoteness from the revolutionary struggle muffled his authorial voice, softened his satire, and expressed itself in the insufficient concreteness of his positive ideals.

Thus, in The Cherry Orchard, the distinctive features of the poetics of Chekhov the playwright were manifested: a departure from the pretentious plot, theatricality, external eventlessness, when the plot is based on the author's thought, which lies in the subtext of the work, the presence of symbolic details, subtle lyricism.

But nevertheless, with the play The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov contributed to the progressive liberation movement of his era. Showing the “clumsy, unhappy life”, people “stupid”, Chekhov forced the viewer to say goodbye to the old without regret, awakened in his contemporaries faith in the happy humane future of his homeland (“Hello, new life!”), contributed to the approach of this future.

List of used literature

.M. L. Semanova "Chekhov at school", 1954

2.M.L. Semanov "Chekhov the Artist", 1989

.G. Berdnikov “The life of wonderful people. A.P. Chekhov, 1974

.V. A. Bogdanov "The Cherry Orchard"

Tags: "The Cherry Orchard" by A.P. Chekhov: the meaning of the name and features of the genre Abstract Literature

Municipal budgetary educational institution "Secondary school of the village of Verkhniy Arbash" of the Kukmor municipal district

Republic of Tatarstan

Republican Conference of Research Works of Students

“My Self in Big Science” named after R.I. Utyamyshev

Nomination "Russian language and literature"

"The Cherry Orchard" by A.P. Chekhov: problems and poetics

class

Kamalova Elvira Ilnurovna

Scientific adviser:

teacher of Russian language

and literature 1kv. categories

Kamalova Gulfina Munipovna

Table of contents

Introduction

Chapter 1. Public life in the 80s of the 19th century.

The formation of the artistic talent of A.P. Chekhov.

1.1. "New drama" as a genre that synthesizes all the motives of creativity

A.P. Chekhov.

Chapter 2. Poetics and problems of the comedy "The Cherry Orchard".

Definition of the genre of the work.

2.1. The main knot of dramatic conflict.

1. The doom and illusory existence of Chekhov's heroes.

Conclusion.

List of used literature.

Topic: “The Cherry Orchard” by A.P. Chekhov

Kamalova Elvira Ilnurovna MBOU "Secondary school d. Verkhniy Arbash" Grade 11

Scientific adviser: Kamalova Gulfina Munipovna

Since childhood, I have been reading his stories “Kashtanka”, “Horse Surname”, “I want to sleep”. As I got older, I became interested in his more serious works.

On the advice of the teacher of literature Kamalova Gulfina Munipovna, she read the plays "The Seagull", "Three Sisters", "Uncle Vanya" and learned a lot about Chekhov, the playwright.

Among dramatic works, I especially like the comedy The Cherry Orchard, because it was in it that Chekhov's concept of life, its special feeling and understanding, were most fully realized.

Research topic– “The Cherry Orchard” by A.P. Chekhov: problems and poetics

The object of my research is the work of A.P. Chekhov, the subject of the research is the problems and poetics of the comedy "The Cherry Orchard".

Research objectives:

Determine the place of A.P. Chekhov in the literature of deaf timelessness of the 80s;

Establish the origins of the "new drama" by A.P. Chekhov;

Find out the main knot of the dramatic conflict of comedy;

To reveal the problems and poetics of comedy.

Chapter 1. Social life in the 80s of the 19th century. The formation of the artistic talent of A.P. Chekhov.

The formation of the artistic talent of A.P. Chekhov proceeded in the period of deaf stagnation of the 80s of the 19th century, when a dramatic painful change was made in the worldview of the Russian intelligentsia. “It seems that everyone was in love, fell out of love and is now looking for new hobbies,” Chekhov defined the essence of the social life of his time with sad irony.

“Everything that they messed up, that they set up, that people blocked themselves with, everything needs to be thrown away in order to feel life. Enter into the original, simple attitude towards her, ”wrote the playwright.

It was precisely such a simple relationship with life that Chekhov, the artist, greatly valued, well aware that the “general idea or god of a living person” must be sought anew, that the answer to the painful question about the meaning of human existence can only be given by life in its complex course, historical self-movement and self-development. .

The more intently Chekhov peered into life, frozen in complacency and indifferent stupefaction, the sharper and more penetratingly he felt the tremors of a new life breaking through it to the light, with which the writer concluded a “spiritual union”. What it would be specifically, he did not know, but he felt that it should be based on such a “general idea” that would not truncate the living fullness of being, but, like a vault of heaven, would embrace it: “A person needs not three arshins of earth, not a manor, but the whole globe, all nature, where in the open space he could show all the properties and characteristics of his free spirit.

1. "New Drama" as a genre synthesizing all the motives of A.P. Chekhov's creativity

Chekhov was not destined to write a novel, but the “new drama” became a genre that synthesized all the motives of his work. It was in it that Chekhov's concept of life, its special feeling and understanding, were most fully realized.

Chekhov's dramas are permeated by an atmosphere of general unhappiness. They don't have happy people. Their heroes, as a rule, are not lucky either in big or small: they all turn out to be failures to one degree or another. In "The Seagull", for example, there are five stories of unsuccessful love, in "The Cherry Orchard" "non-pretentiousness" is a characteristic feature of all the characters.

General trouble is complicated and intensified by the feeling of general loneliness.In Chekhov's drama there is a special atmosphere of deafness - psychological deafness. People are too absorbed in their own troubles and failures, and therefore they do not hear each other well. Communication between them hardly turns into a dialogue.With mutual interest and goodwill, they cannot get through to each other in any way, since they “talk to themselves and for themselves” more.

This gives rise to a special sense of the drama of life. Evil in Chekhov's plays is crushed, penetrating everyday life, dissolving into everyday life. Therefore, in Chekhov it is very difficult to find a clear culprit and a specific source of human failures. A frank and direct bearer of social evil is absent in his dramas. There is a feeling that everyone individually and collectively is to blame for the inconsistency of relations between people to one degree or another. This means that evil lies in the very foundations of the life of society, in its very composition. Life in the forms in which it exists now, as it were, cancels itself, casting a shadow of doom and incompleteness on all people, on all its direct participants.

Therefore, conflicts are muted in Chekhov's plays, there is no clear division of heroes into positive and negative accepted in classical drama. Even the "prophet of the future" Petya Trofimov in "The Cherry Orchard" is both "stupid" and "shabby gentleman" at the same time, and Uncle Vanya's shot at Professor Serebryakov is a blunder not only in the literal, but also in a broader, symbolic sense.

Chapter 2. Poetics and problems of the comedy "The Cherry Orchard". Definition of the genre of the work.

I want to use the example of the comedy The Cherry Orchard to reveal the poetics and problems of Chekhov's dramaturgy.

A.P. Chekhov called The Cherry Orchard a comedy. In his letters, he repeatedly and specifically emphasized this. But contemporaries perceived his new thing as a drama. Stanislavsky wrote: "For me, The Cherry Orchard is not a comedy, not a farce - but a tragedy in the first place." And he staged The Cherry Orchard in that dramatic vein.

This production, despite the noisy audience success, did not satisfy Chekhov: “I can say one thing: Stanislavsky ruined my play.” As if the matter is clear: Stanislavsky introduced dramatic and tragic notes into the comedy and thereby violated Chekhov's plan. But in reality, everything looks much more complicated. Let's try to figure out why?

It is no secret that the genre of comedy did not at all exclude the serious and sad in Chekhov. "The Seagull", for example, Chekhov called a comedy, but this is a play with a deeply dramatic fate of people. And in The Cherry Orchard, the playwright did not deny the dramatic tonality: he made sure that the sound of the “broken string” was very sad, he welcomed the sad finale of the fourth act, the scene of the farewell of the heroes, and in a letter to the actress M.P. Lilina, who played the role Ani, approved the tears at the words: “Farewell, home! Farewell, old life!

But at the same time whenStanislavsky drew attention to the fact that there are many crying people in the play, Chekhov said: “Often I have remarks “through tears”, but this only shows the mood of faces, not tears.” In the scenery of the second act, Stanislavsky wanted to introduce a cemetery, but Chekhov corrected: “There is no cemetery in the second act, but it was a very long time ago. Two, three slabs lying randomly - that's all that's left"

So, it was not about removing the sad element from The Cherry Orchard, but about softening its shades. . Chekhov emphasized that the sadness of his heroes is often superficial, that their tears sometimes hide the tearfulness common to nervous and weak people. By thickening the dramatic colors, Stanislavsky obviously violated Chekhov's measure of the ratio of the dramatic to the comic, the sad to the funny. The result was a drama where Chekhov dreamed of a lyrical comedy.

A.P. Skaftymov drew attention to the fact that all the heroes of the Chekhov play are presented in a dual, tragicomic light. It is impossible not to notice, for example, notes of the author's sympathetic attitude towards Ranevskaya and even Gaev. A number of researchers, seizing on them, began to talk about Chekhov's poeticization of the outgoing nobility, called him the "singer" of noble nests, and reproached him for "feudal-gentry romance." But after all, Chekhov's sympathy for Ranevskaya does not exclude hidden irony over her practical helplessness, flabbiness of character, and infantilism.

There are certain sympathetic notes in Chekhov and in the image of Lopakhin. He is sensitive and kind, he has intelligent hands, he does everything possible to help Ranevskaya and Gaev keep the estate in their hands. Chekhov gave other researchers a reason to talk about his "bourgeois sympathies." But after all, in the double Chekhovian coverage, Lopakhin is far from being a hero: he has a business-like prosaic lack of wings, he is not able to get carried away and love, in relations with Varya Lopakhin is comical and awkward, and finally, he himself is dissatisfied with his life and fate.

A number of researchers saw the author's sympathy in the coverage of the young heroes of the drama - Petya Trofimov and Anya. There was even a tradition, which has not been outlived to this day, to present them as the "petrels" of the revolution. But the comic decline applies no less to these actors.

Thus, all the characters in Chekhov are given in double illumination; the author both sympathizes with some aspects of their characters, and flaunts the funny and bad - there is no absolute bearer of evil. Good and evil are here in rarefied and dissolved existence in the everyday life.

At first glance, the play presents a classic clear alignment of social forces in Russian society and outlines the prospect of a struggle between them: the outgoing nobility (Ranevskaya and Gaev), the rising and triumphant bourgeoisie (Lopakhin), new revolutionary forces that are replacing the nobility and the bourgeoisie (Petya and Anya). Social, class motives are also found in the characters of the characters: the lordly carelessness of Ranevskaya and Gaev, the bourgeois practicality of Lopakhin, the revolutionary inspiration of Petya and Anya.

However, the seemingly central event - the struggle for the cherry orchard - is devoid of the significance that a classical drama would assign to it. The conflict based on social struggle is muted in Chekhov's play. Lopakhin, the Russian bourgeois, is devoid of predatory grip and aggressiveness towards the nobles - Ranevskaya and Gaev, and the nobles - any resistance to Lopakhin. It turns out as if the estate itself floats into his hands, and he, as it were, reluctantly buys a cherry orchard.

2.1. The main knot of dramatic conflict

What is the main knot of the dramatic conflict? Probably not in the economic bankruptcy of Ranevskaya and Gaev. Indeed, already at the very beginning of the drama, they have an excellent option for economic prosperity, proposed by the kindness of the heart of the same Lopakhin: rent out the garden for summer cottages. But the heroes refuse him. Why? Obviously, because the drama of their existence is deeper than elementary ruin, so deep that money cannot fix it and the fading life in the heroes cannot be returned.

On the other hand, the purchase of the cherry orchard by Lopakhin also does not eliminate the deeper conflict of this person with the world. T Lopakhin's ordeal is short-lived, it is quickly replaced by a feeling of despondency and sadness. This strange merchant turns to Ranevskaya with words of reproach and reproach: “Why, why didn’t you listen to me? My poor, good, you will not return now. And as if in unison with all the heroes of the play, Lopakhin utters a significant phrase with tears: “Oh, if only all this would pass, if only our awkward, unhappy life would somehow change.”

Here Lopakhin directly touches on the hidden, but the main source of drama: it lies not in the struggle for the cherry orchard, but in the subjective dissatisfaction with life, equally, although in different ways, experienced by all the heroes of The Cherry Orchard without exception. This life goes absurdly and awkwardly, it brings neither joy nor a feeling of happiness to anyone. This life is not only unhappy for the main characters, but also for Charlotte, lonely and useless with her tricks, and for Epikhodov with his constant failures, and for Simeonov-Pishchik with his eternal need for money.

2.2 Doom and illusory existence of Chekhov's heroes.

The drama of life lies in the division of the most essential, its root foundations. And therefore, all the heroes of the play have a sense of the temporality of their stay in the world, a sense of the gradual exhaustion and death of those forms of life that once seemed unshakable and eternal. In the play, everyone lives in anticipation of the inevitable impending fateful end. The old foundations of life are disintegrating both outside and in the souls of people, and new ones are not yet born, at best they are vaguely anticipated, and not only by the young heroes of the drama. The same Lopakhin says: “Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I think: Lord, you gave us huge forests, vast fields, the deepest horizons, and living here, we ourselves should really be giants ... "

The future presents these people with a request to which, due to their human weakness, they are not able to give an answer. There is in the well-being of Chekhov's heroes a feeling of some kind of doom and illusory nature of their existence. From the very beginning, we have people in front of us, anxiously listening to something inevitable that is coming ahead. This breath of the end is brought into the very beginning of the piece. It is not only in the fateful date known to all - August 22, when the cherry orchard will be sold for debts. This date also has a different, symbolic meaning - the absolute end. In its light, their conversations are illusory, unstable and capricious - changeable communication. People are, as it were, turned off for a good half of their existence from the accelerating flow of life. They live and feel at half strength, they are hopelessly late, lagging behind.

The circular composition of the play is also symbolic, connected with the motive of being late, first to the arrival and then to the departure of the train. Chekhov's heroes are deaf in relation to each other, not because they are selfish, but because in their situation full-blooded communication is simply impossible. They would be happy to reach out to each other, but something constantly "revokes" them. The characters are too immersed in the experience of internal drama, looking back sadly or looking ahead with anxieties and hopes. The present remains outside the scope of their attention, and therefore they simply do not have enough strength for complete mutual “listening”.

“Everyone, shuddering and looking around with fear, is waiting for something ... The sound of a broken string, the rude appearance of a tramp, an auction at which they will sell a cherry orchard. The end is coming, approaching, despite the evenings with Charlotte Ivanovna's tricks, dancing to the orchestra and recitation. That's why laughter is not funny, that's why Charlotte Ivanovna's tricks hide some inner emptiness. When you follow an impromptu ball arranged in a town, you obviously know that someone from the auction will come and announce that the cherry orchard is sold - and therefore you cannot surrender completely to the power of fun. Here is the prototype of life as Chekhov portrays it. Death will certainly come, liquidation, rude, violent, inevitable, and what we considered fun, rest, joy is only an intermission, waiting for the curtain to rise over the final scene. ... They live, the inhabitants of the "Cherry Orchard", as if half asleep, transparently, on the border of the real and the mystical. Bury life. Somewhere, a string broke. And the youngest of them, barely blooming like Anya, seem to be dressed up in all white, with flowers, ready to disappear and die, ”wrote A.R. Kugel. in the book "Russian playwrights".

In the face of impending changes, Lopakhin's victory is a conditional victory, just as Ranevskaya's defeat is a conditional defeat. Time is running out for both. There is something in The Cherry Orchard from Chekhov's intuitive premonitions of the impending fatal end: “I feel like I don’t live here, but fall asleep or I’m leaving, leaving somewhere without stopping, like a balloon.” This motif of escaping time stretches throughout the play. “Once upon a time, you and I, sister, slept in this very room, and now I’m already fifty-one years old, oddly enough…” Gaev says. “Yes, time is running out,” Lopakhin echoes him.

Chapter 3. Who is destined to be the creator of new life, who will plant a new garden in it?

Time runs! But who is destined to be the creator of a new life, who will plant a new garden in it? Life does not yet give an answer to this question. Petya and Anya seem to be ready. And where Trofimov speaks of the disorder of the old life and calls for a new life, the author definitely sympathizes with him. But there is no personal strength in Petya's reasoning, there are a lot of words that look like spells, and sometimes some kind of empty “gayness” also slips through. In addition, he is an "eternal student" and a "shabby gentleman." It is not such people who master life and become creators and masters of it. On the contrary, life itself pretty patted Petya. Like all the "klutzes" in the play, he is clumsy and powerless before her. Youth, inexperience and unsuitability for life are also emphasized in Ana. It is no coincidence that Chekhov warned M.P. Lilina: “Anya is first of all a child, cheerful, who does not fully know life.”

So, Russia, as Chekhov saw it at the turn of two centuries, had not yet worked out in itself a real ideal of man. Premonitions ripen in her the next coup, but people are not yet ready for it. There are rays of truth, humanity and beauty in each of the heroes of The Cherry Orchard.

But they are so scattered and fragmented that they are unable to illuminate the coming day. Good secretly shines everywhere, but there is no sun - cloudy, diffused lighting, the light source is not focused. At the end of the play, there is a feeling that life ends for everyone, and this is not accidental. The people of the Cherry Orchard have not risen to the heights required of them by the coming test.

Conclusion.

“It’s good to remember such a person, vigor immediately returns to your life, a clear meaning enters it again,” Gorky wrote about Chekhov.

Yes, A.P. Chekhov is an extraordinary writer. In the course of my research, I tried to show the formation of Chekhov's artistic talent, to establish the origins of the "new" drama, to reveal the problems and poetics of the comedy "The Cherry Orchard".

Based on the analysis of the work, it was proved that it was in it that Chekhov's concept of life, its special feeling and understanding, were most fully realized.

We were able to observe the doom and illusory nature of the existence of Chekhov's heroes. The author could not answer the question of who will be the creator of a new life, because the heroes of The Cherry Orchard did not rise to the height that the coming life requires of them.

References

A.P. Chekhov. Plays. Nizhne-Volga book publishing house, Volgograd 1981

M. Nevedomsky. Without wings. Anniversary Chekhov collection. - M., 1910.

N.Ya.Abramovich. The human way. Anniversary Chekhov collection.-M., 1910.

T.K. Shah - Azizova. Chekhov and Western European drama of his time.

A.P. Skaftymov. Moral quests of Russian writers. - M., 1972.

A.R. Kugel. Russian playwrights. - M., 1934.

A.Turkov. A.P. Chekhov and his time. - M., 1987.

A.P. Chekhov. Leads and stories. M. "Enlightenment" 1986

A.P. Chekhov in portraits, illustrations, documents. Edited by V.A. Manuilov. State Educational and Pedagogical Publishing House of the Ministry of Education of the RSFSR Leningrad Branch Leningrad. 1957

On October 5, 1903, N.K. Garin-Mikhailovsky wrote to one of his correspondents: “I met and fell in love with Chekhov. He's bad. And it burns out like the most wonderful day of autumn. Delicate, subtle, barely perceptible tones. A beautiful day, caress, peace, and the sea, mountains doze in it, and this moment seems eternal with a wonderful pattern given. And tomorrow ... He knows his tomorrow and is glad and satisfied that he has finished his drama "The Cherry Orchard".

Chekhov wrote his last play about home, about life, about the motherland, about love, about losses, about the inexorably escaping time. The piercingly sad comedy The Cherry Orchard has become a testament to readers, theater, and the 20th century. Textbook is now the assertion that Chekhov laid the foundations of a new drama, created a "theatre of philosophical mood." However, at the beginning of the century this position did not seem indisputable. Each new play by Chekhov caused conflicting assessments. The comedy "The Cherry Orchard" was no exception in this series. The nature of the conflict, the characters, the poetics of Chekhov's drama - everything in this play was unexpected and new.

So, Gorky, Chekhov's “brother” on the stage of the Art Theater, saw rehashings of old motives in The Cherry Orchard: “I listened to Chekhov’s play - in reading it does not give the impression of a big thing. New - not a word. Everything - moods, ideas - if you can talk about them - faces - all this was already in his plays. Of course - beautifully and - of course - from the stage it will blow on the audience with green melancholy. And I don’t know what the longing is about. ”

Contrary to such forecasts, Chekhov's play became a classic of the Russian theater. Chekhov's artistic discoveries in dramaturgy, his special vision of life are clearly manifested in this work.

Chekhov was perhaps the first to realize the inefficiency of the old methods of traditional dramaturgy. "Other paths for drama" were outlined in The Seagull (1896), and it is there that Treplev pronounces a well-known monologue about the modern theater with its moralistic tasks, arguing that this is "routine", "prejudice". Aware of the power of the unsaid, Chekhov built his own theater - a theater of allusions, allusions, halftones, moods, exploding traditional forms from within.

In pre-Chekhovian dramaturgy, the action unfolding on the stage had to be dynamic and was built as a clash of characters. The intrigue of the drama developed within the framework of a given and clearly developed conflict, affecting mainly the area of ​​social ethics.

The conflict in Chekhov's drama is fundamentally different. A. P. Skaftymov defined its originality deeply and accurately: “Chekhov’s dramatic and conflicting positions do not consist in opposing the volitional orientation of different sides, but in objectively caused contradictions, before which the individual will is powerless ... And each play says: it’s not individual people who are to blame, but all the existing composition of life as a whole. The special nature of the conflict makes it possible to detect internal and external action, internal and external plots in Chekhov's works. Moreover, the main thing is not the external plot, developed quite traditionally, but the internal one, which Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko called the "second plan", or "undercurrent".

The external plot of The Cherry Orchard is the change of owners of the house and garden, the sale of the family estate for debts. (Chekhov already addressed this topic in the youthful drama Fatherless, although it was secondary there, the love affair was the main one.) This plot can be considered in the plane of social problems and commented accordingly. A businesslike and practical merchant opposes the educated, mentally subtle, but not adapted to life nobles. The plot of the play is the destruction of the poetry of estate life, which indicates the onset of a new historical era. Such an unambiguous and straightforward interpretation of the conflict was very far from Chekhov's intention.

As for the construction of the plot of the play "The Cherry Orchard", there is no conflict in it, because there is no outwardly expressed confrontation of the parties and a clash of characters. The social role of Lopakhin is not limited to the traditional one. idea of ​​a merchant-acquirer. This character is no stranger to sentimentality. Meeting with Ranevskaya for him is a long-awaited and exciting event: “... I would only like you to believe me as before, so that your amazing, touching eyes look at me as before. Merciful God! My father was a serf with your grandfather and father, but you, in fact, you once did so much for me that I forgot everything and love you like my own ... more than my own.

However, at the same time, Lopakhin is a pragmatist, a man of action. Already in the first act, he joyfully announces: “There is a way out ... Here is my project. Attention please! Your estate is only twenty versts from the city, there is a railway nearby, and if the cherry orchard and the land along the river are divided into summer cottages and then leased out for summer cottages, then you will have at least twenty-five thousand a year income.

True, this “exit” to a different, material plane is the plane of utility and benefit, but not beauty, so it seems “vulgar” to the owners of the garden. In essence, there is no opposition. There is a plea for help, on the one hand: “What should we do? Teach what? (Ranevskaya) and willingness to help, on the other hand: “I teach you every day. Every day I say the same thing” (Lopakhin). The characters do not understand each other, as if they speak different languages. In this sense, the dialogue in the second act is indicative:

"Lopakhin. We must finally decide - time does not wait. The question is completely empty. Do you agree to give the land for dachas or not? Answer in one word: yes or no? Only one word! Lyubov Andreevna. Who's smoking disgusting cigars here... (Sits down.) GAYEV. Here the railway was built, and it became convenient. (Sits down.) We went to the city and had breakfast ... yellow in the middle! I would first go to the house, play one game ... Lyubov Andreevna. You will succeed. Lopakhin. Only one word! (Pleading.) Give me an answer! GAYEV (yawning). Whom? LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA (looks in her purse). Yesterday there was a lot of money, and today there is very little. My poor Varya, out of economy, feeds everyone with milk soup, in the kitchen they give old people one pea, and I spend it somehow pointlessly ... (I dropped my purse, scattered the gold ones.) Well, they fell down ... (She is annoyed.) "

Chekhov shows the confrontation of different life positions, but not the struggle of characters. Lopakhin pleads, begs, but they don’t hear him, or rather, they don’t want to hear him. In the first and second acts, the viewer retains the illusion that it is this hero who will play the role of a patron and friend and save the cherry orchard.

The climax of the external plot - the auction sale of the cherry orchard on August 22 - coincides with the denouement. The hope that everything would somehow work itself out melted away like smoke. The Cherry Orchard and the estate have been sold, but nothing has changed in the arrangement of the characters and their destinies. Moreover, the denouement of the external plot is even optimistic:

“Gaev (cheerfully). In fact, everything is fine now. Before the sale of the cherry orchard, we all worried, suffered, and then, when the issue was finally resolved, irrevocably, everyone calmed down, even cheered up ... I am a bank servant, now I am a financier ... yellow in the middle, and you, Lyuba, after all, look better , that's for sure."

So, in organizing external action, Chekhov departed from the canons of classical drama. The main event of the play turned out to be moved to the "periphery", behind the stage. According to the logic of the playwright, it is a private episode in the eternal cycle of life.

Artistic analysis of the play "The Cherry Orchard"

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The problems and poetics of the play by A.P. Chekhov "The Cherry Orchard". The peculiarity of the genre.

Comedy "The Cherry Orchard" (1903)
1. The example of the comedy "The Cherry Orchard" clearly shows what the innovation of the Chekhov theater is.
There is no single plot-forming event in the play, there is no single conflict. It can be said that "centrifugal" forces prevail in the plot, and not "centripetal" forces, as in traditional dramatic plots.
The formal impetus for the development of the plot is the conflict between Gaev and Ranevskaya and Lopakhin (over the sale of the cherry orchard). But in the course of action, the imaginary nature of this conflict becomes obvious. The sale of the cherry orchard is a plot element that does not connect, but rather separates the lines of heroes from each other. Heroes cannot be divided into positive and negative, and even into unconditionally main and secondary ones. Each of them has his own life drama (tragicomedy), his own problems (moreover, these problems are somewhat similar in type), their own “plot in the plot”, in a special way connected with the cherry orchard. At first, on the stage, as it were, “nothing happens”: a feeling of “eventlessness” is created. The main fuss around the cherry orchard does not begin immediately. The main plot-forming element is not some
some event, not the intrigue itself, but the author's thought, expressed in the subtext, at the level of "undercurrents".
2. Each of the characters has its own conflict - an internal discrepancy in character. What is desired does not correspond to reality, motivations do not correspond to actions, the self-esteem of the hero does not correspond to the impression made on others, the words of the hero do not correspond to his deeds (Ranevskaya is a loving woman, mother, betrays everyone, lets
around the world; Lopakhin, loving and pitying these people, feasts at the commemoration of the garden; Petya Trofimov often says that he needs to work, but he himself is an “eternal student”; after the words "let's be quiet" empty chatter continues.
But all these conflicts have something in common - this is a tragicomedy of an unfulfilled fate. Before us are heroes who have lost their past, present (except Lopakhin, but he is not happy with his luck) "and the future, who have lost themselves.
Ranevskaya, Lopakhin and others constantly play the hardened role imposed on them by society and culture. They have mastered the language of concepts and the style of behavior characteristic of their social groups, behind their rhetoric almost no individuality is visible,
personality.
The heroes of The Cherry Orchard often ridicule, and sometimes even denounce each other. Each of them sees well the weaknesses of the other, but cannot be critical of himself.
The fate of the old servant Firs is symbolic. Everyone leaves, leaving him to the mercy of fate: they forgot the man. At the same time, Firs is the embodiment of the past: they left their past, they lost themselves. The play ends with Firs's word: "klutz", which can be attributed to
to each of the heroes.
"Undercurrents".
Each hero lives his own inner life, little dependent on plot twists and replicas of other heroes. The intonation does not correspond to the meaning of the statement: the words are pronounced “mechanically”, and the intonation expresses the state of the hero
Leitmotif remarks of heroes. Heroes often repeat the same or similar in meaning replicas, which can be called leitmotifs. For example, Gaev constantly talks to himself about billiards, and sometimes asks pointlessly: "Whom?" This
the comic device shows that the hero lives in his own separate world, not noticing what is happening around him.
Dialogue disruption. The dialogue does not line up, the characters answer each other
inappropriately for a friend, everyone speaks “about his own”, “without hearing” others.
This indicates the disunity of people: all the characters are equally deaf to other people's problems, contacts and interpersonal connections are broken.
Thus, a through motif of deafness appears in the play. Firs - a really, physically deaf person - becomes a symbolic figure. Moreover, Firs, paradoxically, is perhaps the most sympathetic of the heroes: devoted to his masters, he continues to take care of them touchingly, cares for Gaev, who is 51 years old, like a baby (“We put on the wrong trousers again”). He answers out of place, because he really does not hear well, and other heroes have deafness not physical, but mental. Their position is in some sense worse than that of Fiers, which is why he rightly calls them "klutheads."
The role of symbols in the play
Symbolism is an important element of Chekhov's dramaturgy. The central character in the play is
The Cherry Orchard.
The sound of the ax is accompanied by the music ordered by Lopakhin, a symbol of the new
life that his grandchildren and great-grandchildren should see.
Genre originality of the play
Chekhov called The Cherry Orchard a comedy. What is the origin of comedy?
1. The basis of the conflict is absurd contradictions in characters and situations.
2. Rough comic, even grotesque farcical elements are often used.
3. In the monologues of heroes, the technique of absurdity is often used.
A vivid example is Gaev's appeal to the closet:
“Dear respected closet!..”, etc. Judging by the context, Gaev
wants to say about the books that are in this cabinet, about the role of these
books in his life (see text). But inherent in this hero is ridiculous
manner of expression turns a parody-journalistic monologue
about books in an absurdly phantasmagorical "dialogue with the closet".
However, the overall mood of the comedy is sad and the ending is sad. In principle, this is traditional for Russian comedies.
But there is something else in the play "The Cherry Orchard" that "prevents" from calling it a comedy. This element is best described as lyricism, the lyrical principle. Lyricism is manifested in the monologues of all heroes, even comic ones. Each of them is unhappy in his own way, sad about the meaningless flow of life and about his homeless existence.
Thus, the play can be called a lyrical comedy, and some researchers even call it a lyrical drama. This indicates an important trend in the development of drama: in the XX century. drama as a medium genre supplants the traditional "extreme" genres known in classical drama (remember the two meanings of the term
"drama"): it can carry both tragic and comic motives, and even combine them within one stage episode.

The Cherry Orchard. The play "The Cherry Orchard" is written on the theme of the ruin of a noble nest, passing into the hands of a wealthy peasant merchant. But behind a private everyday collision, epochal changes are revealed here: the change of noble culture to bourgeois culture, the break in cultural traditions, different life and spiritual orientations of people at the turn of eras. Life appears in motion, historical changes are reflected (1861) and the inevitable radical shifts in social and personal psychology. The past causes acute nostalgia not only among the ruined nobles, but also among people of other social and generational groups: Lopakhin, Anya Ranevskaya. It’s not just the klutzy nobles who are fading into the past. The culture that encouraged people to live not only according to profit calculations, but also according to the laws of beauty, is leaving. For a merchant, a garden is only an object of income or loss. For the nobles, he is a symbol of the beauty of the Russian land - a symbol of the fatherland, faith in his country and his strength, always dear to a Russian person. Before our eyes, there is a break in times and traditions (19-20 and 20-21 centuries). That is why Lopakhin's victory over Ranevskaya and Gaev does not seem to be the final triumph, the complete victory of a businessman. And the well-being of the winner becomes evidence of the historical incompleteness of the play. Only for one hour after the end of the auction, he experiences a sense of success and triumph. In another, he himself reflects on his socially transformative mission: “you just need to start doing something to understand how few honest, decent people ...” The characters are devoid of typical certainty. Ranevskaya and her brother cannot be called only loafers, idle, frivolous people. All this belongs to them. But they also have sensitivity, kindness, dignity, patriotism. They can take the drama of the situation lightly, which is why their social frivolity is even attractive. Lopakhin does not look like a typical merchant, he has no hostility towards the masters, he keeps a grateful memory of them, he is attached to their estate. The word "klutz" is applicable to all the characters in the play, all of them have some vulnerability. This quality of the play is associated with its genre originality. The play was often performed as a drama and perceived by readers as a drama, although by its nature it is a lyrical comedy. She has lyrical-dramatic and comedic-humorous pathos at the same time. Real Faces evoke in the reader either sympathy, or ridicule, or admiration, or irony. Chekhov creates this play of "tonal chiaroscuro" by unexpected collisions of people; their statements inappropriate to the situation; remarks thrown "for themselves", not addressed to anyone. In the play there is no strict division of heroes into positive and negative. The author's assessment of their characters is devoid of unambiguity. The main collision of Chekhov's plays is a general dissatisfaction with the way of life, a passionate expectation of change. In the plays of Ch. there are many symbols, entire scenes and episodes are symbolic: left in a boarded-up estate in the finale of "V.s." Firs. Topoi are symbolic - a house and a garden. Sounds are symbolic - the sound of a broken string in the second act of "VS", the blow of an ax on cherry trees at the conclusion of the play. Some lyrical and comic means are also symbolic: pauses, omissions, eccentric tricks, etc.