Agreed.
DYADIN. That is fascinating! That is fascinating!
ELENA ANDREYEVNA (looking at the sky): What bird is that?
ZHELTOUKHIN: It is a hawk.
FYODOR: Friends, let’s drink the hawk’s health!
(SONYA laughs aloud.)
ORLOVSKY: Now, she has started. What’s the matter?
(KHROUSCHOV laughs aloud.)
ORLOVSKY: Why are you laughing?
MARIE VASSILIEVNA: Sophie! It is not right!
KHROUSCHOV: Oh, I am so sorry! … I’ll stop presently, presently…, ORLOVSKY: This is laughing without reason.
VOYNITSKY: Those two, you’ve only;o lift up your finger, and they burst out laughing. Sonya! (Lifting his finger.) Look now! …
KHROUSCHOV: Stop it! (Looking at his watch) Well, I have eaten and drunk, and now I must be off. It’s time I went.
SONYA: Where to?
KHROUSCHOV: To a patient. I’m as tired of my medical practice as of an unloved wife, or a long winter… .
SEREBRYAKOV: But, look here, medicine is your profession, your work, so to say… .
VOYNITSKY (ironically): He has another profession. He digs peat on his estate.
SEREBRYAKOV: What?
VOYNITSKY: Peat! A mining engineer has calculated with absolute certainty that there is peat on his land worth seven hundred and twenty thousand roubles. It isn’t a joke.
KHROUSCHOV: I don’t dig peat for the sake of money.
VOYNITSKY: Why do you dig it then?
KHROUSCHOV: In order that you should not cut down forests.
VOYNITSKY: Why not cut them? To hear you, one might think that forests only existed for the courtships of youths and maidens.
KHROUSCHOV: I never said anything of the sort.
VOYNITSKY: What I have had the honour of hearing you say up to now in defence of forests is all antiquated, not serious, and tendentious. Pray forgive me. I say this not without grounds, I know almost by heart all your arguments in defence… For instance… (Raising the tone of his voice and gesticulating, as though imitating KHROUSCHOV.) You men are destroying the forests, but they adorn the earth, they teach man to understand beauty and inspire him with a sense of majesty. Forests soften harsh climates. Where the climate is milder, there man exerts less effort in his struggle with nature, and therefore man there is gentler and kindlier. In countries with a mild climate people are handsome, alert, easily excited, their speech is elegant, their movements graceful. Arts and science flourish there, their philosophy is not gloomy, their relations to women are full of fine courtesy. And so on and so on… All this is fine, but so unconvincing that you must allow me to go on burning wood in the fireplaces and building wooden barns.
KHROUSCHOV: Cut forests, when it is a matter of urgency, you may, but it is time to stop destroying them. Every Russian forest is cracking under the axe, millions of trees are perishing, the abodes of beasts and birds are being ravaged, rivers are becoming shallow and drying up, wonderful landscapes are disappearing without leaving a trace; and all this because lazy man has not got the sense to stoop, to pick up fuel from the ground. One must be a barbarian (pointing to the trees) to burn that beauty in the fireplace, to destroy what we cannot create. Understanding and creative power have been granted to man to multiply what has been given him, but hitherto he has not created, he has only destroyed. The forests grow less and less, the rivers dry up, wild birds disappear, the climate is spoilt, and every day the earth grows poorer and uglier. You look at me ironically, and all I am saying seems to you antiquated and not serious, but when I pass by woods belonging to the peasants, woods which I have saved from being cut down, or when I hear the rustling of the young forest, which I have planted with my own hands, I realize that the climate is to a certain extent also in my power; and if a thousand years hence man is to be happy, I too shall have had a share in it. When I plant a little birch tree and then see how it is growing green and shaking in the wind, my soul is filled with pride from the realization that, thanks to me, there is one more life added on earth
FYODOR (interrupting): Your health, Wood Demon!
VOYNITSKY: All this is very fine, but if you looked at the matter, not from a novelette point of view, but from a scientific point of view, then
SONYA: Uncle George, your tongue is covered with rust. Do keep quiet!
KHROUSCHOV: Indeed, George Petrovich, let’s not discuss it. Please.
VOYNITSKY: As you like!
MARIE VASSILIEVNA: Ah!
SONYA: Granny, what’s the matter?
MARIE VASSILIEVNA (to SEREBRYAKOV): I had forgotten to tell you, Alexander… I’m losing my memory. … I had a letter to-day from Kharkov, from Paul Alexeyevich… .He asks to be remembered to you… .
SEREBRYAKOV: Thank you, I am very glad.
MARIE VASSILIEVNA: He sent me his new pamphlet and asked me to show it to you.
SEREBRYAKOV: It is interesting?
MARIE VASSILIEVNA: It is interesting, but somewhat odd. He refutes what he himself was defending seven years ago. It is very, very typical of our time. Never have people betrayed their convictions with such levity as they do now. It is terrible!
VOYNITSKY: There’s nothing terrible. Won’t you have some fish, maman?
MARIE VASSILIEVNA: But I want to speak!
VOYNITSKY: We have been talking for the last fifty years about tendencies and schools; it’s time we stopped.
MARIE VASSILIEVNA: It does not please you for some reason when I speak. Excuse me, George, but this last year you have changed so much that I can’t make you out at all. You used to be a man of definite conviction, an enlightened personality… .
VOYNITSKY: Oh, yes! I was an “enlightened personality” from which no one got any light. Permit me to get up. I was an “enlightened personality.” A more venomous joke couldn’t have been uttered! Now I am forty-seven. Up till last year I was deliberately trying, like you, to fog my eyes with all sorts of abstractions and scholasticism, in order not to see real life; and I thought that I was doing the right thing… But now, if only you knew what a great fool I seem to myself for having so stupidly let slip the time when I might have had everything, everything which my old age denies me now!
SEREBRYAKOV: Look here, George, you seem to blame your former convictions for something
SONYA: Enough, papa! It’s dull!
SEREBRYAKOV: Look here! You, as it were, blame your former convictions for something. But it is not they, it’s yourself who is at fault. You forget that convictions without deeds are dead. You ought to have been at work.
VOYNITSKY: Work? Not everyone is capable of being a writing perpeuium mobile.
SEREBRYAKOV: What do you mean to convey by that?
VOYNITSKY: Nothing. Let’s stop the conversation. We aren’t at home.
MARIE VASSILIEVNA: I am completely losing my memory.… I forgot to remind you, Alexander, to take your drops before lunch; I brought them with me, but forgot to remind you.
SEREBRYAKOV: You need not.
MARIE VASSILIEVNA: But you are ill, Alexander! You’re very ill!
SEREBRYAKOV: Why make a fuss about it? Old, ill, old, ill … that’s the only thing I hear! (To ZHELTOUKHIN) Leonid Stepanovich, allow me to get up and to go into the house. It is rather hot here and the mosquitoes are biting.
ZHELTOUKHIN: Please do. We’ve finished lunch.
SEREBRYAKOV: