Uncle Vanya

"حقیقت هر چه باشد، کم تر از بلاتکلیفی و بی خبری دردناک است."

نمایشنامه دایی وانیا مجموع شخصیت هاییست که به امروز ما بی ارتباط نیستند. شخصیت هایی با پیش زمینه ها و اهداف متفاوت اما ناراضی از شرایط. اهداف پس از مدتی بیهوده به نظرشون می‌آیند و سبک زندگی همدیگر را نمی پسندند.
می شه از متن اینطور برداشت کرد که چخوف از طریق وانیا بعضی از "روشنفکر" های وقت که به واسطه کارهای علمی شون و نوشتن چند مقاله تبدیل به بت می شن، اما show more در عمل کمک زیادی به بشریت نداشتند، نقد می کنه. همینطور، دغدغه پزشک داستان از اوایل متن در رابطه با تخریب جنگل ها و محیط زیست و نقش انسان ها برای من جالب بودند.
من نمایشنامه زیادی نخوندم اما از خوندن این نمایشنامه که لذت بردم. شخصیت ها واقعی و ملموس بودند. دغدغه هاشون لزوما محدود به ۱۰۰ سال پیش نبود و شاید همین مساله خیلی جذاب بود.

"آدم باید وحشی بی شعوری باشد که این همه زیبایی را در بخاری یا اجاق بسوزاند، آن هم برای نابود کردن آن چه خودمان قادر به وجود آوردنش نیستیم... انسان تاکنون چه چیزی آفریده؟ فقط نابود کرده. از تعداد جنگل ها روز به روز کاسته می شود، رودها به خشکی می گرایند، شکار نایاب می شود، آب و هوا خشک و نامساعد می شود و زمین هر روز فقیرتر و زشت تر می شود." show less

I related to this at at least nine broadly related points (the wasted life, the tragic ridiculousness of the old man who can't catch up with the fact that old he is, the feeling of universal decline emerging from one's own decline, how watching other people laugh and cry makes you laugh and cry for maybe motor neuron reasons, how very very hard it is to walk away from someone you KNOW is gonna kiss you for the second time ever, how sad it is to be smart and unaccomplished and peevish, how it's all a fuckin dumb waste man, etc., etc.), and yet it still didn't really compare to Three Sisters on any level really for me, showing the superiority of art over life I guess.

First saw this at the Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, nearly five decades ago (1969)--before I had read it in translation or (parts) in Russian. (The title, Дядя Ваня can be understood after two weeks of Russian.) The Guthrie had the tone just right--a comedy with a sad ending? Rather like so many Shakespeare tragedies with (somewhat) happy endings-- RIII,even MacBeth. Back then it was rare to see Checkov anything but dreary, quasi-tragic, similar to Ibsen. Тогда это было редко видеть Checkov ничего, кроме тоскливой, квази-трагический, похожий на Ибсена.
Dr. Astrov's resounding support for the forest resounded with me, whose family has lived in New England show more since 1661, and who grew up summers in Maine on 40 acres of field and forest, the nearest inhabited farm a mile away. Astrov might appall modern pretend conservationists paid to manage forests but who sell off the oak to create better hunting. (Even Brazilians who strip rainforest don't pretend they're land protectionists.)
Amazing how telling, how contemporary, land issues here and in the Cherry Orchard are. Of course, land was always a plague in Russia: anybody might own huge property, and not be rich. Wealth required owning the peasants to work tracts, мужики. Gogol's Chichikov discovers a tax loophole which can make him appear rich (thus marriageable), by buying dead people still on the lists. Amusing throughout. Hilarious when one sentimental landowner ironically named Bitch-son, собакевич, refuses to sell his former carriage-repairmen (?).
I suppose trees are the modern tax-roll "souls": valuable when dead, as pretend conservationists know. show less

Uncle Vanya Déjà Vu All Over Again
Review of the Theater Communications Group paperback (October 23, 2018) of a translation by Richard Nelson, Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky of the Russian language original Дядя Ваня (1897).

Yes, I know this is the 3rd version of Uncle Vanya that I've read within the last month. In advance preparation for seeing a recent Toronto theatrical adaptation by Liisa Repo-Martell (which is not in print) I listened to David Mamet's and read Richard Nelson's adaptations which I reviewed respectively here and here.

The curious thing about Uncle Vanya is not only the number of translations which exist, but also the number of so-called "adaptations". These latter efforts are usually in the cause of show more modernizing the text and in cutting the number of characters. In both the Mamet & Nelson adaptations the walk-on part of the Workman is dropped. Nelson even drops the part of the impoverished farmer Telegin aka Waffles, whose part is admittedly small but does allow for musical interludes. A recent National Theatre Live adaptation by Simon Stephens (published as Vanya (2023)) both modernizes the text AND turns it into a one-man solo production with Andrew Scott playing ALL THE PARTS. You can see a trailer for that here [NOTE: If you are reading this in early March 2024, the NTLive production might be available at your local movie theatre]

Anyway, I wanted to read a complete authentic translation version as well and this one from the TCG series of classic Russian plays seemed the best go-to. It includes an informative introduction by translator Richard Pevear and at least a short series of footnotes to explain various references and to provide historical background. This was an ideal introductory and complete Uncle Vanya.

Trivia and Links
As Uncle Vanya is in the public domain, you can read various online translations at sources such as Project Gutenberg. The English language translator is not identified.

You can also read the original Russian language version of Uncle Vanya at iLibrary.ru. If you turn on web translator you can obtain your own rough translation. show less

I found this drama to be quite dark. The setting, rural Russia in the late 1800s, was interesting. I believe Chekhov was trying to make a statement not just about the rural wealthy, but about humanity in general. He describes a degeneration of the relationship between man and nature, an indolent, ignorant oblivion, which destructs without replacing. A very dark drama.

A classic work of angst and despair, set in pre-revolutionary Russia. This is a play in four acts, and one of Chekov's most famous. It is a tale of mediocrity, and the pains of mediocrity in people who know they were not born to be mediocre. An extended family is thrown together for a summer, and seething resentments gradually bubble to the surface and threaten to destroy the title character, a man brought down by his own character flaws, but unable to recognize that, and attributing it to the whims of others. This play would probably not make it through a modern theatre workshop; it is filled with long expository speeches, and you go for quite a while without knowing what the stakes are, and never quite figure out who the antagonist show more and protagonist is, because the characters seem to change roles throughout the course of the play. Still, it can speak to a modern audience, if they will allow themselves to slow down to a pace unknown in our modern world, and move with the characters through their lazy days. show less

I read while listening to the Librivox full cast recording, which I will recommend. I found having different people reading the different parts (plus their intonations at certain times) really helped me keep track of who was who.

This play struck me as having a lot going on even through it is mostly talk rather than action. Vanya (Ivan) has been caring for his niece Sonia's estate after his sister died; now, his (former?) brother-in-law & his second wife Helena are visiting. Helena exerts a disruptive influence on all the male characters which irresistably reminded me of Helen of Troy.

I was struck by how modern some of the ideas expressed were. One example of this is the doctor's ideas about forests - his thoughts about deforestation and show more climate could have been spoken by someone today. I hadn't realized that these ideas existed in the late 1800s when Chekhov wrote this play! show less