6 Emotions
I leave the performance of Uncle Vanya with a peculiar mixture of
emotions. Undoubtedly, they are imprecise,fleeting and indefinite. But I may
be able to say something about them, without fear of gross inaccuracy.
I pity Vanya and Sonya; they will have a hard life ahead of them–they
know it and we know it–and if they dofind peace, then it will only be
the peace of the grave. But I am thinking not just about the characters
I have seen, but about myself and some of the people I know. On stage,
we saw Serebryakov: an academic who writes about art, who is respected
(to some degree) by his family, but about whom there is some doubt
whether he really knows very much or has contributed anything to the
academy or to the world beyond. Vanya sums it up:‘all he ever does is
write nonsense, grumble and feel jealous.’^1 An academic spectator who
hears this description and does not wonder, at least for a moment, if it
applies to her is probably not an academic whose writings I would bother
to read. There are other characters whose concerns do not directly relate to
my own, but who remind me of other people I care about–be they
bored, depressed, hopelessly idealistic, ill or elderly. I am alsofilled with
admiration and respect for some of the actors and, perhaps, I am mildly
frustrated with others. And there is a familiar feeling after seeing a
Chekhov play: I wonder in a vague and general way whether humans can
make progress, whether they can achieve anything meaningful or be ful-
filled by their work and by their relationships with each other.
Undoubtedly, these are sad thoughts, even if I do not draw exclusively
negative conclusions (and I don’t normally draw any conclusions at all);
and it would not, I don’t think, be completely unjust to say that there’s
something unsatisfyingly pleasurable in having the occasion to wallow in
them. I am also aware of a kind of general gloominess or moroseness,
which may be linked with all my other, various feelings, but which is
certainly distinct from all of them. At the same time, I wonder what I have
missed in the translation and what it would have seemed like to an
audience in 1897, and perhaps I am a little nervous that we may have
missed the last bus home.