feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/sparknotes/Uncle Vanya/section_0_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Uncle Vanya.act i
feat_summary_id: act i
feat_summary: {"name": "Act I - Part One", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210227035013/https://www.sparknotes.com/drama/unclevanya/section1/", "summary": "Act I opens on a muggy autumn afternoon in the garden of Professor Serebryakov's estate. Marina, an old nanny, sits knitting by a samovar as Astrov, the country doctor, paces back and forth. Astrov reminisces about the time when he first came to the region, a time when Vera Petrovna--Serebryakov's first wife and mother to his daughter Sonya--was still alive. Marina notes that since then Astrov has lost his good looks, started to show signs of age, and taken to drinking. Astrov then goes into an extended speech about his \"boring, stupid, sordid\" life, a life in which he is overworked and surrounded by \"eccentric people\". As a result, his feelings are \"dead to the world\": Astrov needs nothing, wants nothing, and loves no one. Refusing Marina's offer of food, Astrov then recounts how he went to Malitskoe over Lent to treat an epidemic of spotted typhus. One of his patients died while under chloroform, and he is plagued with guilt. Astrov also laments that future generations will not bother to remember those living in the present. Marina comforts him: God will remember. Voynitsky , Serebryakov's brother-in-law by his marriage to Vera Petrovna and caretaker of the estate, then enters yawning. He complains that the professor and his wife, having recently relocated to the estate from the city, have thrown the estate out of kilter, drawing everyone into sleep, boredom, and lethargy. Marina concurs, bemoaning the disruption of their dining schedule. Suddenly Serebryakov,--ridiculously over-dressed in an overcoat, a pair of galoshes, and a pair of gloves--his current young wife Yelena, Sonya, and Telegin, an impoverished landowner dubbed \"Waffles\" for his pockmarked face, return from a stroll. Speaking of plans to visit a forest preserve, the party enters the house; Telegin joins the group in the garden. Dreamily Voynitsky sighs about Yelena's beauty. When Astrov reproaches him for not joining the conversation, Voynitsky replies listlessly that he has nothing to say, that he has grown old and lazy. Bitterly, he goes on to caricaturize the other members of the household. His mother, Maria, is a \"lazy old crow\" who has \"one eye fastened on the grave\" and the other fixed on her pamphlets \"for the dawn of a new life.\" The professor is an \"old, dried up biscuit, a learned, smoke-cured fish\", a pompous charlatan of an art historian who knows nothing about art and has already faded into obscurity. Indeed, Serebryakov has spent his life \"pouring from one empty pot into the next\"--the empty pot of this joke referring to the vacant bodies of his mind, ideas, works, and students. When Astrov remarks that Voynitsky seems to envy Serebryakov, he readily concurs. In particular, Voynitsky envies Serebryakov's success with women: the examples he adduces are his angelic late sister, his mother , and the beautiful Yelena. He then points out the illogic of Yelena's fidelity to her dottering, decrepit husband. He questiones how it can be moral to deny one's vitality and youth while immoral to deceive a husband one despises. Voynitsky's remarks almost reduce Telegin to tears. Apparently his wife deserted him the day after their wedding because of his \"unprepossessing appearance.\" \"Waffles\" has remained faithful, however, supporting the children she has had by her lover. Though miserable, he has retained his pride, while his wife has grown old, and her lover has died.", "analysis": "As one might have noticed, most of the characters of Uncle Vanya are consumed with lethargy, boredom, and regret over their disappointing lives, mourning years they have wasted in drudgery and the ways in which their fates might have been different. To recall Voynitsky's description of his mother, the characters here are half-dead with bitterness and hopeless seek the renewal of their lives. Their malaise is reflected in the mugginess of the afternoon; indeed, Voynitsky will remark in the following scene that in such \"lovely weather\" one could hang oneself. Astrov introduces this theme of the wasted life in two extended speeches. Notably Astrov describes being surrounded by \"eccentric people\" and then, in the course of his disappointing life, becoming \"strange\" himself. This motif of estrangement--referring to a sense of alienation from not only those around you but from yourself as well--will recur in relation to the aging doctor. Astrov's becoming strange to himself over the years is materialized here by his \"colossal\" and \"asinine\" moustache--a moustache utterly foreign to his own self-concept. One might also note that the motif of self-estrangement describes Astrov's constant introspection as well. To some extent, the self-reflection he undertakes requires that he \"make himself strange\", that he distance himself from what is conventionally considered the most familiar--one's inner life. This self-estrangement is matched by the distance Astrov takes from the world around him when brooding. Though ostensibly addressed to Marina, his speeches seem to proceed entirely without their manifest listener in mind. Note how Astrov suddenly remembers that Marina is next to him at the end of his first speech  and then rambles off into a memory of his childhood nanny. Also of interest is Astrov's story of the patient who dies while anesthetized. A few lines above, Astrov relates how his feelings have become dead to the world, how he no longer needs, wants, or loves. This numbness is tantamount to a kind of anesthesia: thus we can consider the dead patient Astrov's double, and, indeed, Astrov himself might be aware of this doubling. Tellingly, his \"feelings  back again\" when the patient dies. As he confesses: \"I was tortured so much by my conscience I felt that I'd deliberately killed him. \" One could argue then that Astrov \"kills\"--albeit accidentally--the anesthetized patient, which doubles for ending his own anesthetizing in order to feel again, even if that feeing is one of guilt. Speeches such as Astrov's will recur throughout Uncle Vanya, the inner life of the characters constantly standing to release a torrent of unhappy introspection. In reading these artificially long speeches, however, we should keep in mind that they burst through the surface of a realistic, everyday context--indeed, a dialogue, action, and setting defined by banality and petty detail. Recall, for example, the anecdote of the dining schedule or Voynitsky's famous understated entrance: \" Yes Yes\" One might also recall here that the name \"Vanya\" is as common as \"Jack\" or \"John\" in English. Such use of banality helps to compose the very particular malaise described above, the misery in passing through the course of the everyday. Indeed, as we will see, everyday routine will ultimately subsume the changes in the characters' lives that their speeches might seem to foreshadow. Chekhov's petty details lend themselves to comedy as well: the humor in Voynitsky's entrance is clear. Thus we cannot close this discussion without noting how the tragedy of these first scenes is interlaced with comic elements . There are a number of obvious examples of humor here: the \"unprepossessing\" Telegin or \"Waffles\" is held up for ridicule. Voynitsky's caricatures of his mother and the professor are hilarious, posing him as a sort of bitterly comic misanthrope, the character who explicitly and insightfully points out the miserable nature of those around him.There also appears some subtle moments of humor. For example, when Marina offers Astrov something to eat after his first speech, she perhaps both ironizes his endless oratory and reveals herself as oblivious to these ruminations in her blind religious faith. Such an ironic interpretation of dialogue would find new voices in Chekhov's text alongside its manifestly tragic content: in this case, voices that criticize an indulgence in introspection as well as a simple-minded religiosity. In blending the tragic and comic, Uncle Vanya allows for endless flights of fancy along these lines."}
text: ACT I
  
  A country house on a terrace. In front of it a garden. In an avenue of
  trees, under an old poplar, stands a table set for tea, with a samovar,
  etc. Some benches and chairs stand near the table. On one of them is
  lying a guitar. A hammock is swung near the table. It is three o'clock
  in the afternoon of a cloudy day.
  
  MARINA, a quiet, grey-haired, little old woman, is sitting at the table
  knitting a stocking.
  
  ASTROFF is walking up and down near her.
  
  MARINA. [Pouring some tea into a glass] Take a little tea, my son.
  
  ASTROFF. [Takes the glass from her unwillingly] Somehow, I don't seem to
  want any.
  
  MARINA. Then will you have a little vodka instead?
  
  ASTROFF. No, I don't drink vodka every day, and besides, it is too hot
  now. [A pause] Tell me, nurse, how long have we known each other?
  
  MARINA. [Thoughtfully] Let me see, how long is it? Lord--help me to
  remember. You first came here, into our parts--let me think--when was
  it? Sonia's mother was still alive--it was two winters before she died;
  that was eleven years ago--[thoughtfully] perhaps more.
  
  ASTROFF. Have I changed much since then?
  
  MARINA. Oh, yes. You were handsome and young then, and now you are an
  old man and not handsome any more. You drink, too.
  
  ASTROFF. Yes, ten years have made me another man. And why? Because I am
  overworked. Nurse, I am on my feet from dawn till dusk. I know no rest;
  at night I tremble under my blankets for fear of being dragged out to
  visit some one who is sick; I have toiled without repose or a day's
  freedom since I have known you; could I help growing old? And then,
  existence is tedious, anyway; it is a senseless, dirty business, this
  life, and goes heavily. Every one about here is silly, and after
  living with them for two or three years one grows silly oneself. It is
  inevitable. [Twisting his moustache] See what a long moustache I have
  grown. A foolish, long moustache. Yes, I am as silly as the rest, nurse,
  but not as stupid; no, I have not grown stupid. Thank God, my brain is
  not addled yet, though my feelings have grown numb. I ask nothing, I
  need nothing, I love no one, unless it is yourself alone. [He kisses her
  head] I had a nurse just like you when I was a child.
  
  MARINA. Don't you want a bite of something to eat?
  
  ASTROFF. No. During the third week of Lent I went to the epidemic at
  Malitskoi. It was eruptive typhoid. The peasants were all lying side by
  side in their huts, and the calves and pigs were running about the floor
  among the sick. Such dirt there was, and smoke! Unspeakable! I slaved
  among those people all day, not a crumb passed my lips, but when I got
  home there was still no rest for me; a switchman was carried in from the
  railroad; I laid him on the operating table and he went and died in
  my arms under chloroform, and then my feelings that should have been
  deadened awoke again, my conscience tortured me as if I had killed the
  man. I sat down and closed my eyes--like this--and thought: will our
  descendants two hundred years from now, for whom we are breaking the
  road, remember to give us a kind word? No, nurse, they will forget.
  
  MARINA. Man is forgetful, but God remembers.
  
  ASTROFF. Thank you for that. You have spoken the truth.
  
  Enter VOITSKI from the house. He has been asleep after dinner and
  looks rather dishevelled. He sits down on the bench and straightens his
  collar.
  
  VOITSKI. H'm. Yes. [A pause] Yes.
  
  ASTROFF. Have you been asleep?
  
  VOITSKI. Yes, very much so. [He yawns] Ever since the Professor and his
  wife have come, our daily life seems to have jumped the track. I sleep
  at the wrong time, drink wine, and eat all sorts of messes for luncheon
  and dinner. It isn't wholesome. Sonia and I used to work together and
  never had an idle moment, but now Sonia works alone and I only eat and
  drink and sleep. Something is wrong.
  
  MARINA. [Shaking her head] Such a confusion in the house! The Professor
  gets up at twelve, the samovar is kept boiling all the morning, and
  everything has to wait for him. Before they came we used to have dinner
  at one o'clock, like everybody else, but now we have it at seven. The
  Professor sits up all night writing and reading, and suddenly, at two
  o'clock, there goes the bell! Heavens, what is that? The Professor wants
  some tea! Wake the servants, light the samovar! Lord, what disorder!
  
  ASTROFF. Will they be here long?
  
  VOITSKI. A hundred years! The Professor has decided to make his home
  here.
  
  MARINA. Look at this now! The samovar has been on the table for two
  hours, and they are all out walking!
  
  VOITSKI. All right, don't get excited; here they come.
  
  Voices are heard approaching. SEREBRAKOFF, HELENA, SONIA, and TELEGIN
  come in from the depths of the garden, returning from their walk.
  
  SEREBRAKOFF. Superb! Superb! What beautiful views!
  
  TELEGIN. They are wonderful, your Excellency.
  
  SONIA. To-morrow we shall go into the woods, shall we, papa?
  
  VOITSKI. Ladies and gentlemen, tea is ready.
  
  SEREBRAKOFF. Won't you please be good enough to send my tea into the
  library? I still have some work to finish.
  
  SONIA. I am sure you will love the woods.
  
  HELENA, SEREBRAKOFF, and SONIA go into the house. TELEGIN sits down at
  the table beside MARINA.
  
  VOITSKI. There goes our learned scholar on a hot, sultry day like this,
  in his overcoat and goloshes and carrying an umbrella!
  
  ASTROFF. He is trying to take good care of his health.
  
  VOITSKI. How lovely she is! How lovely! I have never in my life seen a
  more beautiful woman.
  
  TELEGIN. Do you know, Marina, that as I walk in the fields or in
  the shady garden, as I look at this table here, my heart swells with
  unbounded happiness. The weather is enchanting, the birds are singing,
  we are all living in peace and contentment--what more could the soul
  desire? [Takes a glass of tea.]
  
  VOITSKI. [Dreaming] Such eyes--a glorious woman!
  
  ASTROFF. Come, Ivan, tell us something.
  
  VOITSKI. [Indolently] What shall I tell you?
  
  ASTROFF. Haven't you any news for us?
  
  VOITSKI. No, it is all stale. I am just the same as usual, or perhaps
  worse, because I have become lazy. I don't do anything now but croak
  like an old raven. My mother, the old magpie, is still chattering about
  the emancipation of woman, with one eye on her grave and the other on
  her learned books, in which she is always looking for the dawn of a new
  life.
  
  ASTROFF. And the Professor?
  
  VOITSKI. The Professor sits in his library from morning till night, as
  usual--
  
     "Straining the mind, wrinkling the brow,
      We write, write, write,
      Without respite
      Or hope of praise in the future or now."
  
  Poor paper! He ought to write his autobiography; he would make a
  really splendid subject for a book! Imagine it, the life of a retired
  professor, as stale as a piece of hardtack, tortured by gout, headaches,
  and rheumatism, his liver bursting with jealousy and envy, living on the
  estate of his first wife, although he hates it, because he can't afford
  to live in town. He is everlastingly whining about his hard lot, though,
  as a matter of fact, he is extraordinarily lucky. He is the son of
  a common deacon and has attained the professor's chair, become the
  son-in-law of a senator, is called "your Excellency," and so on. But
  I'll tell you something; the man has been writing on art for twenty-five
  years, and he doesn't know the very first thing about it. For
  twenty-five years he has been chewing on other men's thoughts about
  realism, naturalism, and all such foolishness; for twenty-five years he
  has been reading and writing things that clever men have long known and
  stupid ones are not interested in; for twenty-five years he has been
  making his imaginary mountains out of molehills. And just think of the
  man's self-conceit and presumption all this time! For twenty-five years
  he has been masquerading in false clothes and has now retired absolutely
  unknown to any living soul; and yet see him! stalking across the earth
  like a demi-god!
  
  ASTROFF. I believe you envy him.
  
  VOITSKI. Yes, I do. Look at the success he has had with women! Don Juan
  himself was not more favoured. His first wife, who was my sister, was
  a beautiful, gentle being, as pure as the blue heaven there above us,
  noble, great-hearted, with more admirers than he has pupils, and she
  loved him as only beings of angelic purity can love those who are as
  pure and beautiful as themselves. His mother-in-law, my mother, adores
  him to this day, and he still inspires a sort of worshipful awe in her.
  His second wife is, as you see, a brilliant beauty; she married him in
  his old age and has surrendered all the glory of her beauty and freedom
  to him. Why? What for?
  
  ASTROFF. Is she faithful to him?
  
  VOITSKI. Yes, unfortunately she is.
  
  ASTROFF. Why unfortunately?
  
  VOITSKI. Because such fidelity is false and unnatural, root and branch.
  It sounds well, but there is no logic in it. It is thought immoral for a
  woman to deceive an old husband whom she hates, but quite moral for her
  to strangle her poor youth in her breast and banish every vital desire
  from her heart.
  
  TELEGIN. [In a tearful voice] Vanya, I don't like to hear you talk so.
  Listen, Vanya; every one who betrays husband or wife is faithless, and
  could also betray his country.
  
  VOITSKI. [Crossly] Turn off the tap, Waffles.
  
  TELEGIN. No, allow me, Vanya. My wife ran away with a lover on the day
  after our wedding, because my exterior was unprepossessing. I have never
  failed in my duty since then. I love her and am true to her to this day.
  I help her all I can and have given my fortune to educate the daughter
  of herself and her lover. I have forfeited my happiness, but I have kept
  my pride. And she? Her youth has fled, her beauty has faded according to
  the laws of nature, and her lover is dead. What has she kept?
  
  HELENA and SONIA come in; after them comes MME. VOITSKAYA carrying a
  book. She sits down and begins to read. Some one hands her a glass of
  tea which she drinks without looking up.
  
  SONIA. [Hurriedly, to the nurse] There are some peasants waiting out
  there. Go and see what they want. I shall pour the tea. [Pours out some
  glasses of tea.]
  
  MARINA goes out. HELENA takes a glass and sits drinking in the hammock.
  
  ASTROFF. I have come to see your husband. You wrote me that he had
  rheumatism and I know not what else, and that he was very ill, but he
  appears to be as lively as a cricket.
  
  HELENA. He had a fit of the blues yesterday evening and complained of
  pains in his legs, but he seems all right again to-day.
  
  ASTROFF. And I galloped over here twenty miles at break-neck speed! No
  matter, though, it is not the first time. Once here, however, I am going
  to stay until to-morrow, and at any rate sleep _quantum satis._
  
  SONIA. Oh, splendid! You so seldom spend the night with us. Have you had
  dinner yet?
  
  ASTROFF. No.
  
  SONIA. Good. So you will have it with us. We dine at seven now. [Drinks
  her tea] This tea is cold!
  
  TELEGIN. Yes, the samovar has grown cold.
  
  HELENA. Don't mind, Monsieur Ivan, we will drink cold tea, then.
  
  TELEGIN. I beg your pardon, my name is not Ivan, but Ilia, ma'am--Ilia
  Telegin, or Waffles, as I am sometimes called on account of my
  pock-marked face. I am Sonia's godfather, and his Excellency, your
  husband, knows me very well. I now live with you, ma'am, on this estate,
  and perhaps you will be so good as to notice that I dine with you every
  day.
  
  SONIA. He is our great help, our right-hand man. [Tenderly] Dear
  godfather, let me pour you some tea.
  
  MME. VOITSKAYA. Oh! Oh!
  
  SONIA. What is it, grandmother?
  
  MME. VOITSKAYA. I forgot to tell Alexander--I have lost my memory--I
  received a letter to-day from Paul Alexevitch in Kharkoff. He has sent
  me a new pamphlet.
  
  ASTROFF. Is it interesting?
  
  MME. VOITSKAYA. Yes, but strange. He refutes the very theories which he
  defended seven years ago. It is appalling!
  
  VOITSKI. There is nothing appalling about it. Drink your tea, mamma.
  
  MME. VOITSKAYA. It seems you never want to listen to what I have to say.
  Pardon me, Jean, but you have changed so in the last year that I
  hardly know you. You used to be a man of settled convictions and had an
  illuminating personality----
  
  VOITSKI. Oh, yes. I had an illuminating personality, which illuminated
  no one. [A pause] I had an illuminating personality! You couldn't say
  anything more biting. I am forty-seven years old. Until last year I
  endeavoured, as you do now, to blind my eyes by your pedantry to the
  truths of life. But now--Oh, if you only knew! If you knew how I lie
  awake at night, heartsick and angry, to think how stupidly I have wasted
  my time when I might have been winning from life everything which my old
  age now forbids.
  
  SONIA. Uncle Vanya, how dreary!
  
  MME. VOITSKAYA. [To her son] You speak as if your former convictions
  were somehow to blame, but you yourself, not they, were at fault. You
  have forgotten that a conviction, in itself, is nothing but a dead
  letter. You should have done something.
  
  VOITSKI. Done something! Not every man is capable of being a writer
  _perpetuum mobile_ like your Herr Professor.
  
  MME. VOITSKAYA. What do you mean by that?
  
  SONIA. [Imploringly] Mother! Uncle Vanya! I entreat you!
  
  VOITSKI. I am silent. I apologise and am silent. [A pause.]
  
  HELENA. What a fine day! Not too hot. [A pause.]
  
  VOITSKI. A fine day to hang oneself.
  
  TELEGIN tunes the guitar. MARINA appears near the house, calling the
  chickens.
  
  MARINA. Chick, chick, chick!
  
  SONIA. What did the peasants want, nurse?
  
  MARINA. The same old thing, the same old nonsense. Chick, chick, chick!
  
  SONIA. Why are you calling the chickens?
  
  MARINA. The speckled hen has disappeared with her chicks. I am afraid
  the crows have got her.
  
  TELEGIN plays a polka. All listen in silence. Enter WORKMAN.
  
  WORKMAN. Is the doctor here? [To ASTROFF] Excuse me, sir, but I have
  been sent to fetch you.
  
  ASTROFF. Where are you from?
  
  WORKMAN. The factory.
  
  ASTROFF. [Annoyed] Thank you. There is nothing for it, then, but to go.
  [Looking around him for his cap] Damn it, this is annoying!
  
  SONIA. Yes, it is too bad, really. You must come back to dinner from the
  factory.
  
  ASTROFF. No, I won't be able to do that. It will be too late. Now where,
  where--[To the WORKMAN] Look here, my man, get me a glass of vodka, will
  you? [The WORKMAN goes out] Where--where--[Finds his cap] One of the
  characters in Ostroff's plays is a man with a long moustache and short
  wits, like me. However, let me bid you good-bye, ladies and gentlemen.
  [To HELENA] I should be really delighted if you would come to see me
  some day with Miss Sonia. My estate is small, but if you are interested
  in such things I should like to show you a nursery and seed-bed whose
  like you will not find within a thousand miles of here. My place is
  surrounded by government forests. The forester is old and always ailing,
  so I superintend almost all the work myself.
  
  HELENA. I have always heard that you were very fond of the woods. Of
  course one can do a great deal of good by helping to preserve them, but
  does not that work interfere with your real calling?
  
  ASTROFF. God alone knows what a man's real calling is.
  
  HELENA. And do you find it interesting?
  
  ASTROFF. Yes, very.
  
  VOITSKI. [Sarcastically] Oh, extremely!
  
  HELENA. You are still young, not over thirty-six or seven, I should say,
  and I suspect that the woods do not interest you as much as you say they
  do. I should think you would find them monotonous.
  
  SONIA. No, the work is thrilling. Dr. Astroff watches over the old woods
  and sets out new plantations every year, and he has already received a
  diploma and a bronze medal. If you will listen to what he can tell you,
  you will agree with him entirely. He says that forests are the ornaments
  of the earth, that they teach mankind to understand beauty and attune
  his mind to lofty sentiments. Forests temper a stern climate, and in
  countries where the climate is milder, less strength is wasted in the
  battle with nature, and the people are kind and gentle. The inhabitants
  of such countries are handsome, tractable, sensitive, graceful in speech
  and gesture. Their philosophy is joyous, art and science blossom among
  them, their treatment of women is full of exquisite nobility----
  
  VOITSKI. [Laughing] Bravo! Bravo! All that is very pretty, but it is
  also unconvincing. So, my friend [To ASTROFF] you must let me go on
  burning firewood in my stoves and building my sheds of planks.
  
  ASTROFF. You can burn peat in your stoves and build your sheds of stone.
  Oh, I don't object, of course, to cutting wood from necessity, but why
  destroy the forests? The woods of Russia are trembling under the blows
  of the axe. Millions of trees have perished. The homes of the wild
  animals and birds have been desolated; the rivers are shrinking, and
  many beautiful landscapes are gone forever. And why? Because men are too
  lazy and stupid to stoop down and pick up their fuel from the ground.
  [To HELENA] Am I not right, Madame? Who but a stupid barbarian could
  burn so much beauty in his stove and destroy that which he cannot make?
  Man is endowed with reason and the power to create, so that he may
  increase that which has been given him, but until now he has not
  created, but demolished. The forests are disappearing, the rivers are
  running dry, the game is exterminated, the climate is spoiled, and the
  earth becomes poorer and uglier every day. [To VOITSKI] I read irony in
  your eye; you do not take what I am saying seriously, and--and--after
  all, it may very well be nonsense. But when I pass peasant-forests
  that I have preserved from the axe, or hear the rustling of the young
  plantations set out with my own hands, I feel as if I had had some small
  share in improving the climate, and that if mankind is happy a thousand
  years from now I will have been a little bit responsible for their
  happiness. When I plant a little birch tree and then see it budding
  into young green and swaying in the wind, my heart swells with pride and
  I--[Sees the WORKMAN, who is bringing him a glass of vodka on a tray]
  however--[He drinks] I must be off. Probably it is all nonsense, anyway.
  Good-bye.
  
  He goes toward the house. SONIA takes his arm and goes with him.
  
  SONIA. When are you coming to see us again?
  
  ASTROFF. I can't say.
  
  SONIA. In a month?
  
  ASTROFF and SONIA go into the house. HELENA and VOITSKI walk over to the
  terrace.
  
  HELENA. You have behaved shockingly again. Ivan, what sense was there
  in teasing your mother and talking about _perpetuum mobile?_ And at
  breakfast you quarreled with Alexander again. Really, your behaviour is
  too petty.
  
  VOITSKI. But if I hate him?
  
  HELENA. You hate Alexander without reason; he is like every one else,
  and no worse than you are.
  
  VOITSKI. If you could only see your face, your gestures! Oh, how tedious
  your life must be.
  
  HELENA. It is tedious, yes, and dreary! You all abuse my husband and
  look on me with compassion; you think, "Poor woman, she is married to
  an old man." How well I understand your compassion! As Astroff said just
  now, see how you thoughtlessly destroy the forests, so that there will
  soon be none left. So you also destroy mankind, and soon fidelity and
  purity and self-sacrifice will have vanished with the woods. Why cannot
  you look calmly at a woman unless she is yours? Because, the doctor
  was right, you are all possessed by a devil of destruction; you have no
  mercy on the woods or the birds or on women or on one another.
  
  VOITSKI. I don't like your philosophy.
  
  HELENA. That doctor has a sensitive, weary face--an interesting face.
  Sonia evidently likes him, and she is in love with him, and I can
  understand it. This is the third time he has been here since I have
  come, and I have not had a real talk with him yet or made much of him.
  He thinks I am disagreeable. Do you know, Ivan, the reason you and I are
  such friends? I think it is because we are both lonely and unfortunate.
  Yes, unfortunate. Don't look at me in that way, I don't like it.
  
  VOITSKI. How can I look at you otherwise when I love you? You are my
  joy, my life, and my youth. I know that my chances of being loved in
  return are infinitely small, do not exist, but I ask nothing of you.
  Only let me look at you, listen to your voice--
  
  HELENA. Hush, some one will overhear you.
  
  [They go toward the house.]
  
  VOITSKI. [Following her] Let me speak to you of my love, do not drive me
  away, and this alone will be my greatest happiness!
  
  HELENA. Ah! This is agony!
  
  TELEGIN strikes the strings of his guitar and plays a polka. MME.
  VOITSKAYA writes something on the leaves of her pamphlet.
  
  The curtain falls.
  
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Act I - Part One
target: Act I opens on a muggy autumn afternoon in the garden of Professor Serebryakov's estate. Marina, an old nanny, sits knitting by a samovar as Astrov, the country doctor, paces back and forth. Astrov reminisces about the time when he first came to the region, a time when Vera Petrovna--Serebryakov's first wife and mother to his daughter Sonya--was still alive. Marina notes that since then Astrov has lost his good looks, started to show signs of age, and taken to drinking. Astrov then goes into an extended speech about his "boring, stupid, sordid" life, a life in which he is overworked and surrounded by "eccentric people". As a result, his feelings are "dead to the world": Astrov needs nothing, wants nothing, and loves no one. Refusing Marina's offer of food, Astrov then recounts how he went to Malitskoe over Lent to treat an epidemic of spotted typhus. One of his patients died while under chloroform, and he is plagued with guilt. Astrov also laments that future generations will not bother to remember those living in the present. Marina comforts him: God will remember. Voynitsky , Serebryakov's brother-in-law by his marriage to Vera Petrovna and caretaker of the estate, then enters yawning. He complains that the professor and his wife, having recently relocated to the estate from the city, have thrown the estate out of kilter, drawing everyone into sleep, boredom, and lethargy. Marina concurs, bemoaning the disruption of their dining schedule. Suddenly Serebryakov,--ridiculously over-dressed in an overcoat, a pair of galoshes, and a pair of gloves--his current young wife Yelena, Sonya, and Telegin, an impoverished landowner dubbed "Waffles" for his pockmarked face, return from a stroll. Speaking of plans to visit a forest preserve, the party enters the house; Telegin joins the group in the garden. Dreamily Voynitsky sighs about Yelena's beauty. When Astrov reproaches him for not joining the conversation, Voynitsky replies listlessly that he has nothing to say, that he has grown old and lazy. Bitterly, he goes on to caricaturize the other members of the household. His mother, Maria, is a "lazy old crow" who has "one eye fastened on the grave" and the other fixed on her pamphlets "for the dawn of a new life." The professor is an "old, dried up biscuit, a learned, smoke-cured fish", a pompous charlatan of an art historian who knows nothing about art and has already faded into obscurity. Indeed, Serebryakov has spent his life "pouring from one empty pot into the next"--the empty pot of this joke referring to the vacant bodies of his mind, ideas, works, and students. When Astrov remarks that Voynitsky seems to envy Serebryakov, he readily concurs. In particular, Voynitsky envies Serebryakov's success with women: the examples he adduces are his angelic late sister, his mother , and the beautiful Yelena. He then points out the illogic of Yelena's fidelity to her dottering, decrepit husband. He questiones how it can be moral to deny one's vitality and youth while immoral to deceive a husband one despises. Voynitsky's remarks almost reduce Telegin to tears. Apparently his wife deserted him the day after their wedding because of his "unprepossessing appearance." "Waffles" has remained faithful, however, supporting the children she has had by her lover. Though miserable, he has retained his pride, while his wife has grown old, and her lover has died.
feat_summary_analysis: As one might have noticed, most of the characters of Uncle Vanya are consumed with lethargy, boredom, and regret over their disappointing lives, mourning years they have wasted in drudgery and the ways in which their fates might have been different. To recall Voynitsky's description of his mother, the characters here are half-dead with bitterness and hopeless seek the renewal of their lives. Their malaise is reflected in the mugginess of the afternoon; indeed, Voynitsky will remark in the following scene that in such "lovely weather" one could hang oneself. Astrov introduces this theme of the wasted life in two extended speeches. Notably Astrov describes being surrounded by "eccentric people" and then, in the course of his disappointing life, becoming "strange" himself. This motif of estrangement--referring to a sense of alienation from not only those around you but from yourself as well--will recur in relation to the aging doctor. Astrov's becoming strange to himself over the years is materialized here by his "colossal" and "asinine" moustache--a moustache utterly foreign to his own self-concept. One might also note that the motif of self-estrangement describes Astrov's constant introspection as well. To some extent, the self-reflection he undertakes requires that he "make himself strange", that he distance himself from what is conventionally considered the most familiar--one's inner life. This self-estrangement is matched by the distance Astrov takes from the world around him when brooding. Though ostensibly addressed to Marina, his speeches seem to proceed entirely without their manifest listener in mind. Note how Astrov suddenly remembers that Marina is next to him at the end of his first speech  and then rambles off into a memory of his childhood nanny. Also of interest is Astrov's story of the patient who dies while anesthetized. A few lines above, Astrov relates how his feelings have become dead to the world, how he no longer needs, wants, or loves. This numbness is tantamount to a kind of anesthesia: thus we can consider the dead patient Astrov's double, and, indeed, Astrov himself might be aware of this doubling. Tellingly, his "feelings  back again" when the patient dies. As he confesses: "I was tortured so much by my conscience I felt that I'd deliberately killed him. " One could argue then that Astrov "kills"--albeit accidentally--the anesthetized patient, which doubles for ending his own anesthetizing in order to feel again, even if that feeing is one of guilt. Speeches such as Astrov's will recur throughout Uncle Vanya, the inner life of the characters constantly standing to release a torrent of unhappy introspection. In reading these artificially long speeches, however, we should keep in mind that they burst through the surface of a realistic, everyday context--indeed, a dialogue, action, and setting defined by banality and petty detail. Recall, for example, the anecdote of the dining schedule or Voynitsky's famous understated entrance: " Yes Yes" One might also recall here that the name "Vanya" is as common as "Jack" or "John" in English. Such use of banality helps to compose the very particular malaise described above, the misery in passing through the course of the everyday. Indeed, as we will see, everyday routine will ultimately subsume the changes in the characters' lives that their speeches might seem to foreshadow. Chekhov's petty details lend themselves to comedy as well: the humor in Voynitsky's entrance is clear. Thus we cannot close this discussion without noting how the tragedy of these first scenes is interlaced with comic elements . There are a number of obvious examples of humor here: the "unprepossessing" Telegin or "Waffles" is held up for ridicule. Voynitsky's caricatures of his mother and the professor are hilarious, posing him as a sort of bitterly comic misanthrope, the character who explicitly and insightfully points out the miserable nature of those around him.There also appears some subtle moments of humor. For example, when Marina offers Astrov something to eat after his first speech, she perhaps both ironizes his endless oratory and reveals herself as oblivious to these ruminations in her blind religious faith. Such an ironic interpretation of dialogue would find new voices in Chekhov's text alongside its manifestly tragic content: in this case, voices that criticize an indulgence in introspection as well as a simple-minded religiosity. In blending the tragic and comic, Uncle Vanya allows for endless flights of fancy along these lines.