3 Chekhov provides no information about the creative process he went through in turning The Wood Demon into Uncle Vanya. For speculation on the time of the actual writing of Uncle Vanya, see Chapter IX, Section 7, Note 4.
professors were offended by Chekhov's characterization of Professor Serebryakov as a pompous, giftless poseur, a kind of academic fraud. Stanislavsky represents Chekhov as laughing uproariously over the committee's contention that it was impossible for an enlightened man like Uncle Vanya to shoot at Professor Serebryakov, the former holder of a university chair. He might well have laughed at this, but he was angry enough to refuse these requests for changes and to withdraw Uncle Vanya from consideration by the Maly Theater — much to the dismay of some of its more practical-minded officials, for Chekhov's plays were then being eagerly sought by various theaters.
Taking advantage of this situation at once, the directors of the Moscow Art Theater pressed their claims on Uncle Vanya and promised to perform it exactly as Chekhov had written it. But he had never seen this company act one of his plays, he protested that spring when he was in Moscow. Their season was closed, the theater rented, and the scenery all stored until the fall. But his word was law, for they not only hoped to get Uncle Vanya but also to persuade him to write a new play for them. So on May 1, in a rented theater and without any scenery, the company put on a special performance of The Sea Gull for Chekhov and about ten other spectators.6 Stanislavsky recalls that, because of the conditions under which the play was staged, the impression created was only a middling one. After every act Chekhov ran on the stage, but his face bore no signs of inner joy. Some of the actors he praised but others he criticized, especially M. L. Roksanova, who acted Nina — he adamantly insisted that she never be allowed to portray this role again. Stanislavsky, who still felt shy and awkward in Chekhov's presence, waited in his dressing room after the performance for the storm he was sure would break over his head. He finally had to scarch out Chekhov: "Scold me," he pleaded. "Wonderful! Listen, it was wonderful!" Chekhov replied. "Only you need torn shoes and checkered trousers." More than a year passed before Stanislavsky fathomed the import of this cryptic comment — he had played Trigorin as a handsome, talented and elegantly dressed writer, whereas Chekhov was indicating that the inexperienced, sentimental Nina would more likely be attracted by an untalented writer who dressed in old checkered pants and worn shoes.
6 This date coincided with Lidiya Avilova's visit to Moscow when Chekhov met her at the railway station (See Chapter XX, p. 459). In her memoirs she tells that he tried to persuade her to stay over for the special performance of The Sea Gull, but she refused.
In a letter to Gorky, Chekhov expressed himself more frankly about the performance and the acting of Stanislavsky: "I cannot judge the play dispassionately, because the Sea Gull [Nina] played abominably and kept sobbing all the time, and Trigorin [the writer] walked about the stage and talked like a paralytic; his interpretation of the role was that of a man who has no 'will of his own,' and it sickened me to watch him. On the whole, however, the play was not bad and it gripped me. In places I could hardly believe that it was I who had written it." (May 9, 1899.) There was now no doubt in Chekhov's mind that the Moscow Art Theater should stage JJncle Vanya.
During that summer Chekhov attended a number of the rehearsals of Uncle Vanya, which he thought were going extremely well. Directors and cast sought his advice on the staging and interpretation of roles. Finding it difficult often to discuss his plays or to answer questions about the inner significance of a portrayal or an action, he would invariably fall back on the simple declaration: "Listen, I wrote it all down, it is there." But when he observed an actor doing something which he thought was incorrect, he could become sharply declarative in his protest. Or if one of these actors should write him on the interpretation of a role — as Vsevolod Meierhold and Olga Knipper did at this time — feeling more at home on paper, he became eloquently expansive. In answering Meierhold's question on how he should act Johannes in Gerhart Hauptmann's Lonely Lives, Chekhov pointed out that no matter how spiritually healthy the character was, Meierhold should try to bring out the social loneliness or social tragedy of the man and above all avoid naturalistic emphasis and stage conventions or any nonessential effects which might destroy the typicality of a portrayal.7 Chekhov soon became closely attached to these brilliant young actors and their remarkable theater and they to him. And the fact that Olga Knipper was a prominent member of the troupe intensified his affection for them. Jokingly they had begun to call him "inspector of the actresses." That summer he posed for a photograph with the cast of The Sea Gull, pretending to read a copy of the play to them. When a false rumor got around that winter that he would come to Moscow, Meierhold wrote him: "Come quickly! Don't fear the cold. You must know that the love which your numerous admirers have for you
7 Chekhov's letters to Meierhold were deliberately excluded from the Soviet edition. However, this letter was published in Literatumoe Nasledstvo (Literary Heritage), Moscow, i960, LXVIII, 227-228.
will warm you, not only in Moscow, but even the North Pole."
Back at Yalta in the fall Chekhov was anxious for any news about the preparations for the opening of Uncle Vanya and of Olga's part in it as the beautiful Elena. On September 29 he replied to Olga's "sensible letter with a kiss for my right temple," with congratulations in advance on the start of the second season. A few days later she urgently requested an explanation of her last scene. Stanislavsky had insisted that Astrov — the role he played — was passionately in love with Elena even at the very end. Nothing of the kind, Chekhov answered. Elena attracts Astrov by her beauty, and by the last act he knows that nothing will come of it and kisses her quite casually, to pass the time. And Chekhov adds: "Ah, sweet actress, how I would like to be in Moscow! However, your head is in a whirl, you have caught the poison, you are in a daze, and now you have no time for me."
Just before the opening of the season, the troupe, in the names of Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, wired Chekhov, "dear friend of our theater," their heartful greetings and expressed the hope that he would soon be among them again. On October 1 he sent his thanks in a telegram and, associating himself with the troupe, hoped that they would go on to further triumphs, so that "the life of their theater would become a bright page in the history of Russian art and in the life of each of us." Olga wrote: "Yesterday with delight we performed your beloved The Sea Gull. . . . Before the third act I read the telegram of 'the writer Chekhov,' pipned up on the bulletin board, and I was deeply moved."
After the first performance of A. K. Tolstoy's Ivan the Terrible, Olga wrote him, at four o'clock in the morning, a temperamental, self-lacerating letter, because she felt sure of a failure. Success had spoiled the whole troupe, he replied, and he urged her, after Uncle Vanya was played, to go to bed and sleep soundly if she thought it a failure. Then, forgetting his calm, he burst forth: "There are insufferably many visitors. Their idle provincial tongues wag. I'm bored and I rage and rage and I envy the rat that lives under the floor of your theater." (October 4,1899.)