The first performance of Uncle Vanya took place on October 26. Olga had written that all the cast were tremendously excited and the house sold out. On the evening of the 27th, when Chekhov was in bed, the telegrams began to be telephoned in. "Each time I woke up," he wrote Olga, "and I ran to the telephone in the dark in my bare feet and got very much chilled; then I had scarcely dozed off when the bell rang again and again. It was the first time that my own fame has kept me awake." (October 30, 1899.) Though the telegrams announced a great success, he detected something subtle and elusive about them that led him to suppose that all was not well. The reviews, when he read them, confirmed this feeling. Though nearly all of them praised the performance highly, few failed to point out defects both in the play and the acting. In her letter to him the day after, Olga insisted that Uncle Vanya had been "a tremendous success" and "gripped the whole audience," but that she had not slept all night and kept crying because she had "acted inconceivably badly."
Chekhov tried to comfort her by demeaning his own art. Neither her role nor Uncle Vanya were "worth wasting so much feeling and nerves over. The play is an old one, already out of date, and there are all kinds of defects in it; if more than half the performers have not grasped the right tone, then it is really the fault of the play." And he warned her again that she and the company had been spoiled by too much success, that there would be more failures, and that they should be prepared to accept them with equanimity. It was more important that she not forget him, he wrote, not let their friendship die, and he hoped that they could go away somewhere together this coming summer. "Masha writes that the weather is not good in Moscow and that I must not come, yet I so want to get away from Yalta where my loneliness bores me. I am a Johannes without a wife, not a learned Johannes and not a virtuous one."8 (November 1, i8gg.)
The paeans of praise for Uncle Vanya, however, mounted as the staging and acting improved over successive performances and the public understood better its inner meaning and nuances of feeling. For spectators and critics began to perceive that realism is raised to the level of inspired symbolism in the striking contrast between the idleness and futility of the lives of Serebryakov and his parasitic wife Elena and the useful work performed by Uncle Vanya, Sonya, and Astrov. The terrible truth that they had been sacrificing themselves for years to sustain the false fame and very existence of Serebryakov is a tragic discovery for Uncle Vanya and Sonya, but it does not overwhelm them. Like Astrov, who loves life and has the courage and zeal to attempt to transform its ugliness, they too believe that everything about a human
8 A reference to the hero of Hauptmann's Lonely Lives, which the Moscow Art Theater staged that season.
being should be beautiful. And Sonya's wonderful speech at the end to Uncle Vanya is filled with the courage bom of defeat, a spiritual symphony of the undying hope that is to be found in lives dedicated to work and service to others.
Uncle Vanya, like The Sea Gull, became a permanent fixture in the Moscow Art Theater. More than ever now Chekhov felt his fortunes closely bound up with this organization and its charming actress Olga Knipper. Stanislavsky's outstanding performance as Astrov had even softened Chekhov's objections to this member of the company, whose plea, as well as that of Nemirovich-Danchenko, that he write another play for the theater was now favorably entertained. When Nemirovich- Danchenko informed him in the course of the winter that he was getting weary of his duties as one of the directors, Chekhov replied: "Oh, don't get weary, don't grow cold! The Art Theater will supply the best pages of the book that will one day be written about the contemporary Russian theater. This theater should be your pride, and it is the only theater I love, although I have not been in it once. If I lived in Moscow, I would try to get on the staff, if only in the capacity of a janitor, so that I could help out a little and, if possible, keep you from growing cold to this dear institution." (November 19, 1899.)
Early in 1899 two short stories, The New Country House0 and On Official Duty,10 which Chekhov had actually written at the end of the preceding year, appeared in print. Among the last of the tales that draw upon his experiences in the Melikhovo district, they are curiously contrasting pictures of the relations of the gentry to the peasantry. One suspects that some of the difficulties which the estate owner encountered with the peasants —who cut down his trees, picked the mushrooms on his land, and let their cattle roam over his planted terrain — were those which Chekhov had endured at Melikhovo. No kindness on the part of the owner of the estate and his wife could deter them, for such behavior had become an ingrown habit of the peasants, almost a way of life sanctioned by generations of hostility in master and serf relationships. They belonged to two different worlds, quite incapable of understanding each other's virtues.
The other side of the medal is revealed in On Official Duty, where
8 Russian News, January 1899.
10 Books of the Week, January 1899.
a young examining magistrate arrives at a village during a blizzard to conduct a post-mortem on an insurance agent, an impoverished gentleman who had committed suicide out of disillusionment with his lowly lot in life. There he hears the report of the village policeman, a garrulous old peasant, who also tells the story of his life, which serves as a brilliant characterization of this pathctic figure. For a mere pittance he delivers official government papers all over the district, and has been so constantly on his feet for thirty years that they ache even when he is not walking. The gentry are harsh with him and easily offended, and he is more likely to get a bite and a drink at a peasant's than at a gentleman's house. The magistrate, rather than spend the night on some hay in a wretched village hut, where the corpse of the suicide is laid out, accepts an invitation to stay at the estate of a local landowner. In bed that night, after enjoying his host's cheery hospitality in a warm and comfortable house while the storm roars outside, he dreams of the village policeman and the suicide. They are walking together through the open fields in the blizzard, chanting: "We go, we go, we go . . . You are where it is warm, bright, and cozy, but we tramp on in the storm, in the deep snow and bitter cold. . . . We know no rest, no joys. . . . We carry the whole burden of this life of yours and ours." The dream repeats itself throughout the night, and in the morning the conscience of the disturbed magistrate is troubled over the miseries of such people as the suicide and the peasants. And he thinks of how terrible it is to be reconciled to the fact that they, submitting to their fate, shoulder all that is darkest and most burdensome in life. Tolstoy deeply admired the warm, human sympathy of this story and especially the effective portrayal of the village policeman.
The pressure of preparing material for the collected edition of his works and his unsettled condition prevented Chekhov from undertaking much serious writing during the early part of 1899. The first volume of the complete edition appeared in December, and when Marx, who placed more emphasis on quantity than quality, complained that Chekhov had eliminated too many of his youthful stories, he commented: "Chekhonte could write much that Chekhov would never write." Nor did Marx appreciate Chekhov's self-effacing wish that no photograph or biographical statement appear in the volume. For a time Chekhov contemplated accepting Lavrov's invitation to become literary editor of Russian Thought, on the condition that all manuscripts be sent to wherever he happened to be living. However, he soon gave up the idea when he learned of the precarious financial situation of the magazine and that Lavrov appeared to have the notion that he might wish to invest some of the money he received from Marx.