7 A highly contagious fever distinguished by purple spots, extreme prostration, and delirium.
8 According to Aleksandr Vishnevsky,
Chekhov got very angry when a certain provincial theatre depicted Uncle Vanya as a land owner on the skids, i.e., dirty, tattered, in greased boots.
“Well, what should he be like?” he was asked.
“It’s all written down in my play!” he replied.
And this is in the stage direction with the remark that Uncle Vanya is wearing a fancy necktie. Chekhov considered that this was quite enough to designate his dress.
(Scraps of Memory, 1928)
Chekhov described Voinitsky as “an elegant cultivated man. It is counter to the truth to say that our country squires walk around in boots that stink of grease” (Stanislavsky, My Life in Art, 1924). The tie is mentioned specifically, because it is put on to impress Yelena Andreevna.
9 Kabuli, highly spiced Caucasian stews, similar to curries. Evidently, the Professor’s biliousness derives in part from his diet.
10 A metal urn, heated by charcoal, to keep water on the boiling point for making tea. The pot with leaves is kept warm on top of the samovar, and filled with water from the tap as necessary.
11 Chekhov wrote, in a notebook entry of August 20, 1896: “M[enshikov] in dry weather goes around in galoshes, carries an umbrella, so as not to die of sunstroke, is afraid to wash with cold water, complains about heart trouble.”
12 Telegin’s flowery way of speaking is typical of the old-fashioned landowner, trying to seem courtly and well educated. Chekhov uses a similar device in his first published story of 1879: “Letter of a Landowner to His Learned Neighbor Dr. Friedrich.” Telegin’s remark may be another of Chekhov’s parodies of the famous Pushkin poem, “Whether I walk noisy streets . . .”
13 In the original, he uses a Latin term often found in prescriptions: quantum satis, “as much as necessary.”
14 Ma’am is to indicate that Telegin adds an s for sudar (sir) or sudarinya (madam) to his words, an old-fashioned and obsequious manner of speaking.
15 Mariya Vasilyevna belongs to a generation of educated persons who conversed in French and referred to one another by the French forms of their names: hence, Alexandre, Jean.
16 Nado delo delat, “one must do something,” “be active,” “committed,” “get involved.” A motto of liberalism in the 1860s, it does not mean “One must work,” as it is often translated.
17 Between 1887 and 1900 the number of factory workers in Russia increased from 1.5 to 2.1 million. Sanitary and housing conditions were very bad, since employers were not compelled to protect workers against dangerous machinery, and few factories provided medical attention.
18 Astrov is imitating the manner of speaking of Anfusa Tikhonovna in Ostrovsky’s 1875 comedy Wolves and Sheep.
19 The popular dramatist Aleksandr Ostrovsky (1823–1886). The character is Paratov in The Girl without a Dowry (1879), who, in Act Two, scene ix, says, “We already know one another. (Bows.) A man long on moustache and short on abilities.”
20 In The Wood Goblin, the title character, Dr. Khrushchov, a liberal ecologist, says much the same thing.
21 A traditional form of greeting used by inferiors to their betters; a survival from the days of serfdom.
22 Vanya uses the term domovoy, house goblin, which, like the English nightmare or European incubus, is reputed to interfere with the breathing of those who are sleeping. It connects with his reference to water sprites in Act Three.
23 A folksong.
24 Feldsher (from the German, Feldscher, an assistant medical officer), a medical attendant without a doctor’s degree; in rural areas of Russia, the feldsher often stood in for a licensed physician.
25 In Russian, the wordplay is on idet, colloquially “shall we go,” and idyot, which sounds like idiot, “imbecile,” a pun Chekhov often used privately, especially in letters to his brother Aleksandr.
26 Literally, “Fair is she,” an allusion to the “Tale of the Tsar’s Dead Daughter and the Seven Warriors,” a Russian version of “Snow White,” by Aleksandr Pushkin (1833); the evil Tsarina turns to her mirror with the question whether she is really the fairest in the land. The mirror replies: “Fair art thou, no contest there; but the Tsar’s daughter’s still more fair . . .”
27 Italian: enough.
28 Yelena has picked one of Astrov’s favorite words; she’s clearly been listening to him.
29 The St. Petersburg Conservatory, founded in 1862 by Anton Rubinstein, was an outstanding nursery of brilliant musicians.
30 “The Art Theatre is putting on my Uncle Vanya; in the third act they need a survey map. Be so kind as to pick out a suitable one and lend it or promise to donate a suitable one, when you find one among those you don’t need” (Chekhov to Dr. P. I. Kurkin, May 24, 1899). Kurkin sent him a survey map of the Serpukhov region with the village of Melikhovo, where Chekhov lived, in the middle.
31 Schismatics from the Russian Orthodox church, persecuted by the authorities from the seventeenth century, sought refuge in the countryside, and split into many sects.
32 In the original, Lakedaimonov, a joke name based on Lacedæmon, land of the Spartans.
33 According to Nadezhda Butova:
Anton Pavlovich was once watching Uncle Vanya.
In the third act Sonya, at the words “Papa, open your heart,” got on her knees and kissed her father’s hand.
“She mustn’t do that, that’s really not drama,” said Anton Pavlovich. “All the sense, all the drama of a human being is inward, and not expressed in outward manifestations. There was drama in Sonya’s life up to that moment, there will be drama after that, but this is simply an incident, the consequence of the gunshot. And a gunshot is really not drama, but an incident.”
(“From Memories of A. P. Chekhov at the Art Theatre,” Shipovnik Almanac 23 [1914])
34 Capital of the Kharkov guberniya in the Ukraine, a university town of 220,000 inhabitants, famous for its annual cattle and wool market. In the view of a Petersburger: back of the beyond. Chekhov often uses it to suggest a humdrum way of life.
35 Astrov picks up Telegin’s affected style of talking.
36 Gorokhy shut, literally “a pea-green jester,” a generic term for a buffoon, like Shakespeare’s “motley fool.”
37 Compare Chekhov’s notebooks: “He used to consider that a ridiculous crackpot was ill, but now he is of the opinion that it is the normal condition of mankind to be a ridiculous crackpot.”
38 Allusion to such novels of Ivan Turgenev as A Nest of Gentry, which were proverbial by Chekhov’s time.
39 Italian: “The play is over,” an expression Chekhov often used in his letters to mean “it’s all played out.”
40 On September 30, 1899, Chekhov wrote Olga Knipper:
At your command, I hasten to answer your letter in which you ask me about Astrov’s last scene with Yelena. You write that Astrov addresses Yelena in that scene like the most passionate lover, “clutches at his feeling like a drowning man at a straw.” But that’s not right, not right at all! Astrov likes Yelena, she captivates him by her beauty, but in the last act he already knows that nothing will come of it, that Yelena is vanishing from him forever—and he talks to her in that scene in the same tone as about the heat in Africa, and kisses her quite casually, with nothing better to do. If Astrov carries on that scene tempestuously, the whole mood of the fourth act—quiet and despondent—will be lost.”