Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov

 Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov

From the perspective of Flow and choosing the wrong goals

 

This may be the third time that I listen to or watch this play. I was lucky enough to see it on stage at the National Theater, with the best actor there is in the lead role- George Constantin.

The other day I listened to an audio production, where I missed the magic of George Constantin. There are parts and characters of this play that I must confess that I confuse with The Cherry Orchard, but then I am no serious reader, listener or watcher of plays.

Therefore these notes are destined for a time when I get really old and I may cure my Alzheimer with memories of what I have read. What did I just say? Oh, about Vanya, or was it The Seagull?

 

At the heart of this sad story is the sacrifice of one man for the wrong goals. In order to have a good, happy life, one needs to have and pursue meaningful and reasonable goals. Like Tal Ben-Shahar says:

“It is not reaching the peak of the mountain, or climbing around it meaninglessly, but it is the climb towards the peak of the mountain that is satisfying and rewarding” in more or less these words.

If we do not have consistent goals, we will be unhappy, but then the same thing happens if we are obsessed only with reaching the goals and enjoy nothing in the meantime. That is called the rat racer and we see plenty of them around.

Uncle Vanya has dedicated all his life to the...wrong purpose, that of working for a property that is not his. When the shock arrives, he is completely unprepared. Serebryakov, Vanya’s brother-in-law is the owner of the land and the house and he wants to sell.

Vanya has a speech which I will remember, perhaps forever. It is a confession of failure, even if from a different angle it is a worthy statement and Vanya has done his duty and lived well by moral standards.

What will he do if he is kicked out of the house with his mother? Well, life is complicated- one can try and live honestly, on a meager salary and find that misfortune makes him homeless.

In a powerful dialogue, underlined by the aura of George Constantin, Vanya says, more or less:

-          What can we do, my mother and I, now that you sell

-          Serebryakov: it is not like that

-          V: I worked all my life for you and I have nothing

-          S: I did not mean…

-          V: I earned a pittance and you never thought of raising my salary

-          S: you could have raised it yourself

-          V: you mean I should have stolen!?

 

Then there is the wrong kind of love, if there is such a thing, in the sense that characters fall for people who do not love them back.

And, like always in Chekhov there is nostalgia, a melancholy that is pervasive and makes the characters, but not the readers tired.

Yelena Serebryakova, Sebrebryakov’s wife keeps saying I am tired. Which made me think of the psychology classic Flow:

One condition to be in “the zone „or in Flow is to have a challenge which is equal to the skills of the person, or in Chekhov, in the vast steppes of Russia there seemed to be no challenge (now there is the Ukraine to take over). The attention which is necessary, the focus on a task was missing. People float about with their worries and sad thoughts dominating their existence.

The mindset was generally negative: instead of thinking that the future will be all right, they almost always see in the darkest colors.

I wonder what the impact on us, readers is…would we get gloomy after all this? Just in case, The Seagull is postponed for a few days, until I listen to it again, preferably on a rainy, morose afternoon.