Anton Chekhov

Name: Uncle Vanya — Act II
Author: Anton Chekhov

Summary

“Uncle Vanya — Act II”, published in 1899, is a work by Anton Chekhov. It explores elements such as Sonia, last Sunday and gout.

Quotes from Uncle Vanya — Act II (Anton Chekhov)

Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya — Act II (1899)

“ Like your Uncle Vanya, I am discontented, and so we are both grumblers.
SONIA. Aren't you satisfied with life?
ASTROFF. I like life as life, but I hate and despise it in a little Russian country village, and as far as my own personal life goes, by heaven! there is absolutely no redeeming feature about it. Haven't you noticed if you are riding through a dark wood at night and see a little light shining ahead, how you forget your fatigue and the darkness and the sharp twigs that whip your face? I work, that you know—as no one else in the country works. Fate beats me on without rest ”

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Source: Wikisource

Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya — Act II (1899)

“ For years I have worshipped that miserable gout-ridden professor. Sonia and I have squeezed this estate dry for his sake. We have bartered our butter and curds and peas like misers, and have never kept a morsel for ourselves, so that we could scrape enough pennies together to send to him. I was proud of him and of his learning; I received all his words and writings as inspired, and now? Now he has retired, and what is the total of his life? A blank! He is absolutely unknown, and his fame has burst like a soap-bubble. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya — Act II (1899)

“ There is your father, entirely absorbed in his books, and his gout; there is your Uncle Vanya with his hypochondria, your grandmother, and finally, your step-mother—
SONIA. What about her?
ASTROFF. A human being should be entirely beautiful: the face, the clothes, the mind, the thoughts. Your step-mother is, of course, beautiful to look at, but don't you see? She does nothing but sleep and eat and walk and bewitch us, and that is all. She has no responsibilities, everything is done for her—am I not right? And an idle life can never be a pure one. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya — Act II (1899)

“ SONIA. Uncle Vanya, you and the doctor have been drinking! The good fellows have been getting together! It is all very well for him, he has always done it, but why do you follow his example? It looks dreadfully at your age.
VOITSKI. Age has nothing to do with it. When real life is wanting one must create an illusion. It is better than nothing.
SONIA. Our hay is all cut and rotting in these daily rains, and here you are busy creating illusions! You have given up the farm altogether. I have done all the work alone until I am at the end of my strength— [Frightened] Uncle! ”

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Source: Wikisource

Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya — Act II (1899)

“ Day and night the thought haunts me like a fiend, that my life is lost for ever. My past does not count, because I frittered it away on trifles, and the present has so terribly miscarried! What shall I do with my life and my love? ”

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Source: Wikisource

Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya — Act II (1899)

“ I want to live; I long for success and fame and the stir of the world, and here I am in exile! Oh, it is dreadful to spend every moment grieving for the lost past, to see the success of others and sit here with nothing to do but to fear death. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya — Act II (1899)

“ SONIA. You love no one?
ASTROFF. Not a soul. I only feel a sort of tenderness for your old nurse for old-times' sake. The peasants are all alike; they are stupid and live in dirt, and the educated people are hard to get along with. One gets tired of them. All our good friends are petty and shallow and see no farther than their own noses; in one word, they are dull. Those that have brains are hysterical, devoured with a mania for self-analysis. They whine, they hate, they pick faults everywhere with unhealthy sharpness. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya — Act II (1899)

“ You are young and healthy and beautiful, and longing for life, and I am an old dotard, almost a dead man already. Don't I know it? Of course I see that it is foolish for me to live so long, but wait! I shall soon set you all free. My life cannot drag on much longer. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya — Act II (1899)

“ People like him are rare and should be loved. What if he does drink and act roughly at times? A man of genius cannot be a saint in Russia. There he lives, cut off from the world by cold and storm and endless roads of bottomless mud, surrounded by a rough people who are crushed by poverty and disease, his life one continuous struggle, with never a day's respite; how can a man live like that for forty years and keep himself sober and unspotted? [Kissing SONIA] I wish you happiness with all my heart ”

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Source: Wikisource

Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya — Act II (1899)

“ Your mother hates everything but her pamphlets and the professor; the professor is vexed, he won't trust me, and fears you; Sonia is angry with her father, and with me, and hasn't spoken to me for two weeks; I am at the end of my strength, and have come near bursting into tears at least twenty times to-day. Something is wrong in this house.
VOITSKI. Leave speculating alone.
HELENA. You are cultured and intelligent, Ivan, and you surely understand that the world is not destroyed by villains and conflagrations, but by hate and malice and all this spiteful tattling. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya — Act II (1899)