Uncle Vanya | Page 7

woods and sets out new plantations every year, and he has already

received a diploma and a bronze medal. If you will listen to what he
can tell you, you will agree with him entirely. He says that forests are
the ornaments of the earth, that they teach mankind to understand
beauty and attune his mind to lofty sentiments. Forests temper a stern
climate, and in countries where the climate is milder, less strength is
wasted in the battle with nature, and the people are kind and gentle. The
inhabitants of such countries are handsome, tractable, sensitive,
graceful in speech and gesture. Their philosophy is joyous, art and
science blossom among them, their treatment of women is full of
exquisite nobility---
VOITSKI. [Laughing] Bravo! Bravo! All that is very pretty, but it is
also unconvincing. So, my friend [To ASTROFF] you must let me go
on burning firewood in my stoves and building my sheds of planks.
ASTROFF. You can burn peat in your stoves and build your sheds of
stone. Oh, I don't object, of course, to cutting wood from necessity, but
why destroy the forests? The woods of Russia are trembling under the
blows of the axe. Millions of trees have perished. The homes of the
wild animals and birds have been desolated; the rivers are shrinking,
and many beautiful landscapes are gone forever. And why? Because
men are too lazy and stupid to stoop down and pick up their fuel from
the ground. [To HELENA] Am I not right, Madame? Who but a stupid
barbarian could burn so much beauty in his stove and destroy that
which he cannot make? Man is endowed with reason and the power to
create, so that he may increase that which has been given him, but until
now he has not created, but demolished. The forests are disappearing,
the rivers are running dry, the game is exterminated, the climate is
spoiled, and the earth becomes poorer and uglier every day. [To
VOITSKI] I read irony in your eye; you do not take what I am saying
seriously, and--and--after all, it may very well be nonsense. But when I
pass peasant-forests that I have preserved from the axe, or hear the
rustling of the young plantations set out with my own hands, I feel as if
I had had some small share in improving the climate, and that if
mankind is happy a thousand years from now I will have been a little
bit responsible for their happiness. When I plant a little birch tree and
then see it budding into young green and swaying in the wind, my heart
swells with pride and I--[Sees the WORKMAN, who is bringing him a
glass of vodka on a tray] however--[He drinks] I must be off. Probably

it is all nonsense, anyway. Good-bye.
He goes toward the house. SONIA takes his arm and goes with him.
SONIA. When are you coming to see us again?
ASTROFF. I can't say.
SONIA. In a month?
ASTROFF and SONIA go into the house. HELENA and VOITSKI
walk over to the terrace.
HELENA. You have behaved shockingly again. Ivan, what sense was
there in teasing your mother and talking about _perpetuum mobile?_
And at breakfast you quarreled with Alexander again. Really, your
behaviour is too petty.
VOITSKI. But if I hate him?
HELENA. You hate Alexander without reason; he is like every one
else, and no worse than you are.
VOITSKI. If you could only see your face, your gestures! Oh, how
tedious your life must be.
HELENA. It is tedious, yes, and dreary! You all abuse my husband and
look on me with compassion; you think, "Poor woman, she is married
to an old man." How well I understand your compassion! As Astroff
said just now, see how you thoughtlessly destroy the forests, so that
there will soon be none left. So you also destroy mankind, and soon
fidelity and purity and self-sacrifice will have vanished with the woods.
Why cannot you look calmly at a woman unless she is yours? Because,
the doctor was right, you are all possessed by a devil of destruction;
you have no mercy on the woods or the birds or on women or on one
another.
VOITSKI. I don't like your philosophy.
HELENA. That doctor has a sensitive, weary face--an interesting face.
Sonia evidently likes him, and she is in love with him, and I can
understand it. This is the third time he has been here since I have come,
and I have not had a real talk with him yet or made much of him. He
thinks I am disagreeable. Do you know, Ivan, the reason you and I are
such friends? I think it is because we are both lonely and unfortunate.
Yes, unfortunate. Don't look at me in that