Anton Chekhov

Similarly, if culture, in the sense of refined feelings revealed through sensitivity and cultivated understanding, is the touchstone for the Prozorovs, it will not sustain scrutiny either. The term intelligentsia is misleadingly translated as 'intellectuals,' when it simply means those persons who had enjoyed a higher education. For Russians, it bore a burden of political awareness, social commitment and an obligation to those benighted souls who did not share the intelligent's advantages. The Prozorov family prides itself on these virtues, and judges others by them. Many of the major characters are closely connected with the school system. Olga is somewhat unwillingly promoted from teacher to headmistress, and despite her complaints and exhaustion, it is that work which enables her to maintain her independence and create a haven for her old nanny. Kulygin is a tutelary careerist, truckling to the principal and turning Masha into a faculty wife. Andrey's father had intended him for a professor in Moscow, and his sisters make him feel guilty for missing this goal. On the scale of failed but honourable intelligents that includes Ivanov and Vanya, Andrey, with his gambling and whining, is a despicable come-down.

When tested by the realities of life, the fabric of their culture soon falls to pieces. The Prozorovs and their circle cling to the shreds and patches - Latin tags for Kulygin, quotations from Pushkin, Krylov and Lermontov for Masha and Solyony, amateur music. Andrey's 'sawing away' at the violin and Masha's untested prowess at the keyboard are mocked in the last act by Natasha's offstage rendition of 'The Maiden's Prayer'. Irina grieves that she cannot remember the Italian for window, as if foreign vocabulary could buoy her up in the sea of despair. Solyony poses as the romantic poet Lermontov, but his ultimate behaviour shows him to be more like Martynov, the man who killed Lermontov in a duel. During the fire, Natasha condescendingly must remind Olga of the intelligent's duty 'to help the poor. It's an obligation of the rich'. Philosophis­ing (always a pejorative word for Chekhov) passes for thought, snippets from the newspaper ('Balzac was married in Berdichev') pass for knowledge, a superior attitude passes for delicacy of feeling, yet everyone's conduct dissolves into rudeness or immorality.

At one moment in the Brecht and Weill opera The Rise and Fall of the City ofMahagonny, a whore is playing 'The Maiden's Prayer' and a roughhewn client takes the cigar out of his mouth and comments, 'Das ist die ewige Kunst' ('Such is eternal art'). Chekhov's technique is considerably more subtle, but his inferences are not dissimilar. Three Sisters does not try to show how three gifted women were defeated by a philistine environment, but rather that their unhappiness is of their own making; if they are subjugated and evicted by the Natashas of this world, it is because they have not recognized and dealt with their own shortcomings. At one point or another, each of the sisters is as callous and purblind as Natasha herself. Olga rather cattily criticises Natasha's belt at the party, though she has been told that the girl is shy in company; in Act Three, she refuses to listen to Masha's avowal of love, will not voluntarily face facts. Her very removal to a garret is as much an avoidance of involvement as it is an exile imposed by Natasha. Irina is remarkably unpleasant to both her suitors, Tusenbach and Solyony; in her post as telegraph clerk she is abrupt to a grieving mother; and at the last refuses to say the few words of love that might solace the Baron, even though, as Chekhov informed Olga Knipper, she is prescient of an impending misfortune. Masha talks like a trooper, drinks, abuses Anfisa almost as badly and with less excuse than Natasha does. Her flagrant adultery with Vershinin may even be more destructive than Natasha's with Protopopov, for Kulygin genuinely loves his wife, whereas Andrey tries to forget that he has one.

This litany of faults is not meant to blacken the sisters or to exonerate Natasha, Solyony and the others. It is meant to redress the balance: Chekhov selects the Prozorov family (who, along with the officers, were based on acquaintances) to sum up a way of life. With all the benefits of education, a loving home and creature comforts, the sisters stagnate, not simply because they live in the sticks, but because they have established nothing of value to give meaning to their existence. The ennobling labour that Tusenbach and Vershinin rhapsodise over, that inspires Irina, cannot be equated with doing a job every day. Olga's teaching, Irina's work at the Council and the telegraph office, the position at the mines to which Tusenbach retires offer a prospect of meaningless drudgery.