What To Do With a Cherry Orchard

This was my first interaction with Chekhov, and with Russian literature, and it was a pleasing one albeit with a less than perfect English translation.

I can only speak to the tone of the play and of its characters. My Russian history is lacking so I cannot, in this essay, respond to Chekhov's interaction with his day. However, I plan to read more and gain more understanding of his context in 1903.

The Cherry Orchard is a story of the changing from one era to another, one class to another, one way of thinking about the world to another.

With the quickest of summaries, the play centers on Madame Lyubov as an aristocrat stuck between keeping her past in her possession, the cherry orchard, but walking straight into bankruptcy or selling it in auction but losing her connection to the past.

I was most interested in the contrast of the responses to the change of an era. That of the younger and the older.

The younger generation, and the one gaining prominence in the new system, is all too willing to overthrow the older and they seem to have progress and education on their side but they do not know how to respond and empathize as they ought.

The older generation seems to be the only one that recognizes the sadness and the pain of the change. They, perhaps, see the virtue of the progression but they seem to observe things as they are. Change? Yes. Reasonable? Possibly. But painful and uprooting? Certainly.

Every change is a response to something in the past. Usually an unjust something or a broken something. Sometimes the disadvantaged become the advantaged and take excesses just as the previous advantaged, whom they just overthrew, did originally. 

It seems that Chekhov only gave us two major responses to change: yearning for the past or uncritically welcoming the future. (There was the butler who was the epitome of complacent indifference or ignorance)

Every period of history has actions and systems with the flashes of brilliance and blemishes of evil. When we move from one to the next we carelessly throw out a thing in its entirety, demonizing all of it, rather than reforming the bad and making even better what exists.

Perhaps that is the curse of history: to abandon a flawed system or state for a differently flawed system or state, shouting against past injustices while being blind to the present maladies propped up by our current favored system.

For my part, I want to know the entirety of something. I don't want to follow along just because it is popular. I want to see a thing in its context and evaluate it fairly. It is too easy to take a position because it is the majority's position. Often that is also less painful. But I would rather take the longview knowing truth may not fit into the popular idea at any given time.

For my reading I felt stuck in the middle of the characters, wondering what good they were throwing away as they welcomed the new and also desiring proper remedies for the problems they experienced. 

Instead of losing the cherry orchard in vain nostalgia, I would have had the protagonist use the cherry orchard for good.

A Properly Focused Autobiographer

Augustine is a profound writer.

As I was reading Confessions, I felt as though I was finally old enough, or smart enough, to begin scanning this great and classic work. This was not the first time I had picked it up but it was the first time I finished it.

As I read, it became clear there was a reason this book sits on the list of must reads of not only Christian literature but also world history. At the very least, Augustine started a new form of literature: autobiography. But where so often a first run of something is only a husk of the future form, Augustine gives us the completed excellence while future attempts, by later autobiographers, seem to pale in comparison.

The Original Biographer

The original autobiography, by Augustine, was not a typical walkthrough of the life of the author but instead a prayer to the God he so completely wants to glorify. Unlike many autobiographies, Augustine puts his focus on God. There is much talk of himself but it is thoroughly within a conversation with God.

What is astounding is that Augustine just sits in that understanding. In fact, toward the end of the book he does not wax eloquent about himself after the turning point in his life (like the typical form of most autobiographies after) but instead focuses his attention on God and what he is doing in time and space.

This is the proper relationship each of us should have. Our autobiographies would be incomplete, lacking, if only an isolated look at ourselves apart from a proper relationship with God. 

A Desire to Worship God

Augustine is listed as one of the church fathers for a reason and it is enriching to read his story and start to focus on what he focuses on. He is very good at drawing our gaze to God even when he is talking about himself.

Augustine cannot help himself from worshiping God in the text. He will talk about his past and then he will worship, the presence and nature of sin and then worship, the quality of plays and oration and then worship. Science. Worship. The stars. Worship. His mother. Worship. The very nature of time. Worship. 

While reading I was invited to consider the glory of God for myself and, ultimately, to worship him for his goodness.

Read Augustine

Augustine is brilliant. Many in the church, on many sides, quote him, or attack him, but I wonder how many have read him. He is worth conversing with. Listen to his thoughts and try to follow along as he plumbs the depth of any number of topics. You will be the better for it.

Oh, Margery!

The Book of Margery Kempe is the first autobiography written in English and the first by a woman. More than a look into the life of a single woman it is a survey of the confusion and brokenness of the world in the 14th and 15th century.  

Within the church, from which Margery would eventually be labeled a saint, there was concern and lack of knowledge about what was true. People did not know how to differentiate truth from confusion or distortation and the priests and friars, hardly less confused, could not shepherd the people effectively. 

Amidst this context, Margery roamed on many adventurers all the while inconsolably weeping or getting into fights with priests. Much of my response to her behavior was a constant refrain of, “oh Margery!” However, a friend pointed out that much of her delusion and bizarre antics could be a result of pyshcological illness. She was a broken person and the basic confusion of the time had no proper response to help her or serve her and thus her story only confused others. 

While we live in a distant age and a modern time, we do not live in an age without brokenness and confusion. The stories may be different now but they are symptoms of the same type of hurt and malady.

This book had me heartbroken for the church as a whole. Most of all, this book is a reminder that we need an understanding of what is whole and true. We need a way to indentify it, counsel those who do not understand, and comfort those who need healing. Much of the book was a confusion on the lovileness of Christ and his good news. Clarifying that story and properly applying it can make much progress in helping people like Margery.

A Dolls' House

Ibsen gives us a look into the framework of the Victorian era and invites the viewers into a more equal world. 

On a writing level, with the absence of stage direction, it seems the play leaves a lot to the actors’ interpretation to portray the desired end. As a reader, the play did not seem to contain the subtlety necessary to tell the proper story. Hopefully, I will be able to see a production to give the play a proper chance at telling its story. 

With A Doll’s House Isben creates an anthem for human equality. A clear look into the brokenness of his society provides the backdrop from which the protagonist flees to learn as an individual. Isben sought to elucidate the equality of all people. And he seems to point to education as a remedy in the effort. 

In the final act I was struck by some of the final words spoken by Nora, the play’s heroine, 

“I believe that before all else I am a reasonable human being, just as you are--or, at all events, that I must try and become one. I know quite well, Torvald, that most people would think you right, and that views of that kind are to be found in books; but I can no longer content myself with what most people say, or with what is found in books. I must think over things for myself and get to understand them.”

She calls for the ability for all to think on their own. I agree with the beginning of her sentiment and extend it to the idea that we must all be taught how to think. She seems to be saying that we can, solely internal introspection, see how things are. My extension would be that we should each be given the tools to think and understand because they are not innately within us without cultivation.

Considering the method by which one “becomes a rational being,” I land on some version of classical teaching by which people are given the tools of learning. It is not enough to be told, “this is good and this is beautiful, this is true and this is broken.” We must be taught how to investigate them, prod them, dive into them. When that has been given to us we can feel and know, by our earnest investigation, the nature of things.

It is wrong to relegate anyone to an ignorant station. It is also wrong to “educate” someone but only teach them how to do things and not how to truly learn and understand things. We have perpetuated a problem of equality when we churn out workers but tell them we have given them education. All should be given the chance to truly engage with the history-long conversation and understand their relationship to this great thing we call life. 

Education is not the sole answer. We remain in a broken world with broken people who will supplant the weaker or malign the different. But education is a gift that should be handed to everyone. And by that gift they can see what is inequitable and where righteousness and justice can be wrought. Whether they accept the gift is their decision. 

With Ibsen I can take up the call for human equality. Each person is innately valuable. Give everyone the tools to investigate this world, the relationships to truth, and the values that stand timelessly. Using those tools they can gain understanding and each can make their way because they have plumped the depths on their own and learned what is good.