What the cherry orchard symbolizes. What is the symbol of the cherry orchard? The final chord of the outgoing era

Content
Introduction ................................................. .................................................. ................ 3
1. Symbol as a literary phenomenon ............................................ ......................... 7
1.1 Concept of the symbol ............................................... ...................................... 7
1.2 Formation of the concept of "symbol" ............................................ .................eight
1.3 Symbol concepts ............................................... ...............................ten
1.4 Study of the symbol in the work of A.P. Chekhov ..................................... 14
2. Symbols in the drama by A.P. Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" ........................................... 16
2.1 The ambiguity of the symbol of the garden in the drama of Chekhov .................................. 16
2.2 Symbolic details in Chekhov's drama ... ... ... ................................... 20
2.3 Sound Symbols in Drama ............................................. ...................... 22
Conclusion................................................. .................................................. .......... 26
List of used literature ............................................... .................... 28

Introduction
Chekhov is one of the most amazing phenomena in our culture. The phenomenon of Chekhov as a classic was unexpected and somehow, at first glance, at first glance, unusual: in any case, everything in him contradicted the entire experience of Russian classical literature.
A lot of works of both domestic and Western drama are devoted to the work of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. Russian pre-revolutionary and Soviet Czech studies have accumulated extensive experience in research, textual and commentary work. Already in the pre-revolutionary years, articles appeared in which Chekhov's prose and drama received a deep interpretation (articles by M. Gorky, V.G.Korolenko, N.K. Mikhailovsky, F.D. Batyushkov).
In Soviet times, an enormous amount of work was undertaken to collect and publish the literary heritage of A.P. Chekhov, on the study of his life and work. Here we should mention the works of S.D. Balukhatoy (Questions of poetics. - L., 1990) in which theoretical approaches to the analysis of the new psychological-realistic drama are substantiated. The book by G.P. Berdnikov “A.P. Chekhov: Ideological and Moral Quest "from the series" Life of Remarkable People "is today considered one of the most authoritative biographies of Chekhov. In addition, here Chekhov's works are revealed in the context of public life in 18980-1900. In his other book "Chekhov the Playwright: Traditions and Innovation in Chekhov's Drama" G.P. Berdnikov focuses on the history of the formation of Chekhov's innovative drama, as well as on the most important features of Chekhov's innovative dramatic system as a whole. At the same time, the book makes an attempt to understand the living connection between Chekhov's drama and the traditions of Russian realistic theater. Thus, the main issue in the work is the question of tradition and innovation in Chekhov's theater and its place in the history of Russian realistic drama, more broadly, in the history of Russian realistic theater. The research is carried out sequentially chronologically, with each play being considered as a new stage in the formation of Chekhov's innovative dramatic system as a whole.
Articles by A.P. Skaftymova "On the unity of form and content in" The Cherry Orchard "by Chekhov", "On the question of the principles of constructing Chekhov's plays" have already become classical. Here, as in his other works, the scientist recreates the personal creative truth and the spiritual, moral ideal of the artist through a holistic interpretation of the work of art. In the above-mentioned articles, a systematic analysis of the plot-compositional features of Chekhov's plays is presented.
Z.S. Paperny in his book "Contrary to all the rules ...": Chekhov's plays and vaudeville talks about the impossibility to say everything about Chekhov's work. The work of the Soviet literary critic explores the artistic nature of Chekhov's plays and vaudeville in its connections with the contemporary reality of the writer.
Monographs by A.P. Chudakov's "The Poetics of Chekhov" and "The World of Chekhov: The Emergence and Establishment" were a new word in Chekhov's studies. And although the first work was published back in 1971, already in it there is a break from the formulations traditional for Soviet literary criticism. The development of new approaches to the work of the writer develops in the next work of the researcher, in which the systemic-synchronic analysis of Chekhov's work was continued with a historical-genetic analysis.
In the book of V.I. Kamyanov's "Time against timelessness: Chekhov and the present" contains a new approach to the analysis of the work of the Russian writer. The author proposes to consider the works of Chekhov in an indissoluble unity and, at the same time, from different points of view: the course of time in stories, stories and plays, issues of religious faith in artistic illumination, the image of nature as the basis of the harmony of the world. At the same time, Kamyanov was one of the first to raise the question of the influence of Chekhov's work on Russian literature in the second half of the 20th century.
At present, the collections Chekhovsky Vestnik and Young Chekhov Researchers are regularly published, where articles by young Chekhov scholars are published. These are mainly studies of any individual aspects of the writer's work.
At the same time, there are no separate works devoted to the study of image-symbols in Chekhov's drama. At the same time, now in literary criticism, much attention is paid to the study of the unexplored levels of Chekhov's works. Therefore, we can talk about the relevance of this work.
The aim of our research is to study the images-symbols in the drama of A.P. Chekhov (on the example of the play "The Cherry Orchard"), their place and role in the artistic system of works.
To achieve this goal, it is necessary to solve the following tasks:
1. Define the concept of "symbol" and present its basic concepts;
2. To identify the symbols most typical for the work of A.P. Chekhov;
3. Determine the place and role of symbols in the artistic system of Chekhov's drama.
The most suitable for solving the problems posed is the historical and cultural method.
This work consists of an Introduction, two chapters, a Conclusion and a List of used literature, consisting of 51 titles. The first chapter of the work "Symbol as a Literary Phenomenon" examines the formation of a symbol as a literary, art criticism and philosophical term. The same chapter describes the main approaches to the study of the symbol in the work of A.P. Chekhov.
In the second chapter “Symbols in the drama by A.P. Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" "shows the role and meaning of symbols in Chekhov's drama, using the example of the play" The Cherry Orchard ".
The source for this work was the Collected Works of A.P. Chekhov in 12 volumes:
Chekhov, A.P. Collected works in 12 volumes.Vol. 9: Plays 1880-1904 / A.P. Chekhov. - M .: State publishing house of fiction, 1960. - 712 p.

1. Symbol as a literary phenomenon
1.1 Concept of a symbol
The concept of a symbol is multifaceted. It is no coincidence that M.Yu. Lotman defined it as "one of the most ambiguous in the system of semiotic sciences", and A.F. Losev noted: "The concept of a symbol in both literature and art is one of the most vague, confusing and contradictory concepts." This is explained, first of all, by the fact that the symbol is one of the central categories of philosophy, aesthetics, cultural studies, literary criticism.
A symbol (Greek symbolon - a sign, an identifying omen) is a universal aesthetic category that reveals itself through comparison, on the one hand, with adjacent categories of an artistic image, and on the other, a sign and allegory. In a broad sense, we can say that a symbol is an image taken in the aspect of its significance, and that it is a sign endowed with all the organic and inexhaustible polysemy of the image. S.S. Averintsev writes: “The object image and deep meaning appear in the structure of the symbol as two poles, inconceivable one without the other, but also separated from each other and generating the symbol. Passing into a symbol, the image becomes “transparent”: the meaning “shines through” through it, being given precisely as a semantic depth, a semantic perspective ”.
The authors of the Literary Encyclopedic Dictionary see the fundamental difference between a symbol and an allegory in the fact that "the meaning of a symbol cannot be deciphered by a simple effort of reason, it is inseparable from the structure of an image, does not exist as a kind of rational formula that can be" put "into an image and then extracted from it" ... Here we also have to look for the specifics of the symbol in relation to the category of the sign. If for a purely utilitarian sign system polysemy is only a hindrance that harms the rational functioning of a sign, then the more meaningful the symbol is, the more polysemous it is. The very structure of the symbol is aimed at giving a holistic image of the world through each particular phenomenon. Objects, animals, known phenomena, signs of objects, actions can serve as a symbol.
The semantic structure of the symbol is multi-layered and is designed for the active inner work of the perceiver. The meaning of a symbol objectively realizes itself not as cash, but as a dynamic tendency; it is not given, but given. This meaning, strictly speaking, cannot be explained by reducing it to an unambiguous logical formula, but can only be explained by correlating it with further symbolic linkages, which will lead to greater rational clarity, but will not achieve pure concepts.
The interpretation of a symbol is a dialogical form of knowledge: the meaning of a symbol really exists only within human communication, outside of which only the empty form of the symbol can be observed. "Dialogue", in which the comprehension of the symbol is carried out, can be disturbed as a result of the interpreter's false position.
I. Mashbits-Verov notes that "the origin of the symbol is very ancient, although in specific historical conditions new symbols appear or the meaning of old ones changes (for example, the swastika is an ancient symbol of the tree of life, now it is a symbol of fascism)."
1.2 Formation of the concept of "symbol"
Although the symbol is as ancient as human consciousness, philosophical and aesthetic understanding comes relatively late. The mythological understanding of the world presupposes an undivided identity of the symbolic form and its meaning, excluding any reflection of the symbol, therefore, any view that comprehends the nature of the symbol is excluded.
A new situation arises in ancient culture after Plato's experiments on constructing a secondary, i.e. "Symbolic" in the proper sense, philosophical mythology. It was important for Plato to limit, above all, the symbol from the pre-philosophical myth. Despite the fact that Hellenistic thinking constantly confuses symbol with allegory, Aristotle created a classification of symbols: he divides them into conventional ("names") and natural ("signs").
In the Middle Ages, this symbolism coexisted with didactic allegorism. The Renaissance sharpened the intuitive perception in its open polysemy, but did not create a new theory of the symbol, and the revival of taste for the learned book allegory was picked up by the Baroque and Classicism.
The separation of allegory and symbol was finally formed only in the era of romanticism. In periods of actualization of the opposition between allegory and symbol, and this is mainly romanticism and symbolism, the symbol is given the place of an artistic ideal. Significant observations on the nature of the symbol are contained in the works of Karl Philip Moritz. He owns the idea that the beautiful cannot be translated into another form: "We ourselves exist - this is our most sublime and noblest thought." All the characteristic features of the manifestation of art are concentrated in a single concept, which the romantics later called the word symbol.
In the multivolume work of F. Kreutzer "Symbolism and mythology of ancient peoples ..." (1810-12), a classification of types of symbols was given ("mystical symbol", exploding the closedness of form for the direct expression of infinity, and "plastic symbol", striving to accommodate semantic infinity into closed form). For A.V. Schlegel's poetry is "eternal symbolization", the German romantics relied in understanding the symbol on the mature JV Goethe, who understood all forms of natural human creativity as meaningful and speaking symbols of living eternal becoming. Unlike romantics, Goethe associates the elusiveness and indivisibility of the symbol not with the mystical otherworldly, but with the vital organic nature of the principles expressed through the symbol. G.V.F. Hegel, (opposing the romantics, emphasized in the structure of the symbol a more rationalistic, sign side ("a symbol is, first of all, some sign"), based on "convention".
Comprehension of the symbol acquires a special role in symbolism. One of the most important principles of symbolic poetry, the Symbolists considered synthesis and suggestion, these qualities should have a symbol. It seems paradoxical that, despite the absolutization of the concept of symbol, symbolism did not give a clear idea of ​​the difference between a symbol and other categories. In the Symbolist environment, the word "symbol" had many meanings. In particular, it has been confused many times with allegory and myth. The era of symbolism gave impetus to the "academic", strictly scientific study of the symbol. To one degree or another, the scientific consciousness of the twentieth century develops the ideas of the symbol, reflected in the aesthetics of the Symbolists.
1.3 Symbol concepts
The systematic study of symbolism, carried out by the direct successors of that era - the philologists of the next generation, can be considered the beginning of a proper scientific approach to the symbol. Here, first of all, we should mention the works of V.M. Zhirmunsky and other scientists of the St. Petersburg school.
V.M. Zhirmunsky defined the symbol in his work "Metaphor in the Poetics of Russian Symbolists" (June 1921) as follows: "A symbol is a special case of metaphor - an object or action (that is, usually a noun or verb) taken to denote a emotional experience." Later he reproduced this formulation almost literally in the article "The Poetry of Alexander Blok": "We call a symbol in poetry a special type of metaphor - an object or action of the external world, denoting the phenomenon of the spiritual or mental world according to the principle of similarity." There is no doubt that V.M. Zhirmunsky was well aware that "a special kind of metaphor" is far from everything that a symbol carries. The limitations of his formulation made themselves felt from the very beginning. And first of all stylistically. According to Zhirmunsky, the symbol is actually a pre-symbolic symbol that has existed for centuries both in folk songs and in religious literature (liturgical poetry and even mystical lyrics).
One of the most detailed and generalizing concepts of a symbol in terms of its role and meaning in human life, created largely under the influence of Russian Symbolists, belongs to the German philosopher of the first half of the twentieth century, E. Cassirer. In his work “Experience about Man: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Human Culture. What is a man? " (1945) he wrote: "Between the system of receptors and effectors, which all animal species have, in man, there is also a third link, which can be called a symbolic system." According to Cassirer, the symbolic space of human life unfolds and expands in connection with the progress of the race, with the development of civilization: "All human progress in thinking and experience refines and simultaneously strengthens this network."
According to K.A. Svasyan, “the question of whether there is reality apart from the symbol is characterized by Cassirer (as philosophically inappropriate and mystical.<...>Cassirer does not deny the intentional nature of the symbol as pointing to something. However, by this "something" is meant for him the unity of the function of the formation itself, that is, the rules of symbolic functioning. " As if continuing the thoughts of Cassirer, a prominent linguist of the twentieth century, E. Sapir wrote in 1934: “... The individual and society, in an endless mutual exchange of symbolic gestures, build a pyramidal structure called civilization. There are very few “bricks” that underlie this structure. ”
AF Losev distinguishes between a symbol and other categories close to it. Let us dwell on the difference between a symbol and a sign and from an allegory. A symbol, according to Losev, is an infinite sign, i.e. sign with an infinite number of meanings.
A.F. Losev believes that one of the main characteristics of a symbol is the identity of the signified and the signifier. "The symbol is the arena of the meeting between the signifier and the signified, which have nothing in common with each other." The presence of the symbolized in the symbol at one time became one of the central ideas of the philosophy of the word of P. Florensky. “The meaning transferred from one object to another merges so deeply and comprehensively with this object that it is no longer possible to distinguish them from one another. The symbol in this case is the complete interpenetration of the ideological imagery of the thing with the thing itself. In the symbol, we necessarily find the identity, the mutual permeability of the thing being signified and the ideological imagery that signifies it ”.
According to Losev, the symbol as an artistic image strives for realism. However, if we assume that the only criterion for a symbol is realism, the line between the symbol and the artistic image will be erased. In fact, any image is symbolic.
Lotman's theory of symbols organically complements Losev's theory. According to Lotman, "being an important mechanism for the memory of culture, symbols transfer texts, plot schemes and other semiotic formations from one layer of culture to another." The symbol can belong not only to individual creativity. This property of the symbol determines its closeness to myth.
E.K. Sozina considers the concept of M.K. Mamardashvili and A.M. Pyatigorsky, proposed by them in their 1982 work “Symbol and Consciousness. Metaphysical Reflections on Consciousness, Symbolism and Language ”. The authors seek to interpret the symbol "in the sense of consciousness." They understand a symbol as a thing "which with one end" appears "in the world of things, and the other -" drowns "in the reality of consciousness." At the same time, the symbol in their understanding is practically pointless: “any meaningfulness of a symbol appears as a completely empty shell, inside which only one content is constituted and structured, which we call“ meaningfulness of consciousness ””. By virtue of the content of consciousness that fills the symbol, it is a thing. In addition, Mamardashvili and Pyatigorsky distinguish 2 main types of symbols: primary and secondary. Primary symbols (and the primary myths associated with them) "lie at the level of the spontaneous life of consciousness and the spontaneous relationship of individual psychic mechanisms to the content of consciousness", i.e. they correspond to cosmic consciousness and do not have an adequate human expression. Secondary symbols "appear at the level of a mythological system, which as a system itself is the result of ideological (scientific, cultural, etc.) elaboration, interpretation", they arise in language, culture, society. Mamardashvili and Pyatigorsky paid great attention to the problem of multiple interpretation of a symbol associated with the problem of “understanding - knowledge”: “multiple interpretations are a way of being (and not expressing!) Of the content that is symbolized”.
1.4 Study of the symbol in the work of A.P. Chekhov
For the first time, the problem of the symbol in the work of A.P. Chekhov was posed by A. Bely in the article "Chekhov" (1907). He notes that, despite the continuation of the traditions of Russian realists, in Chekhov's work "the dynamite of true symbolism is embedded, which is capable of blowing up many intermediate currents of Russian literature." Speaking about the pseudo-realistic and pseudo-symbolic tendencies of Russian literature of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, Bely calls Chekhov's creative method "opaque" realism, involuntarily fused with symbolism.
A. Bely continues the assertion of Chekhov as a realist-symbolist in the collection of essays "Green Meadow" (1910). Here the main attention of the Russian Symbolist is drawn to identifying common features in the works of Chekhov and Maurice Maeterlinck, but at the same time Chekhov's symbols are “thinner, more transparent, less deliberate. They have grown into life, without a trace have been embodied in the real. " In the same article, A. Bely proves that true symbolism coincides with true realism, because "a symbol is only an exponent of experience, and experience (personal, collective) is the only reality."
D.P. Mirsky. He also notes that all the works of the Russian writer “are symbolic, but most of their symbolism is expressed not so concretely, bewitchingly vague<…>But Chekhov's symbolism reached its greatest development in his plays, starting with The Seagull. "
A.P. Chudakov is probably one of the few in Soviet literary criticism who directly stated about the symbolism of Chekhov's details. He also gives a brief description of these symbolic details: “His symbols are not some“ special ”objects that can be a sign of a hidden“ second plan ”already in their fixed or easily guessed meaning. In this capacity are the usual objects of everyday environment. " Chudakov also noted one more important detail of symbols: “Chekhov's symbolic object belongs to two spheres at once -“ real ”and symbolic - and not one of them to a greater extent than the other. It does not burn with one even light, but flickers - sometimes with a symbolic light, sometimes with a “real” one ”.
In modern literary criticism, the presence of symbols in the works of A.P. Chekhov is no longer disputed. At present, Chekhoologists are interested in certain issues of symbolism in the writer's work.
Thus, the symbol is one of the oldest phenomena in culture and literature. Since ancient times, it has attracted the attention of both writers and researchers. The difficulty in studying the concept of "symbol" is caused by its ambiguity and multiplicity of classifications. According to literary scholars, in Russian realistic literature, the works of A.P. Chekhov.

2. Symbols in the drama by A.P. Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard"
2.1 The ambiguity of the garden symbol in Chekhov's drama
The main character of the play by A.P. Chekhov is not a person, but a garden, and not just any, but the most beautiful garden of the Earth, which is even mentioned in the "Encyclopedic Dictionary". The visual symbolism of the garden determines the structure of the play, its plot, but the symbol of the garden itself cannot be interpreted unambiguously. The central core of the work is the cherry orchard - from the time of flowering to the sale at the hammer: “the plot covers about six months from a long biography of the garden, mentioned even in the encyclopedia - the last six months that expire in the course of the plot,” writes V.I. Kamyanov. The image of the cherry orchard is all-encompassing, the plot, characters, relationships are focused on it. The image of the cherry orchard is all-encompassing, the plot, characters, relationships are focused on it.
In the last play by Chekhov, all the elements of the plot are concentrated on this symbol: the plot ("... your cherry orchard is being sold for debts, the auction is scheduled for August 22nd ..."), the climax (Lopakhin's message about the sale of the cherry orchard) and, finally, denouement ("Oh, my dear, my gentle, beautiful garden! .. My life, my youth, my happiness, goodbye! ..").
In The Cherry Orchard, the symbol is constantly expanding its semantics. He appears already on the first pages of the play, and, according to V.A. Kosheleva, "the symbolic features of this image are initially presented in" everyday "guises." For Ranevskaya and Gaev, the garden is their past:
“Lyubov Andreevna (looking out the window at the garden). Oh, my childhood, my purity! In this nursery, I slept, looked from here at the garden, happiness woke up with me every morning, and then he was exactly the same, nothing changed. (Laughs with joy) All, all white! Oh, my garden! After a dark, stormy autumn and cold winter, you are young again, full of happiness, the heavenly angels have not left you ... ".
The cherry orchard for Ranevskaya and her brother Gaev is a family nest, a symbol of youth, prosperity and a former graceful life. The owners of the garden love it, although they do not know how to preserve or save. For them, the cherry orchard is a symbol of the past.
Act 1 mentions that Gaev is fifty-one years old. That is, during his youth, the garden had already lost its economic significance, and Gaev and Ranevskaya were used to appreciating it, first of all, for its unique beauty. The symbol of this generous natural beauty, which cannot be perceived in terms of profitability, is a bouquet of flowers, in the first act, brought from the garden to the house in anticipation of the arrival of the owners. I.V. Gracheva recalls that Chekhov considered harmonious unity with nature "one of the necessary conditions for human happiness."
Ranevskaya, looking at the garden, comes into joyful admiration: “What an amazing garden! White masses of flowers, blue sky ... ". Anya, tired of the long journey, before going to bed dreams: "Tomorrow morning I will get up, run to the garden ...". Even the businesslike, eternally preoccupied with something Varya for a moment succumbs to the charm of the spring renewal of nature: “... What wonderful trees! My God, the air! The starlings are singing! " ... Nature appears in the play not only as a landscape, but as a socialized symbol of nature.
The cherry orchard is a symbol not only of perfect happiness, childhood and innocence, but also a symbol of fall, loss and death. A river flows through the cherry orchard, in which Ranevskaya's seven-year-old son drowned:
“Anya (thoughtfully). Six years ago my father died, a month later Grisha's brother, a pretty seven-year-old boy, drowned in the river. Mom could not bear it, left, left without looking back ... ".
Lopakhin had a completely different attitude to the garden, whose father was a serf with his grandfather and father Gayevs. The garden for him is a source of profit: “Your estate is located only twenty versts from the city, there is a railway near it, and if the cherry orchard and the land along the river are divided into summer cottages and then leased out for summer cottages, then you will have the least twenty thousand a year of income. " He evaluates this garden only from a practical point of view:
“Lopakhin. The only wonderful thing about this garden is that it is very large. Cherries are born every two years, and there is nowhere to put them, no one buys. "
The poetry of the cherry orchard is not interesting for Lopakhin. V.A. Koshelev believes that “he is attracted by something new and colossal, like the“ thousand tithes ”of the poppy that brings income.<…>The flowering of the traditional “garden” is not interesting for him precisely because it is “traditional”: the new owner of life is used to looking for new turns in everything, including aesthetic ones ”.
In the very construction of the play, the garden - a recognized sign of this "poetic" principle of being - thus becomes an inevitable symbol associated with tradition. And as such it appears throughout the entire further course of the play. Here Lopakhin once again reminds of the sale of the estate: "I remind you, gentlemen: on the twenty-second of August the cherry orchard will be on sale."
He recently proved the unprofitableness of this garden and the need to destroy it. The garden is doomed to destruction - and in this sense it also becomes a symbol, because the result of this destruction is nothing more than the provision of a better life for posterity: “We will set up summer cottages, and our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will see a new life here ...”. At the same time, for Lopakhin, the purchase of the estate and the cherry orchard becomes a symbol of his success, a reward for many years of work: “The cherry orchard is now mine! My! (Laughs.) My God, Lord, my cherry orchard! Tell me that I am drunk, out of my mind, that all this seems to me ... (Stamps his feet.)<…>I bought an estate where my grandfather and father were slaves, where they were not even allowed into the kitchen. I am sleeping, it only seems to me, it only seems ... ".
Another meaning of the symbolic image of the garden is introduced in the play by the student Petya Trofimov:
“Trofimov. All Russia is our garden. The earth is great and beautiful, there are many wonderful places on it. Think, Anya: your grandfather, great-grandfather and all your ancestors were serf owners who owned living souls, and really from every cherry in the garden, from every leaf, from every trunk, human beings do not look at you, can you really not hear voices ... living souls - after all, this has reborn all of you, who lived before and are living now, so that your mother, you, uncle, no longer notice that you are living on debt, at someone else's expense, at the expense of those people whom you do not let farther than the front door. .. ".
Z.S. Paperny notes that “where Ranevskaya imagines her deceased mother, Petya sees and hears tortured serf souls;<…>So why pity such a garden, this serf vale, this kingdom of injustice, the life of some at the expense of others, the disadvantaged. " From this point of view, the fate of Chekhov's cherry orchard reveals the fate of all of Russia, its future. In a state where there is no serfdom, there are traditions and vestiges of serfdom. Petya is, as it were, ashamed of the country's past, he calls on “first to redeem our past, to put an end to it, and it can only be redeemed by suffering” in order to meet the future. In this context, the death of the cherry orchard can be perceived as the death of Russia's past and a movement towards its future.
The garden is an ideal symbol of the heroes' feelings; external reality, corresponding to their inner essence. A blooming cherry orchard is a symbol of a pure, immaculate life, and the cutting down of a garden means leaving and the end of life. The garden stands at the center of the collision of various mental warehouses and public interests.
The symbolism of the garden is due to its tangible incarnation, and it disappears after the garden is cut down. People find themselves deprived not only of the garden, but also through it - of the past. The cherry orchard is dying, and its symbolism, which connects reality with eternity, dies. The last sound is the sound of a breaking string. The image of the garden and its death is symbolically polysemantic, not reducible to visible reality, but there is no mystical or surreal content.
2.2 Symbolic details in Chekhov's drama
In the last comedy of Chekhov, a detail is clearly brought to the fore - the dominant of the character's appearance. Particularly important is the detail that accompanies his first appearance, since it is she who becomes an ideological sign, a kind of allegory of the character's attitude to the world. E.S. Dobin believes that "the detail becomes the core of the psychological characterization and even the course of events." Being significant for the plot, everyday details become symbolic.
So, at the beginning of the play, Chekhov points out a seemingly insignificant detail in the character of Varya: "Varya enters, she has a bunch of keys on her belt." In the above remark, Chekhov emphasizes the role of the housekeeper, housekeeper, mistress of the house, chosen by Varya. At the same time, it is through the key symbol that Vary's connection with the house is transmitted. She feels accountable for everything that happens on the estate, but her dreams are not connected with the cherry orchard: “I would go to the desert, then to Kiev ... to Moscow, and so I would all go to the holy places ... I would go. Splendor! .. ".
It is no coincidence that Petya Trofimov, urging Anya to action, tells her to throw away the keys: “If you have one from the farm, then throw them into the well and leave. Be free like the wind. "
Chekhov skillfully uses the symbolism of keys in the third act, when Varya, having heard about the sale of the estate, throws the keys on the floor. Lopakhin explains this gesture: "She threw the keys, wants to show that she is no longer the mistress here ...". According to T.G. Ivlevoy, Lopakhin, who bought the estate, took away the housekeeper from her.
There is another master symbol in the drama. Throughout the play, the author mentions Ranevskaya's purse, for example, “looks in a purse”. Seeing that there is little money left, she accidentally drops it and scatters the gold. In the last act, Ranevskaya gives her wallet to the men who came to say goodbye:
“Gaev. You gave them your wallet, Lyuba. You can not do it this way! You can not do it this way!
Lyubov Andreevna. I could not! I could not!" ...
At the same time, only in the fourth act does the wallet appear in Lopakhin's hands, although the reader knows from the very beginning of the play that he does not need money.
Another important detail that characterizes Lopakhin's image is the watch. Lopakhin is the only character in the play whose time is scheduled by the minute; it is fundamentally concrete, linear and, at the same time, continuous. His speech is constantly accompanied by the author's remarks: "looking at the clock." T.G. Ivleva believes that “The situational - psychological - meaning of the remark is due to the character's early departure, his natural desire not to be late for the train; this meaning is explicated in Lopakhin's remarks. The ideological semantics of the remark is largely predetermined by the specifics of the very image of the clock as an allegory that has become firmly established in the human mind ”. It is noteworthy that it is Lopakhin who informs Ranevskaya of the date of the sale of the estate - August 22nd. Thus, Lopakhin's watch becomes not just a detail of his costume, but a symbol of time.
In general, time is constantly present in Chekhov's drama. The perspective from the present to the past is opened by almost every character, albeit to a different depth. Firs has been muttering for three years. Six years ago, her husband died and the son of Lyubov Andreevna drowned. Forty-fifty years ago, they still remembered the methods of processing cherries. A wardrobe was made exactly one hundred years ago. And the stones that were once gravestones remind of the gray antiquity. Petya Trofimov, on the contrary, constantly talks about the future, the past is of little interest to him.
Insignificant details in the artistic world of Chekhov, repeatedly repeating themselves, acquire the character of symbols. Combining with other images in the work, they go beyond the framework of a particular play and rise to the universal level.
2.3 Sound symbols in drama
Play by A.P. Chekhov is filled with sounds. A pipe, a guitar, a Jewish orchestra, the clatter of an ax, the sound of a broken string - sound effects accompany almost every significant event or character image, becoming a symbolic echo in the reader's memory.
According to E.A. Polotskaya, the sound in Chekhov's drama is "a continuation of poetic images that have already been realized more than once." At the same time, T.G. Ivleva notes that "the semantic significance of the sound remarks in Chekhov's latest comedy becomes, perhaps, the highest."
Sound creates the general mood, the atmosphere of a particular scene or action as a whole. This, for example, is the sound that completes the first act of a piece:
“Far beyond the garden, a shepherd is playing the flute. Trofimov walks across the stage and, seeing Varya and Anya, stops.<…>
Trofimov (in emotion). Sweetheart! Spring is mine! " ...
The high, clear and gentle sound of the pipe is here, first of all, the background design of the tender feelings experienced by the character.
In the second act, the sound of the guitar becomes the leitmotif, and the mood is created by a sad song played and sung by Epikhodov.
An unexpected sound also serves to whip up the atmosphere - "as if from the sky, the sound of a broken string." Each of the heroes in their own way tries to determine its source. Lopakhin, whose mind is busy with some business, believes that a bucket fell far in the mines. Gaev thinks that this is the cry of a heron, Trofimov - an owl. The author's calculation is clear: it does not matter what kind of sound it was, it is important that Ranevskaya felt unpleasant, and he reminded Firs of the times before the "misfortune", when the owl also screamed and the samovar screamed to keep going. " For the southern Russian flavor of the area in which the action of "The Cherry Orchard" takes place, the episode with the ripped bucket is quite appropriate. And Chekhov introduced it, but deprived of everyday certainty.
Both the sad nature of the sound and the uncertainty of its origin - all this creates some kind of mystery around it, which translates a specific phenomenon into the rank of symbolic images.
But the strange sound appears more than once in the play. The second time "the sound of a broken string" is mentioned in the final remark to the piece. Two strong positions assigned to this image: the center and the final - speak of its special significance for understanding the work. In addition, the repetition of an image turns it into a leitmotif - in accordance with the meaning of the term: a leitmotif (a repeated image, "which serves as a key one for revealing the writer's intention").
The repetition of the sound at the end of the piece in the same expressions frees it even from the supposed everyday interpretation. For the first time, the remark corrects the versions of the characters, but so far it itself appears only as a version. The second time, in the finale, in the remark about the “distant sound,” all earthly motivations are eliminated: there can not even be an assumption about any fallen “bucket” or the cry of a bird. "The author's voice in this case does not specify, but cancels all other positions, except for his own, final: the sound seems to come from unearthly spheres and go there."
A broken string gets an ambiguous meaning in the play, which cannot be reduced to the clarity of any abstract concept or fixed in one, precisely defined word. A bad omen foreshadows a sad end that the characters - contrary to their intentions - cannot prevent. Chekhov shows how little room for action remains for a person in a historical situation, when external determining forces are so overwhelming that internal motives can hardly be taken into account.
The changing meaning of the sound of a broken string in "The Cherry Orchard", his ability to do without household motivation, breed him with a real sound that Chekhov could hear. The variety of meanings turns the sound in the play into a symbol.
At the very end of the play, the sound of a broken string obscures the sound of an ax, symbolizing the death of noble estates, the death of old Russia. The old Russia was replaced by an active, dynamic Russia.
Along with the real blows of an ax on cherry trees, the symbolic sound "as if from the sky, the sound of a broken string, fading, sad" crowns the end of life on the estate and the end of a whole strip of Russian life. Both the harbinger of trouble and the assessment of the historical moment merged together in The Cherry Orchard - in the distant sound of a broken string and the clatter of an ax.

Conclusion
Chekhov is one of the most beloved and widely read classics of Russian literature. The writer who most closely matched the dynamism of his time. The phenomenon of Chekhov as a classic was unexpected and somehow, at first glance, unusual, everything in him contradicted the entire experience of Russian literature.
Chekhov's dramaturgy was formed in an atmosphere of timelessness, when, together with the onset of the reaction and the collapse of revolutionary populism, the intelligentsia found itself in a state of impassability. The public interests of this environment did not rise above the tasks of a partial improvement in life and moral self-improvement. During this period of social stagnation, the uselessness and hopelessness of existence was most clearly manifested.
Chekhov discovered this conflict in the lives of people from the environment he knew. Striving for the most accurate expression of this conflict, the writer creates new forms of drama. It shows that it is not events, not exclusively prevailing circumstances, but the usual everyday life state of a person that is internally conflicted.
The Cherry Orchard is one of the most harmonious, integral works of Chekhov, in the full sense of the final creation of the artist, the pinnacle of Chekhov's drama. And at the same time, this play is so polysemantic and even mysterious that from the first days of its existence to the present time there has been no established, generally accepted reading of this play.
However, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the content of Chekhov's plays, it is not enough to confine oneself to an analysis of only its external plot. Details play a huge role in the artistic space of Chekhov's works. Repeated many times in the text of the play, the details become leitmotifs. Repeated use of the same part deprives it of its everyday motivation, thereby turning it into a symbol. So, in the last play of Chekhov, in the sound of a bursting string, the symbolism of life and homeland, Russia, was combined: a reminder of its immensity and of the time flowing over it, of something familiar, eternally sounding over the Russian expanses, accompanying the countless arrivals and departures of all new generations ...
The cherry orchard becomes the central image-symbol in the analyzed Chekhov's play. It is to him that all the plot threads are drawn. Moreover, in addition to the real meaning of the cherry orchard, this image has several more symbolic meanings: a symbol of the past and past well-being for Gaev and Ranevskaya, a symbol of beautiful nature, a symbol of loss, for Lopakhin the garden is a source of profit. You can also talk about the cherry orchard as an image of Russia and its destiny.
That is, in the play of the same name, the image of the cherry orchard rises to a poetic symbol of human life and is filled with a deep, symbolist meaning.
Thus, images-symbols play an important role in understanding the work of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov.

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The play "The Cherry Orchard" was written by Chekhov shortly before his death. It is impossible to imagine a person who would not know this play. In this touching work, Chekhov seems to say goodbye to the world, which could have been more merciful and more humane.
Studying the work of Chekhov "The Cherry Orchard", I would like to note one feature of his characters: they are all ordinary people, and none of them can be called a hero of their time, although almost every one of them is a symbol of the time. The landowner Ranevskaya and her brother Gaev, Simeonov-Pishchik and Firs can be called a symbol of the past. They are burdened by the legacy of serfdom, under which they grew up and were brought up, these are the types of leaving Russia. They do not imagine a different life, like Firs, who cannot imagine life without masters. Firs considers the liberation of the peasants a misfortune - "the peasants are with the gentlemen, the gentlemen are with the peasants, and now everything is in disarray, you will not understand anything." The symbol of the present is associated with the image of Lopakhin, in which two principles are fighting. On the one hand, he is a man of action, his ideal is to make the earth rich and happy. On the other hand, there is no spiritual principle in it, and in the end the thirst for profit takes over. Anya, the daughter of Ranevskaya and the eternal student Trofimov, was a symbol of the future. They are young and the future belongs to them. They are obsessed with the idea of ​​creative work and liberation from slavery. Petya urges you to drop everything and be free like the wind.
So who is the future? For Petya? For Anya? For Lopakhin? This question might have been rhetorical if history had not provided Russia with a second attempt at solving it. The end of the play is very symbolic - the old owners leave and forget the dying Firs. So, the logical ending: inactive consumers in the social sense, a servant - a lackey who served them all his life, and a cherry orchard - all this irrevocably goes into the past, to which there is no turning back. History cannot be returned.
I would like to note the cherry orchard as the main symbol in the play. Trofimov's monologue reveals the symbolism of the garden in the play: “All Russia is our garden. The land of the giant is beautiful, there are many wonderful places on it. Think, Anya: your grandfather, great-grandfather and all your ancestors were serf owners who owned living souls, and really from every cherry in the garden, from every leaf, from every trunk, human beings do not look at you, can you really not hear voices ... living souls, because it has reborn all of you who lived before and are now living, so your mother, you, your uncle no longer notice that you are living in debt at someone else's expense, at the expense of those people whom you do not let farther than the front door .. . ”Around the garden, all the action takes place, the characters of the heroes and their fates are highlighted on its problems. It is also symbolic that the ax brought over the garden caused a conflict between the heroes and in the souls of most of the heroes the conflict is not resolved, just as the problem is not solved after the cutting down of the garden.
On the stage "The Cherry Orchard" is about three hours. The characters live for five months during this time. And the action of the play covers a more significant period of time, which includes the past, present and future of Russia.

State budgetary professional educational institution

"Kizelovsky Polytechnic College"

METHODOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT

open lesson in the academic discipline

Russian language and literature

Symbols in comedy

A.P. Chekhov. "The Cherry Orchard"

Developer:

Zueva N.A.

teacher

Russian language and literature

2016 Nov.

Content:

Explanatory note.

This lesson is a study on the topic “Symbols in the play by A.P. Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" should be carried out at the final stage of the study of the play by A. Chekhov "The Cherry Orchard".

Classical literature is, at first glance, the most studied branch of literary criticism. However, a number of works, including "The Cherry Orchard" by A.P. Chekhov, remain unsolved and relevant to this day. Despite the many literary works that reveal different points of view on this play, unresolved issues remain, in particular, there is no clear classification of the symbols of the "Cherry Orchard". Therefore, the advantage of the presented lesson is the meticulous selection by students of the dominant groups of symbols, their classification and a table compiled at the end of the lesson, which gives a clear interpretation of each symbol found in the work.

In this lesson, students are actively involved in research activities, which makes it possible to most effectively and consistently make a turn from the traditional approach in teaching to a new one aimed at developing such universal educational actions as:

Self-development ability;

Development of orientation skills in information flows;

Developing the ability to pose and solve problems.

This allows you to develop the intellectual potential of the individual: from the accumulation of knowledge and skills to self-expression in creativity and science.

Technological lesson map

Theme... Characters in the comedy by A.P. Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard"

Chapter.Russian literature of the second half of the 19th century

Discipline... Russian language and literature.

Group.CCI-16

Well... First

Educational: get to know the concept of a symbol, comedy; make a table of symbols for the play "The Cherry Orchard"

Developing: improving the skills of analysis and interpretation of a literary work;

Educational: create conditions for the research activities of students.

Predicted result.

Formable universal learning activities:

Personal: readiness and ability for education, including self-education, throughout life; a conscious attitude towards lifelong education as a condition for successful professional and social activities;

Metasubject: possession of the skills of cognitive, educational and research activities, the ability and readiness to independently search for methods of solving practical problems, the use of various methods of cognition.

Subject:

the formation of skills in various types of analysis of literary works;

possession of the ability to analyze the text from the point of view of the presence of explicit and hidden, basic and secondary information in it;

the ability to identify images, themes and problems in literary texts and express one's attitude towards them in detailed, reasoned oral and written statements;

possession of the skills of analyzing works of art, taking into account their genre and generic specifics.

Lesson type: combined.

Methods of organizing educational activities: informational, research.

Forms of organizing educational activities: frontal, pair, individual.

Methodical teaching aids:the text of the play, video lecture by Dmitry Bykov, an excerpt from the TV show "The Cherry Orchard" 1976, presentation, dictionaries, student worksheet.

Interdisciplinary connections:history, social studies.

Internet resources:

TV show "The Cherry Orchard". ( https://www.youtube.com/watch? v = WsigUjw68CA)

One hundred lectures with Dmitry Bykov. The Cherry Orchard ( https://www.youtube.com/watch? v = ZJ4YQg71txk)

During the classes

Annex 1.

Cards with text:

Appendix 2.

Student worksheet

The symbol is ____________________________________________________________________________________________

Comedy is ___________________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

table

Appendix 3.

A symbol in a work of art.

A symbol is a polysemantic allegorical image based on the similarity, similarity or commonality of objects and phenomena of life. A symbol can express a system of correspondences between different aspects of reality (the natural world and human life, society and personality, real and surreal, earthly and heavenly, external and internal). In a symbol, the identity or similarity with another object or phenomenon is not obvious, is not fixed verbally or syntactically.

The image-symbol is polysemantic. He admits that the reader may have a wide variety of associations. In addition, the meaning of the symbol most often does not coincide with the meaning of the word - metaphor. Understanding and interpretation of a symbol is always broader than the assimilations or metaphorical allegories from which it is composed.

Correct interpretation of symbols contributes to a deep and correct reading of literary texts. Symbols always expand the semantic perspective of the work, allow the reader, based on the author's hints, to build a chain of associations linking various phenomena of life. Writers use symbolization in order to destroy the illusion of lifelikeness that often arises among readers, to emphasize the polysemy, the great semantic depth of the images they create.

In addition, the symbols in the work create more accurate, concise characteristics and descriptions; make the text deeper and more multifaceted; allow you to raise important issues without advertising it; evoke individual associations in each reader.

The role of the symbol in a literary text can hardly be overestimated.

ME

1 group. Real symbols .

Household details are real symbols, which, being repeated several times, acquire the character of symbols.

In the play "The Cherry Orchard" it is a symbol of keys. So, in the first act, the author points to a seemingly insignificant detail in the image of Varya: "Varya enters, she has a bunch of keys on her belt." In the above remark, Chekhov emphasizes the role of the housekeeper, housekeeper, mistress of the house, chosen by Varya. She feels accountable for everything that happens on the estate.

It is no coincidence that Petya Trofimov, urging Anna to take action, tells her to throw away the keys: “If you have the keys to the farm, then throw them into the well and leave. Be free like the wind ”(second act).

Chekhov skillfully uses the symbolism of keys in the third act, when Varya, hearing about the sale of the estate, throws the keys on the floor. Lopakhin explains this gesture: “She threw the keys, wants to show that she is no longer the mistress here ...” According to TG Ivleva, Lopakhin, who bought the estate, took it away from the housekeeper.

One more material symbol of the owner is in the "Cherry Orchard". Throughout the play, the author mentions Ranevskaya's purse, for example, “Looks in a purse” (second act). Seeing that there is little money left, she accidentally drops it and scatters the gold. In the last act, Ranevskaya gives her wallet to the peasants: “Gaev. You gave them your wallet, Lyuba! You can not do it this way! Lyubov Andreevna. I could not! I could not!" In the same action, the wallet appears in Lopakhin's hands, although the reader knows from the very beginning of the play that he does not need money.

In the artistic world of Chekhov's drama, a number of images-symbols can be distinguished that are inextricably linked with the idea of ​​a house, these symbols begin to perform not the function of unification, but separation, disintegration, break with the family, with the house.

Real symbols.

In the play "The Cherry Orchard", real symbolism is also widely used to increase the ideological and semantic significance, artistic persuasiveness and emotional and psychological tension. It is hidden both in the title and in the setting. The blooming garden of the first act is not only the poetry of noble nests, but also the beauty of all life. In the second act, a chapel, surrounded by large stones, once apparently tombstones, and the distant outlines of a large city, which “visible only in very good, clear weather "symbolize the past and the future, respectively. The ball on the day of the auction (third act) indicates the frivolity and impracticality of the owners of the garden. The circumstances of departure, the devastation of the house, the remains of furniture that was “folded into one corner, as if for sale,” suitcases and bundles of the former owners characterize the liquidation of the noble nest, the final death of the outdated noble-serf system.

Group 2. Verbal symbols.

Revealing the social and psychological essence of the characters, showing their internal relations, Chekhov often turns to the means of the indirect meaning of the word, to its meaningfulness, and multiple meanings. Honing his deeply realistic images to symbols, the writer often uses methods of verbal symbolism.

For example, in the first act, Anya and Varya talk about the sale of the estate, and at this time Lopakhin looks at the door, hums("Me-e-e")and right theregoes away. This appearance of Lopakhin and his humorous mocking mocking moo is clearly significant. It, in fact, anticipates all future behavior of Lopakhin: after all, it was he who bought the cherry orchard, became its sovereign owner and rudely refused Varya, who was patiently waiting for his offer. A little later, Ranevskaya, taking Varya's telegrams from Paris, tears them up without reading them, and says: "Paris is over ..." With these words, Lyubov Andreevna says that she decided to end her nomadic life outside her native land, and that she irrevocably broke with his "keeper". These words are a kind of result of Ani's story about her mother's bohemian lifestyle in Paris. They demonstrate the joy with which Ranevskaya returns home. The same Lopakhin, after Gaev's speech to the closet, only says "Yes ..."

In the second act, Anya and her mother thoughtfully repeat one phrase: "Epikhodov is going," but each puts into it a completely different, meaningful meaning associated with their understanding of life and thinking about it. Trofimov's words are clearly significant, really symbolic: “Yes, the moon is rising.(Pausea.) Here it is, happiness, here it is, coming closer and closer, I can already hear his steps. " Trofimov here does not mean his personal happiness, but the approaching happiness of the whole people, he expresses faith in the imminent triumph of truth. But the appearance of the changeable moon, which has always been a symbol of deception, leads him to thoughts of national well-being. This is how the unrealizable hopes of the student are shown. Words such as "bright star" and "duty" also have a real-symbolic meaning in his mouth. Trofimov puts a particularly deep meaning in his statement: "All Russia is our garden" (second act). These words revealed his ardent love for the Motherland, his admiration for everything that is great and beautiful in it, the desire to change it for the better and devotion to it.

Anya's words in the third act clearly echo Trofimov's assertion: "We will plant a new garden, more luxurious than this." With these words, the heroine speaks of creating life on a completely new basis, where there will be no selfish struggle for her personal, where all people will be equal and happy, enjoying a common garden, blooming and fruitful for the joy of every person.

Sound symbols.

In the works of A.P. Chekhov, symbolic implications are acquired not only by things, objects and phenomena of the surrounding world, but also by audio and visual series. Due to sound and color symbols, the writer achieves the most complete understanding of his works by the reader.

So, the cry of an owl in the second act is a real threat. An illustration of this can be seen in the words of the old man-lackey Firs: "Before the misfortune there was also: the owl screamed, and the samovar hummed without stopping."

The sounds of music occupy an important place in Chekhov's drama. Such, for example, is the sound completing the first action: “Far beyond the garden, a shepherd is playing the pipe. Trofimov walks across the stage and, seeing Varya and Anya, stops.<…>Trofimov (in emotion). Sweetheart! Spring is mine! " The high, clear and gentle sound of the pipe is here, first of all, the background design of the tender feelings experienced by the character.

TG Ivleva notes that "the semantic significance of the sound remark in the last comedy of Chekhov becomes, perhaps, the highest." The drama is filled with sounds. A pipe, a guitar, a Jewish orchestra, the clatter of an ax, the sound of a broken string accompany almost every significant event or character image.

In the second act, the characters are alarmed by an unexpected sound - "as if from the sky, the sound of a broken string." Each of the heroes in their own way tries to determine its source. Lopakhin believes that a bucket fell off far in the mines. Gaev thinks it is

the cry of the heron, Trofimov - the owl. Ranevskaya felt unpleasant, but this sound reminded Firs of the times "before the misfortune."

But the strange sound is mentioned for the second time in the final remark to the play. It obscures the sound of the ax, symbolizing the death of old Russia.

Thus, the sound of a broken string and the sound of an ax are the embodiment of impending disaster and the inevitability of death and play an important role in Chekhov's play. With the help of sounds, those facets of stage action that cannot be conveyed verbally are revealed.

Group 3. Color symbols.

Of all the variety of colors in The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov uses only one - white, using it in different ways throughout the first act.

“Gaev (opens another window). The garden is all white. "

At the same time, the garden in the play has only just been named, it is shown only outside the windows, as the potential possibility of its death is outlined, but not concretized. White color is a presentiment of a visual image. The heroes of the work repeatedly speak about him: “Lyubov Andreevna. All, all white! Oh my garden! To the right, at the turn to the pavilion, the white tree bent down like a woman ... What an amazing garden! White masses of flowers. "

Despite the fact that the garden itself is practically hidden from us, its white color appears throughout the entire first act in the form of color spots - details of the costumes of the characters who are directly connected with it and whose fate completely depends on the fate of the garden: “Lopakhin. My father, it is true, was a peasant, and here I am in a white waistcoat ”; Firs enters; he is in a jacket and a white waistcoat ”; "Firs puts on white gloves"; "Charlotte Ivanovna in a white dress, very thin, pulled together, with a lorgnette on her belt, goes through the stage."

T.G. Ivlev, referring to the letters of the writer K.S. Stanislavsky, comes to the conclusion that "This feature of the stage realization of the image of a garden - a color play - was probably assumed by Chekhov himself." Through color spots, the heroes' union with the garden and dependence on it are shown.

Title symbolism.

The title of the work itself is symbolic. Initially, Chekhov wanted to name the play "Inand shnevy garden ”, but then rearranged the stress. KS Stanislavsky, recalling this episode, told how Chekhov, announcing the change of the title to him, relished it, “pressing on the delicate sound of e in the word“ cherry ”, as if trying with his help to caress the old beautiful, but now unnecessary life, which he tearfully destroyed in his play. This time I understood the subtlety: “Band shnevy garden ”is a business, commercial garden that generates income. Such a garden is needed now. But "The Cherry Orchard" does not bring any income, it keeps in itself and in its blossoming whiteness the poetry of the former lordly life. Such a garden grows and blooms for a whim, for the eyes of spoiled aesthetes. "

But why is the symbol of the outgoing, obsolete - the cherry orchard - the personification of poetry and beauty? Why is the new generation called upon to destroy and not exploit the beauty of the past? Why is this beauty associated with the "dullards" - Ranevskaya, Gaev, Simeonov-Pischik? The title "The Cherry Orchard" denotes the useless beauty of the obsolete, as well as the narrowly proprietary, selfish aspirations of its owners. The garden, which previously brought in a huge income, has degenerated. Anya overcomes this egoism in herself: "I no longer love the cherry orchard, as before." But the future also takes on the image of a garden, only more luxurious, capable of bringing joy to all people, and not just a select few. The title contains both specific and generalized poetic content. The Cherry Orchard is not only a characteristic attribute of a noble estate, but also the personification of the Motherland, Russia, its riches, beauty, poetry. The motive of the death of the garden is the leitmotif of the play: "Your cherry orchard is sold for debts" (first act), "The cherry orchard will be on sale on August 22" (second act), "The cherry orchard is sold", "Come all to see how Yermolai Lopakhin has enough cherry orchard ”(third act). The garden is always in the center of attention, through the attitude towards it, most of the images in the play are revealed. For old Firs, it symbolizes lordly expanse, wealth. In his fragmentary recollections of the time when the cherry orchard gave income ("There was money") (the first act), when they knew ways to pickle, dry, boil cherries, there is a slavish regret about the loss of the lord's well-being. For Ranevskaya and Gaev, the garden is also a personification of the past, as well as a subject of noble pride (and the “encyclopedic dictionary mentions this garden”) (first act), contemplative admiration, a reminder of the departed youth, lost carefree happiness. For Lopakhin in the garden, "it is wonderful ... only that he is very large", "in skillful hands" will be able to generate a huge income. The Cherry Orchard also evokes memories of the past in this hero: here his grandfather and father were slaves. But Lopakhin's plans for the future are also connected with him: to divide the garden into plots, lease it out for summer cottages. The garden is now becoming for Lopakhin, as before for the nobles, an object of pride, the personification of his strength, his domination. The nobility is being ousted by the bourgeoisie, it is being replaced by democrats (Anya and Trofimov), this is the movement of life. For a student, the cherry orchard is a symbol of the serf lifestyle. The hero does not allow himself to admire the beauty of the garden, leaves it without regret and instills the same feelings in young Anya. His words "All Russia is our garden" (second act) speaks of the hero's concern about the fate of his country, about Trofimov's attitude to its history. The cherry orchard is to some extent symbolic for each of the heroes, and this is an important point of the characteristic.

E.Yu. Vinogradov

THE DEATH OF SYMBOL (The Cherry Orchard: Reality and Symbolism)

Strehler, the director of the famous Cherry Orchard, believed that the image of the garden was the most difficult in the play. “Not showing it, just implying it is a mistake. Show, make feel - another mistake. The garden should be, and it should be something that can be seen and felt<...>but it cannot be just a garden, it must be everything at once ”1. This Chekhovian symbol is special, completely different elements live in it on equal terms - reality and mystics; it is both an object that has its own quite tangible shell, and a myth that stores the memory of the past. But its peculiarity is not only in this two-fold structure, but in its very fate - the cherry orchard, as a symbol, lives exactly as long as its shell lives.

The Cherry Orchard is not a trifle, like Volovy Luzhkov. Let us recall that the dispute about Luzhki easily turns into an argument about the "bridleness" of Otkatay. In vaudeville, it doesn't matter what the characters are talking about, the earth or the dog, that's not the point. The Cherry Orchard is a symbol that is irreplaceable in the play, since the plot is built on it. But even if one compares the symbols in Chekhov's last play and, for example, in Ibsen's "Wild Duck" or "Doll's House", then the difference in scale and function will also be visible. The image of the cherry orchard is all-encompassing, the plot, characters, relationships are focused on it. Ibsen's symbols have the function of semantic generalization, but they are not plot-forming, as in The Cherry Orchard. This play is unique among other dramatic works of Chekhov.

In Chekhov's last play, all the elements of the plot are concentrated on the symbol: the plot (“... your cherry orchard is sold for debts, on August 22

tenders are appointed ... "), the climax (" the cherry orchard is sold ") and, finally, the denouement (" Oh, my dear, my tender, beautiful garden! .. My life, my youth, my happiness, goodbye! .. " ) 2.

In "The Cherry Orchard" the symbol is constantly expanding its semantics: the garden, white and blooming, is beautiful, it seems that only bright and happy memories are associated with it ("... the heavenly angels did not leave you ..."), but next to it in the pond six years ago, Ranevskaya's little son drowned. Lopakhin says that “the only thing that is remarkable about this garden is that it is very large. Cherries are born once every two years, and there is nowhere to put them, no one buys ”(I act). Petya Trofimov convinces Anya: “All of Russia is our garden ... Think, Anya: your grandfather, great-grandfather and all your ancestors were serf-owners who owned living souls, and don't they really look at you human beings, can you really not hear the voices ... After all, it is so clear that in order to start living in the present, we must first redeem our past, put an end to it ... ”(II act). And now, in the words of Ani, a new hypothetical garden appears, which will be planted in the place of the old one that was cut down (III act). Chekhov combines so many contradictory features in the symbol, and none of them overshadows the others, they all coexist and interact, like numerous allusions to other gardens.

Any symbol does not appear from scratch and has an extensive pedigree “going back into the depths of centuries”. The meaning of the symbol is fundamentally dynamic, since it initially strives for ambiguity. "The structure of the symbol is aimed at immersing each particular phenomenon in the element of" first principles "and giving through it an integral image of the world" 3. The archetypal basis of the Garden lies mainly in the fact that it is a “cultured” space with “controlled entry and exit” 4. “The concept of a garden, first of all, includes its belonging to the sphere of culture: a garden does not grow by itself - it is grown, processed, decorated.

The first gardener and garden keeper is a god who can transfer his skill to a cultured hero5.<...>The aesthetic side of the garden requires that it be materially disinterested. This is not contradicted by the fact that a person derives benefit from the garden: it is secondary and exists only in combination with aesthetic pleasure. The mythological center of the garden is easily recoded into a spiritual value - be it the stars and heavenly bodies, golden apples, the tree of life, or, finally, the garden itself as a carrier of a special mood and state of mind ”6. Speaking about antique poetry and about the lyrics of the Renaissance oriented towards antique samples, T. Tsivyan points to the mythological basis of the image of the garden, “since it is included in the mythological

ethical picture of the world ".

The garden lives in its own separate time (vegetative cycle), which initially coincided with the time of the people involved in it, but later missed it. Christian culture has rethought this eternal cycle: “Winter symbolizes the time preceding the baptism of Christ; spring is the time of baptism, renewing a person on the threshold of his life; in addition, spring symbolizes the resurrection of Christ. Summer is a symbol of eternal life. Autumn is a symbol of the last judgment; this is the time of the harvest that Christ will reap in the last days of the world, when man will reap what he sowed ”8. In Chekhov, in the spring a man does not sow anything, and in the fall he is expelled from the garden, which perishes.

The time of the owners of the cherry orchard has diverged from the time of the orchard, it is divided into before and after, and the critical point is August 22 - the date for which the auction is scheduled. The garden can no longer continue its existence apart from people (as it was before); the garden is destined to obey someone else's will.

The symbol has many meanings, and the meanings contained within the symbol are able to argue with each other: another garden, a garden of the distant Christian past is one of the reproachful ghosts of the cherry orchard.

But the reality in the image of the cherry orchard was no less than symbolism. “Until the end of the century, Russian newspapers printed notices about auctions and auctions: old estates and fortunes were floating away from their hands, going under the hammer. For example, the Golitsyn estate with a park and ponds was divided into plots and rented out for summer cottages ”9. A good friend of Chekhov M.V. Kiseleva wrote in December 1897 about her estate Babkino, where the writer repeatedly rested in the summer: "... in Babkino, much is being destroyed, starting with the owners and ending with buildings ..." (13; 482). It is known that Babkino was soon sold for debts, the former owner of the estate received a place on the board of the bank in Kaluga, where the family moved.

Chekhov's contemporary B. Zaitsev writes about this time in connection with The Cherry Orchard as follows: “Anton Pavlovich’s life ended, a huge strip of Russia ended, everything was on the verge of a new one. What this new thing would be, no one then foresaw, but that the former - the lordly intellectual, stupid, carefree and which nevertheless created the Russian XIX century - was coming to an end, many felt it. Chekhov too. And I felt my end ”10.

The garden has long been overgrown with weeds, both in Russian life and in Russian literature. Only before it was not perceived tragically:

“While the cocktail was being pledged for me, I went to wander through the small, once fruitful, now wild garden, which surrounded the outbuilding on all sides with its fragrant, juicy wilderness. Oh, how good it was in the open air, under the clear sky, where the larks trembled, from where the silver beads of their sonorous voices fell! " (IS Turgenev, "Living Power") 11.

Sometimes Turgenev pays no attention at all to the garden, which is often no more than a detail of the background: “They were not rich people; their house is very old, wooden, but comfortable, stood on a mountain, between a decayed garden and an overgrown courtyard "12 (" Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky district. ") For Turgenev,

As for all literature of the mid-19th century, an overgrown garden does not necessarily mean abandoned, orphaned. If the garden is "well-groomed", then this is a clear sign of prosperity and love for order of its owners:

Nikolskoe<...>there she had a magnificent, well-kept house, a beautiful garden with greenhouses<...>Dark trees of an old garden adjoined the house on both sides, an alley of trimmed trees led to the entrance "13 (" Fathers and Sons ". From Ch. XV, XVI).

“... it was large and beautiful, this garden, and was kept in excellent order: hired workers scraped the paths with shovels; in the bright green of the bushes, red kerchiefs flashed on the heads of peasant girls armed with a rake "14 (" Nov ". Ch. VIII).

By the turn of the century, much had changed, a whole "class" of summer residents appeared, and the "noble nests" fell into desolation. The age-old manor culture was dying, its autumn came:

Home I was walking<...>

all around the forest was dazzling,

But here on the pass, behind the hollow,

The orchard turned red with foliage,

And the wing looked like a gray ruin.

G loeb opened the doors to the balcony for me,

He spoke to me in a decorous posture,

A gentle and sad moan poured out.

I sat down in an armchair, by the window, and, resting,

I watched him fall silent as he died out.

And I was looking at the maples by the balcony,

On a cherry blossom under the bump ...

And the harpsichords were dark against the wall.

I touched them - and sadly in the silence there was a sound. Trembling, romantic

He was pathetic, but with a familiar soul I caught the hum of my own soul in him ...

A silent silence torments me.

Nests of native desolation languish.

I grew up here. But the stalled garden is looking out of the window. Smolder floats over the house.

I'm waiting for the cheerful sounds of the ax

I'm waiting for the destruction of insolent work,

I'm waiting for life, even if in brute force,

It blossomed again from the dust on the grave. 15

How strangely similar and at the same time not similar this description of the old estate to the estate of Ranevskaya in the "Cherry Orchard". Bunin wrote this poem at the end of 1903, and published it at the beginning of 1904 under the title "Over the Oka". Subsequently, the poem was published under the title "Abandonment" 16. Did he know Chekhov's play then? It is known that when Chekhov arrived in Moscow in December 1903 to attend rehearsals at the Art Theater, they saw each other several times and had long conversations with Bunin. It is likely that at that time Bunin did not perceive this Chekhov's play as he began to treat it later.

It is known from memoirs that Bunin did not approve of Chekhov's last play: “I thought and think that he should not have written about nobles, about landowners' estates - he did not know them. This was especially evident in his drunken

sah - in “Uncle Vanya”, in “The Cherry Orchard”. The landowners there are very bad ... And where were those landowners' gardens, all of which consisted of cherries? "Cherry garden" was only in hohlatsk huts. And why did Lopa-khin need to cut this “cherry orchard”? To build a factory on the site of a cherry orchard? ”17. Bunin knew the life of the estate too well, he kept so many memories of it, and it was probably impossible and blasphemous to perceive the image of the old landowner's garden as a symbol. Bunin, unlike Chekhov, could not be “cold as ice” 18 when he wrote about his passing world. He did not like Chekhov's garden, apparently, for its abstractness, symbolic generalization. Bunin's gardens are filled with overflowing flowers, smells of Antonov apples, honey and autumn freshness. The dense, decayed garden was not, like Turgenev's, an indispensable evidence of the extinction of local life: "Aunt's garden was famous for its neglect ..." 19.

Another reminiscence, earlier, "Dead Souls" by Gogol. Let us recall the lengthy and poetic description of Plyushkin's garden:

“An old, extensive garden stretching behind the house, overlooking the village and then disappearing into the field, overgrown and decayed, it seemed, one refreshed this vast village and one was quite picturesque in its picturesque desolation. Green clouds and irregular, quivering domes lay on the heavenly horizon the connected peaks of trees that had grown free. The colossal white trunk of a birch tree, devoid of its top, broken off by a storm or thunderstorm, rose from this green thicket and swirled in the air like a regular marble glittering column; its oblique pointed fracture, with which it ended upwards instead of a capital, darkened on its snowy whiteness, like a hat or a black bird<... >In places, green thickets, illuminated by the sun, diverged, and showed an unlit depression between them, gaping like a dark mouth<... >and, finally, a young maple branch, stretching out its green leaves to the side.

dust-sheets, under one of which, having climbed God knows how, the sun suddenly turned it into transparent and fiery, miraculously shining in this dense darkness<...>In a word, everything was fine, how not to invent either nature or art, but how can it be only when they unite together, when, through the piled up, often useless, work of man, nature will pass its final incisor, lighten the heavy masses, destroy the grossly perceptible correctness and beggarly holes, through

which does not reveal a hidden, naked plan, and will give a wonderful warmth

everything that was created in the cold of measured cleanliness and neatness. "

It is interesting that the description of Plyushkin's garden is preceded by a lyrical digression, which ends with the words “O my youth! Oh my freshness! " (Later, Turgenev called one of his prose poems that way.) Intonational and semantically, this exclamation "rhymes" with Ranevskaya's words when she "looks out the window at the garden": "O my childhood, my purity!"

The important thing is that the garden in Dead Souls, abandoned and useless, is beautiful. The fate of the garden and its owner is different, as if the garden was separated by a wall of weeds and weeds from the house, which lives the same life with the owner.

In Chekhov's case, the house and the garden are semantically one. Lopakhin is going to cut down not only the garden, but also to demolish the house, "which is no longer good for anywhere." For a new farm, a “new garden,” this turns out to be necessary. The garden in Chekhov's last play is more than a garden, it is a house; a ghost belonging to the house appears in the garden ("the deceased mother ... in a white dress"). The garden is connected with the house, as one link is connected to another in the "chain of being", and if the house gets sick, then the garden also gets sick. Interestingly, despite the inseparability of the house and the garden, everyone looks at the garden from afar. He is a kind of symbolic projection of the house. “The fate of the garden is constantly discussed in the play, but the garden itself never becomes a direct place of action.

viya.<...>The garden just does not fulfill its traditional function as an area of ​​unfolding events. Its special, ideal nature is highlighted ”21.

The indissolubility of the fate of the garden and of people was metaphorically expressed in Hamlet, Chekhov's most beloved play by Shakespeare. E.V. Kharitonova, in her article on the motive of illness in the tragedy “Hamlet”, writes: “For Shakespeare, nature not only lost its former perfection, it turned out to be vulnerable, unprotected from adverse influences. This is due to the fact that nature is inseparable from man - it reflects all the painful processes that occur with him. In tragedy, nature is associated with a multi-valued image of a garden, which is included in the material and spiritual levels of the “disease motive,” the main and plot-forming motive in the Hamlet. ”22

The garden-world metaphor appears in Hamlet's first monologue (I, 2):

Despicable world, you are an empty garden

Waste grasses are an empty property.

(Translated by A. Kroneberg);

Life! What are you? A garden that has died out

Under the wild, barren grasses ...

(Translated by N. Polevoy).

The metaphor of the garden, connecting with the motive of the disease, runs through the whole tragedy. So, "... after the death of her father, Ophelia seems to go out of the castle walls into the garden for the first time and there she gathers real flowers in bouquets." According to E. Kharitonova, the metaphor of a sick garden also affects the plot level: “The garden in which Ophelia finds herself infects her with her terrible disease” 25; after hanging the flowers of the garden, "garlands of daisies, nettles, buttercup and purple flowers ...", which the "strict virgins" call "the hand of a dead man" (IV, 7) (from KR's translation), Ophelia dies.

In the famous scene of Gamlet's conversation with Gertrude, the metaphor of an "empty garden" overgrown with weeds is once again recalled:

Don't fertilize bad grass

So that she does not grow in excess of strength ...

(translation by A. Kroneberg).

After tracing the development of the garden metaphor in Hamlet, E. Kharitonova concludes: “The garden is not only a model of the macrocosm, the garden also exists within a person, and its wild state testifies to chaos within human consciousness” 26.

The closest lineage of the cherry orchard undoubtedly goes back to the gardens of Russian literature and culture and does not include Hamlet's connotation of ugliness; the cherry orchard is beautiful. However, in its symbolic essence, the garden of the last play by Chekhov is close to the metaphor of the garden-peace in "Gam-let". "The disintegrated connection of times" is the cause of desolation at the beginning, and then of the death of the garden-house, and, as once in "Hamlet", this disintegration between the past, present and future is preceded by death. In Chekhov's play, this is the death of a child, after which the mother, Ranevskaya, fled, abandoning everything; and the return turned out to be impossible. There will be no "new garden" for Ranevskaya and Gaev. Lopakhin, with less faith than Anya, hopes for the existence of other dacha gardens. But the cherry orchard, the most remarkable "in the whole province" and in Russian literature, will disappear, and with it will go away the memory of everything the garden was associated with and kept.

Hamlet's famous metaphor “the time is out of joint” 27 could be the epigraph of The Cherry Orchard. Although we must make a reservation: Chekhov would never have put such an epigraph - too pretentious for a comedy. The sound of a broken string - "fading, sad ... as if from the sky" - non-verbally expresses the same feeling of torn from the tension of time.

Selling an estate is terrible not only in itself, but as the loss of that "general idea" that Treplev did not have, in which his uncle became disillusioned

Vanya, whom the three sisters were looking for in vain and whom Ranevskaya and Gaev saw (or got used to seeing) in their white cherry alleys. This "general idea" is illusory and as if it does not contain anything concrete inside itself, its meaning is inexpressible. Chekhov did not like to answer definitely "eternal" questions. In order not to say "god", his heroes said - "general idea" 28. Two and a half months before his death (April 20, 1904) Chekhov wrote to O.L. Knipper: “You ask: what is life? It's like asking: what is a carrot? Carrots are carrots, and nothing else is known. "

Andrei Bely in his article "Chekhov", comparing Chekhov's theater and the theater of Maeterlinck, writes about the tendentiousness of the latter's symbols: “... the presence of insight, he subordinates the tendencies. Such tendentiousness only gets its full justification when the artist's revelation spills over beyond the bounds of art into life ”29. Chekhov's revelations never left life, so his images were never perceived as speculative. The symbol of the cherry orchard is saturated not only with myths, but, above all, with reality and life. And "true symbolism coincides with true realism<...>both about the real ”30. The central symbol of Chekhov's last play seems to consist of two layers joined together; using Bely's definition, “... in it Turgenev and Tolstoy come into contact with Maeterlinck and Hamsun” 31.

The symbolism of the garden is due to its tangible incarnation, and it disappears after the garden is cut down. It is like an instrument and music, one is impossible without the other. People find themselves deprived not only of the garden, but also through its beautiful three-dimensionality - the past and God. After the death of the garden, they begin a lonely life in a cold world, where there are no living, not invented, but given, as it were, from above symbols. Reality hears no more

echo of the past. The present turns out to be an isolated temporary compartment, into which a person falls without a "general idea." The cherry orchard is dying, and its symbolism, which connects reality with eternity, dies. The last sound is the sound of a breaking string.

I Strehler J. Chekhov's Cherry Orchard (1974) // Chekhoviana. The sound of a broken string: To the 100th anniversary of the play "The Cherry Orchard". M., 2005.S. 225.

All quotes from the works of A.P. Chekhov and references to the notes are given according to the following edition: A.P. Chekhov. Complete works and letters: In 30 volumes. T. 13. M., 1986.

3 Aesthetics: Dictionary. M., 1989.S. 312

4 Tsivyan T.V. Verg. Georg. IY. 116-148: Towards the mythologeme of the garden // Text: semantics and structure. M., 1983.S. 148.

5 Ibid. P. 141.

6 Ibid. P. 147.

7 Ibid. S. 149-150.

8 Likhachev D.S. Poetics of Old Russian Literature. L., 1967.S. 159.

9 Gromov M. Chekhov. M., 1993.S. 355-356.

10 Zaitsev B. Zhukovsky; Turgenev's life; Chekhov. M., 1994.S. 497.

II Cit. by edition: Turgenev I.S. Hunter's notes. M., 1991.S. 238. (Literary monuments).

12 Ibid. P. 196.

13 Turgenev I.S. The day before; Fathers and Sons; Steppe King Lear. L., 1985.S. 194, 196. (Classics and contemporaries).

14 Turgenev I.S. Smoke; New; Spring waters. M., 1986.S. 209.

15 Bunin I.A. Collected works: In 8 volumes.Vol. 1.M., 1993. S. 115-117.

16 The similarity of this poem by Bunin and Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" was noted in the article: A.P. Kuzicheva. The echo of the "broken string" in the poetry of the "Silver Age" // Chekhoviana: Chekhov and the "Silver Age" M., 1996. S. 141-142. Kuzicheva also mentions that Chekhov most likely read "Over the Oka", since the poem was published together with Bunin's story "Chernozem", about which Chekhov expressed his opinion to the author. The researcher quite rightly notes that “the plot and poetic overlap of two works<...>interesting typologically - regardless of whether the Bunin poem was inspired by meetings and conversations with Chekhov or not. This mood and intonation are already characteristic of the previous works of Bunin ”(Ibid. P. 142).

17 Bunin I.A. Poetry and prose. M., 1986.S. 360.

Bunin recalls that Chekhov once told him: "You need to sit down to write only when you feel cold as ice ...". In the same place. P. 356.

19 Bunin I.A. Collected cit .: In 8 volumes. V. 2. Antonovskie apples. M., 1993.S. 117.

20 Gogol N.V. Collected works: In 9 volumes.Vol. 5.M., 1994. S. 105-106.

21 Goryacheva M.O. Semantics of the "garden" in the structure of Chekhov's artistic world // Russian Literature. 1994. No. XXXV-II (15 February). P. 177.

Kharitonova E.V. The concept of a tragic motive in the drama of Shakespeare: "the motive of illness" in the tragedy "Hamlet" // Anglistics -1. M., 1996.S. 57-58.

23 The Chekhov Museum in Yalta contains three translations of Hamlet - Kroneberg and Polevoy, with pencil marks in the margins, and K.R. Apparently, the first two books are

accompanied Chekhov from the 80s. In 1902, the author gave Chekhov a three-volume book of KR's works, including a translation of Hamlet.

24 The problem of Shakespeare's images in "The Cherry Orchard" was thoroughly considered in the article by A.G. Golovacheva: A.G. Golovacheva "The sound of a broken string." Unread pages of the history of the "Cherry Orchard" // Literature at school. 1997. No. 2. S. 34-45.

25 Ibid. P. 58.

26 Ibid. P. 62.

27 The connection of times has fallen (translation by Kroneberg), The chain of times has broken (translation by K.R.). Field translation the time is out of joint is omitted.

28 The professor in The Boring Story said: “Every feeling and every thought lives on its own in me, and in all my judgments about science, theater, literature, students and in all the pictures that my imagination draws, even the most skillful analyst will not find that , which is called the general idea, or the god of a living person. And if this is not there, then it means that there is nothing either. "

29 Bely A. Chekhov // Bely A. Symbolism as a world view. M., 1994. P. 374-375 For the first time A. Bely published the article “A.P. Chekhov ”in the magazine“ In the World of Arts ”(1907, No. 11-12). V. Nabokov had a similar perception of Chekhov's symbolism, who called Chekhov's symbols “unobtrusive” (see: V. Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature. Moscow, 1996, p. 350). Modern Chekologists V.B. Kataev and A.P. Chudakov, often recalling Bely's articles, noted the peculiarity of the Chekhovian symbol, which "belongs to two spheres at once -" real "and symbolic - and none of them to a greater extent than the other" (Chudakov A.P. Poetics Chekhov. M., 1971, p. 172). See also: V.B. Kataev Chekhov's literary connections. M., 1989.S. 248-249. You can also name the monograph by A.S. Sobennikova: Sobennikov A.S. An artistic symbol in the drama of A.P. Chekhov: Typological comparison with the Western European "new drama". Irkutsk, 1989. Many Western researchers also wrote about special Chekhov's symbolism, for example: Chances E. Chekhov's Seagull: Ethereal creature or stuffed bird? // Chekhov's art of writing. A collection of critical essays / Ed. P. Debreczeny and T. Eekman. Columbus, Ohio. 1977.

30 Bely A. Decree. op. P. 372.

The image of the garden in the play "The Cherry Orchard" is ambiguous and complex. This is not just a part of the estate of Ranevskaya and Gaev, as it might seem at first glance. This is not what Chekhov wrote about. The cherry orchard is a symbolic image. It means the beauty of Russian nature and the life of the people who raised him and admired him. Together with the death of the garden, this life also perishes.

Center uniting characters

The image of the garden in the play "The Cherry Orchard" is the center around which all the heroes unite. At first it may seem that these are just old acquaintances and relatives who have gathered by chance in the estate to solve everyday problems. However, it is not. It is no coincidence that Anton Pavlovich combined characters representing various social groups and age categories. Their task is to decide the fate of not only the garden, but also their own.

Gayev and Ranevskaya's connection with the estate

Ranevskaya and Gaev are Russian landowners who own the estate and the cherry orchard. They are brother and sister, they are sensitive, intelligent, educated people. They are able to appreciate beauty, they feel it very subtly. That is why the image of the cherry orchard is so dear to them. In the perception of the heroes of the play "The Cherry Orchard", he personifies beauty. However, these characters are inert, because of which they cannot do anything to save what is dear to them. Ranevskaya and Gaev, with all their spiritual wealth and development, are deprived of responsibility, practicality and a sense of reality. Therefore, they cannot take care not only of loved ones, but also of themselves. These heroes do not want to heed Lopakhin's advice and rent out their land, although this would bring them a decent income. They believe that dachas and summer residents are vulgar.

Why is the estate so dear to Gaev and Ranevskaya?

Gaev and Ranevskaya cannot lease the land because of the feelings that connect them with the estate. They have a special relationship with the garden, which is like a living person to them. Much connects these heroes with their estate. The cherry orchard seems to them to be the personification of a departed youth, a past life. Ranevskaya compared her life with "cold winter" and "dark, rainy autumn." When the landowner returned to the estate, she again felt happy and young.

Lopakhin's attitude to the cherry orchard

The image of the garden in the play "The Cherry Orchard" is also revealed in relation to Lopakhin. This hero does not share the feelings of Ranevskaya and Gaev. He considers their behavior to be illogical and strange. This person wonders why they do not want to listen to seemingly obvious arguments that will help them find a way out of a predicament. It should be noted that Lopakhin is also capable of appreciating beauty. The cherry orchard delights this hero. He believes that there is nothing more beautiful in the world.

However, Lopakhin is a practical and active person. Unlike Ranevskaya and Gaev, he cannot just admire the cherry orchard and regret it. This hero seeks to do something to save him. Lopakhin sincerely wishes to help Ranevskaya and Gaev. He never ceases to convince them that both the land and the cherry orchard should be leased. This must be done as soon as possible, as the auction will be coming soon. However, the landlords do not want to listen to him. Leonid Andreevich can only swear that the estate will never be sold. He says he will not allow an auction.

The new owner of the garden

Nevertheless, the auction did take place. Lopakhin became the owner of the estate, who cannot believe his own happiness. After all, his father and grandfather worked here, "were slaves", they were not even allowed into the kitchen. The purchase of the estate for Lopakhin becomes a kind of symbol of his success. This is a well-deserved reward for many years of work. The hero would like his grandfather and father to rise from the grave and be able to rejoice with him, to see how their descendant has succeeded in life.

Negative qualities of Lopakhin

The cherry orchard for Lopakhin is just land. It can be bought, pledged, or sold. This hero, in his joy, did not consider himself obliged to show a sense of tact in relation to the former owners of the purchased estate. Lopakhin immediately begins to cut down the garden. He did not want to wait for the departure of the former owners of the estate. The soulless footman Yasha is somewhat similar to him. It completely lacks such qualities as attachment to the place where he was born and raised, love for his mother, kindness. In this respect, Yasha is the complete opposite of Firs, a servant who has unusually developed these feelings.

Attitude to the garden of Firs' servant

In revealing, it is necessary to say a few words about how Firs, the oldest of all in the house, treated him. For many years he devotedly served his masters. This man sincerely loves Gaev and Ranevskaya. He is ready to protect these heroes from all troubles. We can say that Firs is the only one of all the characters in The Cherry Orchard, endowed with such a quality as devotion. This is a very integral nature, which is manifested in its entirety in the attitude of the servant to the garden. For Firs, the estate of Ranevskaya and Gaev is a family nest. He seeks to protect it, as well as its inhabitants.

Representatives of the new generation

The image of the cherry orchard in the play "The Cherry Orchard" is dear only to those heroes who have important memories with it. The representative of the new generation is Petya Trofimov. The fate of the garden does not interest him at all. Petya declares: "We are higher than love." Thus, he admits that he is not capable of experiencing serious feelings. Trofimov looks at everything too superficially. He does not know real life, which he is trying to remake based on far-fetched ideas. Anya and Petya are outwardly happy. They yearn for a new life, for which they seek to break with the past. For these heroes, the garden is "all of Russia", and not a specific cherry orchard. But is it possible to love the whole world without loving your own home? Petya and Anya are losing their roots in striving for new horizons. Mutual understanding between Trofimov and Ranevskaya is impossible. For Petya, there are no memories, no past, and Ranevskaya deeply experiences the loss of the estate, since she was born here, her ancestors also lived here, and she sincerely loves the estate.

Who will save the garden?

As we have already noted, it is a symbol of beauty. It can only be saved by people who are able not only to appreciate it, but also to fight for it. Active and energetic people who replace the nobility treat beauty only as a source of profit. What will happen to her, who will save her?

The image of the cherry orchard in Chekhov's play "The Cherry Orchard" is a symbol of the home and the past, dear to the heart. Can you boldly go forward if you hear the knock of an ax behind your back, which destroys everything that was previously sacred? It should be noted that the cherry orchard is, and it is no coincidence that expressions such as "hitting a tree with an ax", "trampling a flower" and "chopping down the roots" sound inhuman and blasphemous.

So, we briefly examined the image of the cherry orchard as understood by the characters in the play "The Cherry Orchard". Reflecting on the actions and characters of the characters in Chekhov's work, we also reflect on the fate of Russia. After all, she is a "cherry orchard" for all of us.