History of the creation of the "Cherry Orchard"

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in the nineteenth century, society was changing, people and their worldview were changing and Russia was moving towards a new system that developed rapidly after the abolition of the Serfdom. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov began the history of writing his final work, The Cherry Orchard, probably since Anton moved to Moscow in 1899 at a young age.

From an early age, Anton Chekhov was fond of drama and tried to write in this genre as a gymnasium student, but this is the first attempt at writing after the author's death. A play written around 1878 is called "Fatherlessness". It was staged on a stage in the theater in 1957. The passage did not match Chekhov's style; however, the altered strokes of the whole Russian theater are already visible.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov‘s experience from childhood

Anton Pavlovich's father had a small shop on the first floor of Chekhov's house, the second family lived. However, by 1894, things in the store were getting worse and worse, and in 1897 the father went completely bankrupt, forcing the whole family to move to Moscow after selling the property, where the older children had already settled. That time. So, from an early age, Anton Chekhov learned what it was like to part with his most expensive house to pay. By now, in a more grown-up age, Chekhov had more than once turned out to be a "new man", and in modern parlance had the phenomenon of selling great land at auction.

The situation of the house sale was close and familiar to Chekhov, and after the sale of his father's house in Taganrog he became interested and anxious in the emotional tragedy of this national cause. Thus, the play has its own painful impressions and its friend A.S. Its story was based on both. Kisev, whose estate has also moved away from the auction, also, many of the abandoned aristocratic treasures of Kharkov province, where he rested, went through his experience right before the author’s eyes. Anton Pavlovich also observed the situation of their owners on the same prestigious land and his estate in Melikhov. The process of poverty of the aristocracy lasted a long time; they lived only through their destiny, unreasonably confused them, and did not think about the consequences.

A drama born of pain

It took about three years to produce the play from the beginning. This was for several causes. One of the chief ones was the author's poor health and even in letters sent to friends he complained that the work was moving too slowly, sometimes not being able to write more than four lines a day.

The second reason can be attributed to Chekhov's adaptation of his play, which was intended not only for the fate of the destroyed landowners, but also for the common people of that era by the perpetual student Trofimov, to make him feel like a revolutionary-minded intellectual. Even Yasha's painting work required a lot of effort because it was through him that Chekhov showed how the historical memory of his roots was being erased, and how attitudes towards society and the motherland as a whole were changing.

Can the play be considered droll?

Now is much easy to answer than a hundred years ago. Such concepts as lyrical comedy, tragicomedy, dramedies, and indeed genres, are becoming more and more hybrid.

In 1904, Chekhov's plays were judged according to a stricter genre system. Classical comedy involves a struggle for mundane goals, which ridiculous characters lead by ridiculous means; the conflict is resolved without serious consequences for both parties. clearly, most of Chekhov's contemporaries saw a catastrophe in the denouement of The Cherry Orchard.

The loss of the estate, the cutting down of the garden as a symbol of the death of the old culture, the ruin and separation of the family, the alarming uncertainty of the future, old Firs, forgotten in an empty house until spring and doomed to die are a tragedy. In this context, the characters also look like tragic figures, and their goals, to preserve the past or, conversely, to build the future; are high. But even with such a reading, one cannot fail to notice purely comic characters, many comedy scenes.

All the characters in the play can cause pity or irritation because they are ridiculous in their naivety, indecision, inconsistency, unsuitability for life.