Legacy and Prestige Theme Analysis

I sat down, closed my eyes — like this — and thought: will those who will be living a hundred, two hundred years from now, those for whom we are now laying down the road to the future, will they remember us in their prayers? Nyanya, they won’t!

I still love her and am faithful to her, I help with what I can and have given up my property for the education of the children she had by the man she loved. I lost my happiness but kept my pride. And what became of her? Her youth has now gone, by the laws of nature her beauty has faded, the man she loved has passed on… What has she left?

…And perhaps this really is just craziness, but when I go past the peasant’s woods, which I saved from destruction, or when I hear the hum of my young trees, which I planted with my own hands, I know the climate is a little in my control and that if in a thousand years man is happy, the responsibility for that will in a small way be mine. When I plant a birch and then watch it come into leaf and sway in the wind, my spirit fills with pride…

I work all my life for learning, and I’m used to my study, the lecture hall, the colleagues I esteem — and then, I end up for no good reason in this tomb, see fools here every day, listen to worthless conversations… I want to live, I like success, I like fame, making a noise, and here it’s like being in exile. To pine every minute for the past, to watch the success of others, to be afraid of death… I can’t! I haven’t the strength! And they won’t even excuse me my age here!

We have here a decline which is the consequence of an impossible struggle for existence; a degeneration arising from stagnation, ignorance, a total lack of self-awareness, when a frozen, hungry, sick man, in order to preserve the remnants of life, to protect his children, instinctively, unconsciously grasps at anything to relieve his hunger and get warm, and destroys everything around without a thought for tomorrow. Now almost everything is destroyed, but nothing has yet been created to take its place.

I will not be silent! Stay here, I haven’t finished! You have destroyed my life! I haven’t lived, I haven’t lived! Thanks to you I wasted, I destroyed the best years of my life! You are my worst enemy!

Those who will live after us in a hundred or two hundred years’ time and who will despise us for living our lives so foolishly and with such a lack of taste — they may find a way of being happy, but we… You and I have only one hope. The hope that when we lie in our coffins we’ll be visited by visions, perhaps even agreeable ones.

We shall live, Uncle Vanya. We shall live out many, many days and long evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials fate sends us; we shall labour for others both now and in our old age, knowing no rest, and when our time comes, we shall meekly die, and there beyond the grave we shall say that we suffered, that we wept, that we were sorrowful, and God will have pity on us, and you and I, dear Uncle, shall see a life that is bright and beautiful and full of grace, we shall rejoice and look back on our present woes with tenderness, with a smile — and we shall rest.