So I went last night to see Chekov’s Uncle Vanya at Cal Shakes which was a smart, unsentimental and effective production. Given the past year’s events I heard the delivery of these lines in a new way. Outside the planetary pull of the families’ little drama, Doctor Michael Astroff has a committment and a dream. He is saving the forests of Russia, replanting trees, buying woodland, encouraging responsible use. He has already noticed the relationship between loss of habitat and loss of wildlife, and he knows his country will be the poorer for it. He has the foresight to see that his small actions might someday, a thousand years from now, make mankind happy.
ASTROFF. Why destroy the forests? The woods of Russia are
trembling under the blows of the axe. Millions of trees have
perished. The homes of the wild animals and birds have been
desolated; the rivers are shrinking, and many beautiful
landscapes are gone forever. And why? Because men are too lazy
and stupid to stoop down and pick up their fuel from the ground.
[To HELENA] Am I not right, Madame? Who but a stupid barbarian
could burn so much beauty in his stove and destroy that which he
cannot make?
(Or force a keystone species to leave when he is bringing wildlife and interest to the city?)
Man is endowed with reason and the power to create,
so that he may increase that which has been given him, but until
now he has not created, but demolished. The forests are
disappearing, the rivers are running dry, the game
is exterminated, the climate is spoiled, and the earth becomes
poorer and uglier every day. [To VOITSKI] I read irony in your
eye; you do not take what I am saying seriously, and--and--after
all, it may very well be nonsense. But when I pass
peasant-forests that I have preserved from the axe, or hear the
rustling of the young plantations set out with my own hands, I
feel as if I had had some small share in improving the climate,
and that if mankind is happy a thousand years from now I will
have been a little bit responsible for their happiness. When I
plant a little birch tree and then see it budding into young
green and swaying in the wind, my heart swells with pride and
I--[Sees the WORKMAN, who is bringing him a glass of vodka on a
tray] however--[He drinks] I must be off. Probably it is all
nonsense, anyway. Good-bye.
“Find something outside yourself, that is yourself. Then devote yourself to it with all your heart.” Be it birch or beavers. Nice Farmer’s Market today. Lots of friendly faces. Tonight much activity at the tree past the “third dam”. Looks like the beavers are making a food cache directly across from the tree. Watch for yourself. They break off a branch, then cross the creek and dive in the same place every time. I guess being stored underwater keeps leaves fresh; like a fridge. Smart beavers.
