—Lin Xi
Is beauty eternal or short-lived? Can beauty remain forever? In my country, the five thousand years of history is no match for modernization. The beauty of history gradually diminishes in the passage of time, and eventually disappears. In “The Cherry Orchard”, Chekhov wanted to express his attitude towards the demise of the feudal system. But other than that, the orchard in the story is also impressive. Although the owners continuously expressed their infatuation with the beautiful and poetic orchard, they however let the money and reality invade it step by step, weeping and burying the beauty easily, It’s very sad to see that, and it seems that the passing of the beauty – the cherry orchard is also inevitable.
Chekhov portrayed two charming but obnoxious roles in the play, Ranevskaya and Gayev. They used to tenderly recall their childhood; they made passionate speech referring that they could not live without the orchard. However, when losing it, they easily and thoroughly compromised on such misfortune, and even satisfied with the end of everything. Ranevskaya and Gayev wanted to “play” themselves as a tragic character, but I couldn’t feel the solemn and strong emotions that a tragic character should have shown.
These old owners could no longer maintain the original beauty of the orchard. No matter how much Lopakhin appreciated the beauty of the orchard, as a bourgeois, he still destroyed it driven by his interests, cutting down the trees to build a villa. A good play is written for all times. Behind the lyric poetic quality of “the cherry orchard”, I saw Chekhov’s concern about cultural loss. He did not know whether traditional culture must withstand the terrible attack of the evolution of civilization; whether the spirit and the material were really incompatible; and how beauty should exist at the turn of the century. Thus, Chekhov’s thought about beauty in “The Cherry Orchard” is meaningful beyond his own time. He somewhat foresaw the contradiction between fantasy and reality in the turmoil of social transformation and the threat under the highly develoed materials and increasing spiritual needs. In my opinion, this has to be a great work.
