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292 Anton Tchekhof
Materialism reigns supreme; it lords the or
chard with mighty hand, and in the frenzy of its
triumph believes itself in control of the bodies and
souls of men. But in the madness of conquest it
has discounted a stubborn obstacle the spirit of
idealism. It is symbolized in Peter Trophimof,
"
the perpetual student," and Anya, the young
daughter of Mine. Ranevsky. The "
wonderful
achievements
"
of the materialistic age do not en
thuse them; they have emancipated themselves
from the Lopakhin idol as well as from their aristo
cratic traditions.
Anya. Why is it that I no longer love the cherry
orchard as I did ? I used to love it so tenderly ;
I thought
there was no better place on earth than our garden.
Trophimof. All Russia is our garden. The earth is
great and beautiful ;
it is full of wonderful places. Think,
Anya, your grandfather, your great-grandfather and all
your ancestors were serf-owners, owners of living souls.
Do not human spirits look out at you from every tree in
the orchard, from every leaf and every stem ? Do you not
hear human voices? . . . Oh! it is terrible. Your or
chard frightens me. When I walk through it in the
evening or at night, the rugged bark on the trees glows
with a dim light, and the cherry trees seem to see all that
happened a hundred and two hundred years ago in pain
ful and oppressive dreams. Well, well, we have fallen
at least two hundred years beyond the times. We have
achieved nothing at all as yet; we have not made up our
minds how we stand with the past; we only philosophize,
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