“Who but a stupid barbarian could burn so much beauty in his stove and destroy that which he cannot make?” Astrov asks Yelena in Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. “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 wildlife is exterminated, the climate is spoiled, and the earth becomes poorer and uglier every day. I see irony in your look; you don’t take what I am saying seriously, and—and—after all, it may very well be nonsense. But when I pass village forests that I have preserved from the ax, or hear the rustling of the young trees 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’ll have been a little bit responsible for their happiness.”
c. 1897 | Russia
Devil of Destruction
Anton Chekhov
Astrov: 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—I must be off. Probably it’s all nonsense, anyway. Goodbye.
[Astrov and Sophia go into the house. Yelena and Voynitsky walk over to the terrace.]
Yelena: You have behaved shockingly again. Really, your behavior is too petty.
Voynitsky: If you could only see your face, the way you move! Oh, how tedious your life must be, absolutely tedious.
Yelena: It is tedious, yes, and boring! How well I understand your compassion! As Astrov said just now, see how you thoughtlessly destroy the forests, so that there will soon be none left. So you also destroy mankind, and soon loyalty and purity and self-sacrifice will have vanished with the woods. Why cannot you look calmly at a woman unless she is yours? Because, the doctor was right, you are all possessed by a devil of destruction; you have no mercy on the woods or the birds or on women or on one another.
Voynitsky: I don’t like your philosophy.
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