2 years ago
"All Russia is our orchard. It is a great and beautiful land, and there are many wonderful places in it. (Pause) Just think, Anya: Your grandfather, your great-grandfather, and all your ancestors were serf-owners, possessors of living souls. Don’t you see that from every cherry tree, from every leaf and trunk, human beings are peering out at you? Don’t you hear their voices? To possess living souls—that has corrupted all of you, those who lived before and you who are living now, so that your mother, you, your uncle, no longer perceive that you are living in debt, at someone else’s expense, at the expense of those whom you wouldn’t allow to cross your threshold… We are at least two hundred years behind the times, we have as yet absolutely nothing, we have no definite attitude toward the past, we only philosophize, complain of boredom, or drink vodka. Yet it’s quite clear that to begin to live we must first atone for the past, be done with it, and we can atone for it only by suffering, only by extraordinary, unceasing labor. Understand this, Anya."
- Cherry Orchard Trofimov
