The Swan Song by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov: Analysis

 The Swan Song by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov: Analysis

About the Author

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is a world-famous short story writer He has also written full-length plays. Some of them are The Sea Gull, Orchard, Uncle Vany, and the Three Fighters. The main source of his inspiration is his sympathy for the people around him and his closeness to the ‘bad and dreary’ life of Russia.

About the Play

The play ‘The Swan Song’ exhibits (displays) the author’s keen observation and sensitivity to life. It shows how people feel and think after completing a long cycle of life and their career.

There are two characters in this play: the first is a sixty-eight years old ‘Vasil Svietlovidoff’ and the second one is Nikita Ivanich, who is also an old man, a prompter.

This play is about the last performance of Vasil Svietlovidoff, who has a long experience of forty-five years of theatre. The title of the play is based on an old belief among the people. It is said that the mute swan (It is a species of a swan) See the pic] sings a song just before it dies

In this play, the last performance of the main character becomes the swan song.

As the play begins, the reader/audience finds the old actor waking up from his sleep in the dressing room. He is still under the influence of alcohol. He wakes up and feels as if his life is over and it is time to exit the stage of life too. Darkness is spread around him.

Let’s have a detailed analysis of the play.

The scene on the stage shows that it is a country theatre and it is night. The play is over and no audience is present in the theatre. On the right side of the stage, the row of unpainted doors leads to the dressing room.

To the left side, all sorts of rubbish are found in the background. An overturned stool is also visible in the middle of the stage.  The overturned stool also shows that in real life how people forget not only about things but also about living beings. They believe in the ‘use and throw’ policy. The main character ‘Vasil Svietlovidoff’ also thinks of him as a ‘squeezed lemon’

In this way, the stage also becomes symbolically rich in meaning presenting life at its fag end.

 The words were spoken by Macbeth in Shakespeare’s famous play ‘Macbeth’ becomes relevant to quote here that life ‘…is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’

The old actor is shown on the stage coming out of a dressing room laughing, holding a candle in his hand.

It seems that he feels guilty about drinking wine and sleeping in the dressing room after his performance. He calls it a good joke. He also calls him a foolish old man and poor dodder (one who walks with shaking legs).

Then he calls ‘Yegorka! Petrushka!’. But no sound except the echo of his own words reaches his ears. He concludes that they must be asleep and it is very difficult to wake them up now. After that, he puts the candle on the floor, picks up the stool, and sits on it. Then he recalls he gave both of them a tip that day, but they have disappeared. Calling them rascals, he thinks that they have gone off and perhaps they locked up the theatre.

He thinks that the play was to his benefit. But at the same time, he feels it disgusting that he has drunk so much beer and wine. He also feels satisfied with his performance. He says that he exerted full effort to honor the occasion by giving the best performance of his life. After that, he feels his whole body burning.

He also feels as if he had twenty tongues in his mouth. It means that he might be feeling feverish and wondering how much talkative he has become. He recalls that experience as horrible and foolish. He also calls himself a ‘poor old sinner’. It means that, in the past, he has been trying not to drink, but he has not been able to have control over his old habit of drinking too much wine and beer. He feels guilty for having done so. This is the reason why he calls himself an old sinner. His mind is not working properly. He does not know what occasion he had been celebrating.

Vasil Svietlovidoff feels that his head is splitting due to a headache. He feels that his body was shivering due to the cold. Nothing is visible to him. He thinks as if he were present in a cellar. Again he feels guilty about drinking wine. He should have thought of his old age. He calls himself an idiot. He can play the role of a fool and joker and of a young man, but now he feels that all is over. Then he becomes nostalgic about his sixty-eight years that have gone and cannot be revived. He cannot live those years again.

The line ‘I have drained the bottle, only a few little drops are left at the bottom, nothing but the dregs.’ is very meaningful. Imagery is created here in the reader’s mind. It seems as if an empty bottle is lying there on the floor. It contains a few left-out drops at its bottom. At the symbolical level, it shows a few left-out years of the speaker’s life. The precious sixty-eight years have already been lived by the actor. The remaining ‘a few years’ of his life are like those ‘a few drops of wine’ that were left at the bottom of the bottle and those are just dregs, containing small particles of solid waste material.

It further means that the remaining few years of his life are quite unimportant, useless, and lacking in the energy of his youthful period.

The line ‘I have drained the bottle’ may mean that he has lived the maximum best part of his life.

He calls himself ‘Vasili, old boy; and also tells himself to remain prepared for his last moments of life when death comes to take him, whether he likes it or not. He has been playing his role on stage for the last forty-five years. It is for the first time that he has seen the theatre at night after the lights have been put out.

Then he walks up to the footlights and is unable to see anything due to the darkness. Only the prompter’s box and his desk are visible to him. The rest is in pitch darkness around him. Again the speaker creates a word picture: ‘the rest is in pitch darkness, a black, bottomless pit, like a grave, in which death itself might be hiding....’

The speaker imagines a grave in front of him, where spreads pitch darkness and where death itself is hiding.

Such thoughts reflect the actor’s state of mind, his loneliness, and his hopelessness. He has become hollow from the inside.

He also feels the cold wind blowing out of the empty theatre as though out of a stone flue (an outlet/a pipe-like chimney). He feels as if the shivers are running up and down his back.

After that, he calls ‘Yegorka and Petrushka’. He is unable to know where both of them are at present. It’s horrible to think about where they are. Then he again fills with the guilt of drinking and says that he must leave his habit of drinking wine. HE is an old man. He is not going to live for more years. At sixty-eight, people visit the church and prepare for death. He looks at his dress and feels bad to see himself in a fool’s dress. He feels ashamed of wearing a joker’s dress at sixty-eight. HE thinks that it does not suit him. So he wants to change it at once. After that, he calls the theatre a dreadful place. He believes that he would die of fright if he continued sitting there.

He moves towards the dressing room. At the same time, At the farthest end of the stage, Nikita Ivanich, wearing a long white coat, comes out of the dressing room.

Svietlovidoff shrieks to see Nitika Ivanich. He says, “Who are you? What? What do you want? [Stamps his foot] Who are you?

Coming closer to Svietlovidoff, he tells him that it is he (Nikita), the prompter. But Svietlovidoff does not feel normal and keeps on asking him in fright as to who he is. After a few seconds, he regains consciousness and asks Nikita what he was doing there. Nikita tells him that he spends nights in dressing rooms because he has no place to live in. He also requests Svietlovidoff not to tell Alexi Fomitch about it.

Svietlovidoff confirms if it was Nikitusha there. As he called his name several times and he did not respond to him, he reminds him that the audience called him sixteen times and they also brought garlands and several other gifts too. They were wild with joy and enthusiasm. But when he fell asleep in the dressing room, he complains to him that not a single person came to wake him up and take him home.

 

He expresses his grief over such apathy /ˈæp.ə.θi/  shown to him by his own companions. Then he is filled with self-pity and tells him that he is in old age and illness. He is unable to drag his life further. Then he falls on Nikitusha’s neck and starts weeping bitterly. While weeping he tells him that he is old and helpless and tells him not to go leaving him alone. He also tells him that he is about to die and it is all dreadful to think about his last time.

Ivanich very tenderly and respectfully tells Svielovidoff that it was time for him to go home. But Vasil pathetically says that he won’t go home because he has no home to go to. Ivanich asks him if he has forgotten where he lives.

At this Svietlovidoff tells Ivanich that he is all alone at his house, so he won’t go there. He is alone there, with no wife, no children. He equates himself to the lonely wind blowing on the fields.

He tells him that he has no one to remember him after his death. Here he feels the pangs of living alone. He represents all old men who are victims of loneliness. Then he repeats his plight that it is awful to be alone and no one is there to cheer him up, no one to show affection to him, to help him to go to bed, etc.  Thus he feels miserable in front of Nikitusha.

Ivanich Nikitusha consoles him by saying that his audience loves him. At this, Svietlovidoff tells Nikitusha that his audience has gone home. They are sleeping and have forgotten their ‘old clown’. Then he again expresses his disappointment by saying that his audience do not remember him; nobody loves him---he has no wife and children.  Ivanich again consoles him and tells him not be feeling unhappy. Svietlovidoff continues speaking further. He tells Niikitusha that he has the blood of noble aristocratic ancestors in his veins. He also informs him that before joining the theatre, he served in the army and in the artillery. By speaking the line ‘before I fell as low as this’ he means to say that he did not like playing the role of a joker in the plays. It shows his strong dislike for the role he usually performed in theatre.

He recalls his youthful time when he was a fine handsome young boy bold and eager.

He feels nostalgic about his beautiful past. He says that a dark pit has swallowed them. He tells Nikitusha that he can remember his old days very clearly. He recalls how he was young, full of youthful ecstasy …love for women.

Ivanich tells him that it is time for him to sleep.

But Svietlovidoff continues speaking to Ivanich and remembers that a woman fell in love with him when he first appeared on the stage with a glow of passionate youth on his face. She loved him for his acting. She was beautiful graceful, young, innocent, pure, and radiant like summer dawn.

 Svietlovidoff keeps on telling Nikitusha that she was so charming that she could charm even the darkest night. It means her smile could make even the depressed person charming.

He remembers the day when she stood just in front of him. She had never seemed as lovely to him as she did then. She spoke to him with her beautiful eyes. He tells Nikitusha Ivanich that he shall never forget her tender, soft and deep eyes even in the grave.

Feeling enraptured with her beauty, he fell to his knees in front of her and begged for accepting his proposal for marriage.

But she put on the condition that he must give up the stage if he wants to marry her. She told him that she could love an actor but cannot marry him.

 

He was playing a foolish clown’s part that day. That day, he had the awareness of the bitter reality that his worship of art was a delusion. It was an empty dream.

 He understood his audience that day. He came to know that he was playing the part of a clown just for the entertainment of the people. Before that, whatever he received from the audience in terms of applause or garlands was all fake.  He tells Nikitusha that people applauded him and bought his photographs just to show their unreal love for art. But he was always a stranger to them. They never tried to know about him. He is worthless to them. They want to meet him but no one is there to marry his/her daughter or a sister to him.

After that, he sinks onto the stool by saying that he has no faith in his audience.

 Ivanich very respectfully tells Svietlovidoff that he looked extremely pale. He tells him that he is afraid to see death’s impact on his face and requests him to go home.

But Svietlovidoff is lost in himself and continues speaking that he kept thinking deeply on that day and finally gained knowledge by paying a heavy cost on it.

After that, he began to wonder about aimlessly without caring for his future and took the parts of buffoons and low comedians. He did not care for the thought that went through his mind.

 

He expresses deep pain to think that once he was a great artist till he gradually lost his talent because he did not care to maintain it. He played the role of a buffoon for various types of people. He lost his previous attractive looks and lost the power of expressing his thought because the role of buffoon did not require much talent. Thus he became Merry Andrews (a person who entertains others by means of comic antics; a clown), instead of a man. Actually in those days playing a buffoon was not considered to be a respectable role.

By speaking the line ‘

After that ‘I have been swallowed up in that great black pit.’, he means to say that he was lost in the black pit of depression, hopelessness, and frustration due to the shock he received from the lady he loved. He says that he never felt so much aggrieved (pained) in such a measure as he does on this day. It is all over now. While saying this, he starts sobbing. Then Ivanitch calls Petrushka and Yogorka.

 But Svietlovidoff continues speaking about his past. He tells him that he was a great genius. He adds that Ivanitch cannot imagine that he had great power of eloquence. He was very graceful and tender. He had a passionate heart. Then he beats his breast.t But he feels choked in his throat due to sentiments. After that he recites some lines:

 "The shade of bloody Ivan now returning Fans through my lips rebellion to a flame, I am the dead Dimitri! In the burning Boris shall perish on the throne I claim. Enough! The heir of Czars shall not be seen Kneeling to yonder haughty Polish Queen! ‘’

After that he recites a few lines from King Lear:

See, the sky is overcast with dark clouds; the rain is pouring onto the earth; the thunder and the lightning in the clouds above are piercing the sky….and listen: ‘Blow winds, blow. Emerge out of the limitation by piercing the cheeks of your mouth. Be outrageous and blow.

Then he appeals to cataracts and hurricanes to reach up to the height of the staples of the Churches to drown the cocks (In the 9th century, Pope Nicholas made the rooster official. His decree was that all churches must display the rooster on their steeples or domes as a symbol of Peter's betrayal of Jesus.) on them.

 You angry thoughts, you fires of the thunderbolts that pierce the oak trees by their power, burn my white-haired head to ashes. You thunder that shakes all, flatten the round-shaped earth with its powerful strike. Make cracks in mountains and break them to pieces and destroy all those elements on the earth that fill in human beings' ingratitude!

After reciting a few lines from King Lear, Svietlovidoff becomes impatient. Now he wants Ivanich to perform the role of a foolish joker. He stamps his foot on the ground and tells him to play the part of the joker as quickly as possible because he cannot wait for more.

Ivanich begins to play the role of a fool. He speaks ‘ O Nuncle, rainwater collected from outside and brought in a house that has no water at all is better than the holy water kept in a court. Good Nuncle, come inside. Ask for your daughter’s blessings. Here in this night, no one is wise or foolish.

He also recites some lines from Hamlet.

At last, he concludes that old age is no hurdle if a man is a genius and has a talent.

Thus the one-act play highlights the theme of alienation and loneliness and ends up on the positive note that old age is no hurdle in life if the person is talented and a genius. Alienation and loneliness are just states of mind. One can replace them by creating positivity and by making oneself busy in life.