What the Soviet interpretation left out was the question of love. And yet love, the force of love, love in all its permutations, is everywhere in the play, like the wind that Natalya Petrovna suddenly lets into the drawing room in Act One:

NATALYA: Hello, wind. (She laughs) As if he’s been waiting for a chance to burst in . . . (Looking around) See how he’s taken over the whole room . . . There’s no driving him out now . . .

Belyaev is in some sense the personification of that wind, a local Eros with his homemade bow and arrow. He is a breath of fresh air, of youth, freedom, disruption, in what Stanislavsky called the “hothouse” life of the old country estate. But he is an unwitting and unwilling Eros. His importance lies less in his own character than in the effect he has on the others. The result of his sudden intrusion is a comedy of the unexpected at every turn and in every tone, a constant balancing of absurdity and true feeling, concealment and confession. The play keeps the lightness and quickness of the older French comedies, their repartee and their soliloquies, but transformed by a realism that was new to the stage. Maintaining that balance was the “complex psychological task” Turgenev set himself as a dramatist.

—Richard Pevear

A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY

CHARACTERS

ARKÁDY SERGÉICH ISLÁEV (Arkásha), a wealthy landowner, thirty-six

NATÁLYA PETRÓVNA (Natásha), his wife, twenty-nine

KÓLYA, their son, ten

VÉRA ALEXÁNDROVNA (Vérochka), their ward, seventeen

ÁNNA SEMYÓNOVNA ISLÁEVA, Islaev’s mother, fifty-eight

LIZAVÉTA BOGDÁNOVNA (Líza), her companion, thirty-seven

ADÁM IVÁNOVICH SCHÁAF, a German tutor, forty-five

MIKHÁIL ALEXÁNDROVICH RAKÍTIN (Michel), a friend of the house, thirty

ALEXÉI NIKOLÁEVICH BELYÁEV, a student, Kolya’s Russian teacher, twenty-one

AFANÁSY IVÁNOVICH BOLSHINTSÓV, a neighbor, forty-eight

IGNÁTY ILYÍCH SHPIGÉLSKY, a doctor, forty

MATVÉI, a servant, forty

KÁTYA, a maid, twenty

The action takes place on Islaev’s estate in the early 1840s. A day passes between Acts One and Two, Two and Three, and Four and Five.

ACT ONE

A drawing room. To the right, a card table and the door to the study; in the middle, the door to the ballroom; to the left, two windows and a round table. Sofas in the corners. At the card table, Anna Semyonovna, Lizaveta Bogdanovna and Schaaf sit playing preference; by the round table sit Natalya Petrovna and Rakitin. Natalya Petrovna is doing embroidery on canvas. Rakitin is holding a book. The clock on the wall shows three.

SCHAAF

Haartz.

ANNA

Again? You’ll be the death of us, my dear.

SCHAAF

(Phlegmatically) Eight haartz.

ANNA

(To Lizaveta Bogdanovna) Look at him! Look how he plays!

Lizaveta Bogdanovna smiles.

NATALYA

(To Rakitin) Why did you stop? Read.

RAKITIN

(Slowly raising the book) “Monte Cristo se redressa haletant . . .”¹

Are you interested in this, Natalya Petrovna?

NATALYA

Not at all.