They are all serious, and all wear solemn faces; they discuss important subjects and air their theories; but meanwhile workers eat abominably and sleep in filth and stuffiness without pillows. There are as many as forty of them sleeping in one room and bugs everywhere, and the stench and damp and moral impurity. It's plain that all our clever talk is only meant to distract our attention and other people's. Translated from the Russian by Kathleen Cook Anton Chekhov The Cherry Orchard Pyotr Trofimov