mamma.

MME. VOITSKAYA. It seems you never want to listen to what I have
to say. Pardon me, Jean, but you have changed so in the last year
that I hardly know you. You used to be a man of settled
convictions and had an illuminating personality---

VOITSKI. Oh, yes. I had an illuminating personality, which
illuminated no one. [A pause] I had an illuminating personality!
You couldn't say anything more biting. I am forty-seven years
old. Until last year I endeavoured, as you do now, to blind my
eyes by your pedantry to the truths of life. But now--Oh, if you
only knew! If you knew how I lie awake at night, heartsick and
angry, to think how stupidly I have wasted my time when I might
have been winning from life everything which my old age now
forbids.

SONIA. Uncle Vanya, how dreary!

MME. VOITSKAYA. [To her son] You speak as if your former
convictions were somehow to blame, but you yourself, not they,
were at fault. You have forgotten that a conviction, in itself,
is nothing but a dead letter. You should have done something.

VOITSKI. Done something! Not every man is capable of being a
writer _perpetuum mobile_ like your Herr Professor.

MME. VOITSKAYA. What do you mean by that?

SONIA. [Imploringly] Mother! Uncle Vanya! I entreat you!