> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://theparnassian.com/en/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Patchouli in Gaev's line in Chekhov's “The Cherry Orchard” and its possible meaning
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/gaev/
- Published: 2019-04-23T10:53:21.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T18:56:00.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Books, Observations, Mores

GAYEV. Once, sister, you and I slept in this very room, and now I am fifty-one years old, strange as it may seem...  
LOPAKHIN. Yes, time goes on.  
GAYEV. What?  
LOPAKHIN. Time, I say, goes on.  
GAYEV. And it smells of patchouli here.

As for this «patchouli» in *The Cherry Orchard*, people usually write, without troubling themselves over the logic, that Gayev was merely describing an unpleasant smell. I have also come across the version that the scent of patchouli is connected with repelling moths and points us rather to the fashion for Indian cashmere textiles, which reached Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. Some even start inventing-remembering their grandmothers, who saved their wardrobes from insects with patchouli sachets.

But no, Chekhov, of course, was not writing about that. At the beginning of the century it was customary for women of easy virtue to wear the perfume «Patchouli»: cheap, with a very lasting sweet, herbaceous scent, it somehow became an indispensable accessory of prostitutes, perhaps because, as I am told, patchouli is considered an aphrodisiac.

That is why, after Gayev's remark, Anya suddenly says: «I'll go to bed», because it sounded insulting, and not because the room is thick with a cloying odour.

In short, I do not know about your grandmothers, but mine did not smell of patchouli.