Anton Chekhov

Chekhov's objections to the Moscow interpretation did not, however, spring from its style, but from the imbalance in meaning that Stanislavsky had induced. Although it contains a 'ton of love', The Seagull is not a soap opera about a triangular relationship or a romantic dramatisation of Trigorin's 'subject for a short story'. It is perhaps Chekhov's most personal play in its treatment of the artist's metier. The theme of splendours and miseries of artists is plainly struck by Nina at the start, when she explains why her parents won't let her come to Sorin's estate: 'They say this place is Bohemia'. Years of theatre-going, reviewing, dealing with performers and managers were distilled by Chekhov to create a density of metaphor for the artistic experience, for the contrasts between commercialism and idealism, facility and aspiration, purposeless talent and diligent mediocrity. Of the central characters, one is an aspiring playwright, another a successful and performed writer; one is an acclaimed star of the footlights, another a would-be actress.

Stanislavsky's black-and-white vision of the play also ran counter to Chekhov's attempt to create multiple heroes and multiple conflicts. Treplyov seems the protagonist because the play begins with his artistic credo and his moment of revolt, and it ends with his self-destruction. But in terms of stage time, he shares the limelight with many

other claimants, whose ambitions cancel out one another.

Nor can Nina be singled out as the one survivor who preserves her ideals in spite of all. The type of the victimised young girl, abandoned by her love and coming to a bad end, frequently recurred in Russian literature from Karamzin's Poor Liza (1792) onward. Often she was depicted as the ward of an older woman who, in her cruelty or wilful egoism, promotes the girl's downfall: many plays of Ostrovsky and Potekhin feature such a pair, the relation­ship is subtly handled by Turgenev in A Month in the Country (1850). In The Seagull, the relationship is rarefied: it is Arkadina's example rather than her intention that sends Nina to Moscow, maternity and mumming.

The pure-souled, lone, provincial actress, a prey to the jealousy of colleagues, the importunities of admirers, and the scorn of society, was an early avatar of the Poor Liza type. In Pisemsky's One Thousand Souls (1858) Nastenka, a local girl betrayed, returns to her home town as a famous tragedienne to enjoy a bittersweet reunion with her former lover. This interview parallels the similar scene between Treplyov and Nina. When Nastenka relates her past sufferings and berates her love for not going on with his writing, he flies into a rage and looks to her to save him from himself, which she does. Significantly, Nina does not marry her former suitor out of a sense of duty and fond memories; she sees her duty is to her career, and her memories of 'a bright, warm, joyous, pure life . . . feelings like tender, fragile flowers' are inaccurate. At Nina's most intense moment of recollection, she runs away, leaving the failed writer to save himself, if he can.

Other literary prototypes for Nina include Anninka and Lyubinka in Saltykov-Shchedrin's novel The Golovlyov Family (1876), who flee the stifling family estate and after a brief stint in Moscow, descend to touring seedy provincial theatres in musical comedy: seduction, arrest, alcoholism and attempted suicide follow in quick succession. Negina, in Ostrovsky's comedy Talents and Admirers (1881), on the other hand, a gifted provincial leading lady, turns down the love of the idealistic student Melusov to go to Moscow with a wealthy landowner in order to further her career.

melusov: Oh, Sasha, how can you! Are talent and depravity inseparable?

negina: No, no! Not depravity! Ah, what a man you are . . . understand . . . I'm an actress! But according to you I ought to be some sort of heroine. Yet how can every woman be a heroine? I'm an actress . . . And if I were to marry you I'd soon throw you over and go back to the stage. Even for the smallest salary. Just to be there - on the stage. I can't live without the theatre.⁵

Nina's beginnings, her debut outside Moscow at a summer theatre, her subsequent touring, her dead baby and empty affair, recall the swift decline of Anninka and Lyubinka, as do her third-class railway trips to boom towns like Yelets where 'businessmen with a taste for the arts will pester me with their attentions. A sordid life'. But, like Negina, her faith in her vocation keeps her from succumbing to despair. We even hear Negina's assertion in Nina's 'I'm a gull . . . Not so, I'm an actress. Why, yes!'