I finished The Seagull, by Anton Chekhov (Tom Stoppard’s translation), just yesterday, and I feel like having only read it once, there’s a lot there that I haven’t picked up on yet. After all, you can only get so much out of reading it--like any play, it’s not meant to be read, it’s meant to be brought to life onstage. Still, several things came across to me very clearly, one of which was that it’s very meta: it’s a work of art about works of art, why we create them and what their purpose is.
Different forms of art, and arguments about which of those forms are valid, are an integral part of the play. Chekhov uses the characters to draw strong contrasts between different artistic ideologies. Konstantin and Trigorin are two writers with polarized ideas about what good writing is. Trigorin, a very successful author, writes stories in a traditional format--with plot, characters, etc. Konstantin, on the other hand, is a symbolist writer. Russian symbolism (according to wikipedia) was an intellectual/artistic movement in the late 19th and early 20th century. The originators of the movement, Minsky and Merezhovsky, promoted individualism and ¨deified the act of creation.¨ Russian symbolism came to be known, by some, as ¨russian decadence,¨ and Konstantin’s mother, Arkadina, calls her son a decadent several times in the play (interestingly, one of the most popular early russian symbolist poets was named Konstantin Balmont). We see an example of Konstantin’s work in Act I of The Seagull, in a play-within-a-play. There is no action in the play, just an actress (played by the character Nina) sitting on a rock, reciting a monologue. Its set far, far in the future, after the death of all living things. Here’s an excerpt from it:
¨I am the souls of Alexander the Great, of Ceasar, of Shakespeare, of Napoleon and of the lowest leeches. In me, godlike reason is infused with animal instinct, every memory is in my memory, and every life is lived again in me… I am all alone. Once in a hundred years I open my lips to speak and my voice echoes dismally in the void and there is no one to hear me… not even you, pale fires--born at the turn of the night, from rotting swamps, to wander the Earth till day is breaking--devoid of thought or will or any pulse of life. The Devil--Lord of Eternal Matter--fearful of life coming to life in you, has caused a ceaseless interchanging of your atoms as in rock and water, so you are forever altering as you alter, and in the whole universe spirit is the only constant.”
And it goes on. So yeah, pretty different from the stuff Trigorin writes.
Two other characters, Arkadina and Nina, are contrasted in a different way. Arkadina was once a very famous actress, and although she is still well-known, it’s clearly that she constantly longs to be acting again. Nina, on the other hand, starts at the beginning of the play as an ingenue who dreams of being a famous actress. She ignores her parents wishes and runs away to be an actress, only to have her life pretty much fall apart. Largely unsuccessful, embittered, and somewhat crazed, she has become a very different character by the end of the play. This is not so much a contrast of ideas about art--both women love the theatre--but a contrast between different ways art can affect (and in these cases, eat away at) the lives of artists.
The bigger question here, though, is why? Why are these characters doing what they’re doing? What moves them to create art? Nina speaks in Act I of “the joys of creation,” which she assumes must make all other pleasures seem insignificant. This is echoed by several other characters, including Dorn (a doctor) who says, “let me tell you, if I’d ever experienced that transcendent feeling that artists get in the moment of inspiration, then I believe I would have nothing but contempt for my physical life and everything that goes with it and I’d have left the Earth behind me and soared into the skies,” and Sorin (Arkadina’s brother), who says “There was a time when there were two things I passionately wanted--to get married and to be a literary man… even to be an unknown literary man must be nice, that’s what.” All this suggests a love of creating art for the sake of creating art; that enjoyment of creation is what drives artists. But not much later, in Act II, she asks Trigorin about what fame is like, and tells him how much she envies him--clearly, the attention and admiration are a key part of her desire to be an actress. But at the end of the play, in Act V, she says, “I’ve become a real actress. I love acting, when I’m onstage I feel drunk on the sheer joy of it, and I feel beautiful… what I’ve realized is that, with us, whether we’re writers or actors, what really counts is not dreaming about fame and glory… but stamina: knowing how to keep going despite everything, and having faith in yourself--I’ve got faith in myself now, and that’s helped the pain, and when I think to myself, ‘You’re on the stage!’, then I’m not afraid of anything that life can do to me.” This indicates a third kind of motivation for Nina to act: as a way to escape the harsh realities of her life, to feel invincible.
But for the famous Trigorin, fame seems to matter little, as does the "joy of creation" referenced by the other characters. When Nina asks him what being famous feels like he says, “Well, it feels like not being famous. I never think about it. Well--two possibilities: either I’m not as famous as you think, or it doesn’t feel like anything.” His description of creation does not seem very joyous, nor like something that would make one soar into the sky. He describes it as a compulsion “Day and night I must be writing--I’ve scarcely finished one story before--God knows why--I have to write another--then a third, and after the third a fourth--I keep on without a break like the mailcoach changing horses--on and on, and I can’t do anything else. What’s so wonderful about that?” It seems that Trigorin has no choice but to write--he truly can’t stop himself. Later on in the play, he wonders longingly what his life might have been if he’d spent it fishing, and never started writing. When defending Konstantin after the production of his ill-received play, he says, “We write as we must, and as best we can.”
Konstantin seems to write for yet another reason. At the beginning, he describes theatre as something pointless, meaningless, saying, “Up goes the curtain, and there in a room with a wall missing, inexplicably bathed in artificial light, are these great artists, these high priests of the sacred mystery, demonstrating how people eat, drink, make love, walk about and wear their coats; and when they strain to squeeze out some trite little moral for us to take home for use about the house--then I’m afraid I run,” and goes on to add, “We need a new kind of theatre. If we can’t make it new better to have none.” He writes because he sees a real problem and believes that he has the power to fix it. Even at the end, when his writing has begun receiving some praise from critics, he says, “I’m still adrift in a chaos of dreams and images, with no faith in myself, and no idea where I’m going, or what I’m for.” He tears up all his manuscripts and kills himself. Why is he so lost and devoid of hope? Is is that a has no belief in his ability to create real change? Is it because he simply can’t go on living with the heartbreak of Nina leaving him? Is it a combination of both, or something else entirely? I don’t know.
Maybe even more mysterious is the driving force behind Arkadina. Konstantin gives his opinions on the matter very clearly. He says that she reveres the theatre, adores being famous, and is jealous of anyone else either literally or figuratively being in the spotlight. There’s certainly evidence in the text to support that. But I think there’s more to it. Konstantin also says that his mother wants to feel young again. Does she turn to art as a source of immortality? If so, theatre is a strange art form to turn to--her work is temporal, and will not live on after her death. Or is her nostalgia a result of the fact that theatre was once such a large part of her life that she no longer knows who she is without it?
I this play was very intriguing and thought-provoking. It's got a lot of great character development and interesting relationships. I’d highly recommend reading it--or better, if you can, going to see it. If you’ve got any ideas about it, I’d love to hear them--please let me know in comments. Thanks for reading.
