Creation
1895
of
the
Seagull
After making a lot of promises that he would never deal with theatre again, after a good many one-act
plays performed all over Russia, Chekhov started to write a new drama on the 21st of October, 1895. "I
am writing with pleasure, although I offend against the laws of theatre. Comedy, three female and six
male roles, four acts, a landscape (a panorama of the lake), many discussions about literature, little
action, five pounds of love." On the 18th of November he wrote: "I finished the play. I started forte and
finished pianissimo, breaking all the rules of theatre art. It turned to be a short novel."
(...) Chekhov read the play in front of a wide company, this was the first audience of the Seagull, and
the theatre critics mainly used to the overwhelming plots of Sardou and Dumas generally didn't like it.
The first objection was that Potapenko the seducer of Lika was easily discernible in the figure of the
famous writer, Trigorin. (Chekhov has condensed many autobiographical elements in this character, too,
but the critics didn't notice it at the beginning.)
The censorship was studying deeply and for a long time the text of the Seagull. The main condition was
that the young heroine should not notice the affair of her mother and Trigorin. They had a detailed
correspondence about this problem, dealing with even the deleting or substitution of certain
conjunctions. Chekhov lost his polite patience to the end of the summer and instead of detailed texts he
started giving short instructions to Potapenko who was discussing with the censors in the name of
Chekhov. Furthermore - that has never happened before to the author scrupulously correcting even the
fifth edition of his own works - he wrote to Potapenko: "You can substitute the sentences 'I cannot make
out what she is up to. She simply doesn't speak.' with 'You know, I don't like her' or whatever you want,
you can even quote from the Talmud. Or just insert something like that: 'Oh, in her age! Oh, oh, isn't
she
ashamed!"
Ágnes
Európa
Gereben:
Csehov
Publishing
világa
House,
(The
world
Budapest,
of
Chekhov)
1980
1896 - the premiere of the Seagull in the Alexandrinsky Theatre, Saint
Petersburg
There were only a few rehearsals before the performance. Nobody understood the play except
Comissarjevskaya, one of the most prominent personalities of Russian theatrical art, who played Nina,
and received the text four days (!) before the premiere. The actors haven't memorised their roles...
On the evening of 17th October 1896, before the premiere, the chaos reached the summit. Everybody
was perplexed, the general atmosphere was anything, but not cheerful. The audience (attracted to
theatre by the bonus play of Saint Petersburg's favourite comedienne) was waiting patiently at the
beginning. But when the famous monologue of the insert play has started: "Men, lions, eagles and
doves, red deer, geese, spiders, and you, mute fish living in the water" - the enthusiastic words of
Comissarjevskaya were interrupted by some silly guffaw. As if given the cue, the entire audience started
to whistle, laugh, hiss and beat with the feet.
The voice of the actress was hardly even heard in the general pandemonium... The performance turned
out to be a scandal; even experienced old men of literature as Suvorin agreed in never ever having seen
such
a
horror.
The author has disappeared in the meantime. After the performance they were desperately looking for
him, but he was nowhere. He left with the first freight car to Melihovo. When his sister arrived home,
instead of greeting her, he said her not even mention the play. His diary has preserved only a few
sentences with the date of 17th October: My play, the Seagull was presented today at the Alexandrinsky
Theatre. It was not successful. (...) The critics never spoiled Chekhov. Still, what he had to bear at 17th
October and the days after was incomparable to everything before. Here is one typical example out of
the many, written by an otherwise important literary critic: "I don't know, I don't remember when Mr.
Chekhov turned to be a great talent, but for me it is undoubtedly true that it was a mistake to raise him
to this literary rank... His play entitled Seagull gives first of all the impression of a writer's awkwardness,
of the literary inertia of a frog blowing up itself. One feels that the author is willing to say something what exactly, he himself doesn't know - but is incapable of reaching his goal.
And all the efforts, all the strains of this tiny little art seem to be pathologically piteous..." Dozens of
papers published critics written in this manner. (...) There was only one critic who was astonished by this
attitude: "Whom and in what ways could Chekhov hurt, whom could he insult, who is he hindering to
deserve this malevolence? Is it possible that skills and popularity are sufficient reasons to evoke it?"
The second performance - the improved variant of the play, presented for a different audience, with roles
that finally were memorised- was met with the well-deserved success. Comissarjevskaya could send the
happy telegram in the first minutes after the performance: "Anton Pavlovich, my darling, we won!" The
success came too late, this time the performance attracted no attention, and the play was removed from
the
agenda
after
the
fifth
show.
Chekhov wrote in December to Suvorin: "Lately I have calmed down, my mood is just the usual, but I
cannot forget what happened - as I couldn't have forgotten a slap for example..."
Ágnes
Gereben:
Csehov
Európa Publishing House, Budapest, 1980
világa
(The
world
of
Chekhov)
Mizinova
to
Chekhov,
Pochrovskoye,
1st
November
1896
(...) It is scandalous that you write three line-letters - this is egoism and disgusting laziness!
As if you didn't know that I am collecting your letters in order to sell them later and thus assure a living
for
my
old
days!
Let me know when you arrive to Moscow. We need to discuss a particular problem; I won't keep you
long. Don't fear to stay at my place. I will not allow myself any indecency, if only because I'm afraid to
ascertain about happiness never coming. Thus I will have at least a little hope left.
Good
bye.
(Ar.)*
too
times
rejected
by
you,
that
is
L.
Mizinova
See,
now
you
have
a
pretext
to
call
me
liar!
Here everybody says that you have borrowed the Seagull from my life, and they also say that you're
upbraiding
someone
else
here,
too!
*Ariadna,
see
Chekhov's
short
story
with
the
same
title
Csehov szerelmei (Chekhov's loves), ed. by Annamária Radnai, Magvető Publishing House, Budapest,
2002
"The Seagull is a big rubbish, it does not worth anything; it is written as if Ibsen wrote it." Tolstoy
Note in Suvorin's diary, 11th February, 1897
1898 - the second staging of the Seagull at the Art Theatre, Moscow, directed
by
Stanislavsky
Arkagina
Trepliov
Nina
Trigorin
Masha
-
Olga
-
-
Knipper
Maria
(the
-
later
Vsevolod
Constantin
Lilina
wife
of
(Stanislavsky's
Chekhov)
Meierhold
Roxanova
Stanislavsky
wife)
The Seagull has failed for the first time at the premiere. Many were trying to find its reasons. The cast in
the Alexander Theatre was really impressive, even the great actress of the period, Comissarjevskaya
played a role. And it wasn't only the premiere to fail, the further performances failed, too. Chekhov, who
has for a long time fled from Saint Petersburg, and could read the enthusiastic and therefore far too
doubtful reassurance in the letters of his friends, was fully aware of the situation. Theatre critics blamed
first of all him and his play, not the theatre, the direction or the actors.
Most of the critics considered that the play has failed because it was a weak drama. It is
impossible to find out from contemporary critics what the real reason of the failure was, the
single document that can offer some clues is the director Evtihy Karpov's much later found
notebook. It seems that he has misunderstood the play.
According to his notes, Karpov's interpretation - and thus also his presentation - was
focussing onto the melodrama of Nina Zarechnaya. It states that "The heart-broken Nina
stands lonely and she is proudly facing all the other characters, these egoistic, petty-minded
people." (Role-interpretation is a question to doubt, knowing that the actress has received
Nina's role four days before the performance.)
Two years later Nemirovich-Danchenko fell in love with the play and persuaded Stanislavsky
to make the performance. At that moment Stanislavsky neither has liked, nor has understood
the play. It was summer, he withdrew to his brother's estate and wrote the director's text
variant of the Seagull, thus performing the reform of Russian theatre. He started to love and
understand the play while writing about it.
The director's text variant was first published in 1938, forty years after the premiere (later on, in 1981it
was re-published in six volumes, together with other director's text variants). In the introduction
Stanislavsky considered it important to distance himself in a certain degree from his own earlier work, as
his ideas have changed a lot in the meantime. This was the method of a despot, with whom he was on
bad terms at the moment, as he stated; however, three decades after the Seagull he wrote in the same
manner the director's variant for Othello (this was published in 1945). For his excuse it should be
mentioned that Stanislavsky was cured in Nizza and he directed the rehearsals from there, that's why
such
a
precise
director's
variant
was
needed.
Stanislavsky called the carefully written director's text variant a score, the visible and audible music of
the play. Everything happening on stage was in there. However, one thing was missing, it could not have
been integrated: if the performance played according to these instructions was going to be successful. It
was successful. Stanislavsky was not proclaiming the ideas of a new theatre creation at the time of
"writing" the Seagull, he was not predicting the reforms yet, but he made it, wrote it, directed it (and
also played it). The innovations could really be noticed in this copy. The date of the premiere was 17th
December
1898.
A part of the innovations have become routines since then, they have been used up. The instructions for
the scenery, sounds, noises, movements and actors demonstrate the idea that this theatre should be
based on being and life, not on a playing-game. It is the creation of a second realism. It is realism itself.
Since then this realism stays in theatre as some kind of illness (or virtue?). (...)
One focus point of Stanislavsky's reform was the space, the scenery, and the stage-picture. He wanted
to liquidate the empty stage, the proscenium. He wanted to create a life-like space (see: a second
reality), which was packed, with a lot of things in a disorder, both in the first two acts (happening
"outdoors") and the last two ("the house"). (...) Stanislavsky built up consequently and in an
ostentatious manner a fourth wall out of mainly those things that were in the foreground of the stage. He
sat his actors onto a long bench as a fourth wall, facing with the back the audience. That's how they
were watching Trepliov's play. (Stanislavsky succeeded in building this fourth wall so dominantly that
since then everybody constantly wants to demolish it, together with the other three.) (...)
Olga Leonardovna Knipper (who became Chekhov's wife in 1901) played the role of Arkagina. She wrote
that the Seagull's important factors were was neither the scenery, nor the costumes, but only the actors.
Meierhold played Trepliov. Later on, when Meierhold left the Art Theatre (and he became an opponent of
it), he wrote that the success of the Seagull was due to the actors' performance, not to the direction of
Stanislavsky.
Knipper
and
Meierhold
played
very
well.
Chekhov
also
liked
them.
Chekhov wanted to take the role of Nina from Roxanova. The actress has left the theatre soon. Masha,
performed by Maria Lilina (Stanislavsky's later wife), was much better than she was. All the critics
considered it important to mention Masha.
According to the critics the other weak interpretation of the play was Trigorin, performed by
Stanislavsky.
Not
the
director,
but
the
actor
was
unsatisfying.
(...) Chekhov has altered in the greatest degree Medvedienko's role. He was very much afraid of
Medvedienko's character; he deleted all the earlier texts, until in the last variant Medvedienko was
almost not talking at all (but he was present). Chekhov must have feared that this Medvedienko
constantly
talking
about
money
can
easily
slide
into
a
caricature-figure.
(...)
"What kind of person is this writer?"- Sorin raised the question in Act I. What kind of person was
Trigorin, then? Stanislavsky was not a good Trigorin. Chekhov didn't like it himself. His figure was built
on one single feature: weakness. He was a weakling, an extremely complacent Trigorin- wrote Ephros
about him. Stanislavsky played the role of Trigorin for seven years; he transformed the role in 1905.
Andrea Tompa: Száz éve és ma (A hundred years ago and today). Színház, 2002/2
1890-1892
Lika
Mizinova
Chekhov and Mizinova met in the autumn of 1889, when Lika became a teacher of the Rjevsky
Gymnasium, where the writer's sister, Maria Chekhova was working. Lika really impressed Chekhov
already when first visiting his family. Contemporary notes mention them as inseparable; they went
together to concerts, exhibitions, and meetings. Mizinova made notes about Sahalin for Chekhov; she
helped him in preparations. When taking farewell, Chekhov gave a photograph to Mizinova, writing on
the backside the following: "For the ever nicest person who I flee from to Sahalin, and who has clawed
my nose. I solicit the suitors and admirers to wear a nose-pad. Chekhov. P.S. this note as well as our
postcards does not commit me for anything." The atmosphere of the note is similar to the mood the
correspondence of Chekhov and Mizinova in the first years radiates. The letters from 1891-1892 prove
the existence of a close, intimate friendship. But when it came to enthusiasm for each other (the first
letters demonstrate a liking and a wish for being liked), they seemed to have different behaviours.
Chekhov didn't even react to Lika's undefined or sometimes defined sentiments. The motive of
hopelessness appeared in Lika's letters in the autumn of 1892, when she realised that she could not
force Chekhov to put his cards on the table. "Oh, please come, and save me!" - she desperately wrote to
him. Chekhov didn't answer but he wrote to Suvorin: "I don't want to marry and I don't have anybody to
marry. Damn it! I would be bored by the problems of a wife. Of course it wouldn't be bad to fall in love.
It is boring to live without love." Shortly afterwards the adventure with Chekhov turned publicly into a
different affair, the romance of Lika and Ignaty Potapenko. The new love seemed to make disappear the
previous, defining, strongest sentiments. Although the correspondence and relation of Chekhov and Lika
lasted for many years, they have parted for ever. Lika's life got harder and harder. She gave birth to
Potapenko's child in 1894, who left her not much later and returned to his wife. Lika experienced again a
tragedy when her daughter died in pneumonia in 1896. Lika was lost, her unshaped talent could not
develop in any direction. Her ambitions in the domains of teaching, singing, acting, translating and
fashion design all ended in a fiasco.
Their letters in the following years were friendly and colloquial. At the end of the 1890's Olga Knipper has
appeared in Chekhov's life. In this period the correspondence between Lika and Chekhov almost came to
an end. In 1901 Lika applied for a place to the workshop of the Art Theatre, but she was accepted only
as an extra. She became an extra in the place where Knipper was the heroine. In 1902 she married
Alexander Akimovich Sanin, the actor and director of the Art Theatre and soon they moved abroad. After
the Great October Revolution the returned for a short while, but afterwards they settled for good in Paris.
Lika came never back again to Russia.
Radnai Annamária: Introduction
Csehov szerelmei (Chekhov's loves), ed. by Annamária Radnai, Magvető Publishing House, Budapest,
2002
Lidia
Avilova
At one time with the Mizinova-affair lasting for years, Chekhov developed a less problematic but
nevertheless affectionate relationship with Avilova, the delicate young writer from Saint Petersburg. They
also have met in 1889; she was also a Lidia and she was not less charming than Mizinova. She always
met Chekhov when visiting the capital, they were regularly writing to each other. This relationship was
never as developed as with Mizinova; it was no source of a "danger" as the girlish Avilova was a mother
with
three
children.
However, she would have followed Chekhov without a moment's hesitation if he had asked her. In the
winter of 1895, when Czehov had allegedly confessed: "I was in love with you", Avilova offered to go
with him. Namely she sent a small medallion in secret - she thought that it was also an incognito - to the
writer and engraved onto it: "Novels and short stories by A. Chekhov, page 267, line 6 and 7." In the
indicated place it says: "If you ever need my life, come and take it."
The addressee realised whom the present came from, but he was not far the person to overturn the life
of a family. Neither were his feelings strong enough for taking such a step. But he has used the idea
afterwards:
the
Seagull's
Nina
Zarechnaya
confesses
her
love
in
this
way.
Ágnes
Gereben:
Csehov
Európa Publishing House, Budapest, 1980
világa
(The
world
of
Chekhov)