The role of the seagull in Chekhov's play. The history of the creation and production of Chekhov's play "The Seagull"

Composition

The most important event in the life of A.P. Chekhov turned out to be a rapprochement with the Moscow Art Theater. On December 17, 1898, the first performance of “The Seagull” took place there. The performance was a great success and was a historical event in the life of the theater. From now on, the flying seagull became the emblem of the Moscow Art Theater.
"The Seagull", written by Chekhov in 1895-1896, differs sharply from previous plays in its lyricism, emphasized symbolism and a clearly defined clash of different views on art and life concepts. The love storyline occupies a significant place in The Seagull: this powerful, passionate feeling, to one degree or another, embraces all the characters in the play. Thus, one can simultaneously observe the development of relationships within several “love triangles” at once, which maintains the viewer’s intense attention throughout the entire action. Chekhov himself joked that in his “The Seagull” there are “five pounds of love...”.
The actress Arkadina is having an affair with the writer Trigorin, a bachelor at an advanced age. They understand things approximately equally and are each equally professional in their respective fields of art. Another pair of lovers is Arkadina's son Konstantin Treplev, who hopes to become a writer, and the daughter of a wealthy landowner Nina Zarechnaya, who dreams of becoming an actress. Then there are, as it were, falsely constructed pairs of lovers: the wife of the estate manager Shamraev, in love with the doctor, the old bachelor Dorn; the Shamraevs' daughter, Masha, unrequitedly in love with Treplev, who out of despair marries an unloved man. Even the former state councilor Sorin, a sick old man, admits that he sympathized with Nina Zarechnaya.
The sudden connection between Trigorin and Zarechnaya changed a lot in the lives of the characters in the play. The betrayal of a loved one, a faithful friend, stung Arkadina and brought unbearable pain to another person - Treplev, who sincerely loved Nina. He continued to love her when she went to Trigorin, and when she gave birth to a child from him, and when she was abandoned by him and became poor. But Zarechnaya managed to establish herself in life - and after a two-year break she reappeared in her native place. Treplev greeted her joyfully, believing that happiness was returning to him. But Nina was still in love with Trigorin, she was in awe of him, but she did not seek a meeting with him and soon suddenly left. Unable to bear the ordeal, Treplev shot himself.
Love, which engulfs almost all the characters, is the main action of The Seagull. But devotion to art is stronger than love. In Arkadina, both of these qualities - femininity and talent - merge into one. Trigorin is undoubtedly interesting precisely as a writer. In all other respects, he is a weak-willed creature and complete mediocrity. Out of habit, he trails after Arkadina, but leaves her when the opportunity arises to get along with the young Zarechnaya. You can explain such inconstancy of feelings to yourself by the fact that Trigorin is a writer, and a new hobby is a kind of new page in life, which has a chance to become a new page in the book. In part, this is true. We watch him write down in his notebook the thought that flashed through his mind about a “plot for a short story,” repeating exactly the life of Nina Zarechnaya: a young girl lives on the shore of a lake, she is happy and free, but by chance a man came, saw and “out of nothing to do” destroyed her. The scene in which Trigorin showed Zarechnaya the seagull killed by Treplev killed the bird is symbolic - Trigorin kills Nina’s soul.
Treplev is much younger than Trigorin, he belongs to a different generation and in his views on art he acts as an antipode to both Trigorin and his mother. He himself believes that he is losing to Trigorin on all fronts: he has not succeeded as a person, his beloved is leaving him, his search for new forms was ridiculed as decadent. “I don’t believe and don’t know what my calling is,” Treplev says to Nina, who, in his opinion, has found her path. These words immediately precede his suicide
Thus, the truth remains with the average actress Arkadina, who lives with memories of her successes. Trigorin also enjoys constant success. He is smug and on his last visit to Sorina’s estate he even brought a magazine with Treplev’s story. But, as Treplev noted, all this is for show: “He read his story, but didn’t even cut mine.” Trigorin condescendingly informs Treplev in front of everyone: “Your admirers send their regards to you... In St. Petersburg and Moscow they are generally interested in you. And everyone asks me about you.” Trigorin would like not to let the question of Treplev’s popularity out of his hands; he would like to measure its measure himself: “They ask: what is he like? how old, brunette or blond. For some reason everyone thinks that you are no longer young.” This is how the ladies from Trigorin’s entourage are seen here; he tried to decolorize their questions even more. Trigorin literally erects a tombstone over a man whom he also robbed in his personal life. Trigorin believes that Treplev’s unsuccessful writing is further confirmation that Treplev is not worthy of any other fate: “And no one knows your real name, since you publish under a pseudonym. You are as mysterious as the Iron Mask." He does not suggest any other “mystery” in Treplev. If you listen more carefully to the characteristics of the heroes, to the definitions they give to each other, you can understand that Chekhov gives some preference to Treplev’s life position. Treplev's life is richer and more interesting than the sluggish, routine life that other heroes lead, even the most spiritual ones - Arkadina and Trigorin.
Chekhov sought to express his views on the problems of art through the lips of the characters in the play. Everyone in “The Seagull” talks about art, or more precisely about literature and theater, even the physician Dorn, who intrudes into the area of ​​spiritual creativity with his clumsy paradoxes. The reasoning mainly concerns Treplev's play, which is greeted and perceived with irony from the very beginning. Arkadina thinks that the play is pretentious, “it’s something decadent.” Zarechnaya, who plays the main role in it, reproaches the author for the fact that it is difficult to play the play: “There are no living faces in it,” “there is little action, only reading,” and in the play there must certainly be “love.” Of course, there is something pretentious in Treplev's statement. that his performance was booed only because the author “broke the monopoly” and created a play that was not similar to those that the actors were used to playing. Treplev has not yet proven his innovation. However, Arkadina understood Treplev’s far-reaching claims: “He wanted to teach us how to write and what to play.” Unexpectedly, Dorn, who is far from art, stands up for Trep-lev’s seemingly buried play. He rises above the scolding of “decadent nonsense.” In his opinion, Treplev is above both the philistine and petty advice of the teacher Medvedenko, who suggests playing on stage “how our brother-teacher lives,” and above Trigorin, who evaded assessments in art: “Everyone writes as he wants and as he can.” Dorn tries to support Trep-lev: “I don’t know, maybe I don’t understand anything or I’m crazy, but I liked the play. There's something about her." In Dorn's words, it is assumed that in the everyday art of Arkadina and Trigorin there are no big ideas, it does not affect the “important and eternal.”
In the play “The Seagull,” which simultaneously develops several love lines in the plot, Chekhov wanted not only to present an entertaining intrigue, but also to debunk the false paths of the heroes’ spiritual quest, leaving his sympathies on Treplev’s side.

Other works on this work

I was very lucky that among the topics on Chekhov’s dramaturgy was the one included in the title of the essay. Not only because “The Seagull” is my favorite Chekhov play, but also because it is so precisely because of the comprehensive study of art and creativity that Chekhov carries out with brutal and surgical precision in his comedy. In fact, if I were asked what Chekhov’s other plays are about, I could, of course, highlight the theme of the moribund old life of the nobility and the vigorous but also cynical capitalism that is replacing it in The Cherry Orchard, the leaden abominations of Russian provincial life in "Uncle Vanya", "Three Sisters" and "Ivanov", while in each play one could fruitfully talk about superbly developed love lines, and about the problems that come to a person with age, and about much more. But “The Seagull” has it all. That is, like all other “comedies”, “scenes” and dramas, “The Seagull” is about life, like any real literature, but also about what is most important for a creative person, writing, like Chekhov himself, writing for theater and who created a new mask for the ancient muse of the theater Melpomene - about Art, about serving it and about how art is created - about creativity.
If they wrote about actors, their lives, their cursed and sacred craft back in ancient times, then the writers themselves started talking about the creator - the author of the text much later. The semi-mystical process of creativity began to be revealed to the reader only in the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Gogol in “Portrait”, Oscar Wilde in “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, J. London in “Martin Eden”, Mikhail Bulgakov in “The Master and Margarita”, and in our time His Majesty the Author is becoming almost the most beloved hero of prose writers and playwrights.
Now it is difficult to understand whether Chekhov, with his “The Seagull,” gave impetus to this research boom, or whether just any writer at some point comes to the need to figure out how he writes, how his description and perception of reality relates to life itself, why he needs this himself and the people, what it brings to them, where he stands among other creators.
Almost all of these questions are posed and resolved in one way or another in the play "The Seagull". "The Seagull" is Chekhov's most theatrical play, because it stars writers Trigorin and Treplev and two actresses - Arkadina and Zarechnaya. In the best Shakespearean traditions, another scene is symbolically present on the stage; at the beginning of the play there is a beautiful, mysterious, promising scene with natural scenery, as if saying to both the audience and the participants in the big performance taking place in the estate: “It will still be. The play has just begun. Look!" and in the end - ominous, dilapidated, useless to anyone, which is too lazy to take apart or is simply scary. “Finita la comedia,” the participants in this “human comedy” could say, if according to Balzac. The curtain closes. Isn’t it the case in “Hamlet” that the traveling comedians reveal what people cannot say to each other openly and directly, but are forced to play life much more subtly than the actors do?

I would not be afraid to say that Art, Creativity and the attitude towards them are perhaps one of the most important characters in comedy, if not the main characters. It is with the touch of art, as well as love, that Chekhov trusts and rules his heroes. And it turns out right - neither art nor love forgives lies, false pretense, self-deception, and momentariness. Moreover, as always in this world, and in the world of Chekhov’s characters, in particular, it is not the scoundrel who is rewarded, but the conscientious one who is rewarded for being wrong. Arkadina lies both in art and in love, she is a craftsman, which in itself is commendable, but a craft without the spark of God, without self-denial, without the “intoxication” on the stage, to which Zarechnaya comes, is nothing, it is day labor, it is a lie. However, Arkadina triumphs in everything - both in the possession of tinsel success in life, and in forced love, and in the worship of the crowd. She is well-fed, youthful, “in tune”, self-satisfied, as only very narrow-minded people who are always right in everything can be, and what does she care about the art that she, in fact, serves? For her, this is just a tool with the help of which she ensures a comfortable existence for herself, indulges her vanity, and keeps with her someone she does not even love, no, a fashionable and interesting person. This is not a shrine. And Arkadina is not a priestess. Of course, we shouldn’t simplify her image; there are also interesting features in her that destroy the flat image, but we are talking about serving art, not about how she knows how to bandage wounds. If it were possible to expand Pushkin’s phrase about the incompatibility of genius and villainy, projecting it onto art and all its servants, among whom are geniuses, as Pushkin’s Mozart said - “you and me,” that is, not so many, and with the help of this criterion to check the servants of art depicted in the play, there would probably only be left Zarechnaya - pure, slightly exalted, strange, naive and so cruelly paid for all her sweet Turgenev qualities - paid with fate, faith, ideals, love, simple human life.
But the fact of the matter is that, apart from Arkadina, of the people associated with art in “The Seagull,” not a single one lives a simple human life, or can live. Art simply does not allow Chekhov’s heroes to do this, demanding sacrifices everywhere and continuously, in everything, everywhere and everywhere, contradicting Pushkin’s formulation “Until Apollo demands the poet to make a sacred sacrifice...”. Neither Treplev, nor Trigorin, nor Zarechnaya are able to live normally, because Apollo demands them to make a sacred sacrifice every second, for Trigorin this becomes almost a painful mania. He seems to confirm the old joke that the difference between writers and graphomaniacs is that the former get published, and the latter do not. Well, this difference between Trigorin and Treplev will disappear in just two years, between the third and fourth acts.
Well, who is the priest, restless, obsessed, tireless and merciless to himself, it is Trigorin. For him, according to the old Russian proverb, “hunting is worse than bondage”; If for Nina the biggest dream is creativity and fame, then for him it is fishing and life on the shore of an enchanted lake, far from the mad crowd. From the small evidence that is scattered throughout the pages of the play, one can judge that Trigorin is indeed talented. This neck of a bottle glinting on the bridge, and the shadow of a wheel in the moonlight, this amazing phrase about life that you can “come and take” - all this is written not so much worse than those Greats with whom Trigorin is constantly compared, tormenting and forcing him to doubt both in your gift and in the need to engage in creativity. However, for him creativity is not just bread, fun and fans, as for Arkadina, for him it is both a painful illness and an obsession, but also synonymous with life. He ruins Nina not because he is a villain, he just doesn’t live. He only writes. He is unable to understand the vitality of the allegory with the seagull, which became not an entertaining plot for a story, but a providence of what would happen to a living person, and to a woman who loved him with all the sincerity and strength of which she was generally capable. I can’t bring myself to blame Trigorin. He's not a scoundrel. He is a priest. He is blind and deaf to everything except his notebooks, he sees only images. He is Salieri, unable to realize that he is tearing music apart like a corpse. Taking landscapes into talented, even ingenious miniatures, he turns them into still lifes, natur mort - dead nature. Even understanding the civic tasks of his work, the responsibility for the word to the reader, the “educational function of art,” he does not feel within himself the ability to do anything in this field - this is not the right talent. But a poet in Russia is more than a poet.

Naive Nina! From her point of view, “whoever has experienced the pleasure of creativity, for him all other pleasures no longer exist.”

A. P. CHEKHOV COMEDY “THE SEAGULL” “The Seagull” is a comedy in four acts by A. P. Chekhov. The play was written in the years, first published in the 12th issue of 1896 of the magazine “Russian Thought”. The premiere took place on October 17, 1896 on the stage of the St. Petersburg Alexandrinsky Theater.

The action takes place in the estate of Pyotr Nikolaevich Sorin, who, after retirement, lives there with his sister’s son, Konstantin Gavrilovich Treplev. His sister, Irina Nikolaevna Arkadina, an actress, is visiting his estate with her lover, Boris Alekseevich Trigorin, a fiction writer. Konstantin Treplev himself is also trying to write. Those gathered at the estate are preparing to watch a play staged by Treplev amid natural scenery. The only role in it should be played by Nina Mikhailovna Zarechnaya, a young girl, the daughter of wealthy landowners, with whom Konstantin is in love. Nina's parents are categorically against her passion for theater, and therefore she must come to the estate secretly. Among those awaiting the performance are also Ilya Afanasyevich Shamraev, a retired lieutenant and Sorin’s manager; his wife Polina Andreevna and his daughter Masha; Evgeniy Sergeevich Dorn, doctor; Semyon Semenovich Medvedenko, teacher. Medvedenko is unrequitedly in love with Masha, but she does not reciprocate his feelings because she loves Konstantin Treplev. Finally Zarechnaya arrives. Nina Zarechnaya, all in white, sitting on a large stone, reads a text in the spirit of decadent literature, which Arkadina immediately notes. During the entire reading, the audience constantly talks over each other, despite Treplev’s comments. Soon he gets tired of this, and he, having lost his temper, stops the performance and leaves. Masha hurries after him to find him and calm him down.

Several days pass. The action moves to the croquet court. Nina Zarechnaya's father and stepmother left for Tver for three days, and this gave her the opportunity to come to Sorin's estate. Nina walks around the garden and is surprised that the lives of famous actors and writers are exactly the same as the lives of ordinary people. Treplev brings her a killed seagull and compares this bird with himself. Nina tells him that she completely stopped understanding him, since he began to express his thoughts and feelings with symbols. Konstantin tries to explain himself, but when he sees Trigorin appear, he quickly leaves. Nina and Trigorin are left alone. Nina admires the world in which Trigorin and Arkadina live. Trigorin paints his life as a painful existence. Having seen the seagull killed by Treplev, Trigorin writes in a book a new plot for a short story about a girl who looks like a seagull: “A man came by chance, saw her and, having nothing to do, killed her.”

A week passes. In the dining room of Sorin's house, Masha confesses to Trigorin that she loves Treplev and, in order to tear this love out of her heart, marries Medvedenko, although she does not love him. Trigorin is going to leave for Moscow with Arkadina. Nina Zarechnaya is also planning to leave, as she dreams of becoming an actress. Nina gives Trigorin a medallion containing lines from his book. Having opened the book in the right place, he reads: “If you ever need my life, then come and take it.” Trigorin wants to follow Nina, because it seems to him that this is the very feeling that he has been looking for all his life. Having learned about this, Irina Arkadina begs on her knees not to leave her. However, having agreed verbally, Trigorin agrees with Nina about a secret meeting in Moscow.

Two years pass. Sorin is already sixty-two, he is very sick, but also full of thirst for life. Medvedenko and Masha are married, they have a child, but there is no happiness in their marriage. Masha is disgusted by both her husband and child, and Medvedenko himself suffers greatly from this. Treplev tells Dorn, who is interested in Nina Zarechnaya, her fate. She ran away from home and became friends with Trigorin. They had a child, but soon died. Trigorin had already stopped loving her and returned to Arkadina. On stage, things turned out even worse for Nina. She played a lot, but very “rudely, tastelessly, with howls.” She wrote letters to Treplev, but never complained. The letters were signed by Chaika. Her parents don’t want to know her and don’t even let her near the house. marriage

Nina appears completely unexpectedly. Konstantin once again confesses his love and loyalty to her. Nina does not accept his sacrifices. She still loves Trigorin, which she confesses to Treplev. She leaves for the province to play in the theater and invites Treplev to look at her play when she becomes a great actress. After she leaves, Treplev tears up all his manuscripts, then goes into the next room. Arkadina, Trigorin, Dorn and others gather in the room he left. A shot rings out. Dorn, saying that it was his bottle of ether that burst, leaves to follow the noise. Having returned, he takes Trigorin aside and asks him to take Irina Nikolaevna somewhere, because her son shot himself. manuscripts

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov reads "The Seagull" to the artists of the Moscow Art Theater.

In Chekhov's dramaturgy "The Seagull" occupies a very special place. There are no central characters in it - all heroes are equal in rights, side and main destinies do not exist, so there is no main character in it.

The title of this work is very symbolic. In no previously written play has the figurative motif - the title - played such an active (albeit hidden) determining role. The writer boldly violated the dramatic laws familiar to the mass of viewers. While working on “The Seagull,” Chekhov admitted in one of his letters: “I am writing it not without pleasure, although it is scary against the conditions of the stage, there is a lot of talk about literature, little action, five pounds of love.” After finishing this play, Chekhov admitted in a letter to Suvorin that he wrote it “contrary to all the rules of dramatic art.” The plot here is not a single-track path, but rather a labyrinth of hobbies, fatal attachments, with no way out. Quote by: Ivleva T.G. Author in dramaturgy A.P. Chekhova / T.G. Ivleva. - Tver: TvGU, 2010. - P. 64.

"The Seagull" was first staged in 1896 in St. Petersburg on the stage of the Alexandria Theater. However, not all viewers correctly understood the play and few approved of it. The first performance ended in grandiose failure. “The theater breathed with anger, the air was thick with hatred, and according to the laws of physics, I flew out of St. Petersburg like a bomb,” Chekhov wrote shortly after the performance. However, this failure only meant that a new, unusual dramaturgy was being born. They began to persuade Chekhov to stage the play at the Moscow Art Theater (MKhAT). What happened next became theatrical legend. K.S. Stanislavsky, who played the role of the writer Trigorin, recalled: “It seemed that we were failing. The curtain closed in deathly silence. The actors fearfully clung to each other and listened to the audience. Silence. Someone began to cry. We silently moved backstage. At that moment the audience burst into groans and applause. There was a huge success in the audience, and there was a real Easter on the stage. Everyone was kissing, not excluding strangers who burst into hysterics. Many, including me, danced with joy and excitement. wild dance" (K.S. Stanislavsky "A.P. Chekhov at the Art Theater"). Right there.

Chekhov called The Seagull a comedy, which was unusual. This mystery of the playwright still excites the minds of researchers. It would seem that the author shows us only the tragedies associated with each hero. The comedy of Chekhov's play "The Seagull" is determined by the specifics of the ontological model implemented in it. T.K. talks about this. Shah-Azizov, appealing to the “author’s assessment”: “The main genre feature is a way of resolving a conflict, and therefore plays are divided into dramas, tragedies, comedies. Here there is a direct dependence on the author’s assessment of what is happening: the capabilities and behavior of the characters, the availability for them exit, etc." Karpova A.Yu. Comedyography by A.P. Chekhov in the context of “New Drama” / A.Yu. Karpova // Bulletin of the TSPU. - 2010. - No. 8 (98). - P. 11-15.

Some literary scholars, while agreeing with the author’s definition of the genre, still consider “The Seagull” to be the most “tragic comedy of Russian comedy”. “In Chekhov’s play, a unique situation arises: in the world of tragedy, filled with various signs of fate, a hero with a fundamentally different type of behavior characteristic of comedy is placed, as a result of which such a genre as the comedy of rock is born.” Fadeeva N.I. “The Seagull” by A.P. Chekhov as a comedy of rock // Chekhov readings in Tver / N.I. Fadeeva. - Tver, 2000. - P. 133.

Anyone who has read this work involuntarily asks the question: what is comic in it, because... There is no more funny in the play than there is in life. And as in life, joy, love, success are given to the heroes very sparingly or not at all, their life paths are not smooth, their characters are complex. "The Seagull" is the most tragic comedy in Russian comedy. Frustrated hopes, unhappy love, thoughts of a wasted life are the lot of almost all the characters in the play. Love interests in "The Seagull" are sad contrasts that have no direct way out into the plot, sad dead ends, the movement goes past them. Teacher Medvedenko loves Masha, Masha is hopelessly in love with Treplev, who is equally hopelessly in love with Nina, she is in love with Trigorin, who, after a short affair with her, returns to Arkadina. Of course, Treplev has much more “rights” to Nina, but she loves Trigorin. In all these “buts,” illogicalities, and inconsistencies, the disharmony of the structure of the play, a unique comedy that does not turn into an ordinary drama, is manifested again and again.

By calling his work a comedy, Chekhov seems to emphasize that the “main character” of his play is everyday life, which burns through the best human feelings and relationships, which destroys personality and makes characters petty, almost comical. This is how the famous writer Trigorin appears before us. He does not perceive life with his heart with all its joys and tragedies, but becomes only an outside observer, and everything that happens around him and with him is just a “plot for a short story” for him. Arkadina is such a talented actress that she can convey any high feelings on stage, but in everyday life she feels sorry for money, even for her son and brother, she is indifferent to everything except her own success. It is no coincidence that Treplev, in his last remark, when he had already decided to commit suicide, says that his mother might be upset by the meeting with Nina. It’s as if he doesn’t believe that his mother will take his death tragically. Other characters in the play are such victims of everyday life. Chekhov wrote this: “On stage there are the most ordinary people. They cry, fish, play cards, laugh and get angry, like everyone else...”. Quote by: Razumova N.E. “The Seagull” by A.P. Chekhov and the “new drama” / N.E. Razumova // Literary studies and journalism. - Saratov, 2000. - pp. 117-128.

Outwardly bright stage actions do not attract Chekhov. For example, there are at least two episodes in the play that would be played out in traditional drama. The first is Treplev's attempt to commit suicide after the failure of his performance and Nina's "betrayal." The second is Treplev’s suicide at the end of the play. Chekhov takes these scenically “beneficial” episodes off stage. This refusal of spectacular scenes was subordinated to the author's intention: to show the characters of people, their relationships, problems arising from misunderstandings between people.

A feature of a dramatic work is the absence of author's digressions. And since the creator of the drama does not have the opportunity to give a textual assessment of the characters and actions of his heroes, he does this through speech. Thus, in “The Seagull,” as in all other dramatic works of Chekhov, there are so-called dominant words that define the main meanings of the work. These are words such as “life”, “love”, “art”. These words exist on different levels.

The concept of “life” for Chekhov is both a problem and an experience of its values. Chekhov, as a creator and as a person, was especially acutely aware of the transience of life. Art (for the characters in “The Seagull” this is mainly literature and theater) constitutes a huge layer of the heroes’ ideals, it is their profession and hobby. The two main characters of the play - Arkadina and Zarechnaya - are actresses, Trigorin and Treplev are writers; Sorin also dreamed of once connecting his life with literature, but did not succeed as a writer; Shamraev, although not directly a person of art, is nevertheless close to it, interested in it, especially literary creativity; Dorn can also be called a "near-literary character."

Love in The Seagull, as in almost all dramatic works, is one of the most important drivers of the plot. True, there are no happy people in Chekhov's drama. Heroes, as a rule, are unlucky in love. The innovation of Chekhov the playwright was that he created his work by addressing the moral issues of human life. What is truth and love? Is it possible, after overcoming all the trials of fate, to maintain faith in people? What is art? Should a person engaged in creativity selflessly serve art, or is it possible for him to please his own vanity? At the same time, the author did not offer his viewers ready-made answers to all questions. He simply showed life as it is, giving him the right to make his own choices. Instead of intense passions and bright love twists and turns, it told about a provincial young man who dreams of directing. He puts on a play for friends and relatives, and invites the girl Nina, with whom he is in love, to play the main role in it. However, the audience does not like the play, not only because the author could not convey in it his experiences and understanding of the meaning of life, but also because the mother of the main character - a famous and no longer young actress - does not like her son and does not believe in him. success. As a result, Nina’s fate takes a tragic turn; she plunges into love like an abyss. Dreams of family life and the stage. However, at the end of the play, the audience learns that Nina, having run away with her lover Trigorin, ended up alone. She lost her child and is forced to work on the stage of third-rate theaters. However, despite all the trials, Nina does not lose faith in life and people. She tells the man who once fell in love with her that she has understood the essence of life. In her opinion, the meaning of human existence lies in patience, in the need to overcome all life’s difficulties and trials. At the same time, all the characters in the analyzed play are united by one common quality: everyone experiences their fate alone, and no one can help a friend. All the characters are, to one degree or another, dissatisfied with life, focused on themselves, on their personal experiences and aspirations.

Chekhov unites all heroes without exception into a single system, where each has his own task in the author’s creative plan. Therefore, he avoids external effects, and forces him to closely monitor all the characters. The speech of each character has a “subtext” that gives the entire play a richness of content, artistic truthfulness and persuasiveness. Thus, another feature of the play “The Seagull” is the speech of the characters. It is ordinary, the lines are often delivered out of place, the dialogues are intermittent. The characters are distracted every now and then, often creating the impression that the phrases spoken are random. The play contains speech dominants. Arkadina - “how I played.”; Nina - “I am a seagull, I believe.”; from Sorin - I am dangerously ill. "; from Shamraev - "I cannot give horses. "; from Dorn - "I was, I wanted to be. "It's hard to live with Medvedenko." At the same time, Chekhov managed to masterfully develop the subtlest subtext. The words in the play are very often not tied to the action. The course of the play is almost not expressed in words and actions. The author emphasizes the ordinariness of what is happening. Stenanenko A.A. Subtext in the prose of A.P. Chekhov 1890-1900: diss. for the job application uch. Art. k.f. n. / A.A. Stenanenko. - Sugrut: SSU, 2007. - P. 22.

Pauses play a special role in Chekhov's plays. They seem to complement the subtext and arise when the characters cannot and do not want to talk about the most secret things. In the third act, for example, Nina and Trigorin say goodbye before leaving. Nina gives him a medallion as a keepsake. Trigorin promises to remember the girl as he saw her for the first time. “We were talking. Even then there was a white seagull lying on the bench.” Nina thoughtfully repeats: “Yes, seagull.” Pause. “We can’t say more, they’re coming here.” The pause helps you focus on the image of the seagull. During a pause, the viewer remembers the previous conversation of the heroes, when Trigorin wrote down in his notebook “a plot for a short story” about a girl who was killed by “one person” on a hike. But the entire multidimensional content of the heroes’ conversation becomes clear much later. The pause creates a certain emotional tension, as if the viewer expects the characters to explain, reveal something very important, but this does not happen. And the viewer himself must guess what is hidden behind this silence.

The play contains three iconic symbols: lake, seagull, world soul.

The lake symbolizes the beauty of the Central Russian landscape - an important element of Chekhov's plays. We do not see a description of the urban environment. The landscape becomes a participant in dramatic events. Sunset, moon, lake - all these are projections of the spiritual life of the heroes. The seagull - this image-symbol passes through each character - is deciphered as a motive for an eternal anxious flight, a stimulus for movement, a rush into the distance. Wingless people are eager to take off, to break out of everyday life. It was not the banal “plot for a short story” that the writer extracted from the story of the shot seagull, but an epically broad theme of bitter dissatisfaction with life, awakening cravings, longing, and longing for a better future. Only through suffering does Nina Zarechnaya come to the idea that the main thing is “not glory, not brilliance,” not what she once dreamed of, but “the ability to endure.” “Know how to carry your cross and believe” - this hard-won call for courageous patience opens the tragic image of Chaika to an aerial perspective, a flight into the future. And the fact that a seagull is stuffed is scary; the death of the seagull means the death of the soul, art, love. At the beginning of the drama, Treplev stages a play about the World Soul. This image reveals the complex relationship between the natural and the human. Treplev is looking for a general idea that would be able to explain the imperfections of life. In each character of the play there is a struggle between the material and spiritual principles. Razumova N.E. Creativity of A.P. Chekhov in the aspect of space. Monograph / N.E. Razumov. - Tomsk: TSU, 2010. - P. 123.

Thus, Chekhov revealed a genre that made it possible to raise broad generalizations and depict the life and mood of entire social strata. The author wrote a drama about the fate of the provincial intelligentsia, deprived of serious life tasks and prospects. At the same time, in “The Seagull” the comic and tragic are intricately intertwined. Each character throughout the action constantly strives to achieve some ideal happiness. Of course, everyone represents the ideal in their own way. But the heroes are united by this almost manic persistence. Everyone longs to be happy, to embody themselves in art, to find ideal love. At some stage, the author makes the reader and viewer understand the simple truth that attempts to find your ideal without humor, without the ability to look at the situation from a comic point of view, are doomed to failure. Everything that seemed funny and absurd turned out to be “terrible and destructive.” Treplev's final shot clearly demonstrates the tragedy of life. Never before has the tragic reached such prosaic, everyday life; never before have such simple characters played the role of tragic heroes and heroines. In the play, the action of which is structured according to the laws of comedy, the author gives the central place to tragic characters. In a word, Chekhov wrote a sad comedy - the feeling of the general disorder of life reaches here to the point of pain, to a scream, to a shot.

These are the features of the dramaturgy of Chekhov's "The Seagull", which are combined with the understatement of the play, the incompleteness of the destinies of its characters, with the general principle of depicting life as a continuous process, not decomposed into closed, complete episodes. This was the innovation of Chekhov the playwright. The enduring significance of Chekhov's plays lies not only in innovation, lofty words and dramatic clashes, but also in lyricism, tenderness and subtlety.

The work must have a clear, definite idea.

You must know why you are writing...

(Dr. Dorn to Konstantin Treplev)

A.P. Chekhov’s play “The Seagull” begins with the significant words of two characters (Masha Shamraeva and Semyon Medvedko): “Why do you always wear black? – This is mourning for my life. I am not happy". The last words seem to anticipate the sad tone of the entire comedy. However, maybe the further development of the plot will tell something else? Or, perhaps, the heroine’s well-known understanding of her life will be completely debunked as incorrect? In turn, another hero of the play, Konstantin Treplev, says about his mother: “She is already against me, and against the play, and against my play, because it is not she who plays, but Zarechnaya. She doesn’t know my play, but she already hates it... She’s already annoyed that it’s Zarechnaya who will be successful on this small stage, and not her. Psychological curiosity - my mother. Undoubtedly talented, smart, capable of crying over a book, can take everything Nekrasov by heart, looks after the sick like an angel; but try praising Duse in front of her. Wow! You only need to praise her alone, you need to write about her, shout, admire her extraordinary play, but since here in the village there is no such intoxication, she is bored and angry, and we are all her enemies, we are all to blame. Then she is superstitious, afraid of three candles, the thirteenth. She's stingy. She has seventy thousand in the bank in Odessa - I know that for sure. And ask her for a loan, she will cry.” What confuses you about the hero’s monologue? It seems that this is not really a son’s speech, or something. Why? Yes, because he talks about it like an outside observer, who, by the will of the author of the play, tries to be objective in his assessment. But what are the signs of this? And they are such that the son will not talk about his mother so dryly (distantly). This will obviously be prevented by his personal involvement in the assessment being made. And indeed, this is his mother, which means that if she is so bad, then he will be the same! Therefore, a true son would speak differently about his own mother. How? And, for example, this: my mother is jealous of both my play and other people’s success; she is simply used to being the center of attention and does not tolerate a different state; however, she has the right to this weakness, since she is very talented and warm-hearted; her other weaknesses are superstition and stinginess, but they are natural for her, because this is only the effect of her fears of losing the fruits of her long labors. Thus, the son would remain a son, and not an outside man who only wants to gossip about a noticeable woman. But by the will of the author, the son easily condemns his own mother to the pillory, apparently believing that it is his filial duty. Then the same hero quite boldly pronounces his verdict on the entire modern theater: “...modern theater is a routine, a prejudice, when they try to extract a moral from vulgar pictures and phrases - a small moral, understandable, useful in everyday life; when in a thousand variations they present me with the same thing, the same thing, the same thing, then I run and run, like Maupassant ran from the Eiffel Tower, which was crushing his brain with its vulgarity.” Again we are faced with a sad situation: the hero cannot stand the theatrical life he knows, he tragically denies it completely. He doesn’t even realize that he needs to at least know the reasons for this state of affairs. But no, instead of the approach he rejected, he decisively proclaims: “New forms are needed. New forms are needed, and if they are not there, then nothing better is needed.” What are these new forms? And why new for the sake of new? One gets the impression that A.P. Chekhov either does not finish speaking, or he himself does not know what his hero is trying to talk about. But the impression is strong: we are not given freedom! Next, the hero of the comedy grieves over the lack of his own fame. At the same time, he seems to doubt his existence, is perplexed about his own worthlessness, and suffers from a state of humiliation. On the other hand, in a conversation with Nina Zarechnaya, he preaches a new approach to theatrical art: “We must portray life not as it is, and not as it should be, but as it appears in dreams.” The last reasoning is quite remarkable. Why suddenly? Yes, if only because Konstantin Treplev actually formulates his creative credo, of which, apparently, he himself will one day become a hostage. But what is wrong with his stated opinion? And the fact that avoiding the anger (problems) of life, from its objective, non-invented essence, is certainly fraught with troubles, not to say misfortune, or even tragedy. In other words, you cannot live safely in reality, replacing the latter with dreams about it. Summarizing what has already been said, it should probably be emphasized that theatrical art either supports reality (changes it for the better), or it clearly destroys it along with its specific and obsessed adherents. Yes, it is difficult not to object to the dominance of theatrical vulgarity and routine, but one should not shy away from finding out and overcoming the reasons for this. Therefore, such an elaborate art-historical desire does not evoke any serious sympathy from any attentive observer. And as a vivid illustration of the last assumption of the author of this essay, within the plot twist of the comedy adjacent to the already discussed episode, a natural conflict arises between the stage dream of Konstantin Treplev (we are talking about the appearance on stage of a powerful enemy of man, the devil. - Author) with true reality in the face of the reaction of his mother Irina Nikolaevna Arkadina on the images offered to the audience: “This doctor took off his hat to the devil, the father of eternal matter.” In this case, Konstantin Treplev's plan, built strictly on the basis of his dreams, came into conflict with the ironic response of his mother, who unwittingly offended the author of one play within another. What can I say? Only that Treplev himself brought to life what he was objectively looking for - a conflict with reality. At the same time, like a madman, he suddenly exclaims: “I’m guilty! I lost sight of the fact that only a select few can write plays and act on stage. I broke the monopoly! Once again there is some kind of inadequacy in the hero’s position, again an obvious attempt to blame potential enemies in advance. As we see, the hero of the comedy, at the will of its author, begins, as it were, to string one of his own stupid actions onto a similar one. He seems to be out of his mind, as if unconsciously trying to discover his own existence, the search for which becomes something obsessive and painful for him. Therefore, he, apparently, deliberately shocks the people around him with the incomprehensibility of his own spiritual aspirations, while accusing them of wanting to ignore him. Thus, using the example of K. Treplev, A.P. Chekhov involuntarily shows the public to what sad limits any person who has fallen into the sin of earnest service to the self can reach. The last assumption is partly confirmed by the words of Treplev’s disgruntled mother: “...he (Treplev. - Author) did not choose any ordinary play, but forced us to listen to this decadent nonsense. For the sake of a joke, I’m ready to listen to nonsense, but here there are claims for new forms, for a new era in art. But in my opinion, there are no new forms here, just bad character.” However, if K. Treplev is still more right than wrong regarding the concept of his own play, then his reaction to his mother’s reaction is all the more strange. In other words, he had to bear the ridicule patiently, expecting further insight and apology. But no, nothing like that happens, which means that the hero still has more delusions than genuine novelty or the discovery of something true. By the way, even K. Treplev’s beloved Nina Zarechnaya, who played a role in his play, does not find it successful: “It’s difficult to act in your play. There are no living persons in it. There is little action in your play, just reading. And in the play, in my opinion, there must certainly be love.” Zarechnaya herself behaves very strangely. On the one hand, she seems to love (loved) Treplev, on the other, there are no clear signs of this. One even gets the impression that A.P. Chekhov, who apparently personally experienced something similar to the fate of his hero, still leaves something unsaid or clearly exaggerates something. As a result of this, the relationship between K. Treplev and Nina looks completely unconvincing. In other words, the hero desperately hopes where there is no reason for this. On the other hand, the heroine seems to repent of having allegedly betrayed her first love for Treplev. In short, there are a lot of hints, but very little clear meaning. But this storyline contains the most important premise for the ending of the entire work we are considering. In other words, something very muddy cannot but generate something that is not muddy. But let us return to assessing the creative efforts of the comedy hero. In particular, Dr. Dorn, having generally supported Treplev’s stage endeavor, strongly recommends him: “You took the plot from the realm of abstract ideas. This was as it should be, because a work of art must certainly express some great thought. Only what is beautiful is what is serious. The work must have a clear, definite idea. You must know why you are writing, otherwise if you go along this picturesque road without a specific goal, you will get lost and your talent will destroy you.” But Treplev doesn’t seem to hear anything, he is only obsessed with a love passion for Nina Zarechnaya, while he himself is hopelessly loved by Maria Shamraeva, mentioned at the very beginning of the essay. And we fully understand that her passion is most likely not destined to be satisfied. The latter can be clearly seen in her own words: “...I drag my life like an endless train... And often there is no desire to live.” As we see, the heroes of A.P. Chekhov are in great difficulty: they do not know why they should live, what they should strive for. However, Nina Zarechnaya seems to know why: “For such happiness as being a writer or artist, I would endure the dislike of loved ones, poverty, disappointment, I would live under a roof and eat only rye bread, I would suffer from dissatisfaction with myself, from consciousness of my imperfections, but I would have demanded glory, real, noisy glory.” Here it is, the undisguised ideal of the dreams of all the heroes of “The Seagull”. Why? Yes, because they don't know anything else. In other words, people’s great desire for self-love overwhelms their unfortunate souls. They don’t want anything more and don’t even know how to want. What's so? Apparently, they are completely unaware of even the very question of the purpose of human life. They are not burdened with it in any way. In other words, their ability to make speculative generalizations is still in vain or not developed at all. But how else do A.P. Chekhov’s heroes live? This is how Trigorin speaks about it: “Young love, charming, poetic, taking you to the world of dreams - on earth only this can give happiness! I have never experienced such love before.” Again the desire for stupefying bliss, again the desire to hide from the true needs of human life. Yes, it is difficult to parse the details of the meanings of earthly human existence, but frivolous flight from this work has never saved anyone anywhere! And it doesn’t matter that this deviation can take on the sublime garb of, say, the mutual love of a man and a woman. In other words, a wonderful love interest in no way actually saves a person, does not make him different and does not bring him closer to the truth of human existence. Whereas the heroes of the comedy are only busy looking for love for themselves, and if they don’t find it, then... Even creativity is considered by them only as a universal means for gaining the desired love of others, for obtaining the above-mentioned stupefying bliss, which is conveyed better than others by K. Treplev: “I am calling you (we are talking about Nina Zarechnaya - Author), I kiss the whole earth on which you went; Wherever I look, your face appears to me everywhere, that gentle smile that shone for me in the best years of my life. I am alone, not warmed by anyone’s affection, I am cold, like in a dungeon, and, no matter what I write, it is all dry, callous, gloomy. Stay here, Nina, I beg you, or let me go with you!” In response, Nina Zarechnaya tells the hero of the play something else: “Why do you say that you kissed the ground on which I walked? They need to kill me... I am a seagull...” However, she also says this: “I now know, I understand, Kostya, that in our business - it doesn’t matter whether we play on stage or write - the main thing is not fame, not brilliance, or something else.” , what I dreamed of, but the ability to endure. Know how to bear your cross and believe. I believe, and it doesn’t hurt me so much, and when I think about my calling, I’m not afraid of life.” As we see, on the one hand, the heroine is in despair, on the other, she knows how and with what to keep herself in life. However, it is possible that this is just an illusion, since without a clear awareness of the meaning of life, patience alone will not go far, as they say. But Treplev obviously does not even have the aforementioned illusion of the meaning of life, as his own words addressed to Zarechnaya exhaustively testify to: “You have found your path, you know where you are going, but I am still running around in the chaos of dreams and images, not knowing why and who needs it. I don’t believe and I don’t know what my calling is.” In response to him, the heroine suddenly reads the text of his long-standing play: “People, lions, eagles and partridges, horned deer, geese, spiders, silent fish that lived in the water, starfish and those that could not be seen with the eye - in a word, everything lives, all lives, all lives, having completed a sad circle, faded away. For thousands of centuries the earth has not carried a single living creature, and this poor moon lights its lantern in vain. Cranes no longer wake up screaming in the meadow, and cockchafers are no longer heard in the linden groves.” Why does A.P. Chekhov repeat the introductory words of his hero’s play at the end of his comedy? What is he trying to tell his reader and viewer? Did he really believe that his hero was a talented author who, under other conditions, would still be able to tell people something new and important? If so, then I sincerely feel sorry for the Russian writer himself, since then his “poor moon lights its lantern in vain.” In other words, A.P. Chekhov, apparently having once rejected faith in God and thereby depriving himself of the true meaning of life, tried in the work under consideration to save himself through only visible earthly love for mankind. But is such salvation entirely possible? Is there something unshakable about him? After all, preserving human passions and lusts, reverently deifying them, say, as some kind of universal human values, doesn’t it still lead a person to destruction?

Completing the analysis of A.P. Chekhov’s comedy “The Seagull,” you involuntarily wonder about the purpose of writing this essay. On the one hand, penetrating into the meaning of the play, you recognize its essence, on the other hand, you ask yourself: what’s so special about it? In other words, why retell and why evaluate the content that has already been retold for the umpteenth time? Didn’t they say everything possible earlier? Yes, it’s hard to argue that this is not the case. In any case, if you look at the matter as usual. But, if you count (say, in accordance with the dictionary) under the word “comedy” something feigned and hypocritical, then you suddenly understand that the Russian writer in this case is sincerely “breaking the comedy.” In other words, with a serious look, he depicts as if real life, in which he draws as if real images, taken as if from life itself, which in fact did not exist in it at all. However, someone will object that this is not so, that life itself has many examples of this. Yes, if we talk about the details of the plot, then much is quite recognizable and true. But if we talk about “The Seagull” as a whole phenomenon of life, then its overall meaning does not correspond to reality in any way or at all. On the contrary, having only the appearance of life, it simply denies it or deprives it of meaning. Therefore, A.P. Chekhov, most likely, not having firm guidelines in his own life, and, in this regard, partly becoming like his hero Konstantin Treplev, introduces his reader (viewer) into the false world of “self-sufficient philanthropy,” masking its imaginary final suicide main character. Is there any urgent need for such a creation in a real person? Hardly. On the contrary, real life cannot but resist Chekhov’s characters and their bitter ridicule of it. In other words, A.P. Chekhov appears in “The Seagull” as an elegant (stylish) jester who, combining the real and the unreal, presents the result of this “creativity” to the public as something serious or genuine. Is such an activity harmless for humans? Hardly. Why? Yes, because everything false will not teach anyone anything, but will only lead them away from the essential into the jungle of vain illusions. That is why the words of Dr. Dorn that “only what is beautiful is serious” do not apply to “The Seagull” itself.

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