Landmarks in Russian literature

by Maurice Baring

Ina: I do not recognise you.

Constantine: Yes, some time after I have ceased to recognise you. You have changed towards me, your look is cold, my presence makes you uncomfortable.

Ina: During these last days you have become irritable, and speak in an unintelligible way, in symbols. I suppose this sea-gull is a symbol. Forgive me, I am too simple to understand you.

Constantine: It all began on that evening when my play was such a failure. Women cannot forgive failure. I burnt it all to the last page. Oh, if you only knew how unhappy I am! Your coldness is terrifying, incredible! It is just as if I awoke, and suddenly saw that this lake was dry, or had disappeared under the earth. You have just said you were too simple to understand me. Oh, what is there to understand? My play was a failure, you despise my work, you already consider that I am a thing of no account, like so many others! How well I understand that, how well I understand! It is as if there were a nail in my brain; may it be cursed, together with the amour propre which is sucking my blood, sucking it like a snake! (He sees Trigorin, who enters reading a book.) Here comes the real genius. He walks towards us like a Hamlet, and with a book too. “Words, words, words.” This sun is not yet come to you, and you are already smiling, your looks have melted in its rays. I will not be in your way. (He goes out rapidly.)

There follows a conversation between Trigorin and Ina, during which she says she would like to know what it feels like to be a famous author. She talks of his interesting life.

Trigorin: What is there so very wonderful about it? Like a monomaniac who, for instance, is always thinking day and night of the moon, I am pursued by one thought which I cannot get rid of, I must write, I must write, I must ... I have scarcely finished a story, when for some reason or another I must write a second, and then a third, and then a fourth. I write uninterruptedly, I cannot do otherwise. What is there so wonderful and splendid in this, I ask you? Oh, it is a cruel life! Look, I get excited with you, and all the time I am remembering that an unfinished story is waiting for me. I see a cloud which is like a pianoforte, and I at once think that I must remember to say somewhere in the story that there is a cloud like a pianoforte.

Ina: But does not your inspiration and the process of creation give you great and happy moments?

Trigorin: Yes, when I write it is pleasant, and it is nice to correct proofs; but as soon as the thing is published, I cannot bear it, and I already see that it is not at all what I meant, that it is a mistake, that I should not have written it at all, and I am vexed and horribly depressed. The public reads it, and says: “Yes, pretty, full of talent, very nice, but how different from Tolstoy!” or, “Yes, a fine thing, but how far behind Fathers and Sons; Tourgeniev is better.” And so, until I die, it will always be “pretty and full of talent,” never anything more; and when I die my friends as they pass my grave will say: “Here lies Trigorin, he was a good writer, but he did not write as well as Tourgeniev.”

Ina tells him that whatever he may appear to himself, to others he appears great and wonderful. For the joy of being a writer or an artist, she says, she would bear the hate of her friends, want, disappointment; she would live in an attic and eat dry crusts. “I would suffer from my own imperfections, but in return I should demand fame, real noisy fame.” Here the voice of Arkadina is heard calling Trigorin. He observes the sea-gull; she tells him that Constantine killed it. Trigorin makes a note in his notebook. “What are you writing?” she says. “An idea has occurred to me,” he answers, “an idea for a short story: On the banks of a lake a young girl lives from her infancy onwards. She loves the lake like a sea-gull, she is happy and free like a sea-gull; but unexpectedly a man comes and sees her, and out of mere idleness kills her, just like this sea-gull.” Here Arkadina again calls out that they are not going to Moscow after all. This is the end of the second act.

At the third act, Arkadina is about to leave the country for Moscow. Things have come to a crisis. Ina has fallen in love with the author, and Constantine’s jealousy and grief have reached such a point that he has tried to kill himself and failed, and now he has challenged Trigorin to a duel. The latter has taken no notice of this, and is about to leave for Moscow with Arkadina. Ina begs him before he goes to say good-bye to her. Arkadina discusses with her brother her son’s strange and violent behaviour. He points out that the youth’s position is intolerable. He is a clever boy, full of talent, and he is obliged to live in the country without any money, without a situation. He is ashamed of this, and afraid of his idleness. In any case, he tells his sister, she ought to give him some money, he has not even got an overcoat; to which she answers that she has not got any money. She is an artist, and needs every penny for her own expenses. Her brother scoffs at this, and she gets annoyed. A scene follows between the mother and the son, which begins by an exchange of loving and tender words, and which finishes in a violent quarrel. The mother is putting a new bandage on his head, on the place where he had shot himself. “During the last few days,” says Constantine, “I have loved you as tenderly as when I was a child; but why do you submit to the influence of that man?”—meaning Trigorin. And out of this the quarrel arises. Constantine says, “You wish me to consider him a genius. His works make me sick.” To which his mother answers, “That is jealousy. People who have no talent and who are pretentious, have nothing better to do than to abuse those who have real talent.” Here Constantine flies into a passion, tears the bandage off his head, and cries out, “You people only admit and recognise what you do yourselves. You trample and stifle everything else!” Then his rage dies out, he cries and asks forgiveness, and says, “If you only knew, I have lost everything. She no longer loves me; I can no longer write; all my hopes are dead!” They are once more reconciled. Only Constantine begs that he may be allowed to keep out of Trigorin’s sight. Trigorin comes to Arkadina, and proposes that they should remain in the country. Arkadina says that she knows why he wishes to remain; he is in love with Ina. He admits this, and asks to be set free.