Trigorin’s Lament

How awful it is to be a mediocre success

The Seagull by Anton Chekhov, translated by Constance Garnett

We are, of course, because this is Chekhov, in a country estate — in the county estate of the rich. And some of them are old and ailing; some of them are ageing but in denial of death and senescence; and others of them (too true!) are young and have not yet found their way.

The actress Irina Arkadina likes her son Konstantin Treplev — but only insofar as he does not make her feel old and does not ask her for money. Of course, he is always, at least implicitly, doing both. His having attained the age of near-maturity means that his mother is old. And his wearing old clothes and subpar coats means that she has given him no money; she hordes her money, has it all in distant bank accounts, and pretends poverty because of the cost of her brilliant dresses.

The actress is in town to visit her brother, Sorin, who is old and getting older — and aren’t we all? It’s his estate where all of this is happening. And it’s here that the actress’s son, Treplev, has decided to stage a play of his very own. He is the son of a famous mother, alternately ignored or patronised by her famous friends, and his father — long-dead — was a kind of higher tradesman. Unsure of who he is, Treplev has literary pretensions, and he’s got a young ally in Nina, the daughter of a local rich man, a girl who wants more than anything to go out there on the stage.

Treplev has written her a piece of theatre, heavy on the monologues. We see a brief excerpt of it and though it’s interesting, it’s pure tripe. Nina, all in white, is the world spirit — the world spirit who has outlasted all life on earth. The eels and the lampreys and the men and the bears and the mice — all their souls have been shivered free of their earthly bodies and have coalesced and combined into a mass consciousness, supposedly channelled by a girl in white.

But we never see where this goes, of course, because Irina Arkadina, unhappy, we presume, that the play does not feature her and that it does her no extra honour, mocks it and brings the drama to its end. She has also brought along a friend, Trigorin, a novelist that she calls a genius — and whom Nina, for her sins, also makes into an idol, an ikon.

Just as Irina Arkadina is surrounded by hideous flattery — although it doesn’t seem to bother her all that much — the literary man Trigorin has to contend with the same. Not from Treplev, who hates his guts; the boy says he’s a fake and phoney and that he wouldn’t know truth and beauty it they were barbecuing his left leg. But everyone else tells Trigorin he is a genius, and though he is alternatively fishing in the nearby rivers and streams and noting down something for his later work, he is besieged by comment of all kinds, including comment, seemingly unsought, from Nina.

Ah, she says, you get to live a life of fantasy and wonder! You are permitted to make your creative work without impediment. They sell your picture in the shops; they write about you in the newspapers. Is this not the finest a human soul can experience?

And she asks Trigorin if he does not rejoice in his good fortune, if he does not glory in his status and success.

At this, Trigorin clears his throat.

What you call success does not mean much to me, he tells her. I spend my whole life thinking about getting back to my desk. Every moment I am not writing my novels or my short stories, or pondering my plays, I wonder why I am not doing so.

To prove this, Trigorin continually puts down ideas in a little book — plot points and titles, things he may or may not use later. (Surely we all do it; I must say I do.)

You tell me I ought to enjoy my success, Trigorin says to Nina, but to me that means less than nothing. All my life I have been trying to grow better at producing my work. And it is only now, when I come to a charming rural spot like this, when I can live, in a way — I can fish for perch and I can take walks in the fresh air — that I wonder if perhaps I shouldn’t be writing so hard for so little reason. If I were a peasant husband, would I miss writing those long, laboured novels? Would I regret that my works were not performed upon the stage? Or would I appreciate, just as keenly, the pleasures of fishing and walking and watching strange things happen in rural life as I do now?

Trigorin even finds it fascinating when Treplev, an odd duck, shoots a seagull and presents it to Nina in ghastly ceremony. Even though Treplev later fails to shoot himself and afterwards challenges Trigorin to a duel (a contest the writer weasels out of), Trigorin does not lose his shy demeanour. He believes he has wasted his life, perhaps, but at least he is not overawed by fame.

Yet he can always be misled by it, misled by its effects on orther. And so when Nina, her heart afire in ways she has not otherwise been able to suggest, says to Trigorin that she is at his disposal, he takes her at the implication of her word.

This play is very funny, though parts of it trend sad.