"new forms. Search results for \"Treplev's play\" Introduction to literature, a textbook for foreign students studying Russian as a foreign language

Alexander Chepurov

“You can’t live without a theater...”

Christian Lupa

in work on Chekhov's "The Seagull" at the Alexandrinsky Theater

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the outstanding Polish director Krystian Lupe. In 2007, he staged his only performance in Russia so far, performing an original interpretation of Chekhov’s “The Seagull” at the Alexandrinsky Theater.

The idea to invite a classic of Polish directing to collaborate belonged to Valery Fokin, who in those years began implementing his creative program “New Life of Tradition.” This performance was very popular among the audience and was performed on the theater stage for ten years. For directing Alexandrinsk's The Seagull, Krystian Lupa was awarded the highest Russian theater award, the Golden Mask.

The question of the director's adaptation created by Krystian Lupa is quite complex. The director himself, starting work on the play, at the first rehearsal, which took place on May 15, 2007, deliberately forced the artists to read the entire play in its original author’s version, performed at the Alexandrinsky Theater in 1896. By this, the director emphasized the starting point from which he began work with the artists, fundamentally making them co-creators of the future performance.

Of course, Lupa initially had a plan for the future production, and had her own vision of its textual basis. Without going into details of the formation of the stage text, we will consider the final version, which was formed during the interaction of the author's plan with its elaboration during rehearsals with the actors. Ultimately, methodologically, the problem of studying the director's dramaturgy of a performance prompts us to a multidimensional study of the entire complex of theatrical documentation, which includes the director's copy of the literary text, which mainly records the dramaturgical intention of the director, and copies of the assistant director, which reflects the result of rehearsal work, and, finally , that stage text that unfolds in real time and space and which is imprinted in our audience perception. It is precisely this comprehensive approach that should be used when analyzing the dramatic structure of the play by Krystian Lupa, staged at the Alexandrinsky Theater. The task is to identify the nature and creative motivations of the changes to which the text of Chekhov’s play was subjected in a performance created “based on it,” which ultimately determined the nature of the stage interpretation.

The first layer of directorial adjustments touched upon the archaisms present in Chekhov’s text, which characterize the manner of speech of the Russian philistine environment of the late nineteenth century. Lupa removed phrases like “thank you”, “excuse me”, “favor”, “yesterday”, etc., replacing them with “thank you”, “please”, “yesterday”... All chronological markings of actions and memories were removed and associations.

Photo from the theater archive

Personal pronouns also underwent changes: instead of the traditional in Russian culture, somewhat old-fashioned “you”, “you” was inserted almost everywhere, which gave the general sound of the text and the relationships of the characters a completely modern sound.

However, the adjustments, which seemed to have a historical basis, also affected more fundamental things. So, for example, by eliminating the remarks indicating that Masha “sniffs tobacco” (since today this method of using tobacco has long gone out of use), the director thereby removed a very important characteristic feature of Chekhov’s heroine, which sharply emphasized her emancipation, her bravado . At the same time, the director clearly had another goal: he deliberately wanted to remove the touch of almost caricatured character that often accompanied the image of Masha, and behind which hid the vulgar theatricality in the performance of this role.

The first act has undergone virtually no changes. As Lupa declared, he considered it almost as a separate work, where the creative flight, the dream of art, harshly collided with reality, where the main catastrophe for the artist occurred.

At the same time, the director's correction was made in the first act. By removing repetitions, narrative details, and conversations à propos, the director, on the one hand, makes the action more elastic, and on the other, purposefully deprives it of the so-called “immersion in everyday life.”

Lupa even goes so far as to discard “logical bridges” and motivations and ignore the leitmotif construction of individual text structures. So, for example, by eliminating Masha’s remark, which in a dialogue with Sorin explains the need for a dog protecting millet from thieves in the barn, the director makes incomprehensible and almost absurd Shamraev’s words that appear in the second act about the impossibility of getting rid of a dog’s howl. Thus, the composition emphasizes that in a dispute with Arkadina and Sorin about the inconveniences being caused, the manager shows rather quarrelsomeness and stubbornness rather than some common sense. Also, eliminating the motive associated with the shortage of horses employed in household work, which Sorin denotes in the first scene, removes the logical explanation for Shamraev’s position and aggravates the conflict in the second act that arises between Arkadina and the manager. The clash between Arkadina and Shamraev over horses, thus, loses its logical and everyday motivation and acquires an absurdly positional character.

In Treplev’s dialogue with Sorin, Lyupa skips topics related to the social and everyday motivations of the characters’ situation. Thus, Sorin’s rantings about his appearance, which was the cause of his life’s tragedy, about his service and attempts to realize his social role turn out to be unnecessary in the context of the director’s plan. Treplev’s social status (“according to my passport, I am a Kiev tradesman”) is absolutely unimportant for the director. This motif will also be used in Arkadina’s line from the third act. And this is understandable. After all, the play will not be about the hero’s social vulnerability, but about his spiritual and creative crisis.

In Treplev's story about Trigorin, Lyupa removes the narrative-everyday tone, as a result of which the characterization of the fiction writer becomes sharper: “now he drinks only beer and can only love middle-aged people.” The characterization of Trigorin in Lupa’s composition concerns, first of all, the assessment of his artistic merits: “after Tolstoy or Zola, you will not want to read Trigorin.” Similarly, Treplev’s characterization of Arkadina is devoid of many details, which again makes the conflict between the mother-actress and son-playwright more generalized and devoid of petty everyday motivations.

It should be noted that the motive of the mother’s jealousy of her son in the course of adaptation is cleared of the secondary motive associated with Nina Zarechnaya. Lupa leaves the theme of creative jealousy associated with the possible

the success of Zarechnaya (“she is already annoyed that Zarechnaya will be successful”), but removes the theme of jealousy in connection with the impression that a young girl can make on Trigorin (“her fiction writer may like Zarechnaya”).

Another significant thing to note is that Lupa in his adaptation tones down the radicalism in Treplev's position. We are talking about his attitude towards the theater. In one of the remarks dedicated to Arkadina, at the very beginning of the play, Treplev states: “She also knows that I do not recognize the theater.” And then he talks about theatrical routine. Actually, the model that Treplev proposes is fundamentally provocative and irreconcilable in nature. Treplev radically denies art and theater as such. Lupa deprives Treplev of such intransigence. Kostya is, first and foremost, an artist. And this, on the one hand, complicates the conflict, and on the other hand, leaves the hero some way out of the deadlock in the finale.

The director shortens Treplev’s enthusiastic monologue preceding Nina’s appearance, where there is a vulgar, cliche exaltation (“I can’t live without her. Even the sound of her steps is beautiful. I’m incredibly happy. Sorceress, my dream...”). Here the motive of Treplev’s irresistible love for Zarechnaya, which in the first act of Chekhov’s play, seemingly prevails over the artist’s imagination, is removed. In Lyupa's adaptation, it can be assumed that Treplev initially sees in Nina primarily an actress, the embodiment of his creative idea.

On the other hand, in Nina Zarechnaya’s remarks, the director reduces the manifestations of her emotional exaltation. The famous phrase leaves the composition: “the moon is already beginning to rise, and I drove the horse, drove it.” In addition, Lupa removes from Treplev’s and Sorin’s remarks all the details of Nina’s relationship with her father and stepmother, which allows the viewer to concentrate on the spiritual and creative relationships of the young heroes yearning for their artistic self-realization.

Christian Lupa attached very important importance in his performance (to some extent this is already outlined in the text of the composition) to the role of Jacob and his relationship with Konstantin. Yakov becomes a kind of demon assistant to Treplev, helping to realize his creative ideas, guarding and protecting him, including from his own despair. "Worker" Yakov becomes, in a sense, his hands

"Gull". Alexandrinsky Theater. S. Sytnik - Sorin. Photo from the theater archive

creative soul, materializing spiritual impulse. He is a kind of “body of spirit” of the artist. It is no coincidence that in the play we will directly feel his physicality when Yakov, performing plastic somersaults, like a certain Homunculus in protoplasm, swims in a transparent reservoir of water, symbolizing the witch’s lake. This metaphorical image, of which Yakov will become a part of the play, is called upon by the director to establish the coordinates of the metaphysical context of the action.

Lupa's performance even depicts a certain rivalry between Yakov and Nina - as two personalities who must embody the creative idea of ​​the author-playwright. If Yakov seems to fully understand and share Treplev’s plan, then Nina still does not understand this plan and she feels it, rather, intuitively, perhaps subconsciously. In the dialogue between Nina and Treplev, Lupa emphasizes their misunderstanding of each other. Several cuts and additions made by the director show that Nina is more concerned with the desire for self-embodiment and fame than with the desire to understand the meaning of the role she plays. And she treats Treplev, rather, as a means to achieve her goal. Lupa emphasizes and intensifies the aggravation of the conflict between Nina and Treplev in the play. Following Nina’s remark about the ineffectiveness of his play, about the lack of love in it, Treplev throws a chair at her.

And Nina, as if in response, tears off her dress, throws it to Treplev and leaves to change clothes for the performance.

With the appearance of Nina, Treplev kicks Yakov out of the pool, since it is Nina who will take his place in this symbolic “lake” and, rising from it, read the monologue of the World Soul. Here again the balance seems to be upset: the assistant who understands everything is expelled from the creative space, and his place is taken by the model who does not yet understand the meaning. Subsequently, the theme of the confrontation between Nina and Yakov will be carried out in the play until the finale, where both figures will find balance in Treplev’s soul.

After Nina leaves, before the performance of the play about the World Soul, Lupa inserts a remark from Treplev, addressing directly to the audience: “Understand me. Please.". This very personal, deeply lyrical phrase emphasizes that Treplev, as a true artist, craves understanding and responsiveness of the audience, and does not at all want to insult and shock them.

In Treplev’s reaction to the failure of his play, Lupa removes the excessive childish hysteria of the hero present in the original text. Treplev in Chekhov repeats several times “Curtain! A curtain!" and even stomps his feet. All this is absent from Lupa’s performance. The hero, in his version, immediately moves on to the motivation for “failure”: “I lost sight of the fact that only a select few can write plays and act on stage. I broke the monopoly! And although Lupa in no way detracts from the hero’s youthful fervor, he gives it a fundamentally creative character. The director also emphasizes the generality and aesthetic motivation of Treplev’s reaction by the fact that the actor playing the role of Konstantin jumps off the stage and runs away through the auditorium.

Arkadina's conversation with Sorin, Trigorin and Dorn regarding Treplev is completely preserved in the composition. However, in the next scene, where Arkadina admires the picture of the lake, the text is significantly and fundamentally changed. Here a kind of “displacement” of time is introduced, a view of events and situations from the future. The characters begin to talk as if about something that no longer exists, that has disappeared from reality. It’s as if the action from Chekhov’s time is transposed into our present-day reality, where the witch’s lake no longer exists and where in its place there is only a barren, cracked, cluttered plain with the remains of some kind of wastewater treatment plant.

"Gull". Alexandrinsky Theater. M. Ignatova - Arkadina, A. Shimko - Trigorin. Photo from the theater archive

In Arkadina’s monologue, Lyupa inserts the phrase: “Once upon a time there was a huge lake here.” And immediately a surprising, effective counterpoint arises. The characters seem to be transported to a transtemporal space. They are endowed with some kind of special vision that can give a feeling of simultaneous existence in the present, in the past, and in the future. To our surprise, it turns out that Treplev’s play had a certain impact on them, putting them in a philosophical and contemplative mood. They unwittingly find themselves in the position of the World Soul, which they have just ridiculed together. Chekhov loved such almost mystical “throws” in time, at the same time explaining them as some kind of psychological phenomenon or game of consciousness. There are such “moments of truth” in many of his works; the writer also focused on them in his notebooks. In this case, Krystian Lupa makes a completely “Chekhovian” move.

In this scene, the director introduces another character absent from Chekhov's play - a certain Lost One. He appears next to Masha, among other characters, silently and silently rising from the auditorium to the stage. It would seem that no one notices him, only Masha glances at him for a moment. Here Lupa also materializes another Chekhovian theme that is present in his works, and which he accurately and sensitively notices in life. This is about

K. Lupa. Sketch of the scenography of the play “The Seagull”.

Alexandrinsky Theater. Photo from the theater archive

the so-called “invisible witness”, a spectator, a participant in the event, whom we sometimes subconsciously feel. The theme of theater, which is born from life itself, is also uniquely realized here. And then we begin to perceive what happens to us, and ourselves, from the outside, as some kind of spontaneously unfolding performance.

The Lost One is like the Passerby in The Cherry Orchard. It is quite real, but at the same time, in the imagination and play of the subconscious of the heroes, it acquires an ominous, distinctly mystical role as some kind of evil harbinger.

The appearance of Nina and her dialogue with Arkadina and Trigorin are generally preserved in the composition. Only in Trigorin’s remark about fishing is the phrase inserted: “Lake, say...”. This phrase emphasizes the non-domestic nature of Trigorin’s reasoning about his love of fishing, despite the fact that the lake, as we have already seen, exists in the artistic space of the performance only hypothetically as a reflection of a painting that has long disappeared in the past.

The director corrects Arkadina’s line addressed to her brother, who is complaining about sore legs. If in Chekhov’s original the conversation is about Sorin’s real illness (“Your legs are like wood, they can barely walk.”), then in Lyupa Arkadina ironically remarks: “Yes, your legs. Not one, but the other.” Thus, the reality of Sorin's illness is immediately

is being questioned. The hero, rather, begins to resemble a character who has imagined his illness and lives under the influence of this illusion. Lupa ignores the image of a “barely living ruin”, which in Chekhov’s play was contrasted with Treplev.

In the final scene of the first act, in the dialogue between Dorn and Treplev, again, following his original idea about the creative, spiritual nature of the protagonist’s conflict, Lyupa reduces in the young man’s remarks the manifestations of his love impulses towards Nina. Also, in Dorn’s remarks, assessments of Treplev’s condition are abbreviated: “Ugh, how nervous! Tears on eyes. How pale you are." At the same time, in the final scene Treplev’s attitude towards Masha is aggravated. In Treplev’s remark, Lyupa inserts the phrase: “Don’t follow me,” which emphasizes both the desire to get rid of Masha’s obsession and the reluctance to see the manifestation of self-pity. The director, shortening Treplev’s remarks, at the same time introduces a phrase that emphasizes Konstantin’s desire to quickly end the conversation and end the “performance”: “Thank you everyone.”

The very finale of the first act in Lupa's version becomes harsher and more conflicting. Instead of the peace and elegiac poetry of the last scene, when Masha lays her head on Dorn’s chest, and he utters pathetic words about the witch’s lake, about general nervousness and about love, the director encourages Masha to run away impulsively, and Dorn only to say in confusion: “What should I do? "

The second act of Krystian Lupa's play combines three Chekhov acts. And here the director makes a significant rearrangement of the dramatic material. The director makes the dominant part of the first part of the second act a scene of collective reading of Maupassant’s story “On the Water”. He shortens the very beginning of the second act, where Arkadina boasts to Masha about her youthfulness and expresses her credo: not to think about the future. Having caught the moment in the first act when Kostya Treplev’s play had a certain impact on the audience, setting them in a philosophical and contemplative mood, Lyupa picks up this feeling and develops it in the very first scene of the second act. He also focuses attention on the conflict of times, on the conflict between the spiritual and the real, which has already revealed itself in the first act. The sound overture of the second act - the deafening noise of the city - contrasts with the atmosphere of a lake that has disappeared from reality and exists only in the imagination.

"Gull". Alexandrinsky Theater. Scene from the play. Monologue of the World Soul. Photo from the theater archive

At the beginning of the act, Lupa expands on a fragment from Maupassant’s diary prose, dedicated to the assessment of the work of novelists, their ability to transfer life stories and even people themselves into their works. This text, only partially quoted in Chekhov’s play, is fully expanded by the author of the composition, revealing in it the origins of the figurative motifs of “The Seagull”, parallels and associations that arise regarding the past and future thoughts of the characters. Thus, the novelist’s ability to copy his plots from real life circumstances and persons will respond in the third act with Trigorin’s intention to turn the story of Nina the Seagull, not yet realized in life, into a “plot for a short story.”

In the first scene of the second act, Lupa ties another figurative and dramatic knot, which, it would seem, makes a purely everyday detail one of the key images of the performance. After a quote from Maupassant “about novelists and rats,” which Dorn reads, Nina suddenly gets up and, having paraded in front of all those gathered, silently leaves. She returns only when Arkadina finishes discussing her part of the text she read. This departure and return of Nina, on the one hand, focuses our attention on her as a potential “model” for an artistic concept (especially since for Treplev this is already an acted out plot), on the other hand,

show the state of Nina, who feels inner restlessness and longs for her embodiment in art. And finally, Nina’s passage is a kind of performative gesture, caught “in the frame”, which can be imprinted in the mind, repeated, and concentrate the viewer’s attention on itself.

As if in response to Arkadina’s words that Treplev spends whole days on the lake, Lyupa introduces the phonogram “birds chirping” (according to the copy of the assistant director*).

This phonogram only emphasizes that the lake on which Konstantin disappears is imaginary, just as the birds whose voices we hear from the phonogram are imaginary. The phonogram with the chirping of birds began to sound when Nina seemed to be disconnected from people. It is at this moment that Masha asks Nina to read a monologue from Treplev’s play. And Nina begins to read the monologue of the World Soul for the second time: “People, lions, eagles and partridges.”

This fragment was subsequently removed by Chekhov from the final version of the play, but was present in its first original version. And Krystian Lupa keeps it. Moreover, the director makes this system of repetitions, picked up after Chekhov, key in his composition. Initially, Nina pronounced Chekhov’s monologue of the World Soul three times. The first time during an unsuccessful performance of Treplev’s play, the second time at Masha’s request in the second act, and the third time at the end of the play on her own impulse. Chekhov builds the action in such a way that understanding of this text and inspiration by it comes to Nina only when she, having experienced her own hardships and disappointments, having gone through the hell of life, turns out to be ready to appropriate this text written by another person. And this path of gaining life experience becomes for her the path of finding herself as an actress, as an artist, which, in fact, makes such a strong impression on Treplev in the finale. Subsequently, Chekhov, under the influence of his editors, getting rid of repetitions, decided to shorten the reading of the monologue in the second act, considering it sufficient to emphasize the contrast of its first performance and the finale.

For Christian Lupa, it was important to trace the entire development of Nina’s relationship with Treplev’s text. Moreover, in

* Our analysis uses stage directions and notes made in the assistant director’s copy kept at the Alexandrinsky Theater.

In the second act, Masha decisively contrasts Nina’s reading with the memory of Treplev’s inspired reading.

Lupa cuts Nina's monologue about Trigorin in half. He leaves only the first part, which talks about Trigorin’s fame as a writer and expresses Nina’s bewilderment at his passion for fishing. The second part - a detailed description and characterization of Trigorin's behavior - is being shortened. Thus, the director emphasizes Nina’s focus precisely on the problem of fame, the publicity of the artist, which worries her most.

The director further aggravates the situation by not leaving Nina alone on stage, but bringing Treplev into the background, who appears with a gun and a dead seagull. Thus, symbolic and situational tensions arise. It must be said that Lupa (as will become clear later) disrupts the linear development of the action of the second act, subordinating it to the internal logic of the heroes’ consciousness. Consequently, the end of the second act will be perceived as an associative inversion, where characters and situations arise not so much out of life, but out of inner spiritual necessity.

Treplev's presence, breaking Nina's loneliness, also makes her internal monologue public and theatrical. And therefore, Konstantin’s theatrical gesture of laying a dead seagull at Nina’s feet seems quite natural. In Lupa's performance this gesture is indeed perceived symbolically. It rhymes with the scene from the first act when Nina’s dress is in Treplev’s hands - the shell of everyday life, which she, as an actress, sheds in order to be embodied in the image created by the author of the play about the World Soul. The killed seagull, therefore, is a symbol of an objectified dream, a living life embodied in an artistic image. Here Lupa picks up and develops the Chekhovian motif, making it the dominant element of the spiritual and psychological conflict of the play. The loss of interest in Kostya on the part of Nina is considered by the director solely as the loss of the hero-author of his actress, that living matter that is capable of realizing his spiritual dream.

At the same time, it must be said that the released fragment of Treplev’s replica, at the same time, was not lost for the performance. In the composition, Trep-lion does not utter the text about his dream, in which he dreamed that “the lake suddenly dried up or flowed into the ground.” However, Lupa makes this image one of the key ones in the play. Moreover, he visualizes it,

embodied in its scenery: on the backdrop depicting a withered, waterless landscape, in the strange design of Treplev’s “theater”, reminiscent of a sewage treatment plant with residual water in a transparent reservoir. And then this theme is read in the image of an emptied swimming pool, which opens to the view of the audience in the second part of the performance.

Released by the director and the beginning of Nina's dialogue with Trigorin. In Chekhov, Trigorin himself shows interest in Nina, wanting to get rid of the falsehood in his stories and imagine “what kind of thing” the girl is at 19 years old. Lupa shortens these words of Trigorin and begins the dialogue with a remark from Nina, who almost hooliganly calls out to the “famous writer,” asking “head-on”: “How does fame feel?”

In a conversation about fame, the director suppresses Nina’s words about a “wonderful world” that opens up to the chosen ones, in contrast to those unfortunates who eke out a gray, boring existence. Instead, Lupa confronts Nina’s remark: “How I envy you!” with Trigorin’s remark: “I must go and write now.” Here the director introduces a fairly strong symbolic image. Trigorin, indeed, intends to leave Nina and opens one of the doors located on the left side of the scene. And this door turns out to be golden from the inside, and even illuminated from behind the scenes by a bright spotlight. However, having opened the “golden door,” Trigorin immediately slams it and returns to Nina to continue the conversation about “fame” and the hardships of writing.

Lupa consistently focuses the audience's attention on the problem of the embodiment of a spiritual idea in a person (or actor). The emphasis in Trigorin's monologue is on the burden of a public profession. The director also emphasizes the confrontation between the hero and the audience through mise-en-scène. In the performance, Trigorin sits on the edge of the stage, dangling his legs into the audience. At the same time, Lupa builds the characters’ relationships with each other and their monologues in such a way that it creates the feeling that the viewer is always present in the object of their attention. Trigorin openly addresses the audience of the Alexandrinsky Theater.

Following Nina’s enthusiastic remark about selfless service to art and fame, Lupa inserts an episode that is missing from Chekhov. Nina climbs onto the stairs again, and the figure of Trigorin is highlighted on the proscenium. And at this moment in the background, within the red luminous frame, a screen opens on which we see Kostya, rushing about in some enclosed space and desperately

pronouncing the monologue of the World Soul from his play. However, Kostya’s intonations here are by no means poetically inspired, but nervous, harsh, desperate. This monologue is colored by his inner state of mind, and the intonations resemble a hellish swing.

Following the video fragment that appears on the screen, Treplev himself quickly runs onto the stage with a gun in his hands and feverishly tries to adjust the barrel of the gun so as to shoot himself. Yakov runs out after him and tries to snatch the gun from his hands. A fight ensues between them. Lupa inserts the furious remarks he invented from Treplev and Yakov. Treplev shouts that he will commit suicide anyway, Yakov responds that he will not allow this to happen. The assistant director's copy notes that it is at this moment that the red frame lights up brightly. The vision disappears when Arkadina’s scream is heard from behind the scenes. There seems to be an awakening, and we again see Nina and Trigorin talking.

This inversion is necessary for the director in order to emphasize the contrast between “suffering” and “unsuffering” art. Almost Lupa visualizes the personality crisis of a person becoming an artist. The director reveals to us a picture of the hell through which Treplev passes and the path to which Nina is still choosing. This picture is revealed instead of that “golden door” to the wonderful world that Nina dreams of. And the fact that this picture appears behind the back of Trigorin, who tells about the torments of professionalism, confirms the idea that this hell awaits any artist who has chosen art as his vocation and profession.

As the light returns to the foreground, Nina talks about the house in which she was born and which remains on the other side of the lake. This phrase in the new context takes on a symbolic character. The Rubicon will be crossed: Nina is ready to make a choice and leave her home and her old life. Accordingly, the seagull killed by Treplev is now perceived in the same context. It is here that Nina turns into a “nature shot down by art,” which Trigorin instantly guesses, in whose head a “plot for a short story” is born.

Nina and Trigorin leave, at which time Lost appears on the stage and picks up the fake seagull that was left lying on the stage. Lost in this appearance is no longer a spectator, but a person on the stage. It’s as if he belongs equally to both the audience and the stage.

simultaneously. It is here that we first begin to perceive him as a man lost between art and life.

And after the Lost, the main characters of the play enter the stage, sit down in the same way as they were already sitting at the beginning of the second act, and the reading of Maupassant begins again. Lupa inserts the phrase: “And yet, we will continue.”, which is spoken by Dorn. Thus, the director builds a certain psychological trick, which consists in the fact that all previous scenes begin to be perceived only as a play of the imagination. The reality of what has just been seen is called into question, the line between life and artistic imagination is blurred. And the very scene of reading Maupassant in the minds of the heroes and spectators is already perceived as something that once happened.

Lupa creates a complex trans-temporal space of action in which the characters perceive each other as both characters and spectators at the same time.

The director shortens the famous scene where Nina, speaking about the possibility of an upcoming meeting, gives Trigorin a medallion with cherished words of recognition. Lupa ignores the intrigue with the medallion, trying to erase the touch of a “well-made play,” the techniques of which Chekhov sometimes deliberately used. Also, in depicting the relationships of the characters, the director avoids protractedness and sentimental details, which, regardless of the philosophical context of the play, open a “loophole” for melodrama.

Developing the relationship between Treplev and his friend-assistant, the director precedes Konstantin’s shot with Yakov’s desperate cry. The fact that the sound of the gunshot in Lupa's performance was moved from the end of the play to the middle of the performance is also very significant. It is here, where Treplev first encounters the artist’s inner hell, where his human self suffers and experiences catastrophe, that the real shot takes place.

Lupa directly connects Sorin's attack of faintness with this shot. In Chekhov, Sorin reacts to the words of Arkadina, who sanctimoniously complains about lack of money and does not want to help her son financially. In addition, in the original play, Medvedenko inadvertently inserts himself into the conversation between Arkidina and Sorin with his idee fixe about the meager provision of teachers, which irritates both interlocutors. Lupa replaces all this complex everyday-associative construction of the scene with a direct reaction to the shot, which is either real or somehow internal

Sorin hears by ear. At the same time, Arkadina, shocked by her brother’s fainting, does not seem to hear this shot. In this context, we don’t even fully understand to whom Arkadina is shouting “Help!” Why is she asking for help? According to the director's directions, she shouts after Yakov, who is running away into the auditorium, either calling for help with Sorin, or begging him to save his son. This ambiguity, specially generated by the director, creates the volume of the situation and makes it symbolic.

The scene of the “taming” of Trigorin is reproduced in the play entirely according to the text of the play, with the exception of a few notes in the remarks of both characters. In the center are Arkadina’s arguments, affecting Trigorin’s writer’s pride. At the same time, Lupa ironically delivers the emotional tirades of Arkadina, who, falling to her knees and tearing off her dress, portrays passion in an emphatically theatrical manner. Lupa misses a situational nuance when Arkadina, as if testing Trigorin’s inability to resist her will, invites him to stay. His own admission of his softness was also stopped. This property of Trigorin’s character in the context of the performance no longer requires special evidence. Next, the director shortens the entire scene of Arkadina’s farewell, and instead of the scene of the last secret meeting between Nina and Trigorin, there is a short episode in which Nina twice unanswerably asks the question: “When will we see each other?”

Trigorin leaves without saying a word, and Nina suddenly begins to read Sonya’s final monologue from Chekhov’s play “Uncle Vanya.” This is quite a strong move by the director. After all, here for the first time Nina’s life and artistic elements unite. Here, for the first time, her personal feelings are embodied in a role, the text of which she begins to pronounce with utmost strength and sincerity, no longer by order, but under the influence of some mysterious, subconscious impulse. What’s amazing is that Lyupa accurately guessed Chekhov’s train of thought, as if he had penetrated his creative laboratory. After all, in fact, Chekhov took up the task of remaking his failed play “The Goblin” into the future “Uncle Vanya” almost immediately after the failure of “The Seagull.” Researchers of Chekhov's work have paid attention to the fact that Sonya's final monologue in some ways echoes the final monologue of Nina Zarechnaya, as if continuing and developing it. However, in Lyupa’s play, Nina begins to read Sonya’s monologue long before the finale, having not yet lived the life that she will have after running away from home. Director

"Gull". Alexandrinsky Theater. A. Shimko - Trigorin, S. Elikov - Medvedenko, V. Kovalenko - Shamraev. Photo from the theater archive

wants to emphasize that Nina is pronouncing the text of a play that has not yet been embodied, that has not yet been composed. And this artistic, deeply personal, some kind of secret, subconscious premonition plays a primary role here.

The Act II finale includes the fourth act of Chekhov's play. Here Krystian Lupa proceeds from Chekhov's principle of effective counterpoint, which was discovered and used by the playwright in the last part of The Seagull.

The dialogue between Masha and Medvedenko that opens the action is partially shortened by the director. He removes Masha’s remark calling Treplev, whom, according to her, Sorin is looking for. For him, the conversation about bad weather and the destroyed theater is of much greater and, perhaps, central importance. The director discovers that Chekhov has “loop” the composition of the play, beginning the fourth act with a scene that rhymes with the very beginning of “The Seagull.” In both cases we are talking about theater created by the creative imagination of the artist. At the beginning of the play, the state of nature sets one in an inspired and poetic mood, for the creation of a new theater, and the characters anticipate the merging of the souls of the creator and performers, and in the finale they are struck by the “terrible weather,” the destroyed theater and the discord of souls. Lupa picks up and develops the image set by Chekhov in the fourth act.

"Gull". Alexandrinsky Theater. A. Shimko - Trigorin. Photo from the theater archive

At the end of the play, events take place in the living room, turned into the writer's office. This extrapolation of the creative world to the reality of life aggravates the conflict of two worlds in which the artist is simultaneously doomed to exist. Accordingly, in the play, the entire fourth act takes place against the backdrop of a lowered backdrop, depicting the wall of a dilapidated house with missing ceilings and doorways located at different levels. The walls of this house were painted red and it seemed that here, in this symbolic space, passions reigned and madness was boiling.

On the left, in the background, there is a table with a lamp hanging above it. The lotto game will take place around this table. And on the right, a little in front (almost on the proscenium) a red sofa will take its place, which will mark the place of a person’s heated, dramatic “showdown” with his dreams and with life’s reality. That is why the mise-en-scenes of Polina Andreevna with Dorn, Nina with Treplev, and Sorin (“the man who wanted.”) will be built around him.

The conversation between Dorn and Treplev about Nina Zarechnaya in the play is devoid of the narrative details present in Chekhov. In Lupa's composition, the vicissitudes of Nina's life are presented quite concisely. Attention is focused primarily not on her life's hardships, but exclusively on her creative destiny. Treplev in the play

does not talk about how he followed her, about what she wrote to him in her letters. The details of her return to her native land, wandering around the estate, and relationships with her father and stepmother are reduced. Dorn immediately asks about Nina’s talent, to which Kostya answers very evasively (but, unlike Chekhov’s text, not in the past, but in the present tense). This entire dialogue in Krystian Lupa's play takes place in the presence of Nina, who appears, unseen by the interlocutors, in the doorway that opens at the top of the red wall.

Medvedenko and Sorin's remarks about Nina are cut short, and Arkadina, Trigorin, Shamraev and Yakov appear immediately with suitcases. Their conversation with Treplev in the play is shortened. There is only a hint of Arkadina’s former “battle” with the manager and the mention that Trigorin brought a magazine with Konstantin’s story printed. The words of Trigorin, who talks about the interest of the metropolitan reading public in Treplev’s personality, have been shortened.

The beginning of the game of lotto, the refusal to participate in this activity and Treplev’s departure, Trigorin and Dorn’s discussion of Konstantin’s works and writing style - all this is contained in the composition. Treplev’s sarcastic phrase about how Trigorin only read his own story in the brought magazine and “didn’t even cut Treplev’s” goes away.

The contrast between Treplev's creative style and Trigorin's craft of writing also leaves the play. Therefore, the episode in which Shamraev gives Trigorin a stuffed seagull shot by Konstantin is also shortened. The contrast between the stuffed animal and the living thing, between craft and the poetic perception of the world will be later developed by Chekhov in the final monologues of Treplev and Nina. However, Lupa shortens Konstantin's monologue about the torments of creativity. But the director leaves the theme of Nina the seagull-actress in the final remarks of Zarechnaya. Here the theme of finding the “dual unity” of a woman-actress, a person-artist, to which Nina constantly returns, becomes the main and all-encompassing one for Lupa.

Treplev's monologue (his reflections on creativity), which he pronounces while sitting at the table alone (after Arkadina and the whole company leave for dinner), is reduced to almost two phrases. Only words about “new forms” and the danger of slipping into routine are left, as well as Treplev’s conclusion that everyone writes because “it flows freely from his soul.” Although in the play Kostya doesn’t finish the sentence. Here Lupa involuntarily gives us the idea that

that Kostya is almost ready to repeat the words of Trigorin himself, spoken in the first act: “everyone writes as he wants and can.” The difference is that Chekhov's Treplev talks about the soul. At the end of Lyupa’s play, Kostya doesn’t say exactly this word.

The director constructs the scene in such a way that Treplev perceives both those sitting at the table and Nina, who came to him a little from the outside, as an object of observation and embodiment in his work. In the finale, his position on stage is that of an observer of life and a creator at the same time. Leaving Arkadina's company, busy playing lotto, Treplev in Chekhov's play begins to play a melancholic waltz on the piano. In the play, the director does not take the hero backstage, but invites him to watch the lotto game, climbing on the piano. It is here that the main turning point occurs for the hero. Having reached the words about the soul, Treplev abruptly jumps from the piano, there is a blackout and a deafening sound of breaking glass is heard. Lupa, instead of the shot with which Treplev kills himself in Chekhov’s play, produces the sound of a “bursting bottle of ether.” The director offers not a life-realistic, but a metaphorical-figurative resolution of the conflict. Jumping onto the stage board, plunging into life, Konstantin thus seems to find himself in the space of creativity. And therefore, when the lights come back on, we simultaneously see a group of lotto players frozen in the distance, and Nina appearing on the red sofa.

As if guessing Chekhov's original plan, Lupa creates the psychological effect of the invisible presence of a certain spectator, a witness to a completely intimate conversation between Nina and Treplev. It is no coincidence that Kostya, like a director, begins to “build” the mise-en-scene of Nina’s final monologue, adjusting the lighting in the background, where the lotto players sit without leaving the stage. By making Treplev both a participant in the event and the director of some new play, Lupa again brings reality and theater into conflict.

The explanations of Treplev and Nina have been shortened. The actual “love”, melodramatic shade leaves the text. All that remains is Nina’s story about how she finally found her calling as an actor and learned to endure. Lyupa’s composition also does not contain Nina’s pathetic words about the ability to “carry your cross and believe.” There is also no desperate remark from Treplev about his inability to believe in his calling.

Instead, there is a monologue of the World Soul, which Nina again pronounces and which ends the composition.

The play lacks a scene of Nina leaving and the players returning. There is no confirmation of Treplev’s suicide. Instead, the viewer sees how Nina, to the sounds of a song by a Canadian singer with the symbolic name Lhasa, which tells about the return of the human soul to itself (to its city), rhythmically moves around the stage, and Konstantin thoughtfully watches her, as if pondering some kind of creative intention. The rest of the characters in the play watch Nina and Treplev. They become spectators of a new performance unfolding before their eyes. And behind Nina, on the stairs, we see the sitting figure of Yakov, who seems to have frozen in anticipation of the author’s new task. Here we discover an almost elusive and fragile balance of life and creativity, suffering and inspiration, which is ready to be disrupted at any moment and plunge heroes, creators and spectators into the abyss of conflicts and contradictions.

The adaptation of Chekhov's "The Seagull", made by Krystian Lupa for the Alexandrinsky Theater, is an amazing experience in the depth of penetration into the figurative and philosophical world of the playwright in the creative interpretation of one of the most mysterious and elusive works of the world repertoire. In it, the director managed to capture the main thing that worried Chekhov and ran through his entire work - the collision of two metaphysical universals that determine the fate of a person; a clash of dreams and reality, which unfolds on the sharp, bloody edge of life and theater.

The presence of a visible or invisible spectator in monologues, dialogues and entire scenes is a complex psychological phenomenon that turns theater from a purely aesthetic phenomenon into an existential one. And Krystian Lupa, using the material from Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” explores this phenomenon in many ways. The director captures the deepest discovery of Chekhov, who was able to anticipate the effect of defamiliarization in his dramaturgy, reproducing the multifocal embodiment and perception of the characters - from the inside and from the outside. This was seen as the source of the complex genre orientation of his plays, elusive for Chekhov’s contemporary theater. Christian Lupa, considering Chekhov through the prism of the artistic discoveries of his followers, through the perspective that was opened up by the art of the twentieth century, subtly captures and reveals in the text of “The Seagull” the motives of theatrical play, extrapolated into life. That is why Sorin’s phrase: “You can’t live without theater” takes on a special symbolic meaning in the context of the composition of the play.

“The Seagull” (based on the play by A.P. Chekhov).
Alexandrinsky Theater. Stage adaptation and set design by Krystian Lupa

Christian Lupa's performance is structured according to a specific law: in it the meanings of individual episodes and scenes are intertwined, but do not necessarily complement each other. Moreover, the director, apparently, is generally not inclined to express these meanings unambiguously; he often leaves the viewer the opportunity to figure out the content of what is happening. As a result, the sacramental question “what is the play about?” in the case of the new Alexandrinsky “The Seagull”, one can only get the most general answer - any attempt to clarify it will either conflict with parts of the action, or turn out to be the imagination of the writer. And yet this answer is possible.

The performance is not a stage version of the classic play. This is a production “based on”. The director freely handles Chekhov's text, reshaping, shortening and even supplementing it (discouraging Zarechnaya herself, Sonya's final monologue from Uncle Vanya bursts out of her). The composition is demonstratively not Chekhovian (note that this circumstance removes the performance from the series of Alexandrinsky “Seagulls”, begun by the famous failure of 1896 - Lupa is not staging a Chekhov play, and any talk about another rehabilitation of “our exemplary stage” will only be speculation by historically knowledgeable critics ).

Y. Marchenko (Nina).
Photo by V. Krasikov

The current “The Seagull” is played with one intermission. Before it is the minimally modified first Chekhov action, after it there is a free adaptation of the remaining three. Compositionally, the performance is certainly original: it reaches its climax incredibly quickly. The central event is Treplev’s production. Lupa does everything possible so that the theatrical experiment of the novice writer acquires the features of realized new forms. Zarechnaya, of course, is right: this play is “difficult to act”, but it is possible to stage it, especially if a master takes on the task. The theater is embodied in a complex metal structure installed almost at the very backdrop. Its frontal part has a more or less regular square shape. But the main thing is a translucent bathtub filled with water, raised much higher than human height. Between the spectators of Treplev’s “joke” located on the proscenium and the theater, there is an abyss of the empty Alexandrinsky stage.

The steady light, unchanged since the beginning of Lupa’s performance, goes out, giving way to Treplev’s theater snatched from the darkness by several rays, unreal due to its own geometric meaninglessness. The bright backdrop of the Alexandrina stage, previously huge and empty, turns out to be a screen onto which constantly changing blurry forms are projected. It is not difficult to guess that the “atmosphere” is supported by a corresponding sound range - it cannot be called music, rather, proto-music: tonally and rhythmically organized viscous sounds. The director knows what he's doing. These means of expression have long been time-tested. They work on their own and don't need an actor. That’s why Zarechnaya doesn’t have to play anything. Her monologue begins to sound out of nowhere. Only after the words about the world soul does it become clear that the actress is hidden in the water. Well, then Treplev, as expected, breaks down, drawing a curtain over the vision.

The contrast between the everyday life of the inhabitants of Sorin's estate and the otherworldly magic of Treplev's performance is so striking, the opposition is so obvious that there is no doubt left: Konstantin Gavrilovich is a misunderstood talent. All subsequent events will be hidden and overtly accompanied by the characters’ reflection on what happened on the stage in the park. The monologue about the world soul will appear four more (!) times in the play. And the central theme of thoughts and experiences will be the artist in his relationship with the world around him.

Lupa does not skimp on accents and clearly indicates her own likes and dislikes for the characters. The young, lively Treplev - Oleg Eremin, bursting onto the stage in a loose blue sweater and jeans, visibly confronts the “man in a case” - Trigorin, dressed in a black leather jacket and black trousers. With his appearance, the venerable writer is reminiscent of the director's uniform that existed a quarter of a century ago: rarely did the director come to the theater without a leather or suede jacket. General from art. Trigorin, performed by Andrei Shimko, is the antagonist of the play, the antipode of Treplev, militant mediocrity. Having practically remained silent throughout the entire first act (given to the bright Treplev), in the second Trigorin appears as a man devoid of imagination and even feelings. Writing down a “plot for a short story” for him is a familiar job, a disgusting work, and the emerging relationship with Nina is not even entertainment, rather, the implementation of the formula “having nothing to do ruined her.” By the way, Zarechnaya - Yulia Marchenko is not very suitable for the role of Treplev’s muse. She, like most of the characters in this play, is extremely practical. Her goal is fame and glory, and Trigorin is a way for her to get it. In general, in connection with Trigorin, the theme of love does not arise in the play. Everyday practicality and everyday life are opposed by Treplev and in the person of Arkadina - Marina Ignatova. The “great actress” is down to earth to the point of being a social bitch. But, unlike Trigorin, whose writings are not in the play, her artistic talent, albeit in a hint, is revealed. In the scene of an explanation with her lover about Nina, Arkadina, with a measured gesture, tears off her dress and sprawls at Trigorin’s feet. Without feelings, without exaltation, memorized words not about love are heard - passages about Trigorin’s talent. An unmistakable play on his ego. Practiced gestures and intonations. Truly a routine. Arkadina, Trigorin and even Zarechnaya are deprived of creative and sensual impulses. One can only guess about their art, but there is no place left in the performance for the assumption that they have even a spark of talent. There are many mediocrities, but only one talent. This talent - Treplev - comes to the finale in doubts and reflections. He is clearly not satisfied with his literary experiments. But “it’s not about old and new uniforms,” but about... trousers. Treplev, who publishes in metropolitan magazines, swapped his loose jeans for black trousers. The sweater is still the same, but the transformation into Trigorin has begun.

Y. Marchenko (Nina).
Photo by V. Krasikov

The indicated relationships are the center of gravity of Lupa’s composition. However... Their implementation contains many contradictions, both semantic and aesthetic. In the reality of the performance, Treplev’s art is opposed to the lifestyle of Arkadina and Trigorin. The simple fact that these are different rows apparently does not bother the director much. And the more he convinces viewers of the worthlessness and pettiness of established artists, the more bewildering the public’s signs of love for them are. The mention of Arkadina’s Kharkov triumph makes one think that one of two things: either she is, perhaps, not such a terrible actress as the audience along with the director wanted to think throughout the performance, or, as is well known, the audience is a fool and success simply does not correlate with talent. The latter is more likely, but who then needs “new forms”? And most importantly: what did Arkadina and Trigorin win their success and what does Treplev not have?

The key problem of the play is the time shifts. The director is not interested in setting the action in the realities of the late 19th century. And it's not so much about the jeans, but about the way the characters interact. Their existence on stage - their manner of speaking, the absence of signs of class society (Yakov is turned into Treplev's confidant, a comrade in the revolution in art, and the shaven-headed Shamraev shouts and humiliates not only his wife, but also Arkadina), the psyche itself - are as close as possible to modernity. Chekhov's motives are realized in the play through today's man with his modern knowledge of life and art. This is supported by numerous passages through the illuminated auditorium during the first act, direct appeals to him for support, the possibility of breaking through the immediate moods of the audience into the performance (on the day of Zenit’s memorable victory, Zarechnaya appeared on stage in a blue-white-blue scarf with the name of her beloved commands). Declaratively, this “Seagull” is modern and about modernity. But in these circumstances, Treplev’s performance itself looks like a routine, all the expressive means of which, including video and water in the bathroom, have been used by modern theater for decades. The new forms turned out to be old, and the amateur Treplev suddenly acquired the solid skill of Christian Lupa.

Y. Lakoba (Masha), A. Shimko (Trigorin).
Photo by V. Krasikov

In general, the performance of the Alexandrinsky Theater is formally “new”: an arbitrary combination of signs of times, video projections (the scene of Treplev’s throwing, repeated in the backdrop, and the clouds appearing there (?), sometimes on a gray or blue sky, are spectacular), involvement of the audience, amazing a wall in the entire mirror of the stage, lowered for a minute and separating Arkadina and Treplev from the emptiness behind them, a play with existing interpretations of “The Seagull” (the audience of Treplev’s performance repeats Stanislavsky’s mise-en-scène of 1898 - they sit on chairs along the line of the ramp with their backs to the audience), and finally, a demonstrative a change in Chekhov's plot, expressed not only in the rearrangement of the text, but also in the change in the ending: the bottle burst, and not “Konstantin Gavrilovich shot himself.” Frankly speaking, all these techniques are not so “new”, but they create a specific semantic field for the performance: you can argue about their meaning, you can fantasize about them. This performance is fertile material for a critic who is passionate about his own conceptual thinking. It is better to put conceptualism aside and turn to formal analysis. We have to admit, the form is not perfect. The performance openly falls apart into two acts: after the intermission, the spectator suddenly discovers a lowered curtain, and from that moment on, no one will remember the audience of the Alexandrinsky Theater, hidden in the darkness of the hall. The already mentioned wall of colossal dimensions, when it first appears, leaves the impression that it was lowered only so that, because of it, Trigorin would materialize from the void and that Treplev, a small trick with a huge prop, would disappear into the same void. The extremely slow rhythm of the performance is felt defiantly and provocatively, flirting with the audience throughout the first half and built on the intonation of everyday authenticity. “The Seagull” beckons the viewer and throws him away, completely surrendering to “new forms”. It is not surprising, therefore, that, excited and lively at first, the auditorium turned sour by the end. Treplev’s “new forms” of Trigorin’s “success” were not successful.

All of them and each of them, to one degree or another, repeat the life path of the oldest hero of this play - Sorin, by his own definition, "the person who wanted." All of them and each of them, to one degree or another, wanted to, but no one achieved what they wanted due to their own fault, we note. The breeding ground for Chekhov’s comedy “The Seagull” is not only “five pounds of love,” but also five or even ten pounds of these damned desires, without which there are no Chekhov heroes at all. This is their fate - to want, but never to fully realize their desires. To live is not the destiny of Chekhov’s characters; they are destined by fate to want...

The Seven Seagulls in this Chekhov play are like the seven wonders of the world or like the seven days of the week: they are amazing in their indispensability and indispensable in their essence. They are eternal in their discreet everydayness, eternal, like the same Chekhov's Firs or Garden, which in the end expresses the same thing: the immutability and irrevocability of any life manifestations. All seven, they discover the Seagull in each other, but then gradually kill it in each other. As the plot develops, the chosen symbol is freed from the burden of the initial poetic assignments.
The place of the eighth Seagull could, in the end, be claimed by its stuffed animal presented by Shamraev at the end of the play to Trigorin, but no: in the stuffed bird killed by Treplev there is precisely the least amount of Seagull (in the symbolic, of course, meaning of the word). The corpse of a bird is poorly identified with the bird itself, which personifies, first of all, movement, flight, aspiration to some distant heights. As is known, the souls of dead people settle in the body of a flying bird, which is a sign of overcoming, alienation of death, transition from earthly existence to another, eternity, other existence - to the kingdom of the World Soul.

So, a stuffed seagull is no longer perceived as a symbol, but becomes just an exhibit of a home zoological museum. The replacement of a symbol with its dummy is carried out quickly:
SHAMRAEV (brings Trigorin to the closet). Here’s the thing I told you about just now... (Takes a stuffed seagull out of the closet.) Your order.
TRIGORINN (looking at the seagull). I do not remember. (Thinking.) I don’t remember!
And this, mind you, will be said by the man who once “ordered” the murder of Chaika in his writer’s diary: “...a young girl has lived on the shore of the lake since childhood, loves the lake like a seagull, and is happy and free like a seagull. But by chance a man came, saw it, and out of nothing to do, killed it, like this seagull.” Now Trigorin does not cancel, but rejects his own “order”: his “plot for a short story” will be neatly located between these only outwardly identical words: “I don’t remember.” This entire “plot” will fit into the pause “Thinking” - a signature Chekhov literary device.
Two plays - Trigorin's unwritten play and Treplev's written play - will merge into one bizarre flow of Chekhov's tragicomedy "The Seagull". Trigorin’s “plot for a short story” stands here against Treplev’s “decadent nonsense.” It is noteworthy that in both cases the same woman was appointed to the main roles and played them with inspiration - Nina Zarechnaya, it would be more correct to say: Zaozernaya. Treplev will challenge Trigorin, but he will not accept the invitation to a duel, or rather, he will still be drawn into this duel by Chekhov himself, who will turn out to be the winner.

« For the first time,- notes L.V. Karasev, - standing next to the dead seagull, Treplev promised to kill himself; in the second, when the stuffed animal was taken out of the closet, he fulfilled his promise. Chekhov connected symbol and plot in a new way: by literalizing the metaphor, he thereby transferred it to a different state, fused it with the “prose of life.”
This is how that strange combination of symbolism and reality arose, which at the beginning of the century seemed false and inorganic to many” (1). To many, but not to all: Meyerhold, who played Treplev, for example, understood the essence of stage art precisely in this way: “Modern style in the theater is a combination of the most daring convention and the most extreme naturalism” (2). This style will be classified as “modern”, but Chekhov’s “The Seagull” at the time of its premature (that is, ahead of its time) appearance will not even know what to attribute it to. Its very name will immediately reveal a lot of mysteries: how many meanings does this bird symbol contain? And who is the Seagull in the play? Nina? Only Nina, etc., etc.
« The bird as a symbol of the high human spirit,- notes M. Muryanov, - known at all times of the era of world art, but for the transcendental states placed by Treplev’s artistic imagination at the end of world history, this role should be assigned to the seagull. This is the only bird whose very name is derived from the verb of mental movement to expect"(3). Let’s add here such characteristics of the image as taking wings and soaring.
The killed Seagull is a stopped flight, it is a denial of the movement’s right to be, to be carried out; but not the carcass of a bird gutted for preservation. Where there are the least signs of the Seagull is in this carcass. Trigorin is still disingenuous, answering Shamraev: “I don’t remember!”: he remembers, of course, Nina the Seagull, but he simply cannot remember the stuffed animal.
As a result, it turns out that the stuffed killed seagull can be likened to the heroes themselves, who wasted their lives on trifles and thereby killed themselves. “I don’t remember” - these words could be repeated after Trigorin by any of the seven heroes, who, of course, perfectly remember what happened and is happening to them, but admitting it directly, out loud, means really signing your own death warrant, killing yourself not from “there is nothing to do”, but from “there is nothing to do.” They have to deny the obvious not by their own will, but by order or even the arbitrariness of the fate prepared for them.
The tragedy of Chekhov's play about the Seagull lies precisely in the fact that none of the seven named contenders for this extremely capacious image reaches its limits, or coincides with it to varying degrees. Each of them is just a shadow of Chaika or even a parody of her. The place of the Seagull herself remains vacant in the play: any of the seven characters vying for it still cannot be definitively identified with the Seagull.
“The image of a seagull, which has a generalized symbolic meaning, according to N.I. Bakhmutova, varies and changes in the play depending on which character it appears in connection with” (4).
Chekhov's "The Seagull" with seven emblematic characters containing, to one degree or another, the characteristics of one symbol is a complete, definitive story. And therefore this story is eternal: after all, nothing happens after Sunday except Monday - and again, and again, and again. And this is also a story - ordinary, everyday and, most importantly, fleeting, based on an impressionistic view of life phenomena, appearing as if out of nothing:

S o r i n. In two hundred thousand years nothing will happen.
T replev. So let them portray it to you as nothing.

"They'll portray it to you"- Treplev in these words, preceding his performance about the World Soul, seems to be avoiding responsibility for it. “They will portray it to you” - he is appealing to poor Nina, paler than the “pale moon” awaiting her debut behind the stunted curtain of the home theater. It seems as if Wagner’s opera is about to be performed in a bathhouse or in a chicken coop: a comedy and nothing more...
The ordinary story about “nothing,” offered to us not by Treplev, but by Chekhov, who gave birth and killed him (5), penetrates us not from above (the habitat of the World Soul) and not from below (a sweet country estate), but from somewhere on the side. This story is mirror-like, like the surface of the lake on the shore of which it takes place: we ourselves are suddenly reflected in it through the guises of Chekhov’s characters, who are so similar to us. Yes, that’s right: they are not in us, but we are in them. We unite, merge with Chekhov’s characters, like the amazing street crowd in Genoa that amazed the cynic Dorn who traveled through Italy. (By the way, the French director Louis Malle in the American film “Vanya on 42nd Street” saw the heroes of “Uncle Vanya” exactly in the New York crowd, among many hundreds of people rushing about their business: he literally wrote Chekhov’s on-screen heroes into the off-screen everyday life , into the street crowd.)
The motif of chance, as a fundamental element of the literature of the absurd, occupies a leading place in this Chekhov play: “... a man came by chance, saw it, and out of nothing to do, destroyed it, like this seagull.”
«… It is in Chekhov's plays, The “principle of chance” has transformed from an ordinary literary device into a constructive principle. In the “case” the original meaning of the text declares itself: it seems to be materialized for a moment, hangs over the play, becomes one of its emblems. What happened by chance does not repeat itself. Life, understood and seen as an accident, as a play of nature, becomes something unreliable, ephemeral. In Chekhov, all the characters live in two time dimensions at once. They live not only their normal human lives, but also obey natural time"(6).
The most striking example of the embodiment of this type of human hero, we add, is the character of “The Cherry Orchard” Firs - the last character of the unique Chekhov drama, a character bequeathed (sentenced to death, but not dead) to all of us. And, of course, the seven heroes of “The Seagull” live a similar dual life, torn between their real situation and their desired, expected.
Let’s imagine for a moment something seditious: Treplev could simply be unpleasant to those around him, like Chekhov’s Solyony, for example. He seeks understanding and sympathy from everyone and at the same time is full of complaints against everyone.
Yes, Nina quickly turned her attention to Trigorin and from that moment, by the way, selflessly bore her cross. And why, in fact, should she be carried away by Treplev? How can he captivate her? Could it be this nonsense about the World Soul?.. After the well-deserved failure of the performance, Kostya also behaved very childishly: he was offended by everyone and ran away. What was it like for Nina there, behind the hastily drawn curtain? It was definitely even more necessary for her to disappear in English: without saying goodbye.

And why, by the way, didn’t Treplev himself volunteer to perform his own composition? After all, he is already a theater innovator, and Nina is not yet an actress. Maybe the World Soul should be portrayed by a woman in pantomime, but voiced by a man? Maybe the World Soul is bisexual? Maybe this is for Adam and Eve, who lost planet Earth, and it’s cold and empty?..
One way or another, there is always the possibility of not believing in the likelihood of a lasting union between Treplev and Nina. And it is still unknown who failed more then - Treplev as a decadent on the amateur stage or Treplev as a Russian person at a rendez-vous in real life? Let's be fair: subsequently Trigorin will do not much better than Kostya - he will abandon Nina.
Trigorin will very accurately translate into reality his own “plot for a short story”: a man came by chance, saw a girl on the shore of a lake and, having nothing else to do, killed her. The “person” in this plot will be Trigorin himself. Wise with everyday and literary experience, he assumed in advance the further course of events and, in fact, warned Nina about the danger of getting closer to him. But Treplev, who unwittingly pushed Nina towards Trigorin, is also part of this same “person”: “I had the meanness to kill this seagull today. I lay it at your feet." When Trigorin is reminded of the shot seagull, he, as already mentioned, will answer: “I don’t remember.”
Here it is, the sad ending of a “short story”, more precisely, a short story about Nina Zarechnaya.
“I don’t remember” by Trigorin and Nina’s repetition of fragments of the monologue of the World Soul, in the text of which she now discovers personal meaning - all this organically enters the memory of the “plot for a short story” itself and makes the fate of the heroine truly dramatic.
Trigorin is strong in his weakness, if you like, in his outward ordinariness, in his apparent simplicity. Treplev, on the contrary, is weak in his demonstration of a certain strength, in his annoying posing as a destroyer of canons, an innovator. Of course, he is young - and the energy of youth, as a rule, is not devoid of aggression, and is not free from destructive currents. Trigorin is older and wiser, Treplev is younger and more simple-minded. Trigorin is truly intelligent and therefore reacts with great tact to Treplev’s behavior and certainly does not seek to become his opponent.
Old man Sorin is sincerely jealous of both of them: he knows for sure that he lived his life in vain.
Treplev loves himself more than others. There is little real in his relationship with Nina - no more, perhaps, than in the play he composed, the genre of which will be precisely determined by his mother, who is jealous of other people’s successes and happiness: “decadent nonsense.” The mother is also selfish, like all actresses, but still she has the will to forgive Trigorin for his obvious sins, has the strength to fight decisively for him with no less energy than Polina Andreevna, selflessly working around Dorn.
The conflict between the talent to create and the talent to live is where one should look for the roots of the plot of Chekhov's play.
Direct references to Shakespeare before the start of Treplev’s performance reach the finale of the play “The Seagull” in a bizarre echo. Tragedy penetrates its plot unnoticed, like the rays of the setting sun. It was just day - and now night is approaching. What has just happened is what was, but now the outlines of what will be are already appearing in it. This is Chekhov’s “is”, Chekhov’s “now”.

Treplev, as a hero traditional for all of Chekhov's drama, does not stand the test of this “now”. He becomes confused between his own past and present. And, realizing this, the decadent Treplev decides on his last decadent act - he shoots himself. And before this, note, he aestheticizes, theatricalizes his departure, inspiredly playing music on the piano. And it’s not just life that ends—the melody of life ends.
This may seem like an obvious overlap, but it still makes sense, I think, to look at the relationship between Trigorin and Treplev as the relationship between Mozart and Salieri. Is it not possible, for example, to discern in Treplev’s behavior the same Salierian envy? Doesn’t envy (not only envy, but also envy) guide many of Treplev’s actions? Doesn’t Treplev feel deprived and humiliated next to the prosperous Trigorin? Isn't he inferior to Trigorin in talent for living? The talent for living includes both creativity and love.
Judge for yourself: Trigorin, not only did he essentially replace Kostya’s father in the marital bed, he also, without making any effort at all, took Nina away from Treplev. Add to this Trigorin’s actual well-being in artistic life, his fame, glory, recognition - what do you tell the loser Treplev to do? Yes, it’s not enough to kill this Trigorin - for the fact that he exists, that he lives confidently and prospers like this. Resentment and envy do not give Treplev peace - and he acts, acts, acts, gradually bringing his life's work to a tragicomic end. Treplev, we repeat, does not shoot himself just like that, but to spite those around him, just as another young Chekhov character once decided to pinch his finger to spite others...
« Konstantin,- notes Finnish director R. Longbakka, - wants to be an artist, he must be an artist - not because he has a need to express or convey something with his art, but because he perceives art as the only way to be accepted. Above all, he wants to be accepted by his mother. And, of course, he considers his main rival Trigorin, his mother’s lover, a fashionable writer, a man whom Konstantin perceives as a peer, because he is much younger than his mother"(7). And then R. Longbacca clarifies his understanding of Treplev: “... for Constantine, love and art are linked together, and he considers one a necessary condition for the other. A person can love only if he is accepted and blessed, and for this a person must be happy. And there is only one way to be happy - to be an artist. So the real reason for Konstantin’s attempts to become a writer is the desire to impress his beloved, and his beloved may be Nina, but first of all, it is his mother" (8).
In Chekhov's play there are, as it were, two Treplevs - the Treplev of the beginning and development of the action and the Treplev of its finale.
Let us ask ourselves the question: does the other Treplev completely follow from the first, or is there still a gap, some kind of inconsistency between two different periods of states of one person?
It seems that this gap, this inconsistency exists. And precisely in it, in the hero’s mental breakdown, which occurred (note) in off-stage time, in months, days and hours invisible to us and unknown to us, lies the answer to Treplev’s subsequent behavior. But for all that, he did not deliberately take the path leading to suicide. It turned out to be unexpected for himself. Let's put it this way: suicide happened because it happened. In the other Treplev, that first, that previous person seemed to awaken for a moment: Treplev the decadent kicked up again, again “played naughty” in him. And Kostya at that moment (we emphasize again) was not so much in a state of passion, but in a state of “effect”, that is, in a decadent state, in a pose that, to a sober everyday mind, can be explained extremely sharply: “there is nothing to do” or “ he's freaking out."
American researcher J. Curtis interprets Treplev’s “bifurcation” as follows: “ If in Trigorin Chekhov acts as a predecessor who remembers what it means to be an ephebe, then in Treplev he remains an ephebe with a sharply expressed social position of an outsider from the middle class who dreams of becoming a predecessor. Treplev's suicide is the murder of the ephebe in himself, that is, in Chekhov. But this purification suggests that the suicide that takes place in the play is not autobiographical. Chekhov the ephebe turns into a predecessor, “bifurcating” into two independent characters. This “split” is intended to focus the reader’s and viewer’s attention on the inevitable difficulties of the creative process, which, of course, the writer Chekhov himself could not avoid.”(89). The internal conflict of this truly innovative play, says J. Curtis, lies precisely in the fact that Chekhov, freed from the fear of Turgenev’s influence, which lasted fifteen years, combined in it "the ephebe that he was, and the predecessor that he became"(10).
The internal conflict of the play is that the symbol of the victim bird ultimately acquires the mystical features of the executioner bird. This is a conflict between Chaika's shadows and Chaika herself - killed, but not destroyed.
« According to belief,- points out L.V. Karasev, - a killed seagull brings bad luck. Treplev shot the seagull, not hiding his readiness to share its fate and be killed himself. And so it happened: the dead bird did everything to punish the killer. Chekhov's "The Seagull", seen in this way, becomes a story of revenge achieved, a story of crime and punishment."(eleven). “In “Uncle Vanya” or “The Cherry Orchard”,- the researcher further adds, - in such provisions there is at least a hint that “punishment” is somehow related to “guilt”. In “The Seagull,” the meaninglessness and cruelty of life are revealed with the greatest sharpness and decisiveness.”(12). So, these very motives of the meaninglessness and cruelty of life bring the old Chekhov play closer to the relatively new story by Du Maurier and, to an even greater extent, to the Hitchcock film based on it. Sometimes it even begins to seem that Hitchcock’s cinema all came out of Chekhov’s “The Seagull” and “The Cherry Orchard,” just as Russian literature came out of Gogol’s “The Overcoat.” “The sound of a breaking string” from “The Cherry Orchard,” as well as its menacing messenger Passerby, is a sharply amplified signal of the meaninglessness and cruelty of life. The ending of The Cherry Orchard, as we know, brings us to the threshold of tragedy: an old man is forgotten in a tightly boarded up house - a pure thriller.
It turns out that in Chekhov’s play “The Seagull” something was outlined, and in “The Cherry Orchard” something that has not yet happened, but which, alas, may well happen someday, has been multiplied and consolidated. And it will happen...
Hitchcock’s film does not have the usual “The End” title, but ends, as it were, with an ellipsis that instills new anxiety. And how, tell me, does Chekhov’s “The Seagull” end? Konstantin Gavrilovich just shot himself; his mother does not yet know about this; Nina, too, for now - and even without that, it seems that she has been forever thrown out of the prosperous rut ​​of life; Sorin will not die today or tomorrow; Masha has been unhappy for a long time and, without embarrassment, mourns for her life; Polina Andreevna will never again be treated kindly by Dorn, etc. - in a word, for “five pounds of love” there are twenty-two pounds of misfortune.

A stuffed seagull, removed from a closet, insists on being returned from oblivion - it needs indispensable recognition in human memory. As a “skeleton in the closet,” the scarecrow is fraught with obvious rather than secret threats. The pre-final scene of Treplev’s last meeting with Nina no longer looks like an abstract “decadent delirium”, like a fragment of his play about the World Soul, but a very mystical reality, a kind of sad conclusion to that old play. The scene is designed in the spirit of Shakespeare's shadow of Hamlet's father: Nina also appears on this stormy autumn evening, like the shadow of the Seagull. And everything, mind you, is prepared for this: nature is rampant, indignant, the pitiful remains of the former stage area on the shore of the lake are frightening both with their appearance and with the alarming sounds generated by the rushing wind. It seems that the stuffed seagull is about to come to life. The moment of reckoning is approaching. Treplev's anxiety is growing rapidly. And not only him...
The estate location of the house where the action of Chekhov’s “The Seagull” takes place is essentially preserved in Hitchcock’s film “The Birds,” who himself explained it this way in his conversation with Francois Truffaut: “ I instinctively feel that fear can be increased by isolating the house so that there is nowhere to turn for help.” A number of episodes of his film, where people locked in a house defend themselves from bird attacks, remind us of the scene of the last meeting of Nina Zarechnaya and Treplev (the fourth act of the play). If we consider Nina the Seagull to be a character who happened, then she, once accidentally killed, appears in the fourth act of the play as a harbinger of death, insisting on revenge, punishment for what she has done. Chaika’s act of forced aggression is a consequence of human cruelty and injustice. This “plot for a short story” received repeated development and continuation in the literature and art of the twentieth century and, in addition, acquiring many new interpretations, has long ago become a large - novel, epic plot.
In the works of Chekhov and Du Maurier there is a look from the earth to the sky; Richard Bach, the author of the story “The Seagull Named Jonathan Livingston”, on the contrary, takes a completely different perspective - he looks at the earth from the sky: heaven, according to Bach, is not a place and not time, heaven is the achievement of perfection. This opposition of earth and sky is eloquently echoed in Treplev’s moral torment, which, as the author himself pointed out, is identical to Hamlet’s suffering. This opposition is distributed as follows in the poetic structure of Chekhov’s and Shakespeare’s plays: Konstantin likens his misfortune to a “dry lake” that suddenly flows into the ground; Hamlet, in a similar situation, perceives the sky, this “majestic roof, sparkling with golden fire,” as “a mixture of poisonous vapors” (translated by A. Kroneberg).
Chekhov and Du Maurier observe what is happening through the eyes of people, Bach through the eyes of the Seagull. From here a fundamentally different system of comparisons is built, which is resorted to by the author of the story-parable and its hero, Jonathan Livingston the Seagull.
Bach is talking not just about the space adjacent to the Earth, but about an extraterrestrial, otherworldly, if you like, another world, located in another dimension, where it is only possible to fully experience the difference between the independence of man and the independence of heaven.
Of course, the works of Du Maurier (1952), Hitchcock (1963) and Bach (1970) that correlate with the play about Nina and Constantine have different artistic potential. But all of them, as best they can, in one way or another develop and enrich the symbolism of Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” encouraging us to remain in anxious anticipation of universal changes.

“The skeleton in the closet,” hidden in the plot of Chekhov’s play, has long been removed from it, but is still in the room...
Treplev’s characterization of his mother (“a psychological curiosity”), had he possessed at least a bit of irony in his own address, could have been addressed to himself with even greater reason, but it was not in his capacity to humble his pride. In fact, the mother behaved in a similar way - but she was a woman and, worst of all, an actress, for whom hypertrophied egoism is not something unusual, exceptional, but, on the contrary, an everyday manifestation of oneself, an integral part of the profession. Not being Hamlet, Treplev deliberately identifies himself with him, and he naturally classifies his mother and her beau Trigorin as Gertrude and Polonius. Chekhov makes, as it were, an epigraph to Treplev’s “decadent delirium” with this rapid pairing of mother and son with Shakespearean quotes. Needless to say, Nina inevitably claims the place of Ophelia here - and from this point of view, it is time to recognize the rights of not just comedy, but vaudeville, for Chekhov’s “The Seagull”. This genre trend of the play is energetically supported by the supporting characters - Medvedenko, Shamraev, the district “playboy” Dorn, Polina Andreevna, Masha, whose lyrical sufferings Chekhov himself, who had suffered greatly from the efforts of irrepressible admirers, could not perceive without a smile. Just as Treplev looks at his mother through the eyes of Shakespeare, so Arkadina herself once looks at Trigorin through the prism of Maupassant. Arkadina, as best she can, “mirrors” the feelings and moods of the young and venerable writers. She easily “winds up” Treplev, being the first to use a quotation from Shakespeare that is dangerous for her (reads from Hamlet): "My son! You turned my eyes into my soul, and I saw it in such bloody, such deadly ulcers - there is no salvation! And he - the son of his mother, and not of a Kyiv tradesman - playfully takes up the challenge: “And why did you succumb to vice, looking for love in the abyss of crime?”
But since she, strong and wise, forestalled his mood, then Treplev, even here, in this intellectual blitz duel, has to remain second, and not first. And this is his tragedy and comedy: he wanted to be first, but all his life he remained second, very similar to his elderly uncle - “the man who wanted...”.
Thus, we can say that this play by Chekhov is a comedy about people who wanted to be first, but ended up second. Masha remained in the second position with her unrequited love for Treplev; Medvedenko always ended up second - a most curious, very unusual type in this plot, from whom both Kulygin and Epikhodov would later grow and into whom they would “flow.” Polina Andreevna, forever rejected by Dorn, felt undeservedly second. The second was Shamraev, stoically carrying his cuckold cross. Duse, Maupassant and Zola, Tolstoy and Turgenev, by all accounts, were the first (according to Curtis: “predecessors”), and Arkadina and Trigorin, the star of the provincial stage and popular fiction writer, “the hope of Russia,” also stood on the pedestal of the second (that is, , according to the same Curtis: “ephebes”) - silver medalists of the Silver Age approaching Russian culture. Of all this host of others, the figure of Treplev, the “harbinger of the century,” stands out as the most open, pathologically sincere person in his maximalist impulses and beliefs. Of all the second ones listed, Treplev is, so to speak, the most second, the very second; how of all the seven seagulls in this play, he is the Seagull to the greatest extent. That's what makes him interesting. Treplev voluntarily leaves this life as the second, unable to come to terms with this position of his. But he has nothing to oppose to the world, and in particular, to Trigorin - this very first of the second. The fiction writer Trigorin is skillful and successful (in our days he could be the secretary of the Writers' Union) and, in general, is content with this, but the writer Treplev cannot yet master the professional skills necessary for any master of the pen, but remain in the position of an unrecognized genius, or even that worse, he doesn’t want and can’t be a nongenius. Having once killed a seagull “out of nothing to do,” he now kills himself: there really is nothing to do!..
It would be time for Treplev to kill not himself, but Trigorin: after all, he playfully, “out of nothing to do,” took Nina away from him and just as playfully abandoned him, remaining for her the subject of unfading - as much as “five pounds” - of love. “Five pounds of love” in the case of Nina turned into a tragedy, and in the case of the same Polina Andreevna - a comedy, farce, operetta; and in the case of her daughter Masha - drama. It turned out that there is just as much unlove in the plot of this play.
And the genre of Chekhov’s “The Seagull” itself is not just a comedy of “five pounds”, but an epic comedy, “a comedy of rock” (13). " On a plot level,- points out N.I. Ishchuk-Fadeeva, - This is a multi-hero play with frankly reduced action, the tense moments of which occur during intermission, and the most tragic moment - suicide - occurs against the backdrop of a lotto game, practically uninterrupted after the shot"(14). She further notes: “The Seagull can be read as a mystical “comedy of errors” (15).
If history repeats itself twice, existing first in the form of a tragedy and then turning into a farce, then in Chekhov the plot movement is carried out exactly the opposite way - from farce to tragedy. This most obviously happens with the same monologue of the World Soul, first entrusted by Treplev to Nina, and subsequently appropriated by her. In the fourth act, Nina, having again confessed to Treplev her undiminished love for Trigorin, thereby blocks his path to further life: with a monologue he “gave birth” to her, and with a monologue she “killed” him. The conflict that has arisen “out of nothing to do” leads other heroes to the conclusion that there is truly nothing to do. Treplev has only one choice: not to demonstratively tear up his manuscripts on stage, but, quietly leaving it, to shoot himself there - behind the scenes of life continuing as if nothing had happened.
And how can one not sympathize with him and utter the proper words in Treplev’s justification; how not to feel sorry with all your heart for this first hero of the first (of the main) Chekhov plays, which remains innovative to this day.
Throughout the entire fourth act, Treplev is still there, but he is no longer there, just as the seagull he shot is long gone. Treplev's staged death is pitiful, absurd and funny, its tragic comedy is obvious. It is no coincidence that the author of the play does not give his characters the opportunity to realize and experience it. In the foreground, the characters are laughing, playing lotto, and at this time, somewhere behind the stage, someone is shooting themselves. Here, not only do the two genre lines of the play not intersect, but here the two meanings of life do not correlate.
Many people were involved in Treplev’s suicide, who denied him the right to be first. These many all eventually ended up in the “spade” prepared for them. Having experienced the tragedy of separation from Trigorin and yet continuing to desperately love him, Nina doomed herself to inescapable internal suffering. Trigorin, in turn, having lost Nina and, it seems, Arkadina, entered a zone of insurmountable loneliness and disappointment in himself: with the words “I don’t remember!” he literally crossed out his own past. Masha, who was once in love with Kostya, but who married Medvedenko and gave birth to his child, also extremely limited herself in further normal existence, essentially committing spiritual suicide. Having returned from Italy, rested and refreshed, Dorn cannot find himself again in his previous environment (“How many changes you have, however!”), and the only way out for him is to leave this environment, erase himself from it, disappear.
This “triangle” (), which in its own way parodied the other two “triangles” (Nina-Treplev-Trigorin and Arkadina-Nina-Trigorin), will fall apart after them. There is no need to talk about Sorin for long: literally before our eyes, “the man who wanted” ceases to want, that is, to live, he is about to die in front of those around him: “Petrusha, are you sleeping?”- at any next minute there will be no one to turn this question to. And finally, Arkadina, mother, lover and actress, who drove herself into a “mousetrap” - the same “spend”: she clearly played too much in this life, losing her son, and also her brother, and her lover, and her profession, she was horrified realizes that she has completely squandered, emptied herself...
The quiet ending of this play is deceptive: the comedy is over, long live the tragedy!
In Chekhov's “The Seagull” we are dealing with the comedy of tragedy and the tragedy of comedy - with Treplev’s “nothing” raised to some high degree.

The Seven Seagulls in Chekhov's “The Seagull” are like the seven colors of the rainbow or like seven notes. The magic number “seven” means completeness, completeness, integrity, exhaustion (and at the same time inexhaustibility) of an object or phenomenon. That is why the young and daring Treplev muse seeks precisely the World Soul, seeks the infinity of attractive and frightening matter. Treplev seeks the peace of the Most High, just as the real, biblical God seeks Man in each and every person. " Listen,- Pete objected, - the real Lord will seek each of us. The Bible is nothing more than a description of how God seeks man. It is not man who seeks the Lord, but the Lord who seeks man!” These words are from the novel “Lord of Wrath” by American science fiction writers Roger Zelazny and Philip K. Dick, written exactly SEVEN ten years after The Seagull.
Who knows, if Konstantin Treplev had not shot himself at the dawn of his creative life, he might have grown into a curious science fiction writer (or he might not have grown up, as the exquisitely ironic Dorn would have added), but even in this modest unfinished state of his (“Enough, curtain!”) fantasy miniature about the World Soul contains some kind of pre-apocalyptic warning, the echo of which will reach the limits of Chekhov’s last play in the form of “the sound of a broken string.”

1 Karasev L.V. The substance of literature. M., 2001. pp. 238–239.
2 Meyerhold V.E. Articles, letters, speeches, conversations: In 2 volumes. M., 1968. T. 2. P. 342. 3 Muryanov M. F. About the symbolism of Chekhov’s “The Seagull” // Chekhoviana: Flight of the “Seagull”. M., 2001. P. 218.
4 Bakhmutova N. I. Undercurrent in Chekhov’s play “The Seagull” // Questions of Russian linguistics. Saratov, 1961. P. 360.
5 It is worth recalling here the fundamental work on Chekhov by Lev Shestov, “Creativity from Nothing.” - Approx. author.
6 Karasev L.V. Op. op. pp. 244–245.
7 Longbacca Ralph. "A comedy with a fatal outcome." Notes about "The Seagull" // Chekhoviana: Flight of the "Seagull". P. 332.
8 Ibid. P. 334.
9 Curtis James M. Ephebes and predecessors in Chekhov’s “The Seagull” // Chekhoviana: Flight of the “Seagull”. P. 142.
10 Ibid.
11 Karasev L.V. Decree op. P. 208.
12 Ibid. P. 213.
13 See: Fadeeva N. I. “The Seagull” by A. P. Chekhov as a comedy of rock // Chekhov readings in Tver. Tver, 2000. P.129–133.
14 Ishchuk-Fadeeva N.I. “The Seagull” by A.P. Chekhov: myth, ritual, genre // Chekhoviana: Flight of the “Seagull”. M., 2001. P. 221.
15 Ibid. P. 229.

In fact, he is a fisherman not only in life, but also in literature. Immersed in contemplation on the shore of life. That's the only thing he likes. And I really don’t want to be distracted from the quiet excitement and encouraged to do something that, of course, needs to be done, but something that his soul is definitely not in.

It seems that he is generally more of a fisherman than a writer. Fishing is pure pleasure: “Catching a ruff or perch is such bliss!” While literature is such a troublesome business! Meanwhile, there is no will, the soul has become “sluggish and loose.” He hardly pretends when he says: “If I lived in such an estate, by the lake, would I really write? I would overcome this passion within myself and would do nothing but fish.”

This is where the real tragedy unfolds. He is a complex, broken man. From childhood, he developed an inferiority complex, because he had a brilliant mother nearby, in comparison with whom he felt that he was “nothing”, that in her society he was tolerated only because he was her son. Wounded pride gives him true torment: “... when, in her living room, all these artists and writers turned their merciful attention to me, it seemed to me that with their glances they measured my insignificance - I guessed their thoughts and suffered from humiliation.” .

And he, apparently, did not exaggerate much, because his mother has been busy all her life only with herself, her successes and the theater. Meanwhile, Treplev is smart. He sees what Arkadina and her entourage do not notice.

He speaks passionately about modern theater as routine and prejudice. “When the curtain rises and in the evening light in a room with three walls, these great talents, the priestesses of holy art, depict how people eat, drink, love, walk, wear their jackets; 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, then I run and run, like Maupassant ran from the Eiffel Tower, which was crushing his brain with its vulgarity.”

Treplev, nevertheless, loves his mother, although he has suffered from abandonment since childhood. He leads the life of a “ragamuffin,” lives as a parasite with his uncle, and when he meets his mother, he invariably becomes convinced of his uselessness and loneliness. He is lonely not only in everyday life, but also in the ideological sense. Arkadina, and indeed the majority, do not share his views on art. Meanwhile, Treplev is convinced that change, search, and experiment are needed. “We need new forms,” otherwise instead of theater there will be a frozen routine, which is tantamount to the death of art. And he writes plays and stories, trying to bring his principles to life.

The play, which he staged on a wooden stage, where the scenery was the real moon and its reflection in the water, is highly unusual. He decided to show not how one should eat and wear a jacket, but what would happen on Earth in two hundred thousand years. The performance is a monologue of the Common World Soul, which united in itself the souls of everyone who once lived on Earth: Alexander the Great and Caesar, Shakespeare and Napoleon, the last leech.

The performance is filled with solemn, sad recitation and is accompanied by unusual lighting effects and the smell of sulfur - with the appearance of a powerful enemy of the world soul - the devil.

“This is something decadent,” Arkadina notes. And in fact, in the works of the decadents - adherents of the philosophy of historical pessimism - the idea of ​​the powerlessness and loneliness of man, the aimlessness and meaninglessness of his existence came to the fore. In Treplev's play, the influence of modernism and symbolism is also noticeable.

Modernism declared an escape from the “prose of life” into the “ivory tower,” that is, the artist’s immersion in the spheres of philosophical abstractions, mysticism and dreams. Which, in essence, is what we see in Treplev’s play.

The atmosphere of fear and horror in symbolic theater (for example, in Meyerhold's plays) was needed so that all attention was focused on the relationship between Rock and man. And here external action is not needed at all; it prevents you from concentrating on the main idea, which, by the way, the symbolism of smells is intended to emphasize. A symbolic play is not so much played as read and recited.

As we see, the experienced Arkadina was not mistaken; the play is, indeed, decadent.

Nina Zarechnaya also intuitively felt this: “Your play has little action, just reading.” And one more thing: “Your play is difficult to play. There are no living persons in it.”

Treplev's drama lies in the fact that in his protest against traditional forms, he rushed towards fundamentally formless abstractions; not perceiving the depiction of everyday life on stage as the goal of art, he along with it rejected all the usual forms of life, which, as we know, are carriers of not only everyday consciousness, but also the spirit.

In a letter to Suvorin dated November 25, 1892, developing his views on literature and speaking about great artists “who intoxicate us,” Chekhov writes: “The best of them are real and write life as it is, but because every line is imbued with “like juice, with the consciousness of a goal, you, in addition to life as it is, also feel the life that should be, and this captivates you.”

Even judging by the “home” audience, Treplev, alas, did not turn out to be a “great artist”. And it’s not even a matter of the sharp reaction of Arkadina, who has a long-standing war with her son (“Decadent nonsense”, “demonstration”; wanted to “teach us how to write and what to play”; “claims for new forms, for a new era in art " etc.). In fact, everyone except Dorn did not understand and did not accept her. The original doctor praises her for what others scold her for: “She’s kind of strange...”; “Fresh, naive”... In a word: “I don’t know, maybe I don’t understand anything or I’m crazy, but I liked the play. There's something about her." And this despite the fact that he did not hear the end of the play at all.

It was Dorn who expressed one important thought, which essentially predicted Treplev’s creative collapse. Having embarked on a difficult path, where “soil and fate breathe,” striving to embody big, serious thoughts, the artist must remember that “the work must contain a clear, definite thought. 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.”

However, a thinker, this Dorn! And how would he know about what nourishes and what, on the contrary, destroys real talents? One way or another, this warning was not heeded by Treplev. It seems that he is invariably interested in only one thing: “Where is Zarechnaya?”

It seems that he began to write largely motivated by his love for Nina. In any case, when he realized that he had lost her forever, that he was “lonely and not warmed by anyone’s affection,” everything, including creativity, lost all meaning for him. In the scene of his last date with Nina, he speaks directly about this: “Ever since I lost you and started publishing, life has been unbearable for me - I suffer...” “I’m cold as in a dungeon, and no matter what I write, all this is dry, callous, gloomy.”

He begs Zarechnaya more than for love, he begs her for life: “Stay here, Nina, ‹…› or let me leave with you!” But Nina doesn’t hear, doesn’t listen to him. She is absorbed in her own work: her profession, her unhappy love for Trigorin, which not only has not dried up, but has become even stronger...

Quoting Treplev’s play by heart: “People, lions, eagles and partridges...” - Zarechnaya completely forgets about the relationship that she once had with its author. Characterized by spiritual deafness and isolation only on one’s own problems. When Treplev confesses his love to her, which alone reconciles him with an orphan, painful existence: “I call you, I kiss the ground on which you walked; wherever I look, your face appears to me everywhere, that gentle smile that shone for me in the best years of my life...” Nina mutters in confusion: “Why does he say that, why does he say that?” Just like that, replacing the lively, passionate Treplev with the impersonal “he” - in a private conversation! – Nina completely fenced herself off both from his love and from himself.

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1

M.: PROMEDIA

Using the example of translations into French of A. P. Chekhov's play "The Seagull" the issues of literary translation as a creative activity are considered.

<...> <...> <...> <...>Trepleva.

2

The connection between the artistic thinking of A.P. is considered. Chekhov with ontological and anthropological problems of Russian culture. It is argued that the philosophical and artistic thinking of A.P. Chekhov is close to the ontology of M. Heidegger, and in his artistic images an understanding of the game as an ontological space of man is formed

KOPTSEV'S GAME AS AN ONTOLOGY OF HUMAN (BASED ON THE PLAY BY A.P.<...>“A play within a play”, “a game within a game”, the constant reference to the word “game” here cannot be accidental.<...>Playing with new forms is what attracts and keeps playwright Treplev.<...>Treplev's artistic play about the World Soul and the play of his personal life are interrupted for the same reason<...>The rivalry between Treplev and Trigorin is a one-goal game, an unreal game, one-sided, incomplete.

3

No. 9 [EMPIRE DRAMA, 2007]

Naive Nina in Chekhov's play tells Treplev: “There must certainly be love in the play.”<...>As for the “new forms”, or Treplev’s play, it is performed three times, each time becoming more acceptable<...>Treplev’s stormy “piece” goes into the future, repeating itself there ad infinitum.<...>Nina Zarechnaya - Yulia Marchenko is revealed gradually, simultaneously with Treplev’s play “The World Soul”.<...>But, I think, more surprising is the combination of Nina and Treplev, invented by Lyupa.

4

This is a typical positional move, also characteristic of Treplev, who comes “from himself”.<...>Hamlet's play, with which Trelev's play is often compared, is just a programmatic way of<...>This is an applied art that has nothing in common with Treplev’s “foggy” play, the purpose of which is to create<...>Treplev's death is unlikely to change anything in the lifestyle and thoughts of the inhabitants of the Sorin estate.<...>Alas, the first suicide attempt confronts both Treplev and the reader with the fact that the measure of Treplev’s significance

5

Shapiro Adolf Yakovlevich - director, theater teacher. Born in 1939 in Kharkov. Graduated from the directing department of the Kharkov Theater Institute. He continued his studies with Maria Knebel, a student and associate of Stanislavsky. Since 1962 he headed the Riga Youth Theater (Russian and Latvian troupes). The theater was a winner of international festivals; “Fear and Despair in the Third Empire” was the only foreign performance invited to Berlin for Brecht’s 90th birthday. In Rome, at the European festival “Theater on Screen,” the director received the Grand Prix and Gold Medal for the film “The Invention of the Waltz” based on Nabokov. In 1990 he was elected president of the International Association of Theaters for Youth (ASSITEZH), from 1989 to this day - president of the Russian Center ASSITEZH.

It's time to search for your destiny - as Dorn said about Treplev's play: “there is something in this.”<...>Nina talks to Treplev, and laughter comes from the dining room.<...>Chekhov gave himself equally to Treplev.<...>In the milky haze, the whitish curtain of Konstantin Treplev’s home theater swayed in the wind.<...>what is the play?

6

Hermeneutics of dramaturgy A.P. Chekhov monograph

M.: FLINTA

Book by Doctor of Philology, Professor I.V. Dmitrevskaya is devoted to a practically unexplored problem, the hermeneutical analysis of the dramaturgy of A.P. Chekhov. Believing the situation of misunderstanding to be the main internal cause of the existential content of Chekhov's plays, the author, using the method of systemic hermeneutics, reveals the sequence of meanings hidden inside Chekhov's texts and aimed at resolving existential situations or identifying the conditions under which they remain insoluble. Thus, the internal logic of the plot is revealed, the movement of the psychological world of the characters from misunderstanding to understanding. The book also reveals other aspects of A.P.’s dramaturgy. Chekhov - phenomenological, existential, symbolic, social, etc.

The suicide of K. Treplev is the natural ending of the play.<...>K. Trepleva.<...>She is alarmed and somewhat removed from the world of Arkadina-Trigorin-Treplev by the gloomy meaning of Treplev’s play<...>Trepleva.<...>aletheia and its comprehension - in the decadent play by K. Treplev.

7

Modern literary trends of textbooks. allowance

Publishing house of NSTU

The manual consistently reveals the artistic and aesthetic specificity of modern Russian literature of the 1990–2000s in the dynamics of the relationship between sociocultural and artistic processes, demonstrating a complex search for aesthetic, artistic and philosophical ways of mastering and reflecting the phenomena of the crisis transition period of the late 20th – early 21st centuries. The modern artistic paradigm is presented in complex mutual influences, transformations of aesthetic and poetic systems, focused on addressing various types of artistic thinking (realistic, modernist, postmodernist, mass and post-mass), which indicates various ways of understanding modern reality, the formation of different pictures of the world, different poetic ways of expressing them.

Closing the curtain after the failure of Treplev's play means the end of one stage action<...>So, for example, the rationalist Dorn is surprised by Treplev’s play, sympathizes with his tossing, is kind to Masha, regrets<...>The heroes of the play are prone to inspired speeches and theatrical pathos (replicas of Arkadina and Treplev from Hamlet<...>In the fourth act of the play, an incident occurs - Treplev’s suicide, the reasons for which are explained by Chekhov<...>Thus, the number of remarks related to Treplev doubles.

8

No. 13 [EMPIRE DRAMA, 2008]

The newspaper covers the life of Russian and foreign drama theaters. Articles by famous theater critics with analyzes of performances and reviews of them, interviews with directors and playwrights are published.

It is impossible to separate me and Treplev.<...>monologue time. - How does Eremin Oleg feel about his Treplev?<...>to his performance of Treplev.<...>Maybe he wouldn’t have killed Ivanov, Treplev, or cut down the cherry orchard.<...>The play begins with a prologue.

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The text is in dialogue with the reader. Experience of reading Russian literature at the beginning of the third millennium. allowance

Publishing house of ZabGGPU

The textbook offers various approaches to the study of Russian literature, the authors of familiar textbook texts are found in other semantic dimensions. As is known, the reflection of reality in literature presupposes a certain degree of convention, therefore, when analyzing a literary text, semantic transitions from the level of signs and symbols to the level of subject-semantic content are taken into account. Removing the previous level with a new, more complex one, gives the reader the opportunity to increase other meanings and meanings of Russian artistic thought.

<...> <...>Treplev’s symbolic drama is a symbol of the life of Chekhov’s characters, and the symbolism of Chekhov’s play itself<...>The performance, based on Treplev's play inside Chekhov's play, brings it to the level of acting.<...>

10

M.: PROMEDIA

The Chelyabinsk Opera and Ballet Theater hosted the premiere of two one-act ballets: a choreographic composition to the music of S. V. Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto and the play “Chekhov. Reflections” to the music of P. I. Tchaikovsky, choreographed by Konstantin Uralsky.

because he did not follow the line of plot embodiment of this or that work, because a dramatic play<...>episodes: for example, the acquaintance of Gurov and Anna Sergeevna from “The Lady with the Dog”, or an episode of the performance of the play<...>Trepleva from “The Seagull”, or the existence of three sisters surrounded by military men and others.<...>

11

The article makes an attempt to review modern works that have become derivatives of Chekhov's “The Seagull”. The characteristics of literary works, theatrical productions and films are given, their connection with postmodernism and art house is indicated.

life, about the art of six characters in whom we easily recognize the prototypes of Chekhov's heroes: Misha - Treplev<...>Masha will meet us in the film “Little Lily,” which ultimately finds the key to the heart of the impulsive Treplev<...>Masha’s tragic declaration of love for Treplev is grotesque - there is a mockery of her husband, and a number of other similar<...>There is a feeling that this is an allusion to the theme of taxodermism - the skins of animals killed by Treplev, the protection of which<...>will be spoken at the end of the play.

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No. 4 [RUSSIAN LITERATURE with the section "RUSSIAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE FOR SCHOOLCHILDREN", 2018]

The magazine “Russian Language and Literature for Schoolchildren” is addressed to middle and older schoolchildren, to all those who want to become a literate person and an interesting conversationalist. The magazine will help you master complex topics in Russian language and literature, complete your homework, write an essay, and prepare for Olympiads and exams. Publishes articles on linguistics, linguistics and literary criticism, information about universities, admission conditions and features of entrance exams, and introduces new fiction.

Quoting Treplev’s words from the play about the need to create new forms of theatrical art, the author of the work<...>Treplev's play is also symbolic.<...>Treplev's play reflects the general state of life: the power of matter, evil in the soul and extinction.<...>The performance, based on Treplev’s play inside A. Chekhov’s play, brings it to the level of acting.<...>Her thoughts return to Treplev’s first play, where her life was. Game and life coincided.

13

No. 8 [EMPIRE DRAMA, 2007]

The newspaper covers the life of Russian and foreign drama theaters. Articles by famous theater critics with analyzes of performances and reviews of them, interviews with directors and playwrights are published.

In the role of Treplev - Oleg Eremin THE INTERNATIONAL Chekhov Festival ENDED IN MOSCOW WITH A NEW ARTIST<...>2007 GAZETA ALEKS A N D R I N S K O G O T A T A T R A KRISTIAN LUPA: “I DON’T WANT TO KILL TREPLEV<...>Plays become journeys much less often. A play is an event.<...>And that’s why I don’t want to kill Treplev... - !!! My God! He will still be alive! - Don't know.<...>Well, yes, he identified himself with Trigorin, but he had the chance to experience the same thing as Treplev.

14

The article examines those structural changes in European and Russian drama that led to the creation of a new drama - this is the trinity of hero, plot and genre. Chekhov's innovation is manifested at all levels - from “non-dramatic” dialogues to the philosophy of plot

the expected explosion does not occur - moreover, truly dramatic events such as Treplev's suicide<...>The movement of the plot in Chekhov's plays, as in Maeterlinck's plays, constitutes the hero's path to real knowledge<...>However, “psychological curiosity” - the definition given by Treplev to his mother is equally fair<...>there are two actresses and two writers; two seagulls - a freshly killed one and its stuffed one; finally, two shots from Treplev<...>side the question of the closeness of this philosophy of numbers to the reasoning of the representative of the “new drama”, Konstantin Treplev

15

Based on the works of I. Grekova, Chekhov's traditions in the writer's prose are analyzed: genre preferences, allusions and reminiscences, psychologism, symbolic images, the role of landscape, internal dramaturgy

In Chekhov, Nina Zarechnaya pronounces a monologue from Treplev’s play: “...For thousands of centuries, the earth has not carried<...>The writer has a more than modest opinion about herself as a co-author in these cases, for example, about the play “Everyday Life”<...>I'm a little shy, but when I say that it was a magnificent play, I attribute this only to

16

Konstantin Uralsky is one of those choreographers who began his creative journey early and brightly. Not afraid of being misunderstood, Konstantin Uralsky already from the first productions declared his vision of modern ballet theater. In his ballets, first of all, it should be noted the combination of narrative with symbolism, methods of splitting the image of the hero, an abundance of parallel actions and simultaneous compositions, developed, expanded multifaceted finales of a generalizing nature - all this and much more was used by the choreographer to reveal the meaning of the dance action, its images and the central ideas.

sisters." Ural did not follow the line of plot embodiment of this or that work, because a dramatic play<...>For example, the acquaintance of Gurov and Anna Sergeevna from “The Lady with the Dog,” or an episode of the performance of Treplev’s play<...>Five women from Chekhov’s works - Anna Sergeevna from “The Lady with the Dog”, three sisters from the play of the same name

17

No. 3 [Bulletin of Moscow University. Episode 22. Translation theory. , 2010]

The journal bears the traditional name for the domestic science of translation - “Translation Theory”. It is devoted to issues of theory, history, methodology, criticism, didactics and translation practice. The central object of publications in this journal is translation activity in all its diversity

The text of Treplev’s decadent play is absurd, it does not fit into the idea of ​​beauty that dominated<...>Treplev’s last remark addressed to himself, a minute before suicide, is absurd: “It’s not good,<...>She seeks to smooth out the frightening dominance of the four main characters - Arkadina, Treplev, Trigorin<...>Moreover, Treplev's arguments about new forms in art are completely distorted.<...>Trepleva.

18

Introduction to literature, a textbook for foreign students studying Russian as a foreign language

Nizhny Novgorod State Conservatory (Academy) named after. M.I. Glinka

This textbook provides an overview of the development of Russian literature, highlighting the historical periods associated with the emergence of various literary movements.

Play A.<...>his son's play.<...>The play failed.<...>Her tender relationship with Treplev turned out to be just an easy dream of her youth.<...>The play ends with Treplev's suicide. His life was cut short, as was his performance.

19

What is truly important is her second remark, addressed to Treplev: “My dear son, when did it start?”<...>In the finale of “The Seagull” we see the same sequence: after Treplev’s suicide, the doctor enters, singing<...>under the pretext of an article received from America2, he takes Trigorin aside and informs him about Treplev’s suicide<...>They appear in the play together and leave it together. The beginning of the play. Marina offers Astrov tea.<...>in the plays discussed above.

20

No. 1(13) [Theatron, 2014]

Scientific almanac of the St. Petersburg State Academy of Theater Arts

Thus, the ballet opens with a scene in which all the characters in the play, with the exception of Treplev and Nina, who are on stage<...>For Treplev, Neumeier composed a ballet in the modern style with the symbolic title “The Soul of the Seagull.”<...>On the stage by the lake, she remembers Treplev’s ballet and locks eyes with Kostya.<...>Zozulina sees in the yellow semicircle planned for the scenery for Treplev’s play (sketch by K.<...>The monologues of Trigorin and Treplev merge into a single reflection by Eifman on the difficult path of the artist.

21

Dostoevsky and Chekhov: non-obvious semantic structures

The book is devoted to the analysis of non-obvious semantic structures present in many of Dostoevsky's novels and Chekhov's plays. Non-obvious semantic structures are identified using certain procedures against the backdrop of emphasized attention to the exact form in which the actions and statements of the characters are presented and to the setting in which they are performed. The author's personal ontology and mythology are the main subject of research.

It was precisely this level that came under Treplev’s shot.<...>He is Treplev's rival, and besides, there is something of the seagull in him.<...>) turns out to be the force that takes Nina away from Treplev.<...>turned out to be more successful than Treplev's.<...>This is what she tells Treplev: “There is little action in your play, only reading.

22

No. 25 [EMPIRE DRAMA, 2009]

The newspaper covers the life of Russian and foreign drama theaters. Articles by famous theater critics with analyzes of performances and reviews of them, interviews with directors and playwrights are published.

Fokin removed all apocrypha from the play-life.<...>to be honest, to Treplev’s performance) exactly like Arkadina: “Well, it’s the French…”.<...>Dorn's story about Genoa - the transition that Dorn makes to the memory of Treplev's performance is already outlined here<...>Christian Lupa’s “sympathy” for Konstantin Treplev is not limited to the fact that he saves his life and<...>Now Gorin’s play, his first, famous play, was staged at the Youth Theater by the artist, poet and bard

23

Italian and Spanish literary classics on the domestic screen and Russian on the Italian and Spanish screens, materials of the international. scientific conference, December 8–9, 2011

This collection is compiled based on the materials of the international scientific conference “Italian and Spanish literary classics on the domestic screen and Russian on the Italian and Spanish screens,” which was organized by the Department of Aesthetics, History and Theory of Culture of VGIK and took place at the University of Cinematography in December 2011, declared a cross year Russia and Italy, Russia and Spain. This is the fourth conference dedicated to the issue of film adaptation of literary classics. The conference participants - Russian and Italian philologists, film scholars, film playwrights, film artists - explored a range of issues related to the transfer of a literary work from one country to the screen of another, and the influence of great writers on cinema in general.

His plays do not have that cathartic beginning that Aeschylus, or even Sophocles, had.<...>Let's start with Treplev.<...>The director's meeting with Chekhov's play was not immediate.<...>While generally remaining faithful to the play, the film still contains many elements that are not in the text.<...>The play turned out great, in my opinion, and the script was written by the French writer Paul Moran.

24

Theater arts and educational activities

This book is quite difficult to place within the framework of a genre classification. This is not a monograph, not a textbook or a methodological guide: it is written in too emotional language, too often it happened to switch from a scientific style to a journalistic, artistic, and sometimes even colloquial style.

Here is Treplev’s experimental play about the world soul included in the text of “The Seagull”: how to present it?<...>In my opinion, Treplev’s work should look either very serious (sorrowful sepulchral voice<...>Treplev’s mother here is not an inspired improviser, but a reader who has memorized the text, which beneficially<...>, in the image of Treplev he looks like a young Mayakovsky.<...>Arkadina, abandoned by Trigorin for the sake of a young passion, fawns on him differently than clings to Treplev unrequitedly

25

No. 21 [EMPIRE DRAMA, 2008]

The newspaper covers the life of Russian and foreign drama theaters. Articles by famous theater critics with analyzes of performances and reviews of them, interviews with directors and playwrights are published.

But Maxim Isaev has plays.<...>The play itself dictated the terms.<...>Treplev, as in London, is played by comedian Mackenzie Crook, familiar to the general public for his role as the one-eyed man<...>still has a reserve of vitality and, despite all the hardships, will live and play, then about Treplev<...>This formula probably ruined Treplev, for whom it was not enough to become a writer, he needed to become

26

No. 48 [EMPIRE DRAMA, 2011]

The newspaper covers the life of Russian and foreign drama theaters. Articles by famous theater critics with analyzes of performances and reviews of them, interviews with directors and playwrights are published.

The first point in this ABC is the work of the theater with the play.<...>Or you don’t have the actors to stage this or that play exactly the way you want.<...>It’s difficult to respect this Treplev, the pea buffoon, but it’s easy to sympathize with him, he’s so hopelessly alone<...>Entre Sorin and Treplev during the performance are accompanied by musical works of increased degree of sincerity<...>Nina takes off her panties and lies down in front of Treplev on the same table where they played about eagles the day before yesterday

27

No. 26-27 [EMPIRE DRAMA, 2009]

The newspaper covers the life of Russian and foreign drama theaters. Articles by famous theater critics with analyzes of performances and reviews of them, interviews with directors and playwrights are published.

Maupassant's Trigorin is no longer fishing - he is among his heroes (a little further away, of course), and Treplev's suicide<...>Arkadina reads her monologue in front of him - as Nina will later read hers in front of Treplev; but at Treplev's<...>They don’t have enough imagination for Treplev, or more precisely, they don’t have enough soul scale.<...>The experience with the Finnish play Panic by Mika Myllyaho was quite controversial; a play dealing with mental health<...>Katona - Gorky's play "Barbarians".

28

The article is devoted to the analysis of the worldview of A.P. Chekhov based on the story “The Man in a Case”. It is shown that the world of the main character of the story - the case - is a model of the author's world, hypertrophied to extreme dimensions - absurdity and death. The case is a world devoid of meaning, and meaning will come to the world only through faith in the possibility of overcoming the existential contradiction between the finitude of a person’s physical existence and the infinity of his consciousness

“Fragmentation” of the narrated world and the absence of a definite authorial position are also characteristic of A.P.’s plays.<...>Treplev in “The Seagull”), and on stage - only everyday episodes (“scenes from village life”, as defined<...>genre of one of A.P.’s plays<...>The plays are full of microplots that are parallel and not at all related to the main conflict (these are the lines<...>Such a composition deprived the play of its theatricality and spectacle; turned into a purely literary, convenient only

29

Russian Word in cultural, historical and social context. T. 2

Included are articles devoted to the consideration of topical issues in the study of the development of the Word as the fundamental principle of Russian culture in the context of the institutional forms of its existence and intercultural communications.

The murdered seagull is Treplev’s hopeless, painful love.<...>: “Your piece is difficult to act.<...>From the point of view of eventfulness: Nina meets Treplev at the end of the play, as at the beginning.<...>At the end of the play she repeats the words of the role written by Treplev.<...>in the play the image of a seagull.

30

For example, in the play by A.P.<...>Book-Service Agency 7 – 16 YOUNG IN LIBRARY 62 “The Seagull” is the suicide of the young man Konstantin Treplev<...>to prevent the sale of the famous cherry orchard, found out the participants in the forum play “The Orchard for Sale...” based on the play<...>based on the play “Three Sisters” prompted discussions about the “inertia of place” that holds and does not let go of the Russian<...>A literary experiment based on the play “The Bear” involved a lively debate between the main characters - Popova

31

No. 11 [Russian reporter, 2012]

"Russian Reporter" is a national illustrated weekly magazine of the Expert Media Holding. An independent publication for people who are not afraid of change and prefer to determine their own lifestyle. The magazine covers socially significant topics, political events and news. Main headings: “Actual”, “Report”, “Trends”, “Figure”, “Culture”, “Habitat”, “Poster”, “Case”. It is filled with high-quality photo reports and illustrations by famous world authors. Socio-political publication. Main headings: “Report”, “Actual”, “Figure”, “Trends”, “Culture”, “Poster”, “Habitat”, “Case” and much more. In addition, the magazine publishes photo reports of famous world authors. The format of “Russian Reporter” is similar to the format of such world-famous magazines as “Time” or “Stern”.

In essence, the Treplev Center is permission for stage experiments.<...>He is not in the play at all. But I needed him.<...>The plays are the same, but we play people of a different class.<...>The play is modern: today no one believes in either classes or mysticism.<...>And the play Vorozhbit is scary because it shows us.

to retell the plot of Chekhov's "The Seagull", omitting the endless layering of meanings, one can easily turn the play<...>They stage one act at a time, and in their free time from directing themselves, they play Treplev for their colleagues.<...>Grammar and, in fact, Shakespeare himself in Pasternak’s translation is not an interpretation, but actually a new play

33

No. 14 [EMPIRE DRAMA, 2008]

The newspaper covers the life of Russian and foreign drama theaters. Articles by famous theater critics with analyzes of performances and reviews of them, interviews with directors and playwrights are published.

Yes, and his play - well, it’s nonsense, isn’t it? what nonsense?!<...>He gives Treplev another chance. Mervarth translated all 13

M.: FLINTA

The monograph examines the problematic and thematic field that determines the development of small epic forms in Russian literature of the late 20th – early 21st centuries; the plot-narrative discourses that make up the artistic systems of modern prose writers (T.N. Tolstoy, A.V. Ilichevsky, V.A. Pietsukh, L.E. Ulitskaya, L.S. Petrushevskaya, V.G. Sorokin) are considered. The main attention is paid to semantic transformations of canonical textual units as a reflection of the ontological conflict. Continuity and connection between classical and modern Russian prose are established at the problem-thematic level, and the cultural and philosophical context of modern works is revealed.

Ironizing Treplev's play or justifying it, the characters in their own way act out a tragicomedy about human<...>Kuleshov notes: “But unexpectedly for the seemingly buried M.: Children's Literature Publishing House

This tutorial is devoted to the issues of working on speech in a performance.

And then she reveals the reason for her condition, which lies in her love for Treplev: “... (holding back<...>frank confessions, dreams of a wonderful future, marriage as a desire to get rid of hopeless love for Treplev<...>Treplev's rebellion, based on conflictual relations with the world, is confirmed by the hyperbolization of his feelings<...>Ironic remarks about the plot indicate the impossibility for Treplev to realize his ideas and<...>Chekhov as mood plays.

39

No. 1(23) [Theatre, 2016]

The Theater magazine is the oldest existing Russian magazine about performing arts. It started coming out in the mid-30s. Over these long years, it has experienced several radical updates, each of which reflected a new historical era - from Stalinism to the Thaw and Perestroika, but in all eras it remained the main media resource about the theater. In 2010, after a two-year break, STD RF decided to revive “Theater.”

brutal (all three cannot be classified as frantic deconstructors) people who decided to try themselves in the role of Treplev<...>In the very sense in which Meyerhold imagined Treplev, who played “himself” in the Moscow Art Theater play - an innovative director<...>Yuri Muravitsky This model of behavior is reproduced by Yuri Kvyatkovsky, who played Kostya Treplev in the first part

Play by A.P.<...>They also understand differently what the play should be: Nina. Your piece is difficult to perform.