The Shot as a Memory, Or an Actress’s Work. Sketches on Chekhov’s “The Seagull”

Abstract

The article interprets those levels of the plot model of the comedy “The Seagull” that did not fall into the field of close attention of Chekhov’s researchers. This play occupies a middle place in Chekhov’s drama, collecting and transforming individual motives and plot links: some of them it inherits from the writer’s earlier works, while others it gives rise to itself. This motive is “fatherlessness”. After the drama of the same name, preserved in the author’s archives, this problem is explicated in “Three Sisters”. But it is also found in The Seagull, reflecting the idea of the death of God (Father), which is actual for the time. Another motive associated with the detached figure of the Pater familias is suicide. The thesis is argued that the act of Kostantin Treplev manifests a complex and not fully understood ending, which realizes two archetypes – suicide and fatherlessness – in their causal relationship. It is characteristic of Chekhov that the system of characters in his texts is not based on the traditional hierarchy of heroes (main, secondary, episodic). Each of them has their own personal history and backstory that can be traced back. The proposed hermeneutic analysis focuses on the image of Arkadina. Who is she and why the play could not exist without her presence? For the first time, the hidden details of the heroine’s biography are revealed, indicating the reasons for her mystery. In Chekhov’s dramatic thinking, the character remains not fully clarified, which allows the theater to interpret it depending on its own reading. The method of slow but open reading is used, taking into account the two-dimensional status of the dramatic text addressed to two institutions – literary and theatrical.

Keywords

• drama
• archetypes
• a. p. chekhov
• “the seagull”
• suicide
• fatherlessness