The Seagull develops to a surreal degree the pattern of Turgenev's A Month in the Country of 1849: a country estate, an ironical doctor, a dominant heroine and an absurdly long chain of unrequited love -nobody loves the schoolteacher Medvedenko, who loves Masha, the manager's daughter, who loves Treplev, the young writer, who loves Nina, the neighbour's stepdaughter, who loves Trigorin, the older writer, who is in thrall to Arkadina, the actress. The structure is innovative: four acts flow, not broken into scenes. Act 4 reiterates, like a musical piece, the motifs of Act 1. Never did Chekhov write such a literary play: the text alludes to Maupassant, whom Chekhov admired as much as his heroes do. The opening lines 'Why do you always wear black?' - 'I'm in mourning for my life.' are out of Bel-Ami, while the passage Dr Dorn reads in Act 2, on the dangers of writers to society and of women to writers, is from Maupassant's travel book Sur Veau. Shakespeare too, in particular Hamlet, is grafted into the play. Traditions are reversed. All the material of comedy - couples in love, youth against age, servants outwitting their masters - is there, but the action resolves uncomically. There are no happy reunions; age is unscathed, youth perishes, and the servants sabotage the household.
On 21 October 1895 Chekhov told Suvorin that his comedy, satirizing his intimates, attacking the theatre and its actresses, was unstage-able: 'I am writing it not without pleasure, though I offend stage rules terribly. A comedy, three female parts, six male, four acts, landscape (view of a lake); a lot of talk about literature, not much action, 13 stone of love.' Anton did all he could, from conception in May 1895 until its first performance in October 1896, to stir up the hostility of those who had to watch and act his play. It is as if the author against his own will propelled The Seagull into reality.
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The Fugitive Returns September-December 1895 ON 6 AUGUST 1895 Lika Mizinova brought her baby to Moscow. She made her peace with her mother and looked for work. Then she went to Tver province with chocolate for Granny Ioganson's name day. Christina was put, as Lika had been, in Granny Ioganson's care: a nurse was found. On 23 September Masha brought Lika to Meli-khovo. In November Lika wrote to Granny: Masha Chekhova often stays with me and I with her. She lives with her brother Vania and still works in the Rzhevskaia boarding school. When I'm home, I read, play the piano and sing, and time passes quickly… I've been twice to the Chekhovs' estate, once when I arrived, before term started, and spent two weeks there and I've also been going down for Saturday and Sunday with Masha, I am loved there as I used to be… Lika's mother, Lidia Iurgeneva, doggedly independent, could not afford wood to heat her quarters. Physically and emotionally, the Chekhovs gave Lika warmth that autumn. Potapenko was still banned from Melikhovo, but, in December 1895, back in Tver, Lika stood up for him against Masha: 'I have and shall have only one thing - my little girl!… never blame Ignati for anything! Believe me he is the man you and I thought he was.' Ignati Potapenko by November had made an act of contrition, at least to Anton, for he felt the lack of sympathetic company in Petersburg: Dear Antonio,… I did think that our true spiritual bond must not be broken by any external circumstances. And if I were to let myself doubt your friendship, I still should say 'That will pass, that is temporary.' So - everything is bright between us, as before, and I am terribly glad. Anton devised a suitable penance. Potapenko accepted without demur.
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He, the man most ridiculed in The Seagull, was to oversee the play's realization. Potapenko was easily supervised: he was one of Suvorin's dependants, and he dined regularly with Aleksandr at the Petersburg monthly writers' dinners. Potapenko found Chekhov a typist in Moscow, a Miss Gobiato, who at snail's pace, for a few kopecks a page, made two copies for transmission to Petersburg. Potapenko had one last laugh: Aleksandr sent Anton a newspaper cutting from Zhitomir (in the Ukraine) which showed that library users preferred Potapenko to Chekhov.
Miss Gobiato was too slow: Anton finally sent a manuscript to Suvorin, who was told to expect it from the hands of 'a tall handsome widow' - Sasha Selivanova. Anton told Suvorin to let Potapenko, and nobody else, read it. Suvorin (who admired Potapenko's wife Maria) was shocked by the play; he told Anton that Trigorin, torn between Nina and Arkadina, was too obviously Potapenko, torn between Lika and his wife. Anton disingenuously replied that if this were so, the play would be unstageable. Suvorin, as Chekhov might have suspected, showed The Seagull to his confidante, Sazonova. She was already worried by Suvorin's fondness for decadent drama. On 21 December her diary anticipated public opinion: I read The Seagull. A thoroughly depressing impression. In literature only Chekhov, in music Chopin make that impression on me, like a stone on your soul, you can't breathe. It is unrelieved gloom. Iavorskaia still hoped that Chekhov would provide her with a triumphal chariot of a play, that The Seagull would be in the same neoroman-tic vein as Rostand's La Princesse lointaine, which she and Tania were taking to Petersburg for the new season. In Moscow, in early December, Chekhov read The Seagull to a large company in the blue drawing room at Iavorskaia's hotel. Tania recalls: Korsh… considered Chekhov his author, since he had put on the first production of Ivanov… I remember the impression the play made. It was like Arkadina's reaction to Treplev's play: 'Decadence!' 'New forms?'… I remember the argument, the noise, Iavorskaia feigning delight, Korsh's amazement: 'Dear boy, that's bad theatre: you have a man shoot himself off-stage and don't even let him speak before he dies!' etc. I remember Chekhov's face, half embarrassed, half stern.
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Iavorskaia and Chekhov had no more to say to each other. Anton then took his manuscript to Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, whose suggestions he respected and adopted.
Anton now treated Lika as lightly as his old sweetheart Sasha Seli-vanova. He was celibate, he told Suvorin on 10 November: I am afraid of a wife and family life which will restrict me and as I imagine them won't fit in with my disorderliness, but it is still better than tossing about in the sea of life and going through storms in the frail boat of dissipation. Anyway I don't love my mistresses any more, and with them I gradually become impotent. Anton visited Sasha Selivanova in Moscow to drink beer and vodka, and invited Lika to sing and walk in the woods. Only the faraway aroused desire. Liudmila Ozerova, the Petersburg actress, intrigued Anton even more after a fiasco in Schiller's Intrigue of Love. He wrote to Suvorin on 21 October: 'Reading The Petersburg Newspaper, where her acting was called simply absurd, I can imagine the little Jew-girl crying and going cold.'
After searching the attic in Melikhovo, Anton found Elena Shav-rova, now Mrs lust's manuscripts, which he had mislaid. He offered to make up to her for his delinquency and confided that he was writing a story ('My Fiancee', the future 'House with the Mezzanine'), as well as a play, about lost love: 'I used to have a fiancee'. Inviting each other to rendezvous in the Great Moscow hotel, she and Anton began a cautious game. Shavrova's letters become flirtatious. On 11 November she hinted at the relationship - of a young actress with a distinguished older man - that she sought: 'You know, I often recall Katia from "A Dreary Story" and I understand her.' On 3 December she wrote: 'It's nice to know that cher maitre has loved, which means he could have and understand this earthly feeling… I think somehow that you analyse everything and everyone too finely to fall in love…'49 For the New Year Shavrova praised 'Ariadna' as a vraie femme aux hommes, and wished Chekhov 'as few boring days, hours and minutes as possible'.
Autumn left Anton no time for love or boredom. The creative impulse that had started in spring 1894 intensified. As soon as The Seagull was despatched, he sat down to work on his most nostalgic story, 'The House with the Mezzanine'. The scenery and the second356