TRIGORIN (making notes in the book). Takes snuff and drinks vodka . . . Always wears black. Courted by a schoolteacher . . .
NINA. Good afternoon, Boris Alekseevich!
TRIGORIN. Good afternoon. Circumstances have taken an unexpected turn, so it turns out we leave today. In all likelihood we’ll never see one another again. And that’s a pity. I don’t often get the chance to meet young girls, young and interesting ones; I’ve long forgotten, I can’t quite imagine what it must feel like to be eighteen, nineteen, and that’s why in my novellas and stories the young girls are usually stilted. I really would like to be in your shoes, if just for an hour, to find out how your mind works and more or less what sort of stuff you’re made of.
NINA. And I should like to be in your shoes.
TRIGORIN. What for?
NINA. To find out how it feels to be a famous, talented writer. How does fame feel? How do you realize that you’re famous?
TRIGORIN. How? Nohow, I suppose. I never thought about it. (Thinking it over.) It’s either-or: either you’re exaggerating my fame or there’s no real way to realize it.
NINA. But what about seeing your name in the papers?
TRIGORIN. If it’s praise, I feel good, and if it’s a scolding, then I’m in a bad mood for a couple of days.
NINA. The world’s amazing! How I envy you, if you only knew! People’s fates are so different. Some people can barely crawl through their boring, obscure existence, the same as everyone else, all unhappy; still others, like you, for instance — you’re one in a million—are granted a life that’s interesting, brilliant, meaningful . . . You’re happy . . .
TRIGORIN. Am I? (Shrugging.) Hm . . . You stand here talking about fame, happiness, a brilliant, interesting life,49 but to me it sounds sweet and gooey, sorry, just like marshmallows, which I never eat. You’re very young and very kind.
NINA. Your life is so beautiful!
TRIGORIN. What’s so especially good about it? (Looks at his watch.) I ought to get some writing in now. Forgive me, I’ve got no time . . . (Laughs.) You’ve stepped on my pet corn, as the saying goes,50 and now I’m starting to get upset and a little bit angry. All right, let me make a statement. Let’s talk about my beautiful, brilliant life . . . Well, now, where shall we begin? (After thinking a bit.) Some people are obsessive compulsives, a person who thinks all the time, for instance, about the moon, well, I have my own particular moon. All the time, I’m obsessed with one compulsive thought: I have to write, I have to write, I have to . . . I’ve barely finished one story, when already for some reason I have to write another, then a third, after the third a fourth . . . I write nonstop, like an express train, and I can’t help it. What’s so beautiful and brilliant about that, I ask you? Oh, what an uncivilized way of life! I’m here talking to you, I’m getting excited, but meanwhile I never forget there’s a story of mine waiting to be finished. I see that cloud over there, that looks like a grand piano. I think: have to refer to that somewhere in a story, a cloud drifted by that looked like a grand piano. I catch a whiff of heliotrope,511 instantly reel it in on my moustache: cloying smell, widow’s color, refer to it in describing a summer evening. I’m angling in myself and you for every phrase, every word, and I rush to lock up all these words and phrases in my literary icebox: some time or other they’ll come in handy! When I finish work, I run to the theater or go fishing; should be able to relax there, forget myself, oh, no, a heavy cannonball has started rolling around in my head—a new subject, and I’m drawn back to my desk, hurry, hurry, write, write. And so it goes forever and ever and ever, and I know no peace, and I feel that I’m devouring my own life, that to give away honey to somebody out there in space I’m robbing my finest flowers of their pollen, tearing up those flowers and trampling on their roots. Wouldn’t you say I’m crazy? Surely my friends and relatives don’t behave as if I were sane? “What are you puttering with now?52 What will you give us next?” The same old same old, and I start thinking that this friendly attention, praise, admiration—it’s all a plot, they’re humoring me like an invalid, and sometimes I’m afraid that they’re just on the verge of creeping up behind me, grabbing me and clapping me into a straitjacket, like the madman in Gogol’s story.53 And years ago, the years of my youth, my best years, when I was starting out, my writing was sheer agony. A second-rate writer, especially when luck isn’t with him, sees himself as clumsy, awkward, irrelevant, his nerves are shot, frayed; he can’t help hanging around people connected with literature and art, unrecognized, unnoticed by anyone, afraid to look them boldly in the face, like a compulsive gambler who’s run out of money. I couldn’t visualize my reader, but for that very reason he loomed in my imagination as hostile, suspicious. I was afraid of the public, it terrified me, and every time a new play of mine managed to get produced,54 I thought the dark-haired spectators disliked it, while the fair-haired spectators couldn’t care less. Oh, it’s awful! Excruciating!55
NINA. I’m sorry, but surely inspiration and the creative process itself must provide sublime moments of happiness?
TRIGORIN. Yes. When I’m writing, it’s nice enough. And correcting the proofs is nice too, but . . . it’s barely come off the presses, when I can’t stand it, and can see that it’s not right, a mistake, that it shouldn’t have been written just that way, and I’m annoyed, feel rotten inside . . . (Laughing.) Then the public reads it: “Yes, charming, talented . . . Charming, but a far cry from Tolstoy,” or “Lovely piece of work, but not up to Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons.”56 And so until my dying day all I’ll hear is charming and talented, charming and talented — , and when I die, my friends will file past my grave and say, “Here lies Trigorin. He wasn’t so bad as a writer, but no Turgenev.”
NINA. Forgive me, I refuse to accept that. You’re simply spoiled by success.
TRIGORIN. What do you call success? I’m never satisfied with myself, I don’t like myself as a writer. Worst of all is when I’m in some sort of trance and often I don’t even understand what I’m writing . . . I love the water over there, the trees, sky, I have a feeling for nature; it inspires me with a passion, the irresistible urge to write. But I’m really more than just a landscape painter;571 do have a social conscience as well, I love my country, the people. I feel that if I’m a writer, I have an obligation to discuss the people, their suffering, their future, discuss science, human rights, et cetera, et cetera, and I do discuss all of it, trip over myself; I’m attacked from every side, I make people angry, I hurtle back and forth like a fox hunted down by hounds. I see that life and science keep moving farther and farther ahead, while I keep falling farther and farther behind, like a peasant who’s missed his train and, when all’s said and done, I feel that all I know how to write about is landscapes, and everything else I write is phony, phony to the nth degree!