DORN. Your jokes smell like an old, shabby waistcoat. (Cens.)
page 798 / Replace: then she and DORN wheel out the armchair. Everyone goes out the door left. Only TREPLYOV remains alone on stage at the writing desk.
with: Everyone goes out left; on stage remain only SORIN in his chair and TREPLYOV at the desk. (Cens.)
page 799 / Replace: Nobody. —
with: It’s uncle. He’s asleep. (Cens.)
page 799 / Replace:(Looking round.)
with: And now at him. (Walks over to Sorin.) He’s asleep. (Cens.)
page 800 / After: Time to go. — (Nodding at Sorin.) Is he badly?
TREPLYOV. Yes. (Pause.) (Cens.)
NOTES
1 Why do seagulls hover over an inland lake on Sorin’s estate? In Russian, chaika is simply a gull. Sea has the connotation of distance and freedom, quite out of keeping with this play. In English, however, The Seagull has gained common currency as the play’s title, so I have retained it here, but refer simply to the “gull” in the text.
2 Ivan Bunin complained that Chekhov gave the women in his plays names befitting provincial actresses, but since two of the women in The Seagull are provincial actresses, no great harm is done. Arkadina is a stage name based on Arcadia, with its promise of a blissful pastoral existence (the sort of boring country life Arkadina loathes); but Arcadia was also the name of a garish amusement park in Moscow.
3 Treplyov hints at trepat, to be disorganized or feverish, trepach, an idle chatterbox, and trepetat, to quiver or palpitate.
4 Sorin seems to come from sorit, to mess things up, and is indicative of the old man’s habitually rumpled state.
5 Zarechnaya means “across the river” and suggests Nina’s dwelling on the opposite side of the lake, as well as her alien spirit in the world of Sorin’s estate.
6 Medved means bear, and the name’s ending suggests a Ukrainian origin.
7 A voluntary contribution from one’s monthly salary toward an old-age pension.
8 He does not use the ordinary Russian word for indifference, ravnodushie, but the more exotic and pedantic indifferentizm.
9 In the original, “First wing, then second,” referring to the wing-and-border arrangement of the nineteenth-century stage. Treplyov is displaying his familiarity with theatrical jargon.
10 Trigorin always uses the neutral, workmanlike word “writer” (pisatel) to describe himself, but Treplyov employs the more limited belletrist, a writer of fiction and light essays.
11 This line was excised by the censor. It was replaced by “because she isn’t acting in it and Miss Zarechnaya is.”
12 Literally, “can rattle off all of Nekrasov by heart”—Nikolay Alekseevich Nekrasov (1821–1878), Russian populist poet who called his inspiration the “Muse of vengeance and melancholy.” His poems about the downtrodden masses, suffering peasants, and appeals for justice were popular parlor recitations at liberal gatherings in the 1880s, but Chekhov uses such recitations to indicate hypocrisy and posing in the reciter.
13 Eleonora Duse (1859–1924), the great Italian actress, who first toured Russia in 1891, where Chekhov saw her as Cleopatra. He wrote, on March 17, 1891, “I don’t understand Italian, but she acted so well that I seemed to understand every word. Remarkable actress. I’ve never seen anything like her.” Like George Bernard Shaw, he preferred her to her rival Sarah Bernhardt.
14 Arkadina’s repertory consists of rather sensational, fashionably risqué dramas. Camille is La Dame aux camélias (1852), a play by Alexandre Dumas fils, concerning a courtesan with a heart of gold and lungs of tissue paper who gives up her love and eventually her life to advance her lover. It was first played in Russia in 1867, and later seen there during tours of Sarah Bernhardt in 1881 and 1892 and Eleonora Duse in 1892. Chekhov loathed Drugged by Life, a play by Boleslav Markevich, based on his novel The Abyss, and performed in Moscow in 1884 under the title Olga Rantseva. To quote Chekhov’s review, “In general the play is written with a lavatory brush and stinks of obscenity.” Its central character is a woman of loose morals, who, after four acts of dissipation and costume changes, dies in the fifth in an odor of sanctity. The connection to Arkadina’s life and her expensive wardrobe is clear.
15 Literally, three candles on a table. This is a fatal omen, for at a Russian wake two candles were placed at the corpse’s head, one at its feet. Therefore, if three lights are burning, one must be snuffed out.
16 Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893), French writer, whose works began to appear in Russian in 1894 and 1896. He died of syphilis and drugs, not modern technology. The Eiffel Tower was erected by Gustave Eiffel in 1889 for the Paris Exposition and, at 300 meters, was the highest man-made structure of the time. It was controversial, many persons of taste considering it an eyesore. Maupassant detested it as a symbol of materialism and modern vulgarity; he chose to dine at its restaurant, the only place in Paris from which one could not see the tower.
17 This last phrase was excised by the censor, and replaced by Chekhov with “but she leads a disorderly life, constantly carrying on with that novelist.”
18 A journalistic euphemism to cover passages deleted by the censorship. It suggests that Treplyov was expelled for political activity.
19 Literally, a Kievan meshchanin, that is, a burgher, townsman, artisan, or small tradesman. The word bears connotations of narrow-mindedness, philistinism, and parochialism. By marrying Treplyov’s father, Arkadina had come down in station. And although Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, was the seventh most populous city in Russia, to be associated with it suggests provincialism.
20 Nemirovich-Danchenko believed the character of Trigorin to be based on Chekhov’s friend Ivan Potapenko, a successful novelist noted for his modesty, self-deprecation, lavish living, and appeal to women.
21 This phrase was excised by the censor and replaced by Chekhov with “already famous and jaded within an inch of his life . . .”
22 Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828–1910) was widely considered Russia’s greatest author and her moral conscience. The works of Émile Zola (1840–1902) usually appeared in Russian translation shortly after their appearance in French.
23 The opening lines of a poem by Heinrich Heine, “Die beide Grenadiere” (1822), set to music by Robert Schumann (1827). The rest of the verse goes in translation:
They had been imprisoned in Russia.
And when they got to a German billet,
They hung their heads.
According to Arthur Ganz, it is ironic that “one of the great romantic evocations of the power of the will (here a will that vows to seize upon its object even from beyond the grave), [is] precisely the quality that Sorin lacks” (Drama Survey, Spring 1966).
24 We learn later that Sorin had been an Actual State Councillor, fourth class in the tsarist table of ranks, equivalent to a Major-General and a Rear Admiral, so he is being twitted by an underling. A person who attains this rank may be addressed as “Your Excellency.”