The Seagull: The Stage Mother, the Missing Father, and the Origins of Art

The Seagull: The Stage Mother, the Missing Father, and the Origins of Art CAROL A. FLATH Before the problem of the creative artist, analysis must, alas, lay down its arms. -Freud 1. WHAT IS NOT In the play that initiated the "modem drama" of this journal's title, Chekhov offers a timeless plot of intergenerational conflict played out on the field of art. The allegorically charged relationships in The Seagull (Chayka, 1896) challenge the audience to speculate as to the ways art and life are intertwined. It is treacherous territory. The sensitive critic is continually aware of the . author's voice muttering peevishly in the background, "Unlike some people, I don't presume to know any answers; all I do is ask questions.'" Chekhov teases anyone who wants to find deeper meaning in his work. Asked his opinion on the lake in Simov's set design for the first performance of The Seagull, he says, "It's wet.'" Or take his suggestion to Stanislavsky, the Moscow Art Theatre's fust Trigorin, that he should wear not white, but checkered trousers .3 The critic seems doomed to failure, and the author remains silent. And yet, The Seagull is so clearly about the nature of the relationship between art and life that no interpretation of the play can be complete without tackling the tbeme. Chekhov's art thrives on hidden tensions. What goes on on stage is only . half the picture. It is equally important to concentrate on what His not": on what is expected to happen but does not (plot); on where characters would rather be but are not (setting); all what people purport to be or wish to be but are not (characterization); on what is not said but is truly meant (dialogue). In her last dialogue with TTeplev, Nina, quoting Turgenev, says, "'fortunate is he who sits at home under his own roof all a night like this, who has a warm Modem Drama, 42 (Winter 1999) 491 492 CAROL A. FLATH place to stay.' I am a seagull ... No, that's not it." (Y TypreHeBa eCTh MeCTO:«XOPOIIIO TOMY. KTO B TaKHe HOt.{H CH,II;HT nOA KPOBOM ,ll;OMa. y Koro eCTb TenJIbIH yrOJI». .H - lJaHKa... HeT, He TO.)4 The expression Nina uses here, "ne to," "not that," one variant of the Russian expression meaning "wrong," suggests that we direct our attention away from the lexical meaning of the words themselves to the forces underlying them; away from the text, the art, into the life beyond it.s Chekhov's reader will find it useful to ask what "presences" in the text can be seen as harboring more potent "absences"? Specifically, what is the importance of offstage in Chekhov's drama? The present study attempts to balance what "is" in Chekhov's drama with what "is not." OUf focus is on the generational conflict. On stage, we explore the implications of the relationship between mother and son: Arkadina and Treplev. Off stage, our attention turns to forces emanating from the absent father. Opposing the "missing person" of Treplev's father to the all-toopresent mother should give an idea of how rich this perspective can be for revealing the workings of Chekhov's drama. We view The Seagull metonymically, as a kind of "play within a play," that is, Chekhov's play itself (presence) nested in the "absence" of a broader reality (to build on the metaphor Chekhov provides us in Act One), as a way of revealing the hidden processes by which life becomes art.6 For the difference between what we see and hear on stage, by its very artificiality and distance, and what is real should bring us more closely and sensibly in touch with that reality - ours: what "is not" in the play "is" in fact OUf reality, made fresh and tangible again by the workings of Chekhov's art. II. PRESENCE: THE "STAGE" MOTHER Focusing on the generational conflict as a primary force in the play's plot development will help us better understand Chekhav's aesthetics. The plot takes much of its power from hints at the timeless Oedipal paradigm: in a coming-of-age plot, the son encounters...