Product Description

The Seagull, a spectacular failure on its first appearance, was the play that, on its second, established Anton Chekhov as an important and revolutionary dramatist. Here, amid the weariness of life in the country, the famous actress Arkadina presides over a household riven with desperate love, with dreams of success and dread of failure. It is her son, Konstantin, who one day shoots a seagull; it is the novelist Trigorin who will one day write the story of the seagull herself, whose life to come will rewrite the story.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #140762 in Books
• Published on: 2001-08
• Original language: Russian
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

Review

Language Notes
Text: English, Russian (translation)

About the Author
This new translation of The Seagull -- made by Tom Stoppard for the Peter Hall Company at the Old Vic in 1997 -- was produced by The Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival in New York City in 2001. The volume also contains an Introduction by Mr. Stoppard that indicates some of the problems translators have faced since the first English language Seagull in 1909.

Customer Reviews

Jealousy, ambition, despair
The play is set on an estate in the Russian countryside, owned by the former state councillor Peter Sorin. He lives there with his nephew Konstantin Trepliev, the son of a famous actress and himself an aspiring playwright. His mother, Irina Abkadina, is a miserly and self-centered woman fascinated by her own fame and beauty. The only object of her affection is the famour writer Trigorin.

An abstract play written by Trepliev and performed by his young girlfriend Nina Zarietchnaya fails miserably, and Nina turns her attention instead to the more successful Trigorin. The young Trepliev attempts suicide, then challenges Trigorin to a duel. All his efforts are in vain, and Nina leaves for Moscow to be with her idol. Trigorin, however, soon forgets about her, and her career as an actress is even more miserable than Trepliev's career as a writer. Both youngsters thus face tragic fates as their failed ambition, jealousy, and misguided love and anger carry them to destruction.

This subtle work deals with issues such as unrequited love, jealousy, betrayal and vanity without being overly sentimental. It also addresses the spectacular effect people of charisma or celebrity can have on ordinary people, and suggests that this great power is a dangerous tool in the hands of people who are often hostages of their own reputations.

Universal
Everyone, whether we like to admit it or not, wants nothing more than to lay on their deathbeds and be able to say "I have led a beautiful life." This intense desire lives within us all. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it causes us to worship other human beings as something more than human, sometimes it destroys us.

In Chekov's The Seagull, the brilliant playwright displays his passionate understanding of the desire that wrestles with the human soul. Subtly complex, The Seagull is a play meant to be read many times, and each time readers are bound to meet a different facet of themselves in the play's characters and their quests to satiate that voice within each of them, constantly whispering "you need more, more." It is a voice that leads one aspiring writer in the play to suicide, and cuts off another's capacity to embrace anyone but himself and his own entrapped mind.

Almost every facet of desire is explored here: love, life, death, dreams of glory, success, achievement. And, as with our very best playwrights, Chekov incorporates a masterful metaphor in his Seagull, which tightly wraps the play in a bundle of genius. Like Williams's breathtaking 'Night of The Iguana," and Ibsen's eerie 'The Wild Duck," The Seagull blends tragedy and beauty in an unforgettably delicate union. This is the kind of play that will stick in readers' minds for a lifetime.

a masterful new translation
Russian plays aren't for everyone--they are dense, heavy affairs, packed full of ideas and slow moving characters. If you are looking for a fast-paced potboiler with lots of action, etc. then stay away from Chekhov. But if you enjoy reflection and having something to talk about when you finish a book then Checkhov will serve you well--and, most improtantly, if you want to read "The Seagull" this IS the translation to get--Stoppard has done a wonderful job, making this classic even more readable and enjoyable.