The symbolic meaning of the image of a seagull in the play by A.P. Chekhov's "The Seagull"

Composition

The inspired image of “The Seagull” has become in Russian art a symbol of the victory of the human spirit over all the difficulties of life. Chekhov's call to “not be afraid of life” was directed against bourgeois art, which always felt fear of life, either embellishing it, or moving away from it into dead ends from which there was no way out. “You have found your path, you know where you are going, but I am still running around in the chaos of dreams and images, not knowing why and who needs it,” Treplev says to Nina at the end of the play, as if summing up the author’s thoughts . In October 1896, “The Seagull” was staged at the Alexandria Theater in St. Petersburg, the same theater in which Gogol’s “The Government Inspector” was greeted with anger and “Marriage” was booed.

On the morning of the performance, Anton Pavlovich met his sister, who had arrived from Moscow, at the station.

* “You shouldn’t have come,” he said, walking along the platform with Maria Pavlovna, “the play will fail.”

He looked gloomy and gloomy. Entering the hall in the evening, Chekhov looked around the rows where almost the entire literary Petersburg was present. But most of the public hardly knew about the existence of Chekhov. “The Seagull” was given as a benefit performance for the comic actress Levkeeva, a favorite of businessmen, clerks, and merchants from Gostinodvor. Fans of her talent came to the theater to have fun: Levkeeva knew how to make people laugh. At the very first remarks, the audience froze in bewilderment: on the stage there was some girl sniffing tobacco, a teacher talking about his difficult life: “I only get 23 rubles a month.” The stalls giggled and the boxes responded with laughter. The first rows began to stir and began to speak, defiantly turning their backs to the stage. The actors were confused, and their lines sounded uncertain, drowned out by the noise. When Zarechnaya - Komissarzhevskaya1 uttered the first words of her monologue, the audience did not laugh - they laughed.

The curtain fell to whistles, hisses, and furious stamping of feet. Chekhov, pale with excitement, stood up. He peered into the faces of familiar writers and did not recognize them. What lies in the eyes of these people who yesterday smiled at him and caught his every word? Why do these people avoid his gaze? And the well-dressed audience of the benefit and the writing brethren of St. Petersburg, in unprecedented unity, defended that evening the dilapidated, outdated art, against which Chekhov rose up. Spectators inexperienced in matters of literature listened sympathetically to the deliberately loud voices of the journalists:

* Disgrace! I wish I could write my own stories better! Where did he find such people in Russia? No plot, no resolution, no characters!

Chekhov left the theater without waiting for the end of the performance. For a long time he wandered alone through a strange, cold city. In the morning, Anton Pavlovich, without saying goodbye to anyone, went home. He was accompanied by the writer Potapenko. The cover was calm, joking, but pain was frozen in his eyes.

“It’s over,” he said, standing on the platform of the carriage, “I will never write plays again.”

“Don’t talk about the theater,” Gogol wrote to his friend Pogodin, shocked by the critics’ malicious attacks on “The Inspector General,” “except for abominations, nothing connects with it.” Soon after the production of his comedy, Gogol went abroad to settle his grievances. Chekhov was firmer and stronger. The very next day, having returned to Melikhovo, Anton Pavlovich fell into the rut of his usual life: he received the sick, bothered about books for the Taganrog library, and prepared for the national census. A month later, Anton Pavlovich was already calmly recalling the “enormous failure” of “The Seagull,” but the feeling of resentment remained throughout his life. Chekhov treated reports that “The Seagull” was a success in Kyiv, Rostov, Astrakhan, Novocherkassk and Taganrog with restraint and distrust.

* “I’m calm now, my mood is normal,” he wrote, “but I still can’t forget what happened, just as I couldn’t forget if, for example, I was hit.”

The failure of “The Seagull” had a serious impact on the writer’s health. In March 1897, he came to Melikhov for several days in Moscow. During lunch at the Hermitage restaurant, Anton Pavlovich’s blood rushed down his throat. Suvorin took him to his hotel. As a doctor, Chekhov understood his condition. “The patient laughs and jokes, as usual,” Suvorin, who visited Anton Pavlovich, wrote in his diary, “he coughed up blood into a large glass. But when I said that I watched the ice move along the Moscow River, his face changed and said: “Has the river moved?” It probably occurred to him whether this opened river and his hemoptysis had a connection. A few days ago he told me: “When you treat a man for consumption, he says: “It won’t help. I’ll leave with some spring vodka.”

In the fall of 1897, on the advice of doctors, he left for Nice. Those were troubled days for France. The Dreyfus case was being examined. The officer of the French General Staff, Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew of GTO nationality, was accused of espionage for Germany and, on the basis of documents fabricated by the actual traitor Major Esterhazy, was sentenced by a military court to life hard labor. The reactionary military decided to take advantage of the Dreyfus case to incite chauvinistic sentiments. The famous French writer Zola. He published an open letter to the French President in the newspaper, entitled “I Accuse.” In this letter the true culprits of the crime were named. Zola was accused of libel and sentenced to prison. The writer was forced to flee abroad.

The newspaper “Novoe Vremya” fully supported the obscurantists who launched a fraudulent case against Dreyfus. Having long ceased to be an employee of Novoye Vremya, Anton Pavlovich lro had to maintain friendly relations with Sz’vorin himself, still believing that Suvorin was on his own, and his newspaper on its own. The relationship with But in the 19th century to the Dreyfus case revealed to Anton Pavlovich the true face of his long-term friend. The gap between them became inevitable. The time when Chekhov separated himself from politics has passed. Along with the social upsurge in Russia, the political consciousness of the writer also grew.

It was warm and sunny in Nice. In the courtyard of the boarding house for Russians where the writer lived, oleanders bloomed, and armfuls of fragrant flowers were sold on the streets. And Chekhov missed the autumn Russian sky, the gray Moscow weather. The maids in the hotel, serving the guests, smiled continuously, and this smile, frozen like a mask, made Anton Pavlovich feel uneasy. The beggars on the streets also smiled, holding out their hands: they tried to maintain a decent appearance. When addressing them, they were called, like everyone else, “sir”, “madam”, but they were given sparingly. Rich people from all over the world came to Nice. For their money, they demanded not only comfort and entertainment, but also the illusion that everything was fine in this world. Anton Pavlovich met fellow countrymen in Nice: the historian M. Kovalevsky, the artist Jacobi, the writer Potapenko, the artist Yuzhin-Sumbatov. These were people pleasant to Anton Pavlovich, but at the thought that each of them could at any moment leave the disgusting sweet beauty of Nice to the north, in Rossique, he began to feel like a convict, chained to the south by illness.

As always, it was difficult for Chekhov to work on someone else's side. “The table is someone else’s, the pen is someone else’s and what I write seems alien to me...” he complains in the letter. “You feel like you’re hanging upside down by one leg.” In May, Anton Pavlovich returned to Melikhovo.

The seagull (Laridae) is a bird of the Charadriiformes order, the Chaikov family, which lead a marine lifestyle. Seagulls can be found on any beach in the world; they are distributed throughout the globe. The physique of seagulls provides them with everything necessary for living on the coast; they are excellent fishermen and divers.

Seagull - description and photographs

Birds of this species differ little from each other, it is difficult not to recognize them. Characteristic features of gulls are contrasting body color (most often dark markings on the head, wing tips and white undersides) and webbed feet. Seagulls are medium-sized birds, their body length is 30-80 cm, and their weight ranges from 100 grams to several kilograms. Scientists suggest that the contrasting body color helps the gulls remain invisible to fish as they soar over the water in search of prey.

The plumage of gulls is most often white, but there are gray and even pinkish (during mating seasons) shades. The belly of gulls remains unchanged white, only dark spots on the back, head or wings vary. All of the above applies to adults, but young birds that have not yet reached sexual maturity have dark stripes on the body, which create a masking effect. This is necessary so that the young animals are less noticeable to terrestrial predators, because due to their inexperience they become easy prey.

Within 2-4 years, young birds acquire breeding plumage. Seagulls, like seabirds, have waterproof plumage. They have abundant down, and their feathers are covered with a special lubricant, thanks to which seagulls are not afraid of water. The wings of gulls are relatively long and wide, somewhat curved during flight, and are also distinguished by dark feathers along the edges. The tail is short, with tail feathers.

One more distinctive feature seagulls is their beak. It is straight, curved at the end, and somewhat compressed at the sides. During evolution, the beak of seagulls has been transformed in order to hold slippery fish in the beak: a sharp hook has appeared at the end, and sharp teeth have appeared on the sides of the beak.

Seagulls have webbed feet, which makes them similar to flippers and helps them move through the water with ease. Seagulls swim almost as well as they fly. Their diet consists of various fish and small sea insects, which they take directly from the water. While relaxing on the seashore, you can often watch them quickly fall into the water after their prey. Food for seagulls can be small and medium-sized fish, crabs, shellfish, shrimp, fish waste and even carrion.

Seagulls are very voracious birds. If you calculate the amount of fish eaten by one individual per day, the number is not particularly striking. But let’s take for example the 60 thousand seagulls that nest on the coasts of the Black Sea: in the same day they destroy more than 10 tons of marine insects.

All birds of this species are monogamous; formed pairs remain for many years. During the mating season, ritual feeding occurs - males bring food for their females. The rest of the time both fly for food. In addition to feeding, males also have to choose a place to build a future nest. Seagulls often nest directly on the ground or on rocks. The gull's nest is built from grass, twigs and wet sand. The clutch consists of 2-4 eggs, which are incubated by both the female and the male in turn. The chicks of most species of the semi-brood type are covered with gray down and remain in the nest for several weeks, but in some gulls, the chicks of which are of the brood type, the young leave the nest almost immediately, a few hours after hatching they are already hiding in the water.

Treplev is the hero of A.P. Chekhov’s comedy “The Seagull” (1896). In the image of T. Chekhov reveals the worldview of a man of a “turning point” time, the leading idea of which is the idea of “spiritual chosenness”. This idea excites T.’s imagination, determines the nature of his feelings, the “coloring of experiences” (A. Bely). T.’s words about “priests of holy art”, “the chosen few” can be considered a “Freudian slip”, betraying T.’s burning desire to become one of them: “I have like a nail in my brain, damn it along with my vanity, which sucks my blood, sucks like a snake...” The desire to escape from the captivity of social reality, in which he is just a “Kiev tradesman,” gives rise to an “aesthetic protest” (N.A. Berdyaev) against modern forms of art and life.

T.’s “strange” play is his first lyrical self-expression, his personal “attempt at flight.” A real estate landscape (“view of the lake; the moon above the horizon, its reflection in the water”; a woman “all in white” sitting on a stone) - this landscape, enclosed in the “mirror of the stage”, becomes the ideal aesthetic shell of the World Soul. T. creates a “metaphysics of beauty” that is tragic in essence. In T.’s refusal to depict life “as it is,” one can hear an echo of Schopenhauer’s “rejection of matter.” Triple echo “Cold, cold, cold. Empty, empty, empty. Scary, scary, scary” expresses the author’s state of endless spiritual loneliness. And the words about “a captive thrown into a deep well” mean hope to be heard and understood. For T., the failure of the performance means not so much a rejection of “new forms” as a “failure of the individual,” ridicule of the “claim” for spiritual chosenness. Existential anxiety associated with the problem of self-identification (“I am nothing... Who am I? What am I?”) and the fear of “being late” (“I’m already twenty-five years old”) develops in T. the “Hamlet complex” (V.V. Nabokov ). Hence T.’s desire to “symbolize” life, to transform its rough matter into a spiritualized image-symbol: “I had the meanness to kill this seagull today. I lay it at your feet." Nina’s refusal to understand this symbolic action is “terrible, incredible” for T.: “It’s as if this lake suddenly dried up or flowed into the ground.” Nina Zarechnaya - Psyche, the soul of creativity T. Losing her, he loses the ability to create: “She doesn’t love me, I can’t write anymore... My hopes are gone.” Throughout the play, T. strives to break out of his loneliness: he puts on a play, tries to commit suicide, starts a stupid duel with Trigorin, wants to return the love of his mother, Arkadina. But all his attempts end in failure, funny failure, absurdity, scandal. Two years later, between the third and fourth acts of the play, T. is already a “real writer”: he is published in magazines, he is scolded in newspapers, admirers are interested in his appearance and age. He has become calmer in his expressions, and one can only guess what feelings possess him when he talks about Nina’s life, sees a stuffed seagull, hears Trigorin’s “I don’t remember.” Nina's arrival explodes T.'s outer calm and reveals his inner despair, loss of the sense of life, lack of faith in himself and his calling. When Nina, the World Soul, finally leaves him, he is left alone with the “chaos of dreams and images.” T.'s suicide shot at the end of the play is not the impotence of despair, but a conscious choice. “The 409 bottle of ether burst”: the spirit was freed from the “matter of life” that constrained it. The tragedy of T.’s “strange” play echoed with tragic irony in the finale of Chekhov’s comedy, transforming T.’s conflict from a life-psychological one into an existential-philosophical one. In the image of T. Chekhov foresaw many features of a person of modern times, which manifested themselves with sufficient clarity and completeness later - in the worldview, in creative destinies artists " silver age": V.F. Komissarzhevskaya, V.E. Meyerhold," Shv. Konevsky, V. Knyazev, especially A. Bely. Characteristics this worldview, recreated in the image of T.: “unfinished” inner world, lack of support, “firmament” (F.A. Stepun); tossing between the vital-psychological “I” and the artistic-aesthetic “I” (V.F. Khodasevich); “the flaw of excessive spirituality” (B.L. Pasternak). The first performer of the role of T. (performance at the Alexandria Theater, a failure, 1896) was R. Apollonsky. In the famous production of the Art Theater, in which, according to the conviction of K.S. Stanislavsky and V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, the “birth” of the theater they created took place, the role of T. was played by V.E. Meyerhold. The words of Chekhov's hero about the search for new forms of art determined the artistic credo of the future great director.

“The Seagull” by Chekhov, the main characters and their characteristics are Sorin, Dorn, Masha Shamraeva and Semyon Medvedenko.

"The Seagull" Chekhov main characters

, married to Trepleva, actress
, her son, young man
Pyotr Nikolaevich Sorin, her brother
, a young girl, the daughter of a rich landowner
Ilya Afanasyevich Shamraev, retired lieutenant, Sorin’s manager
Polina Andreevna, his wife
Masha, his daughter
, fiction writer
Evgeniy Sergeevich Dorn, doctor
Semyon Semyonovich Medvedenko, teacher
Yakov, worker
Cook
Housemaid

Doctor Dorn Evgeniy Sergeevich- a kind of representative of the author in the play. This is a middle-aged man, about 55 years old, who is accustomed to the attention of women and their favor. Dorn loves art and knows a lot about it. He is almost the only one who supports Treplev, believing that the work should have “an uplifting spirit.” But he warns the young author that he must know; why does he write: “... Because... you will wander, and your talent will destroy you.”

Plays a cameo role in the play and Petr Nikolaevich Sorin, the owner of the estate where the play takes place, Arkadina’s brother. The actual state councilor retired, bought an estate and lives in complete inactivity, entrusted all affairs to the manager and found himself in a certain financial dependence on him. He calls himself “a man who wanted”: he wanted to become a writer, he wanted to learn to speak beautifully, he wanted to get married, but he didn’t achieve any of this.

Sorin has kind heart. He sympathizes with his family, defends Konstantin and asks his sister for money for him, warns Arkadina: “You can’t behave like that... with young pride.” Treplev, in turn, asks his mother for money for his uncle, since he believes that all his illnesses are due to the monotony of life.

Masha Shamraeva- daughter of the estate manager Sorina. She sniffs tobacco and drinks vodka, walks in black, wearing mourning for herself, since she considers herself the most unfortunate because of her unrequited love for Treplev. She responds to Arkadina’s remark that she looks older than her years: “But I feel as if I was born a long time ago... And often there is not a single desire to live.”

Medvedenko, because of his constant complaints about poverty, makes the remark: “In your opinion, there is no greater misfortune than poverty, but as for me, it is a thousand times easier to walk around in rags and beg than... However, you don’t understand...”

To tear love for Treplev out of her heart, Masha marries Medvedenko, gives birth to a child, but still cannot cope with her feelings. So, here too is the tragedy of unrequited love, which overcame both maternal feelings and a sense of duty.

Teacher Semyon Semenovich Medvedenko- a middle-aged man, moderate and good-natured, a little enlightened, but more limited, so the author even makes fun of him. Although the problem of poverty, especially among provincial teachers, was really serious.

Medvedenko selflessly loves Masha, patiently endures her whims and indifference. So, here too there is the problem of unrequited love in marriage.

The following love chain is built: Medvedenko -> Masha -> Treplev -> Nina -> Trigorin.

The tendency of the cultural consciousness of the 19th century was to master the contradictions of life to the fullest possible extent, courageously and honestly accepting the most pressing questions and unresolved problems. And the most important thing is not to be satisfied with approximate answers. All this is fully reflected in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky, L.N. Tolstoy.

But another trend is no less relevant - the need of modern man to find stable guidelines in a complex and changing world, the desire to rely on something simple and clear. These attempts to “take root”, to find support for moral life and are reflected in Anton Pavlovich Chekhov’s comedy “The Seagull”.

The history of writing “The Seagull” - as far as can be judged from notebooks - shows that at the beginning the rough notes were grouped around Treplev, his rebellion against the dominance of routinists in art. But soon other characters that the young artist encountered gain independence, leave the environment of the protagonist and form new centers, new “foci” of the plot. And in the end, the image of a seagull takes root completely, which will become so important that it will overshadow all the heroes.

In Chekhov's play, only man and his soul, his conscience, his ideals, his understanding of life, his feelings are explored. Hence the understanding of the meaning of the title of the play: “The Seagull” is a lonely, unhappy bird, doomed to constantly circle over the water screaming. Because of this spiritual deficiency, all the troubles of the heroine, the seagull, arise.

The title of the play is symbolic. Everyone knows that among artists the words of the title are in close connection with the object of the image, with the conflict, plot, central situation, characters, with the form of the narrative, with the author’s intonation dominant in this work.

Since childhood, we have become accustomed to Chekhov's titles and sometimes we do not notice that they not only indicate the object of the image, but also give an ambiguous author's assessment. The intonation of Chekhov's titles expresses the writer's attitude towards what is depicted in the work.

What is a seagull in Chekhov’s play of the same name, what place does this image occupy in the work? The seagull is a bird killed by Treplev with a gun and a plot recorded by Trigorin for a short story. This is Nina herself, who first connected herself with the image of a murdered seagull, and then found her own path. This is to some extent Treplev, who at first dreamed of great love and glory, and in the end he shot himself with the same gun with which he once killed a seagull. This is also the general idea of the play, a rush into the future. Thus, the seagull runs as a leitmotif through the entire play, combining all the images of the work, complementing them or finally encrypting them.

This image-motive contains a charge of all-encompassing feeling - tragically intense, philosophical and deep. Under the influence of his “force field,” some characters become winged and musical, while others become wingless and prosaic.

The image of the Seagull goes back to folk poetic ideas about the soul, white and black, winged and wingless, living and dead, the container of which is the seagull, any free bird.

The image of a free bird is a symbol of human freedom, an expression of protest against oppressive reality, a hint of strength or weakness, the insecurity of a suffering individual.

But the Seagull is also invariably accompanied by the image of water: in Chekhov it is a lake. As indicated in the encyclopedia “Myths of the Peoples of the World,” water is one of the fundamental elements of the universe. In a variety of pagan beliefs, water is the origin, the initial state of all things, the equivalent of primeval chaos. Water is the medium, agent and principle of universal conception. Water as “moisture” in general, as the simplest type of liquid, acted as an element of all vital “juices” of a person. Correlating with the motif of water as the beginning is the significance of water for the act of ablution, which returns a person to the original purity. And ritual ablution is like a second birth. In the minds of any person, water is associated with life, with something pure, with washing during baptism. This is probably why our heroine, the seagull, is so attracted to water.

Nina Zarechnaya, appearing on stage for the first time, tells Treplev: “...I am drawn here to the lake, like a seagull...my heart is full of will...”. Nina is drawn to water, which can wash away and cleanse dirt not only from the body, but also from the soul, give new strength, and revive spiritually.

In the finale, the heroine comes to the water again. Nina again comes to the lake, to Treplev, and again - getting confused and confused in her words - compares herself to a seagull: “I am a seagull.” In essence, the action of the play takes place between Nina the Seagull’s two visits to the lake.

“Why don’t people fly? …” says Katerina from “The Thunderstorm”. The heroine of “The Seagull” was also about to fly on the wings of love, but broke them off. Chekhov's Nina Zarechnaya compares herself to a seagull, to a seagull killed by an indifferent hand. This is how the image of a free bird arose in the work of the Russian playwright, a bird that rose above everyday life and was destroyed physically and morally.