which belonged to his mistress, Anna Turchani-nova. Like Sofia Kuvshinnikova, she was married and ten years older than Levitan. She had three daughters, of whom Levitan seduced at least one. He had a row with Anna Turchaninova, and on 21 June he
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pulled out a revolver and shot himself in the head. The wound was slight, but Levi tan's mood was not. On 23 June he wrote to Anton: Dear Anton, if at all possible, come to see me, just for a few days. I am horribly unhappy, worse than ever. I would come to see you but I have no strength left. Don't refuse. A big room is at your disposal in a house where I live alone, in the woods, on the shore of a lake. Neither compassion nor the fishing moved Anton, so Anna Turchaninova wrote: I don't know you, Mr Chekhov, but I have an urgent request at the insistence of the doctor treating Isaak. Levitan is suffering very severe depression which is pulling him into the most terrible state. On 21 June, in a minute of despair, he tried to kill himself. Fortunately we managed to save him. The wound is no longer dangerous, but Levitan needs meticulous, loving and friendly care. Knowing from what he has said that you are a close friend, I decided to write and ask you to come and see the patient immediately. A man's life depends on your coming. You, only you, can save him and bring him out of complete indifference to life, and at times a furious determination to kill himself.48 On 5 July, telling nobody where he was going, Anton made his way to Gorki and saw Levitan. From Gorki he wrote to Leikin to say he 'was on the shores of a lake 50 miles from Bologoe' for ten days. He told Suvorin that he was with a patient on the Turchaninova estate, 'a marshy place, smelling of Polovtsians and Pechenegs'.
Anton stayed only five days and, instead of turning home, travelled just as secretively from Bologoe to Petersburg. Leikin learnt that Anton was at Suvorin's. He drove straight round to see Anton there 'thin and jaundiced'; Anton claimed Suvorin had telegraphed for him. Leikin's were not the only prying eyes; Kleopatra Karatygina hoped to join Suvorin's new theatre and, like many actresses Anton had known, she named him as a referee.
Anton was back in Melikhovo by 18 July. Tania and Sasha Seli-vanova, whom he now called the 'enchanting little widow', joined him. Four days later, Anton went back to Moscow to see Suvorin: they spent two days walking and talking. Suvorin came down to Melikhovo to meet Tania and talk about the theatre. On 24 July Pavel's
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diary records: 'Full moon. The guests went for a walk in the woods.' The walk shaped Tania's future. She charmed Suvorin, who would prepare the way for her in Petersburg. Tania was translating Edmond Rostand's La Princesse lointaine - a source for the cult of the 'Beautiful Lady' in Russian symbolist drama. (Tania's enthusiasm for modern French drama made Anton spend several weeks studying French grammar.) In The Seagull, the little play that Treplev stages to annoy his mother parodies Russian plays yet unwritten: the Symbolist drama which Tania was adapting and Hannele's Assumption, in which the pretty Liudmila Ozerova had made her debut, helped Chekhov imagine what such drama might sound like in Russian.
The Seagull is full of cruel parody. The shot bird symbolizing youth destroyed was aimed at Ibsen's Wild Duck; the young writer Treplev, jealous of his mother's lover, parodies Hamlet and Gertrude. The middle-aged actress, Arkadina, who holds all the men - her brother Sorin, her son Treplev and her lover Trigorin - in thrall, caricatures every actress that Anton had ever disliked, and echoes Iavorskaia's mannerisms, such as kneeling before Anton, like Vasantasena before Charudatta, calling him 'my only one!' The boring schoolteacher Medvedenko mimics Mikhailov, the teacher in the village of Talezh, near Melikhovo. The medallion that Nina gives Trigorin with the coded reference to his lines 'If you need my life, come and take it', mocks Avilova and her medallion. The lakeside setting of The Seagull, the pointless killing of the seagull, and Treplev's first attempt to shoot himself, all commemorate Levitan. The unhappy fate of Nina, adored by Treplev and seduced by Trigorin, reflects - and, as we shall see, anticipates - the story of Lika, Anton and Potapenko.
Chekhov was most cruel to himself. Trigorin, the traditional writer, and Treplev, the innovator, standing for old and new movements, both ineffectual and mediocre, really personify two aspects of Chekhov, one the analytical follower of Turgenev and Tolstoy, the other the visionary prose-poet. Much of Trigorin is Anton - with his fishing rods, his dislike of scented flowers, his self-disparagement. Lines from Chekhov's prose (a description of a broken bottle on a weir) and from his letters (to Lika about obsessive writing) are given to Trigorin in the play. Like Potapenko, however, Trigorin seduces and abandons Nina; like Anton, Treplev is the man to whom she briefly returns, undeterred in her desire for a career on stage. The Seagull is neverthe352
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less not primarily a confessional work: Trigorin is only part Potapenko and Anton only part Treplev. The authorial Chekhov is there as Doctor Dorn who looks on with amused compassion, and deflects possessive women.
The Seagull develops to a surreal degree the pattern of Turgenev's A Month in the Country of 1849: a country estate, an ironical doctor, a dominant heroine and an absurdly long chain of unrequited love -nobody loves the schoolteacher Medvedenko, who loves Masha, the manager's daughter, who loves Treplev, the young writer, who loves Nina, the neighbour's stepdaughter, who loves Trigorin, the older writer, who is in thrall to Arkadina, the actress. The structure is innovative: four acts flow, not broken into scenes. Act 4 reiterates, like a musical piece, the motifs of Act 1. Never did Chekhov write such a literary play: the text alludes to Maupassant, whom Chekhov admired as much as his heroes do. The opening lines 'Why do you always wear black?' - 'I'm in mourning for my life.' are out of Bel-Ami, while the passage Dr Dorn reads in Act 2, on the dangers of writers to society and of women to writers, is from Maupassant's travel book Sur Veau. Shakespeare too, in particular Hamlet, is grafted into the play. Traditions are reversed. All the material of comedy - couples in love, youth against age, servants outwitting their masters - is there, but the action resolves uncomically. There are no happy reunions; age is unscathed, youth perishes, and the servants sabotage the household.
On 21 October 1895 Chekhov told Suvorin that his comedy, satirizing his intimates, attacking the theatre and its actresses, was unstage-able: 'I am writing it not without pleasure, though I offend stage rules terribly. A comedy, three female parts, six male, four acts, landscape (view of a lake); a lot of talk about literature, not much action, 13 stone of love.' Anton did all he could, from conception in May 1895 until its first performance in October 1896, to stir up the hostility of those who had to watch and act his play. It is as if the author against his own will propelled The Seagull into reality.
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The Fugitive Returns September-December 1895 ON 6 AUGUST 1895 Lika Mizinova brought her baby to Moscow. She made her peace with her mother and looked for work. Then she went to Tver province with chocolate for Granny Ioganson's name day. Christina was put, as Lika had been, in Granny Ioganson's care: a nurse was found. On 23 September Masha brought Lika to Meli-khovo. In November Lika wrote to Granny: Masha Chekhova often stays with me and I with her. She lives with her brother Vania and still works in the Rzhevskaia boarding school. When I'm home, I read, play the piano and sing, and time passes quickly… I've been twice to the Chekhovs' estate, once when I arrived, before term started, and spent two weeks there and I've also been going down for Saturday and Sunday with Masha, I am loved there as I used to be… Lika's mother, Lidia Iurgeneva, doggedly independent, could not afford wood to heat her quarters. Physically and emotionally, the Chekhovs gave Lika warmth that autumn. Potapenko was still banned from Melikhovo, but, in December 1895, back in Tver, Lika stood up for him against Masha: 'I have and shall have only one thing - my little girl!… never blame Ignati for anything! Believe me he is the man you and I thought he was.' Ignati Potapenko by November had made an act of contrition, at least to Anton, for he felt the lack of sympathetic company in Petersburg: Dear Antonio,… I did think that our true spiritual bond must not be broken by any external circumstances. And if I were to let myself doubt your friendship, I still should say 'That will pass, that is temporary.' So - everything is bright between us, as before, and I am terribly glad. Anton devised a suitable penance. Potapenko accepted without demur.
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He, the man most ridiculed in The Seagull, was to oversee the play's realization. Potapenko was easily supervised: he was one of Suvorin's dependants, and he dined regularly with Aleksandr at the Petersburg monthly writers' dinners. Potapenko found Chekhov a typist in Moscow, a Miss Gobiato, who at snail's pace, for a few kopecks a page, made two copies for transmission to Petersburg. Potapenko had one last laugh: Aleksandr sent
