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THE SEAGULL OF THE AMERICAN SOUTH: LOOKING AT TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’S FREE ADAPTATION OF ANTON CHEKHOV’S THE SEAGULL
© Крылова Н.В.*
Карельская государственная педагогическая академия, г. Петрозаводск
Автор данной статьи обращается к малоизвестной пьесе Т. Уильямса The Notebook of Trigorin. A Free Adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull. Пьеса интересна возможностью не только литературоведческого, но и лингвистического и интертекстуального анализа. В своей версии «Чайки» Уильямс меняет фокус видения: главным персонажем становится Тригорин, образы Тригорина и Аркадиной претерпевают существенные изменения, общий драматический рисунок выглядит острее, сценичнее, современнее и ироничнее.
This year marked both Tennessee Williams’s centennial and Anton Chekhov’s sesquicentennial anniversary. This invited scholars, educators, writers, directors and other leading professionals all over the world to offer fresh perspectives on the established classics, as well as to engage influential but rarely performed experimental and neglected works. To celebrate Williams’ / Chekhov’s legacy is also to analyze the elements of similarity that bridge the two authors. In a world torn by various religious, political, ethnic, social discords, the all-encompassing human values of tolerance, love and understanding so quietly and brilliantly proclaimed by Chekhov and Williams in separate countries and at different times, serve to cement a foundation for the diversity of contemporary cultures.
Tennessee Williams is one of the most celebrated American playwrights, rivaled only by Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller [4, р. 9]. He was quintessentially American, but never a typical pragmatic middle American. He saw himself as an outsider: a poet in a practical world, a homosexual in a heterosexual society. His is the realm of the imaginary, elusive and transient where imagination often becomes the last refuge for his ill-fated characters. This line of thought demanded a special poetic language that reinvented the American stage.
The powerful impact of Chekhov’s aesthetics on Williams is universally acknowledged. Indeed, both writers explored the world of private need beneath the routines of social performance. While Chekhov’s plays are suffused with the poetry of Russian life, Williams’ plays are also flooded with poetry, albeit coming from the romantic mythology of the American South. His dramatic strategy is also close to the one of the Russian master whose characters may seem inactive, but it is precisely their seeming inactivity that conceals complex inner activity. For Williams’s and Chekhov’s characters imagination is the source of both weakness and strength: weakness because the human imagination becomes consumed
* Доцент кафедры Английского языка факультета иностранных языков, доцент.
by different manifestations of indifference, hostility or even violence; strength because the imagination of their characters creates a «heroic resistance» against the cruel universe [2]. It is exactly their defenselessness and anguish that reveal a tensile strength in the most fragile of creatures.
The action of Williams’s plays is in the images he chooses, in the imaginary world of his otherworldly, dreamy characters; the non-realistic set design, the poetic language of his dramatic works. Both the playwrights set stage the action in small towns and appoint one of the chief characters to challenge narrowminded philistines. Williams picked up and developed the Chekhovian interest for creatures broken in mind and body, people in constant need of money, love or recognition, people with unrequited passions and unfulfilled dreams. We find a similar blend of humor and derision, pity and compassion, which eventually originally characterized Chekhov’s artistic idiom and which eventually became Williams' «trademark». Many literary critics, Allean Hale, Philip Kolin, to name the most prominent ones, find parallels between Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire and Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard: they both depict characters whose superficial communications mask a subterranean tumult that sends their lives spinning out of control. Both plays begin with an arrival and end with a departure. In both we deal with the flight from reality toward an illusory refuge [6].
The parallels between Williams and Chekhov are further reflected The Glass Menagerie and The Seagull. It is strongly Chekhovian in its mingling of pathos and comedy, naturalistic detail, portrayal of self-pity, and the presentation of four similar central protagonists [3, p. 134]. But more important than common dramatic techniques (lighting, similar stage effects, music, etc) is the portrayal of the human condition with both the authors: loneliness, the absence of human contact, the inherent inability but the thirst and need for the people to understand one another - and above all - the overwhelming compassion for the human race in general.
In October 1981, as a homage to the great Russian master, Williams produced his own version of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull titled The Notebook of Trigorin. A Free adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull. The play was first produced by the Vancouver Playhouse. It was a long-lost play, perhaps his last major piece. However, Williams was known as an inveterate writer [4, p. 11]. He repeatedly fused one work into another or transformed earlier written works (usually one-act plays or short stories) into full-length plays. Chekhov's The Seagull was his favorite play. He himself was often nicknamed the «American Chekhov». The play's characters, two playwrights and two actresses attracted him immensely, and its theme of the artist's struggle against society's indifference echoed his own experience at the time [6, p. 11]. Even after the big success of the Streetcar Named Desire in 1947, Williams remained fixated on The Seagull.
But what motivated Williams to rewrite such a famous play? I have no unequivocal answer to this. This paper is an attempt to look at the play's ambigui-
ties and complexities. Williams re-interprets the play, but remains true to its spirit. He allows certain deviations from the original vision of the characters, a product of his (Williams’s) aesthetics, as well as his troubled inner life. Chekhov focuses on the two young artists, Nina and Constantine; Williams (who was 70 at the time), as the title implies, writes from the point of view of the Trigorin character, a well-established older writer. Williams most radical change was to make Trigorin bisexual, tethered to Madame Arkadina by habit and obligation while actively pursuing stable-boys on the Sorin estate. Williams clear identification with Trigorin skews the plot making Trigorin's seduction of Nina seem improbable - and even if possible, more immoral and eventually pointless. Williams's Trigorin is sharper-edged, forced to be someone he does not want to be («... I am so profoundly depressed, I must run to, to - Sicily or to Venice or a Greek island and turn for a while into a simply - mindless - beast...»), a man who is tired of fame and indifference and the narrow-mindedness of the society («You ask yourself the question because without a new work to turn to, your life would be absent completely. But they ask the question because if you didn’t produce the new work, you’d no longer be of financial value or any interest to them»).
In a more subtle way, Williams also identifies himself with Constantine, the young writer, mostly by reading into this character the anguish, despair and sensitivity of the young Williams who was shy, passionate, and even contemplates suicide [5, p. 10]. Williams’ Trigorin, despite his obvious cynicism, sounds affectionate and compassionate towards both Constantine and Nina, projecting the playwright’s own bitter personal experience and disappointments. Making Trigo-rin rather than Constantine the protagonist in the play moves the spotlight from Nina to Arkadina. Their dynamic is central to the Williams’s version. Arkadina’s threat to blackmail Trigorin if he abandons her, turns Arkadina into one of Williams’s «monster woman» characters, adding an emphatic oedipal touch to the play. Arkadina is disguised as a portrait of his mother who had the same taste for clothes and who had also aspired to be an actress.
Other characters also underwent a reinterpretation. Nina, Chekhov’s main heroine, reminds us of Williams’s sister Rose, a feature in many other plays, particularly in The Glass Menagerie. However, Williams’s Nina is stronger, more assertive; he adds vigor into her characterization by reducing Nina’s long monologues and famous soliloquies. When she returns for the last meeting with Trigorin she summarizes their lives in one sentence: «Well, so it’s gone - our youth». Williams is true to Chekhov’s symbolism in Nina - her connection with the lake; yet the most powerful words expressing this connection are issued by Trigorin: «What the lake tells us is what God tells us - we just don’t know the language».
The stylistic peculiarities of Williams’ interpretation of the best-known Chekhov’s play were brilliantly summarized in Allean Hale’s introduction to the play [5, p. 9-22]. While some of her points are subject to argument, she targets the main difference between the two «birds». Williams’ The Seagull tends to demonstrate
what Chekhov narrates. It is more vigorous and dynamic with more attention to the staging. Williams’s Seagull uncovers what Chekhov keeps buried. The same distinction is true for the humor in the play. Chekhov’s humor is more subtle, mingled with sorrow and pity. Williams injects more obvious comedy [5, p. 15].
All this makes the work of the American master more expressionistic, emphasizing the characters’ emotions, passions and motives, while Chekhov’s tone of voice is more impressionistic, he paints people in subdued hues, actions happen incidentally, as they would in real life. Nor is the Russian setting of great importance to the Chekhov drama. Williams, on the other hand, brings the reader to the American south, to the state of Tennessee, at least spiritually, despite the nominally Russian characters setting. He tried to give the play a more contemporary treatment, a more theatrical excitement. His Seagull was a chance to engage deeply with the singular lyricism, tenderness, violence, desire, laughter and tragedy that characterize Williams’s dramatic works and life.
Bibliography:
1. Saddik Annette J. Contemporary American Drama.
2. Bigsby C.W. A Critical Introduction to Twentieth -Century American Drama. Volume2: Williams, Miller, Albee. - Cambridge University Press, 1984.
3. Gunn Drewey W. More than a Little Chekhovian: The Seagull as a Source for the Characters // «The Glass Menagerie». Modern Drama. - 33.3. - (Sept. 1990): 313-21.
4. Tennessee Williams. A Guide to research and Performance / Ed. by Philip C. Kolin. - Westport, Conn.:Greenwood Press, 1998.
5. Tennessee Williams. The Notebook of Trigorin. A Free Adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull / Edited, with an introduction by Allean Hale. - University of South, Sewanee, Tennessee, 1997.
6. http://www.gradesaver.com/the-glass-menagerie/essays/essay1/ Chekhov’s Influence on the Work of Tennessee Williams by Dawn Burgess. - march 23, 2003.
