By Joe Straw
The above painting by Pierre Auguste Renoir – Luncheon of the Boating Party (1880 – 1881) reminds me of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull (1895). So vivid in its depiction of life, both works of art have an exquisite common thread. The lifelike characters in the painting express want as well as the characters in the play. The fascinating similarities of desire are captured in each of the artist’s medium. And interestingly enough the characters in each medium want someone other than the one they are with.
Alors s’il vous plait excusez l’esprit imaginative en moi.
Chekhov was in Paris in 1891 and there is little evidence he and Renoir met or that he even saw Renoir’s painting. One can only imagine. Perhaps they crossed paths on a chance meeting or a casual observation? For that time both artists managed to create an esthetic impression of their art in time and in different mediums.
The characters in the painting, and on a pleasant summer day, are happily inebriated by mid afternoon, noted by the empty glasses and bottles of wine they have consumed, each in their moment explore the fantasies of wanting that which, at the twinkling, they cannot have. And yet they daydream fulfilling an emotional need if only for one satisfying release.
The eyes mostly give it away. One can observe a painting and think of thousand of scenarios in which these characters interact within the space they occupy to the outer reaches of their imagination.
Renoir presents his friends, writers (Charles Effrussi), poet (Jules Laforgue), bureaucrat (Pierre Lestringez), artists (Paul Lhôte, and Gustav Caillebotte), actresses (Jeanne Samary, Ellen Andrée, and Angèle Legault), and others who have gathered much in the same way the characters in The Seagull have.
And so it is with the characters in The Seagull. Brought together on the Sorin estate for a summer of human contact. And in the cause of their gathering each character moves toward the things they want with obstacles coming in from every direction.
Irina Arkadina is an aging actress who desperately wants to hold onto her world, her life in the theatre. She tolerates those around her, acting much like the woman in the right background in black gloves; she lives only for that one thing, adulating from her admiring fans. For now, at her country estate, she marks time, recharging her batteries, strengthening her craft with human interaction, but, then again, keeping all of them at a distance.
Constatine Treplieff, (25) her son, has questionable skills as a playwright. He espouses the current despairing reflections of theatre art in order to create a new form of theatre. He has found someone he desires, but he is also an all-consuming emotional being, draining the life of those around him. He is desperate in his wants and desires and will have them at all costs. His talents and his wants are misguided.
Constatine is possibly the man in stripped jacket hovering over what he cannot have, or he may be the man far center in the background taking notes without a pencil in his hand unaware of the things said to him from the man in the top hat.
The setting of the play is at the Sorin summer getaway, which happens to be a working farm. There is a pond in the background and center stage, a makeshift stage, with workers engaged in the final setup before the performance. The river and the sailboats give us that same impression.
Masha and Medviedenko enter coming in from a walk to observe the performance. They are there a trite early.
Medvidenko. “Why do you always wear morning?”
Masha. “I dress in black to match my life. I am unhappy.”
Simon Medviedenko is a schoolmaster and is a penny pincher who barely gets by having to support his mother, his two sisters and his younger brother on a very meager salary. He is single and he puts his views of life out in the open so there are no misrepresentations of the kind of man he is much to his demise. He doesn’t put on false pretenses.
Masha Shamraeff is the aging daughter (22) of Ilia Shamraeff and his wife Paulina who are the caretakers of the Sorin estate. Masha, who is not well endowed, has her sights on Constantine knowing life with Simon will be as exciting as watching the grass grow in a drought. At present she bides her time but is always on the lookout for an alternative relationship. She may be the woman holding a glass to her lips thinking of ways to be with someone who would enrich her life.
But Simon Medviedenko, the schoolteacher, is always focused on the hunt and only on one prize, Masha.
Medviedenko: “There is no ground on which your soul and mine can meet. I love you. Too restless and sad to stay at home`, I tramp here every day, six miles and back, to be met only by your indifference.”
Medviedenko might have well been speaking to a deaf person. Masha’s heart is not with him. Her gaze is toward the house. She seeks the solace from someone else who can provide her with a better life.
Peter Sorin is Irina Arkadina’s older brother. He enjoys visiting with his relatives despite the noise of the countryside. He prefers to live in the city where he can be taken care of should he fall ill and succumb to his ailments. He feels at the ripe age of sixty-two that his dreams of being married and a writer are over. Although the dream is an ember within him is still very much alive.
Sorin. Do you know, my boy, I like literary men. I once passionately desired two things: to marry, and to become an author. I have succeeded in neither. It must be pleasant to be even an insignificant author.
Nina Zabietchnaya is an aspiring actress who desperately wants a relationship with a famous writer and not the person who has introduced her to the family. In the painting I imagine that she is represented by the woman learning on the railing looking into a world she desperately wants and cannot completely have, although, she tries mightily. (In real life that young lady is Alphonsine Fournaise daughter of the restaurant owner of the Maison Fournaise restaurant.)
Eugene Dorn, 55 years old, a doctor is suspected as having an infatuation with the famous actress but has his sights on another prey. I imagine Dorn to represent the bearded man leaning on the rail man (In real life Alphonse Fournaise) staring at the young man in the upper left corner. (In real life Jules Lafergue.) What ever his motives are they are sincere if not articulated.
Paulina Shamraeff is married to the manager of the Sorin estate Ilia and yet she wants Eugene, the doctor.
Paulina. Eugene my darling, my beloved, take me to you. Our time is short; we are not longer young; let us end deception and concealment, even though it is only at the end of our lives.
Eugene. I am fifty-five years old.
Well, obviously this is going nowhere but you can fault a woman for trying.
Boris Trigorin, the writer, is represented by the man in the brown suit facing away and looking out into the river. He is an entangled mass of thoughts, stealing the moments of people’s lives that come to him and jotting them down into his book. He is cleverly thinking of finding ways to bed the young woman of his dreams and asking for his partner to release him.
Trigorin. People sometimes walk in their sleep, and so I feel as if I were asleep, and dreaming of her as I stand here talking to you. My imagination is shaken by the sweetest and most glorious visions. Release me!
I don’t think I’ve completely made the case for all the characters in this painting matching to the characters in the play. Still in both, the players are engaged in confabulation, ironing out the minute details of their lives, sometimes in mindful agitation and discomforting intimacy. Both works of art are infinitely enlightening and deserving of another look.
