by Anton Chekhov,
trans. by Jean-Claude van Itallie
The writer TRIGORIN is a celebrity author in Moscow, but when a young woman, NINA, expresses her admiration, TRIGORIN vents his true feelings about this obsessive pursuit.
Scene
At the estate of Sorin, a civil servant in provincial Russia.
Time
The present in 1904.
TRIGORIN:
What’s so beautiful about writing?
[He looks at his watch.]
I have to go back to work. Excuse me. I’m going in—
[He stops himself, laughs.]
You stepped on my toes, as they say. You’ve made me angry and excited. So let’s talk. Let’s talk about my bright beautiful life . . . Where shall we begin?
[He reflects a moment.]
You know how it is with an obsession. The moon, for instance—day and night someone thinks only of the moon. Well, I have a moon. Day and night I’m obsessed—I must write, I must write, I must write. I barely finish a novel when I must write another, then a third, then a fourth. I write without stopping, at lightning speed. It’s the only way I can write. What’s bright and beautiful about that? I talk to you, I’m excited, but at the same time I can’t forget the unfinished story waiting on my desk. I see that cloud. It’s shaped like a grand piano. Instantly I take note—a cloud sailed by shaped like a grand piano. I smell heliotrope. I take note—a sickly smell, the widow’s color. I’ll use that to capture a summer evening. I capture every word we say, and lock it in my literary storeroom. Who knows when it’ll be useful? When I’ve finished work, I race to the theatre, or go fishing—hoping to find rest. But no. A new idea drops into my head like a cannon ball, and I’m back at my desk—writing, writing, writing. I get no rest. I consume my life. To harvest honey for strangers, I rob my best blossoms of their pollen, tear up their petals and trample them. You think I’m crazy? Well, do people talk to me as if I were sane? What are you writing now?" they ask. “What masterpiece will you give us next?” I think all that attention and praise is like speaking kindly to a sick person, to deceive and soothe him before stealing up to carry him off to the madhouse, like Poprischin. And as for my young years, my best years—life was a torture. A beginning writer, especially an unlucky one, feels awkward and unwanted—the world doesn’t need him. His nerves are frazzled, he’s always on edge. But he can’t resist being around people in the arts and literature. They, of course, are not interested in him. They ignore him, while he’s too shy to even look at them. He’s like an incurable gambler with no money. I’d never met my readers, but I pictured them angry and suspicious. I had a deathly fear of theatre audiences. They terrified me. When a new play of mine was produced, I felt the dark-haired people in the audience were hostile, and the blondes cold and indifferent. It was horrible—torture.
Yes, I enjoy writing, and reading proofs. But as soon as something’s published, I hate it. I realize it is not at all what I meant—and I feel angry, I feel bad.
[He laughs.]
Then other people read it. “Yes,” they say, “charming and clever, but a long way from Tolstoy.” Or—“It’s good, but Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons is better.” Until I die they’ll say—“charming and clever, nothing more.” And on my tombstone they’ll write—“Here lies Trigorin—a good writer, but not as good as Turgenev.”