Chekhov speaking to Gorky about teachers

He [Chekhov] suddenly fell silent, coughed, glanced sideways at me, and smiled his gentle, kind smile which was always so irresistibly attractive and evoked especial and keen attention to his words.

"You find it boring, listening to my fantasies? But I like talking about this. If you knew how much the Russian village needs a good, intelligent, educated teacher! Here in Russia he needs to be given certain special conditions, and this should be done as soon as possible if we realize that without broad popular education the state will collapse like a house built of badly baked bricks! A teacher needs to be an actor, an artist, passionately devoted to his work, but in Russia he's a laborer, a badly educated man who goes to teach village children with the same enthusiasm with which he would go into penal exile. He is hungry, ignorant, frightened of losing his daily bread. Yet, he ought to be the most important man in the village, able to answer any questions the villagers put to him; so that they recognize in him a force worthy of attention and respect, and no one dares to shout at him, humiliate him as now everyone does: the village constable, the rich shopkeeper, the village priest, the local police superintendent, the local school patron, the village elder, and the official with the title of school inspector, who does not concern himself with improving school education but only with scrupulous adherence to district circulars. Is it not folly to pay a mere pittance to a man who is called upon to educate the people--you understand?--educate the people! It should not be permitted that such a man is obliged to dress in tatters, shiver from cold in damp, drafty schools, breathe in the fumes from a broken-down stove, develop laryngitis, rheumatism and tuberculosis at the age of thirty. It's a shame on all of us! Our teacher lives for eight or nine months of the year like a hermit; he has no one to talk to; he becomes dull from loneliness, lacking books and entertainment. And if he sends for his colleagues, he's accused of unreliability--a stupid word used by the crafty to frighten fools! It's all revolting--the abuse of a man who is doing enormous and terribly important work. You know, when I see a teacher, I feel embarrassed by his timidity, his shabby clothes; I have the feeling that I am somehow guilty of the fact that he is so poor--honestly."

Anton Chekhov and His Times compiled by Andrei Turkov. 1995. Page 151-2.

Stanislavisky on Trigorin and Nina

With almost childish pleasure he visited the dirty dressing rooms. He loved not only the footlights, but the backstage of the theater as well. The performance pleased him, but he criticized some of the performers, including my role as Trigorin.

"You act splendidly," he said, "only that's not my character. I didn't write that."

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"He has checkered trousers and shoes with worn soles."

That was all he said in reply to my repeated questions.

"Checkered trousers, mind, and he smokes a cigar like this," he rather clumsily illustrated his words. I was able to get nothing more from him. His comments were always graphic and brief. They were striking and memorable, like charades with which you continued to wrestle until you had solved them.

This particular charade I resolved only six years later, when we staged our second production of The Seagull.

Indeed, why had I chose to play Trigorin as a dandy, in white trousers and shoes bain de mer? [beach shoes] Was it because women fell in love with him? Was such dress typical of the Russian writer? It was not, of course, the checkered trousers, worn shoes, and cigar that mattered. Nina Zarechnaya, her head full of the pleasant but empty little stories of Trigorin, falls in love not with him, but with her own girl's dream. In this lies the tragedy of the wounded seagull. In this cruel irony lies the harshness of life. The first love of a provincial girl notices neither the checkered trousers, nor the worn shoes, nor the foul-smelling cigar. This travesty of life is recognized when it is too late, when a life has been broken, the sacrifices made, and love has turned into a habit. New illusions are needed in order to be able to continue living, and Nina looks for them in faith.

Anton Chekhov and His Times compiled by Andrei Turkov. 1995. Page 96-7.

Gorky's memories of Chekhov

"The Russian is a strange creature!" he [Chekhov] said once. "He lets everything through, like a sieve. In his youth he avidly fills his soul with everything that comes his way, and then, after thirty, all that remains is some gray waste. In order to live a good, humane life one needs to work! Work with love, with faith. But that's something we are unable to do. Having built two or three fine houses, the architect becomes a card player, plays for the rest of his life, or else spends it sitting backstage in the theater.

Anton Chekhov and His Times compiled by Andrei Turkov. 1995. Page 159.

Nina from The Seagull

Now I know, I understand, Kostya, that in our work... acting or writing... what matters is not fame, not glory, not what I used to dream about, it's how to endure, to bear my cross, and have faith. I have faith and it all doesn't hurt me so much, and when I think of my calling I'm not afraid of life.

"The Sea Gull" from Best Plays by Chekhov. 1956, Page 67.

Trepleff in The Seagull

Students had come to be considered a dubious and dangerous body of young men who could not even be allowed to meet in small groups in each others' rooms, still less to have any kind of societies or clubs. Even in 1914 H W Williams wrote of them: "The students are held to their book-learning, their minds are fed on abstractions, they are artificially held aloof from the normal process of life that creates its own forms and build strong characters. It is no wonder that students in this position become absorbed in abstract politics, or when bitter experience has shown the futility of politics, are oppressed by the sheer emptiness of life, grow reckless, live morally and materially from hand to mouth, and in large numbers find refuge in suicide."

Chekhov and His Russia: a sociological study by W H Bruford. 1947. Page 147-8.

The Tale of a Manor

She told him that while he had been mad he had saved her life. He had aroused her from death, she continued, and protected her. But that was not enough for her; she wished for himself.

When she kissed him he felt that a healing balm was poured into his sick soul, but he had not yet dared to believe that it was love which impelled her. But her anger and her tears left him no room for doubt. He was loved, poor monster.

. . . .

Ingrid had remained silent. She was weary after a heavy task, but she was also quiet as one who had carried it out in the best way. She knew that she had victory in her hands.

Hede at last broke silence. "I promise you that I will endure," he said.

"Thank you," she replied.

Nothing more was said just then.

Hede felt he could not tell her how he loved her. It could not be said in words, but had to be shown every day and every hour as long as life lasted.

The Tale of a Manor by Selma Lagerloff. 1923. Pages 170-172.