The Sea-Gull | Page 5

you.
TREPLIEFF. [Pulling a flower to pieces] She loves me, loves me not;
loves--loves me not; loves--loves me not! [Laughing] You see, she

doesn't love me, and why should she? She likes life and love and gay
clothes, and I am already twenty-five years old; a sufficient reminder to
her that she is no longer young. When I am away she is only thirty-two,
in my presence she is forty-three, and she hates me for it. She knows,
too, that I despise the modern stage. She adores it, and imagines that
she is working on it for the benefit of humanity and her sacred art, but
to me the theatre is merely the vehicle of convention and prejudice.
When the curtain rises on that little three-walled room, when those
mighty geniuses, those high-priests of art, show us people in the act of
eating, drinking, loving, walking, and wearing their coats, and attempt
to extract a moral from their insipid talk; when playwrights give us
under a thousand different guises the same, same, same old stuff, then I
must needs run from it, as Maupassant ran from the Eiffel Tower that
was about to crush him by its vulgarity.
SORIN. But we can't do without a theatre.
TREPLIEFF. No, but we must have it under a new form. If we can't do
that, let us rather not have it at all. [Looking at his watch] I love my
mother, I love her devotedly, but I think she leads a stupid life. She
always has this man of letters of hers on her mind, and the newspapers
are always frightening her to death, and I am tired of it. Plain, human
egoism sometimes speaks in my heart, and I regret that my mother is a
famous actress. If she were an ordinary woman I think I should be a
happier man. What could be more intolerable and foolish than my
position, Uncle, when I find myself the only nonentity among a crowd
of her guests, all celebrated authors and artists? I feel that they only
endure me because I am her son. Personally I am nothing, nobody. I
pulled through my third year at college by the skin of my teeth, as they
say. I have neither money nor brains, and on my passport you may read
that I am simply a citizen of Kiev. So was my father, but he was a
well-known actor. When the celebrities that frequent my mother's
drawing-room deign to notice me at all, I know they only look at me to
measure my insignificance; I read their thoughts, and suffer from
humiliation.
SORIN. Tell me, by the way, what is Trigorin like? I can't understand

him, he is always so silent.
TREPLIEFF. Trigorin is clever, simple, well-mannered, and a little, I
might say, melancholic in disposition. Though still under forty, he is
surfeited with praise. As for his stories, they are--how shall I put
it?--pleasing, full of talent, but if you have read Tolstoi or Zola you
somehow don't enjoy Trigorin.
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.
TREPLIEFF. [Listening] I hear footsteps! [He embraces his uncle] I
cannot live without her; even the sound of her footsteps is music to me.
I am madly happy. [He goes quickly to meet NINA, who comes in at
that moment] My enchantress! My girl of dreams!
NINA. [Excitedly] It can't be that I am late? No, I am not late.
TREPLIEFF. [Kissing her hands] No, no, no!
NINA. I have been in a fever all day, I was so afraid my father would
prevent my coming, but he and my stepmother have just gone driving.
The sky is clear, the moon is rising. How I hurried to get here! How I
urged my horse to go faster and faster! [Laughing] I am so glad to see
you! [She shakes hands with SORIN.]
SORIN. Oho! Your eyes look as if you had been crying. You mustn't
do that.
NINA. It is nothing, nothing. Do let us hurry. I must go in half an hour.
No, no, for heaven's sake do not urge me to stay. My father doesn't
know I am here.
TREPLIEFF. As a matter of fact, it is time to begin now. I must call the
audience.

SORIN. Let me call them--and all--I am going this minute. [He goes
toward the right, begins to sing "The Two Grenadiers," then stops.] I
was singing that once when a fellow-lawyer said to me: "You have a
powerful voice, sir." Then he thought a moment and added, "But it is a
disagreeable one!" [He goes out laughing.]
NINA. My father and his