Narrative features of A. P. Chekhov's play "The Seagull"

Krasnikov Yaroslav Evgen'yevich ORCID: 0009-0002-8188-6845 Lecturer, Department of Theoretical and Historical Poetics, Russian State University for the Humanities; Lecturer, Department of Humanity Disciplines, Institute of Theatre Art named after People's Artist of USSR I.D. Kobzon 141446, Russia, Moscow, Miusskaya Ploshchad str., 6 yar-krasnikov@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Narratology and narrative

One of the leading places on the modern horizon of humanitarian knowledge today is occupied by narratology. Some ideas about narrative can already be found in ancient rhetoric and poetics ^{[1, pp. 666-667]}, the term itself has Latin roots (from Lat. narratio) and literally means "exposition, narration". The secret of the popularity of narratology, which in recent decades has become a separate branch of literary criticism, lies, on the one hand, in the interdisciplinary nature of such a perspective of studying texts of various kinds and properties, on the other hand, in the appeal of narratology not so much to the formal side of speech, as in the interest in its psychological background, emphasis on the speaker, his cognitive features.

            Such a type of discourse as a narrative (unlike the performative and others that are adjacent in this series, which do not yet have well-established generally recognized names) involves telling a story, recreating semantically marked event episodes in the verbal fabric that make up either a deterministic chain of facts, or are isolated ones that took place in the past and form part of a reflexive life the experience reproduced in the narrative act that is currently taking place. This implies, firstly, the existence of a time distance between the "event that is being told" and the so-called "storytelling event" ^{[2, p. 403]}. The second significant point in the narrative form of verbal practices is that the narrated is interpreted by the speaker as an event or a chain of events, implicitly (in some cases explicitly) endowed with the properties of uniqueness, "singularity" ^{[3, p. 16]}, that is, it has special significance for a particular subject of speech. The eventfulness of the fact voiced in the act of narration emphasizes its ability to significantly change the situation after its implementation, relative to the situation preceding the event, succinctly defined by Yu. M. Lotman as "moving across the border of the semantic field" ^{[4, p. 282]}.

             Finally, a fundamentally important instance in the structure of the narrative is the figure of the speaker. According to the textbook expression of M. M. Bakhtin, the narrator in the act of telling initiated by him is endowed with the statuses of "witness and judge" at the same time ^{[5, p. 360]} in relation to the story he is telling. Thus, a narrator is a subject of speech, in whose consciousness a certain segment of life is refracted, differing in the status of eventfulness, and is verbally presented to the recipient (listening or reading) from the standpoint of his subjective vision.

            To date, experts in the field of narratology have developed some tools that allow to identify or reconstruct the features of a particular narrative discourse: the speaker's characteristic picture of the world and the modality of the utterance, more or less clearly manifested in his speech; the perspective and points of view correlated with the time and place of the events being told, as well as the ideological and speech characteristics of the subject; intrigue, a component of the main line, integrating the narrative into a single whole, etc.  Following the work of Wayne Booth, the category of "unreliable narrator" has become widespread ^{[6, p. 169]}, which assumes not just the subjectivity of the speaker's view, but its extreme degree, reaching its limit to a story that has practically nothing in common with the reality of the artistic world of a particular work. On the one hand, such a refraction of events becomes "a constructive difficulty, the overcoming of which leads to the true meaning of what is being told" ^{[7, p. 26]}, on the other hand, it allows the reader to understand the special properties of the speaker's nature, the reasons for such speech behavior.

            A special sphere of application of the narratological theory is the sphere of artistic writing. Without a narrative, literary works of an epic kind are unthinkable, which are inseparably linked with the categories of the plot, the event, and, of course, the figure of the narrator.

Narrative in Drama

The consequences of the expansion of narratological methods are also the attempts of individual researchers to see the narrative type of discourse in such kinds of literature as lyrics and drama ^[8]. A number of experts suggest talking about the tacitly, wordlessly present figure of the narrator, whose function is to dispose frames of mental vision, episodes, phenomena and scenes. V. I. Tyupa convincingly calls the attempts made to consider the phenomenon of "narrative without a narrator" a "paradoxical <...> loss of the boundaries of the basic category, disastrous for any branch of knowledge, thereby losing its rhizome" ^{[9, p. 27]}. Nevertheless, to talk about the narrative in relation to the two above-mentioned literary genera in a global sense, as a constructive principle, it is very difficult, since they "lack such an integrating intermediary figure between the creative (author) and receptive (reader, viewer) subjects of aesthetic communication" ^{[9, p. 168]}.

At the same time, a dramatic utterance, not being holistically narrative, contains narrative elements in its construction, noticeable to a greater or lesser extent depending on the era, genre, individual author's characteristics. Thus, O. M. Freudenberg sees in the episodes of the ancient tragedy, where "the characters come from the other world and tell about what they saw with their own eyes <...> classic examples of ancient narrative" ^{[10, p. 276]}.

            Speaking about the possibility of studying narratives in drama, we should not lose sight of the specifics of the stage action, which assumes that we learn about everything that happens on stage from the replicas of the actors. The entire text is voiced by the characters (with the exception of a relatively small part of the author's remarks, which are reproduced nonverbally: through subject and interior codes, intonation prescribed by the actors, paratext, various kinds of nonverbal behavior: poses, gestures, facial expressions, reactions), that is, the viewer or reader can learn firsthand about off-stage episodes intentionally left the playwright behind the scenes, the backstories of the characters, and also see the different assessment of the actors when rethinking these events.

Such stories, told by the actors of the dramaturgical texts of history, we propose to call "stage narratives" ^{[11, p. 115]}. The characteristic "scenic" in this case is used in a meaning similar to the understanding of Patrice Pavi, who speaks of the opposition of "dramatic space" and "scenic space" ^{[12, pp. 260-264]}, that is, significant not for the world of heroes, but for the addressee of the text – the reader and the viewer. Regardless of the prospects of being or not being staged at the theater, the dramatic text by its compositional structure implicitly assumes the unfolding of the action on stage. The text is pronounced by the actors in the space of the scene, as well as in the time interval of the act, which is also called a "scene".

Also, speaking about dramaturgical texts in the aspect of narratology, it is worth noting an approach that considers remaroch complexes (in the process of the evolution of dramaturgy, less and less performing only technical functions) as a kind of narrative ^{[13, p. 16]}. Moreover, in recent dramaturgy, genres that are intergenerational in nature are becoming popular: "monodrama", plays in the verbatim technique, etc., which allow many researchers to talk about the obvious tendency to epization in dramaturgy ^[14] and, consequently, the growing importance of narratives uttered by the characters on stage. The key trends and various aspects of the narrative of Russian dramaturgy in historical perspective were considered by us in the corresponding article "Thesaurus of Historical Narratology" ^{[15, pp. 22-26]}.

Features of narrative in Chekhov's dramaturgy and in the play "The Seagull"

            A. P. Chekhov's dramaturgy was and continues to be a special page in the history of not only the national theater, but in the whole world drama. It is impossible to deny the innovation of methods and techniques that allowed the author to create texts that attract writers-followers with undying force to turn again and again to the plots of Chekhov's plays, creating a kind of intertextual dialogue with the still relevant classic; theater and film directors who are able to look at all seemingly familiar texts from a different angle and to see new depths that were previously hidden from our view; to researchers-humanitarians who unite in their sincere curiosity and impulse to unravel the secret of the eternal youth of Chekhov's texts-the playwright, charming with their simultaneous simplicity and incomprehensibility.

            One of the surprises for contemporaries was, as it seemed to them, the eventlessness of the stage action, especially noticeable in comparison with the vaudeville tradition, the core of the plot of which was a pronounced conflict of love-romantic, everyday, etc., associated with unexpected event turns of an occasional nature, the resolution of which took place in front of the audience. The exchange of perofrmative replicas, which were previously the locomotive of the action of plays, in A. P. Chekhov's dramaturgy blurred its ground, often turning into a form of exchange of monologues, a specific form of "dialogue of the deaf", etc., which gives researchers of the language of Chekhov's dramaturgy every right to talk about "semantic and communicative weakness of dialogues" ^{[16, p. 282]}. The reasons for the failure of communication can be called the increased self-reflexivity of the characters addressing their speeches to the interlocutors, or the recipient's excessive immersion in his world, the inability to adequately hear the speaker.

An interesting feature of the poetics of Chekhov's plays is the fragmentary exposure of stories about the heroes' past. Speaking about the poetics of Chekhov's dramaturgy (and his followers), E. Bentley notes: "Now the character acquires a life story, and if the playwright cannot present it in one monologue, he reports information about the character's past life in pieces here and there, so that the reader or viewer can later put them together" ^{[17, p. 78]}.

Highlighting the features of the narrative in the text of A. P. Chekhov's play "The Seagull", the statements of the characters containing a narrative element can be classified according to the type of connection with the plot. So, it's worth starting with replicas representing the prehistories of the actors. To this category of stage narratives can be attributed the memories of Kostya Treplev about his young years, lived, as it seems to him, in the shadow of maternal glory, unsuccessfully:

"I left the third year of university due to circumstances, as they say, independent of the editorial office, no talents, no money, and according to my passport I am a Kiev philistine. <...> So, when, in her living room, all these artists and writers turned their gracious attention to me, it seemed to me that they measured my insignificance with their views – I guessed their thoughts and suffered humiliation..." ^{[18, pp. 8-9]}.

The same category will also include the appeal of the fiction writer Trigorin to the past experience of creating and staging plays, speaking retrospectively in his monologue about his own writing path.:

"I was afraid of the audience, it was scary to me, and when I had to stage my new play, it seemed to me every time that the brunettes were hostile, and the blondes were coldly indifferent..." ^{[18, p. 30]}.

Also, an example of an autorepresentation of a character affecting events that took place long before the framework of the stage action is Dr. Dorn's nostalgia, accompanied by longing for missed opportunities, an example of the so-called "zero eventfulness":

"You know, I have lived my life in a diverse and tasteful way, I am satisfied, but if I had to experience the uplift of spirit that artists have during creativity, then it seems to me that I would despise my material shell and everything that is peculiar to this shell, and would be carried away from the earth away to height" ^{[18, p. 19]}.

            Analyzing the lexical features of this kind of narratives-memories, we notice that the key semantic load in the story of prehistories is carried by verbal constructions presented in the forms of the past tense, the sign of perfection /imperfectness marks the singleness or, accordingly, the repetition of actions important to the hero; Dorn's hypothetical reflection on the non-accidental is represented by the form of the subjunctive mood. Negative constructions become significant for Chekhov's heroes in monologues about the past. In the speech of many narrator characters there are lexemes with pronounced negative connotations ("insignificance", "humiliation", "afraid", "hostile", etc.), the words about the doctor's past are more optimistic, however, on the one hand, these are mostly his dreams about the past, on the other hand, the absence of painful self-reflection can be correlated with his non-first-step position in the system of the characters of The Seagull. Also noteworthy is the presence of various word forms of the verb "to appear" in the presented confessional fragments, which can be interpreted as a linguistic marker of a high degree of self-awareness, openness to dialogue with the interlocutor or even with oneself past and present.

The following type of narratives, significant in the construction of Chekhov's plays, can be called, as it is thought, off-stage. This should include the narratives of the actors about the events that occur between the acts (in the "Seagull" there are three such gaps between the acts), and the events that occur at the time of the stage action, but hidden from the viewer and reader by the playwright.

As examples of narrative statements about inter- act events , one can cite the thoughts aloud of Polina Andreevna mamma about the successes of Kostya Treplev in the field of writing:

"No one thought or guessed that you, Kostya, would make a real writer. But, thank God, money began to be sent to you from magazines. <...> And he became beautiful ..." ^{[18, p. 46]}.

In part, this statement is of a performative nature, while at the same time it performs the functions of telling the reader about changes in the status of the actors during the intermission, and also characterizes the subject of the statement. In this case, Chekhov, as a playwright, omits unnecessary details related to the specification of the time distance between the former and the current status; it is important to change the state, which is explicated by the use of evaluative adjectives ("real", "beautiful"). Kostya, still beloved by Masha, is the only person endowed with the status of a subject in the event told by her mother: voices from the past are reduced to the negative pronoun "nobody", just as it is not particularly important which publishing house and who exactly pays for Konstantin's literary works - expressed by the predicate in an indefinite personal form; the result is important – the financial success of the writer's venture and the positive external changes caused by it.

            Another striking example relating to the type of narrative utterance indicated above is Nina Zarechnaya's monologue (sometimes interrupted by Treplev's reciprocal revelations) in the final act of The Seagull:

"...I haven't cried in two years. Late last night I went to look in the garden to see if our theater was intact. And he's still standing. I cried for the first time after two years, and I was relieved, it became clearer in my soul. <...> So, you have already become a writer... You're a writer, I'm an actress... We also got into a cycle with you... I lived joyfully, like a child - you wake up in the morning and sing; I loved you, dreamed of fame, and now? Tomorrow early in the morning to go to Yelets in the third class ..." ^{[18, p. 57]}.

Here, the importance of time markers draws attention to itself: constructions with numerals ("two years", "for the first time"); less concretizing, but no less closely related to the idea of chronology of events, the adverb "late", the conjunction "so", the demonstrative pronoun in a stable construction "so far", etc.; emphasis on specific subject details from the past. Which together speaks about the retrospective view of the heroine, the significance of events from the past, and, consequently, the events of her future and present that are inferior to this background.

            Culminating in tension is an event that happened behind the scenes, outside the stage space – the fatal shot of Konstantin. We will also learn about this through a narrative replica. At the same time, Dr. Dorn, explaining the reason for the frightening sound from behind the scenes, reproduces two different explanations for the reasons for this. First we see his remark:

"It must have burst something in my field pharmacy. Don't worry. <...> So it is. A flask of ether burst" ^{[18, p. 60]}.

This becomes a convincing explanation for Arkadina, who nevertheless instinctively felt with her mother's heart the danger that had once threatened her son. For a moment, the reader of The Seagull is also relieved that, as it seems, the trouble has passed. However, after that, the attentive recipient begins to feel the "unreliability" of the narrative act he has just witnessed, the untruthfulness of the speaker, which Dorn confesses to Trigorin in the final replica of the whole play, and at the same time to the audience waiting for the denouement of the dramatic intrigue.:

"Take Irina Nikolaevna away from here somewhere. The fact is that Konstantin Gavrilovich shot himself..." ^{[18, p. 60]}.

An important factor that allows us to masterfully reveal the characters of the characters brought out in the play are the situations of the narrative about those events, which were witnessed by the actual recipients of the play by A. P. Chekhov. Here we are, sitting behind a non-existent "fourth wall", as if we are observers of a situation of judicial debate spread across different scenes, where each witness or participant in the events presents his vision of what happened. And sometimes even perjury happens, when the speaker deliberately takes the position of an "unreliable narrator", then still often repenting of the act of mutual reconciliation.

The narrative remarks containing an assessment of the events that took place some time ago on the stage include statements about Konstantin's debut production: the indignant Arkadina; the incomprehensible, but good-natured Trigorin; the enthusiastic Dr. Dorn. When analyzing such statements and trying to identify the degree of sincerity or pathos, "playing to the public", etiquette politeness, etc., the most important criterion becomes the pragmatics of a particular speech utterance: by whom and for whom it is pronounced, how close the interlocutors are to the speaker, whether the persons mentioned in it are present on stage at the time of voicing the replica, finally, situational context of stage narrative.

            Another type of narrative in the speech of characters, specifically characteristic of the poetics of A. P. Chekhov's dramaturgical texts, are narrative inclusions or memories made, so to speak, on occasion, that is, they do not fundamentally change the further development of the plot. We propose to call them autonomous stage narratives. For example, Arkadina's memory:

"Take a look: an old lotto, which our late mother still played with us when we were children" ^{[18, p. 53]}.

An element of the objective world (like a "highly respected cabinet" from the "Cherry Orchard") causes the heroine to voice her own "inner speech" in a narrative form (L. S. Vygotsky's term).

Eventfully insignificant or completely insignificant autonomous narrative replicas are repeatedly uttered by the manager Shamraev (Simeonov-Pischik from the Cherry Orchard can also be counted among such comic characters acting in a kind of comic role of a "buffoon"). His entire eventful life experience splits up into a series of anecdotes, which, by the way, are not the fact that they are based on stories that he personally witnessed. The inappropriateness of these narrative inclusions into the general canvas of the conversation speaks either of the speaker's idleness, or of an inappropriate desire to attract attention to his person, which probably marks the playwright's slight sympathy for the character and behavior of this type.

Conclusion

It is impossible not to agree with the thesis of E. G. Dotsenko that "the role of narrative is high in the whole Chekhov theater" ^{[19, p. 31]}. The title and key characters of his plays reflect, doubt and distrust themselves in their narrative reassessments of past events, and the harmony of stage narratives and verbosity often become a sign of talkativeness and empty words in Chekhov's dramaturgy. At the same time, turning to the past in their memories, whether it is a reflection on the events of youth, a reassessment of what they have recently seen, or even a funny anecdotal incident, in the compositional and speech form of stage narratives, the actors demonstrate the peculiarities of their personality, reveal their character more fully, present the previously unknown secrets of their soul to the heroes-interlocutors and recipients of the artistic text.

In general, as was clearly demonstrated above, the texts of A. P. Chekhov's plays in general and "The Seagulls" in particular are fertile ground for a productive study of the narrative features of the dramatic kind of literature. Of course, this problem field is not limited to the proposed analysis and involves further development of the question of the relationship of drama and narrative.