The Sea Gull (1968)

David Warner: Konstantin, Her Son

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Quotes 

• Konstantin Treplev : [speaking to his uncle]  When the curtain goes up, on a room with 3 walls, lit by artificial lights, and these great artists, these high priests of art start imitating people eating, drinking, loving, moving about, wearing their humdrum clothes, when out of a few vulgar images and sentences they try to extract a moral, just a very little one, and that's got to be adaptable and convenient and safe for domestic use. Well, enough of the same old thing, over and over and over again in a thousand variations. I just take to my heels and run like Maupassant when he ran from the Eiffel Tower because of its vulgarity.

  Pjotr Nikolayevich Sorin : [starts to applaud]  You can't do without it! Without the theater, i mean.

  Konstantin Treplev : We need change... we need new forms... and if we can't find them, it would be better to have nothing at all.

• Dr. Yevgeny Dorn : You've chosen a subject from the field of abstract ideas. That was the right thing to do, because a work of art has got to express a great idea. Only serious things can be really beautiful. But you're so pale!

  Konstantin Treplev : So, *you* think I should go on?

  Dr. Yevgeny Dorn : I do. But only write about the really important, the eternal things. You know, I've lived a very varied sort of life. Enjoyed every minute of it. I've been happy, I suppose. But if I'd ever experienced the kind of... spiritual exultation that artists experience, when they're creating something, I think I would've abandoned my material shell with contempt... saw it up to heaven... and left the world behind.

• Konstantin Treplev : [Speaking to his uncle, Pjotr Nikolayevich]  There you are, you see. My mother doesn't love me! Well, of course she doesn't. She wants to live, to love, to wear bright clothes! I'm already 25 and I'm a constant reminder to her that she's no longer young. When I'm not there, she's 32, but when I am, she has to admit to 48, and she detests me for that.

• Konstantin Treplev : [Speaking to his uncle, Pjotr Nikolayevich]  She knows very well that the theater as it is means *nothing* to me. She *adores* it! She sees herself serving humanity. She thinks of the theater as some kind of sacred art. Well, as far as I'm concerned, the theater as it is today is dead! A mere convention.

• Konstantin Treplev : [speaking to his uncle, Pjotr Nikolayevich]  I love my mother. I love her deeply. But she leads an absurd life. She's always drifting around with that novelist. There's always something about her in the gossip columns, and it all wears me out. Sometimes I'm overcome by the sheer egotism of her simple soul.

  [continues, as his uncle soberly listens] 

  Konstantin Treplev : I bitterly regret that my mother's a famous actress, and it seems to me that I would be far happier if she were just an ordinary woman. Uncle, can you think of any situation more desperate and detestable? There she is, surrounded by a great crowd of celebrities: artists, writers... and out of the whole lot, I am the only non-entity. What am I? Who am I?

  [continues, as his uncle soberly listens] 

  Konstantin Treplev : I walked out of my third year at the university because of circumstances, as they say, over which the editor accepts no responsibility. No talent, without a penny to my name. According to my passport I am a tradesman of the city of Kiev - like my father was, but he was a famous actor as well. So, when all these famous artists and writers did finally condescend to pay some attention to me, it was as if they were measuring my mediocrity. I could see what they were thinking. The humiliation was unbearable.

• Nina : I know now Kostya, that in our work, it doesn't matter whether we act or write. The main thing is not fame, nor anything spectacular in all that I dreamed of. The main thing is to know how to endure. How to carry one's cross and to have faith. I have faith now. And it doesn't hurt so much. But when I think of my vocation, then I'm not afraid of life anymore.

  Konstantin Treplev : [Quietly, somberly]  You found your way. You know where you're going. I'm still wandering in a world of dreams and images. Without knowing what it's all about, or whether I have anything to offer. I have no faith... I don't know what my vocation is.

• Nina : [Konstantin abruptly shoves a dead sea gull in Nina's face as she runs up to him]  Oh, what's this?

  Konstantin Treplev : I was vile enough to kill this sea gull today. I lay it at your feet.

  [throws the dead bird down at her feet] 

  Nina : [slightly shocked]  What's the matter with you?

  Konstantin Treplev : Very soon I shall kill myself in the same way!

  Nina : This isn't like you at all.

  Konstantin Treplev : Yes, but then you're not the same as you used to be, either. You've changed. Your eyes are cold. My presence embarrasses you.

  Nina : You've become so irritable lately. You talk in a strange kind of way - all in symbols. This sea gull too is apparently some kind of symbol. Well, forgive me if I don't understand you. I'm probably too simple to understand you.

  Konstantin Treplev : It all began that night when my play turned out to be such a stupid failure. Women *never* forgive failures. I burnt it. Every scrap of it!

• Konstantin Treplev : [talking to Nina]  If only you knew how wretched I feel. Your sudden coldness frightens me. It stuns me. It's as if I woke up one morning to find that the lake had dried up or was draining away.

  Konstantin Treplev : [stoops down and picks up the dead sea gull]  You said just now... that you were too simple to understand me. What is there to understand? You didn't like the play. You despise my work. You think me mediocre, insignificant... just a nobody. How well *I* understand it. How WELL! It's as if I had a nail stuck in my brain and I HATE it as I hate my own pride that sucks my life's blood away like a snake!

  Konstantin Treplev : [Nina's gaze is distracted by Trigorin, walking in the distance. Konstantin turns to look]  There's the *real* genius. Look at him: walking like Hamlet, even down to the book. Words, words, words. That sun hasn't even come near you, but you're smiling already. Your eyes are melting in its rays. I don't want to be in your way!

  [throws the dead sea gull away and runs off] 

• Konstantin Treplev : He's intelligent, naive, perhaps a little inclined to melancholy. He's decent enough. He's now 45 and he's already famous and bored stiff with the whole thing. His writing, I'd say is pleasant and not without talent. But, Tolstoy or Zola, I wouldn't want to start reading Trigorin.

  Pjotr Nikolayevich Sorin : I must admit, dear boy, I'm rather drawn to literary men, myself. There was a time, in my youth, when there where two things I wanted passionately: to get married and to be a man of letters. But, I did neither. No, in deed. It would be nice to have been a mediocre writer, even, you know.

• Nina : It's not easy to act in your play, you know. There are no living characters in it.

  Konstantin Treplev : What would we want with living characters? Its no good showing life as it is or how we would like it to be; but, as it we see it in all those fantastic dreams, our most hideous nightmares.

  Nina : There is so little action in your play and I think a play should always have some love in it.

• Semyon Medvedenko : May I ask you, doctor, what town did you like most - when you went abroad?

  Dr. Yevgeny Dorn : Genoa.

  Konstantin Treplev : Why Genoa?

  Dr. Yevgeny Dorn : I loved the crowds in the streets there. When you walk out of your hotel in the evening, you find the whole street bustling and alive with people. You join the crowd and you wander aimlessly, here and there, along a broken line. You become part of it. Your mind merges with everyone elses. And you begin to believe, in fact, in the existence of one Universal Soul.

• Konstantin Treplev : I used to get letters from her. Intelligent, interesting, warm letters. She never complained; but, I could feel that she was desperately unhappy. The nervous tension starred at you in every line that she wrote and her imagination became slightly unbalanced. She used to sign her letters: The Sea Gull!

• Konstantin Treplev : How easy it is to be the philosopher on paper and how hard it is to be one in reality.

• Konstantin Treplev : I'm always talking so much about new styles, but I feel as if I'm slowly slipping back into the old cliches. "The poster on the wall announced." "The pale face in it's frame of dark hair announced" - frame... I'll begin with the hero being woken up by the noise of the rain and leave out all the rest.

• Konstantin Treplev : Yes, I've become more and more convinced that the whole thing isn't a matter of old or new styles. When a man writes without thinking about style, he writes because the words flow freely from his heart.

• Nina : I know now, Konstantin, that in our work, it doesn't matter whether we act or write. The main thing is not fame, nor anything spectacular and all that I dreamed of, the main thing is to know how to endure. How to carry one's cross and have faith. I have faith now and it doesn't hurt so much. And when I think of my vocation, then I'm not afraid of life anymore.

  Konstantin Treplev : You've found your way. You know where you're going. I'm still wandering in a world of dreams and images, without knowing what it's all about or whether I have anything to offer. I have no faith. I don't know what my vocation is.