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Nina Mikhailovna Zarechnaya
A famous writer and Arkadina’s lover. Trigorin, like Dorn, Sorin, and Treplyov, has been interpreted as a shade of Chekhov himself. Trigorin’s famed monologue in Act Two about the misery of living a writing life has been said to reflect many of Chekhov’s own anxieties and insecurities about his obsessive, perfectionist nature. Trigorin is cool, detached, and quietly preoccupied with his own ego and success. He hates the impulse to cannibalize the events of his own life for use in his fiction—but can’t resist doing so time and time again, even when it hurts those closest to him. Trigorin claims to despise the fame his writing has brought him and to hate the attention—both positive and negative—he receives from his critics, and yet he is unable to stop feeding the machine of his fame by producing stories as rapidly as he can. Trigorin is numb to other people’s suffering, unable to see those around him as anything other than characters in the story of his own life. He seems to be attached to Arkadina solely because of her fame and the way she shamelessly flatters Trigorin in order to get the emotional response she wants from him. When he begins to fall in love with Nina Zarechnaya, he tries to find a way to have his cake and eat it, too, by summoning Nina to Moscow while still seeing Arkadina. It’s eventually revealed that Trigorin shunned Nina after she bore him a child that died in infancy, and returned to Arkadina. Trigorin, upon seeing the gull Treplyov has shot and laid at Nina’s feet in Act Two, comments upon the brilliance of his own idea for a short story about a man who “destroys” a country girl out of lack of anything better to do with his time—in a case of life imitating art, Trigorin does that very thing to Nina, leaving her disowned from her family and penniless in Moscow, saddled with unattainable dreams of reaching her former lover’s level of fame and adoration.
Boris Alekseevich Trigorin Quotes in The Seagull
The The Seagull quotes below are all either spoken by Boris Alekseevich Trigorin or refer to Boris Alekseevich Trigorin. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Act 1
Quotes
TREPLYOV: Are you excited?
NINA: Yes, very. Your Mama doesn’t count. I’m not afraid of her, but then there’s Trigorin… Acting with him in the audience frights and embarrasses me… A famous writer… Is he young?
TREPLYOV: Yes.
NINA: His stories are so wonderful!
TREPLYOV: (coldly) I wouldn’t know, I haven’t read them.
NINA: It isn’t easy to act in your play. There are no living characters in it.
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Act 2
Quotes
NINA: I thought that famous people were proud, inaccessible, that they despised the public and their own fame, their celebrity was a kind of revenge for blue blood and wealth being considered more respectable… But here they are crying, fishing, playing cards, laughing, and losing their tempers like anybody else…
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TRIGORIN: I know no peace, and I feel that I’m devouring my own life, that to give away honey to somebody out there in space I’m robbing my finest flowers of their pollen, tearing up all these flowers and trampling on their roots.
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NINA: For the joy of being a writer or an actress, I would put up with my family disowning me, poverty, disappointment; I would live in a garret and eat nothing but black bread, suffer dissatisfaction with myself and realize my own imperfection, but in return I would insist on fame… real, resounding fame…
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TRIGORIN: Just jotting down a note… A subject came to mind… (Putting away the notebook.) Subject for a short story: on the shores of a lake a young girl grows up, just like you; loves the lake, like a gull, is happy and free, like a gull. But by chance a man comes along, sees her, and, having nothing better to do, destroys her, just like this gull here.
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Act 3
Quotes
ARKADINA: That’s jealousy. People with no talent but plenty of pretentions have nothing better to do than criticize really talented people. It’s a comfort to them, I’m sure!
TREPLYOV: (Sarcastically.) Really talented people! (Angrily.) I’m more talented than the lot of you put together, if it comes to that! (Tears the bandage off his head.) You dreary hacks hog the front-row seats in the arts and assume that the only legitimate and genuine things are what you do yourselves, so you suppress and stile the rest! […]
ARKADINA: Mr. Avant-garde!
[…]
TREPLYOV: You skinflint!
ARKADINA: You scarecrow! (TREPLYOV sits down and weeps quietly.) You nobody!
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ARKADINA: You want to do something reckless, but I won’t have it, I won’t let you… (Laughs.) You’re mine… You’re mine… […] You’re all mine. You’re so talented, clever, our greatest living writer, you’re Russia’s only hope… You’ve got so much sincerity, clarity, originality, wholesome humor... With a single stroke you can pinpoint the most vital feature in a person or a landscape, your characters are so alive. Oh, no one can read you without going into ecstasy! […] Am I lying? […] Do I look like a liar? There, you see, I’m the only one who knows how to appreciate you; I’m the only one who tells you the truth, my darling, marvelous man…
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Act 4
Quotes
SHAMRAEV: (To Trigorin.) Hey, Boris Alekseevich, that thing of yours is still here.
TRIGORIN: What thing?
SHAMRAEV: A while back Konstantin Gavrilovich shot a gull, and you asked me to have it stuffed.
TRIGORIN: Don’t remember. (Thinking about it.) Don’t remember!
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NINA: You can’t imagine what that’s like, when you realize your acting is terrible. I’m a gull. No, that’s wrong… Remember when you shot down a gull? By chance a man comes along, sees, and with nothing better to do destroys… Subject for a short story. That’s wrong… (Rubs her forehead.) What was I saying?... I was talking about the stage. I’m not like that now… Now I’m a real actress… […] Now I know, understand, Kostya, that in our work—it doesn’t matter whether we act or we write—the main thing isn’t fame, glamour, the things I dreamed about, it’s knowing how to endure.
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Boris Alekseevich Trigorin Quotes in The Seagull
The The Seagull quotes below are all either spoken by Boris Alekseevich Trigorin or refer to Boris Alekseevich Trigorin. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Act 1
Quotes
TREPLYOV: Are you excited?
NINA: Yes, very. Your Mama doesn’t count. I’m not afraid of her, but then there’s Trigorin… Acting with him in the audience frights and embarrasses me… A famous writer… Is he young?
TREPLYOV: Yes.
NINA: His stories are so wonderful!
TREPLYOV: (coldly) I wouldn’t know, I haven’t read them.
NINA: It isn’t easy to act in your play. There are no living characters in it.
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 2
Quotes
NINA: I thought that famous people were proud, inaccessible, that they despised the public and their own fame, their celebrity was a kind of revenge for blue blood and wealth being considered more respectable… But here they are crying, fishing, playing cards, laughing, and losing their tempers like anybody else…
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Page Number and Citation:
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TRIGORIN: I know no peace, and I feel that I’m devouring my own life, that to give away honey to somebody out there in space I’m robbing my finest flowers of their pollen, tearing up all these flowers and trampling on their roots.
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NINA: For the joy of being a writer or an actress, I would put up with my family disowning me, poverty, disappointment; I would live in a garret and eat nothing but black bread, suffer dissatisfaction with myself and realize my own imperfection, but in return I would insist on fame… real, resounding fame…
Related Characters:
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
TRIGORIN: Just jotting down a note… A subject came to mind… (Putting away the notebook.) Subject for a short story: on the shores of a lake a young girl grows up, just like you; loves the lake, like a gull, is happy and free, like a gull. But by chance a man comes along, sees her, and, having nothing better to do, destroys her, just like this gull here.
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Act 3
Quotes
ARKADINA: That’s jealousy. People with no talent but plenty of pretentions have nothing better to do than criticize really talented people. It’s a comfort to them, I’m sure!
TREPLYOV: (Sarcastically.) Really talented people! (Angrily.) I’m more talented than the lot of you put together, if it comes to that! (Tears the bandage off his head.) You dreary hacks hog the front-row seats in the arts and assume that the only legitimate and genuine things are what you do yourselves, so you suppress and stile the rest! […]
ARKADINA: Mr. Avant-garde!
[…]
TREPLYOV: You skinflint!
ARKADINA: You scarecrow! (TREPLYOV sits down and weeps quietly.) You nobody!
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ARKADINA: You want to do something reckless, but I won’t have it, I won’t let you… (Laughs.) You’re mine… You’re mine… […] You’re all mine. You’re so talented, clever, our greatest living writer, you’re Russia’s only hope… You’ve got so much sincerity, clarity, originality, wholesome humor... With a single stroke you can pinpoint the most vital feature in a person or a landscape, your characters are so alive. Oh, no one can read you without going into ecstasy! […] Am I lying? […] Do I look like a liar? There, you see, I’m the only one who knows how to appreciate you; I’m the only one who tells you the truth, my darling, marvelous man…
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Act 4
Quotes
SHAMRAEV: (To Trigorin.) Hey, Boris Alekseevich, that thing of yours is still here.
TRIGORIN: What thing?
SHAMRAEV: A while back Konstantin Gavrilovich shot a gull, and you asked me to have it stuffed.
TRIGORIN: Don’t remember. (Thinking about it.) Don’t remember!
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NINA: You can’t imagine what that’s like, when you realize your acting is terrible. I’m a gull. No, that’s wrong… Remember when you shot down a gull? By chance a man comes along, sees, and with nothing better to do destroys… Subject for a short story. That’s wrong… (Rubs her forehead.) What was I saying?... I was talking about the stage. I’m not like that now… Now I’m a real actress… […] Now I know, understand, Kostya, that in our work—it doesn’t matter whether we act or we write—the main thing isn’t fame, glamour, the things I dreamed about, it’s knowing how to endure.
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