The Seagull by Anton Chekhov is one of the greatest plays that I know, indeed, this is the third time I write about I, my other reviews on this and hundreds of other plays, books and films are on my blog, where the best you can find is probably this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html

 

The Seagull by Anton Chekhov is one of the greatest plays that I know, indeed, this is the third time I write about I, my other reviews on this and hundreds of other plays, books and films are on my blog, where the best you can find is probably this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html

 

 

10 out of 10

 

‘The Checkoff formula: you take a lot of characters, all miserable because of something they won't do, and let them talk without influencing each other for three acts, and at the last moment you introduce some arbitrary calamity, or some proposed change like a return to Petrograd or a holiday in the Cry-mere, which you know won't make any difference to any of them, and then you go on for ten minutes or so after the thing should have stopped even by your own standards, to show how delicate and unemphatic your art is…’

 

This was a quote from Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/lucky-jim-by-kingsley-amis-author-of.html but it was up there just for the elating sense of humor, otherwise, I am an admirer of Anton Chekhov, and I was thinking that the Russians have such brain power, so many luminaries…

 

It is astonishing to watch what lousy leaders they have been plagued with, from Ivan the Terrible to Stalin, the other commies, except Gorbachev perhaps, and now this villainous despot – on the other hand, America has something that is on the same abysmal level at the top – while their novelists are the crème de la crème

Anton Chekhov had such an impact on literature, theater https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-shooting-party-by-anton-chekhov-we.html and his shotgun formula is famous –‘if you have a gun in the first act, you must use it in the second, or third’, something along these lines

 

The Seagull opens with…a play within the play, the author is Konstantin Treplev, and he stages this creation of his, in front of his mother, Irina Arkadina, and guests and friends, the problem is that the parent is not respecting her son, she feels it is absurd (and it is really) and talks during the performance and misbehaves

The playwright is offended, furious and decides to draw the curtain, stop the play and express his frustration and chagrin, he seemed to have a romantic connection, going well, with Nina, the one who acts in his play, only the latter appears to be more impressed by Boris Trigorin, who is also a writer, only a famous one

 

Trigorin would be the one I identify with, first because he is passed middle age, and come tot think of it, with the advance of medicine, diets and exercise, I probably have less than his biological age, and thus closer to my status, then he puts lines on paper, which is what I do…voila, even if this is virtual, and he is successful, and I am not

The fact that this young, smart, vivacious woman is so interested in Trigorin gave me hope – or more like it, delusions of grandeur – there are some readers that have contacted me on Goodreads, asked for ‘friendship’, and in one or two cases, if I said ‘you look nice’, they reported me, and I got a warning from the site

 

Ergo, maybe I will have to move my wares and elucubrations elsewhere, and why not, the way it functions now is I get a little attention, but only based on the Reciprocity rule from the psychology classic Influence https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/03/influence-psychology-of-persuasion.html in vulgar terms, you scratch my back…

Konstantin Treplev is quite unstable, and we see that from the start, just like his mother shows a shallowness, but also a sadness, that feeling of tedium vitae that we see in the Russian plays, we also have the ‘Russian questions’ as our luminary, greatest mind, Andrei Plesu was calling them…

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html  

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

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