ABSTRACT
In The Seagull Anton Chekhov deals with the problem of the nature of creative art. It was a problem that had become particularly acute at the time with the emergence of the Symbolist movement which, like every other art movement at its inception, was extremely intolerant, fanatical and militant in its demands for new forms and the abolition of all literary and dramatic traditions. Chekhov dismissed the ‘decadents’, as the Symbolists were called, as ‘frauds’. Chekhov never took part in a public debate on any literary problems. He usually discussed them through the mouths of his characters. He preferred to attack the Symbolist movement in an indirect way by making Konstantin Treplyov, one of the chief characters of The Seagull, write a play based on the ideas of Vladimir Solovyov, poet, mystic and philosopher, a close friend of Fyodor Dostoevsky, and one of the leading lights of the Russian Symbolist movement.
