SOURCE: Curtis, James M. “Ephebes and Precursors in Chekhov's The Seagull.” Slavic Review 44, no. 3 (fall 1985): 423-37.

In the following essay, Curtis reviews the literary predecessors of The Seagull and their influence upon Chekhov.

Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence takes the Freudian concept of an oedipal relationship between father and son as a model for the relationship that exists when one artist, the father figure (or precursor, as Bloom calls him), influences another artist (the ephebe, in Bloom's terminology). Bloom's work provides a desirable redefinition of standard treatments of influence and stylistic change in that it offers a dynamic, rather than a static, paradigm, and denies any simplistic dissociation of the artist as historical figure from the poet as poet. Furthermore, it denies that literary influences can occur as purely verbal processes, and it affirms that the creative process is emotionally charged, like so many other important human...