SOURCE: Curtis, James M. “Spatial Form in Drama: The Seagull.” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 6, no. 1 (spring 1972): 13-37.

In the following essay, Curtis highlights Chekhov's contribution to modernism as exemplified by The Seagull.

Introduction

Roger Shattuck's The Banquet Years. The Origins of the Avant Garde, 1885 to World War I says much to anyone who wishes to understand the nature of modernism. By treating in detail the interrelated careers of Alfred Jarry, Henri Rousseau, Erik Satie, and Guillaume Apollinaire, he conveys a vivid sense of the atmosphere of Paris during the rise of modernism (and certainly makes anyone interested in Russia realize how much we need a comparable book on St. Petersburg in the same period). More important for the present essay, Shattuck concludes his book with a cogent extended definition of the nature of modernist art. He puts the essence of the matter in one sentence, which applies to all...