The Death of the Seagull: Vera Kommissarzhevskaia and the Search for Transcendence in Late Imperial Russia

Vera Fedorovna Kommissarzhevskaia (1864–1910) was one of the most famous stage performers of late imperial Russia, perhaps best known for debuting the part of Nina Zarechnaia in Chekhov's The Seagull ( Chaika ). Her unexpected death in 1910 became a major public event and media sensation, prompting an enormous outpouring of mourning throughout the Russian Empire and extensive commentary in the press that demonstrated her significant social resonance and place in debates on pressing concerns animating late imperial Russia. This article examines the meanings ascribed to Kommissarzhevskaia by commentators and mourners alike through the symbol most frequently used to describe her: the seagull. Attention to the seagull motif in press coverage and public mourning reveals that mourners, influenced by Kommissarzhevskaia herself, transformed the seagull from a signifier of tragic, suffering womanhood into a symbol of emotionally sincere selfhood that promised the transcendence of the troubles of the present. For many Russians who viewed the present world as fragmented, inauthentic, and temporally disjointed, Kommissarzhevskaia as the seagull both embodied the troubles of modernity and suggested a model of overcoming them through an unwavering sense of self revealed by the performance of sincere feeling. Reactions to Kommissarzhevskaia's death demonstrate the social importance of ideas of sincere emotion and authentic selfhood as part of a larger search for transcendent individuals in the late imperial public sphere.