Vagabonding Masks: The Italian Commedia dell’Arte in the Russian Artistic Imagination 9781618115720

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Vag a b o n d i n g M a s k s T he It a l ia n C om med ia del l ’A r te i n t he Rus sia n A r t ist ic Ima g i nat ion

Liber Primus Series Editor David Bethea Editor ial Board Caryl Emerson (Princeton University, Princeton) Svetlana Evdokimova (Brown University, Providence) John MacKay (Yale University, New Haven) Irina Reyfman (Columbia University, New York) Justin Weir (Harvard University, Cambridge)

Vagabonding M asks The Italian Commedia dell’Arte in the Russian Artistic Imagination

Olga Partan

Boston 2 017

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: A bibliographic record for this title is available from the Library of Congress. https://lccn.loc.gov/2016052713

Copyright © 2017 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved.

ISBN (hardcover) 978-1-61811-571-3 ISBN (electronic) 978-1-61811-572-0

Cover design by Ivan Grave On the cover: Konstantin Somov, Sketch for the Curtain, 1913. Reproduced by permission of A. A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum, Moscow.

Published by Academic Studies Press in 2017 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.co

Dedicated to the memory of my grandfather

Ruben Simonov, the first Truffaldino on Evgenii Vakhtangov’s stage

Table of Content s

List of Illustrations

8

Acknowledgments

10

A Note on Transliteration

12

Introduction

13

Chapter 1 Early Harlequinized Art

30

Chapter 2 Anna Ioannovna’s Italian Decade

54

Chapter 3 Russifying the Commedia dell’Arte: Vasilii Trediakovsky and Aleksandr Sumarokov

83

Chapter 4 Ramifications of the Italian Decade

114

Chapter 5 Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat: The Italian Ancestry of Akakii Bashmachkin

131

Chapter 6 The Modernist Revival of the Commedia dell’Arte

161

Chapter 7 The Commedia dell’Arte in Evgenii Vakhtangov’s Princess Turandot

191

Chapter 8 Harlequin and His Lath: Vladimir Nabokov’s Last Novel, Look at the Harlequins!

217

Chapter 9 From the Empress Anna Ioannovna to the Empress of Popular Culture, Alla Pugacheva

240

Epilogue The Italian Arlecchino on the Post-Soviet Stage

263

Bibliography

266

Index

284

L ist of Illust rat ions

Introduction Figure 1: Commedia dell’Arte Characters, nineteenth-century lithograph.

16

Chapter 1—Early Harlequinized Art Figure 2: Dance to the Bagpipes, eighteenth-century lubok (popular print).

33

Figure 3: Buffoon and Matchmaker, eighteenth-century lubok.

48

Chapter 2—Anna Ioannovna’s Italian Decade Figure 4: Italian Commedia dell’Arte Actors in Russia, lubok.

56

Figure 5: Empress Anna Ioannovna in a Coronation Dress, engraving. 64 Chapter 3—Russifying the Commedia dell’Arte: Vasilii Trediakovsky and Aleksandr Sumarokov Figure 6: Eighteenth-century commedia dell’arte performance.

86

Figure 7: Eighteenth-century commedia dell’arte performance.

87

Chapter 5—Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat: The Italian Ancestry of Akakii Bashmachkin Figure 8: Nineteenth-century puppet theater in Naples showing the popular puppet Pulcinella. Courtesy of Giacomo Oreglia.

139

Figure 9: Nineteenth-century Naples street scene.

141

Figure 10: Illustration of a nikolaevskaia shinel’.

147

Figure 11: Pulcinella/Polichinelle.

149

Chapter 7—The Commedia dell’Arte in Evgenii Vakhtangov’s Princess Turandot Figure 12: Actors’ parade at the beginning of Princess Turandot. 199 Figure 13: Actors getting dressed on stage.

199

Figure 14: Masks: Boris Shchukin as Tartaglia, Osvald Glazunov as Brigella, Ivan Kudriavtsev as Pantalone, and Ruben Simonov as Truffaldino.

204

Figure 15: Tsetsiliia Mansurova as Princess Turandot.

207

Figure 16: Iurii Zavadsky as Prince Kalaf.

207

Figure 17: Ruben Simonov as Truffaldino.

207

Figure 18: Actors’ farewell to the audience.

209

Chapter 8—Harlequin and His Lath: Vladimir Nabokov’s Last Novel, Look at the Harlequins! Figure 19: Harlequin with his lath (battoccio).

225

Figure 20: Isabella Andreini. 1601 etchings.

230

Chapter 9—From the Empress Anna Ioannovna to the Empress of Popular Culture, Alla Pugacheva Figure 21: Pugacheva’s press conference on her sixtieth birthday.

241

Figure 22: Pugacheva with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

256

Figure 23: Pugacheva in concert.

260

Figure 24: Pugacheva in concert.

262

Ack nowledg ment s

The initial idea for this book came to mind during my graduate studies in the Department of Slavic Languages at Brown University in the late Professor Samuel Driver’s class on Russian symbolism. While working on a paper about the symbolist fascination with the commedia dell’arte, I became curious about the deeper roots of this phenomenon within the Russian cultural landscape and began my research in this area with Professor Driver’s enthusiastic encouragement. This project was made possible due to the support of many colleagues and friends. First of all, I would like to express special gratitude to my doctoral thesis director, Alexander Levitsky, who ignited my interest in the influence of the commedia dell’arte on eighteenth-century Russian culture. My two other doctoral dissertation readers, Patricia Arant and Svetlana Evdokimova, shared with me their expertise on medieval and nineteenth-century Russian culture. My work on the pre-nineteenth-century roots of the commedia dell’arte in Russia would not have been possible without the guidance of Liudmila Starikova, one of the leading scholars of Russian eighteenth-century performing arts, whose encyclopedic archival work and numerous publications made many of the materials accessible. Starikova generously provided me with many valuable sources for this work and graciously shared with me

Acknowledgments

her deep knowledge and fascination with pre-nineteenth-century Russian culture. The chapter on Alla Pugacheva greatly benefited from collaboration with Helena Goscilo, whose expertise in contemporary Russian culture and extensive comments on my work greatly stimulated my writing. I also thank my dear friends Alexandra Smith, Maxim Shrayer, and the late Svetlana Boym for reading some of the early chapters and giving me valuable scholarly comments and encouragement. I particularly thank Irina Reyfman for her detailed and constructive comments and suggestions during the final stage of this project, which motivated me to look at it from a new perspective. I also appreciate the thoughtful comments and suggestions of my peer reviewers. I thank Vladislav Ivanov for sharing with me his expertise on Vakhtangov and his milieu and for allowing me to use several illustrations. I thank the late Giacomo Oreglia who graciously allowed me to use images from his personal collection. I thank my husband, Matthew Partan, for his love and inexhaustible sense of humor. This work would not have come to completion without the patience and support of my children and family.

A Note on Transliteration In the body of the text, I have used the conventional spellings of surnames (e.g., Gogol instead of Gogol’, Trediakovsky rather than Trediakovskii); for the notes, quotations, bibliographic information, and terms that would be of importance to scholars, however, I use the Library of Congress system of transliteration.

Int ro duct ion

“Stop moping!” she would cry. “Look at the harlequins!” “What harlequins? Where?” “Oh, everywhere. All around you. Trees are harlequins, words are harlequins. So are situations and sums. Put two things together—jokes, images—and you get a triple harlequin. Come on! Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!” —Vladimir Nabokov, Look at the Harlequins!

Mention of the Italian commedia dell’arte in Russian culture brings to mind visual and textual allusions to the sophisticated Russian Silver Age, with its seductive Columbines, melancholic Pierrots, and flamboyant Harlequins. One might think about Vsevolod Meyerhold’s directorial experiments, Aleksandr Blok’s symbolist play The Puppet Show, the theatrical costumes and scenery of the World of Art group, Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and Evgenii Vakhtangov’s commedia dell’arte–style production of Carlo Gozzi’s Turandot, Princess Turandot, which crowned the commedia explosion on the modernist stage. While Russian modernism’s infatuation with the commedia dell’arte has been widely studied, little has been written about the broader impact of the commedia on Russian culture through its Russification and gradual transformation during other periods. However, the iconic masks of the Italian commedia dell’arte have been vagabonding the roads of Russian cultural history for over three hundred years. This study seeks to fill that academic gap by exploring the impact of the Italian commedia (often called the “harlequinade”) and its aesthetic principles on the Russian artistic imagination, 13

Introduction

going beyond the narrow time frame of modernism to evaluate selected cases from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first. I argue that there has been a rich yet insufficiently studied tradition of Russian harlequinized art that has extended for three centuries. In this tradition, the term “harlequinized” describes art or literature that contains core features of the commedia. Each generation of Russian artists has interpreted the commedia differently and borrowed various elements, using the ancient themes of the Italian harlequinade to produce artistic innovation within Russian culture. The breadth and depth of the rich, multifaceted, harlequinized tradition in Russian culture is so extensive that it could not be addressed in a single volume, so the present work uses a case study approach to focus on examples of harlequinized art and literature that have had major cultural significance. This study investigates which important features Russian artists have borrowed from the commedia in various cultural and historical milieus and how individual artists have reinterpreted and Russified the commedia. The Italian commedia dell’arte has been an inexhaustible source of inspiration, providing a powerful impetus for the development of the Russian arts and liberating the Russian artistic imagination. The fact that the commedia was a synthesis of many different arts suggests that an interdisciplinary approach should be used to trace its influence on drama, fiction, literary translation, theatrical performances, and popular culture.

The Italian Commedia dell’Arte Commedia dell’arte was born in mid-sixteenth century Italy—with roots going back to Greek and Roman comedies and medieval farces—and has had a tremendous impact on the Western artistic imagination in literature and in the performing and visual arts in areas such as music, dance, circus, pantomimes, and playwriting.1

1



This discussion of the commedia dell’arte is based on studies such as Anton Giulio Bragaglia, Pulcinella (Rome: Gherardo Casini, 1953); Cesare Molinari, La commedia dell’arte (Milan: Arnoldo Mondatori Editore, 1985); Konstantin

14

Introduction

The term “commedia dell’arte” is attributed by some scholars to the eighteenth-century playwright Carlo Goldoni, while others suggest that it could have been in oral circulation much earlier. Arte signifies “professional craft” or “craftsmanship.” Historically, the commedia was also known as commedia all’improviso (improvisational comedy), commedia di zanni (comedy of zanni [servants]), commedia delle maschere (comedy of the masks), and commedia a soggetto (comedy of the plot).2 The commedia had several essential characteristics: the absence of dramatic text, the use of improvisational dialogue, and the use of comic stock characters wearing masks. Each mask represented a well-known character who typically exhibited certain onstage behavior, had recognizable speech and movement patterns, and wore a traditional costume. Commedia dell’arte was a unique type of theatrical performance as it relied on improvisation and the actors’ virtuosity because performances were not based on a traditional body of dramatic text and audiences did not see the leading actors’ faces. The commedia did not rely on directorial power since it was the art of an actor-creator. The directing that is inseparable from the modern idea of performance was not necessary and neither was a script. The onstage action was based on schematic scenarios that simply summarized the plot, so the performances relied on the actors’ improvisation and acting skills. The commedia dell’arte was a synthetic form of the performing arts as its actors were simultaneously mimes, acrobats, singers, and dancers who had to

Miklashevsky [Constant Mic, K. M. Miklashevskii], La commedia dell’arte, ou Le théatre des comédiens italiens des XVI, XVII, & XVIII siècles (Paris: Shiffrin, 1927); Pierre Louis Duchartre, The Italian Comedy (New York: Dover Publications, 1966); Giacomo Oreglia, The Commedia dell’Arte (London: Methuen, 1968); and Judith Chaffee and Olly Crick, eds., The Routledge Companion to Commedia dell’Arte (London: Routledge, 2015). 2



See Miklashevsky, La commedia dell’arte, 22–25; Robert Henke, Performance and Literature in the Commedia dell’Arte (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 5; and Antonio Fava, The Comic Mask in the Commedia dell’Arte: Actor Training, Improvisation, and the Poetics of Survival (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2007), 25.

15

Introduction

Figure 1. Commedia dell’Arte Characters. Nineteenth-century lithograph by G. Gallina. Courtesy of Giacomo Oreglia.

entertain the audience while wearing typological costumes and halfmasks that left only their mouths uncovered. Therefore, physical expressiveness as well as vocal and verbal skills were essential attributes of the performances. The most prominent performers of commedia dell’arte stock characters also presented philosophical issues intermixed with the buffoonery. For instance, the legendary Italian comic actor Antonio Sacchi was citing Seneca, Cicero, and other classical philosophers under the mask of a buffoon. The actors performing stock characters were expected to maintain a centuries-old comic tradition, relating it to the sociohistorical cultural context outside the theater. Тhe physical appearance of stock characters had grotesque overtones due to the bizarre combination of deathly expressionless half-masks (which could be black, brown, or white) that covered the upper part of the face, and expressive uncovered mouths and agile acrobatic bodies. This juxtaposition of symbols of life and death presented a philosophical message that forced spectators to simultaneously mourn the inescapable approach of death while celebrating life’s endless joy. The Italian language’s musicality and extensive use of vowels helped the masked actors articulate using their mouths as emotional and artistic apparatuses that replaced the barely visible eyes and otherwise totally absent facial expressions. Goldoni, who 16

Introduction

juxtaposed the improvisational commedia with theater based on literary texts, stated that the commedia dell’arte was purely and distinctly an Italian genre of comedy that no other nation was ever able to imitate.3 Nevertheless, since the mid-sixteenth century, Europe had been infatuated with the commedia dell’arte, and its artists and authors sought to imitate and reinterpret the commedia, borrowing the masks and adapting them to their national sense of comedy and reshaping the inventive plots of the Italian scenarios. The famous characters of the commedia, also known as masks, were based on diverse personality types and were associated with specific Italian regions and cities, representing their typical features and speech patterns, proverbs, and sayings. For example, Harlequin was a cunning servant from Bergamo, Dottore was a learned fool from Bologna, Pantalone was an old miser from Venice, and so forth. Over the centuries the Italian commedia developed distinctive poetics and aesthetics that had a powerful impact on the European artistic imagination and were transposed into drama, literature, music, and visual arts across Europe. Core elements of the commedia include the masked character; improvisation within a stable scenario or plot; extensive use of grotesque imagery, plasticity, exaggeration, and self-parody; and the presence of doubles and mistaken identities.4 The theater practitioner, theoretician, and commedia historian Antonio Fava argues that the commedia is still alive and is convinced that it has been evolving and reinventing itself together with the changing world, inspiring generations of artists and nourishing theater and dramatic texts worldwide. Simon Callow writes, We are, all of us in the theater, haunted by the idea of Commedia, partly because the prints and engravings of it that have come down to us so clearly embody the essence of theater

3

Carlo Goldoni, Mémoires de M. Goldoni, pour servir à l’histoire de sa vie et à celle de son théâtre, ed. Paul de Roux. (Paris: Mercure de France, 1965), 256.

4

This discussion of the commedia dell’arte is based on the following works: Duchartre, The Italian Comedy; Winifred Smith, The Commedia dell’Arte: A Study in Italian Popular Comedy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1912); Miklashevsky, La commedia dell’arte; and Molinari, La commedia dell’arte.



17

Introduction

but also because the whole corpus of dramatic literature until the nineteenth century is haunted by it: Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, Molière, Marivaux, Beaumarchais, Goldoni (it goes without saying), Nеstroy, Holberg. Wherever there are witty servants and domineering masters, young wives and old husbands, pompous pedants, thwarted lovers, or bragging soldiers, the Commedia is there in spirit, and also very often in form. What we respond to in it is the energy that leaps out of the old illustrations, a fundamentally theatrical vitality which takes hold of and possesses its characters, fabulously exotic but somehow instantly recognizable.5

Russian Harlequinized Art and Literature The term “harlequinized” art and literature is based on the name of one of the beloved commedia characters—the servant Harlequin (Arlecchino in Italian). Harlequin was one of the stock characters of the improvisational Italian commedia dell’arte, and the first Russian Harlequins represented a peculiar hybrid of a Germanized version of the commedia dell’arte mask with the medieval Russian wandering minstrels—the skomorokhi. By 1702, during the reign of Peter the Great, Russian jesters under Harlequin’s mask had become an integral part of early Russian drama and bore names such as Arlekin, Garlekin, or Gaer. Russian Harlequin adaptations later appeared in many eighteenth-century comedies and comic interludes, significantly before the first authentic Italian Harlequin appeared on Russian soil as part of a commedia dell’arte troupe that traveled to Russia by the invitation of Anna Ioannovna in 1731. In the nineteenth century Harlequin migrated from high culture (court stages) to low culture (the arena of various circuses and balaganentertainment booths), and Harlequin continued to be one of the most popular entertainers in the Russian circus and balagans into the twentieth century. Russian modernist artists such as Aleksandr Benois, Nikolai Evreinov, Vsevolod Meyerhold, and others transformed Harlequin from a comic persona into an irresistible

5



Simon Callow, foreword to Fava, The Comic Mask, vii.

18

Introduction

lover and erotic icon of Russian modernism. Thus, Harlequins and many other Russified Italian masks were vagabonding the roads of Russian culture for several centuries. I introduce the term “harlequinized art and literature” to denote the transposition of the theatrical language of the Itаliаn commedia dell’arte into the language of literature and other arts. This term is rooted in Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the carnivalization of literature as the process of transposing the carnival’s symbolic language into the language of literature.6 However, there is a distinction between the carnival, which is a reallife phenomenon, and the commedia dell’arte, which is an art form based on a theatrical convention. I define the core elements of the commedia: playing the mask; improvisation within a set scenario or plot; and the extensive use of grotesque imagery, plasticity, exaggeration, and self-parody; and the presence of doubles and mistaken identities. This terminology is used to investigate how Russian artists experimented with this ancient art form to produce innovation and break preexisting canons. In its early stages the commedia dell’arte was inseparable from carnivalistic festivities, as commedia performances were a major form of popular entertainment. Bakhtin establishes a direct connection between the medieval carnivalistic culture and the commedia and writes that the commedia preserved stronger ties with the carnivalistic milieu than any other art form.7 According to Bakhtin, the carnival itself is not a literary phenomenon but a “syncretic pageantry of a ritualistic sort” that historically developed its own symbolic language, concrete forms, and sensations.8 Bakhtin calls the “transposition of carnival into the language of

6

Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984); Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968).

7

Mikhail Bakhtin, Tvorchestvo Fransua Rable i narodnaia kul’tura srednevekovia i renessansa (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1990), 42.

8

Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 122.





19

Introduction

literature the carnivalization of literature.”9 Analogously, I use the term “harlequinized” to describe works of literature and art when characteristic features of the Italian commedia dell’arte have been transposed into those works. Carnival traditions and the commedia tradition share many features, yet they are also different. Both carnival and commedia rely on such features as the extensive use of grotesque eccentricity, an atmosphere of festivity, and life-assuring laughter. Furthermore, both the carnival and the commedia flourished during the Renaissance, and both began a gradual decline thereafter, transposing their distinctive features into various art forms and intermixing with masquerades. Nevertheless, unlike carnivalistic festivities that represent real-life phenomena, the commedia is a theatrical convention with a strict division between performers and spectators. The carnival was a real-life phenomenon in which participants temporarily ignored their social statuses and liberated themselves from the dogmatic rules of the church. During carnivalistic festivities, people were all actors in the free and merry reality of the carnival. In contrast, the commedia dell’arte was an art form that was performed by well-trained professional actors. Iurii Lotman remarks that “art can be described as a certain secondary language, and a work of art—as a text in this language.”10 During its long life on European stages, the commedia dell’arte formed this type of secondary language. Russian culture first became acquainted with the language of the commedia dell’arte in an indirect fashion, through various foreign interpretations that included the German version of Harlequin and foreign puppeteers who frequently visited the Russian Empire. In 1731, Russian culture was directly exposed to the original language of the Italian commedia dell’arte for the first time. Since that encounter, this secondary language has been deeply rooted within Russian culture, but, as with any language, it has been subject to constant change

9



Ibid., 122.

10



Iurii M. Lotman, “Isskustvo, kak iazyk,” in Ob iskusstve (St. Petersburg: Iskusstvo-SPb, 1998), 22.

20

Introduction

and transformation. While this secondary language was purely theatrical at first, it was gradually adapted by Russian literature, drama, visual arts, music, and ballet. This adaptation occurred through what Lotman calls the method of “artistic translation.”11 In his discussion of theatrical language, Lotman notes that an original play and its final production on stage use dramatically different language, and that theater production is one of the most difficult types of artistic translation.12 This definition can be fruitful for the purposes of this study as it provides a terminology for the transposition of the language of theater performances into other arts and literature, translating theater language into the various artistic languages. Therefore, harlequinized art and literature represent the artistic translation of theatrical language into the language of other arts. The examples of harlequinized art and literature discussed in this book are characterized by a vivid theatricality.13 The mask is one of the essential attributes of the harlequinade; therefore, I argue that the presence of Italian masks in Russian literary or dramatic texts or performing arts suggests that this particular work may have intertextual and cultural links with the Italian commedia. I suggest that works of art and literature that contain the Italian masks and other key attributes of the commedia can be defined as harlequinized. Lotman notes that the commedia dell’arte created an original model of the universe, where stability and unshakable canons (the masks and what was expected from the actors who perform in them) were combined with the full freedom of artistic improvisation and flexibility of the scenario. The masks were the only stable images of the commedia dell’arte, and they were based on the principle of predictable identities: from the very

11



Iurii M. Lotman, “Iazyk teatra,” in Lotman, Ob iskusstve, 606.

12



Ibid. “Пьеса и спектакль говорят разными языками, и слово, которое пишется на бумаге, глубоко не адекватно играемому на сцене. Пoстановка — один из труднейших видов художественного перевода.”

13



Ibid., 604. Theatricality, according to Lotman, is an artistic theater language: “Театральность есть язык театра как искусства.”

21

Introduction

beginning of a performance, the spectators were well acquainted with the nature of the characters.14 The term “grotesque” denotes a comical and absurd distortion of reality, something that is bizarre and fantastic. According to Bakhtin, both medieval and Renaissance-era carnivalistic festivities and the commedia dell’arte were famous for their grotesque imagery. The term “grotesque” originated in fifteenth-century Italy when, during the excavation of Roman ruins, an old cave—grotta in Italian—revealed a sample of a previously unknown decorative art. Ornaments in the cave presented fantastic combinations of human, animal, and plant forms with fanciful distortions of natural shapes. The comic absurdity of the figures and the bizarre exaggeration of nature were first used exclusively in the visual arts but gradually were transposed into other art forms, including literature. Bakhtin sees the grotesque as providing unlimited freedom of the artistic imagination and at the same time a comic liberation from artistic rules, placing strong emphasis on the primarily comic nature of the grotesque. The commedia dell’arte vividly illustrates this view since its improvisational nature provided actors with endless imaginative possibilities. Visually, the commedia dell’arte caricatures humankind, exaggerating various body parts, covering actors’ faces with half-masks with enormous noses, and presenting comic characters who imitate animal sounds and movements on stage. The commedia absorbed the rich cultural heritage of Roman antiquity, and the visual, comic grotesque is one illustration of this continuity. It is important to emphasize that the masks and other key commedia attributes must be present in order for a text or performance to be considered harlequinized. The presence of features such as grotesque, eccentricity, plasticity, and parody alone do not mean that a work is harlequinized, as they can be used in various forms and genres that have nothing in common with the commedia dell’arte. This study will trace the elements of

14



Iurii M. Lotman, “Tekst i vnetekstovye struktury,” in Lotman, Ob iskusstve, 276.

22

Introduction

the harlequinade only in cases with obvious connections: when an artist or a writer either translates the harlequinades (Trediakovsky’s translations), experiments with the commedia and its elements in their work (Vakhtangov and Nabokov), or expresses an interest in the Italian comedy and studies it carefully (as Gogol did).

Preexisting Scholarship While the commedia’s influence in the West has produced a large body of scholarship, establishing a rich academic field of commedia dell’arte study, only a few publications deal with its influence in Russia in various historical and cultural surroundings, and there is no study that analyzes the broader impact of the commedia on Russian culture throughout several centuries. Thomas Heck’s 1988 publication on primary and secondary literature on the commedia dell’arte—which summarized materials on the commedia in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and even the United States— revealed the dearth of studies of the commedia dell’arte in Russia.15 The Routledge Companion to Commedia dell’Arte (2015), written by fifty leading international experts in the field, demonstrates the multifaceted nature of the commedia phenomena and its powerful impact on the Western artistic imagination, yet the influence of the commedia in Russian culture is represented by just a short article, “From Meyerhold to Eisenstein,” written by J. Douglas Clayton, that covers only the modernist-era infatuation with the commedia.16 Among the most influential Western studies on the commedia in Russia are English-language studies by Martin Green and John Swan (1986), Catriona Kelly (1990), J. Douglas Clayton (1993), and Olga Soboleva (2008) that provide extensive information on this topic and make valuable contributions to the history of the

15



Thomas F. Heck, Commedia dell’Arte: A Guide to the Primary and Secondary Literature (New York: Garland, 1988).

16



J. Douglas Clayton, “From Meyerhold to Eisenstein: Commedia dell’Arte in Russia,” in Chaffee, The Routledge Companion, 364–69.

23

Introduction

Russian harlequinade and Russian puppet theater.17 These works tend to approach the Russian harlequinade as a rather isolated phenomenon that was characteristic of the pre- and postrevolutionary historical era. Due to its interdisciplinary and intercultural nature, the field of commedia dell’arte studies spans such diverse disciplines as the study of performing arts, literature, musicology, and comparative cultural studies. One of the earliest studies on the roots of the commedia in Russian culture was published in French by the Swiss musicologist Robert-Aloys Mooser in 1943.18 While Mooser’s study is dedicated to Russian opera and music, it contains valuable information and documentation about the commedia dell’arte in Russia because the operatic singers were performing together with commedia dell’arte troupes. More recent Italian studies by Maria Chiara Pesenti (1996) and Marialuisa Ferrazzi (2000) provide extensive information about the impact of the commedia dell’arte on eighteenth-century Russian culture.19 Pesenti concentrates on early appearances of Harlequins, addressing their similarities, differences, and genealogy. Ferrazzi analyzes historical records about the touring Italian commedia troupes that performed in Russia during the reign of Anna Ioannovna. Liudmila Starikova has conducted extensive archival research and made many documents accessible by publishing them in volumes dedicated to

17

Martin Green and John Swan, The Triumph of Pierrot: The Commedia dell’Arte and the Modern Imagination (University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1986); Catriona Kelly, Petrushka: The Russian Carnival Puppet Theater (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Douglas J. Clayton, Pierrot in Petrograd: The Commedia dell’Arte / Balagan in Twentieth-Century Russian Theater and Drama (London: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993); Olga Yu. Soboleva, The Silver Mask: Harlequinade in the Symbolist Poetry of Blok and Belyi (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2008).

18

Robert-Aloys Mooser, Annales de la musique et des musiciens en Russie au XVIIIe siècle, vol. 1 (Geneva: Mont-Blanc, 1948), 53.

19

Maria Chiara Pesenti, Arlecchino e Gaer nel teatro dilettantesco russo del settecento: Contatti e intersezioni in un repertorio teatrale (Milan: Guerini scientifica, 1996); Marialuisa Ferrazzi, Commedie e comici dell’arte Italiani alla corte Russa: 1731–1738 (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 2000).





24

Introduction

the performing arts in eighteenth-century Russia.20 This book builds on previous academic studies of the impact of the Italian commedia dell’arte on the Russian artistic imagination and demonstrates the continuity of this cultural phenomenon.

Overview of the Chapters This study is arranged chronologically using a cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary approach, and is structured in nine chapters. As the commedia dell’arte was a synthesis of different arts, a crossdisciplinary approach is used to trace its influence on such diverse disciplines as the performing arts, literature, and popular culture. After providing an overview of the Russian cultural landscape at various stages of cultural history, the narrative of each chapter focuses on the case study of a specific artist or writer whose work was influenced by the commedia dell’arte. The first chapter is dedicated to the state of the Russian performing arts before the reign of Anna Ioannovna. It analyzes early examples of harlequinized art during the pre-Petrine and Petrine epoch that paved the way for the Russian public’s first encounters with Italian theater in 1731 and the commedia’s sensational success on Russian soil. Special attention is paid to the skomorokhi— medieval wandering minstrels—whose art had many affinities with commedia dell’arte–style performances. While European audiences were exposed to commedia dell’arte performances as early as the sixteenth century, the Russian public at that time was only acquainted with Italian theater via numerous second-rate German and French imitators. Peter the Great zealously pursued the Westernization of Russia during his long reign (he was born in 1672 and ruled from 1682 until his death in 1725), but he did not have a significant impact on Russian performing arts. The emperor was not a big fan of theater, music, or singing but instead derived more pleasure from navigating his ships and firing cannons.

20



Liudmila Starikova, ed., Teatral’naia zhizn’ Rossii v epokhu Anny Ioannovny: Dokumental’naia khronika 1730–1740 (Moscow: Radiks, 1995).

25

Introduction

The second chapter focuses on Russian culture’s first exposure to authentic Italian theater, which occurred in 1731, when the Empress Anna Ioannovna, Peter the Great’s niece, invited an Italian company led by Tommaso Ristori to perform for the royal court. The Italian performers achieved sensational success and took center stage in the Russian court’s cultural life throughout the entire decade of Anna Ioannovna’s reign (she was born in 1693 and ruled from 1730 until her death in 1740). For a country without its own professional performing arts tradition, this exposure to first-rate European actors, singers, and musicians ushered in a decade of cultural awakening and revelations as Russians saw the virtuosity and sophistication of the Italian performers. Anna Ioannovna’s Italian decade was the first major wave of the commedia’s influence on Russian soil and a powerful transmitter of the European baroque into Russian art and literature. The third chapter evaluates the first literary translations of the Italian scenarios into Russian by Vasilii Trediakovsky (1703–1768) and explores the influence of those scenarios on the early development of Russian professional playwriting. The narrative then focuses on one of the first harlequinized Russian comedies—Aleksandr Sumarokov’s (1717–1777) The Monsters Court Arbitratic (1750). Trediakovsky’s translations have been largely overlooked, yet they deserve scholarly attention since they made a significant contribution to the history of Russian theater and drama and to the history of the Russian harlequinades. In turn, Sumarokov’s comedy The Monsters was strongly affected by the Italian scenarios. Since Sumarokov is viewed as the founder of Russian theater and as the first modern Russian writer of both comedy and tragedy, his experimentation with the commedia dell’arte deserves special attention. The fourth chapter traces the powerful impetus that the Italian performances provided for the development of literary and cultural criticism in eighteenth-century Russia. The next stage in the appreciation of the Italian art was one of learning and careful analysis, which produced numerous publications on the essence of opera, drama, art, and comedy. The performances of the Italian troupes for Anna Ioannovna’s court stimulated the development 26

Introduction

of literary and theatrical criticism in Russia and resulted in the publication of several treatises on theater and opera history. The Italian commedia dell’arte and its masks began to penetrate many spheres of Russian life, reflecting the tendency to eliminate borders between the stage and real life during the post-Petrine era. The fifth chapter offers a new perspective on one of the most famous nineteenth-century short stories, Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat (first published 1842), challenging the well-accepted critical view that the story is exclusively rooted in a Russian cultural context. Instead, I suggest that Gogol drew on the Italian commedia dell’arte character of Pulcinella while creating his Russian civil servant, Akakii Bashmachkin. Gogol lived in Italy for almost ten years between 1836 and 1848, was fluent in Italian, and completed writing the final version of The Overcoat while living in Rome in the spring of 1841. While in Italy, Gogol expressed deep interest in the Italian comic tradition and especially in Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793), whose comic playwriting and skillful denouements relied heavily on the commedia dell’arte tradition. I explore an Italianate subtext in The Overcoat and suggest that core elements of the plot and narrative technique, along with the name and personality of the protagonist, strongly parallel elements of the commedia, which Gogol was exposed to in Italy prior to writing The Overcoat. The sixth chapter provides an overview of the Russian modernist (roughly from 1890 to 1930) infatuation with the commedia dell’arte, defining it as the second major wave of fascination with the commedia in Russia. During the last decade of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, Russians were rethinking their own cultural bonds with the commedia dell’arte, dedicating a series of publications to the reign of Anna Ioannovna. In modernist revivals of the commedia such as Aleksandr Blok’s The Puppet Show (1906) and Evreinov’s Merry Death (1909), the eighteenth-century life-assuring laughter was replaced by transcendental irony or laughter through tears. The passion for life and the happily ending amorous escapades of the Italian scenarios translated by Trediakovsky were transformed into modernist harlequinades with unresolvable love triangles that centered on the 27

Introduction

theme of unavoidable death. Instead of life’s merriment onstage, the modernists were fatally attracted to the grotesque image of a Merry Death. The seventh chapter focuses on the legacy of the RussianArmenian modernist theater director Evgenii Vakhtangov (1883– 1922), a favorite yet rebellious disciple of the famous theater reformer Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863–1938). In 1922, Vakhtangov produced a flamboyant, life-affirming play, Princess Turandot, based on Gozzi’s 1762 fairytale Turandot. This legendary commedia–style production represented an escape from harsh postrevolutionary reality into a world of artistic imagination. Vakhtangov relied on the commedia’s free carnivalistic spirit, flamboyance, and gaiety, proclaiming it the ideal theater form that helped him search for eternal masks. The eighth chapter analyzes Vladimir Nabokov’s last novel, Look at the Harlequins! (1975), by tracing the impact of the aesthetic and artistic principles of the commedia dell’arte on it. While at first glance the commedia does not appear to play a major role in the novel, a close textual analysis suggests that elements of the commedia are woven throughout the narrative, masterfully veiled by the author. Characterized by an artistic dialogue between the ancient harlequinade performances and Nabokov’s own literary production, the novel belongs to the Western and Russian tradition of harlequinized art and literature as it reflects the aging writer’s nostalgia for the artistic atmosphere of his youth—the era of Russian modernism. The ninth chapter discusses the career of the empress of Russian popular culture, the singer Alla Pugacheva, within the rich tradition of Russian harlequinized art. In 1975, almost simultaneously with the publication of Nabokov’s Look at the Harlequins!, Pugacheva burst into the world of ideologically charged Soviet estrada with a song about a tragicomic clown, Arlekino—one of the most popular commedia dell’arte stock characters. With “Arlekino,” Pugacheva successfully established her stage persona as a privileged female jester who was allowed to express her personalized eccentricity, going against the well-established canons of ideologically charged Soviet popular culture. During the Putin era, the sixty-seven-year28

Introduction

old Pugacheva has openly criticized the political establishment in the post-Soviet media, challenged societal norms, and rejected patriarchal gender roles. This is the first study that traces the full history of Russian harlequinized art and literature and evaluates the ubiquitous presence of Italian commedia dell’arte artistic principles in Russian culture. The commedia in Russian performing arts and literature is a rich and understudied tradition that has had a powerful impact on the artistic imagination in a variety of cultural spheres. This book reveals how it provided Russian culture with an inexhaustible source of inspiration, becoming a beloved cultural theme that has fueled the Russian artistic imagination for more than three centuries. By reinterpreting and rejuvenating the ancient commedia dell’arte, Russian artists have brought dashing novelty to their work, fearlessly experimenting under Italian masks. Covering a broad range of material while also providing new insights regarding important Russian cultural figures and their creative use of commedia imagery, this study fills a gap in the history of Russian theater, literature, and folk culture, bringing to light the scope and depth of the commedia dell’arte’s presence on Russian soil.

Chapter 1

Early Harlequinized Art

This chapter explores several key factors that paved the way for the receptivity of eighteenth-century Russian audiences to the Italian improvisational comedy: the affinities between the art of the wandering Russian minstrels, the skomorokhi, and the aesthetics of the commedia dell’arte as well as the presence of early versions of harlequinized art in Russia before the reign of Anna Ioannovna. The success of the commedia in Russia in the eighteenth century was built on the earlier exposure of Russian high and low cultural spheres to the commedia’s famous masks and its improvisational performing style through various channels. For example, traveling German troupes, the theater of the marionettes, and courtly plays were under the influence of commedia dell’arte imagery.

The State of the Russian Performing Arts before the Reign of Anna Ioannovana The art of medieval Russian minstrels and jesters—the skomorokhi— had many affinities with commedia dell’arte performances. The first mention of the word skomorokh appeared in 1068 in a Russian chronicle known as the Lavrentievskaia letopis’, and the etymology of this word is still uncertain since scholars have not been able to reach a consensus on this topic. Among the existing hypotheses are that there may be potential connections to the Byzantine skom-archos, main entertainer, or to the Arabic maskhara, a jester or merryman.1

1



For a more detailed discussion of the etymology of skomorokh, see Anatolii Belkin, Russkie skomorokhi (Moscow: Nauka, 1975), 25–29, and Sergei

30

Early Harlequinized Art

Yet another plausible theory suggests that skomorokh is of IndoEuropean origin, linking the word to the French scaramouche or Italian scaramuccia—jester, minstrel, a wandering musician, buffoon, dancer, comedian.2 At the end of the sixteenth century in Naples, Scaramouche/Scaramuccia became one of the masks in the Italian commedia dell’arte.3 Coincidentally, the director of the first Italian troupe to visit Russia, Ristori, was a famous performer of the role of Scaramuccia, and his arrival in Russia occurred as the last Russian skomorokhi were being extinguished from the Russian cultural landscape, which left a void that Scaramuccia and other Italian masks were able to fill in the Russian artistic imagination. For several centuries during the medieval era, the skomorokhi were the leading representatives of the Russian performing arts and, at the same time, were the first Russifiers of Western art: during their extensive travels the skomorokhi were well-informed about Western forms of entertainment through their interactions with vagabonding foreign troupes and observation of their performing techniques. Skomoroshestvo (the art of the skomorokhi) and the commedia dell’arte both flourished in the depths of popular culture and were rooted in national cultural traditions. Like the Italian commedia performers, the skomorokhi were professional vagabonding actors, dancers, singers, musicians, and puppeteers. “Everyone can dance, but not like a skomorokh,” says the Russian proverb, reflecting the professional excellence of the Russian minstrels.4 Masks had always been one of the essential performing attributes of the skomorokhi, and their performances relied not on written texts but on verbal and acting improvisation. Like the commedia performances, skomorokhi relied—in their performances and rituals—on

Stakhorskii, Teatral’naia kul’tura drevnei Rusi (Moscow: GITR, 2012), 53–54. 2

Iurii Dmitriev, Tsirk v Rossii ot istokov do 1917 goda (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1977), 11.

3

Duchartre, The Italian Comedy, 236.

4

Dmitriev, Tsirk v Rossii, 14.



31

Chapter 1

scenarios in which each performer was assigned a certain function or role.5 Since their artistry belonged to an oral tradition and lacked written documentation, their history is based on the few surviving memoirs of contemporaneous viewers and on old fresco imagery. Skomorokhi were well acquainted with Russian folk traditions and, like the commedia performers, were well informed about their cultural, social, and political surroundings, using a “heavy reliance on humor and parody.”6 Skomorokhi were synthetic performers who, in addition to their singing, dancing, and acrobatics, also traveled with trained animals and practiced fortune-telling with palm reading—the latter being seen as sinful and devilish by church authorities but still widely practiced in Russian villages.7 Resisting persecution and numerous attempts to outlaw them due to their alleged pagan nature, the skomorokhi had great success with different social strata of the Russian public. Their art had a palpable presence not only in Russian popular culture but also in the royal court. Ironically, while the Russian rulers officially scorned the skomorokhi for the devilish nature of their art, they would invite the skomorokhi for private entertainment and enjoyed spending time in their company. Skomorokhi were the bearers of the laughter culture that, as Dmitrii Likhachev suggests, had always been in opposition to the traditional Russian religious world order since laughter was a rebellion against dogmatic rules. Laughter was destroying the whole “system of signs,” revealing what was hidden behind the screen of everyday reality.8 In turn, Sergei Averintsev notes that in Russian the word смех (laughter) rhymes with грех (sin), observing

5

Belkin, Russkie skomorokhi, 114.

6

Russell Zguta, Russian Minstrels: A History of the Skomorokhi (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), 49.

7

Ibid., 64.

8

Dmitrii Likhachev, “Smekh kak mirovozzrenie,” in Smekh v drevnei Rusi, D. Likhachev, A. M. Panchenko, and N. V. Ponyrko (Leningrad: Nauka, 1984), 39–45.



32

Early Harlequinized Art

Figure 2. Dance to the Bagpipes. Eighteenth-century lubok (popular print).

that in Russian proverbs the two words are closely interconnected, as reflected in the old proverb “Где смех, там и грех” (Where there is laughter, there is sin), since laughter is essentially perceived by ascetic Russian Orthodoxy as a sin.9

9



Sergei Averintsev, “Bakhtin i russkoe otnoshenie k smekhu,” in Ot mifa k literature: Sbornik v chest’ 75-letiia E. M. Meletinskogo (Moscow: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi gumanitarnyi universitet, 1993), 341–45.

33

Chapter 1

The history of the skomorokhi provides essential information about pre-Petrine cultural attitudes toward the artistic profession, music, dance, and the masks. Playing musical instruments or dancing was considered blasphemous for Russian Orthodox Christians, and masks were associated with the devil. The 1551 publication of Stoglav (Book of a hundred chapters) contained a set of religious and behavioral rules, including strict prohibition of the performing arts and the playing of musical instruments: “all divine scriptures and sacred rules deny any kind of games such as dice and chess and checkers and harps and bows and flutes and all the blowing horns and mockery and performance and dancing.”10 Several historical episodes illustrate medieval Russian attitudes toward representatives of the performing arts. Tsar Ivan IV, the Terrible (born 1530, grand prince of Moscow from 1533, tsar of Russia from 1547 until his death in 1584), under whose rule the Stoglav was published, had an ambivalent attitude toward the arts: while officially opposing skomoroshestvo as antireligious, Ivan the Terrible enjoyed wild feasts that featured performances of Russian minstrels. After several drinks, he loved to dance with the skomorokhi and often wore pagan masks himself, cruelly punishing anyone who would dare to condemn his favorite mode of entertainment. Likhachev observes that Ivan the Terrible’s epistolary style bears obvious features of the skomorokhi’s verbal buffoonery. Likhachev perceived him as a skilled performer and a gifted writer who, in his writing, relied on oral tradition, with sudden transitions from magnificent religious narratives to rough vernacular.11 Prince Kurbsky was one of those who condemned the tsar for his frequent invitations of skomorokhi with their trumpets and blasphemous songs.12 Another story tells of the tragic fate of

10

All English translations are my own unless otherwise noted. This quotation from Stoglav (1551) is cited from T. N. Livanova, Ocherki i materialy po istorii russkoi muzykal’noi kul’tury (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1938), 286–87.

11

Likhachev, “Smekh kak mirovozzrenie,” 35.

12

Vladimir Mikhnevich, Ocherk istorii muzyki v Rossii (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1879), 58.





34

Early Harlequinized Art

Prince Mikhailo Repnin, who refused to wear a mask that was put on his face by the drunken tsar. Repnin took the mask, threw it to the floor, crushed it, and said, “Could the sovereign act like the skomorokh? In any case, I, a Duma Boyar, will not!”13 Several days later, Prince Repnin was stabbed to death in a church as punishment for his refusal to join the tsar in his favorite form of entertainment. During his brief reign, the False Dmitrii (1605–1606) was strongly criticized by his contemporaries for his love of music, singing, and dance and for his infatuation with masks. Dmitrii’s political rival, Prince Shuisky compared Dmitrii to a skomorokh, saying, “What kind of tsar is he? What dignity does he have when he dances with jesters and musicians and wears masks? This is a skomorokh!”14 Dmitrii’s love for Western music and masks had a tragic, yet theatrical, ending. When the False Dmitrii was killed as a result of Prince Shuisky’s conspiracy, his body was exposed for public desecration with a mask on his stomach, a bagpipe on his chest, and a pipe in his mouth.15 Indignation toward the skomorokhi was quite widespread among religious Russians. The Old Believer Avvakum Petrov describes his punishment of minstrels for their pagan antireligious art: There came to my village dancing bears with drums and lutes, and I, though a miserable sinner, was zealous in Christ’s service, and I drove them out and I broke the buffoons’ masks and the drums, on a common outside the village, one against many, and two great bears I took away—one I clubbed senseless, but he revived, and the other I let go into the open country.16

13



Ibid., 59.

14



Ibid., 62.

15



Stakhorskii, Teatral’naia zhizn’ starinnoi Moskvy, 364.

16



Archpriest Avvakum Petrov, “The Life of Archpriest Avvakum by Himself,” in Medieval Russia’s Epics, Chronicles, and Tales, ed. and trans. Serge Zenkovsky (New York: Meridian, 1974), 404. Protopop Avvakum (1620–1682) was a leading seventeenth-century religious leader. As an Old Believer he opposed Patriarkh Nikon’s reforms of the Russian Orthodox Church.

35

Chapter 1

Foreigners were puzzled by this peculiar, if not barbaric, attitude toward the performing arts. The personal notes of one foreign traveler, Adam Olearius, reflect this reaction: “They [the Russians] do not allow in their churches any organs or any other musical instruments, saying that ‘[musical] instruments have no spirit or life and therefore cannot praise God.”17 Russian culture inherited from Byzantium this asceticism and religious negation of the pleasure given by the appreciation of art, but on Russian soil this attitude was sometimes taken to the extreme. Skomorokhi were often called veselye liudi (the merry people) because their art, which was pagan in nature, celebrated the joy of life, contradicting the ascetic religious dogmatism—those factors made them intolerable for authorities of the Russian Orthodox Church. Russian folklore reflects this juxtaposition in the proverb “God created a priest and the Devil a skomorokh.” Performances of the skomorokhi were enormously popular, and the actors themselves were very influential among the masses. This made them dangerous in the eyes of the rulers and priesthood, who felt that the ecstatically enthusiastic audiences could be dangerous crowds to rule and govern and that pagan emotions and feelings were inappropriate for good Christians. Aleksei Mikhailovich, Peter the Great’s father, was outraged that performances of the skomorokhi were turning people away from religious services: The people have become oblivious of their Orthodox faith and of God and have instead turned to the minstrels-entertainers: they gather with them in the evenings on the streets and in the open fields to watch their all-night performances and listen to their irreverent and scandalous songs.18

17

Livanova, Ocherki i materialy, 284. Adam Olearius (1599–1671) was a German scholar, mathematician, geographer, and traveler who visited Russia in 1634, 1636, and 1643 and left a witty, detailed account of his trips, describing various aspect of seventeenth-century Russian cultural and political life.

18

Zguta, Russian Minstrels, 60–61.





36

Early Harlequinized Art

In 1648, with strong support from the Russian religious authorities, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich issued a decree that outlawed performances of the skomorokhi, calling for them to be prosecuted, sent into exile away from large cities, and for their masks and musical instruments to be confiscated and burnt. Zguta writes, The skomorokhi did not completely disappear following Aleksei’s proscription of 1648. There is, first of all, a 1681 gramota of Fedor II in which the tsar addresses himself to civil disturbances in the village of Lyskovo (located east of Moscow). Mentioned among the factors contributing to the disorders are the skomorokhi, who are described as making frequent appearances at the local village tavern with their trained bears and all manner of Satanic entertainment.19

Despite numerous prosecutions, the skomorokhi were not extinguished until the second half of the eighteenth century. One of the last historic documents that mentions their performances in the Urals and regions of Western Siberia is dated September of 1768.20

Early Harlequins on the Russian Stage Russian ambassadors abroad regularly informed their monarch about various theater festivities they saw in Italy, France, and other European countries. In 1658 and 1668 they enthusiastically described their impressions of the Florentine and Parisian theaters and were particularly captivated with the splendor of the stage design and technical achievements of the European stages.21 Realizing that it would be challenging to create Russian theater without learning some lessons from European professionals, Tsar Aleksei sought to invite foreign actors and entrepreneurs to Russia. In May 1652, the boyar Matveev asked his friend Colonel Nicholas von Staden to go

19



Ibid., 64.

20



Ibid., 65.

21



V. Vsevolodskii-Gerngross, Russkii teatr ot istokov do serediny XVIII veka (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk, 1957), 102.

37

Chapter 1

to Courland to recruit for tsarist service not only a leading specialist in mining who could smelt ore but also two trumpeters and two specialists in the performing arts who would know how to stage comedies, but the performing arts specialists were not able to come.22 In 1660 the tsar asked a merchant to invite specialists from German lands to come to the Muscovite state to teach Russians how to stage comedies.23 Almost a quarter of a century after his 1648 decree outlawing performances of the skomorokhi, in 1672 Tsar Aleksei felt a need for the performing arts to celebrate the birth of his son Peter, and he decided to initiate a private theater for members of the royal family, courtiers, and other selected members of the public.24 In his court theater, Tsar Aleksei patronized religious plays based on texts from the so-called German village in Moscow that had a regularly performing amateur theater.25 Translating the German plays for the Russian stage was difficult because at that time Russian theatrical language was underdeveloped and did not have adequate terminology to express elevated or gallant monologues and dialogues on stage. In contrast, the translation of comic scenes that were an integral part of any performance, including religious plays, was quite successful as Russia had its own national comic tradition that had been developed by the skomorokhi and royal jesters. There is a view that the interludes on the stage of Tsar Aleksei’s court theater (комедийная хоромина) were strongly affected by the lazzi (comic tricks) of the commedia dell’arte, which came to Russia via popular European plays in German interpretation.26 Tsar Aleksei’s court theater functioned for four years, from 1672 until his death in 1676.

22

Aleksandr Orlov, ed., Istoriia russkoi literatury 1590–1690 (Moscow: Izd. Akademii Nauk, 1948), 368–69.

23

Liudmila Starikova, “Pervyi pridvornyi teatr,” as quoted in Istoriia russkogo dramaticheskogo teatra, ed. N. S. Pivovarova (Moscow: GITIS, 2005), 17.

24

Orlov, Istoriia russkoi literatury, 368.

25

P. N. Berkov, Istoriia russkoi komedii XVIII veka (Leningrad: Nauka, 1977), 17–18.

26

Orlov, Istoriia russkoi literatury, 371–73.



38

Early Harlequinized Art

By the time the first authentic Italian Harlequin appeared on the Russian stage in 1731, his precursors had already achieved wide popularity and had been vagabonding across the Russian cultural landscape for many decades, becoming an indispensable part of early Russian comedy. These precursors had several names—Gaer, Herlikin, and Arlikin—and came to Russia through diverse channels such as Polish and Ukrainian performing arts and Germanized versions of the commedia dell’arte.27 The German harlequinades were already performing in Russia in the early 1700s, during the era of Peter the Great.28 Furthermore, simplified and transformed adaptations of commedia dell’arte scenarios were available in Polish translation, and elements of the commedia dell’arte also were noticeable in the Ukrainian school theater and amateur theater performances.29 While Peter the Great patronized Russian arts during his reign (1682–1725) and sought to invite the best representatives of European theater to Russia, he was not successful in attracting firstrate European companies to travel to Russia. During his reign, there were English, French, Dutch, and German troupes performing in Russia, but the most popular form of entertainment was puppet shows presented by both foreign and Russian puppeteers.30 The puppeteers performed not only at marketplace fairs but also for the tsarist court and houses of nobles; puppetry was a beloved form of entertainment for people of all different social strata. During his stays abroad, Peter the Great had many opportunities to enjoy fine European art, so he was aware of both

27



The Italian comedians had been performing for the German public since the sixteenth century, and the commedia dell’arte was deeply rooted in the history of German theater. As for the mask of Harlequin, according to some sources, its first occurrences in German literature and drama were as early as 1616. See Heck, Commedia dell’Arte, 141–43.

28



Maria Chiara Pesenti, Komediia dell’arte i zhanr intermedii v russkom liubitel’skom teatre XVIII veka (St. Petersburg: Baltiiskie sezony, 2008), 51.

29



Ibid., 36.

30



Liudmila Starikova, “Russkii teatr ot ego istokov do kontsa XVIII veka,” in Pivovarova, Istoriia russkogo dramaticheskogo teatra, 30.

39

Chapter 1

the backwardness of the performing arts in his homeland and the importance of theater during a time of dramatic political change. It is historically documented that Peter the Great was familiar with Italian opera and theater. The tsar listened to Italian opera singers in 1697 and 1713 in Hanover, but he openly admitted that he was not a big fan of music and singing, getting more pleasure from navigating his ships or firing cannonade.31 Traveling widely around Europe, Peter the Great did not travel to Italy but became well informed about Italian art through reading numerous accounts by his ambassadors who visited Florence and Venice and were fascinated with the sophistication of Florentine art, the vivacity of carnivals, and the splendor of Italian theaters and opera houses.32 In 1697, the Russian diplomat and voyager Count Petr Tolstoy expressed his admiration for Italian theater, describing his impressions as if entering a fairy-tale world: В Венеции бывают оперы и комедии предивные, которые в совершенстве описать никто не может, и нигде на всем свете таких предивных оперов и комедий нет и не бывает. Tе палаты, в которых те оперы бывают, великие, округлые, и называют их итальяне театрум. В тех палатах поделаны чуланы многие в пять рядов вверх и бывает в одном театруме чуланов 200, а в ином 300 и больше, а все чуланы поделаны внутри того театрума предивными работами золочеными. . . . Играют в тех операх во обрaзе древних гисторий, кто какую гисторию излюбит так в своем театруме и сделает; а музыка в тех операх бывает предивная в разными инструментами человек 50 и больше, которые в тех операх играют. In Venice there are the most wonderful operas and comedies that nobody can fully describe, and such wonderful operas and comedies do not and will not ever exist anywhere else. The halls in which these operas are performed are great and round, and the Italians call them “theaters.” In those halls there are “closets”—five rows up, and in one theater there

31

Mooser, Annales, 29.

32

Ibid., 26.



40

Early Harlequinized Art

could be two hundred closets, and in another three hundred or more, and all the closets inside of the theater are decorated with the most amazing golden works. . . . In those operas the performances are given in the form of ancient stories; whoever likes a story will stage it in their theater, and music in those operas is the most wonderful with various instruments, with fifty musicians or more playing in those operas.33

In 1702, Peter the Great invited a German acting troupe directed by Iogan Christian Kunst to visit Moscow.34 A wooden theater (komediinaia khoromina) was built for the Germans right on Red Square. Kunst came to Russia with nine colleagues and immediately started to train Russian actors as well. In their performances, the German and Russian actors took turns, switching between the German and Russian languages.35 While Kunst and his follower Otto Furst, who came to Russia after Kunst’s death in 1703, played an important role in the development of Russian theater, teaching the Russians numerous lessons in acting and directing, their own professional level was apparently not ideal. According to foreign noblemen serving in the Petrine court, who were very familiar with the best examples of European theater, the Kunst-Furst troupe was rather mediocre and not worthy of all the expenses it required, including the construction of the theater itself. One of the foreign courtiers, Herring Friedrich von Bassewitz, accused the actors of having poor taste and low professional quality and suggested that Peter himself had good taste for everything, including the arts, and thus was not particularly pleased with Kunst and Furst.36 Peter the Great also patronized the home theater of his sister, Tsarevna Natalia Alekseevna, which was located in the

33



Livanova, Ocherki i materialy, 309.

34



Mooser, Annales, 30; P. Pekarskii, Vvedenie v istoriiu prosveshcheniia v Rossii XVIII stoletiia (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia tovarishchestva obshchestvennaia pol’za, 1862), 422.

35

Liudmila Starikova, Teatr v Rossii XVIII veka: Opyt dokumantal’nogo issledovaniia (Moscow: GTsTM Bakhrushina, 1997), 10.

36

Pekarskii, Vvedenie, 432.



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Chapter 1

Preobrazhenskoe neighborhood of Moscow and was open to the public. Theoretically anyone could go to this theater, but preference was given to the aristocracy and foreigners.37 The texts of the plays for Natalia’s performances—as well as the theater property, clothing, and scenery—were frequently borrowed from the Germans. Around 1710, the theater was moved to Saint Petersburg and existed there until Natalia’s death in 1716. The diverse repertoire of this theater consisted of religious plays and plays written by Natalia herself glorifying Peter the Great’s deeds. Peter, who was a patron and frequent spectator of his sister’s theater, was aware that the nation would benefit from exposure to Western performing arts, but he was too engaged in pursuing his political, military, and social agendas in reforming the Russian nation to devote significant energy toward cultural reform through developing the performing arts. Peter wanted to invite actors who could perform in one of the Slavic languages and could teach Russians the secrets of stagecraft. In 1720, Peter personally asked one of his ambassadors in Vienna, “Try to hire in Prague a company of comedians who can speak either Slovak or Czech.”38 Characteristically, the foreigners discussed the Petrine court theater in a very condescending manner and considered the Russian performances to be barbaric and barely enjoyable for representatives of the European elite. German diplomat Friedrich Christian Weber, for example, remembered that “ten actors and actresses were native Russians who had not seen anything except Russia, therefore one can imagine their artistry.”39 Friedrich Wilhelm von Bergholtz, a courtier from the Duchy of Holstein, expressed a similar opinion about the state of affairs in the Petrine theater: “Despite the significant educational advances in Peter the Great’s domains, they did not have a large influence on the transformational development of Russian theater. There was

37

Starikova, Teatr v Rossii, 17.

38

Pekarskii, Vvedenie, 435–36.

39

Ibid., 442.



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a theater in Moscow, but it was barbaric.”40 The technical aspects of the performances were quite limited, and most of the actors were amateurs without much professional training who came from various social classes. Members of aristocratic families were acting onstage next to representatives of lower social classes, including their own servants. Bergholtz described his astonishment on learning that in one of the plays he saw, the role of the king was given to a commoner who, shortly before the beginning of the performance, had been caned but then acted onstage together with princesses and children of nobility. Bergholtz made fun of the theater house, saying that local thieves were stealing silk handkerchiefs and expensive snuffboxes from the foreigners.41 Unfortunately, many of the documents from Tsarevna Natalia Alekseevna’s archives perished during a flood, but some memoirs by her contemporaries have survived and provide some details related to the harlequinade on the Petrine stage. According to Weber, a Harlequin played by a Russian officer (most likely an amateur actor), was a leading entertainer in Natalia’s private theater, and he appeared in the middle of a play dedicated to an important political issue: The role of Harlequin was entrusted to a chief officer, and he interfered with his jokes here and there during the whole performance. Then the orator came out and talked about the content and course of the play, and finally the play itself would come, which would depict the failure of rebellions and their unavoidable miserable endings. In this play one of the latest strelets uprisings was presented onstage.42

This historic document illustrates how this early Russian Harlequin was permitted to perform his comic interludes even during a play about such a current, sensitive political topic as the rebellion of the strelets during Peter’s reign. There was a rich European tradition,

40



Ibid., 431.

41



Ibid., 433.

42



Ibid., 442.

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dating back to the medieval era, in which interludes were short theatrical performances, usually of a comic nature, that came in the middle of many types of performances including religious plays.43 Jesters and other comic or harlequinized characters were the main protagonists of the interludes. The Russian interludes were centered on a comic persona who might be called Harlequin or one of his derivative names such as Gaer, Arlikin, or Herlikin. Foreign diplomats recounted that the comic effect of the Russian interludes was overwhelmingly based on violence, perhaps reflecting the nature of humor and the expectations of the audience in Petrine Russia: “clownish interludes were performed with the help of a whip and blows of a stick.”44 Bergholtz expressed a negative opinion of the Russian interludes in his 1722 diary, noting that they were poorly acted and would always end with a fight.45 Another piece of information that relates to the Petrine Harlequin is found in a description of some property delivered to Natalia’s theater, including among other objects a “multicolored jester garment”— this was perhaps the traditional Harlequin costume that was made from small multicolored diamond-shaped pieces of fabric, reflecting his low social status as a servant.46

Harlequinized Interludes during the Petrine Era Petrine-era interludes reveal the constant presence and gradual metamorphosis of commedia masks in Russian culture and illuminate the sense of humor of that period. The Italian scenarios that had been performed on the European stage since the beginning of the seventeenth century had complex plots, amorous adventures, sword fights in defense of honor, magical apparitions, and fantastic transformations. As a rule, these Italian plots were built on mistaken identities, love triangles, and betrayals. Geographically, the action 43

Pesenti, Komediia dell’arte, 17.

44

Pekarskii, Vvedeniie, 431.

45

Ibid., 433.

46

Ibid., 427.



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took place in many different countries and spaces, even on the moon. The development of action was dynamic, and the improvisational talent of the actors made the performances exciting and enjoyable for the public. The Italian comic interludes, like the Russian ones, were known for their frivolity and usage of obscenities. The servants (zanni) often parodied the elevated monologues and dialogues of their masters, ending with rudeness and sexually explicit body language and gestures. While the Russian interludes had simplistic plots and one-dimensional characters, the Russian Harlequin and his derivatives had many affinities with the Italian Harlequin, and his appearance on the Russian stage represented a key moment in the development of Russian theater. Harlequin was absorbed and Russified, reemerging on Russian soil as Gaer.47 There is no doubt that the Russian Harlequin was partially a creation of the popular theater, but the Italian roots of his jester persona should not be neglected. The plot of the Russian interludes centered on Gaer’s amorous adventures and his involvement with many women. Like Harlequin, Gaer was a rascal; he duped husbands who had a higher social status. Scatological humor and jokes related to intimate body parts were also very popular. The Russian interlude The Jester’s Wedding from the Petrine era exemplifies the cosmopolitan nature of the Russian Harlequin—his mixed Italian, Russian, and German ancestry. In his first address to the audience, Harlequin poses a question about his national identity: Здравствуйте, благородные господа! Я пред вами имею почтенье всегда. Каким-ста вы меня чаете, Русским или немцем признаете? Нет-ста, я гарликин российский. Пришел вам отдать поклон низкий!

47



Pesenti, Komediia dell’arte, 245. Pesenti provides a detailed study of the early interludes in Russian eighteenth-century amateur theater.

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Chapter 1

Welcome, noble audience! I always have respect for you. What do you think of me? Do you perceive me as Russian or German? No, I am a Russian Harlequin. I came to bow before you!48

Harlequin does not mention here his Italian roots, but it is quite possible that in asking “Do you perceive me as Russian or German [nemets]?” here nemets means a foreigner in general, as this was a common usage of the word in the eighteenth century. However, it is also possible that the interlude’s author was not aware of the Italian origin of Harlequin’s name since the popular imagination, unfamiliar with Italian theater at that time, associated the name with German theater. Harlequin wants to get married and asks the audience for advice: Прошу вас и требую совета: Уже пришли мои совершенные лета. Хочется, как и прочим, жениться И с женою лапушкой повеселиться! I ask you and demand your advice: My mature years have arrived. I want, like others, to get married. And to have fun with my darling wife!

Next he takes an example from the animal kingdom and talks about mating birds in a fashion that echoes how commedia characters frequently imitate the movements and sounds of animals or birds mating: Птицы и звери, тварью что разумеют, И те при себе жену имеют. Я некогда по улице гулял и видел, как воробей воробьиху топтал.

48



Quoted in Liudmila Starikova, Teatral’naia zhizn’ starinnoi Moskvy: Epokha. Byt. Nravy (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1988), 60.

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Також де и петух курочку топчет, И курочка от него клохчет. Birds and animals, creatures have reason, Even they have a wife next to them. Once I was walking on a street and saw how a male sparrow was pushing a female sparrow. The same with the rooster pushing the hen. And the hen clucks from his pushes.49

To better entertain the public during the interludes, Harlequin would probably accompany his monologue with movements that would imitate mating animals.50 In one of the scenes of The Jester’s Wedding, an old womanmatchmaker informs Harlequin that she has finally found him a bride and asks for a reward and gratitude. This scene appears to be illustrated in an eighteenth-century lubok (an engraving on a wooden lime-tree board).51 Lotman writes about the organic connection between the Russian lubok and theater, arguing that the visual space of the lubok orients the spectators toward a spatial appreciation of art that is similar to that of a theater audience, and that like theater, the lubok has a tendency to use masks: “The Russian lubok does not just imitate a type of mask or clothing but reproduces the jester’s behavior. This reveals the audience’s dynamic perception of the lubok’s text.”52 Lotman suggests that the commedia masks became deeply rooted in the art of the Russian lubok due to the works of the well-known printmaker Jacques Callot.53 In this case, the lubok’s imagery contains several curious aspects that signal the foreign nature of the Harlequin vis-à-vis the traditional Russian matchmaker. The Russian Harlequin is wearing a mask and a European costume with a top made of small diamond-

49



Ibid., 60.

50



Ibid.

51



Ibid., 61.

52



Iurii M. Lotman, “Khudozhestvennaia priroda russkikh kartinok,” in Lotman, Ob iskusstve, 484.

53



Ibid. Jacques Callot was a baroque printmaker (1592–1635).

47

Chapter 1

shaped pieces, and he holds in his hands a cane—a batoccio—that was an indispensable element of the Italian Harlequin. His mask is strongly reminiscent of the commedia dell’arte, as it covers only half of his face, leaving the mouth open, and has a large nose that suggests possible Italian ancestry. In contrast, the matchmaker’s face is not covered and her clothing is typical for pre-Petrine Russia, with no sign of Western fashion—her hat and long coat are richly decorated with fur. Therefore, the lubok seems to depict the cultural juxtaposition between Russia and the West, where Harlequin symbolizes the new Western influence and the matchmaker, the old Russian tradition that opposes the novelty. The matchmaker’s pose, with her right hand on her chest, seems to suggest her astonishment at Harlequin’s ridiculous Western outfit.

Figure 3. Buffoon and Matchmaker. Eighteenth-century lubok.

The text of another Petrine-era interlude from the end of the seventeenth century or the first decade of the eighteenth century, The Interlude, is striking for its eroticism, frivolity of language, 48

Early Harlequinized Art

violence, and abundance of rude language and obscenities.54 The nineteenth-century scholar P. Pekarsky, who collected and published valuable historical documents from the epoch of Peter the Great, interrupts his academic comments on the interludes to exclaim that the interlude texts “describe adventures that astonish readers with their cynicism and shamelessness—and all of this was presented to the audience!”55 Pesenti also points out the scatological nature of the humor in Russian interludes, such as in Tikhanov’s collection of Russian interludes where Herlikin is interested in the young wife of an old husband. Herlikin unexpectedly visits the couple with a bottle of wine and fruit and starts simultaneously flirting with the wife and chatting with the husband. Gradually, the old man gets drunk and Herlikin prepares a bed. Herlikin puts the intoxicated husband to bed and then shortly thereafter lies down in the same bed with the wife. The infidelity is depicted in a short verbal exchange: Старик. И ты ложись жена. Жена. Я и так возле тебя Херликин. А мне ж где? Жена. Вот зде [Туда ж ложитца и обнимает хозяйку]. Old man. And you, wife, lie down. Wife. I am right here, next to you. Herlikin. What about me? Wife. Right here . . . [Herlikin immediately lies down and embraces the woman.]56

54

Nikolai Tikhonravov, Russkiie dramaticheskiie proizvedeniia 1672–1725 godov (St. Petersburg: Izdaniie Kozhanchikova, 1874), 2:485–88. In Tikhonravov’s first-volume index on page xlv he writes that The Interlude belongs to the beginning of the eighteenth century, and then on page xlviii he places The Interlude together with other plays that were part of Kunst and Furst’s repertoire, which suggests that the interlude was a translation from German.

55



Pekarskii, Vvedeniie, 457.

56



Pesenti, Komediia dell’arte, 152–53



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Next, before leaving the marital bed he has shared with both spouses, Herlikin defecates and then runs away. A comic argument between the husband and wife then ensues as they both blame each other for defecating and urinating in bed.57 The rudeness and eroticism of the interludes reflect the nature of humor and parody during the Petrine period. Lotman explains such frivolity as due to the specific moral norms of the theater or balagan culture: Interludes, fairs and their entertainment, ritualized forms of calendar holidays, folk theater, and lubok were the kinds of mass culture that expected active, playful reactions from the audience and followed particular moral norms. It seems that the frivolous subjects were perceived by audiences as forbidden under other circumstances, which contributed to the transition to playful behavior, just as tragic behavior requires religious feeling in order to transition the audience into an active state.58

The protagonist of The Interlude is Gaer, whose foreign name is intermixed with typical Russian characteristics. The Interlude is in rhymed syllabic verses with an abundance of colloquial language typical of Russian folklore and with rich use of proverbs, facetious sayings, and flourishes. From his first appearance, Gaer comically complains about how ugly he is: “Голова моя буйна! куда ты мне кажешься дурна!” (My riotous head! How ugly it seems to me!) Then follows a grotesque description of his enormous nose, reminiscent of the Italian mask, and he compares his forehead with that of a bull and his hair with pig bristles.59 Gaer questions his genealogy, making innuendoes about his possible foreign origin and his geographical dislocation: “я и сам дивился, что такой родился и как здесь очутился” (I wonder myself, that I was born this way

57

Ibid.

58

Lotman, “Khudozhestvennaia priroda,” 487.

59

Tikhonravov, Russkiie dramaticheskiie proizvedeniia, 485.



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and ended up here.)60 The comic effect within the interlude is based exclusively on constant verbal offenses and physical violence. While the lovers in the commedia dell’arte—the innamorati— had swords to fight their enemies and protect their honor, they beat their servants with regular canes. As for Gaer, the old woman promises to beat him with a simple Russian poker. The tradition of the skomorokhi with their performing animals is reflected in Gaer’s threats to make the old lady act like a performing bear: “Возьму старую чертовку, стану водить как медведицу по дворам, а не станешь ходить, так приударю по бедрам.” (I will take the old witch, and will start to walk her like a she-bear from one yard to another, and if you do not want to walk, I will hit your hips.)61 The legendary endless amorous adventures of the Italian Harlequin, whose battoccio was not only a weapon but also a symbol of his sexual power, are paralleled in the Russian Gaer’s promiscuity. Despite the physical imperfections described in his first monologue, Gaer seems to be successful in his amorous life and boasts of his erotic victories. Erotic themes appear as often in the interludes as did biblical themes in religious plays. For example, Gaer attempts to seduce a young woman: “Я давно желал спать с девкой. Спасибо, голубушка, что пришла, а меня бедного здесь нашла.” (I wanted to sleep with a girl for a long time. Thanks, darling, that you came and found poor me.) When the young woman finally agrees, Gaer tells her mother, “а дочка твоя пускай у меня посидит, а на мои фигуры поглядит. Я к тебе ее провожу, чем знаю тем награжу.” (Let your daughter sit here with me and look at my body parts. I will accompany her back to you, and I will reward her with what I am good at.)62 In the next scene, he flirts with another young woman whom he knew previously, and immediately, without any flowery courtship, invites himself into her bed: “Аль ты меня не узнала? Помнишь ли как лежала? Я подарил тебе юбку, Ел

60



Ibid.

61



Ibid., 486.

62



Ibid., 487.

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у тебя жареную утку” (Don’t you recognize me? Do you remember how you lay in bed? I gave you a skirt, and I ate a roast duck at your place), and then: “Ей, молодка, ты, помнишь, в ту пору избу топила и варила кисель, а окорок ветчины тут же висел . . . Я с тобой пришел погулять, вместе на кровати полежать.” (Hey, young beauty, do you remember how you were heating the house and made a fruit drink, and the ham was hanging next to you . . . I came to have fun with you and lie down in bed together.)63 Harlequin was famous for his gluttony, and this is reflected in Gaer’s detailed recollection of the Russian dishes served to him during his last rendezvous (kisel’, okorok, solianka). Then a stage direction with erotic content makes it obvious that the Petrine stage tolerated not only verbal eroticism but also eroticism in a more explicit sense: “Лягут под одеялом. Хозяин идет пьяный и кричит: ‘Встречай!’” (They lie down under a blanket. The husband returns home drunk and yells “Welcome me!”) The ending of The Interlude has an unexpected mood change from comic to dramatic. Gaer, whose discourse up to this point is a combination of comic jokes and frivolous advances, suddenly pronounces a monologue that contains almost tragic overtones and is strongly reminiscent of the tragicomic modernist masks of the Harlequins and Pierrots: Люди живут разумно, а я всегда безумно. У иного довольно серебра и злата, того почитают за брата, а у меня ничего нету: не знаю ни от кого привету. Весьма мне хочется деньжонок, да не полушки в кармане не гремит. Ино ночью во сне видется кабы полны денег карманы, а проснулся: ажно все обманы. Не знаю, как другие наживают, а у меня никогда не бывают. Разве уж стать лукавить? People live wisely, and I always live insanely. One who has plenty of silver and gold is respected as a brother, but I have nothing and am not welcomed by anyone. I want very much

63



Ibid., 491.

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Early Harlequinized Art

to have some money, but no money rattles in my pocket. Sometimes at night in a dream, I see pockets full of money, and I wake up and realize all the deceptions. I have no idea how others become rich, but I am not. Perhaps I should start deceiving?64

This monologue of a jester-philosopher reveals the disappointment, loneliness, and pain of a human soul lost in the vortex of political and social reforms. Petrine Gaer’s vision of himself as a social misfit underwent further transformation and multiple incarnations in the history of the Russian harlequinade. Pesenti notes, “He was the darling of the spectators because he was expressing their sympathy and antipathy and was punished for the sake of the public.”65 Thus, the early Russian Harlequin has a complicated genealogy—his personality represents a mixture of the commedia dell’arte mask with German modifications and some features of the Russian skomorokhi. With an Italian name and Italian physical features, Gaer continued the tradition of the skomorokhi in his speech and acts, and he was strongly affected by the German version of Harlequin—Hanswurst. With his cosmopolitan image, the Russian Harlequin seems to mirror the essential features of the times: he is a Westernized version of the Russian jester. Harlequin ridicules himself as being lost in his own genealogy, reminding the audience about their gradual loss of national identity during the Petrine reforms. His image—a comic symbol of the recently Westernized Russian—contains new cultural signs. The foreignness of his name and his mask gave him a certain liberty to parody the grandiosity of the Petrine reforms right in front of the great reformer himself, to express the concerns of his fellow citizens. The persistent presence of harlequinized jesters in popular performances points to audiences’ love of this character. The initial role that this comic persona played in Russian culture was not only to stimulate plot development and entertain the public but also to stimulate the early stages of the development of national comedy.

64



Ibid., 495.

65



Pesenti, Komediia dell’arte, 246.

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Anna Ioannovna’s Italian Decade

Russian audiences’ first encounter with the authentic Italian commedia dell’arte finally occurred in 1731, during the reign of Peter the Great’s niece, Empress Anna Ioannovna (1730–1740), which Starikova characterizes as “the Italian decade” on Russian soil.1 Unlike European audiences that had been acquainted with the commedia dell’arte as it flourished since the sixteenth century, the Russian public was destined to witness the commedia dell’arte in a period of its gradual decline. The golden era of the commedia dell’arte in Europe had occurred during the Renaissance when sophisticated tastes for classical culture were interwoven with reverence for national folk traditions.2 When the commedia as an art form began to decline in Europe, some commedia performers relied on entertaining tricks and verbal jokes, frequently of questionable quality, rather than on artistry and sophistication. Goldoni complained that instead of performing the old scenarios and good comedies, some actors started to perform separate scenes without paying heed to the commedia’s traditional rules or order.3 While the popular literary comedies by Carlo Goldoni and Carlo Gozzi still relied on commedia dell’arte masks and scenarios, these new comedies were based on written scripts, and their popularity

1

See Liudmila Starikova, Teatral’naia zhizn’ Rossii v epokhu Elizavety Petrovny: Dokumental’naia khronika 1741–1750, vypusk 2, chast’ 1 (Moscow: Nauka, 2003), 17.

2

Marialuisa Ferrazzi, Komediia dell’arte i ee ispolniteli pri dvore Anny Ioannovny 1731–1738 (Moscow: Nauka, 2008), 97.

3

Ibid., 103.





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A n n a I o a n n o v n a’ s I t a l i a n D e c a d e

began pushing improvisational performances off the stage. The companies that were performing for the royal European courts still had excellent commedia dell’arte performers, but the gradual decrease in popularity and opportunities for the improvisational commedia in Italy led companies to start looking for new audiences and opportunities elsewhere.

The 1731 Arrival of the First Italian Troupe in Russia The future Russian empress, Anna Ioannovna, married Frederick Wilhelm, Duke of Courland, in her early youth (in 1710) and spent twenty years living in the Baltic town of Mitau. Traveling German theater troupes regularly visited Mitau, influencing her artistic tastes. Anna was well known for her love of the grotesque scenes and obscene jokes of buffoons that often sparked her Homeric laughter.4 It is quite plausible that Anna was acquainted with the commedia dell’arte performing style long before she became the Russian empress and invited the first Italian commedia troupe to Moscow. Well acquainted with the European performing arts, Anna sought to achieve European splendor in her court once she came to power and wanted to be well entertained. As Peter the Great’s niece and Russian by nationality, she both admired Western culture and wished to be a keeper of Russian antiquity. Yearning to be seen as following in her uncle’s footsteps in Westernizing Russia, she was ready to pay any price to make her court appear more magnificent than any other in Europe.5 The desire to see first-rate Italian singers and comedians had been felt in Russian society even prior to Anna’s accession to the throne, yet efforts under previous tsars to invite leading European performers to visit Russia were not successful. Since the reign of Peter the Great, Russians had been infatuated with carnivals and masquerades, and the newspaper Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti had regularly published short informative articles about the

4

Mooser, Annales, 35.

5

Starikova, Teatral’naia zhizn’ Rossii v epokhu Anny Ioannovny, 80.



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Figure 4. Italian Commedia dell’Arte Actors in Russia. Lubok, first half of the eighteenth century.

Italian carnivals and theater performances. In 1729, the newspaper published a series of articles that described Italian theater and carnivalistic festivities to Russian readers. For example, on January 4, 1729, it reported from Rome on the presence of Cardinal Ottoboni in one of Rome’s opera houses and wrote about the pleasure that the audience received from this art form. The article then explained for its readers that “opera is a musical composition, similar to a comedy, where the verses are sung, and it includes various dances and complicated stage machinery.”6 The newspaper informed Russian readers about Italian cultural life and emphasized that all the social classes—from Catholic priests to Italian aristocracy to simple people—greatly enjoy the performances. A March 29, 1729, article pays special attention to a description of the Venetian carnival and to the fact that representatives of various social strata participated in the festivities:

6



Ibid., 112.

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“Everybody here greatly enjoys themselves . . . . Last Sunday at noon on St. Mark’s Square, there were a great many people, and the duke, his council, and all his ministers were in attendance.”7 The commedia dell’arte masks were inseparable from the Venetian carnival, and Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti mentioned the Harlequins, targeting the Russian readership’s familiarity with this character. An article’s anonymous author expressed his admiration for the Italians’ comic sensibility and improvisational skills and educated his readership, concluding that “the masquerades represent an ongoing comedy that is even more pleasant to watch since the participants do not prepare for their acting.”8 After becoming empress in 1730, Anna was determined to invite an Italian troupe to Russia as soon as possible and requested the assistance of the King of Poland and the Prince of Saxony, Frederich-August III. A connoisseur of music and theater, FrederichAugust III had an Italian troupe led by Ristori that was performing for his court and that consisted of commedia dell’arte–style actors as well as opera singers, dancers, and musicians. As a sign of courtesy and respect for Anna, Frederich-August agreed to let the Russian empress “borrow” the Italian troupe for almost a year.9 Anna was willing to pay a high price to get the best musicians, singers, and comedians and promised him that she would take personal care of the Italians to make sure they had everything they needed in Moscow.10 When the Russians had agreed to all conditions of the contract and had given all possible warranties and promises that the actors would be given everything they needed, Marquis de Fleury, one of the Saxon ministers involved in negotiations, suggested that the Italian actors should always be treated like spoiled children.11

7



Ibid., 114.

8

Ibid., 122.

9

Mooser, Annales, 39.



10



Ibid., 41–42.

11



Ibid., 47.

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The Italian performers’ first trip to Russia turned out to be long and exhausting—it took them about one and a half months in the middle of the severe Russian winter (from January 1 to February 14 of 1731) to reach Moscow—and was full of unexpected problems and illnesses. To avoid dangers associated with impassable forests and the risk of wolf attacks in the Minsk area, the Italians made an eight-hundred-kilometer detour through Kiev, Kursk, and Tula. Their cortege included nineteen actors with servants and technical personnel and an escort of soldiers who were responsible for the safety of the troupe.12 Despite the constant presence of the escort, Ristori was robbed and lost a case with clothing and other valuable items. The actors, exhausted by hunger and unaccustomed to the cold, were met with enough royal hospitality when they finally arrived in Moscow that it made up for all the hardships of their trip. Having heard numerous stories about “barbarian” Russians, the Italians were pleasantly surprised by the civilized and friendly manners of their hosts. The actors were lodged in fancy palaces, and all their needs—including medical ones—were taken care off. The Italians were honored with a splendid reception in the presence of the empress Anna herself and her royal court. The only thing that the singer Ludovica, the spoiled Italian diva, complained about was the absence of chocolate, which was not available at that time in Russia.13 After the troupe’s arrival in Moscow on February 19, 1731, Baron Le Fort, who helped make all the necessary arrangements for the performances and who played the role of liaison between the Italians and the Russians, reported that they were all satisfied with the arrangements. While the actors were taking some time to recover after their treacherous journey and gradually started preparing for the first performance, the empress and her court expressed their joy and excitement about the arrival of the Italians and were impatient to see their performances. The surviving documents indicate that the

12

Ibid., 65.

13

Ibid., 68, 366.



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Russian court was expecting something extraordinary that had never been seen before. Evidently, high expectations had been generated by the world fame of Italian theater and opera, numerous publications on the Italian art in the Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti, and by the fascinating stories of eyewitnesses who had seen the Italians perform. Baron Le Fort was also agitated, predicting that the audience would be “ecstatic” when it finally saw the Italians performing onstage, and noted that Her Majesty and the Russian courtiers who had never seen anything like that before were “burning with impatience.”14 This genuine interest on the part of Anna and her court illustrates the extent of the evolution of cultural attitudes in Russia toward the performing arts and performers. While the fact that the Italians had been sent by another European monarch, a wellknown art connoisseur, required that the Russians follow a certain code of civilized behavior, there does appear to have been a genuine desire to experience and appreciate real art. In addition, Anna wanted to be seen as a follower of her uncle’s politics and to add European splendor to her court. Therefore, the invitation of the Italians had not only an entertainment purpose but also a political one. While awaiting the first performance of the Italians, the Russian court itself was involved in a real-life performance— the great masquerade of 1731. Similar to the commedia dell’arte, the Russian masquerade had its own scenario with obligatory participation, a very strict role distribution, and regulation of all costume changes.15 In contrast to Venice, where all the social classes were equal participants in the carnival, the Muscovite royal court excluded the lower classes, making the royal masquerade a purely aristocratic mode of entertainment. Lotman writes that costumed masquerades contradicted Russian religious traditions and were associated with the devil in the Russian Orthodox consciousness. He writes,

14



Ibid., 366.

15



Starikova, Teatral’naia zhizn’ Rossii v epokhu Anny Ioannovny, 20.

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The European tradition of the masquerade penetrated the life of the eighteenth-century nobility with difficulty, or blended with folk mummers. As a form of festivities for the nobility, the masquerade was a closed and almost secretive merriment.16

On January 10, 1731, Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti reported from Moscow that all foreign and Russian ministers were expected to participate during the preparation for the masquerade.17 All the participants had to be dressed according to strict rules, and they represented different nationalities: Yesterday the court masquerade began. The event was divided in four groups, with the first group including Her Majesty with all her courtiers wearing Persian [costumes], then foreign ministers wearing Swiss [costumes], and the remaining two groups wearing Venetian garments. Everything was in wonderful, exceptional order.18

We do not know what the “Venetian garments” worn by the Russians looked like, but one can speculate that the masks of the commedia dell’arte may have been part of the costumes, just as they were in Venice. Starikova states that the masquerade of 1731 clearly exhibited a Western influence, as the Russian court was imitating Italy in general and Venice in particular.19 The singers and musicians of the Italian commedia dell’arte troupe began their performances during the great royal masquerade, when everybody was to some extent a performer acting according to the royal scenario. The first Italian performance took place on February 26, 1731, on a stage built inside the Kremlin Palace, and the Russian audience finally saw the commedia dell’arte and Italian

16

Iurii M. Lotman, “Bal,” in Besedy o russkoi kul’ture: Byt i traditsii russkogo dvorianstva (XVII–nachalo XIX veka) (St. Petersburg: Iskusstvo-SPb, 1994), 100–1.

17



Starikova, Teatral’naia zhizn’ Rossii v epokhu Anny Ioannovny, 177.

18



Ibid., 179.

19

Ibid., 94.





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opera in its all splendor. Mooser calls this event “a sensational revelation,” and most likely he does not exaggerate.20 That evening, the Italians performed L’Inganno Fortunato (Cчастливый обман / Happy deception) and an interlude called Velasco et Tilla, the content of which is unknown. The performances were very successful and earned high praise from the empress. After the end of the performance, Anna told Le Fort that she was very pleased with the comedians and that, despite the fact that she did not understand Italian, she greatly enjoyed the performance. Furthermore, she expressed her desire to have the comedies translated into Russian to better understand the plot development and gestures of the comedians. Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti also praised the performance: From Moscow on March 1st. On Friday, the recently arrived Italian comedians gave their first comedy performance with singing and to everyone’s great pleasure. The theater was intentionally built in a big hall of the new imperial palace.21

Ristori’s letters provide further information about the first Italian company performances. He writes that he decided to build a portable theater inside the royal palace—a sort of royal balagan that could accommodate about six hundred spectators—that included sophisticated stage machinery to help the actors fly onstage as they did in Italian theaters. When Ristori learned that neither Anna nor her courtiers knew much Italian, he started to revise the future comedies to make them more understandable and enjoyable despite the language barrier: After realizing that Her Majesty, the Tsarina, does not understand Italian at all, I started to work hard on improving the actors’ stage behavior, the machinery and flights, and created a comedy that produced such a pleasant impression on Her Majesty that immediately after its completion she

20



Mooser, Annales, 70.

21



Starikova, Teatral’naia zhizn’ Rossii v epokhu Anny Ioannovny, 188.

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rose and, turning to the audience, started to applaud, inviting everyone to follow her example.22

This immediate success demonstrates the expressive and transcultural artistic power of the commedia dell’arte acting style— the music, singing, plasticity, and improvisational virtuosity of the comedians had a visual and emotional impact on the Russians without words. The universal language of the harlequinade transcended cultural differences. Starikova comments that “the Italian commedia dell’arte was an ideal ‘foreign’ theater that was mastered very quickly because it was dominated by the actor’s craft and improvisational nature, without strict reliance on a fixed text.”23 Ristori was inspired by his success with the Russian royalty and enthusiastically continued his work as an actor, company director, stage architect, and set designer. His mature age—he was over seventy by the time he came to Russia—did not prevent him from being a great performer and energetic administrator. His wife, who was an actress in the troupe, and his son, who was a composer, worked with him, entertaining the Russian court. Performers of the commedia dell’arte traditionally played one role throughout their whole career, and their identity therefore became inseparable from their stage character. The troupe of Tommaso Ristori included Ristori himself as Scaramuccia, Andrea Bertoldi as Pantalone, Belotty as Harlequin, Lucas Cafanny as Brighella, and other women and men in the roles of the lovers (innamorati).24 The masked servants—Harlequin and Pantalone— actively communicated with the audience during and after their performances. The Ristori company had an excellent reputation and was greatly respected by fellow actors, but the troupe’s leading performers were past their prime and did not include the first-tier

22

Ibid., 176.

23

Starikova, Teatr v Rossii, 25.

24

Mooser, Annales, 365.



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commedia performers who would later come to Russia directly from Italy.25 An episode on March 18, 1731, illustrates the clash of the Russian and Italian comic traditions during this period. After the play The False Cuckhold, which had great success and produced a lot of laughter, the Italian masked characters were involved in a comic incident with one of the female Russian court jesters (shutikha). Harlequin and Pantalone had decided to invite the female jester for a dance while entertaining her with their comic tricks (lazzi). The Russian jester was apparently caught by surprise and could not figure out how to interact with the two Italian performers. Either being at a loss for what to do or relying on the Russian sense of the comic, she also decided to improvise and . . . she bit both Italians after refusing to dance with them. When Harlequin and Pantalone forced her to go onstage anyway, she pulled up her skirts, showing her underwear to the audience. The public was ecstatic and greatly enjoyed this confrontation of two national comic traditions. Three high-ranking religious authorities happened to be in the audience, and all three simultaneously turned their heads away to avoid seeing such a blasphemous scene. To the priests’ embarrassment, they unintentionally became involved in the comedy, making everyone in the audience laugh even harder.26 This episode, described in one of Le Fort’s letters, is interesting in its mixture of the Russian comic tradition—based on both violence and frivolity— with the Italian dances, lazzi, and interaction with the audience. The fact that high-ranking religious authorities were watching such performances seems to signal a new social norm and perhaps yet another imitation of the West, where cardinals had become theatergoers, as was described in the Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti in 1729. The newspaper was a herald of the new Russian politics and was oriented toward Western cultural standards and societal norms. Russian political and religious leaders, who less than a century earlier had strictly banned the skomorokhi performances as

25



Ferrazzi, Komediia dell’arte, 31.

26



Mooser, Annales, 368.

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Figure 5. Empress Anna Ioannovna in a Coronation Dress. Engraving by Christian-Albert Wortmann from the original by Louis Caravaque (1730)

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pagan and blasphemous and had burned musical instruments and masks for being devilish, had become infatuated spectators of the Italian performances, where masked actors were singing and dancing in front of them. The Orthodox religious leaders now had to mask their genuine reactions and adjust their behavior according to the new Western secular norms. Perhaps the foreignness of this royal balagan made it more acceptable for the leaders of the Russian Orthodox church? It is remarkable that the Italian performances were scheduled throughout the great Lent of 1731, and stopped only for several days before Easter. Easter and the anniversary of Anna’s coronation were celebrated with Italian performances as well. This time, to honor the empress, the Italian singer Ludovica sang a cantata in Russian.27 As a rule, the Italians gave two performances a week, and the commedia dell’arte’s interludes were mixed with operatic performances. Judging by the titles of the comedies—such as Harlequin the Prince Impostor, Harlequin the School Teacher, Scaramuccia the Magician, Scaramuccia the Gardener, and Pantalone the Disappointed Lover—each plot would revolve around one masked character’s adventures and comic misfortunes. Anna was particularly fond of improvisational interludes with buffoons and was not a big fan of opera. Numerous reports by Baron Le Fort affirmed that the acting was excellent and that the troupe had extraordinary success with the Russian audiences. Italian performances became the center of the cultural life of the Russian court for the entire year of 1731. For a country that, at the time, did not have any professional theater of its own, this was—using Mooser’s term—a “sensational revelation,” as Russian audiences experienced the virtuosity and sophistication of first-rate European performers. Spectators in this country that had an ascetic attitude toward artistic pleasures, who had become used to the boring predictability of amateur religious plays and the rude buffoonery of Russian jesters, had finally encountered engaging, life-affirming performances.

27



Ibid., 369.

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The Ristori company was performing a stylized version of the commedia that had originated as a form of popular entertainment. It is not known whether the Italians performed outside the palaces of the aristocracy during their first visit to Russia. Based on surviving documents that indicate there were four small puppet theaters among the belongings left by the Italians in Russia, Starikova speculates that “most likely, in their free time the Italian actors entertained themselves and Russian courtiers, performing with puppets the same plays that they performed as actors in the large ‘live’ theater.”28 According to Starikova, the Italian puppeteers entertained Russian spectators not only in the palaces of the aristocracy but they also performed for the general Russian public, thus planting seeds of the harlequinade in Russian low culture and with mass audiences.29

The Second (1733–1734) and Third (1735–1738) Italian Companies in Saint Petersburg The Russian court’s encounter with Ristori’s company produced exaltation and then the desire to extend the artistic pleasure and invite a new Italian company as soon as possible. Shortly after the Ristori company left Russia for Poland, Anna’s court began new cultural negotiations. Anna sought to engage a new Italian troupe that this time would come to Russia directly from Italy and would include the leading Italian performers. The royal court had moved to Saint Petersburg, and wanted to demonstrate its westernized taste for the performing arts to the rest of Europe. Anna was ready to pay any price to attract the leading Italian comedians, dancers, musicians, and opera singers. In September of 1732, the empress personally signed a credit line for five thousand rubles to recruit the leading Italian artists.30 Anna charged her own

28

Starikova, Teatr v Rossii, 44.

29

Ibid., 43.

30

Mooser, Annales, 99.



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concertmaster Johann Hubner to be her cultural envoy to Venice, which was the leading market for European art and theater at the time, attracting impresarios from all over Europe.31 Hubner and his assistant Domenico Dreyer recruited about thirty Italian actors in Venice and left for Saint Petersburg in March of 1733.32 This second Italian troupe arrived in Saint Petersburg in mid-April of 1733, and financial documents of the Russian court registered that an additional twelve thousand five hundred rubles were paid for all the comforts necessary for the foreigners. Numerous official documents and bills provide detailed information about the second Italian troupe, the names of its participants, and the financial charges. These documents illuminate the cultural life of the Russian court and the eccentric multicultural crowd that was performing on the royal stage: the performers included Antonio Sacchi, who was one of the biggest stars of eighteenth-century Italian theater. Sacchi (Sacco)—a dancer and famous performer of the roles of Truffaldino and Harlequin— was even eulogized by Gozzi and Goldoni, who viewed him as an artistic genius and ideal performer and improviser in the commedia dell’arte style. Among these performers we see the virtuoso violinist Pietro Miro, who was destined to become Anna’s favorite jester. Surprisingly enough, performing with the Italians was Ernst-Johann Biron, an influential courtier from Courland and the empress’s long-time lover.33 Ironically, the name of her lover, who took advantage of his sexual relationship with the empress to rule Russia, is associated with Harlequin’s sword, a symbol of Harlequin’s sexual power: “Purchased for Count von Biron: two Harlequin swords, belt with a buckle and white shoes.”34 The role of Harlequin was performed by an Italian actor, Carlo Gibelli, but it sounds like Biron was either performing Harlequin’s role in life and onstage among the professional Italian comedians or he used 31



Ibid.

32



Ibid., 99–100.

33



Starikova, Teatral’naia zhizn’ Rossii v epokhu Anny Ioannovny, 272–95.

34



Ibid., 276.

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this Harlequin garment for the royal masquerades. One thing is certain—Biron’s name repeatedly appears in association with Harlequin.35 The second and third Italian companies performed in the Saint Petersburg Winter Palace in a splendid theater designed by the architect Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli. The theater was decorated with sculptures and theater masks, and it could accommodate up to one thousand spectators. It is documented that female singers and castratos were alternating performances with the improvisational commedia dell’arte plays. Most of the musicians, singers, and actors were of Italian origin, but amateur Russian actors were participating as well, learning stagecraft from the Italians. The repertoire consisted of forty-four comedies and musical interludes, and many of the scenarios were translated into Russian by Trediakovsky (discussed in the next chapter). The memoirs of foreign travelers depict a theater ambiance that had changed significantly since the Petrine era, with social codes demonstrating great respect for the performances and performers. The foreigners note that, despite the fact that the Russian court spent significant sums on artists’ salaries and costumes, the spectators were not expected to pay anything.36 The rules of behavior were very strict, and those who came late to performances were not allowed into the auditorium. The audiences looked splendid, with noblewomen competing with each other in displaying gorgeous velvet and silk dresses and expensive jewelry.37 Foreign visitors no longer described the Russian stage as barbaric, and instead they eulogized the excellent performances onstage and the fancy outfits of the spectators, noting that Russians were famous for “ostentatious pomp and splendor—the unsurpassed quality of the Russian court.”38

35



Ibid., 278.

36

Ferrazzi, Komediia dell’arte, 67.

37

Ibid., 68.

38

Ibid., 69.



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Pedrillo/Pietro Miro—Royal Jester and Cultural Envoy Anna’s favorite jester Pedrillo came to Russia as the violinistvirtuoso Pietro Miro in 1732, most likely as a member of the second troupe recruited in Venice. Financial documents suggest that Miro was one of the leading musicians, as his salary of seven hundred rubles per year was much higher than that of his fellow musicians, who were earning five hundred rubles or less.39 Miro’s talents and fortune flourished at the Russian court thanks to the protection of the empress and her generous gifts: Miro appears in various documents listed as a violinist, a singer, a composer, a buffoon, an art connoisseur, and as Anna’s cultural envoy, commissioned to recruit yet another troupe in Italy in 1734. Miro was known in Russia as the jester Pedrillo/Petrillo, but the etymology of this nickname is not clear. The most reliable source is Mooser, whose information is based on original eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sources. One eighteenth-century source, JeanChretien Tromer—who knew Miro in Saint Petersburg—wrote that the Italian was born not far from Naples, the son of a sculptor named Adviago Pedrillo, and therefore his Russian nickname was in fact his family name. Some of Miro’s contemporaries called him Adamo Pedrillo, and similar information was published in The Dictionary of Russian Biographies, which states that Pietro was Pietro-Adamo, whose father’s name was Pedrillo.40 Vsevolodsky-Gerngross claims that Pedrillo was a nickname: “Among the violinists there was someone named Pietro Miro, with the nickname Petrillo. After arriving in the Russian court, he soon changed his profession to take a position as the empress’s jester.”41 39



Starikova, Teatral’naia zhizn’ Rossii v epokhu Anny Ioannovny, 217. According to archival materials, the native Russian musicians were earning four times less than the Italians. However, the leading operatic singers were making even more than Miro: their salary is documented as being 1,000–1,237 rubles per year.

40



Mooser, Annales, 105.

41



V. Vsevolodskii-Gerngross, “Teatr v Rossii pri imperatritse Anne Ioannovne,” in Ezhegodnik imperatorskikh teatrov, vypusk 3 (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1913), 14.

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As soon as Miro realized that Anna favored him among his fellow performers, he began playing a new role—that of the leading court jester and the empress’s most intimate confidant—in addition to his vocation as a professional musician. A number of documents demonstrate Miro’s talents and his exceptional wit.42 In one private collection, Mooser discovered a unique document that contains Miro’s musical composition entitled “Funny Jokes for a Little Violin. Composition of the Famous Jester Pedrillo.” Mooser writes that the composition suggests that Miro had mastered advanced techniques and was able to do tricks with his violin, including pizzicati for his left hand and other technically sophisticated feats. The character of the musical piece was humorous and entertaining.43 There are many indications that Miro was entertaining the Russian courtly audience by performing commedia interludes together with other actors such as Antonio and Nina Sacchi. For example, the court documents include a bill that lists payments for stockings and shoes for Nina Sacchi and Miro in 1734, and Miro danced and acted in several Italian comedies, one of them clearly a harlequinade called Comedy about the Birth of Arlikin.44 The very nature of Miro’s talents perfectly matched the skills of a commedia performer, as he was a synthetic actor—a great musician, dancer, and comic actor—who was also a great improviser. Miro created his legendary image as Anna’s favorite buffoon as an original mixture of the Italian comedy with the long tradition of Russian courtly jesters. Going back to the era of Peter the Great, the court jesters had a very prestigious social status, often playing a double role—that of a statesman and a jester. Many royal jesters belonged to wellestablished aristocratic families who considered their foolishness

42

I was not able to determine whether Miro in fact spoke Russian, but the reminiscences of his contemporaries and his status as a close confidant of the empress suggest that he knew it quite well. It is most unlikely that he communicated with her through interpreters. The level of intimacy established between the Russian empress and her favorite Italian jester leads me to believe that Pedrillo knew the language.

43

Mooser, Annales, 106.

44

Starikova, Teatral’naia zhizn’ Rossii v epokhu Anny Ioannovny, 276.





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not a humiliation but an honor. The leading jesters of Anna’s era included Mikhail Volkonsky and Nikita Golitsyn.45 The border between the social status of a jester and that of a courtier was rather illusive, as in the case of Peter the Great’s favorite jester, Count Nikita Zotov, who had a double appointment—as a royal buffoon and as a director of the Financial Council, which enforced the political repression of Peter the Great’s enemies.46 In 1734, Anna appointed Pedrillo/Miro as her cultural envoy, giving him access to a large line of credit and sending him to Italy to recruit a third Italian troupe that would permanently work in Saint Petersburg. The Russian empress appeared to fully trust Miro’s artistic intuition, his taste, and his business skills and was confident that he would successfully accomplish his mission. Mooser suggests that Miro’s ability to recruit a splendid ensemble of leading Italian singers, comedians, composers, stage designers, technicians, dancers, and theater managers to travel to Russia for the third Italian company indicates that the Russian court had given Miro control over significant financial resources. The goal that he was pursuing—to make the royal Russian stage incomparable to any other—was successfully achieved. Leading commedia dell’arte performers were part of this third troupe, and Miro was clearly well informed about the commedia and the professional qualities that a successful impresario should look for. After accomplishing his mission and bringing the third Italian company to Russia, Miro realized that, despite Anna’s desire to have the sophisticated troupe performing for her court, her taste was not very cultivated, as she preferred the rude and obscene lazzi in private during her afternoon rest. One witness reported that Miro received from the empress the title of the leading buffoon, playing his violin and making hilarious grimaces that made the Russian empress laugh until tears came to her eyes.47 It is remarkable that

45



Evgenii Anisimov, Anna Ioannovna (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2002), 87–88.

46



Ibid., 90.

47



Ibid., 107.

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this gifted Italian performer outplayed the famous Russian buffoon Balakirev and the Portuguese Jew Lacosta (one of Peter the Great’s favorites), both of whom were serving the empress at that time. It appears that Miro successfully combined the Italian artistry and sense of comedy with the Russian national comic tradition, assimilating the two traditions in a way that made his performances enormously appealing to the Russian aristocrats. Miro was not only a great actor but also a businessman par excellence who, according to the reminiscences of his contemporaries, was able to erase the border between performance and real life, engaging Russian courtiers in his versatile performances and making them pay well for their entertainment. One episode depicts Miro’s artistic ingenuity, his good knowledge of Russian customs, and his amazing capacity to playfully interact with the Russian courtiers. Karl Biron once mockingly told Pedrillo/Miro that his wife was a she-goat. Miro answered immediately that indeed his wife was a she-goat, and was about to deliver their child, and he cordially invited Anna and her court to come and visit her. This invitation was apparently based on Miro’s knowledge of the Russian custom of giving generous presents to a new mother and her newborn child. This improvised joke turned into a significant financial success for Miro, since Anna ordered all her courtiers to make generous gifts to her favorite jester. When Anna’s courtiers brought their gifts, they were all participating in a spectacle: when the theater curtain rose, Miro was lying in bed with a well-dressed she-goat and each courtier had to congratulate him. According to reminiscences of a contemporary, C. H. von Manstien, at the end of this farce Miro was sitting onstage next to the she-goat, receiving generous gifts from the Russian court with a total value of approximately ten thousand rubles!48 Mooser reproduces a rare eighteenth-century print/engraving of this comic story in German as “Neu Jahr Gratulation an die mosieur Petrill.” During his nine

48



Vsevolodskii-Gerngross, “Teatr v Rossii,” 14–15.

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years of loyal service to the Russian royal court, Miro managed to build a large fortune of twenty thousand rubles.49 Miro’s artistic persona had a significant impact on Russian popular culture as well, and some scholars trace the genealogy of the legendary Russian Petrushka puppet show to Miro-Pedrillo.50 N. I. Smirnova points out that Petrushka’s close connection to Anna’s favorite jester was widely accepted among Russian scholars: As for Petrushka’s nickname, the group of scholars (D. Rovinsky, V. Peretts, V. Vsevolodsky-Gerngross, and others) connects his origin with the name of one of the most popular XVIII-century jesters, a hero of many lubok pictures—the famous “buffoon” . . . . Petrukha Farnos, Adamka Pedrillo, Pedrill—those were nicknames of Anna Ioannovna’s favorite jester, an Italian Adam Pietro Mila [Miro].51

Petrukha-Farnos was one of the leading characters in Russian popular entertainment at the time, who, as a rule, would cover his face with flour (farina in Italian), thus receiving the nickname of Farnos. The Russian lubok immortalized Miro as well. Both Vladimir Peretts, in his 1895 study Kukol’nyi teatr na Rusi, and Mooser, in his 1943 Annales de la musique et des musiciens en Russie au XVIII siècle, published the same lubok image of a character that looked like Miro with a violin. Peretts simply calls this print Petrukha Farnos— muzykant (Petrukha Farnos—the musician), while Mooser believes

49



Ibid., 14.

50



Catriona Kelly writes, “According to some authorities, the name Petrushka developed from Pedrila, the familiar name by which Empress Anna’s Italian court jester was known. It must also have been irresistibly linked in the popular memory with the idea of a famous Petrushka, Peter I, who insisted on being known by the nickname of the ‘Skipper,’ whose manners were as unpredictable as those of his puppet counterpart,” in Kelly, Petrushka, 127.

51



N. I. Smirnova, Sovetskii teatr kukol 1918–1932 (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk, 1963), 28. Smirnova misspelled Pietro Miro’s last name.

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that this is a picture of Miro.52 Vsevolodsky-Gerngross expresses a similar opinion about this print, supporting his belief that the man with the violin is indeed Miro by noting that the inscription under this particular print clearly refers to Miro’s foreignness and his musical profession: Здравствуйте, почтенные господа, Я приехал к вам музыкант сюда. Не дивитесь на мою рожу, Что я имею у себя не очень пригожу. А зовут меня молодца Петруха Фарнос, Потому что у меня большой нос, Три дня надувался, В танцевальные башмаки обувался, А как в танцевальное платье совсем оболокся, К девушкам я приволкся. На шее я ношу заношенную тряпицу, а сам наигрываю в скрипицу. Greetings, respected gentlemen, I came to you here as a musician. Do not be surprised about my mug, The one I have is not very nice. I am the young fellow Petrukha Farnos, Because I have a big nose, For three days I have been drinking, I put on dancing shoes, And as soon as I put on dancing garb, I started to run after girls. I am wearing an old rag on my neck, And I myself play the violin.53

52

Vladimir Peretts, Kukol’nyi teatr na Rusi: Istoricheskii ocherk (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskogo Sob. Teatrov, 1895), 86 reproduces the lubok from D. A. Rovinskii, Russkiie narodnye kartinki IV (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoy Akademii Nauk, 1881), 286. Mooser, in Annales, writes that his source is the Leningrad Philharmonic Museum and doubts the aunthenticity of the portrait.

53

Vsevolodskii-Gerngross, “Russkii teatr,” 182.





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Petrukha, a Russified version of the Italian name Pietro, addresses his audience directly while entering the stage. The information that Petrukha provides about himself matches Miro’s personality and biography: Petrukha says that he came to Russia as a musician from abroad, his face might be covered with either a theatrical mask or just with white flour, and his large nose could be either a part of his Italian features or just a theatrical attribute. The fact that Petrukha is wearing dancing shoes and dancing dress, and at the same time is playing the violin, echoes Miro’s artistic talents, as he would simultaneously perform as a dancer, musician, and buffoon. After Anna’s death, Miro safely returned to Venice where, in 1743, he was introduced to another famous adventurer, Giacomo Casanova.54 He was then traced to Dresden, where he continued his acting career, and at the end of his life he returned to Venice to open a little tavern. Much to the surprise of Grand Duke Paul Petrovich, his wife Maria Fedorovna, and the Grand Duke’s librarian Lafermière, who was traveling with them in Europe in 1781–1782, they found Miro alive and well.55 An unidentified accountant provided a document that, despite its financial nature, gives us a detailed account of the richness of the cultural life of the Russian court between 1732 and 1741 and Her Majesty’s generosity.56 On average, the empress spent twenty thousand rubles a year on entertainment imported from abroad. The document helps us understand the mechanics of the relationship between the Russian state and the foreign performers— their visa statuses, arrivals, departures, salaries, their professional activities, and the names of the Russian officials who were in charge of providing them with a comfortable lifestyle while in Russia. Anna Ioannovna’s Italian decade was exceptionally beneficial for the Italian actors both financially and artistically. They were impressed with the royal hospitality, generosity, and their

54



Mooser, Annales, 109. Casanova’s mother was an actress who visited Russia during the reign of Anna with the commedia dell’arte troupe.

55



Ibid., 109.

56



Starikova, Teatral’naia zhizn’ Rossii v epokhu Anny Ioannovny, 222–30.

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sensational success with the Russian public. Furthermore, the lack of adequately equipped stages and the need to build new theaters and to teach Russians how to dance, sing, and act onstage created a unique opportunity for Italian theater architects, stage designers, and performing artists. Empress Anna succeeded in reshaping the image of the Russian court among its European neighbors, attracting such talented Italian artists as the theater architect Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli (who became the senior court architect), the composer and opera singer Francesco Araja, the dancer and choreographer Antonio Rinaldi (Fusano), and many others who went to live and work in Russia.57 Inspired by the Italian theater professionals, in 1735 Anna and her court established the so-called Italian Company in Saint Petersburg, which was a precursor of the Directorate of the Imperial Theaters. This organization included actors, musicians, stage architects, dancers, choreographers, and others working in the performing arts, and it was a natural result of the extensive Italian cultural presence in the Russian court.

The Development of Cultural Criticism The performances of the Italian troupes for Anna’s court also stimulated the development of literary and theatrical criticism in Russia, resulting in the publication of several treatises on theater and opera history. While the empress and her courtly audience initially basked in their appreciation of the great Italian performances that were examples of the best of Western art, the Russian audience soon began to sense their lack of knowledge of the history and theory of the performing arts and sought explanations of certain terminology and of the roots of theater and opera.58 The only newspaper of that time—Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti—published a series of articles between 1733 and 1739 that included theoretical, historical, and critical essays on the operatic and theatrical arts. These articles were written long before the theoretical debates between the three

57

Starikova, Teatralnaia zhizn’ Rossii v epokhu Elizavety Petrovny, 20.

58

Starikova, Teatral’naia zhizn’ Rossii v epokhu Anny Ioannovny, 30–31.



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leading coryphaei of eighteenth-century Russian culture— Trediakovsky, Lomonosov, and Sumarokov—that started in the mid-1740s, when the leading representatives of Russian art and literature began to define their own criteria for art and literature based on Nicolas Boileau’s neoclassical canons. Sumarokov’s famous verse Epistle on Poetry, discussing the neoclassical rules of the poetic and dramatic, was published in 1748. In 1733, Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti published an article “On Performances, or Comedies and Tragedies” (O pozorishchnykh igrakh, ili komediiakh i tragediiakh), written by an anonymous author who explores the nature of the dramatic arts, making references to their ancient Greek roots. The article discusses the birth of Western drama and its mimetic nature, paying special attention to the importance of the plot, actors’ craft, and stage design.59 The author describes rules of drama established by Aristotle, such as the need to fit the action onstage within a twentyfour-hour time frame, to differentiate between tragic and comic genres, and to have unity of time, place, and action. The author emphasizes that French neoclassical aesthetics were, in turn, based on the ancient artistic canon.60 The article touches on tragicomedy as a genre, along with the theater of marionettes and even shadow theater, and the author praises the technical advancements of the puppeteers and describes the excitement produced by the visual effects.61 This mention of the theater of marionettes could have also been inspired by the Italian puppeteers, since the 1731 commedia dell’arte troupe brought to Russia all the equipment for a puppet theater and regularly gave puppet performances. Archival documents mention four puppet theaters that the Italians left behind after their departure, and Starikova also speculates that the Italians were reenacting the same scenarios on the puppet stage

59



See “O pozorishchnykh igrakh, ili komediiakh i tragediiakh,” SanktPeterburgskie vedomosti, 1733, as cited in Starikova, Teatral’naia zhizn’ Rossii v epokhu Anny Ioannovny, 516.

60



Ibid., 521.

61



Ibid., 521.

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that they were performing with live actors to entertain Russian courtiers.62 Another significant study was published in installments in Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti during the period from February of 1738 to October of 1739 under the title “Historical Description of a Type of Theater Called Opera” (Istoricheskoe opisanie onago teatral’nogo deistviia kotoroe nazyvaetsia opera). This history of opera was written by Jacob von Staehlin, who was at that time a professor of the History of Fine Arts and secretary at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences. The publication of this particular work was clearly inspired by the sensational success of Italian opera singers, whose performances were interwoven with commedia dell’arte interludes. Shtahlin praises opera as the most sophisticated and elevated form of the performing arts, which is destined to delight the spectator’s senses, giving them pure pleasure. The author then pays tribute to Anna for inviting such splendid performers to Russia.63 The author provides a psychological explanation for the intense emotional impact that opera has on spectators and listeners, arguing that the combination of music and singing affects one’s hearing, while the spectacular stage design and the technical advances of stage machinery affects one’s vision. The effect that this combination of factors achieves is, according to Staehlin, an almost religious exaltation that communicates with the divine nature of humanity. Operatic plots should avoid anything that is low, concentrating instead on the splendor of divine creation, and the protagonists should be noble and heroic in their actions— paragons of the best representatives of humanity.64 Moreover, in his discussion of opera, Staehlin persistently emphasizes that only the Italians could produce such harmonious and sophisticated art

62

Starikova, Teatr v Rossii, 44.

63

Shtelin, “Istoricheskoe opisanie onago teatral’nogo deistva, kotoroe nazyvaetsia opera,” as cited in Starikova, Teatral’naia zhizn’ Rossii v epokhu Anny Ioannovny, 532.

64

Ibid., 533.





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because that nation has exceptional talent and artistic capabilities. The entire historical development of opera is presented within the context of Italian cultural and religious history, beginning with religious singing in the Catholic Church, and then, starting in the mid-fifteenth century, gradually becoming an important part of secular cultural life.65 Staehlin’s eulogistic tone reflects his belief that the Italians are the only artists who can reach the highest standards in the world of art. The Italians are portrayed as the nation that has generated new artistic ideas for the rest of Europe, celebrating life through their art during their long and rich cultural history. Historically, the Italian rulers’ financial support stimulated the richness of their cultural life.66 This mention of the generous financial support that Roman and then Italian rulers provided for the performing arts clearly draws a parallel with Anna Ioannovna’s enormous cultural expenditures, eulogizing her cultural politics. Commedia dell’arte characters are mentioned several times in this article in a fashion that suggests that Staehlin assumed his readership was well acquainted with them. In Staehlin’s opinion, the comic appearances of commedia masked characters such as Harlequin, Dottore, Pantalone, Pulcinella and others were destroying the almost sacred mood of the opera audience. He mentions that in Venice, the comic masks were at some point completely separated from the opera, but then in other European and Italian cities, they continued to perform their intermezzi. Here Staehlin’s personal taste clearly contradicts that of his empress, because, as mentioned earlier, Anna was particularly fond of the comic tricks and buffoonery of the Italian actors. Staehlin’s attitude toward the commedia is rather arrogant, as he feels that the humor of the Italian buffoons was inappropriately crude for operatic sophistication.67

65



Ibid., 534.

66



Ibid., 538–39.

67



Ibid., 541.

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At the time when Staehlin’s treatise was written, most of the cultural events for the Russian royal court were produced by the so-called Italian Company—an organization that included all the actors, singers, dancers, theater directors, and stage designers, some of whom were not necessarily Italian. The Italian Company included several foreign troupes that had been invited to Russia and was a predecessor of the famous Directorate of Imperial Theaters.68 Starikova writes, In essence, from the moment it appeared, the Italian Company occupied the same place in court institutions that the Directorate of Imperial Theaters would later have. The Italian Company can be considered to be the immediate precursor of the Directorate. The prolonged existence of the Italian Company played an important role in the development of the organizational forms of Russian theater life.69

In addition to publishing theoretical and historical articles on the history of the performing arts, during the 1730s Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti regularly informed its readers about European cultural life. This cultural chronicle included short descriptions of famous performances and gossip about the private lives of famous actors and actresses and noted the interest that European rulers and nobility had in the arts. The Italian masks had cultural celebrity status as well, as indicated in a note from November 29, 1736, dealing with Harlequin’s misfortune in London’s famous Covent Garden Theater when something went wrong with the stage machinery and the actors were badly injured.70 Once again, all of the above demonstrates the change in attitude toward the performing arts and performers, who were acquiring celebrity status and being discussed in the Russian periodical along with nobility and royalty. The Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti emphasized the regular attendance by members of the

68

Starikova, Teatr v Rossii, 27.

69

Ibid.

70

Ibid., 527.



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European royal families at different cultural events, predominantly operas. The view of opera as being the most spectacular form of entertainment was entering Russian culture as well and would expand in the reign of Elizaveta Petrovna, who was a great admirer of opera.

The Commedia dell’Arte and the Russian Baroque By the time the commedia dell’arte came to Russia, it had been greatly influenced by the European baroque and, according to Lotman, was a powerful transmitter of the baroque on Russian soil.71 Aleksandr Morozov notes that during the Petrine epoch, European baroque art organically intermixed with baroque forms that already existed in Russia.72 The splendor and luxury of royal festivities during the reigns of Peter the Great and Anna were also vivid illustrations of the Russian baroque. The early eighteenth-century commedia dell’arte included many typical baroque features, including plots based on picaresque adventures and love intrigues and the juxtaposition of low and high cultural elements in which the frivolous jokes and rude tricks of servants (zanni) were interwoven with the elevated speeches and sophisticated behavior of the lovers (innamorati). The mixture of different art forms was typical for performances, with elevated operatic cantatas, glorifying the empress, interwoven with the buffoonery of masked actors. The splendor of the costumes and stage design as well as the elaborate technical effects of the Italian performances can be associated with baroque art and architecture in its visual excesses. Constant exaggeration and use of the grotesque is expressed in the Italian masks and costumes—with huge noses, stomachs, humps, and accentuated lower body parts. Morozov writes,

71



Lotman, “Khudozhestvennaia priroda,” 484.

72



A. Morozov, “Problema barokko v russkoi literature XVII–nachala XVIII veka,” Russkaia literatura 2 (1965): 34.

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In art and literature of the baroque, there is a tendency to absorb diverse material. One of the distinctive properties of the baroque in the seventeenth century can be seen in the destruction of borders between genres, the mixing of literary forms, and the desire to go beyond the bounds of literature.73

The aesthetics of the commedia dell’arte and harlequinized art were not subordinated to the strict canons of classicism, with its system of literary and dramatic genres and sense of beauty and sublimity.74 The sensational success of the Italian commedia dell’arte in Russia during Anna’s reign was remarkable in the history of Russian culture and reflected the extent to which the Petrine reforms influenced the Russian aesthetic and artistic consciousness. Less than a century earlier, during the reign of Peter the Great’s father, Aleksei Mikhailovich, musical instruments and masks had been burned because of their blasphemous nature, and the only Russian performers—the skomorokhi—had been outlawed and sent into exile. In the 1730s, during the reign of Peter the Great’s niece, the music and dancing of the Italians were enthusiastically welcomed, and the masks of Harlequin, Scaramuccia, Pantalone, and others that covered the faces of the Italian comedians became an object of fascination and imitation. Empress Anna herself greatly enjoyed the buffoonery of the masked Italians. Without a doubt, the performances of Ristori’s company were significant events in post-Petrine cultural life that gave a strong impulse for the further development of the Russian performing arts, establishing new artistic criteria and stimulating the further development of national arts and literature. Anna’s Italian decade was the only time in Russian history when Russian audiences had direct exposure to the leading Italian commedia dell’arte performers—but the masks would inspire future generations of Russian artists for centuries to come.

73

Morozov, Problema barokko, 10–11.

74

Bakhtin, Tvorchestvo Fransua Rable, 43.



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Russifying the Commedia dell’Arte: Vasilii Trediakovsky and Aleksandr Sumarokov

This chapter explores the harlequinized works of two eighteenthcentury literary rivals—Trediakovsky and Sumarokov—who were the first Russifiers and promoters of the commedia dell’arte in Russian culture. After discussing Trediakovsky’s translations of the Italian scenarios into Russian, the narrative then analyzes one of the first harlequinized comedies written in Russian—Sumarokov’s The Monsters / Court of Arbitration (1750). Since Sumarokov is viewed as the founder of Russian theater, as the first modern Russian writer, and by contemporaries as the Russian Molière, his experimentation with the commedia dell’arte deserves special attention.1 Sumarokov’s comedy The Monsters presents a fascinating early Russification of the commedia, as Sumarokov used Italian models to take the first steps toward the creation of his Russian comedy. A leading character in The Monsters, the servant Arlikin (a Russian-sounding last name that is a Russification of Harlequin), follows the commedia model, presenting a peculiar Russian-Italian comic hybrid. Sumarokov also used the commedia mask of the learned fool Dottore to satirize Trediakovsky, his literary adversary. The Monsters is intended as sharp social satire, yet it lacks the intricate plot structure, dynamism, and eccentricity so typical for the Italian scenarios.

1



Marcus Levitt, “Sumarokov: Life and Works,” in Early Modern Russian Letters: Texts and Contexts (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2009), 6.

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Trediakovsky’s Translations of the Italian Scenarios In 1733, Anna Ioannovna commissioned Trediakovsky to translate Italian commedia dell’arte scenarios into Russian so she and the Russian spectators could better understand the dialogues and follow the action onstage. While Trediakovsky’s translations have been largely forgotten—they were reprinted only once (in 1917 by Vladimir Peretts) and represent a bibliographical rarity—these scenarios made a significant contribution to the history of Russian theater and drama, in general, and to the history of the Russian harlequinades, in particular. The translated scenarios not only made the Italian performances more accessible to contemporary courtly audiences but they also provide valuable insight for posterity into Russian cultural life during Anna’s era. Furthermore, because Trediakovsky meticulously described the jokes, tricks, and ingenious plot development and onstage adventures, he was a pioneer in the development of Russian theatrical comic language, creating Russian equivalents to the improvisational Italian scenarios. The translations help to visualize the onstage action, demonstrate the ingenuity of the plots of the Italian scenarios, and document the Italians’ technical advances that so greatly impressed eighteenthcentury Russian spectators. Between 1733 and 1735, Trediakovsky (1703–1769) translated about forty Italian plays (thirty scenarios of the commedia dell’arte, one tragedy, and nine musical librettos) into Russian. As previously discussed, Anna was very impressed with the commedia performances of the Ristori troupe and expressed her desire to have translations of the Italian comedies in order to better follow all the onstage events and understand the gestures and movements of the performers.2 When the second Italian troupe arrived in Russia in 1733, Trediakovsky, then an official translator for the Russian Academy of Sciences, was commissioned to translate the Italian

2



Mooser, Annales, 71.

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scenarios.3 According to Trediakovsky, he translated all the Italian comedies by himself, working with French versions of the Italian scenarios, translating from French into Russian.4 Trediakovsky faithfully followed the original format of the Italian scenarios: instead of a traditional play with direct speech, the translated scenarios were written as narration, describing the onstage action and paraphrasing the dialogue in the form of indirect speech to allow for improvisational acting. As noted previously, the absence of written dialogues was a traditional feature of commedia scenarios because the actors had to improvise their own text. Trediakovsky registered all the moments when the Italians were performing their famous lazzi—interludes with comic tricks— that interrupted the main action, and called them “funny tricks, appropriate for the theater.” Lazzi “formed a regular and important part of the entertainment and served to keep the audience amused while the troupe took time for a breathing-spell.”5 Trediakovsky methodically documented all of these elements, informing readers when to expect comic intermissions and making clear how the actors would entertain the audience during lazzi with pantomimes, comic tricks, and buffonades. From a linguistic point of view, Trediakovsky juxtaposed a significantly more refined literary language with the traditionally rude and obscene colloquial language of early Russian popular comedy and interludes, as discussed in chapter 1.6 Despite the occasional clumsiness of his translations, he was clearly developing a new path for the next generation of Russian comic playwrights. Evidently, Trediakovsky was trying to create a stylized Russian

3

According to Mooser (Annales, 112) the Italian scenarios were translated both into Russian for the Russian courtiers and into German for foreign diplomats and Russian courtiers of German origin. Vsevolodskii-Gerngross (“Teatr v Rossii,” 29) writes that the German translations were done by Staehlin.

4

Vsevolodskii-Gerngross, “Teatr v Rossii,” 29.

5

Duchartre, The Italian Comedy, 37.

6

The Russian quotations in this chapter preserve the original spelling and syntax used by Trediakovsky in his Russification of the commedia dell’arte.





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Figure 6. Eighteenth-century commedia dell’arte performance. Harlequin, Emperor of the Moon. Print by Gabriel Huquier, after drawings by Claude Gillot.

version of the Italian scenarios, intentionally reducing the vulgarity and eroticism that were common in the commedia dell’arte performances. His translations illustrate his firm belief that any rude or vulgar words should be systematically avoided on stage: “However, vile and rude words should not be allowed in the theater if they are not backed up by some sort of reasoning.”7 Most of the scenarios involve action that takes place in Italy, with frequent scenery changes and with actors repeatedly altering their costumes, appearances, and even identities, engaging the

7



Vasilii Trediakovskii, “Rassuzhdenie o komedii voobshche,” as cited in Starikova, Teatral’naia zhizn’ Rossii v epokhu Anny Ioannovny, 515.

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spectators in ingenious situational comedies that involve fortunate and unfortunate lovers, mistaken identities, and cross-dressing. The plots of most scenarios are based on the amorous adventures of the innamorati—young lovers who represent the nobility—and the amusing escapades of their servants. Traditional commedia dell’arte comic characters such as Harlequin, Pantalone, Brighella, Columbine, Smeraldina, and Dottore are ever-present in all of the scenarios.

Figure 7. Eighteenth-century commedia dell’arte performance. The Loves of Pantaloon and Harlequin (1729). Engraving by Johann Balthasar Probst.

A comparison of Trediakovsky’s translations with the Italian scenarios collected by Flaminio Scala in the early seventeenth century suggests that, as a rule, Trediakovsky was working close to the original.8 Each scenario starts with a short introductory note

8



Flaminio Scala’s collection, published in Venice in 1611, included fifty scenarios and was one of the earliest and most complete. See Flaminio Scala,

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that summarizes the plot, followed by a list of the characters and then the scenario itself, which is based on a detailed description of the onstage action. The presence of this brief description of the plot and its happy denouement might sound strange to contemporary theatergoers, but the commedia dell’arte spectators were not trying to guess the endings, which were easily predictable, but rather to enjoy the improvisational acting itself. Trediakovsky’s translations also note technical aspects of the acting, which may have been his own critical addition. This chapter focuses on two scenarios in which Harlequin played a leading role—Pereodevki Arlekinovy (Harlequin’s disguises) and Chetyre Arlekina (The four harlequins)—that shed light on the eighteenth-century Italian harlequinades in Russia. The plot of the comedy Harlequin’s Disguises, which was performed in Saint Petersburg in 1733, is centered on the young nobleman Silvio, who is in love with Diana and wants to marry her, but his father Pantalone has different plans for his son’s future—he wants Silvio to study at the University of Padua. The geographical location is Venice, and the action is based on the endless escapades of Harlequin, a simpleton who is Silvio’s servant and who outsmarts all the noble masters around him. The comedy is performed by leading characters of the commedia dell’arte such as Dottore, Smeraldina, Brighella, and others. This play is particularly interesting because, unlike many others, it has a scene with the use of direct speech. The comedy is based on mistaken identities, and Harlequin’s constant onstage transformations demonstrate the excellent technical abilities of the Italian actors that clearly fascinated Trediakovsky, who could not resist including his critical remarks. Harlequin’s performance is rich in cross-dressing, changes of appearance, imitation of various speech patterns and dialects, and vocal tricks. In this comedy, Harlequin has an exuberant personality and is passionately in

Il Teatro delle Favole rappresentative, overo la ricreazione comica, boscareccia, e tragica: Divisa in cinqanata giornate (Venice: Giovanni Battista Pulciani, 1611); translated and edited by Henry F. Salerno as Scenarios of the Commedia dell’Arte: Flaminio Scala’s Il Teatro Delle Favole Rappresentative, foreword by Kenneth McKee (New York: Limelight Edition, 1989).

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love with Smeraldina, who is a servant of Diana’s friend Vittoria. Smeraldina and Harlequin’s love affair and actions are more dynamic than those of their noble counterparts—the innamorati— and Smeraldina’s wit is surpassed only by Harlequin’s. It is difficult to judge how erotically charged the love scenes were, since Trediakovsky carefully avoids any sexual language in his translation. Trediakovsky’s descriptions of the onstage behavior only let us imagine how sensual the acting of the two servants was when their lovemaking is interrupted by the pedantic Dottore: “Арлекин хочет поступать вольненько с невестою своею, Дoктор тово не позволяет, что причиняет игрушку надлежащую театру, и чрез то кончится действие второе” (Harlequin wants to behave loosely with his bride, and Dottore does not allow that to happen, which creates action appropriate for theater, and with that the second act comes to an end.)9 Historians of the commedia dell’arte emphasize the ubiquitous eroticism of the commedia plays, but Trediakovsky seems to have intentionally reduced such descriptions to a minimum. In one comic scene, designed as a lazzi, Harlequin asks his friend Brighella to help him write a letter to his mother, unaware that Smeraldina overhears their conversation. The jealous Smeraldina thinks that Harlequin wants to send a letter to his mistress, so she plays a trick on him by imitating his speech and interjecting words into the letter that Brighella is trying to write based on his dictation. This burlesque scene sounds like a comic hit and successfully translates the humor into Russian. Harlequin asks Brighella to write: Бригелл Арлекину. Матери своей? Арлекин. Матери моей. Поклонись батюшке. Смеральдина. Который повешен. Бригелл. Матери своей? Арлекин. Еще таки! Mатери моей. И прошу вас о вашем . . . Смеральдина. Проклятии.

9



Trediakovskii’s translation Pereodevki Arlekinovy is cited from Vladimir Peretts, Italianskie komedii i intermedii predstavlennye pri dvore Imperatritsy Anny Ioannovny v 1733–1735 godakh: Teksty (Petrograd: Imperatorksaia Akademiia Nauk, 1917), 93. The original orthography of the Russian translation is maintained.

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Бригелл. Матери своей? Арлекин. Матери моей. Ваш сын . . . Смеральдина. И всего общества. Арлекин. Арлекин батоккио. Смеральдина. Шпион публичный во всем городе. Смеральдина смеяся уходит. Арлекин говорит Бригеллу, чтоб он прочел письмо. Бригелл стал читать и когда дошол до Смеральдининых речей, тогда Арлекин стал в том сердиться на Бригелла, который извинялся говоря, что он писал всио то, что ему сказано было, что чинит смешную игрушку. Напоследок Арлекин распалившись раздирает письмо. Бригелл утишает ево говоря ему, что он напишет другое. Brighella. To your mother? Harlequin. To my mother. Make a bow to father. Smeraldina. Who was hanged. Brighella. To your mother? Harlequin. Once again! To my mother. I am asking you for your . . . Smeraldina. Your curse. Brighella. To your mother? Harlequin. To my mother. Your son . . . Smeraldina. And everybody’s son. Harlequin. Harlequin batoccio . . . Smeraldina. The public spy for the whole town. Smeraldina leaves. Harlequin asks Brighella to read back the letter that he has dictated. Brighella starts to read and when he comes to the phrases that Smeraldina added, Harlequin gets angry with him. Brighella apologizes, saying that he wrote everything that he was told to write, which creates a comic lazzi. In the end, an irritated Harlequin tears up the letter. Brighella comforts him, saying that he will write another one.10

The comic effect is based on the constant repetition of the same question by the surprised Brighella, “your mother,” and Harlequin’s increasing irritation as he repeats “my mother,” in addition to the fact that they are both unaware of Smeraldina’s presence.

10



Ibid., 89–91.

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Here the comic lazzi is based on a letter, which was a favorite stage object frequently used to ignite the action on stage. Despite the fact that there are no remarks about Smeraldina’s acting, it is clear that she imitates Harlequins’ manner of speech and sounds like a man, making Brighella believe that the whole letter is being dictated by Harlequin himself. This imitation of other characters’ manner of speech, walk, or acting was a common commedia comic device. Smeraldina most likely is hiding somewhere, visible to the audience but unseen by Harlequin and Brighella. Harlequin’s function in this scenario is typical for the commedia—he is generating new ideas, his dashing ingenuity has no bounds, his fantasy and artistry is incomparable to that of anyone on stage around him, and the plot and all the lazzi revolve around him. In one episode, after Harlequin unsuccessfully tries to persuade Pantalone to allow his son Silvio to marry Diana, Harlequin decides to transform himself into Pantalone. After putting on Pantalone’s clothing, Harlequin understands that the change of costume alone will not transform him into another character and that he has to learn how to imitate the Venetian dialect in order to make his masquerade more convincing: Арлекин возвращается, нарядившись в Панталона; однако очень смущен, для того что он не умеет говорить по пантолонскому. Бригелл ево научает, чтоб он прилагал слог ао, ио, и уо, к некоторым речениям, и что того довольно будет для языка венецианского. Арлекин стал теми слогами употреблять ко всякому речению, что чинит игрушку театру свойственную. Harlequin returns, dressed as Pantalone; but he is very concerned that he cannot speak Pantalonian. Brighella instructs him to add the syllables “ao,” “io,” and “uo” to his speech and that is enough for the Venetian language. Harlequin starts to use these syllables with every word, and this creates action typical for the theater.11

11



Ibid., 87–88.

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Not only do we see a commedia character imitating and mocking various Italian dialects to the delight of the audience, but in a different inventive lazzi we see Harlequin’s imitation of several foreign languages: Aрлекин говорит . . . что он уже не служит Диане, и что он хочет отъехать служить толмачом господам, которые хотят ездить по Европе. Панталон ево хвалит, и спрашивает у него, что знает ли он иностранные языки. Арлекин ему сказывает, что он знает по Чешски, по Французски, и по Гишпански. Панталон ево просит, чтоб он поговорил этими языками. Арлекин подражает рыку бычачьему для чешского языка; поросячьему хрюканью для французского; а для гишпанского ко всякому слову прибавляя “ось”. Harlequin says . . . that he no longer serves Diana, and that he wants to travel to serve as an interpreter for gentlemen who travel in Europe. Pantalone praises him and asks him what foreign languages he knows. Harlequin replies that he speaks Czech, French, and Spanish. Pantalon asks him to speak these languages. Harlequin mimics a roaring bull for the Czech language, a pig grunting for French, and for Spanish he adds “os” to every word.12

Trediakovsky points out how, in such verbal jokes, the language imitations create a hilarious lazzi, making everyone laugh. The Italian performances were cosmopolitan by nature, opening new geographical and cultural horizons to Russian audiences, presenting different nationalities on stage and exploring the concept of foreignness and otherness. Another harlequinade translated by Trediakovsky, The Four Harlequins, depicts Harlequin as the center of the amorous longings of three different women. Here again, the plot is briefly summarized in the introductory note:

12



Ibid., 88–89.

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Аурелия, Диана и Смеральдина влюбившись в Арлекина отказывают от любви Сильвио, Одоарду и Бригеллу; еще также и выбору отца их. Сие принудило любовников искать помощи в одном волхве, которой дав им образ арлекинской нашол способ, чтобы они обманули своих невест и на них женились. Aurelia, Diana, and Smeraldina, being in love with Harlequin, reject the love of Silvio, Odoardo, and Brighella, and they also reject their fathers’ choices [of grooms] for them. All this forces the lovers to seek the assistance of a sorcerer, who finds a way to make them all look like Harlequin so they can trick their brides and marry them.13

Here we see love and passion portrayed as above social differences: only Smeraldina is socially equal to Harlequin, while two others— Aurelia and Diana—are noblewomen. The witty and energetic Harlequin is irresistible and is considered to be a perfect candidate for a husband by the young women with higher social strata. The two noblewomen are ready to rebel against societal conventions and the expectations that they must marry their equals—neither Diana nor Aurelia is ashamed to admit that they are in love with a servant. As for Harlequin, he is fully aware of the social differences and even reproaches Diana for making such an unsuitable choice: throughout the play, Harlequin stays loyal to Smeraldina and rejects the adoration of the two rival noblewomen. The onstage action is highly dynamic and requires great energy and improvisational ingenuity from the actor playing Harlequin’s part. In one of the scenes, Harlequin expresses genuine amazement after Diana admits that she is in love with him. He then teaches her a moral lesson, threatens to inform her father, and exhibits even more astonishment at hearing that Aurelia loves him as well. Harlequin fakes passion for Aurelia and immediately

13



Trediakovsky’s translation of the Italian comedy is from the original publication: Vasilii Trediakovskii, Chetyre Arlekina (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1733), 2. These original publications are archival materials found on microfilm at Harvard University. These translations were also reprinted in Peretts, Italianskie komedii i intermedii.

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thereafter declares his sincere feelings to Smeraldina and, fearing he’ll lose her, threatens suicide. Full of dynamic action, The Four Harlequins includes comic flirting with death and ressurection: Harlequin fakes suicide to attract the attention of his beloved Smeraldina, but he comes back to life as soon as he hears that his faked death might leave him without his pasta dinner:14 [Арлекин] притворяется, что будто пробил себя шпагою, и пал на оную крича Я УМЕР. Смеральдина возвращается, дабы видеть, что сделалось с Арлекином; но видя его растянувшегося на земле, стала о нем плакать, и причитать добрыя ево качества; потом говорит, что приготовила макарон, и для того она в отчаянии теперь по тому что не знает кому их есть. Арлекин вскочив говорит, что то он станет их кушать, и по многих шутках свойственных Театру оба пошли к ней. [Harlequin] pretends that he struck himself with a sword and falls upon the sword screaming “I AM DEAD.” Smeraldina returns to see what became of Harlequin, and seeing him sprawled on the ground, she begins to cry and lament about his good qualities; she then says that she has cooked pasta and now is in despair, not knowing who is going to eat it. Harlequin leaps up saying he will eat it and, making jokes typical for theater, they both go to her place.15

This rapid pacing, natural for the Italian tradition, was unknown to Russian audiences at the time and demonstrates the enormous gap

14

In 1906, almost two centuries after the publication of Trediakovsky’s scenarios, the Russian modernists would rediscover the harlequinade, creating similar images but giving them rather tragic overtones. In his 1906 poetic play The Puppet Show, Blok would explore the same theme of Harlequin’s infatuation with Colombina (Smeraldina is just a different name for the same servant), who represents death. The same motif of Harlequin’s tragicomic death will reappear in the 1908 work of Evreinov, playwright and theater historian, in which the modernist Harlequin will converse with his own death. Vakhtangov wrote his own harlequinades using a multiplicity of Harlequins and Pierrots, following original commedia scenarios but adding modern flavor to them. See chapter 7.

15

Trediakovskii, Chetyre Arlekina, 5.





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between the dynamism of the Italian scenarios and the more static dramatic techniques seen in Sumarokov’s harlequinized comedy The Monsters. The Four Harlequins also includes a supernatural element that starts with the apparition of a magician who is able to summon spirits. In desperation that they have been spurned by the women they want to marry, the rejected lovers, Silvio and Odoardo, seek advice from a magician who suggests that in order to get married, they should be transformed into Harlequins. With a magical spell, the magician creates several additional Harlequins, who drive the real one insane. The appearance of Harlequin’s doubles on stage transforms the play into a grotesque phantasmagoria: Арлекин . . . увидев свой образ на земле, испужался, и видя себя в живых, не знает каким бы то способом тело ево или ево тень была мертва. Чинит он игрушку смешную с тем духом, и плача о своей смерти пошол вон. Seeing his own double on the ground, Harlequin gets frightened and, seeing himself still alive, does not know who is dead—himself or his shadow. He performs a funny joke with that spirit double and goes away crying about his own death.16

Harlequin, who at the beginning of the play is an object of the erotic desires of three women, is now surrounded by several doubles of himself who are seducing women under the masks of Harlequins. The real Harlequin, on the verge of madness, performs his comic lazzi with his doubles, asking them who they are, and is stunned to hear that they are all Harlequins, his doubles. Между тем дух во образе арлекиновом обнял Смералдину, и вошел к Смеральдине. Арлекин после многих игрушек приличных театру стал быть в отчаянии о этом, и вскочил в окно к Смеральдине, дабы видеть что там делается.

16



Ibid., 8.

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Meanwhile, the spirit that looks like Harlequin embraced Smeraldina and entered her house. After many jokes that are appropriate for the theater, Harlequin becomes desperate and jumps through a window into Smeraldina’s house to see what is going on inside.17

One can speculate that this scene showcased the acrobatic abilities of the Italian comedians, who could do somersaults, walk on their hands, and make unexpected leaps or splits at any moment. Dushartre mentions one Italian actor who, “at eighty-three years of age, could box his fellow-actor’s ear with his foot without the slightest difficulty.”18 The multiplicity of Harlequins, spirits, mistaken identities, deceptions, and burlesque balancing between life and death, interrupted by comic lazzi, lead the scenario to its happy denouement. A happy ending with three marriages creates a sense of restored harmony—Odoardo and Silvio marry Diana and Aurelia, and Harlequin marries Smeraldina: “These marriages are approved by common agreement, and the comedy ends.”19 This harlequinade is one of the most imaginative scenarios among Trediakovsky’s translations, as it contains a comic intermixture of social classes, cross-dressing, and abundant use of foreign languages. Such a comedy could have been enormously appealing to the Russian royal court with its passion for masquerades, during which social status or national identity could be temporarily altered with a simple change of costume, wig, or mask.20 Trediakovsky’s undeservedly forgotten translations provide valuable material for Russian cultural history, as they recreate the

17

Ibid., 9.

18

Duchartre, The Italian Comedy, 36.

19

Trediakovskii, Chetyre Arlekina, 10.

20

As will be discussed in chapter 5, a close reading of Trediakovsky’s translation brings to mind the close bonds between Gogol’s artistic imagination and Italian commedia dell’arte. Gogolian use of grotesque imagery, the tragicomic interweaving of life and death, and the presence of numerous doubles found in The Four Harlequins would reappear once again in Gogolian literary and dramatic oeuvre as well as in modernist harlequinades.



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harlequinades that fascinated the Russian public shortly before the birth of Russian national drama. Unlike Russian comedy that from its very beginning had a strong element of social satire, the Italian plays were based on situational comedy, comedy of errors, or comedy of characters and the ingenuity of skilled actors. The nature of this comedy was cosmopolitan, and it could be easily understood by audiences of any nationality as long as they were familiar with the conventions of the commedia and the characteristic features of the leading masks. The publishing house of the Academy of Sciences printed only two hundred copies of the Italian scenarios—one hundred copies of Trediakovsky’s Russian translations and one hundred copies of a German translation. Trediakovsky expected to receive five hundred twenty rubles for his translation but as late as 1738 had not yet been paid this full amount.21 Was this neglect a symptom of Trediakovsky’s fate—to be forgotten, neglected, and ridiculed—or just a demonstration of the Russian rulers’ neglect of native writers and artists? This failure to pay the translator stands in striking contrast with the generous, regular payments that were made to the Italian performers, as documented in numerous financial papers. It was emblematic of Russian culture that while the Italians enjoyed Russian hospitality, living in royal palaces surrounded by comfort and receiving large salaries, the prominent Russian scholar-writer who translated the Italian scenarios and helped Russian audiences better understand the Italian performances was unable to receive his own modest honorarium.

Arlikin as a Mock Judge in Sumarokov’s Comedy The Monsters / Court of Arbitration Sumarokov’s satirical comedy Chudovishchi / Treteinyi sud (The Monsters / Court of Arbitration), dated 1750, represents an imaginative example of the Russification of the commedia dell’arte for the eighteenth-century Russian stage. Marcus Levitt defines this

21



Vsevolodskii-Gerngross, “Teatr v Rossii,” 29.

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play as satiric burlesque that is akin to the comical interludes.22 The interconnectedness between The Monsters and the Italian scenarios can be traced in Sumarokov’s innovative interpretation of the commedia characters of Harlequin and Dottore. One of the leading characters in The Monsters is the servant Arlikin, whose personality represents a peculiar Russian-Italian hybrid and marks continued adaptation of commedia dell’arte masks.23 Sumarokov drew on the commedia mask of Dottore to create the character of the pedantic fool Krititsiondius as a parody of Trediakovsky. It is ironic that Sumarokov used a commedia mask when publicly deriding Trediakovsky—the first popularizer of the commedia in Russia. In comparison to the Italian scenarios translated by Trediakovsky, this comedy is rather static and mainly deals with social and personal satire rather than comic misadventures or amorous escapades. In addition to reflecting Sumarokov’s view of the role of comedy, this striking contrast may also stem in part from the fact that there were no Russian actors at that time whose mastery of stagecraft was equal to that of the Italians. Sumarokov is viewed as the founder of the Russian theater and as the first modern playwright of both comedy and tragedy for the Russian stage.24 He was also the first professional theater manager and artistic director in Russia, appointed head of the newly established Russian Imperial Theater in 1756. Sumarokov wrote twelve comedies and nine tragedies, which were structured according to the strict rules of genre formulated by Boileau in his

22

Levitt, “Sumarokov,” 11.

23

The name of the Italian servant has a different spelling, with an “i” in the middle instead of an “e”: Arlikin, not Arlekin, like in Trediakovsky’s scenarios. We don’t know where the stress was, but a stressed “i” in the middle would make the name sound like a Russian last name ending with “-in.” Such Russification of foreign stage characters was widely accepted in eighteenth-century Russian theater; another example is Kapnist’s transformation of Molière’s Sganarelle into Sganarev, which sounds like a Russian last name ending with “-ev.”

24

See P. N. Berkov, Aleksandr Petrovich Sumarokov (Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1949).





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famous treatise The Art of Poetry. Sumarokov paraphrased Boileau’s neoclassical aesthetics in his two epistles, written in 1747, firmly believing that comedy has an educational purpose, combating vice by detecting and then deriding it. Sumarokov expressed in verse his theoretical view on comic playwriting: Не представляй того, что мне нa миг приятно, Но чтоб то действие мне долго было внятно. Свойство комедии — издевкой править нрав. Смешить и пользовать — прямой ее устав. Do not present what is pleasant to me for a moment, But rather present an action that would long have meaning. Comedy’s nature is to correct morality with mockery. Comedy’s task is to amuse and to use.25

While French neoclassical comedy had a significant impact on Sumarokov’s work, performances of the commedia troupes also greatly influenced his artistic imagination and his craft as a comic playwright.26 Sumarokov was involved in the theatrical life of the Russian court while he was a student in the Noble Infantry Cadet Corps, an institution founded in 1732 for the children of Russian nobility, where cadets actively participated in the performances of foreign troupes on the courtly stage. As Pavel Berkov noted, “Sumarokov’s acquaintance with the Italian comedy of masks in 1733–1735 is indisputable: it is known that students of the Noble Infantry Cadet Corps were brought to perform with this troupe.”27 Other scholars such as Vsevolodsky-Gerngross and Starikova also note that traditionally, the cadets were actively involved in the

25



Aleksandr Sumarokov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1957), 121.

26



L. I. Kulakova, “Problema kharaktera v russkoi komedii XVIII veka,” in Problemy zhanra v istorii russkoi literatury (Leningrad: Leningrad Gos. Ped. Inst. Im. Gertsena, 1969), 42.

27



P. N. Berkov, Istoriia russkoi komedii, 13.

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cultural life of the Russian court and performed on stage together with the Italians.28 Sumarokov’s comedy The Monsters was written and performed in 1750 and, following common eighteenth-century theatrical practice, was staged together with one of his tragedies. According to Berkov, the tragedies staged at the end of 1750 together with The Monsters were Sinav and Truvor and Artistona. The title The Monsters leads us to anticipate seeing on stage the monstrosity of contemporary life and to laugh at this, or to see on stage several morally or physically ugly and pitiful characters who would be ridiculed according to the rules of comedy.29 Sumarokov’s satire was directed against the incompetent legal system, broader social trends, and his personal literary rival Trediakovsky, who had strongly criticized his writing. Mimicking the commedia scenarios, the plot of The Monsters centers on young lovers—Infimena and Valere—who face people around them who are opposed to their union. Valere’s uncle wants him to marry a rich bride, but Infimena comes from an impoverished family. Her parents, Gidima and Barmas, have conflicting views on their daughter’s future: her father wants her to marry Khabzei, who is presented in the list of characters as a talebearer (somebody who denounces people), since he can help Infimena’s whole family deal with various legal issues, while her mother wants her to marry the Gallomaniac Diulizh, who looks, speaks, and sings French. As a result of this conflict, Gidima slaps Barmas in the face. This slap initiates a series of events, as the offended Barmas goes to court to get financial compensation from Gidima and punish her legally for such an offense. The whole theme of the courthouse with incompetent judges gives this comedy its distinct Russian flavor, satirizing Russian bureaucracy and the legal system. At the

28

Vsevolodskii-Gerngross, Russkii teatr, 192; Starikova, Teatral’naia zhizn’ Rossii v epokhu Anny Ioanovny, 46.

29

As noted by Levitt, the title of the play was later changed to Treteinoi sud (The Court of Arbitration). See Levitt, “Sumarokov: Life and Work,” in Early Modern Russian Letters, 11.



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same time, the plot and dynamic of the relationship between the two servants Arlikin and Finetta—as well as the annoying pedant Krititsiondius—parallels Italian commedia dell’arte scenarios. Irina Reyfman also suggests it is similar to Molière’s comedy Les femmes savantes, in which the parents of the young heroine choose different grooms for their daughter.30 The onstage action is tied to contemporary Russian life, and in scene 7, the servant Arlikin informs spectators that the geographical location is Saint Petersburg.31 The play opens with the fight between Gidima and Barmas and reveals the wife’s and Diulizh’s Gallomania: Гидима. Инфимена будет за Дюлижем. Бармас. Да что тебе в нем нравится? Гидима. Все. Бармас. Однако ж что ж бы то такое было? Гидима. Все, все, я говорю. Волосы подвивает он хорошо, по-французски немножко знает, танцует, одевается по-щегольски, знает много французских песен; да полно еще, не был ли он и в Париже. Что тебе надобно? Вить нам зятя доставать не с небес. Gidima. Infimena will marry Diulizh. Barmas. But what do you like about him? Gidima. Everything. Barmas. However, what exactly is it? Gidima. Everything, everything, I am saying. He curls his hair nicely, he knows French a little bit, he dances, he is gallantly dressed, he knows many French songs, and many other things. And hasn’t he been to Paris? What else do you need? We are not going to get our son-in-law from the sky.32

30



Irina Reyfman, Vasilii Trediakovsky: The Fool of the “New” Russian Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 84–85.

31



Aleksandr Sumarokov, Dramaticheskie sochineniia (Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1990), 316.

32



Ibid., 311.

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David Welsh writes that Russian eighteenth-century theater was based on adaptations and translations of Western models “without specific relevance to contemporary Russian conditions,” with the settings unrelated to Russian geographical locations and “the characters’ names derived directly from seventeenthcentury French comedies—Oront, Salmina, Fineta and the like.”33 Contradicting Welsh’s view, there is a clear relationship to the Russian cultural and social surroundings in The Monsters, even while names of the characters remain overwhelmingly foreignsounding. The list of the characters in the beginning of the play is eclectic: the young lovers are given French names borrowed from Molière’s comedies, Infimena and Valere; the Doctor-pedant has an unpronounceable Latin name, Krititsiondius; the female servant’s name is French, Finetta; and the male servant’s name, Arlikin, has Italian roots. Finally, there are two judges with Russian folktale names, Finist and Dodon. This “multicultural crowd” on stage illustrates Sumarokov’s attempt to join Russian folklore with the Western European comic tradition. Such interest in folklore was typical for new Russian comedy at that time, and Sumarokov’s usage of fairy-tale characters in his Westernized comedy illustrates this tendency.34 By creating the figure of the annoying philosopher and art theoretician Krititsiondius as a parody of Trediakovsky, Sumarokov echoed the literary fashion at that time of transforming literature or drama into a “battlefield” with one’s ideological or personal rivals. This fashion, having come to Russia from Western Europe, was defined as “satire on the individual” (satira na litso).35 Welsh writes,

33

David Welsh, Russian Comedy: 1765–1823 (Paris: Mouton & Company, 1966), 14.

34

Berkov, Istoriia russkoi komedii, 180–81.

35

Krititsiondius was Sumarokov’s second parody of Trediakovskii: earlier in 1750, Sumarokov had publicly ridiculed Trediakovskii in his comedy Tresotinius, which centered on literary debates between the three leading Russian writers of that time—Trediakovskii, Sumarokov, and Lomonosov. Irina Reyfman writes, “It is well known that Molière pictured two of his literary enemies in the characters Tressotin and Vadius: the poet Abbe



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In Russian comedy the device became so familiar that it merited technical names of its own, and comedies were said to be written “on an individual” (“na litso” or “na lichnost”), and writers aimed to “introduce an original” (“vvesti podlinnik”).36

The similarity between Krititsiondius and the Italian mask of Dottore is striking and illustrates Sumarokov’s transposition of commedia elements onto the Russian stage.37 The Italian Dottore (Doctor) was known as early as the mid-sixteenth-century, and his main characteristic was that he was a learned fool who spent his whole life studying everything without understanding anything. Dottore was simultaneously “a philosopher, astronomer, man of letters, cabalist, barrister, grammarian, diplomat, and physician”; he was a member of all known and unknown scientific academies and was constantly using Latin quotations.38 Similarly, Trediakovsky was a professor of the Russian Academy of Science, with the title of Professor of Latin and Russian Eloquence.39 Sumarokov satirized Trediakovsky’s obsession with Russian grammar and his critical and theoretical work on Russian literature and language. In the following excerpt, Krititsiondius criticizes Khorev, a tragedy written by Sumarokov shortly before The Monsters, which had been criticized by Trediakovsky:40 Charles Cotin and the poet and scholar Gilles Menage. Sumarokov reproduced this pair as Tresotinius and the rhetorician Bobembius, who corresponded to Sumarokov’s literary opponents Trediakovsky and Lomonosov.” See Reyfman, Vasilii Trediakovsky, 85. 36



Welsh, Russian Comedy, 20.

37



I am not the first researcher who has traced the similarity between Krititsiondius and the Italian Dottore. Irina Reyfman provides a detailed analysis contrasting the Italian mask and Trediakovskii’s mythological image of a learned fool of eighteenth-century Russian literature as well. See Reyfman, Vasilii Trediakovsky, 86.

38



Duchartre, The Italian Comedy, 196.

39



Reyfman, Vasilii Trediakovsky, 28.

40

Irina Reyfman, “Vasilii Kirillovich Trediakovsky,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 150: Early Modern Russian Writers, Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Marcus Levitt (Detroit: Thomson Gale, 1995), 388.



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Дюлиж. Апропо! Русскую-то трагедию видел ли ты? Критициoндиус. Видел за грехи мои. И как ты, читая комедию плакал, так я, видя эту трагедию, смеялся. Дюлиж. Так и на тебя это бывает, что ты смеешься, видя, что жалко. Критициoндиус. Да тут никакой жалости не было. Дюлиж. Да разве Хорев то комедия, а не трагедия? Да полно, что может быть хорошо, что на русском языке писано! Критициoндиус. Это правда, однако немного получше можно бы было написать. Diulizh. À propos! Have you seen a Russian tragedy? Krititsiondius. I saw it as a punishment for my sins. And like you, who was crying while reading the comedy, I was laughing while watching this tragedy. Diulizh. So it happens to you as well that you laugh while seeing something pitiful? Krititsiondius. But there was no pity in it! Diulizh. Is Khorev really a comedy and not a tragedy? Come on, can anything written in the Russian language be good? Krititsiondius. This is true, however, it could be written a bit better.41

In commedia scenarios, the Italian Dottore was often beaten by his listeners for his endless philosophizing and annoying behavior, and this was reflected in true life, according to historical anecdotes about Trediakovsky being beaten by Anna’s cabinet minister Artemii Volynsky. Reyfman writes, The conflict occurred in connection with a wedding of jesters organized for Empress Anna’s amusement in early 1740. Volynsky, who was responsible for the empress’s entertainment, summoned Trediakovsky and commanded him to write a poem for this occasion. Following a disagreement, Volynsky ordered that the poet be severely beaten

41



P. N. Berkov, “Sumarokov-Dramaturg,” in Sumarokov, Dramaticheskie sochineniia, 315.

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and himself joined in the beatings. Exactly what provoked the minister’s anger is not quite clear. It could have been a poem that Trediakovsky allegedly had written about him or the poet’s association with Prince Kurakin, Volynsky’s enemy.42

In the play, Krititsiondius is beaten by Arlikin for a simple reason— the old pedant was making amorous advances toward the young Finetta. The Italian Dottore’s numerous attempts to flirt with young women were ridiculed and then rejected as tiresome. The Monsters mirrors this, as the sixty-year-old Krititsiondius is rejected by the young servant Finetta, who does not appreciate his knowledge of foreign languages or his passion for writing philosophical treatises on all imaginable topics. Krititsiondius is presented as a talentless writer-critic who has published numerous volumes of clumsy and pretentious writing that nobody wants to read. Irina Reyfman convincingly illustrates the discrepancy between Trediakovsky’s literary achievements and his contemporaries’ lack of appreciation of his valuable contribution to the development of modern Russian literature: Trediakovsky’s reputation as a failed writer overshadowed his early fame, his significant success among contemporaries, and his contribution to poetry, versification, literary criticism, linguistics, and the development of the Russian literary language. Moreover, Trediakovsky’s contemporaries and literary descendants frequently reassigned his accomplishments, such as the introduction of syllabo-tonics or the development of Russian hexameter, to Lomonosov. As a result, Trediakovsky went down in history as a paragon of talentlessness, a barren pedant, the author of worthless poems.43

Sumarokov’s malicious satire significantly worsened Trediakovsky’s reputation; this illuminates Welsh’s notion that onstage satire in eighteenth-century Russia was following European

42



Reyfman, Vasilii Trediakovsky, 27–28.

43



Ibid., 7.

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models, where the playwright considered himself a judge who “would therefore propose certain standards of conduct while condemning others.”44 The servant Arlikin has many Italian features but is transposed into an exclusively Russian cultural milieu. The Russian Arlikin is a servant of Infimena’s family and is in love with the servant Finetta. Arlikin ignores social differences, criticizing and ridiculing his master and mistress and showing little respect for them. From his first appearances onstage, he expresses his ironic attitude toward his master’s orders, jokingly questioning his sanity, and rather arrogantly addresses the Gallomaniac Diulizh and pedant Krititsiondius, who are socially his superiors. Arlikin’s mockery echoes the commedia dell’arte servants’ outwitting their masters. Sumarokov’s brief remarks on Arlikin’s stage movements, such as running around or beating his rivals, give us reason to believe that the actor performing Arlikin’s role was capable of stage tricks and was in good physical shape. Overall, in comparison to the scenario in Trediakovsky’s translation, Sumarokov’s comedy is rather static, and the onstage action does not include any acrobatic tricks, stage fights, or supernatural apparitions. However, there is a miraculous transformation by the end of the play, as Arlikin the servant is transformed into an ignorant Russian judge. Ignoring social differences, Arlikin ridicules and teases the Russian nobility. His speech is far from that of a simpleton, and his intelligence is demonstrated through his comments about his surroundings. Unlike his masters, who fail to see Valere as the only suitable groom for their daughter, Arlikin clearly sees this from the very beginning of the play. His common sense helps him separate real human virtues from false ones. Another harlequinized element in Sumarokov’s comedy is the famous battoccio used by Harlequin as both a symbol of his sexuality and as a weapon. Risqué jokes and gestures with the battoccio were traditional for the commedia dell’arte, and Harlequin’s iconography vividly illustrates how inseparable this object was from his image.

44



Welsh, Russian Comedy, 19.

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Sumarokov seems to be aware of this fact as well since the comedy contains a miniature humorous dialogue between Finetta and Arlikin that has similar erotic overtones. Finetta and Arlikin are deriding Diulizh, questioning not only his intellectual but also his sexual capabilities: Арликин. Финетта, каков он тебе кажется? Финетта. Таков, как тебе. Арликин. Мне кажется, что какова трость его, таков короток у него разум. Финетта. На что молодому человеку разум? Были б долгие манжеты да трость сажени в полторы. Arlikin. Finetta, how does he seem to you? Finetta. Similar to how he seems to you. Arlikin. It seems to me that his reason is as short as his stick. Finetta. What does a young man need reason for? All he needs are long cuffs and a ten-foot-long stick.45

Arlikin and Finetta’s relationship mirrors that between Harlequin and his beloved Smeraldina/Columbine in the commedia dell’arte. Arlikin is jealous when he sees Finetta with the sixty-yearold Krititsiondius, whose philosophical monologues are in fact masking his lust for Finetta. Arlikin fearlessly attacks his rival both verbally and physically. In the following excerpt, Arlikin enters the stage when Krititsiondius is trying to kiss Finetta, hoping that he had impressed the young servant with his learned conversation: Критициондиус. Эдакие твари рождаются для философов, а не для Арликинов. Арликин. (вынув и показавая ему шпагу свою). А эдакие вещи у нас у философов, которые, оставив философию, то же делают, что и мы простолюдимы. Критициондиус. Тронь только меня, так я на тебя сатир десять сделаю. Арликин. Что хочешь делай, только лишь Финетты не занимай.

45



Sumarokov, Dramaticheskiie sochineniia, 320.

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Критициондиус. (еще поцеловать ее хочет). Прекрасная богиня! Арликин. (бьет его). Вот тебе моя философия. Критициондиус. (бежит вон). Философа бить! Арликин. Вот тебе философия. Krititsiondius. Such creatures are born for philosophers and not for Arlikins. Arlikin. [taking out his sword and showing it] And we have such things for philosophers who abandon philosophy and do the same as we, the common people do. Krititsiondius. If you even touch me, I will write ten satires about you. Arlikin. Do whatever you wish, but leave Finetta alone. Krititsiondius. [trying to kiss her] Beautiful goddess! Arlikin. [beating him] Here is my philosophy! Krititsiondius. [running away] How dare you beat a philosopher? Arlikin. Here is your philosophy.46

This scene echoes the traditional rivalry between the witty simpleton Harlequin and the learned fool Dottore, who makes advances on a charming young woman. As noted, this beating of the learned fool is a classical example of commedia stage action, as the doctor was frequently beaten by listeners who became infuriated with him.47 At the same time, this scene echoes the rumored incident when Trediakovsky was beaten by one of Anna’s courtiers. Another comic device frequently used in the Italian scenarios was a mock scene performed by servants parodying their masters’ elevated passions and poetic love talk in a more prosaic, earthy fashion. This particular commedia dell’arte technique was widely used by European playwrights such as Goldoni, Molière, and Marivaux.48 Sumarokov uses the same approach in two short

46

Ibid., 319.

47

Duchartre, The Italian Comedy, 196.

48

One of the most striking examples of this mirroring technique is seen in Marivaux, L’ile des eslaves (The Island of the Slaves) (Paris: Hachett Liver, 1994), when the servants switch roles with their masters.



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scenes: in scene 7, Valere swears his loyalty to Infimena and vice versa; then, in scene 8, Arlikin expresses his view of love, repeating Valere’s words and imitating his way of speech, but he eliminates any romantic overtones. Arlikin sees the world from a different perspective and expresses his commonsense view of relationships between the sexes. Juxtaposing Valere and Infimena’s elevated rhetoric, Arlikin and Finetta simply believe in the commonplace wisdom that one can promise things only about the present because of the unpredictability of the future: Scene 7 Валер. Прости мой свет, и памятуй что слово, что ты кроме меня ни за кого не выйдешь. Инфемена. Пускай в ту минуту смерть меня пожрет, ежели я тебе изменю. Valere. Forgive me, light of my life, and remember that you gave your word that you will not marry anyone but me. Infimena. Let death strike me if I am unfaithful to you.

Compare with: Scene 8 Арликин. Прости меня, мой свет. Только как ты мне не мила, однако я не клянусь, что никогда тебе не изменю: о настоящем клясться можно, а будущее нам неведомо; может быть, что я тебе и изменю. Вить ты не одна хороша на свете, а вить пословица-то эта лежит недаром, что когда товар полюбиться, тогда и ум отступиться. Финетта. Может быть что такие мысли и у меня; и ты вить не один на свете. Arlikin. Forgive me, light of my life. You are very dear to me, but I am not swearing that I will never cheat on you: one can swear about the present, but the future is unknown to us; perhaps I will cheat on you. After all, you are not the only good one in the world, and there is a reason for the proverb, “When you fall in love with something, you lose your mind.” Finetta. Perhaps I also have similar thoughts; you are not the only one either.49

49



Sumarokov, Dramaticheskiie sochineniia, 321–22.

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As has been discussed, in the Italian performances for the Russian court, Harlequin was able to transform himself on stage into any other character involved in a play, skillfully imitating their speech and body language. For such transformations, the Italian Harlequin used a variety of theatrical tools such as clothing, masks, parody, wigs, distinct body language, and so forth. In the third act of The Monsters, Sumarokov surprises his audience with an unexpected metamorphosis—his servant Arlikin pretends to be a judge by putting on a traditional wig. Here Arlikin’s adventurous nature faces a challenge—under such a wig, he must act like a judge and resolve legal conflicts without having any legal training. However, Arlikin has a more serious reason to transform himself into a judge: he is deeply disappointed in the legal system—represented by the real judges Dodon and Finist— and realizes that he can do a much better job establishing peace in his masters’ household under the wig of a judge. The wig here is the equivalent of a mask, as it dictates a new identity and new societal function. Sumarokov expresses his concern with the dysfunctional Russian legal system using the character of the skeptical and ironic buffoon who has a realistic worldview. Arlikin is convinced that bribing officials is one of the most widespread unwritten rules of society. In addition, while observing the incompetence of the two judges, Dodon and Finist, he realizes that he could become a judge himself. Satirizing the Russian court, Sumarokov presents one judge, Finist, who was just transferred to the court from the army and has no legal training, while the other judge, Dodon, has spent his whole life in courthouses but had never managed to learn anything useful about the legal procedures. While observing these judges, Arlikin decides to take the situation under his own control: he tears the judge’s wig from Dodon’s head and, putting it on his own head, announces, “Арликин (один): Вот я и судья теперь. А что я дела не знаю, это судейству моему не остановка. Есть судьи, которые еще и меня меньше знают.” (Here I am—now I am a judge. And the fact that I know nothing about this business is not going to stop me. There are judges who know even less 110

Russifying the Commedia dell’Arte

than me.)50 Despite the fact that all the actions are described in a comic fashion, Arlikin’s behavior signifies a revolt against the absurd Russian bureaucracy. His sudden transformation into a judge is indeed a satire of law and order in Russian society, where a wig, and not real knowledge of legal procedures, could make a person a judge or lawyer. Other characters view Arlikin’s metamorphosis from their own individual perspectives. The Gallomaniac Diulizh wonders whether the large wig represents the latest European fashion and admires it: “Что это за пречудный парик на тебе?” (What is this marvelous wig you are wearing?) Krititsiondius views the wig as a possible subject for his analytical or poetic writing: “Пожалуй, друг мой, дай мне этого парика дни на три. Это вещь диковинная. Я ему сделаю описание: я до всех куриозных вещей охотник.” (Please, my friend, give me this wig for three days or so. This is an exotic thing. I will describe it. I am a fan of everything that is curious.)51 Under the wig of a judge (a substitute for a commedia mask), Arlikin’s actions are now firm and persuasive: he declares that neither the pedant Krititsiondius nor the Gallomaniac Diulizh can hope for the attention of Infimena, since philosophical treatises and knowledge of the French language cannot affect her and Valere’s love. Arlikin’s dedication to and respect for his young mistress and her beloved are unshakable throughout the whole play, as he tries everything possible to help arrange their marriage, attacking their rivals both verbally and physically. Feeling confident that all the events are now under control, Arlikin announces to the audience that as soon as he became a judge, order in his masters’ household was restored.52 Arlikin the judge wisely directs all the events toward a happy denouement. Valere has in his possession all the important legal papers that supposedly will save Infimena’s parents from legal problems, and

50



Ibid., 329.

51



Ibid.

52



Ibid., 331.

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he officially proposes to her. Gidima and Barmas finally accept their daughter’s choice and make peace with each other. Arlikin seems to admit that he became a judge just temporarily to achieve a happy legal resolution for his masters and is not willing to be a judge anymore: “Арликин: . . . (Бросив с себя парик) Полно быть судьею. Что нам надобно, то уже сделано, а что надобно другим, до того что нам нужды. На весь свет работать трудно.” (Arlikin: . . . [Throwing off the wig] Enough being a judge. What we need is already done, and what others need we do not care. It is hard to work for the whole world.)53 In Sumarokov’s incarnation, the servant Arlikin retains many features of the Italian Harlequin but is deeply rooted within the Russian cultural and social environment. Arlikin expresses realistic views of the legal system and of the fictional characters around him. Sumarokov’s choice to have an Italian character satirize the Russian legal system may have stemmed from the fact that the audience Sumarokov was writing for was familiar with this character through the performances of the commedia dell’arte and was ready to see on stage a favorite comic character who was ridiculing ignorant Russian judges. Sumarokov portrays Arlikin the buffoon as the most reasonable character in his play, making us forget his social status as a servant. Arlikin is depicted as a wise fool who is allowed to ridicule the nobility and the corrupted judicial system. The transformation of the Italian buffoon into an ignorant Russian judge was indeed Sumarokov’s original dramatic invention. Another striking element that distinguishes The Monsters from its Western counterparts is the strong presence of social and cultural satire. This particular feature would later be developed by Vasilii Kapnist and Denis Fonvizin and brought to perfection by Nikolai Gogol. Sumarokov’s comedies ridicule the Russian bureaucracy, the bribing of judges, the post-Petrine Russian infatuation with everything foreign, and the related neglect of the Russian national identity. In The Monsters we can easily detect the beginning of the

53



Ibid., 332.

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types of satire noted by Welsh: personal satire, more general satire, and social or political satire. Discussing these three leading trends, which emerged during the second half of the eighteenth century in Russian comedy, Welsh writes, Of these, two reflected the satire of the French stage: personal satire, or lampoons attacking specific and recognizable individuals, and more general satire aimed against vices, faults or foibles common to all mankind, such as hypocrisy, bigotry, superstition or affectation. The third trend, which soon overshadowed them, focussed upon satirical attacks against social, economic or political abuses which the playwrights regarded as characteristically Russian. The trends were not mutually exclusive: recognisable individuals might be derided as representatives of a general vice or folly, or vices common to all mankind might be satirised in a recognisably Russian setting.54

Sumarokov’s harlequinized comedy has strong elements of personal and social satire, yet it lacks the intricate plot structure, dynamism, and eccentricity so typical of the Italian scenarios. Certainly, in contrast to the Italian scenarios translated by Trediakovsky, Sumarokov’s comedies are rather static and uneventful. Sumarokov was writing his plays relying not on the virtuosity of the Italian performers, who had centuries of theatrical tradition and superb professional training to support them, but on the amateurish actor-cadets who staged and performed all of them.55 While the masterpieces of Russian eighteenth-century comedy were yet to be written, Sumarokov’s The Monsters represented a significant step toward the further development of Russian national comedy, as the playwright absorbed various Italian elements to create the distinctive national comic tradition.

54



Welsh, Russian Comedy, 19.

55



Ibid., 26.

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R amifications

of the Italian

Decade

After Anna Ioannovna’s death in 1740, the Italian masks continued to vagabond across the landscape of Russian high and low culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The masks were infiltrating Russian cultural tradition, traveling from the royal stages and palaces into the arenas of the circuses and masquerades, and appearing in nineteenth-century literature and marketplace balagans. In 1745, during the reign of Elizaveta Petrovna (1741–1761), another famous commedia dell’arte troupe performed in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. While this troupe, run by entrepreneur Johann Peter Hilferding, is traditionally viewed as being of German origin, Mooser writes that Hilferding had some Italian ancestry. Hilferding got an engagement in Germany and then, in 1736, was appointed artistic director of the Konigsberg Theater. According to Mooser, Hilferding was forced to move to Russia because of his frequent confrontations with the Prussian police.1 Hilferding and his performances relied on the Russian audience’s familiarity with the commedia dell’arte characters and on their anticipation of new adventures of the famous Italian masks.2 The 1740s playbills from Hilferding’s performances have a full list of the commedia dell’arte characters, with Harlequin in a leading role.3 His troupe used an improvisational technique and, like the Italians, heavily relied on the artistry and inspiration of the performers

1

Mooser, Annales, 211.

2

Ibid., 211–12.

3

Ibid., 215.



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instead of on literary texts.4 Hilferding died in Saint Petersburg in 1769. While announcing the royal masquerade on February 8, 1752, Empress Elizaveta Petrovna issued a noteworthy decree in which she forbid her courtiers to wear Harlequin costumes. Inviting the nobility, courtiers, and foreign ambassadors, the decree states that the nobility could wear any masquerade costume except those of pilgrims, Harlequin, and peasants, and she forbid the wearing of jewelry.5 It is not clear why Harlequin’s costume was unwelcome at the royal masquerade. V. D. Kuzmina provides a partial explanation for why the figure of Harlequin may have been becoming more and more bothersome for the Russian audience; she writes that the 1740– 1750 German interpretation and remaking of the Italian comedy was of poor artistic quality. Some memoirs of this époque clearly suggest that in the mid-eighteenth century the German harlequinade touring Russia was in a state of decline, relying on rude and banal jokes and lacking the plot development and masterfully designed intrigues that were so typical of the Italian scenarios. Kuzmina also mentions the symbolic burning of a dummy of Harlequin on the Russian stage at this time as a possible manifestation of the desire to expel this character from the stage.6 Another historical episode describes Sumarokov’s anger when the comic persona of Gaer—which was another name for Harlequin—made an unexpected appearance at a staging of his tragedy Sinav and Truvor. At that time, Harlequins and Gaers were beloved characters of the mass audience and their unexpected appearances onstage were welcomed, even if they disrupted the performance. Dmitriev writes, This character often would appear onstage completely outside the plot, not only in comedies, but also in tragedies. It

4

Ibid., 211.

5

A copy of this archival document was kindly given to me by Liudmila Starikova.

6

V. D. Kuzmina, Russkii demokraticheskii teatr XVIII veka (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk, 1958), 88–89.



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was said that one time Sumarokov came to a balagan where his tragedy Sinav and Truvor was being performed. And when one of the protagonists, Gostomysl, loudly pronounced, “Наполнен наш живот премножеством сует” (Our life is filled with a lot of hustle and bustle), Gaer jumped out of nowhere and also yelled, “Наполнен наш живот щами и пирогами” (Our stomach is filled with cabbage soup and pirogies.) All the spectators laughed, and His Excellency the writer got very upset and immediately left the balagan.7

Perhaps at this time the ubiquitous harlequinized imagery was becoming a bothersome cliché for the Russian nobility, who were forcing this character out from the high culture of the court to the low popular entertainment of the marketplace. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the Russian public had become fascinated with Italian opera and opera buffa (Italian comic opera with recited dialogue) that came to Russia in 1758.8 Opera buffa was attracting not only the nobility but also broad popular audiences. Operatic performances, which were monopolizing the attention of the royal court, were directed by the Italian musician Giovanni Battista Locatelli. Elizaveta Petrovna often visited Locatelli’s performances and paid him generous honorariums. The Russian aristocracy were buying private loges at three hundred rubles each and decorating them with expensive rugs and mirrors. At the same time, opera houses were now allowing representatives of the lower social strata to pay one ruble per performance for standing-room tickets.9 While the Russian high cultural scene had been literally invaded by Italian musicians, singers, choreographers, dancers, and impresarios, the harlequinades in their pure form were gradually becoming part of low culture and were separated from 7

Dmitriev, Tsirk v Rossii, 40.

8

This is the date according to Mooser, but it was the fall of 1757 according to Ia. von Shtelin, “Istoricheskoe opisanie odnago teatral’nogo deistva, kotoroe nazyvaetsia opera,” as cited in Teatral’naia zhizn’ Rossii v epokhu Anny Ioannovny, ed. Starikova, 594.

9

Shtelin, “Istoricheskoe opisanie odnago teatral’nogo deistva,” 595–96.





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operatic performances. In his History of the Russian Theater, Staehlin writes that Hilferding’s troupe simply could not compete with the enormous popularity of the opera buffa. However, during the reign of Catherine the Great, Harlequins were still entertaining the broad public daily, even together with a German troupe in 1765.10 There were also frequent unexpected appearances of harlequinized imagery in nineteenth-century Russian literature and culture. In 1829, Alexander Pushkin wrote “To the Bust of the Conqueror”—an epitaph that compares Emperor Alexander I to Harlequin. Apparently, this epitaph was inspired by a marble bust of Alexander I that Pushkin saw while in exile in the Caucasus: Напрасно видишь тут ошибку: Рука искусства навела На мрамор этих уст улыбку, А гнев на хладный лоск чела. Недаром лик сей двуязычен, Таков и был сей властелин К противочувствиям привычен, В лице и в жизни арлекин. In vain you see here a mistake: Art’s hand placed A smile on the marble of these lips And anger on the head’s cold gloss. There is a reason for such duplicity Such was the sovereign himself Accustomed to the contradictory feelings Harlequin had in his look and life.11

In Pushkin’s poetic imagination, Harlequin turns out to be an enigmatic creature, not just a buffoon, whose duplicity is misleading. The poet most likely had in mind Harlequin’s mask, which covers half of his face, making his facial expression undetectable and totally static while only his smiling lips are exposed to the public.

10



Ibid., 600.

11



A. S. Pushkin, Sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh (Moscow: Pravda Publishing, 1981), 2:164.

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Pushkin’s mention of duplicity and contradictory feelings creates an impression far removed from the traditional eighteenth-century buffoons, instead foreshadowing the psychologically complex tricksters—the Harlequins of the Silver Age. Pushkin’s attitude toward Alexander I was also full of contradictions, as the poet both admired and ridiculed the emperor. This attitude was vividly reflected in an earlier poem, “The 19th of October,” written in 1825 in Mikhailovskoe for the Lyceum anniversary: Полней, полней! И, сердцем возгоря Опять до дна, до капли выпивайте! Но за кого? О, други, угадайте . . . Ура, наш царь! Так выпьем за царя. Он человек, им властвует мгновенье, Он раб молвы, сомнений и страстей, Но так и быть, простим ему гоненье, Он взял Париж и создал наш лицей. Pour more, pour more! And with a heart in flame Again to the bottom, drink until the last drop! But to whom? O, friends, guess . . . Hooray, our Tsar! Let’s drink to the Tsar. He is a man, ruled by the moment, He is a slave to rumors, doubts and passions, And so be it, let us forgive him the pursuit, He took Paris and founded our Lyceum.12

Lotman portrays Alexander I’s personality in a similar fashion, emphasizing his constant role-playing and changing of masks on the stage of Russian history. Lotman writes that “Alexander did not stand aloof from games and transformations but, on the contrary, he liked to change masks, sometimes deriving practical benefits from his ability to play a variety of roles and sometimes indulging in pure artistry in changing guises, apparently enjoying the fact that he would mislead interlocutors who were interpreting his

12



Ibid., 2:56.

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games as reality.”13 Further, Lotman illustrates the theatricality of Alexander’s public behavior and his gift for orchestrating skillful political intrigues. He describes a historical episode in which Alexander eliminated one of his ministers, Speransky, from Russian political life, orchestrating an entire intrigue using denunciations and then crying, claiming that he had nothing to do with Speransky’s exile and that it was orchestrated by his evil courtiers.14 Lotman portrays Alexander’s personality in the context of theatricality as a well-accepted norm of social behavior in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, comparing the emperor with a skillful choreographer or a writer of comedies or tragedies for the Russian cultural and political stage. Pushkin’s poetic imagination associates the same personality features of the Russian emperor with the unpredictable yet fascinating figure of the Italian Harlequin. Pushkin was evidently acquainted with the Italian harlequinade, since representatives of all social strata visited the balagans and circuses to see them. Iurii Dmitriev writes about the enormous popularity of the Italian pantomimes in the early nineteenth century who attracted representatives of various social groups, from simple people to Russian intellectuals and nobility. Evidently, the balagans continued to flourish during Pushkin’s lifetime as well: The so-called harlequinades had particular success in the balagans. They were shown at the Brothers Legat, Lehmann, Berg, and others. Academician A. V. Nikitenko said that on March 22, 1831, he went to a folk festival. “It is difficult to make one’s way to the Lemme. At the door of his temple of pleasures it is as crowded as in church during a big holiday before the sermon. I barely got a ticket and, with great difficulty, made my way to the door.15

13



Iurii M. Lotman, “Teatr i teatral’nost’ v stroe kul’tury XIX veka,” in Lotman, Ob iskusstve, 632.

14



Ibid., 633.

15



Dmitriev, Tsirk v Rossii, 112.

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Here Pushkin’s contemporary Nikitenko observes that the harlequinades clearly continued to be one of the major popular attractions at that time, but now they had become much more accessible to representatives of all social strata and not only to the courtly audience. That same year, in February of 1831, one of the widely read periodicals of the time, Severnaia pchela (Northern bee), wrote that good harlequinades can be much more worthwhile than some funny tragedies and sad comedies, placing the skillful artistry of the balagan higher than that of the theater: “As for us, we give preference to a good pantomime over all the merry tragedies and sad comedies.”16 In the nineteenth century, pantomimes with Harlequin in the leading role were performed at the end of circus performances and were announced in advance to attract more spectators. For example, a small announcement published in 1834 in Moskovskie Vedomosti noted, “Astrafy Kaspar has the honor to inform the respectable public that . . . performances will be given . . . that consist of dancing on horseback without a saddle and on a rope, and Italian pantomimes will be given at the end of every performance.”17 The above-mentioned Italian pantomimes were based on commedia dell’arte improvisational techniques, and this popularity of the harlequinades remained unshaken in 1847 when Severnaia pchela praised the leading actress of one the balagans, predicting that, as very popular entertainment, the Italian pantomimes would attract many more spectators than classical concerts. Dmitriev writes, “Severnaia pchela wrote that Legat’s balagan is the best at the folk festivals, and they highly appreciated its female star. The newspaper predicted that there ‘will be more visitors at Legat’s than at the concerts.’”18 Russian periodicals from the second half of the nineteenth century provide additional information about the Italian masks vagabonding across the nineteenth-century Russian cultural

16

Ibid.

17

Ibid., 115.

18

Ibid.



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landscape. For example, in 1862, Russkii khudozhestvennyi listok (Russian arts paper) published an article titled “The Vagabonding Comedians,” which noted a connection between the skomorokhi and the harlequinаdes: Our national skomorokhi were replaced by German comedians who have turned the folk scenes into harlequinades with acrobats and magicians. These comedians travel from one city to another and show people their grand performances. They usually set up a huge tent on a public square or a marketplace and, after arranging seats for the spectators on risers, perform games that nobody has ever heard of or seen.19

The article discusses the performances of the foreign vagabonding troupes without providing information about the nationality of the actors. V. V. Sipovsky wrote that foreign harlequinades in the Russian provinces inspired local Russian actors and puppeteers to create their own Russian popular shows based on these models.20 Sipovsky also mentions a Russian humor magazine called Arlekin that was published in 1859, which included a poem written from the perspective of Arlekin about his genealogy, vagabonding nature, and his continual metamorphoses on European stages. The poem reminds the Russian readership of Harlequin’s constant balancing between high and low culture, his tremendous successes on the European stage, and the impact of fashion on his downfall to marketplace performances, and it also provides an interesting summary of the cultural perception of Harlequin’s character in Russia of 1859: . . . Мне местом рождения был город Бергам Мое назначенье — по свету скитаться, Всегда веселиться, смешить и смеяться! И я, итальянской природы дитя,

19



V. V. Sipovskii, “Italianskii teatr v Peterburge pri Anne Ioannovne,” in Russkaia starina (St. Petersburg: Tip. Tovarishchestvo obshchestvennaia pol’za, 1900), 606.

20



Ibid., 606–7.

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На родине милой жить начал шутя: По улицам бегал, на площадь являлся, Кувыркался, прыгал плясал и кривлялся; Хоть, правда, я грубо шутил иногда, Но шутками людям не делал вреда! За это бергамцы меня полюбили, — Они ведь не очень взыскательны были! В осьмнадцатом веке задумал я вдруг Искать просвещенья, искусств и наук — Чтоб светлую роскошь увидеть поближе. Явился я смело в блестящем Париже. Там счастие было мое таково, Что даже Пирон, Флориан, Мариво Меня наградили вниманием лестным И сделали скоро повсюду известным! Карлино, Лапорт, Томассен, Доминик Умели очистить мой грубый язык, — И вот я в театрах на сцену поставлен, В высоком сословьи любим и прославлен. Но счастье непрочно: настала невзгода, — Известно, что в свете господствует мода. Ну, стала злодейка меня обижать И мне из Парижа пришлось убежать. Я прямо в Россию, в ту самую пору, Когда Петербург удивлялся Дюпору. Но мода и тут мне злодейкой была — В балете приюта никак не дала! Что было мне делать? Куда тут деваться? Пришлось мне опять в балаганах являться. Покорствуя этой злосчастной судьбе, “Послушай, голубчик, сказал я себе: Уж если нельзя быть на сцене артистом, Так, знаешь, попрoбуй и будь журналистом”. . . . My birthplace is the city of Bergamo My purpose—to vagabond around the world, To always have fun, amuse, and to laugh! I am a child of Italian origin, And I began to live, merrily in my homeland: I was running in the streets, and appearing in the squares Somersaulted, jumped, danced, and played the ape; Though, it is true, sometimes I made rude jokes, But my jokes did not do harm to people! 122

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For this, Bergamo folks fell in love with me— After all, they were not very demanding! In the eighteenth century, I suddenly thought to Search for enlightenment, art, and science— To see the light of luxury from up close. I boldly appeared in glittering Paris. My fortune there was such That even Piron, Florian, Marivaux Awarded me with flattering attention And soon made me famous everywhere! Carlino, Laporte, Thomassen, Dominique Were able to purify my rude language— And here I am in the theater put on stage, Loved and glorified by high society. But happiness is fragile: misfortune came— It is known that fashion dominates the world. Well, I got hurt by this villain And had to flee Paris. I went directly to Russia, at the very time When Saint Petersburg marveled at Duport But once again fashion was the villain And did not give me refuge in the ballet! What was I to do? Where should I go? Once again I had to appear in the balagans Submitting to this miserable fate, “Listen, my dear,” I said to myself: “If you cannot be an actor onstage, You know what, try to be become a journalist.”21

Interestingly, Anna Ioannovna’s favorite jester, Pedrillo/ Miro, under the name Kedril, reappears in Fedor Dostoevsky’s semi-autobiographical work, Notes from a Dead House (1860–1862). Dostoevsky describes his narrator’s impressions of an amateur performance of the play Kedril-obzhora (Kedril the glutton) staged by prisoners in Siberian exile, and is puzzled by the name of the character. Dostoevsky was not aware of Kedril’s possible Italian genealogy and this character’s association with Anna’s favorite jester, yet he feels that the name might be of foreign origin:

21



Ibid., 607–8.

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As for Kedril the Glutton, much as I wanted to, I could find out nothing before the performance except that evil spirits appear on stage and carry Kedril off to hell. But what does Kedril mean, and finally, why Kedril and not Kiril? Was it a Russian or a foreign episode?—That I simply could not find out.22

Miro’s personality had had a strong impact on Russian popular theater during the second part of the eighteenth century, and his various nicknames had appeared in many popular Russian plays, transformed into Kedril, Pedrillo, Petrukha Farnos, and Adamka Pedrillo. Smirnova writes, “Pedrillo’s popularity in the second third of the XVIII century was such that in the popular version of ‘A Comedy about Don Juan’ people gave his name to Don Juan’s servant (in fact, later on, this name was distorted from Pedrillo into Kedril the Glutton, the one that Dostoevsky saw in the prisoners’ play).”23 Dostoevsky’s artistic intuition faultlessly leads him to speculate that the play represents the continuation of a tradition that belonged to popular entertainment—in this case the provincial Russian theater. Moreover, Dostoevsky expresses concern with the absence of serious scholarly interest in popular theater: This play would be followed by another, a drama: Kedril the Glutton. The title intrigued me greatly; but though I kept asking about the play, I could not find out anything beforehand. All I found out was that it had been taken not from a book, but “from a manuscript”; that it had been obtained from some retired sergeant, who lived on the edge of town and probably once took part in its performance himself on some army stage. In our remote towns and provinces there indeed exist such theater plays, which nobody seems to know, which may never have been published anywhere, but which appeared of themselves from somewhere and constitute an indispensable part of every popular theater in certain regions of Russia.

22



23



Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from a Dead House, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), 149–50. Smirnova, Sovetskii teatr kukol, 28.

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Incidentally, I have said “popular theater.” It would be very good, very good indeed, if one of our researchers would undertake a new investigation, more thorough than previously, into popular theater, which is there, exists, and even may not be entirely insignificant. I refuse to believe that everything I saw later in our prison theater was invented by our prisoners. There is a need here for a continuity of tradition, for methods and notions established once and for all, which are transmitted from generation to generation and thought old memory.24

Dostoevsky assumes that the popular plays were known in the provincial towns and were preserved on estates of nobility in the houses of the serfs who acted in the wealthy landowners’ serf theaters.25 Dostoevsky’s descriptions of the performance, with Kedril’s grimaces, cunning jokes, and gluttony, as well as otherworldly apparitions of devils who take Kedril and his master away to hell, are strongly reminiscent of commedia lazzi and produced laughter in the audience. Dostoevsky describes the performance and concludes that overall the plot of the play was something like Don Juan: Kedril is a coward and a glutton. Hearing about the devils, he turns pale and trembles like a leaf. He would run away, but he is afraid of his master. And, above all, he wants to eat. He is a sensualist, stupid, cunning in his own way, a coward, cheats his master at every step and at the same time is afraid of him.26

Dostoevsky’s vivid description of the performance concentrates on the stage persona of an energetic, cunning servant with physical actions that echo the inventiveness of the Italian scenarios, in which the Don Juan legend was a popular topic for improvisational performances.

24



Dostoevsky, Notes from a Dead House, 149.

25



Ibid., 149–50.

26



Ibid., 158.

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The commedia dell’arte had an impact on arts and crafts in Russia as well. In June 2003, the State Historical Museum in Moscow opened an exhibition dedicated to the three-hundred-year anniversary of Saint Petersburg called “Four Senses: The Holiday in Petersburg of the Eighteenth Century.” The exposition included a number of items from both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that reflect Russian premodernist fascination with the harlequinades. For example, one of these objects was a wooden sledge with a wooden Harlequin as the coachman, made in 1764 during the reign of Catherine the Great by the Italian architect and stage designer Giuseppe Brigozzi. According to the description, this sledge was designed for a grandiose masquerade in Moscow.27 The other harlequinized items include mirrors with etched figures of Pantalone and Pulcinella that were made in the mid-nineteenth century in Italy. According to the description, the mirrors were used to decorate halls, contributing to the ambiance of royal masquerades as the masked participants would see their reflections through the image of the commedia characters.28 This exhibition featured another item—a large lighter or “steel” (ognivo) made in Russia in the middle of the nineteenth century. The lighter is made of porcelain with two Harlequin figures—a large one with a smaller one sitting in his lap. The faces of the Harlequins are covered with the traditional half-masks and serve a technical function—they mask the burner. The piece is made in a rather eclectic fashion as the rest of the cubic porcelain vessel is designed in an orientalized style—there are two figures with umbrellas standing in a Japanese– style garden.29 The penetration of the Italian commedia dell’arte and its masks into many spheres of Russian life reflects the tendency of borders between the stage and real life to break down in the postPetrine era. This penetration of theater into real life was particularly

27

See the exhibit catalogue 4 Chuvstva: Prazdnik v Peterburge XVIII veka (Moscow: Khudozhnik i Kniga, 2003), item N 27.

28

Ibid., item N 100.

29

Ibid., item N 112.



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striking during festivities and masquerades, when participants were acting according to the rules of scenarios announced in advance as the will of the sovereign. Lotman writes that, at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, people shaped their behavior, speech, and even their destinies according to literary or theatrical models: Meanwhile, in the early nineteenth century the border between art and the everyday behavior of spectators was dismantled. Theater invaded life, actively rearranging peoples’ everyday behavior. Monologue penetrates letter, diary, and everyday speech. That which seemed to be pompous and ridiculous yesterday, because it was only attributed to the theatrical sphere, is becoming the norm of everyday speech and behavior.30

The Russian fascination with masquerades also reflected the theatricality of real life; the border between the fantasy world and reality was illusive. As the Russian masquerades imitated the Western tradition, Italian masks and clothing were just as omnipresent in them as they were in Western European ones. The descriptions of masquerade festivities reveal a close connection with the Italian scenarios, in which the characters were supposed to act according to sketches written for them. The eighteenth-century festivities strictly followed a certain schedule of events: the procession, performance, banquet, spectacle, ball, and, finally, fireworks as a splendid denouement. In this way, these eighteenth-century festivities and masquerades were synthetic events based on the combination of different art forms—dancing, singing, performing, art, and design— that parallel the commedia performances with their interweaving of many different art forms. Consequently, it appears that this Italian art form had a great impact not only on the performing arts and the development of Russian drama and literary criticism but also greatly affected the industry of festivities and masquerades, providing it with masks, costumes, and eccentricity.

30



Lotman, Ob iskusstve, 620.

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Lotman writes that in 1840–1860, human identity was greatly affected by literature, but by the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, real life was seen as a theatrical performance in which everyone was allowed to choose a role and act accordingly to that role.31 The phrase “Finita la commedia!” (The comedy is over!), which was announced at the end of improvisational performances, infiltrated the nineteenthcentury literary narrative. The phrase occasionally appeared in Russian literature and drama to convey a tragicomic mood and to emphasize the theatricality of life and inevitability of role playing. For instance, in Mikhail Lermontov’s novel A Hero of Our Time (1840), Pechorin uses this phrase to announce his rival Grushnitsky’s death in a duel: “Finita la commedia!—I said to the doctor.”32 Being jealous of Pechorin’s success with women and rejected by Princess Mary, Grushnitsky had publicly accused Pechorin of being romantically involved with Princess Mary, stating that he saw Pechorin leaving Princess Mary’s house in the middle of the night. In response, Pechorin challenges Grushnitsky to a duel, but before the duel he offers, “There is still time: retract your slander and I shall forgive you everything. You did not succeed in fooling me and my self-esteem is satisfied. Remember, we were friends once.”33 Grushnitsky categorically refuses, adding that there is no room for both of them in this world, so the duel takes place. Pechorin recounts, “I fired . . . . When the smoke dispersed, Grushnitsky was not on the ledge. Only dust in a light column still revolved on the brink of the precipice. All cried out in one voice. ‘Finita la commedia!’ I said to the doctor. He did not answer and turned away in horror.”34

31



Lotman, Ob iskusstve, 636.

32



Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time, trans. Vladimir Nabokov (Dana Point, CA: Ardis, 1988), 171.

33

Ibid.

34

Ibid.



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Here the Italian phrase that as a rule precedes the happy ending of amorous intrigues in the commedia has tragic connotations and mourns the futility and fragility of human life. Similarly, in Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (1897), Astrov uses this Italian theatrical phrase to admit that his infatuation with Yelena Andreevna is over, since she is leaving the Serebryakov estate with her husband. Her husband, the retired professor Serebryakov, is described by Voinitsky as yet another Russian incarnation of the learned fool Dottore who graduated from a prestigious university and learns and analyzes things his whole life without understanding anything: A person lectures and writes about art for precisely twentyfive years but understands precisely nothing about art. For twenty-five years he’s gone on chewing up and spitting out everyone else’s ideas about realism, naturalism, and every other kind of nonsense. For twenty-five years he’s been lecturing and writing what intelligent people have known about for a long time and what stupid people have no interest in. To put it bluntly, for twenty-five years, he’s been pouring from one empty pot into the next. And at the same time what incredible conceit, what cocksure pretensions!35

Chekhov uses the finita phrase twice, making the last encounter between the two potential lovers—Yelena Andreevna and Astrov— into their final scene, in which they express their suppressed passion and kiss each other, only to lose each other forever. The roles here are strongly reminiscent of those in a commedia scenario: a beautiful woman—innamorata, or Columbine in the modernist interpretation—is married to an old fool, Dottore. Astrov, as the object of fascination for both Sonya and Yelena Andreevna, is acting as Harlequin. Astrov worries that Voinitsky will suddenly appear with a bouquet of flowers, like the idiotic loser Pierrot, who, after seeing Harlequin kissing his beloved Colombine, would pour out tears over his lost love:

35



Anton Chekhov, “Uncle Vanya,” in Anton Chekhov’s Plays, ed. and trans. Eugene Bristow (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), 58.

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Astrov. And so, no matter where you and your husband set foot, you bring destruction everywhere . . . . I am joking, of course, but nonetheless . . . it’s strange. And I am thoroughly convinced that if you had remained here, the devastation would have been enormous. I would’ve wasted away, and as for you . . . you would have paid for it too. Well, you’d better be on your way. Finita la commedia! Yelena Andreevna. [takes a pencil from his desk, and quickly hides it] I take this pencil to remember you by. Astrov. Somehow it’s strange . . . we’ve gotten to know each other and suddenly for some reason . . . we’ll never see each other anymore. That’s the way everything goes in the world . . . While there’s no one here, before Uncle Vanya enters with a bouquet let me . . . kiss you . . . good-bye . . . . Yes? [kisses her on the cheek.] Well, there . . . . Very good too. Yelena Andreevna. I wish you the best of everything. [having looked around.] Oh, come what may, at least for once in my life! [embraces him impulsively and they both at once quickly move away from each other.] I must leave. Astrov. Then go quickly. If the horses are at the door, you’d better set off. Yelena Andreevna. I think they’re coming here [both listen.] Astrov: Finita!36

This phrase finita transforms the denouement of Uncle Vanya into an eternal scenario of unreciprocated love that is both tragic and comic: Sonya is in love with Astrov, who is in love with Yelena Andreevna, whom Voinitsky is in love with as well. The beautiful Yelena is afraid to live her life and is burying herself alive with her boring old husband. The modernity of Uncle Vanya is built on the skillful balance between tragedy and comedy. Unlike in A Hero of Our Time, Voinitsky’s shot does not kill anyone, nothing is resolved, and Yelena leaves with the old professor while Astrov is doomed to a lonely life and Sonya hopes for eternal rest. Most important, Chekhov’s playwriting offers the world a new form of theater sensibility, with vagabonding masks now taking on new names and cultural significance.

36



Ibid., 92.

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Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat: The Italian Ancestry of Akakii Bashmachkin

This chapter discusses Gogol’s The Overcoat, suggesting that the author drew on the Italian commedia dell’arte character of Pulcinella while creating his quintessentially Russian civil servant, Akakii Akakievich Bashmachkin.1 It explores an Italianate subtext and suggests that core elements of the plot and narrative technique and the name and personality of the protagonist have strong parallels with elements of the commedia and its famous Pulcinella character, which Gogol was exposed to in Italy prior to writing The Overcoat. The striking similarities between the Petersburgian Bashmachkin and the Italian Pulcinella illustrate Vladimir Nabokov’s perceptive observation that “Rome and Russia formed a combination of a deeper kind in Gogol’s unreal world.”2 While literary scholars have addressed the place of Italian contexts and subtexts in Gogol’s novella Rome and in his essays on Italian art and architecture, little attention has been paid to how Gogol’s impressions of the Italian performing arts, in general, and of the commedia dell’arte, in particular, may have influenced his

1

An earlier version of this chapter was published as an article: Olga Partan, “Shinel’—Polichinelle—Pulcinella: The Italian Ancestry of Akaky Bashmachkin,” Slavic and East European Journal 49, no. 4 (2005): 549–69. I am grateful to SEEJ for granting permission to use the above-mentioned article in this book.

2

Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 44.





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artistic imagination and the poetics of The Overcoat.3 This tendency reflects the well-established critical tradition of analyzing Gogol’s oeuvre within either the Ukrainian or Russian cultural context. Despite the diversity of critical approaches to The Overcoat—from Boris Eikhenbaum’s formalist study to Daniel Rancour-Laferriere’s psychoanalytical one—existing scholarship views this story as being rooted within the Russian cultural context. An analysis of Italian themes supplements, rather than contradicts, previous scholarship

3



Without mentioning the commedia per se, a number of scholars, including Saprykina, Tynianov, Nabokov, Bakhtin, and Shapiro, have discussed features of Gogol’s poetics that, in one way or another, reflect the impact of the commedia. For instance, E. Iu. Saprykina, “Gogol i tradtsii italianskoi satiry,” in Gogol i mirovaia literatura, ed. Iurii Mann (Moscow: Nauka, 1988) discusses the influence of Italian satirical literature on Gogol’s Italian-period oeuvre but does not explore the possible impacts of contemporaneous Italian theatrical traditions. In Iurii Tynianov, Dostoevsky i Gogol (k teorii parodii) (Petrograd: Izdaniie OPOJAZ, 1921), 10–15, Tynianov noted Gogol’s use of masks as the main artistic device to depict his characters. In his analysis of The Overcoat, Nabokov paid special attention to Akakii’s mask-like face: “We did not expect that amid the whirling masks, one mask would turn out to be a real face, or at least the place where that face ought to be.” Vladimir Nabokov, Nikolay Gogol (New York: New Directions, 1944), 141. Bakhtin saw Gogol’s poetics as the most significant phenomenon of the modern period and suggested that the root of Gogol’s laughter lies in the medieval carnival culture. It appears that Bakhtin is the only other scholar to have previously established a connection between Gogol’s fiction and the mask of Pulcinella, but he noted this link with The Nose, not The Overcoat, writing that the theme of a nose living separated from its owner’s face was taken by Gogol from the Russian Pulcinella-Petrushka. See Bakhtin’s “Rable i Gogol’,” in Bakhtin, Tvorchestvo Fransua Rable, 529. Gavriel Shapiro sees the roots of Gogol’s poetics as lying outside the mainstream of nineteenthcentury realism and investigates Gogol’s indebtedness to baroque culture, which he argues Gogol absorbed first in Ukraine, then in Russia and Italy, but he does not discuss possible impacts of the commedia. See Gavriel Shapiro, Nikolai Gogol and the Baroque Cultural Heritage (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993). Graffy provides a summary of information about critical receptions, readings, and interpretations of The Overcoat in Julian Graffy, Gogol’s “The Overcoat” (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2000).

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and supports the view that The Overcoat is a “kaleidoscope” that is open to a “simultaneity of possible meanings.”4 Many previous studies have analyzed Gogol’s brilliant sense of comedy, his extensive use of grotesque imagery, his unforgettable depiction of mask-like human faces, the tragicomic nature of his art, and his verbal virtuosity, which relied heavily on local dialects and puns. Yet little mention has been made of possible affinities between Gogol’s oeuvre and the Italian commedia, which exhibits similar artistic principles. Furthermore, Gogol’s playwriting experience and talents in the performing arts made him receptive to the commedia’s artistic devices and acting techniques that he transposed into the literary text. Gogol may have first been exposed to the commedia dell’arte masks and its acting techniques in his childhood. His father was an amateur Ukrainian comic playwright, theater director, and performer. Italian commedia dell’arte performers had reached Poland two centuries earlier than Russia, inspiring numerous imitators to transpose commedia acting techniques into the Polish theatrical tradition. The constant migration of the comedians suggests that the cultural landscape in the Poltava Governorate where Gogol grew up, which is in present-day Ukraine, was affected by the commedia much earlier than elsewhere in the Russian Empire, and these influences established deep roots in Ukrainian theater life and marketplace festivities.5 The commedia also flourished in religious schools in Poland, where Gogol’s ancestors the Yanovskys (who were of Polish origin) had been educated.6

4

Graffy, Gogol’s “The Overcoat,” 118; V. Brombert, “Meanings and Indeterminacy in Gogol’s The Overcoat,” in Literary Generations: A Festschrift in Honor of Edward D. Sullivan by His Friends, Colleagues, and Former Students, ed. A. Toumanyan (Lexington, KY: French Forum, 1992), 53; Donald Fanger, The Creation of Nikolai Gogol (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 162.

5

Thomas Heck, “The Commedia dell’Arte in Poland,” in Heck, Commedia dell’Arte, 166–69.

6

Irène Kadulska, “L’influence de la ‘commedia dell’arte’ sur le théâtre des collèges de la Compagnie de Jésus en Pologne,” in Les innovations théâtrales





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It is also worth noting the possible influence of foreign puppets with commedia dell’arte characters on young Gogol’s imagination, since Italian and other European puppeteers toured Ukrainian and Russian towns on a regular basis, arriving from neighboring Poland. The European puppeteers came to participate in summer festivities and regularly sold their puppets and equipment to local puppeteers, often leaving one or two representatives to study the market and need for such entertainment.7 Therefore, Ukrainian and Russian marionette theaters used traditional European puppets mixed with locally made puppets, and puppet theaters represented one of the leading forms of entertainment for various social strata in both Ukraine and Russia.8 Gogol was fascinated with Italian history and culture from his youth, and his early poetic lines dating from 1829, full of clumsy exaltation, were dedicated to Italy: Италия — роскошная страна! По ней душа и стонет и тоскует. Она вся рай, вся радости полна, И в ней любовь роскошная веснует.9 Oh, Italy luxurious land, For which my moaning spirit sighs, All full of joy, all paradise, Where Love, luxuriant Love vernates.10

In 1836, Gogol finally reached the “luxurious land” of his dreams and proclaimed Italy the real homeland of his soul. In a letter written in Rome in October of 1837, Gogol asserts,

de musicales Italiennes en Europe aux XVIII et XIX siècles, ed. Irène Mamczarz (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1991), 73–89. 7

Liudmila Starikova, ed., “Inostrannye kukol’niki v Rossii v pervoi polovine XVIII veka,” in Pamiatniki kul’tury: Novye otkrytiia (Moscow: Nauka, 1996), 139.

8

Ibid., 135.

9

Nikolai Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 14 vols. (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk, 1952), 9:9.



10



Translation by Nabokov, from Nabokov, Nikolay Gogol, 9.

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If you only knew, with what joy, I would abandon Switzerland and would fly to my darling, to my beautiful Italy—nobody in the world will take it away from me. I was born here. Russia, Petersburg, snow, department, faculty, theater—it was all just a dream. I woke up again in my homeland.11

In his April 1838 letter to Balabina, Gogol wrote that he saw in Rome, “not only my own native land, but the native land of my soul, where my soul lived even before me, before I was born into the world.”12 In September 1839, Gogol wrote a letter to Pletnev from Moscow, passionately expressing his adoration for Rome and his desire to go back as soon as possible: “Abandon everything! And let’s go to Rome! Oh, if you would only know what a haven there is for one whose heart experienced losses. How close it is there to the sky! God, god, god! Oh my Rome! Beautiful, marvelous Rome!”13 Gogol spent more than a decade of his creative career in Italy between 1836 and 1848, and he wrote the final version of The Overcoat while living in Rome in the spring of 1841.14 It is generally believed that Gogol began writing the story in Marienbad in 1839, with the tentative title “The Tale of a Clerk Who Stole Overcoats.” He continued work on the story in 1839 in Vienna and Saint Petersburg, and then finished it in Italy. According to Annenkov, Gogol based the plot of The Overcoat on an anecdote that he heard at a soirée in 1834 about a poor official who, being a passionate hunter, dreamt for a long time about an expensive hunting shotgun, finally purchased it, but then accidentally dropped it in the reeds during his first hunting trip to the Gulf of Finland.15 Questioning the reliability of Annenkov’s information, Karlinsky argues that the short story “The Demon” (1839), by Nikolai Pavlov, a prose writer

11



Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (1952), 11:111.

12



Ibid., 141.

13



Ibid., 255.

14



Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (1938), 3:683; Graffy, Gogol’s “The Overcoat,” 3.

15



V. V. Veresaev, Gogol’ v zhizni: Sistematicheskii svod podlinnykh svidetel’stv sovermennikov (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1990),143.

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admired by Gogol, was the literary source for The Overcoat.16 Thus, Gogol may have begun thinking about The Overcoat as early as 1834 and started dictating a first draft of the story to Pogodin in July– August of 1839.17 During the period when the plot of The Overcoat was already on his mind, Gogol (by then fluent in Italian) was regularly exposed to the high and low spheres of the Italian performing arts through his attending operas, street performances, and carnival festivities. While in Italy, Gogol expressed deep interest in Goldoni’s playwriting and the skillful denouements of his comedies, which relied heavily on the commedia dell’arte tradition.18 Most likely, Gogol was well familiar with Goldoni’s plays prior to his trip to Italy, since Goldoni’s operatic libretto and comedies had played an important role in the Westernization of the Russian stage beginning in the eighteenth century.19 As a rule, early nineteenth-century Russian productions of Goldoni’s plays used Russified versions of his plots.20 The masked characters of the commedia were given distinctly Russian names: Brighella and Arlecchino would become Potap and Falalej, Truffaldino would be transformed into Provor (from provornyi—the agile one), and Pantalone would become the old man Panteleimon.21 The facial masks were eliminated and replaced

16

Discussing the connection between Nikolai Pavlov’s story and The Overcoat, Karlinsky writes, “What unites the two stories is not only the several close textual parallels . . . but also the basic love triangle between the poor and humble elderly government clerk, the haughty and pompous high official who is the clerk’s superior, and the clerk’s pretty young wife. Gogol’s device of replacing the human wife with a feminine-gender object, while typical of him in general, became a highly original stroke when it was introduced into the situation borrowed from Pavlov’s story.” See Simon Karlinsky, The Sexual Labyrinth of Nikolai Gogol (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 138–39.

17

Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 3:685.

18

Veresaev, Gogol’ v zhizni, 301.

19

Svetlana Bushueva, Goldoni v Rossii (St. Petersburg: Rossiiskii Institut Istorii Iskusstv, 1993), 5.

20

Ibid., 10–11.

21

Ibid., 12–15.





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by hats, and instead of Italian serenades the characters would sing popular Russian love songs and romances; instead of expressing his love for spaghetti, the Russian Truffaldino/Provor would discuss his passion for pickled mushrooms, and so forth.22 Due to the lack of social satire and strong moral messages, Goldoni’s plays were very different from the early Russian comedies, which always had strong satirical and didactic elements. Interestingly, in contrast to Goldoni’s comedies, in the Russified versions the roles of the servants would be of secondary importance while the amorous adventures of the noble masters were at the center of the plot development and stage action. The Russian actors would ask the translators to adjust the foreign plays for Russian life and Russian audiences’ expectations and tastes (or lack thereof).23 Mikhail Pogodin reminisces that Gogol’s friends (and perhaps Gogol himself) viewed his comic talent as akin to that of Goldoni. Celebrating Gogol’s birthday in Italy in 1838 at the Princess Z. V. Volkonsky’s villa, his friends gave him a drawing of a theatrical mask and a poem that proclaimed him to be a Russian Goldoni: Что ж дремлишь ты? Смотри, перед тобой Лежит и ждет сценическая маска. Ее покинул славный твой собрат, Еще теперь игривым, вольным смехом Волнующий Италию: возьми Ее, вглядись в шутливую улыбку И в честный вид: ее носил Гольдони, Она идет к тебе. Why are you dozing off? Look, in front of you There is a theater mask lying there, waiting for you. It was abandoned by your famous brother-in-arms, Who still excites Italy With his playful, free laughter: take it, Look at its humorous smile

22



Ibid., 14.

23



Ibid., 15.

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And its honest appearance: Goldoni used to wear it. It becomes you.24

Living in Italy in the 1830s, Gogol must have observed the phenomenal popularity of the commedia dell’arte character of Pulcinella in both Naples and Rome. The pervasiveness of Pulcinella in Italian popular culture and the arts during that time is vividly illustrated by contemporaneous iconography, periodicals, and the reminiscences of European travelers, and by Anton Bragaglia’s richly documented study of Pulcinella’s genealogy. During the period when Gogol was in Italy, Pulcinella was represented both in miniature as a popular puppet and in full size by actors and, most important, his ancient mask was adapted to fit the changing historical and social reality.25 Unquestionably, Gogol had multiple encounters with Pulcinella while in Italy: aristocrats and simple people dressed up in Pulcinella costumes during carnival festivities, forming crowded processions of Pulcinellas, and Roman puppet theaters gave daily performances with Pulcinella puppets in the leading role.26 In an 1834 sonnet, one of Gogol’s favorite Italian satirical poets, Giuseppe Belli, mockingly defined the men of Italy as an army of aggressive Pulcinellas.27

24

Veresaev, Gogol’ v zhizni, 225.

25

Numerous studies address the genealogy of Pulcinella and the Italian and cross-cultural transformations of this mask. Among them are Maurice Sand, The History of the Harlequinade (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1915); Bragaglia, Pulcinella; Oreglia, The Commedia dell’Arte; and Benedetto Croce, Pulcinella e il personaggio del napoletano in commedia: Ricerche ed osservazioni (Rome: Loescher, 1899).

26

Bragaglia’s Pulcinella provides more detailed information on Pulcinella in nineteenth-century Rome and Naples.

27

Gogol expressed his admiration of Giuseppe Belli’s poetic craft in his letter to Maria Balabina (Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 11:142–43). In Belli’s 1834 sonnet “L’omo e la donna” (Man and woman), men are defined as “purcinelli” (colloquial for Pulcinella)—aggressive bullies who initiate wars and rule the world. See Giuseppe Giochino Belli, People of Rome in 100 Sonnets, trans. Allen Andrews (Rome: Bardi Editore, 1984), 71.





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Figure 8. Nineteenth-century puppet theater in Naples showing the popular puppet Pulcinella. Courtesy of Giacomo Oreglia.

Gogol mentioned Pulcinella in a letter to Maria Balabina, written in April of 1837, in which he expressed his admiration for the Italian sense of comedy: This reminds me of the impromptus about when the pope banned the carnival last year. You know that the current pope is called Pulcinella due to his large nose, so here is the impromptu: “Oh, how wonderful it is! / Pulcinella is banning the carnival!28

28



“Oh, questa si ch’e bella! / Proibisce il carnevale Pulcinella!” Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 11:142–43.

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Indeed, as Gogol’s own nose resembled that of Pulcinella, that Italian mask may have had a special place in his artistic imagination. In the same letter, Gogol writes that he wants to learn about the Italian national character in depth, observing it from various perspectives, proclaiming that Italians are gifted with an aesthetic sense that no other Europeans possess. In June and July of 1838, Gogol visited Naples and most likely attended the famous Neapolitan pulcinellate—performances in the commedia dell’arte style with Pulcinella in a leading role. While commedia dell’arte was no longer widespread in Italy in its purely improvisational form at that time, it continued to flourish in Naples.29 Teatro San Carlino was presenting the pulcinellate twice a day, attracting foreign visitors as well as local inhabitants from various social strata and sharing its fame with the San Carlo opera house. Gogol expressed his anticipation of attending operatic performances at the San Carlo in a letter to V. N. Repnina: “How large is the San Carlo theater, that you undoubtedly have visited more than once?”30 The San Carlino theater (literally Little San Carlo) was run at that time by a former San Carlo dancer, Salvatore Petito, who was a brilliant Pulcinella himself, and the theater was closely associated with the opera house, attracting not only the same spectators but also the same writers, who alternated between writing classical librettos for San Carlo and schematic scenarios for pulcinellate at San Carlino. This was characteristic of the strong ties between elite and popular entertainment in nineteenth-century Neapolitan culture, in which it was fashionable for the upper classes to attend popular performances together with the middle and lower classes.31 Popular pulcinellate performances were given twice a day, morning and

29

Bragaglia, Pulcinella, 234–63; Laura Richards, “Un Pulcinella Antico e Moderno: Antonio Petito and the Traditions of the Commedia dell’arte in Nineteenth-Century Naples,” in The Commedia dell’arte from the Renaissance to Dario Fo, ed. Christopher Cairns (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989), 279.

30

Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 11:155, 398.

31

Richards, “Un Pulcinella Antico e Modern,” 281.





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evening, and focused on Pulcinella’s adventures “alive or dead,” which were “full of bizarre happenings.”32 In her discussion of the pulcinellate in nineteenth-century Naples, Richards writes, In short, the characteristics of the Neapolitan commedia, which were carried into the nineteenth century, included the standard practice of improvising “business” and dialogue and an ability to adapt and transform many “mask” types, making of them not so much generalized, abstract figures divorced from social specifics but, rather, figures manifestly reflective of an ever changing Neapolitan society. It was perhaps this very rootedness in immediate Neapolitan realities which helps to account for their long lasting appeal.33

Figure 9. Nineteenth-century Naples street scene. Nineteenth-century watercolor. Courtesy of Giacomo Oreglia.

32



Sand, The History of the Harlequinade, 115.

33



Richards, “Un Pulcinella Antico e Modern,” 284.

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In the spring of 1841, Gogol made three major changes in The Overcoat while he was working on the final version in Rome: he altered the plot by adding the fantastic epilogue that portrays Akakii’s vengeful ghost; he gave the story its final title, Shinel’; and he changed the protagonist’s name to Bashmachkin.34 All of these changes evoke links with Pulcinella. These final modifications, as well as many other elements in the narrative of The Overcoat, contain textual allusions to the nineteenth-century metamorphosis of Pulcinella from the traditionally disfigured and unpredictable comic stock character to the modernized and humanized symbol of a Neapolitan everyman who, like Bashmachkin, could rebel against uncaring authorities, seek personal justice, and sometimes unexpectedly appear on stage as a talking ghost. Perhaps the most striking similarity between Pulcinella and the Russian clerk lies in the duality of Akakii’s personality. The addition of the fantastic epilogue that Gogol wrote while in Rome contributes to this depiction of his nature, as The Overcoat has two contrasting parts, first depicting Akakii’s uneventful life as a timid, defenseless copying clerk and then his sudden transformation into an aggressive and vengeful ghost who, as a thief and a bully, terrifies a neighborhood. These two contrasting personality types mirror the character of Pulcinella, who was also famous for his sudden transformations. According to one interpretation, Pulcinella’s mixture of bravery and cowardice came about because he was born from two fathers—Maccus and Bucco— whose roots can be traced back to Roman antiquity. As Pierre Duchartre put it, Pulcinella “was always drawn toward opposite poles by his dual heredity. Maccus was quick, witty, impertinent, ironical, and a bit cruel; Bucco, self-sufficient, fawning, silly, timid.”35 There are indications that dating back to the eighteenth century, Neapolitan comedies had two Pulcinellas with contrasting natures that were based on the different personality types of the Neapolitan characters. Luigi Riccoboni, a theater historian whose

34

Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 3:675–88; Graffy, Gogol’s “The Overcoat,” 3.

35

Duchartre, The Italian Comedy, 208.



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influential eighteenth-century history of the Italian theater may have been known to Gogol, also emphasized Pulcinella’s split personality: “The Neapolitan comedies, instead of a Scapin and a Harlequin, have two Polichinelles, one cunning and the other stupid.”36 Giacomo Oreglia described Pulcinella’s contradictory nature as being in turn “dull-witted or intelligent, a feigned idiot or a feigned intellectual, open-minded and yet superstitious, cowardly and reckless, a great beater of others and much beaten himself.”37 Akakii certainly has many of Pulcinella’s traits, including a contradictory nature and split personality. His transformation from a dull clerk into an aggressive ghost resembles Pulcinella’s multifaceted character, as, shortly before his death, he unexpectedly reveals his temper, cursing the authorities. Akakii tries to meet with the police commissioner to report the robbery but is rebuffed by a clerk: Так что наконец Акакий Акакиевич раз в жизни захотел показать характер и сказал наотрез, что ему нужно лично видеть самого частного, что они не смеют его не допустить, что он пришел из департамента за казенным делом, а что вот как он на них пожалуется, так вот тогда они увидят.38 At last Akakii Akakievich, for the first time in his life, tried to show the strength of his character and said curtly that he must see the commissioner himself, that they dare not refuse to admit him, that he had come from the department on government business, and that if he made complaint of them they would see.39

36



Sand, The History of the Harlequinade, 114. Riccoboni used the French (plural) name variation, “Pulchinelles.”

37



Oreglia, The Commedia dell’Arte, 93.

38



Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 3:162–63.

39



Nikolai Gogol, “The Overcoat,” in The Complete Tales of Nikolai Gogol, vol. 2, ed. Leonard Kent, trans. Constance Garnett (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 324.

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After realizing that he would not get any support or help from the police commissioner, Akakii decides to stay home from work in protest and curses the governmental official: наконец, даже сквернохульничал, произнося самые страшные слова, так что старушка хозяйка даже крестилась, отрoду не слыхав от него ничего подобного, тем более что слова эти следовали непосредственно за словом «ваше превосходительство».40 Then finally he became abusive, uttering the most awful language, so that his old landlady positively crossed herself, having never heard anything of the kind from him before, and the more horrified because these dreadful words followed immediately upon the phrase “Your Excellency.”41

The fantastic epilogue of The Overcoat depicts Akakii’s bravery and aggressiveness in the afterlife, presenting a dramatically transformed protagonist who rebels against social injustice when all his attempts to find the stolen overcoat fail: Но кто бы мог вообразить, что здесь еще не все об Акакие Aкакиевиче, что суждено ему на несколько дней прожить шумно после своей смерти, как бы в награду за непримеченную никем жизнь. Но так случилось, и бедная история наша неожиданно принимает фантастическое окончание. По Петербургу пронеслись вдруг слухи, что у Калинкина моста и далеко подальше стал показываться по ночам мертвец в виде чиновника, ищущего какой-то утащенной шинели, и под видом стащенной шинели сдирающий со всех плеч, не разбирая чина и звания, всякие шинели.42 But who could have imagined that this was not all there was to tell about Akakii Akakievich, that he was destined for a few days to make his presence felt in the world after his death,

40

Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 3:168.

41

Gogol, The Complete Tales, 2:328–29.

42

Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 3:169.



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as though to make up for his life having been unnoticed by anyone? But so it happened, and our little story unexpectedly finishes with a fantastic ending. Rumors were suddenly floating about Petersburg that in the neighborhood of the Kalinkin Bridge and for a little distance beyond, a corpse had begun appearing at night, in the form of a clerk looking for a stolen overcoat, and stripping from the shoulders of all passers-by, regardless of grade and calling, overcoats of all descriptions.43

This aggressive Akakii who seeks revenge against the authorities echoes Pulcinella the bully who sought personal and social justice after losing his trust in government officials. In 1852, the French Romantic writer George Sand wrote that Neapolitan farces had two distinctly different contemporaneous Pulcinella (Polichinelle) characters, one of whom was a vengeful bully: Polichinelle personifies the accomplished revolt; he is hideous but he is terrible, severe and vengeful; neither god nor devil can make him tremble when he wields his great cudgel. By means of this weapon, which he freely lays about the shoulders of his master and the heads of public officers, he exercises a sort of summary and individual justice which avenges the weak side and the iniquities of official justice.44

Pulcinella’s split personality confused Italian theatergoers, who were not able to grasp which was the real Pulcinella, just as readers of The Overcoat experience similar confusion, as the personality of Akakii’s ghost differs so dramatically from that of the timid Akakii before his death. Etymological connections and puns play an important role in Gogol’s narrative, as Gogol himself suggested in one of the earlier drafts of The Overcoat:

43



Gogol, The Complete Tales, 2:329–30.

44



Sand, The History of the Harlequinade, 112.

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В департаменте податей и сборов или, как любят иногда называть его чиновники любящие поострить, подлостей и вздоров . . . да не подумают впрочем читатели, чтобы это название основано было в самом деле на какой-нибудь истине, ничуть, здесь всё дело только в этимологическом подобии слов. Вследствие этого департамент горных и соляных дел называется депар. горьких и солёных дел и тому подобное.45 In the department of tax collections and assessments or, as clerks who like to crack jokes sometimes call it, the department of baseness and nonsense . . . however, readers should not think that this title is based on some sort of truth: not at all—here the whole matter lies only in the etymological resemblance of the words. As a result, the department of mining and mineral affairs is called the department of bitter and salty affairs, and so on.

As Boris Eikhenbaum argued, punning games are one of the dominant literary devices in The Overcoat, and “phonic gestures” and “etymological puns are particular favorites of Gogol’s and to bring them off, he often devises special surnames.”46 While Eikhenbaum focused exclusively on Russian verbal games and did not consider possible cross-cultural Russian-Italian puns, the text of The Overcoat is rich with etymological and punning connections with the commedia. These ties include the striking linguistic similarity between the Russian title of the short story, Shinel’, and the name of the French incarnation of Pulcinella, Polichinelle. A shinel’ is a “formal coat with a fold on the back and a half-belt sewn or buttoned to the back of the coat,” or “a man’s coat with a loose-fitting free cut of garment, with a fur collar and a cape.”47 In the dictionary edited by

45

Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 3:450–51.

46

Boris Eichenbaum, “How Gogol’s Overcoat Is Made,” in Gogol from the Twentieth Century, ed. Robert A. Maguire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 276.

47

Sergey I. Ozhegov, Tolkovyi slovar’ russkogo iazyka (Moscow: Rossiiskaia Akademiia Nauk, 1998), 896.





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D. N. Ushakov, nikolaevskaia shinel’ (Nicholas’s overcoat) is defined as an article of clothing having a broad collar that hangs down to the waist in the form of a cape.48 This type of wide shirt in the form of a cape was the traditional costume of the Italian Pulcinella. Indeed, in his study of the etymology of the word shinel’, P. Chernykh hypothesizes that it has a direct connection with Polichinelle’s costume.49 He writes, Therefore, shinel’ could have derived directly from polichinelle, as the name of a particular cut of a collar or a short coat, that was one of the attributes of the costume of Polichinelle—the comic Neapolitan commedia dell’arte character . . . . The name of another popular character of the Italian commedia dell’arte (known since the end of Peter the Great’s era)—the Venetian Pantalone—had a similar history on Russian soil. I have in mind the word pantalony. It appears that in the eighteenth century this word could be used in the singular, as the name of a particular cut of (masquerade?) clothing.50 Figure 10. Illustration of a nikolaevskaia shinel’. Illustration from Daniel Rancour-Laferriere, Out from under Gogol’s Overcoat: A Psychoanalytic Study (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1982), 6. Courtesy of Ardis Publishers. 48



D. N. Ushakov, ed. Tolkovyi slovar’ russkogo iazyka (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo Inostrannykh Slovarei, 1940), 4:1342.

49



P. Ia. Chernykh, “O slove shinel’,” in Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta, no. 4 (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo Universiteta, 1959), 158. In the 1973 edition of Max Vasmer’s Etimologicheskii slovar’ russkogo iazyka, Chernykh’s 1959 study is cited as an alternative source for etymological links containing more detailed information on the etymology of shinel’. In French, a chenille is a man’s morning outfit.

50



Chernykh, “O slove shinel’,” 156–62.

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Chernykh also provides several examples of Russian words for certain pieces of clothing that originated from the first or last names of real people or from theatrical characters: “We know many examples of when the word defining a piece of clothing derives from a person’s first or last name. This includes examples from recent times such as french (named after General French—the commanderin-chief of the English troops at the beginning of World War I), or the slightly more distant example of galife (that comes from the name of the French cavalry general Gallifet).”51 Gogol’s passion for clothing and fashion, and his scrupulous collecting of etymologically similar words and comically absurd expressions, are well documented in his notebooks and the reminiscences of his friends. Annenkov’s reminiscences portray Gogol as a skillful tailor who altered his own wardrobe and also describe Gogol’s scrutiny of the foreign roots and etymology of Russian words in his dictation of Dead Souls.52 Bakhtin observed that Gogolian language returns forgotten or forbidden meanings to words that start to communicate with each other, leaving their shells: The ties of meaning, which exist exclusively within the context of particular utterances, within the limits of certain linguistic spheres that are inseparable from the situations that produced them, can be reborn under these conditions and acquire a new lease on life.53

Thus, Gogol must have been aware of the visual and linguistic similarities between shinel’ and Pulcinella’s garment. In Russia the French name Polichinelle was often used to refer to the mask of Pulcinella during the period when Gogol was writing The Overcoat. While Gogol was living in Saint Petersburg in the mid-1830s, the widely read newspaper Severnaia pchela

51

Ibid., 159–60. French—a type of military coat. Galife—trousers that are baggy along the hips and thighs and tight along the calves; used by the cavalry and other armies.

52

Veresaev, Gogol’ v zhizni, 292.

53

Bakhtin, “Rable i Gogol’,” 532–33.





148

Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat Figure 11: Pulcinella/Polichinelle. Detail from a picture in the Museum of the Comédie-Française, as reproduced from Pierre Louis Duchartre, The Italian Comedy (New York: Dover Publications, 1966), 209. Courtesy of Dover Publication.

regularly published detailed reviews of popular balagan–style performances called harlequinades that were given on Admiralty Square by foreign entrepreneurs who heavily relied on commedia dell’arte characters and their pantomimes. For example, in April of 1836, an anonymous reviewer noted Polichinelle as a dancing buffoon who entertained the public in a balagan during Holy Week: Here is a difficult dance of Polichinelle on stilts . . . not a romantic dance, there is the wig, the stilts—all features of classicism. And finally here is the pantomime, the one loved by most of the spectators, which is amusing, varied, and, most important, not too long.54

Gogol wrote about these Admiralty Square festivities in his article “Peterburgskie zapiski 1836 goda” (Petersburg notes of 1836), which depicted a socially mixed crowd waiting for balagan performances that competed in popularity with the imperial theaters.55 Polichinelle’s unreliability and talkativeness led to the French expression “le secret de Polichinelle,” which became the Russian term sekret Polishinelia (Polichinelle’s secret), referring to

54



“Zrelishcha,” Severnaia pchela 73 (April 2, 1836), 1–2. It is interesting to note that in its section “Zrelishcha,” dedicated to the Saint Petersburg cultural scene, the newspaper alternated its ecstatic reviews of harlequinades on Admiralty Square with reserved or negative reviews of Gogol’s fiction and plays, criticizing him for the farcical nature of his plays, his poor literary taste, and his shaky knowledge of the Russian language.

55



Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 8:187–90.

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a secret known to everybody.56 Polichinelle is also mentioned in Dostoevsky’s 1866 novel Crime and Punishment as a metaphor for a manipulative and unreliable person, when Rodion Raskolnikov verbally attacks his investigator, Porfiry Petrovich, calling him a “полишинель проклятый” (damned Polichinelle).57 As illustrated by these examples, Polichinelle’s name and character were quite familiar to nineteenth-century Russian writers, readers, and spectators. The very name of the protagonist in The Overcoat also suggests ties with the commedia mask of Pulcinella/Polichinelle. The first name and patronymic of the protagonist—Akakii Akakievich—may echo Pulcinella’s presumed birthplace of Acerra. Drawing readers’ attention to this name, the narrator comments that it sounds odd and contrived: Может быть, читателю оно покажется несколько странным и выисканным, но можно уверить, что его никак не искали, а что само собой случились такие обстоятельства, что никак нельзя было дать другого имени.58 Perhaps it may strike the reader as a rather strange and contrived name, but I can assure him, that it was not contrived at all, that the circumstances were such that it was quite out of the question to give him any other name.59

Previous studies offer a variety of interpretations of the name Akakii Akakievich, ranging from the suggestion that Gogol intentionally

56



Ozhegov, Tolkovyi slovar’ russkogo iazyka, 554.

57



The scene reads, “Лжёшь ты всё! — завопил Рaскольников, уже не удерживаясь, — лжёшь, полишинель проклятый! — и бросился на ретировавшегося к дверям, но нисколько не струсившего Порфирия.” See Fedor Dostoevskii, Prestuplenie i nakazanie. Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: Pravda, 1982), 5:339. Polichinelle here is often translated into English as “clown”: “You lie, you damned clown!” Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, trans. Jessis Coulson, ed. George Gibian, 3rd ed. (New York: Norton, 1989), 295.

58

Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 3:142.

59

Gogol, The Complete Tales, 2:305.



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chose this name for its comic sound in Russian and its associations with okakat’ or obkakat’ (“to beshit” or “cover with excrement”) to the more elegant interpretation that the name is based on hagiographic writing—the legend of Saint Acacius (Greek for Akakii).60 Another possible interpretation is that Gogol may have looked to Pulcinella’s reputed birthplace of Acerra, such that Akakii Akakievich could be Akakii from Acerra—a Russian clerk with Italian ancestry.61 While the word Acerra is pronounced “Acherra” in standard Italian, in Latin and in some Italian dialects it is pronounced “Akera.”62 This type of verbal riddle would have been characteristic for Gogol, who knew Latin from his school years and had achieved fluency in Italian by the time he wrote The Overcoat. Living in Italy in the 1830s and passionately immersing himself in its popular culture, Gogol must have known that Acerra, near Naples, was Pulcinella’s presumed birthplace, and he would have been aware of how this character suddenly transformed into a vengeful bully. He could have simply overheard the popular poem, written in a mixture of Neapolitan and Roman dialects, in which Pulcinella reminds his audience of Acerra, his native land, brags about his popularity, and warns that he can defend himself, punishing those who offend him:

60



The former interpretation is from Karlinsky, The Sexual Labyrinth, 137. The latter is from Graffy, Gogol’s “The Overcoat,” 69, who cites Driessen writing that Saint Acacius “lived for nine years in the service of a certain evil starets and suffered all insults without complaint and then, after his death, appeared to the elder and induced him to repent.”

61



It is often suggested that the name Pulcinella came from the first performer of the mask, a witty peasant from Acerra named Puccio d’Aniello. Duchartre, in The Italian Comedy, cites the legend that a traveling sixteenthcentury commedia dell’arte troupe was entertaining peasants in the vicinity of Acerra, near Naples, and met d’Aniello, a peasant with a huge nose and clever tongue who was invited to join the troupe (217). Puccio d’Aniello immediately achieved great success as an actor, wearing onstage the white linen robe that was the traditional outfit for Acerra’s peasants, and his name became shortened to Pulcinella.

62



I am grateful to Robert Mathiesen and Pamela Bleisch for providing consultations on the Latin pronunciation of Acerra.

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Io songo de l’Acerra ba quanno po me sferra ma quanno po m’affera mo ssaie che serra-serra Cchiu pevo de na Guerra Pote assommare nterra?

I am from Acerra Don’t make me angry Don’t harm me Keep in mind that quicker than in a war I can multiply [combine my forces] on earth.63

Akakii’s last name of Bashmachkin, with its clear reference to shoes (bashmak), also suggests possible links with Pulcinella: the French word “Polichinelle” was also the name of a type of comic dance of French shoemakers—“le dance comique de sabotier.”64 The Overcoat’s narrator admits his total ignorance of the real source of the last name: Фамилия чиновника была Башмачкин. Уже по самому имени видно, что она когда-то произошла от башмака, но когда, в какое время и каким образом произошла она от башмака, ничего этого неизвестно.65 This clerk’s surname was Bashmachkin. From the very name it is clear that it must have been derived from a shoe (bashmak); but when and under what circumstances it was derived from a shoe, it is impossible to say.66

Akakii’s clothing is also suggestive: he is presented as always wearing a shapeless old overcoat, which his colleagues ridicule as being a kapot (a loose robe), and pantaloons—these were quintessential parts of his wardrobe both before and after his brief role as the owner of the new overcoat. This imagery mirrors Pulcinella’s traditional wardrobe, which also consisted of a loose blouse of white linen and flowing pantaloons.67 Historically, Pulcinella’s loose robe was not significantly modified over time, 63

Bragaglia, Pulcinella, 453.

64

Chernykh, “O slove shinel’,” 161.

65

Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 3:142.

66

Gogol, The Complete Tales, 2:305.

67

Duchartre, The Italian Comedy, 220.



152

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but various details of contemporary costumes were sometimes worn on top of the blouse to indicate Pulcinella’s social status. For instance, late nineteenth-century photographs of Antonio Petito in Pulcinella’s role reflect this tendency, as he wears a military uniform, a frock, or a long nineteenth-century coat over Pulcinella’s blouse. The improvisational nature of the narrator’s talkativeness in The Overcoat, defined by Boris Eikhenbaum as skaz, resembles the unique commedia dell’arte acting technique of creating a new artistic world during each performance—within the brittle frame of a commedia scenario—without knowing where the artistic fantasy would lead. Readers of The Overcoat following the narrator’s chatter share the sensations felt by audiences at commedia dell’arte performances as they followed the onstage improvisations of the actors, who created the play as they went, then and there. The narrator creates the illusion that he is having difficulty recollecting events and explaining the reasons why those events are occurring, suggesting that he is telling his story while not living in Saint Petersburg: Где именно жил пригласивший чиновник, к сожалению, не можем сказать: память начинает нам сильно изменять, и все, что ни есть в Петербурге, все улицы и дома слились и смешались так в голове, что весьма трудно достать оттуда что-нибудь в порядочном виде.68 Where precisely the clerk who had invited him lived we regret to say we cannot tell; our memory is beginning to fail sadly, and everything there in Petersburg, all the streets and houses, are so blurred and muddled in our head that it is a very difficult business to put anything in orderly fashion.69

Such phrases suggest that, despite the story’s Russian context and imagery of a snowy Saint Petersburg with wind blowing from the Gulf of Finland, there may be foreign motifs hidden between the lines, contributing to the poetics and overall structure of the story

68

Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 3:158.

69

Gogol, The Complete Tales, 2:320.



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and helping to create the hybrid of a pitiful Russian clerk and an Italian comic character. An Italian context can shed light on the mysterious remark when the narrator describes Petrovich taking Akakii’s new overcoat out from his handkerchief: Он вынул шинель из носового платка, в котором ее принес; платок был только от прачки, он уже потом свернул его и положил в карман для употребления.70 He took the coat out of the [huge] handkerchief in which he had brought it (the handkerchief had just come home from the wash); he then folded it up and put it in his pocket for future use.71

How large, then, is Bashmachkin if his overcoat can fit in Petrovich’s handkerchief? While the Russian original does not note the size of the handkerchief, as shown above, this passage has sometimes been mistakenly translated into English with the addition of the notation “huge” or “gigantic” to describe the handkerchief, obscuring the original Russian, which seems to be irrational yet could be logical within an Italianate context. Italian puppeteers historically used pocket-sized commedia dell’arte marionettes in street performances that sometimes harshly criticized political or church leaders, and the puppeteers could quickly make these miniature Pulcinellas disappear into their pockets if the police or other officials appeared on the scene.72 Gogol’s surroundings, with a multiplicity of Pulcinellas that could be performed by an actor on one corner and by a finger puppet easily hidden in a pocket on another corner, seem to be reflected in the narrator’s confusion between a humansized Pulcinella and a Pulcinella puppet.

70

Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 3:156.

71

Gogol, The Complete Tales, 2:318.

72

Michèle Clavilier and Danielle Duchefdelaville, Commedia dell’arte: Le jeu masqué (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1999), 17.



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In discussing the nature and use of the grotesque in The Overcoat, Boris Eikhenbaum writes that “the comic skaz is suddenly interrupted by a sentimental and melodramatic digression, which contains the characteristic devices of the sentimental style. With this device, Gogol succeeds in raising The Overcoat from the level of a simple anecdote to that of grotesque.”73 Such melodramatic digression from the comic to the sentimental or even the tragic is vividly represented in the passage when Akakii’s colleagues tease him and he begs them to leave him alone, while an unknown young man observes the scene: Молодые чиновники подсмеивались и острили над ним, во сколько хватало канцелярского остроумия, рассказывали тут же пред ним разные составленные про него истории; про хозяйку, семидесятилетнюю старуху, говорили, что она бьет его, спрашивали, когда будет их свадьба, сыпали на голову ему бумажки, называя это снегом. Но ни одного слова не отвечал на это Акакий, как будто бы никого и не было перед ним; это не имело даже влияния на занятия его среди всех этих докук он не делал ни одной ошибки в письме. Только если уж слишком была невыносима шутка: когда толкали его под руку, мешая заниматься своим делом, он произносил: «Оставьте меня, зачем вы меня обижаете?» И что-то странное заключалось в словах и в голосе, с каким они были произнесены. В нем слышалось что-то такое преклоняющее на жалость, что один молодой человек, недавно определившийся, который, по примеру других, позволил было себе посмеяться над ним, вдруг остановился, как будто пронзенный, и с тех пор как будто все переменилось перед ним и показалось в другом виде.74 The young clerks jeered and made jokes at him to the best of their clerky wit, and told before his face all sorts of stories of their own invention about him; they would say of his landlady, an old woman of seventy, that she beat him, would ask when the wedding was to take place, and would scatter bits of paper on his head, calling them snow. Akakii

73



Eikhenbaum, “How Gogol’s Overcoat Is Made,” 286.

74



Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 3:143–44. 155

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Akakievich never answered a word, however, but behaved as though there was no one there. It had no influence on his work, in the midst of all this teasing, he never made a single mistake in his copying. It was only when the jokes became too unbearable, when they jolted his arm, and prevented him from going on with his work, that he would say; “Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?” And there was something touching in the words and in the voice in which they were uttered. There was a note in it of something that aroused compassion, so that one young man, new to the office, who, following the example of the rest, had allowed himself to tease him, suddenly stopped as though cut to the heart, and from that time on, everything was, as it were, changed and appeared in a different light to him.75

This passage exhibits striking parallels with a commedia dell’arte performing technique: first, we hear the erotic, if not obscene, jokes suggesting that the protagonist is sexually involved with his seventy-year-old landlady and is beaten by her, and we see physical slapstick comedy, with beating, pinching, and pieces of paper thrown on Akakii’s head. Such erotic and physical elements were indispensable sources of inspiration for the Italian comedians, as material for their legendary comic interludes, the lazzi. What follows is the dramatically unexpected response of a stock character who begs for mercy instead of continuing a physical fight— a grotesque combination of comic and melodramatic elements. Finally, the whole episode is presented as the universal tragedy of a humiliated, deprived, and lonely human: becoming a metaphor for the human condition, it provokes a religious and philosophical revelation in the observer: И долго потом, среди самых веселых минут, представлялся ему низенький чиновник с лысинкой на лбу, с своими проникающими словами: «Оставьте меня, зачем вы меня обижаете?» — и в этих проникающих словах звенели другие слова: «Я брат твой». И закрыл себя рукою бедный молодой человек, и много раз содрагался он потом на веку

75



Gogol, The Complete Tales, 2:306–7.

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своем, видя: как много в человеке бесчеловечья, как много скрыто свирепой грубости в утонченной, образованной светскости, и Боже! даже в том человеке, которого свет признает благородным и честным.76 And long afterward, during moments of the greatest gaiety, the figure of the humble little clerk with a bald patch on his head appeared before him with his heart-rending words: “Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?” and within those moving words he heard others: “I am your brother.” And the poor young man hid his face in his hands, and many times afterward in his life he shuddered, seeing how much inhumanity there is in man, how much savage brutality lies hidden under refined, cultured politeness. And, my God! Even in a man whom the world accepts as a gentleman and a man of honor.77

The most prominent performers of commedia dell’arte stock characters also presented philosophical issues to their audiences, intermixed with the buffoonery. For instance, according to Goldoni, the legendary Italian comic actor Antonio Sacchi was citing Seneca, Cicero, and other classical philosophers under the mask of a buffoon.78 The actors performing stock characters were expected to maintain a centuries-old comic tradition, relating it to the sociohistorical cultural context outside the theater. The same tendency was flourishing in the Neapolitan Teatro San Carlino, where the pulcinellate reflected the disillusionment and hardship in the everyday lives of contemporary Neapolitans. A Neapolitan periodical of 1838 stated that Pulcinella was a voice of the Neapolitan people, expressing the ideas of an everyman.79 Thus, Gogol visited Naples at a time when Pulcinella had been gradually transformed from a traditional grotesque buffoon into a contemporary Neapolitan and represented different social 76



Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 3:144.

77



Gogol, The Complete Tales, 2:307.

78



Carlo Goldoni, Memoires, 44.

79



Bragaglia, Pulcinella, 242.

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classes and a multiplicity of professions, from a simpleton to a governmental clerk to a nobleman. Pulcinella performers of that time, including Salvatore Petito and later his son Antonio Petito, cleverly added a sentimental and melancholic tone to the traditional comic expressiveness of their performances, combining realistic parts of the plots with fantastic and supernatural elements.80 Akakii Bashmachkin represents the myriad of Petersburgian clerks, just as Pulcinella was an incarnation of the Neapolitan character. According to an anonymous mid-nineteenth-century witness, “There was not a single individual in Naples who had not in himself something of Pulcinella.”81 Тhe physical appearance of Pulcinella and other commedia dell’arte stock characters had grotesque overtones due to the bizarre combination of immobile, expressionless half-masks (black, brown, or white), which covered the upper part of the face, with expressive uncovered mouths and agile acrobatic bodies. This juxtaposition of symbols of life and death presents a philosophical message that forces spectators to simultaneously mourn the inescapable approach of death while celebrating life’s endless joy. The Italian language’s musicality and extensive use of vowels helped the masked actors articulate, using their mouths as an emotional and artistic apparatus that replaced the barely visible eyes and total lack of facial expressions. The final words of Akakii’s ghost in The Overcoat represents a masterful transposition of this acting technique into literary production. The narration focuses on the screaming mouth, which is the only mobile part of the ghost’s dead-white mask-like face. The abundant use of vowels (a is persistent) and exclamation marks contribute to the impression of that mouth’s ехpressiveness: Лицо чиновника было бледно, как снег, и глядело совершенным мертвецом. Но ужас значительного лица превзошел все границы, когда он увидел, что рот мертвеца покривился, и пахнувши на него страшно могилою, произнес такие речи: «А! так вот ты наконец!

80

Ibid., 186.

81

Sand, The History of the Harlequinade, 115.



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Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat

наконец я тебя того, поймал за воротник! твоей шинели мне и нужно! не похлопотал об моей, да еще и распек, — отдавай же теперь свою!82 The clerk’s face was white as snow and looked like that of a corpse, but the horror of the Person of Consequence was beyond all bounds when he saw the mouth of the corpse distorted into speech, and breathing upon him the chill of the grave, it uttered the following words: “Ah, so here you are at last! At last I’ve . . . er . . . caught you by the collar. It’s your overcoat I want; you refused to help me and abused me into the bargain! So now give me yours!83

Early drafts of The Overcoat included the theatrical appearance of an ignorant doctor who visits the dying Akakii— a possible allusion to the commedia Dottore character, who spent his life studying everything without learning anything. Suggesting a theatrical context, the doctor announces that Akakii is about to be ready to make his “final bow”: “Департаментский доктор пришел больше для того только чтобы видеть ход болезни и объявить, что в два дни больной будет совершенно готов откланяться.” (The departmental doctor came simply to announce that within two days the patient will be completely ready to make a final bow.)84 Such phrasing was not typical for Russian doctors announcing terminal diagnoses in the nineteenth-century Russian literary context (typical phases would be “приказать долго жить,” “испустить дух, отдать концы,” “приставиться, “отправиться на тот свет”). This announcement echoes the famous phrase “Finita la commedia!” that was traditionally pronounced at the end of commedia dell’arte performances right before the final bow, and it still is widely used in an ironic fashion within the Russian cultural context.85 However, Gogol changed the text, so in the final version 82



Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 3:172.

83



Gogol, The Complete Tales, 2:332.

84



Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 3:455.

85



As discussed in the previous chapter, the phrase “Finita la commedia!” was used in the nineteenth-century Russian literary context to convey a tragicomic mood.

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of The Overcoat the doctor no longer announces any final bow but simply informs him that his end is at hand (“объявил ему чрез полтора суток непременный капут”).86 Pavel Annenkov recalled that, while in Italy, Gogol once said, If I were a painter, I would invent a special kind of landscape painting. What trees and landscapes are painted nowadays! Everything is clear, defined, and interpreted by the artist, and the viewer follows right along! I would intertwine one tree with another, would mix up the branches, and would throw the light where nobody expects it: these are the kinds of landscape paintings that one should create!—and he [Gogol] accompanied his words with energetic, indescribable gestures.87

Gogol realized this artistic idea in The Overcoat, interweaving branches of the Neapolitan Pulcinella’s genealogical tree with those of the Petersburgian clerk, Akakii Bashmachkin, in a fashion that continues to puzzle and delight critics and readers.

86

Gogol, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 3:168. English version from Gogol, The Complete Tales, 2:328.

87

Veresaev, Gogol’ v zhizni, 299.



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The Modernist Revival of the Commedia dell’Arte

The era of Russian modernism witnessed a veritable explosion of the commedia dell’arte, with the theater stage as its epicenter.1 The commedia was an inexhaustible source of artistic inspiration for the leading figures of Russian modernism, providing them with a variety of tools for experimentation, destruction of old realist traditions, and dashing innovation that strongly affected the performing and visual arts, music, and literature. At the same time, the life-assuring laughter of the commedia was gradually transformed into transcendental irony or laughter through tears. The passion for life and the amorous escapades with happy endings that were characteristic of the Italian scenarios translated by Trediakovsky were replaced with modernist harlequinades that had unresolvable love triangles and centered on the theme of unavoidable death. Instead of life’s merriment onstage, the modernists were fatally attracted to the grotesque imagery of a Merry Death. The impact of the commedia on the Russian modernist artistic imagination has been extensively studied by Russian and Western

1



The time frame of Russian modernism is approximately defined in Terras’s Handbook of Russian Literature as being from 1900 to 1925, while others expand this to about 1890 to 1930. Russian modernism includes a variety of artistic movements—symbolism, decadence, acmeism, futurism, etc.—all of which, despite their differences, share a common goal: to rebel against nineteenth-century realism. Searching for new forms of self-expression, creative originality, and sometimes shocking novelty, the modernist Russian artists shared the view that the realist technique was too narrow to adequately express the new artistic sensibility and reflect the modern world.

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scholars, with many valuable works analyzing this multifaceted phenomenon.2 Most have interpreted the modernist harlequinades as a rather isolated cultural phenomena that was imported from the West, inspired by the turn-of-the-century Western European fashion for commedia dell’arte iconography. Indicative of this prevailing approach, Soboleva writes, “Until the turn of the twentieth century the harlequinade theme, considered so characteristic of modernism, was scarcely present in Russian culture.”3 In turn, Martin Green and John Swan write that Russian infatuation with the commedia during the modernist period was an exclusively Western fashion: What had happened in France in 1880 and 1890 was directly echoed in Russia. (Germany was less important to the comedic Russians.) We might put it with only slight exaggeration that what happened in Paris was echoed in Saint Petersburg, for the commedia movement has a narrow social focus.4

A similar view has been expressed by Clayton, who argues, Although Italian actors, including Antonio Sacchi, the Venetian collaborator of Gozzi, visited Russia in the eighteenth century, the modernist revival of commedia relied heavily on certain Western sources, since the native traditions existed principally in the form of the Petrushka play. As it happens, the sources of texts and information about commedia that the Russians used were relatively few.5

2



See Clayton, Pierrot in Petrograd; Kelly, Petrushka; Andrew Wachtel, ed., Petrushka: Sources and Contexts (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1998); Soboleva, The Silver Mask. The Russian modernist mania for the commedia dell’’arte had several sources of inspiration—the rich Russian tradition of harlequinized art in high and low culture and the West European turn-of-the-century fashion for the commedia imagery. The Harlequin-Columbina-Pierrot trinity became an icon of the Silver Age.

3



Soboleva, The Silver Mask, 23.

4

Green and Swan, The Triumph of Pierrot, 35.

5

Clayton, Pierrot in Petrograd, 19.



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In contrast to the prevailing scholarship, this book traces the rich centuries-long Russian tradition of harlequinized art and literature, and this chapter explores how Russian modernists’ use of commedia themes exhibits continuity with the existing harlequinized tradition in Russia rather than being a direct turn-of-the-century import from the West. As seen in contemporaneous critical, academic, and artistic attention paid to the Russian harlequinized past, the modernist exposition of the commedia had profound cultural roots going back to the eighteenth century. This chapter addresses a series of modernistera publications about the eighteenth-century harlequinades, suggesting that this infatuation with the commedia should be viewed not as an isolated phenomenon of Western origin but rather as a powerful second wave in a centuries-long tradition of Italian masks vagabonding through Russian culture.6 After a discussion of the surge of academic and artistic attention to the Russian harlequinized past, this chapter provides a panoramic view of the harlequinized Russian landscape, with several closeups on modernist harlequinades by Blok, Evreinov, and Meyerhold focusing on the new modernist sensibility in this revival of the Italian masks.

The Rise of Academic Interest in the Harlequinized Past Turn-of-the-century Western Europe was caught up in a mania for a stylized version of the commedia dell’arte that quickly penetrated Russia through the works of the French symbolist poets, particularly Fêtes galantes, by Paul Verlaine; the visual decadence of the English painter Aubrey Beardsley; and the Italian opera Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo, which premiered in Milan in 1892 and was staged in Russia’s Bolshoi Theater in 1893. The refrain from the famous aria sung by Canio, a wandering actor playing Pierrot, “Ridi, Pagliaccio, sul tuo amore infranto!” (Laugh, clown, at broken love!), became a musical slogan of Russian modernism.

6



Ibid., 6.

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While Western culture undoubtedly influenced the Russian modernists, during the last decade of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth the Russians were reexamining their own history of cultural ties with the commedia dell’arte, dedicating a series of publications to post-Petrine cultural life, including the reign of Anna Ioannovna. In 1895, V. N. Peretts published one of the most influential studies of the history of the Russian puppet theater in Ezhegodnik imperatorskikh teatrov. Peretts begins this work with a discussion of the Pulcinella character and his reincarnation in European marionette theaters, where he became Punch in England, Polichinelle in France, and Petrushka in Russia. Noting the successful tours of foreign puppeteers in Russia during Anna’s reign, Peretts discusses the origin of the Russian Petrushka, expressing the opinion that the popular figure is a poor Russian imitation of his Italian and French ancestors.7 In 1900, the monthly historical journal Russkaia starina published V. V. Sipovsky’s article “The Italian Theater in Saint Petersburg during the Reign of Anna Ioannovna (1733–1735).” In his article Sipovsky discusses thirtynine Italian scenarios in Russian translation, calling them “librettos,” but it appears that he was not aware that Trediakovsky had made these translations. Sipovsky recounts the plots of several Italian comedies, emphasizing that Harlequin is one of the leading protagonists in all of them. He also describes the essential qualities of Harlequin that Russian audiences first saw in the early 1730s, speculating that the tricks described in the scenarios must have been performed by excellent comedians whose artistry was the synthesis of a talented comic actor and skillful circus acrobat.8 Sipovsky’s publication contains rich information about the Italian theater and vagabonding Harlequins in Russian premodernist culture, as the author connects the past tradition to the contemporary one, giving his readers an understanding of the continuity of the harlequinades on Russian soil.9

7

Peretts, Kukol’nyi teatr, 93.

8

Sipovskii, “Italianskii teatr v Peterburge pri Anne Ioannovne,” 603–4.

9

Ibid., 597.



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Later, in 1913, Vsevolodsky-Gerngross published the study “Theater in Russia under the Empress Anna Ioannovna” in the same Ezhegodnik imperatorskikh teatrov where he discussed the Italian artists performing for Anna’s court, paying special attention to Ristori and Miro/Pedrillo. Vsevolodsky-Gerngross admits that he has no information about the actors who were performing in Russia between 1733 and 1735—this was later provided by Mooser and then Starikova—but writes that, despite the fact that the names of the performers were unknown, the 1733–1735 performances inspired the first steps in the critical and historical appreciation of the performing arts in Russia. He also mentions that the Russian translations of the Italian scenarios represent a bibliographical rarity that could be useful for the study of the history of Russian and Western theater.10 Vsevolodsky-Gerngross confirms that Trediakovsky made the Russian translations and briefly mentions that Columbine—this icon of the modernist era—had already appeared on the Russian stage in 1735. In 1914, Zigfrid Ashkinazi published an essay, “Immortal Petrushka,” in which, like Peretts in his 1895 study, he reevaluated the genealogy of Petrushka and traced his links with the Italian Pulcinella and French Polichinelle.11 Ashkinazi views Petrushka as a cynical and sinister caricature of humankind, using the term “devilish vaudeville” to describe a Petrushka show in which the tragedy of human existence is ridiculed by his horrifying, idiotic laughter.12 Most important, Konstantin Miklashevsky’s influential study Commedia dell’arte: Teatr ital’ianskikh komediantov XVI, XVII, XVIII stoletii received recognition in Russia and abroad when it was published in Russia in 1914 and 1917, as well as in Paris in French

10



Vsevolodskii-Gerngross, “Teatr v Rossii,” 19.

11



Ashkinazi’s article was also published in Ezhegodnik imperatorskikh teatrov. See Zigfrid Ashkinazi, “Bessmertnyi Petrushka,” in Ezhegodnik imperatorskikh teatrov, vypusk 4 (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1914).

12



Ibid., 17.

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translation in 1927.13 This study was later translated into many foreign languages and used as a source book for the study of the commedia technique worldwide.14 Between 1914 and 1916, almost simultaneously with the Miklashevsky study, Meyerhold’s journal, Liubov’ k triem apelsinam (The love for three oranges), published articles on commedia theory and practice on a regular basis.15 Finally, in February of 1917, a full collection of the Italian scenarios, intermezzi, and libretti translated by Trediakovsky was published by Peretts with his introduction. These publications signaled a genuine interest in, and cultural awareness of, the preexisting commedia tradition. Undoubtedly, the leading modernist theater practitioners were well aware of these publications while studying and experimenting with the commedia. For instance, in the early 1920s the theater critic and director Vladimir Solovyov, who closely collaborated with Meyerhold, was rehearsing and producing improvisational plays based on Trediakovsky’s translation of the Italian scenarios to grasp the practical aspects of the commedia acting technique.16

Revival of the Commedia dell’Arte on the Russian Modernist Stage Along with studying preexisting commedia traditions in Russian culture from historical and theoretical perspectives, leading theater directors were involved in reviving the Italian commedia dell’arte technique onstage, considering it to be, as paradoxical

13

Miklashevsky, La commedia dell’arte.

14

Ferrazzi, Komediia dell’arte, 189.

15

See ruslitwwi.ru/source/periodicals/lubov-apelsin. Among the most widely read and significant publications dedicated to Italian culture in general was Pavel Muratov’s Obrazy Italii (Images of Italy) (Moscow: Terra, 1999), published in Russia twice in 1911–1912 and 1924. This book included not only the notes of an educated Russian intellectual traveling in Italy but also reflections on Italian culture, literature, art, architecture, and the Italian national character.

16

Ferrazzi, Komediia dell’arte, 190.





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as it sounds, an ideal theatrical convention to bring innovation to modern Russian theater. It is difficult to overstate the role that the commedia dell’arte played in the artistic work of leading Russian theater directors such as Meyerhold, Nikolai Evreinov, Aleksandr Tairov, and Vakhtangov, who all studied and imitated commedia improvisational techniques, training their actors as versatile synthetic performers. The actors practiced not only improvisational acting techniques but also dancing, singing, acrobatics, physical expressiveness, and styles of acting while wearing masks. The revival of and experimentation with the commedia dell’arte on the Russian modernist stage inspired many legendary productions based on both Russian and Western plays. Russian modernist theater directors took their first experimental steps almost simultaneously with the rise of photographic realism onstage at the Moscow Art Theatre, which was founded in the summer of 1897 by Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. Leading innovators Meyerhold and Vakhtangov were two of Stanislavsky’s disciples who rebelled against his teachings. They admired Stanislavsky’s directorial style, yet at the same time, they were searching for an escape from “unnecessary truth” onstage.17 The Russian modernist theater practitioners saw in the commedia dell’arte an ideal theatrical convention that could bring contemporary theater back to its popular roots, distancing it at the same time from the Moscow Art Theatre’s photographic realism, psychological truthfulness, and naturalism on stage that was preached by Stanislavsky. Stanislavsky strove to create the real life of the human spirit on stage and to avoid any falsehood, theatricality, or declamation by leading the audience to experience real feelings and emotions. According to Stanislavsky, theater was a powerful force able to transform reality, and his actors had to rely on real-life emotional memory to achieve verisimilitude

17



Valerii Briusov, “Against Naturalism in the Theater,” in The Russian Symbolist Theater: An Anthology of Plays and Critical Texts, ed. and trans. Michael Green (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1986), 30.

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on stage.18 The commedia dell’arte acting style significantly differed from the Stanislavsky system of acting, since the commedia was a theater of presentation based on extensive theatricality and the craftmanship of synthetic performers.19 Meyerhold’s successful career as an actor and director first flourished on the stage of the Moscow Art Theatre, but he rebelled against naturalism and realism and chose a path of experimentation with various theatrical traditions of the past, including Greek, Indian, Japanese, Chinese, and Italian theater. Meyerhold was particularly drawn to the concept of masks in different cultures, as well as to various forms of improvisation and movement techniques.20 Meyerhold was convinced that mastery of the acting techniques of the past could create new actors whose synthetic skills would be based on the old traditions.21 While experimenting with the commedia as a director of state theaters in Saint Petersburg, he simultaneously staged cabaret shows under the pseudonym Doctor Dapertutto. Meyerhold’s revolutionary directing was based on both the practical and theoretical training of his actors. Christopher Moody writes,

18

David Magarshack, Stanislavsky on the Art of the Stage (Boston: Faber and Faber Limited, 1980); and David Magarshack, “Stanislavsky,” in The Theory of the Modern Stage, ed. Eric Bentley (New York: Penguin Books, 1968), 219–74. For more detailed discussion of Stanislavsky’s system of acting and the modernist directors’ challenge to the system, see Rose Whyman, The Stanislavsky System of Acting: Legacy and Influence on Modern Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

19

The Stanislavsky school of acting represents the school of experiencing (shkola perezhivaniia), while the commedia represents the school of presentation (shkola predstavleniia).

20

Christopher Moody, “Vsevolod Meyerhold and the ‘Commedia dell’Arte,’” Modern Language Review 73 (October 1978): 859.

21

L. S. Oves, “Studiia na Borodinskoi i zhurnal Liubov’ k trem apel’sinam Vs. Mejerkhol’da: K probleme teatral’noi maski v estetike stsenicheskogo traditsionalizma,” in Maska i maskarad v russkoi kul’ture XVIII–XX vekov, ed. E. I. Strutinskaia (Moscow: Gosudarstvennyi institut iskusstvoznaniia, 2000), 181.







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The spirit and practices of the commedia dell’arte permeated Meyerhold’s approach to directing plays at all levels and throughout his entire career. It was a philosophy of life and the means of its expression as well as a source of technique. Meyerhold found that the commedia dell’arte coincided with his gradually crystallizing understanding of the theatre and it also helped him to achieve it.22

The commedia dell’arte performing style was in striking opposition to the Stanislavsky method, as commedia actors relied on their technically impeccable acting skills rather than on their emotional memory, and their goal was to create art, not real life. What could be more distant from Stanislavsky’s verisimilitude than a group of actors whose faces were covered with masks, making it impossible for the audience to see their facial expressions and the nuances of their emotional lives? Meyerhold was fascinated with the masks of the commedia, and this had a powerful impact on his directing. Meyerhold’s study of the 1611 Flaminio Scala collection of Italian scenarios made him realize that, The mask is capable of hiding beneath it more than two conflicting images. The two faces of Harlequin are two opposite poles. Between them is an endlessly large number of different shades and variations. How is this enormous diversity of character revealed to the spectator? With the help of a mask . . . . The mask enables the spectator to see not only the actual Harlequin, but all the Harlequins remaining in his memory. In the mask the spectator sees all these people bearing the slightest resemblance to the character.23

Meyerhold felt that the buffoonery of the Italian comedians was in reality masking a rather tragic view of life, and he thought that a grotesque approach was an ideal reflection of the modern world. As Colleen McQuillen observes, Meyerhold had “focused on the commedia characters’ transcendence of time and place,

22



Moody, “Vsevolod Meyerhold and the ‘Commedia dell’Arte,’” 859.

23



Ibid., 864.

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their universality and openness to endless creative appropriation and reinvention.”24 Core technical commedia elements borrowed by Meyerhold included the improvisation and “the art of acting as movement and gesture, instead of a reliance on the literary source.”25 Meyerhold created his own system, known as biomechanics, which was designed to train actors in pantomime, improvisation, juggling, fencing, and dancing. In 1906, Meyerhold’s experimentation with the commedia was crowned with a legendary production of Blok’s Balaganchik (The puppet show), which was a synthesis of Blok’s poetry, Meyerhold’s directing, Nikolai Sapunov’s stage design, and Mikhail Kuzmin’s music. The production was the greatest artistic breakthrough for the Russian symbolists, who perceived the stage as a vehicle to communicate their ideas to the audience. Blok defined his play as a lyrical drama and sought to create a mood of transcendental irony within the production.26 For Blok, experimenting with the commedia was a way to search for new forms of artistic self-expression at a time when he confessed to feeling his poetic limitations. In The Puppet Show, Blok uses the masks of the commedia to satirize his youthful fascination with symbolist mystical religiosity and to address his personal drama— the real-life love triangle that involved his wife and muse, Liubov’ Mendeleeva, his close friend Andrei Bely, and himself. The enthusiasm that both Blok and Meyerhold had for the commedia led to a production in which Blok recreated the spirit of the ancient balagan and Meyerhold brought the play to life by both directing and performing the role of Pierrot. The plot of The Puppet Show is centered on the Columbine-Pierrot-Harlequin trinity of masks. The melancholy Pierrot is in love with Columbine, who betrays him with Harlequin. The appearance of mystics, masks,

24



Colleen McQuillen, The Modernist Masquerade: Stylizing Life, Literature, and Costumes in Russia (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013).

25

Moody, “Vsevolod Meyerhold and the ‘Commedia dell’Arte,’” 863–65.

26

Aleksandr Blok, Teatr 1906–1919, Aleksandr Blok: Sobraniie sochinenii v shesti tomakh (Leningrad: Khodozhestvennaia literature, 1981), 3:424.



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and lovers from different epochs suggests that the balagan of life is a universally recurrent theme without any geographic or historical limitation. Sapunov designed this production as a theater-within-atheater, establishing onstage another stage, suggesting that the play should be understood as a metaphor for life. Clayton writes, More than a play, Balaganchik was a play about play-acting. Like so many forms of modernist art, the theater becomes self-contemplative as it examines its own conventions and critiques its claims to represent reality.27

The essential features of the trinity of masks—Pierrot, Harlequin, and Columbine—underwent numerous reinterpretations in the European artistic imagination and were inseparable from each other, representing a love triangle idolized first by Romantic and then by modernist artists. All three of these characters were originally simple servants, and they were gradually transformed into more refined protagonists in the stylized modernist versions of the commedia. The modernist Pierrot was both an idiotic loser and a spiritual poet or prophet. His long garment was white, his features melancholic, and his personality pessimistic. He was an eternal rival of Harlequin and desperately in love with Columbine. The modernist artistic imagination transformed Harlequin, traditionally a buffoon and simpleton, into a cunning, irresistible lover and an enigmatic messenger of evil. In contrast to Pierrot, whose face is always white, Harlequin’s face is always under a black mask. The Pierrot and Harlequin of The Puppet Show are friends and rivals who compose two vital parts of a love triangle—Pierrot is the betrayed melancholic and Harlequin is the irresistible lover: И всю ночь по улицам снежным Мы брели — Арлекин и Пьеро . . . Он прижался ко мне так нежно, Щекотало мне нос перо!

27



Clayton, Pierrot in Petrograd, 80–81.

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Он шептал мне: “Брат мой, мы вместе, Неразлучны на много дней . . . Погрустим с тобой о невесте, О картонной невесте твоей!”28 All night through the snow-covered streets We wandered—Harlequin and Pierrot . . . He drew close to me with affection, And with a feather tickled my nose! He whispered to me: “My friend, We’re together for many days . . . Let’s both be sorry about Your cardboard, your dear fiancée!”29

We can hardly recognize the traditional Columbine in Blok’s heroine: the seductive Italian servant full of life and wit has been transformed into a cold statue of ideal beauty that can come alive only through the imagination of an artist. Unlike the traditionally talkative Italian servant, Blok’s Columbine pronounces only one phrase in the play: she tells Pierrot “I won’t leave you,” but then immediately betrays him with Harlequin.30 The traditionally lively Columbine is static, and her typically colorful costume is replaced by white robes: Третий мистик Приближается дева из дальней страны. Первый мистик. О, как мрамор — черты! Второй мистик. О, в очах пустота! Третий мистик. О, какой чистоты и какой белизны! Первый мистик. Подойдет — и мгновенно замрут голоса.31

28

Blok, Teatr 1906–1919, 14.

29

Aleksandr Blok, “The Puppet Show,” in Twentieth-Century Russian Plays, ed. and trans. F. D. Reeve (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), 171.

30

Ibid., 169.

31

Blok, Teatr 1906–1919, 9–10.



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Third mystic. A maid is coming from a distant land. First mystic. Oh, her features—like marble! Second mystic. Oh, her eyes—such a void! Third mystic. Oh, how pure she is—how terribly white! First mystic. She’ll come—and at once all voices will die.32

While Columbine is seen by the mystics as death or eternal femininity, she is perceived by Pierrot as his bride and Harlequin as his mistress. In reality, Columbine is made of marble or cardboard and is a lifeless nothingness with empty dead eyes who brings destruction to others. Blok’s Columbine is an artistic and philosophical illusion that never exists by itself but is constantly recreated in the consciousness of the artists, philosophers, and lovers around it. The production of The Puppet Show was a major success for Blok’s poetic theater but audience reactions were mixed, ranging from strong indignation to ecstatic eulogy. Clayton writes that the critical reaction “was clearly political in nature, was provoked by a play that, to all appearances, was an innocuous lyrical drama expressing the despair and melancholy of the poet and did not espouse any political position or deal with any social controversy.”33 This complaint was rooted in the assumption that the Russian stage should be an arena for social and political debates, as the revolution of 1905 had occurred only a year before the production and was still on everybody’s mind. In his introductory address to readers, Blok emphasizes that he intentionally avoided any kind of ideological or moral conclusions in his lyrical play, concentrating instead on the interior struggle of the human soul.34

32



Blok, “The Puppet Show,” 167.

33



Clayton, Pierrot in Petrograd, 77.

34



Aleksandr Blok, Lirika. Teatr (Moscow: Pravda, 1982), 332.

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Indeed, in The Puppet Show Blok is balancing between tragedy and farce, mocking symbolist philosophical and poetic conventions as well as his own symbolist poetry. At the same time, Blok’s usage of the harlequinade echoes Sumarokov’s eighteenth-century experimentation and further develops Sumarokov’s depiction of real-life characters under the Italian masks. As mentioned earlier, Sumarokov satirized Trediakovsky under the name of Krititsiondius, the Russified version of the Italian Dottore. This personal satire of a concrete literary figure and personal rival recurs in Blok’s depiction of himself as Pierrot and Bely as Harlequin— a message that was as easily decoded by Blok’s contemporaries as it had been by Sumarokov’s. Blok’s satire was of a tragicomic nature and targeted his personal drama and disillusionment with his metaphysical and poetic search. Sumarokov’s social satire of the Russian eighteenthcentury judicial system was represented by Harlequin’s sudden transformation into an ignorant judge, suggesting that the system was nothing but buffoonery. Blok’s harlequinade does not touch on social issues of the time but instead uses transcendental irony, targeting the philosophical quest of the symbolist writers, as it was “a production that was both symbolist and a striking satire of symbolism.”35 Pierrot-Meyerhold pronounces his melancholy final monologue, directly addressing the audience while alienated from his fellow performers, suggesting that the poetic soul is destined to undertake a lonely life journey: И вот, стою я, бледен лицом, Но вам надо мной смеяться грешно. Что делать! Она упала ничком . . . Мне грустно. А вам смешно?36 So now I’m here, with my pale face, But it’s a sin to laugh at me:

35

Green and Swan, The Triumph of Pierrot, 87.

36

Blok, Teatr 1906–1919, 20.



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What can I do? She did fall down… I am very sad. You think it funny?37

This direct interaction with the audience followed commedia theatrical convention and eliminated the border between the stage and the audience, and between art and real life, contributing to the theater-within-a-theater concept of the production. Another director, theater historian, and theoretician who proclaimed that the renewal of the commedia dell’arte and other ancient theatrical conventions should lead Russian modernist theater toward its future was Evreinov. He formulated aesthetic principles that echoed Meyerhold’s in many ways, yet the two innovators were renowned rivals who deeply disliked each other.38 In fact, Evreinov even replaced Meyerhold in his appointment as the artistic director in Vera Komissarzhevsky’s theater in Saint Petersburg. Meyerhold’s critics often complained that his directing was designed to create ideal puppets who would move according to the whimsical intentions of the puppeteers, and they saw Meyerhold as a director-dictator. His tyranny caused a serious conflict with the prerevolutionary star, Komissarzhevsky, who complained, “Meyerhold persistently controls us. I saw that in this theater, there was nothing for us actors to do . . . . With every rehearsal, I noticed the fruitlessness of my own and my comrades’ rehearsals.”39 Like Meyerhold, Evreinov opposed naturalism on stage, preaching theatricality as the only acceptable mode of life on stage and off. Evreinov also found in the commedia an ideal form of ancient theater and associated himself with the mask of Harlequin. Sharon Marie Carnicke writes,

37



Blok, “The Puppet Show,” 175.

38



Tony Pearson, “Meyerhold and Evreinov: ‘Originals’ at Each Other’s Expense,” New Theatre Quarterly (November 1992): 321.

39



Sharon Marie Carnicke, The Theatrical Instinct: Nikolai Evreinov and the Russian Theater of the Early Twentieth Century (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), 18.

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Evreinov’s fascination with Harlequin led him beyond a critical perspective to a strong personal identification with the character. As Aleksandr Deich reports: “Once Evreinov told me that his favorable hero was Harlequin and that he wanted all his life to be Harlequin.”40

Like his fellow modernists, Evreinov saw Harlequin as a grotesque “super-clown (sverkh-shut) who laughs at the meaninglessness of life.”41 From the perspective of Evreinov’s artistic credo, Harlequin symbolized the essence of theatricality, bewitching audiences with his stage antics, clowning, and inventiveness. Evreinov wrote several stylized harlequinades, including Sila char (The power of charms), in 1899; Veselaia smert’ (The merry death), in 1908; Kolombina sego dnia (A Colombine of today), in 1915; and Samoe glavnoe (The most important thing), in 1921. Evreinov’s harlequinade The Merry Death (performed in 1909) reflects his philosophical theory about the “theatricalization of life.” The Merry Death gained international recognition, being staged in the United States, France, and Italy, where it was directed by the leading Italian follower of the commedia dell’arte tradition, the playwright and theater director Luigi Pirandello.42 Pirandello saw in Evreinov a kindred spirit: “The Italian was delighted to find a Russian who shared his conviction that the modern theater’s most valid concerns should be those of reality and illusion, self and mask, life as theater.”43 Clayton also sees many similarities between Evreinov and Pirandello: both were simultaneously theater practitioners and theoreticians whose art and ideas flourished at the same time. Drawing the comparison further, Clayton writes, “If Pirandello’s theatre centered around the

40

Ibid., 95–96.

41

Ibid., 96.

42

Christopher Collins, “Nikolai Evreinov as a Playwright,” in Theater as Life: Five Modern Plays, by Nikolai Evreinov, trans. Christopher Collins (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1973), xiii.

43

Ibid., xx.





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battle between life and art, between reality and form, Evreinov was for art over life, for form over reality.”44 Evreinov was fascinated with the world of the performing arts from his early youth, and once ran away to join the circus.45 Like other Russian artists of his generation, he was exposed to a harlequinized world outlook in early childhood through puppet theater performances, and was well known for his “consciously selfdramatizing existence.”46 According to Evreinov, in a world full of hypocrisy the only truthful existence is theatrical illusion. As each human being is in essence an actor, one has to free one’s theatrical instinct to be happy. Therefore, according to Evreinov, theater has to become religion and the actor a healer and priest. The greatest mystery of the theater is that through a simple change of clothing one can achieve a spiritual transformation. While the melancholic Pierrot carries the author’s message in Blok’s The Puppet Show, in The Merry Death Evreinov’s philosophy of life is represented by Harlequin, who is about to die with Pierrot at his bedside. In an introductory note the author informs us that grayhaired Harlequin is sleeping onstage—such a static old Harlequin is a novelty, since he is traditionally a symbol of youthful energy, not the senility of old age: При поднятии занавеса Арлекин спит на кровати лицом кверху, руки по швам, у него седые волосы, в остальном Арлекин, как Арлекин.47 When the curtain is raised, Harlequin is sleeping on the bed, with his face up and his hands next to his body, he has gray hair, and otherwise he is a typical Harlequin.

44



Clayton, Pierrot in Petrograd, 169.

45



Collins, “Nikolai Evreinov as a Playwright,” xii.

46



Green and Swan, The Triumph of Pierrot, 93.

47



Nikolai Evreinov, Veselaia smert’: Iz repertuara veselogo teatra (St. Petersburg: Trud, 1908), 1.

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Harlequin’s gray hair signifies his ancient theatrical history and alludes to this character’s long life on Russian and European stages. Pierrot realizes that his wife, Columbine, was the mistress of his friend Harlequin for many years. To take revenge, Pierrot switches the time on Harlequin’s clock to make his life several hours shorter. In addition to the trinity of masks, Evreinov introduces Dottore (a traditional mask of the commedia, a doctor who never manages to cure his patients) and Death. While Evreinov’s Columbine, unlike Blok’s, is pictured as a lively young woman, the image of Death echoes The Puppet Show. In several episodes Evreinov depicts Death as a double of the lovely Columbine. Both Harlequin and Pierrot are expecting the arrival of Columbine, followed by Death: Harlequin is planning a feast for three and, while in the beginning he claimed that he was expecting Death for dinner, later on admits that in fact he is expecting the appearance of Columbine. The authorial remarks on the appearance of Death emphasize that Death’s clothing has the same design as Columbine’s, colorless and transparent, covering a white skeleton: “входит Смерть — ярко белый скелет в прозрачном дымчатом платье фасона Коломбины; на черепе такая-же треуголка. Величественно простирает руки по направлению к Арлекину.” (Death enters—bright white skeleton in a transparent, smoky dress, Columbine–style; on the skull the same kind of three-cornered hat. Majestically stretches out hands toward Harlequin.)48 An erotic, life-celebrating dance performed by Harlequin and Columbine is repeated by Harlequin and Death late in the play. As in The Puppet Show, Columbine and Death are doubles, one being a representation of life and love and the other its unavoidable ending. Both plays contain grotesque imagery of Merry Death, typical for the modernist harlequinades that deride the absurdity and futility of human existence. Pierrot informs the public that a fortuneteller once told Harlequin that he would die the day he slept more than he drank. Harlequin has been asleep for the whole day, thus he is destined

48



Ibid., 11.

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to die. Pierrot confesses to the public that every Pierrot is a failed Harlequin who does not enjoy his life, being afraid to break social norms. Evreinov creates Pierrot as a philistine and a coward and Harlequin as a fearless artist whose passion for life burns him and who celebrates his own death as a theatrical show. Pierrot’s traditionally white face symbolizes his coldness and inability to experience passion. In contrast, Harlequin is all fire—his temperature is on fire, his heart is on fire, and his skin is on fire. For Harlequin, life is a theatricalized performance with inevitable death at the end, but this death should make life more intense and enjoyable. Harlequin compares two concepts of life: one that involves being afraid of living and another that is to intensely enjoy every moment of being. Harlequin suggests theatricalizing every moment of life—to be cured of all illnesses and sadness and even to meet approaching death in a merry, carnivalistic fashion with loud laughter: Мои силы и здоровье радостно растрачены вместе с моими деньгами. Никогда я не был скупым и потому был вечно весел и беспечен. Я Арлекин, и умру Арлекином. Не плачь, Коломбина! My strength and health are wasted merrily together with my money. I was never miserly, and that’s why I was always cheerful and carefree. I am Harlequin and will die as Harlequin. Do not cry Columbine!49

Evreinov reportedly used the phrase “I am Harlequin and will die as Harlequin” in reference to himself as well.50 Preparing to die, Harlequin has his mistress perform an erotic show for the approaching Death, and they both kiss, dance, and sing in front of Pierrot, who becomes a voyeur. Even Death becomes involved in the show and starts to dance. Harlequin addresses Death:

49



Ibid., 11.

50



Spenser Golub, Evreinov: The Theater of Paradox and Transformation (Ann Arbor: UMI Reseach Press, 1984), 35.

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Но к чему эти трагические жесты? Вы в доме Арлекина, где умеют смеяться над всем трагическим, не исключая и ваших жестов . . . Но традиционный танец?! Ваш танец доброго старого времени, когда люди не разучились еще умирать, как теперь, и сама Смерть была для них развлечением. What are those tragic gestures for? You are at Harlequin’s house, where we know how to laugh at everything tragic, not excluding even your gestures . . . Perhaps a traditional dance?! Your dance of a good old time, when people had not forgotten how to die, like they have now, and Death itself was entertaining for them.51

Bringing the harlequinade to an end, Pierrot says that, as all characters are only actors who are not responsible for what is said and performed, Harlequin is alive, of course, and that his death was just another performance. This ending is strongly reminiscent of Blok’s The Puppet Show, with Pierrot being the last character in the play-within-a-play setting to address the audience, expressing the view that life is nothing but a farce. Evreinov’s Pierrot compares the end of Harlequin’s sinful but merry life with the death of François Rabelais: “When genial Rabelais was dying, the monks surrounded his bed, trying everything to convince him to repent his sins. Rabelais just smiled, and when the last moment came, he said: Lower the curtain, the farce has ended. He said this and passed away.”52 While the grotesque concept of Merry Death belongs to the modernist interpretation of the commedia and echoes Blok’s play in many ways, Evreinov’s harlequinade has obvious links with Trediakovsky’s scenarios in both form and content. As a theater historian, Evreinov was certainly well aware of the existing commedia dell’arte tradition in Russia and combined his theoretical and historical work with the practical. As discussed in the third chapter, Trediakovsky’s Four Harlequins scenario contains Harlequin’s encounter with his own death; the eighteenth-century

51

Evreinov, Veselaia smert’, 12.

52

Ibid., 12.



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Harlequin fights his death with a comic ingenuity that does not have any tragic overtones. In contrast, Evreinov’s gray-haired Harlequin is a messenger of the eighteenth-century harlequinade who is destined to announce that he already exhausted his ingenuity during his three-centuries-long life on the Russian stage. While in Trediakovsky’s translation Harlequin fights death to celebrate life, the modernist Harlequin celebrates death, bidding a last farewell to life. Here we see a dramatic difference between the two eras when the harlequinade flourished on Russian soil. Between 1907 and 1914, Nikolai Evreinov and Baron Nikolai Drizen worked on a project called the Ancient Theater (Starinnyi Teatr) to recreate ancient theater conventions for modern audiences.53 During its first season (1907–1908), the theater presented medieval lyrical dramas, miracles, and legends. The second season (1911– 1912) was dedicated to the Spanish theater, represented by the plays of Calderon, Tirso di Molina, and Lope de Vega. The third (1914–1915) was to be dedicated to the commedia dell’arte, but this was never realized in practice due to the outbreak of World War I and to a personal conflict between Drizen and Evreinov. The relationship between Evreinov and Meyerhold grew hostile on both personal and professional levels, as they accused each other of plagiarism. Evreinov claimed a monopoly on experimentation with the commedia, and he accused Meyerhold of stealing his ideas about the reconstruction of the Ancient Theater: “V. E. Meyerhold naturally rejoiced at the emergence of the artisticreconstructive method of ‘Ancient Theatre,’ founded and initiated by me. Of course, this gave the ‘innovator’, of whom the public had grown sick and tired, the agreeable opportunity of changing ‘his course,’ without risk of apostasy.”54 Indeed, the concept of the Ancient Theater was analogous to Meyerhold’s publication of his journal The Love for Three Oranges—

53



This discussion of the Ancient Theater is based on Carnicke, The Theatrical Instinct, 16–17; and Pearson, “Meyerhold and Evreinov,” 325–27.

54



This excerpt from Evreinov’s “Originality at Someone Else’s Expense” is cited from Pearson, “Meyerhold and Evreinov,” 325.

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both centered on the idea of the renewal of past traditions. Evreinov’s and Meyerhold’s practical stage experimentations with the harlequinades occurred almost simultaneously as well. Tony Pearson provides a fruitful comparison of Meyerhold and Evreinov: They shared a pathological contempt for stage naturalism— especially that of the Stanislavsky school—and a crusading belief in the reintegration of stage and audience through an appeal to the styles and conventions of earlier theatrical epochs. Each came to advocate the absolute centrality to modern theater practice of expressive, metatheatrical strategies: theatricality in the case of Evreinov, stylization in the case of Meyerhold.55

Carnicke writes that Evreinov anticipated “major artistic movements in the twentieth century: metatheatrical plays, theatricalist and symbolist staging, and current studies of performance through anthropology and ritual. Yet, today, few theater historians and practitioners would recognize his name.”56 Aleksandr Tairov, the artistic director of the Moscow Kamerny Theater, was another director who found a great source of inspiration in the Italian commedia. Tairov, who was absorbing the new theatrical approaches of his contemporaries, like other directors, applied two methods to experiment with the commedia— stylization and reconstruction.57 Tairov wanted his theater to be a “synthetic organism,” and once again the commedia was an ideal form to achieve a synthesis of arts. I. A. Shchepetkova reports that, like Benois, Tairov wrote that the balagans of the 1880s were the most unforgettable theatrical experiences of his youth. According to Shchepetkova, in 1906 Tairov witnessed, and participated in, Meyerhold’s famous production of Blok’s play The Puppet Show, in

55

Pearson, “Meyerhold and Evreinov,” 321.

56

Carnicke, The Theatrical Instinct, 1.

57

See I. A. Shchepetkova, “Printsipy i estetika komedii del’arte v russkoi rezhissure pervoi chetverti XX veka. A. Tairov,” in Strutinskaia, Maska i maskarad v russkoi kul’ture XVIII–XX vekov, 216–24.



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which he played the role of the Blue Mask. Shchepetkova speculates that this particular experience was Tairov’s first involvement with the commedia.58 Tairov’s commedia–style productions included the 1913 Arthur Schnitzler pantomime The Veil of Pierette (which had previously been staged by Meyerhold), a 1918 production of F. Lothar’s King Harlequin, and a 1920 production of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s The Princess Brambilla, which brought Tairov great success. Tairov trained his actors to become synthetic performers, wanting them to practice not only acting but also acrobatics, juggling, and fencing. Each particular skill was taught by a different teacher, most of whom were of foreign origin.59 The famous production of The Princess Brambilla was a truly eclectic and synthetic show for which the stage set and costumes were designed by Georgii Iakulov according to the cubist fashion; commedia dell’arte masks were involved in pantomimes, intermingled with circus tricks, and the music was strongly reminiscent of opera or ballet. As Clayton puts it, Tairov describes his objectives as being not to give a “correct interpretation” of Hoffmann, but to “unite the new discrete elements of harlequinade, tragedy, operetta, pantomime, and circus and . . . refract them through the modern soul of the actors and the creative rhythm allied to it.” The results combined commedia dell’arte with Hoffmann’s grotesque in a remarkable way that Torda describes as “expressionist theater.”60

Tairov experimented with the commedia until the early 1930s, but gradually the general mood of his productions transformed from merrily theatrical to a sinister grotesque in which the protagonist was crushed by the machinery of a totalitarian state.61 After 1930, Tairov stopped using the harlequinade and worked instead to try 58



Ibid., 216–17.

59



Ibid., 218–19.

60



Clayton, Pierrot in Petrograd, 107.

61



Shchepetkova, “Printsipy i estetika komedii del’arte,” 222–23.

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to fit into the required framework of socialist realism on stage. However, during those glorious years in the history of the Kamerny Theater, the director had seen the commedia and its masks as an ideal art form and Harlequin as the quintessential incarnation of the actors’ craft. Tairov’s theater was closed in 1949, and the director died soon thereafter. In his memoirs the Tairov company actor Aleksandr Rumnev compared the face of his dead teacher at his funeral with that of a tragic Harlequin: His lips formed a barely noticeable smile. His bald scalp was crossed with a sharp strand of black hair. Suddenly his face reminded me of Harlequin’s makeup. Harlequin in a coffin . . . the funeral of Harlequin . . . . Yes, it was Harlequin, but not the one who amused and entertained the public with witty jokes and virtuoso tricks. It was a tragic Harlequin, who had experienced the bitter enmity and treachery of friends yet was still confident in the truthfulness of his art.62

Rumnev’s reminiscences demonstrate that even during the Stalinist era, when the commedia had already disappeared from the Soviet stage, its imagery was closely associated with those who had preached its aesthetic principles.

Commedia in the World of Art Group and the Ballets Russes The aesthetics of the commedia dell’arte had a significant impact on the famous World of Art group (Mir iskusstva), founded in 1898 by Aleksandr Benois, Leon Bakst, Konstantin Somov, and Sergei Diaghilev, who also started the Mir iskusstva journal for the group in 1899. The credo of the World of Art group has close affinity with the commedia dell’arte’s synthetic nature, as one of the group’s main goals was the unification of all art forms. Benois viewed World of Art as a community that would include representatives of different

62



Ibid., 224.

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The Modernist Revival of the Commedia dell’Arte

professions who would openly discuss their new artistic ideas.63 The slogan of World of Art—art for art’s sake—was indeed a declaration that art should be free from religious, political, or social functions.64 The group was seeking to offer universal salvation through art in its purest form, which became a religion for Benois and his colleagues.65 Like the stage experimentation with the commedia that was fueled by revolt against Stanislavsky’s realist verisimilitude, one of the main concepts that united World of Art members was their resistance to the realist tendency in Russian art, particularly to the art of “the Wanderers” (Peredvizhniki). The works of the leading artists were deeply rooted in the idea of the synthesis of various art forms—they used literary motifs, were fascinated with history, and achieved the peak of their fame as stage and costume designers. The World of Art was a cosmopolitan organization with many members who viewed themselves as “citizens of the world.” Such tendencies were not accidental, since many members of the group were in fact artists of foreign origin who wanted to merge Russian and European culture.66 The mission of the group was to contribute to the creation of a new Russian intelligentsia that would be art conscious and cosmopolitan.67 Commedia dell’arte imagery is inseparable from the World of Art group, and from Benois in particular, who was a passionate advocate of the revival of the commedia in the Russian arts. The commedia dell’arte was represented in Benois’s art from two perspectives—the European and the Russian. In his memoirs, Benois writes that an unforgettable impression was made on him in his childhood by his visit to the balagans when he was four years old, when he first saw the trinity of Harlequin, Pierrot, and Columbine. Like Evreinov, Benois dreamt of being transformed into Harlequin,

63



Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art: 1863–1922, rev. ed. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986), 37.

64



Ibid.

65



Ibid., 39.

66



Ibid., 37–38.

67



Ibid., 43.

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not in his stylized European version, but as a part of the Russian popular fairground entertainment. Later on, Benois admitted that the first impressions of the Russian harlequinades stayed fresh throughout his whole life.68 Benois’s works as a stage designer reflected this fascination with the commedia—he supported the idea of its revival and collaborated with Evreinov on his Ancient Theater project, and he was a stage designer for the 1911 Petrushka production by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and for the 1913 commedia–style performance of Goldoni’s La Locandiera in the Moscow Art Theatre. Surprisingly, Benois was not an admirer of Meyerhold’s experimentation with the commedia and instead collaborated with Stanislavsky, thinking that the latter better understood the essence of the commedia dell’arte than Meyerhold. Benois wanted to see the optimistic, lifeaffirming spirit of the commedia and encouraged Stanislavsky to go forward with the production of Goldoni’s play. Stanislavsky was obviously influenced by the commedia craze in the world of theater and expressed the desire to include commedia–style pantomimes in his production. Benois passionately supported this idea and firmly believed that the Moscow Art Theatre could reproduce the commedia dell’arte better than any other company. In a letter to Stanislavsky, Benois writes that he firmly believes the Moscow Art Theatre should try to stage the commedia dell’arte– style performance, since “it is the most lively form of stage art, and the Art Theatre always strives to liveliness onstage.”69 Benois urges Stanislavsky, “There is no need to forge the ancient Italian one: we need something of our own: new, fresh, modern.”70 Benois’s desire to create an authentic play instead of a fake imitation clearly juxtaposes Stanislavsky’s truthfulness to the

68

Janet Kennedy, “The Triumph of Harlequin: Commedia dell’Arte and Its Significance in the Work of the Mir Iskusstva Group,” in The Silver Age: Russian Literature and Culture 1881–1921, 1 (1998), 35–36.

69

Moscow Art Theatre: One Hundred Years (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskii Khudozhestvennyi, 1998), 1:80–81.

70

Ibid.





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The Modernist Revival of the Commedia dell’Arte

experimental works of other leading directors of this time, whose revivals of the commedia were seen by Benois as artificial. Benois’s design was both poetic and full of life, and the actors’ sincerity and their full transformation into eighteenth-century Italians were performed in the best tradition of the Moscow Art Theatre. The actors were playing the content of the play, instead of artificially recreating the commedia dell’arte, and were successful in this undertaking.71 The World of Art group was drawn to the visual depictions of the performing arts—dance, theater, opera, and circus. The commedia attracted them with its extravagant, colorful costumes and its expressive plasticity.72 One of the most successful results of the artistic collaboration within the World of Art group was the creation of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Ironically, Diaghilev’s company never performed in Russia, showing its productions only in Europe and the United States. Some critics believe that the company was the most significant Russian artistic achievement in the commedia style during the modernist era. Green and Swan write, “The GOSPEL of the commedia was propagated more effectively by the ballet than any other art form, and by the Ballets Russes de Sergei Diaghilev more effectively than by any other ballet company.”73 Diaghilev was an impresario of genius and a man of inexhaustible energy who had achieved the goal that the World of Art

71



Ibid., 82.

72



The commedia dell’arte inspired many paintings by representatives of the World of Art group, including Benois’s 1905 Italian Comedy: Billet doux, which shows a stage with a group of commedia masks facing a theater audience, and his Italian Comedy: The Indiscreet Punchinello (1906), in which Italian comedians in their expressive poses are depicted from the back. Other paintings include Konstantin Somov’s Lady and Pierrot (1910), Harlequin and Lady (1912), and Columbine’s Little Tongue (1915–1917) and Somov’s title page for Blok’s book The Theater (1907); Alexander Golovin’s Portrait of the Stage Director Vsevolod Meyerhold (wearing the costume of Pierrot) (1917); and Sergei Sudejkin’s Harlequin’s Garde (1915–1916), to name just a few. See Vsevolod Petrov and Alexander Kamensky, The World of Art Movement in Early 20th-Century Russia (Leningrad: Aurora Art Publishers, 1991).

73



Green and Swan, The Triumph of Pierrot, 54.

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group was aiming for—he brought the art of Russian modernism international recognition and admiration. His successful propagation of Russian modernist art abroad included numerous art exhibitions and ballet productions. The first ballet influenced by the Italian masks was Robert Schumann’s Carnaval, with a libretto written by Leon Bakst, with Mikhail Fokin’s choreography, and with Vaclav Nezhinsky and Tamara Karsavina in the leading roles. The first season opened in May 1909 in Paris at the Théâtre du Châtelet. The Ballets Russes represented a revolutionary step in the history of Russian ballet since it was a choreographic revolt against the classical school of Marius Petipa that dominated the Russian stage. The Ballets Russes juxtaposed the absence of emotional expression in classical ballet with passionate erotic movements, and the dominant role of the ballerina with new attention to the male dancers. The traditional classical concept of Russian ballet was greatly challenged by the emergence of the circus and carnival culture of the Ballets Russes company. From a musical point of view, the audience was also challenged by the shocking novelty of Igor Stravinsky’s compositions. In his collaboration with Ballets Russes, Stravinsky paid tribute to the Petrushka puppet and the mask of Pulcinella, producing iconic works for the company. In Petrushka, which premiered in Paris at the Théâtre du Châtelet in June 1911, Stravinsky drew on Russian folk tunes to explore the universal significance of this popular puppet, intending to tell a story of “Petrushka, the immortal and unhappy hero of every fair in all countries.”74 Benois and Stravinsky were coauthors of the scenario and together with Michael Fokin’s choreography created onstage the atmosphere of fairground balagan festivities. Stravinsky’s Pulcinella—a ballet with vocal scores—was another Ballets Russes tribute to the spirit of the commedia dell’arte. Diaghilev envisioned this ballet as a stylization of the works of

74



Eric Walter White, Stravinsky: The Composer and His Work, 2nd ed. (Berkley: University of California Press, 1979), 194.

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The Modernist Revival of the Commedia dell’Arte

the celebrated eighteenth-century Neapolitan composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, and brought excerpts of Pergolesi’s music to Stravinsky’s attention. The production’s synopsis describes Pulcinella’s adventures, borrowing its plot from the old commedia dell’arte scenario. The production was a synthesis of Stravinsky’s stylization of Pergolesi’s music, Pablo Picasso’s stage and costume design, and Leonid Massine’s choreography, and premiered at the Palais Garnier opera house in Paris on May 15, 1920.75 Stravinsky recounts, I enjoyed taking part in a task which ended in a real success. Pulcinella is one of those productions—and they are rare— where everything harmonizes, where all the elements— subjects, music, dancing, and artistic setting—form a coherent and homogeneous whole. As for the choreography, with the possible exception of a few episodes that it had not been possible to change, it is one of Massine’s finest creations, so fully has he assimilated the spirit of the Neapolitan theatre. In addition, his own performance in the title role was above all praise. As for Picasso, he worked miracles, and I find it difficult to decide what was most enchanting—the coloring, the design, or the amazing inventiveness of this remarkable man.76

The modernist interpretations of the commedia dell’arte presented life as a farcical game with death, and they were characterized by extensive use of what Bakhtin defined as modernist grotesque, with ironic or sarcastic laughter at human existence. According to Bakhtin, both the Romantic and the modernist grotesque are characterized by subjective worldviews and alienation of the individual from the crowd; the laughter is no longer the joyful, life-assuring laughter of the carnival.77 This tendency was most vividly illustrated by Meyerhold’s and Evreinov’s revivals of the commedia, and certainly by Blok’s symbolist play The Puppet

75



Ibid., 282–89.

76



Igor Stravinsky, An Autobiography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), 85.

77



Bakhtin, Tvorchestvo Fransua Rable, 44–50.

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Show. The modernists borrowed from the commedia’s use of the grotesque, giving the masks metaphysical meaning, and further developed the notion that every mask included a combination of gaiety and tragedy. As demonstrated in this chapter, the commedia was inseparable from the Russian modernist artists’ revolt against preexisting realist conventions, providing the modernists with tools for dashing experimentation. In the world of theater, the leading innovators would use the theatrical language of the commedia to challenge the onstage naturalism and realism preached by Stanislavsky. The World of Art group and its leader, Benois, challenged the realist attitude toward the visual arts, looking for a new path and creating a synthesis of various art forms in their paintings. Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes utilized commedia motifs to create new movement patterns and to express new onstage emotions that were unknown to the classical school, achieving a breakthrough in the world of modern dance.

Chapter 7

The Commedia dell’Arte in Evgenii Vakhtangov’s Princess Turandot

In 1922, as he was dying of invasive stomach cancer in Civil War– era Moscow, Evgenii Vakhtangov (1883–1922) and his pupils at the Moscow Art Theatre’s Third Studio produced the flamboyant, lifeaffirming play Princess Turandot, based on Carlo Gozzi’s eighteenthcentury fantastic fairytale. This legendary production represented an escape from harsh postrevolutionary reality and personal drama into a world of artistic imagination and crowned the modernist era’s infatuation with the commedia. In Princess Turandot, Vakhtangov critically rethought the necessity of psychological truthfulness to the “real life onstage” that was preached by his teacher Konstantin Stanislavsky; he paid tribute to Vsevolod Meyerhold’s experimental spirit; and most important, he made his final bow to the centuries-old theatrical conventions of the commedia dell’arte. This production was another major step away from the verisimilitude of the theater of “experiencing” and a leap toward the vibrant theatricality of the theater of “presentation.” In contrast to many other Russian modernist artists who had been using the commedia’s masks to convey ironic or sarcastic laughter at human existence, Vakhtangov relied on the improvisational free spirit of the commedia and its popular roots to communicate sincere, lifeassuring laughter. According to Fava, collective joy was one of the most important outcomes of commedia performances, since the laughter of the audience was sacred.1 Instead of the iconic PierrotColumbine-Harlequin trinity of masks trapped in irresolvable love

1



Fava, The Comic Mask, 5.

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triangles, Vakhtangov brought to the stage the comic masks of Truffaldino, Pantalone, Brighella, and Tartaglia, with their childish naiveté and genuine sincerity as well as a happy ending for the two innamorati—Princess Turandot and Prince Kalaf. It is important to note that Truffaldino in Princess Turandot was a slightly modified version of Harlequin, since the two traditionally belong to the same family of masks and were interchangeable in some Italian scenarios. Truffaldino’s garment was easily recognizable as a stylized version of the multicolored Harlequin costume. Of the four masks, his was the most youthful and elegant, yet his role this time was drastically different than during the Silver Age: instead of being a modernist symbol of eroticism, he was Princess Turandot’s chief eunuch supervising a seraglio of beautiful slave women.

Vakhtangov’s Exploration of the Commedia dell’Arte before Princess Turandot Vakhtangov’s exploration of the commedia underwent a significant evolution, as he started by observing and imitating his fellow modernist artists but then chose his own distinctive path. Vakhtangov’s father, Bagration, a wealthy Vladikavkaz tobacco factory owner, was infuriated by his son’s longing for the stage and threatened to disinherit him for any disobedience. Prior to starting his professional theater career, Vakhtangov was a law student at Moscow University and an amateur actor in various student productions. He had been actively exploring Moscow’s rich cultural landscape, being equally interested in the realist acting style of the Moscow Art Theatre, cabaret–style performances, and the reconstruction of ancient theater forms that he saw during a twoweek tour of Evreinov and Drizen’s Ancient Theater in late March and early April of 1908. Vakhtangov attended the Ancient Theater performances every single day.2 In 1909, Vakhtangov entered the Moscow Art Theatre’s Adashev School of Acting and, ignoring

2



Evgenii Vakhtangov, Evgenii Vakhtangov: Dokumenty i svidetel’stva, ed. Vladislav Ivanov (Moscow: Indrik, 2011), 1:110.

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The Commedia dell’Arte in Vakhtangov’s Princess Turandot

his father’s threats, decided to dedicate his life to the theater. The Adashev School of Acting was supervised by Stanislavsky, and most of the teachers were Moscow Art Theatre actors, including Leonid Leonidov, Vasilii Kachalov, and Vasilii Luzhsky.3 Vakhtangov’s exposure to contemporary commedia–style productions undoubtedly contributed to his vivid interest in this art form.4 In the fall of 1911, Vakhtangov saw two harlequinized pantomimes directed by Meyerhold—Arthur Schnitzler’s The Colombine’s Scarf and Vladimir Solovyov’s Harlequin the Marriage Broker.5 In the summer of 1912, as a student of Adashev’s School of Acting, Vakhtangov even wrote his own dramatic vignettes, Harlequinade and Pieronade, planning to stage them in improvisational style for the 1914–1915 season. These vignettes imitated the modernist infatuation with the commedia and its trinity of Harlequin, Columbine, and Pierrot masks. Here Vakhtangov relied on the well-known modernist plot in which a lively Columbine is cheating on the melancholic Pierrot with an impudent and irresistible Harlequin. The writing style is reminiscent of a traditional scenario for stage improvisation, with dancing and pantomimes describing the actors’ movements and action onstage and with short sung couplets.6 This early work foreshadowed Vakhtangov’s future directorial style, with its reliance on musical score, dance, and pantomime and infatuation with masked characters. In a scenario-like structure,

3

Iurii Smirnov-Nesvitskii, Vakhtangov (Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1987), 42.

4

As an admirer and a student of the Italian theater, Vakhtangov could not ignore the publication of one of the most influential Russian studies of the commedia dell’arte—Konstantin Miklashevskii’s Kommediia dell’arte: Teatr italianskikh kommediantov XVI, XVII, XVIII stoletii, which was published in Saint Petersburg in 1914 as part of Evreinov and Drizen’s Ancient Theater enterprise.

5

Smirnov-Nesvitskii, Vakhtangov, 103.

6

Vakhtangov’s harlequinade was not published until 2011, when it appeared for the first time in the two-volume collection edited by Vladislav Ivanov that shed new light on Vakhtangov’s early poetic experiments. See Vakhtangov, Evgenii Vakhtangov: Dokumenty i svidetel’stva.





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Vakhtangov adds a melancholic song of his own poetic composition in which Pierrot sings, Средь улыбок и слез, Среди будней и вальса, Между терний и роз Я ищу тебя . . . Сжалься. Among smiles and tears, Among weekdays and waltz, Among thorns and roses I am searching for you . . . Have mercy.7

The dialogues between the passionate Harlequin and Columbine have erotic overtones, with Harlequin aggressive in his seduction and Columbine flirtatious in response: А рлекин

Я счастлив, увидивши вас, Я жду неизведанной ласки, Откройте хоть краешек глаз, Откройте хоть краешек маски.

К оломбина

Как вы смелы, Торопливы, Будьте, милый, Терпеливы.

H arlequin

I am happy to see you, I am waiting for an unexplored caress, Open at least a corner of your eye Open at least an edge of your mask.

C olumbine

How daring you are, How hasty, My darling, Be patient.8

7

Vakhtangov, Evgenii Vakhtangov: Dokumenty i Svidetel’stva, 1:321.

8

Ibid., 1:326.



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The Commedia dell’Arte in Vakhtangov’s Princess Turandot

Following the customary modernist plot line, Columbine’s femininity is both tempting and treacherous, echoing Blok’s The Puppet Show and Evreinov’s The Merry Death: Columbine is a woman. And like all women in a moment of melancholy she prefers Pierrot (melancholy). But the moment that passion (Harlequin) whispers her a word, she goes to Harlequin (passion). Columbine has soul and heart. These two elements are struggling within her. The struggle ends with Columbine’s death. (Body dies. Sorrow lives on.)9

Vakhtangov’s early commedia experiments also recapture the World of Art group’s picturesque palette, with its stylization of the commedia dell’arte. Vladislav Ivanov observes “Vakhtangov makes his first steps toward the commedia dell’arte, following the rather literary and artistic imagery that was formed at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”10 In December of 1914, Vakhtangov wrote yet another harlequinade combining the Italian masks with elements of pre– World War I historical reality. At the time he was already the leader of the Student Dramatic Studio and was experimenting with various acting methods together with his pupils, seeking to recreate improvisational theater. In the harlequinade on Christmas Eve, Harlequin, Pierrot, and Columbine (who are in reality poor Russian provincial actors) decide to bring joy to those who are suffering and deprived.11 Vahktangov’s notes about this scenario include: Act 2. A dream. Actors come to the poor and meek, they create and bring joy. 1. They stylize the play. The most important thing is the drama of the actors. They have in them the worldly, the

9



Ibid., 1:322.

10



Ibid., 1:326–27.

11



Ibid., 2:63. In his comments on this particular harlequinade, Ivanov suggests that later on, a very similar plot would be used in Evreinov’s 1921 harlequinade The Most Important Thing (see 2:62).

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eternal. Harlequin, Columbine, Pierrot. Christmas night, they bring joy—this is only the background. 2. All the same—style, eternal, harlequinade. But the essence—on Christmas night they bring, find joy. 3. Everything should be closer to life. Actors are provincial, Russian. There is no balagan, a poor room. One is older. Gray haired, but with shining eyes. He has life in him. Another one is young. He is down, he drinks. A loser with no will power, only grumbling. The actress is young, but there is decay in her, a sense of the fallen in her. She is kind of empty, with no face. Pale, with a flabby face.12

In 1915, Vakhtangov thoroughly studied essential principles of the stage technique of improvisational Italian comedy and the ways they can be used in modern theater, as published in Meyerhold’s journal The Love for Three Oranges.13 He compiled his own commedia dell’arte guide by cutting out articles that attracted his attention and gluing them into a separate notebook. Some commedia elements such as “an actor with a joyful soul,” “clarity of gesture,” “fearlessness in front of the audience,” and “art of improvisation” were later skillfully woven into Vakhtangov’s directorial style.14 Vakhtangov scrutinized Solovyov’s article “The History of the Commedia dell’Arte Stage Technique,” considering some of the ideas to be quintessential for his pedagogical workshops in the Art Theatre Studios. For instance, he underlined a long sentence dealing with the actor as a poetic improviser: “Perhaps the happy time will come once again when actors will once again want to become poets and they will create again their own theater where they will mirror onstage all contemporary events using only tools of their

12

Ibid., 2:63.

13

Ibid., 2:79. This notebook, located in the Moscow Art Theatre Museum, contains Vakhtangov’s remarks and questions.

14

Ibid., 2:78.



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The Commedia dell’Arte in Vakhtangov’s Princess Turandot

own invention.”15 Vakhtangov added his comments to this passage: “For the creation of such ‘new theater’ the actor must study the art of improvisation.”16 Vakhtangov seemed to support Solovyov’s statement that modern stage theory based on “experiencing” and “transformation” ignores the primary importance of stage technique and theater conventions. After reading Solovyov’s suggestion that modern traditions should be combined with ancient ones in the new theater, Vakhtangov wondered, “But how should one study the art of improvisation through the Italian improvisation comedy?”17 He was puzzled as to how it could be possible to reconstruct the improvisation tradition of the past on the modern stage without having seen it. Numerous exclamation marks in the page margins reveal how strongly the discussion of the commedia in the pages of The Love for Three Oranges resonated with Vakhtangov’s artistic credo. Vakhtangov later incorporated into his own artistic method some anti-Stanislavskian ideas that he underlined in an article by Jurii Aikhenvald: “Only one theater is limited, the one that is fatally dependent on literature,” “Long live the theater of improvisation!,” “Yes, yes! Do not reproduce life onstage, and you will see, gentlemen actors, how little by little, your theater will become art.”18 Vakhtangov was exploring stagecraft based on both literary texts and improvisational études, as well as verisimilitude versus vivid theatricality. In 1920, Vakhtangov announced to his student Boris Vershilov, “Right now I am creating my own system, a system of ‘presentation.’ . . . Nowadays, I am interested in mouths.”19 This interest was consistent with Vakhtangov’s infatuation with the commedia, which relied on the expressiveness of actors’ mouths as the only exposed part of the face of the masked characters.

15



Ibid., 2:79.

16



Ibid., 2:80.

17



Ibid.

18



Ibid., 2:84–85.

19



Ibid., 2:337.

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Producing Princess Turandot Gozzi’s (1720–1806) tragicomic tale Turandot was first performed by Sacchi’s company in Venice in January 1761 on the stage of the San Samuele Theatre. While Gozzi defined this work as “theatrical fantasy” and wrote in his preface to Turandot, “I used the commedia dell’arte characters very little, just enough to continue my support of them.” Vakhtangov relied heavily on commedia aesthetics in his production.20 The capricious and cruel Chinese princess Turandot refuses to get married and asks potential grooms irresolvable riddles that send all of them to be executed. The brave and handsome prince of the Tatars, Kalaf, falls in love with her, is able to solve her riddles, and eventually marries her. The traditional masks of the commedia—Pantalone, Tartaglia, Brighella, and Truffaldino—are present in the play to entertain the audience and remind them of the ancient theater. The connoisseur of Italian culture Mikhail Osorgin, whom Vakhtangov asked to translate Turandot into Russian, attributed coauthorship of the play to Vakhtangov. Initially, Osorgin did not have a very high opinion of the Gozzi play, calling it “heavy” with long monologues and “one of the weakest fairytales of Gozzi’s aristocratic fantasy.” The light and graceful Princess Turandot production was, according to Osorgin, a result of Vakhtangov’s directorial approach being akin to commedia–style improvisation and Vakhtangov using the canvas of Gozzi’s play as a scenario for his directorial imagination.21 During rehearsals—in addition to redesigning and reinventing the text—while his pupils were performing as actors of the vagabonding Italian troupe, Vakhtangov,

20

Carlo Gozzi, Five Tales for the Theater, ed. and trans. Albert Bermel and Ted Emery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 125.

21

The 1923 edition of Princess Turandot is in Karlo Gotstsi [Carlo Gozzi], Printsessa Turandot: Teatral’no-tragicheskaia skazka v 5 aktakh, trans. Mikhail Osorgin (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoie izdatel’stvo, 1923), 63–64; Mikhail Osorgin, “Gotstsi i Vakhtangov,” in ibid., 63–64.



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The Commedia dell’Arte in Vakhtangov’s Princess Turandot

Figure 12: Actors’ parade at the beginning of Princess Turandot.

Figure 13: Actors getting dressed on stage.

Chapter 7

under the mask of the Italian playwright, even impersonated Gozzi posing questions to the actors.22 Vakhtangov’s directorial agenda consisted of recreating the core elements of the commedia dell’arte on the Russian postrevolutionary stage—its improvisational technique and masked actors and its synthesis of acting, music, singing, dancing, and pantomimes. This agenda gave a powerful impetus for Vakhtangov’s artistic imagination and provided his actors with a broad arena for artistic experimentation. Vakhtangov sought to stage the whole play as theater of presentation and not theater of experiencing, and he was convinced that his aspiring actors in the Art Theatre Third Studio were capable of achieving this goal: “We have a right to perform our play as ‘presentation.’ We have such a right, since we will be able if we wish to do so to handle also pure ‘experiencing.’ We know the elements of K. S. Stanislavsky’s school.”23 He urged his actors to distance themselves from verisimilitude for the sake of theatricality: “No psychological explanations, only theatrical explanation.” Most importantly, Vakhtangov envisioned the entire play as effortless improvisation without any visible labor on the actors’ part. Of course, the performers would learn their lines by heart, but they would have to pronounce them as if the words were born right onstage so the audience would have the impression that the text was born then and there in front of them. An impression of lightness was another essential element of the play.24 The constructivist stage design by Ignaty Nivinsky with a sloping (not horizontal) stage, ropes, and colorful fabric created the impression of a movable structure that greatly contributed to the dynamic onstage action. The improvisational technique affected not only the acting but also the actors’ costumes and makeup and the overall atmosphere of instantaneous creativity. The actors selected the details of their costumes while on stage and pretended to do their makeup in front of the audience. They acted as if they were

22

Smirnov-Nesvitsky, Vakhtangov, 186.

23

Gotstsi, Printsessa Turandot, 15.

24

Ibid., 16.



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The Commedia dell’Arte in Vakhtangov’s Princess Turandot

opening all the secrets of their craft to their spectators. The musical score was created by the young composer N. Sizov together with Studio member A. Kozlovsky, who was responsible for putting together the orchestra. The orchestra was made up of young Third Studio actors who could either play musical instruments or simply had a good ear for music, as some of the actors played music on improvised instruments, such as a hair comb wrapped in cigarette rolling paper. As most of the actors were Vakhtangov’s students who had little or no theater experience, they needed to go through physical training in order to be able to move on stage in perfect rhythm with grace and plasticity, similar to the Italians. Special attention was given to voice lessons, singing, and dancing skills. Vakhtangov engaged leading specialists in singing and speech training— singing was taught by M. Piatnitsky (1864–1927) and speech by Prince S. Volkonsky (1980–1937), who developed a unique method to study gesture and speech training.25 The costumes were designed by Nadezhda Lamanova with an inventive but simple concept— all men wore tuxedos and all women wore nightgowns—and they would add their accessories in front of the audience. The process of rehearsal was a step-by-step education in commedia dell’arte technique from the smallest of details, such as playing with fabric or scarves on stage to create an improvisational, lighthearted atmosphere. Furthermore, Vakhtangov was determined to transform his pupils into synthetic commedia–style performers who were able to sing, dance, and perform pantomimes. The rhythmical group movement had to be choreographed and synchronized to perfection. At the same time, Vakhtangov wanted to create an atmosphere of spontaneity—overall a set of very challenging goals for the aspiring actors. One element of the commedia technique was fearlessness of the actor-improviser in front of the audience, right on the proscenium. Vakhtangov recreated the commedia device of having the servants (zanni) present comic versions of the suffering of the lovers (innamorati). During intermissions the actors playing

25



Piatnitsky was a founder of the Russian Folk Piatnitsky Choir.

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zanni, with their clownish painted faces, performed pantomimes, entertaining the audience with comic versions of this suffering. Daringly experimenting with the commedia, Vakhtangov asked his actors not only to play their roles but also to perform as vagabonding Italian actors playing their roles—creating a “theaterwithin-the-theater” technique.26 This double artistic conceit—to play an Italian comedian playing a role—contributed to the production’s vivid theatricality and, at the same time, added an ironic mood to the play. Clayton writes, Vakhtangov’s solution was a new attempt to meet the kinds of problems that had been presented by so many attempts in the preceding ten or fifteen years to recreate a “stylized” representation of a past theatrical style. It aimed to “quote” the past style (that of commedia dell’arte in the present case) and yet find a way for the audience to receive the spectacle as more than a musicological exercise, a gorgeous spectacle . . . or an ironical imitation. His insistence on the actor’s ability to act the roles in an experiential way should they desire is very telling. It suggests that the actors should be able to “lift the quotes” at crucial moments in the production and elicit the audience’s involvement by a shift from representation to presentation. It seems that this interplay of irony and sympathy, laughter at and identification with the characters was central to Vakhtangov’s production.27

At an early stage of the rehearsal process, Vakhtangov came up with the idea of having the four Italian masks welcome spectators in the auditorium. From the conversation among the masks, the spectators would learn that those masks had been vagabonding the world since the eighteenth century, the era of Gozzi and Goldoni’s artistic rivalry. They have wandered the world to remind people what real theater and real comedy are. Having passed through the centuries, they have arrived in snowy Moscow from Italy and found themselves in the Arbat district, at the Moscow Art Theatre’s

26



Gotstsi, Printsessa Turandot, 124.

27



Clayton, Pierrot in Petrograd, 121.

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Third Studio mansion. After realizing that they are in a theater, they immediately decide to start an improvised performance with the local actors and suggest using Princess Turandot as its scenario.28 Ultimately, the beginning of the play was replaced by the prologue and then a parade, but this change seems to have come during one of the dress rehearsals on February 20, 1922, right before the opening night. The masks of Truffaldino, Pantalone, Tartaglia, and Brighella wore stylized traditional commedia dell’arte costumes, but instead of the traditional half-masks, the masks were painted on the actors’ faces. The four masks introduced the cast of young actresses in evening gowns and actors in elegant tuxedos in front of the curtain, facing the audience. The improvisational spirit and the presence of eternally traveling masks in the center of Civil War–era Moscow remained unchanged. The four masks were asked to improvise their retorts and dialogues based on interactions between the actors and the audience, whom they had welcomed into the theater. Several times during the show, the masks went into the audience, walking among the spectators and making jokes. The actors playing the masks had to use improvisational techniques, composing their own jokes based on contemporary life outside the theater. Several decades after Vakhtangov’s death, during foreign tours of the Vakhtangov Theater company, the masks would tell their jokes in the local languages, quickly establishing a close connection with the audience. Following commedia convention, during the rehearsals Vakhtangov required the performers of the masks to work closely with various dialects and speech types. Vakhtangov would inspire his students to deepen their work on dialects, saying that the parody of speech characteristics typical for common people had always been one of the important features of commedia performances. ShchukinTartaglia experimented with stuttering speech to create a distinctive characteristic for his mask’s interaction with others. The mask of Pantalone, scientific secretary to Emperor Altoum, mispronounced

28



Gotstsi, Printsessa Turandot, 21.

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Figure 14: Masks: Boris Shchukin as Tartaglia, Osvald Glazunov as Brigella, Ivan Kudriavtsev as Pantalone, and Ruben Simonov as Truffaldino.

some words and used incorrect stresses and occasional vulgarisms, while Simonov-Truffaldino pattered and babbled his sentences.29 Seeking to achieve improvisational gracefulness, the performers were asked to practice making intelligent and sharp jokes under their masks while observing everyday life around them.30 Gradually, commedia methods and terminology became natural for the cast. Vakhtangov appointed the four masks to be “guardians of the performance” responsible for entertaining the audience, maintaining rhythmical patterns, and saving the performance in case of unexpected problems.31 Vakhtangov’s students recollected that during the rehearsals they had the impression that Vakhtangov had come straight from eighteenth-century Italy, yet Vakhtangov felt the need to find a consultant who had seen commedia–style performances there

29

Nikolai Gorchakov, Rezhisserskie uroki Vakhtangova (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1957), 136-139.

30

Ibid., 138.

31

Ibid., 157.



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firsthand and could help actors better understand the Italian comedic sensibility. This consultant was found—he was an Italian musician and a conductor of the Moscow circus orchestra, Maestro Esposito. Esposito’s memoirs and his artistic descriptions of his encounters with commedia dell’arte performances, his sincere and childish laughter, and his exuberant temperament gave the actors playing the masks an authentic sense of the mood and temperament necessary for the Princess Turandot production. The following excerpt taken from Ruben Simonov’s memoirs illustrates the encounter of the two cultures and gives us a sense of yet another peculiar transposition of the commedia dell’arte onto the Russian stage. Simonov remembers, He [Maestro Esposito] came to talk to us wearing an ancient frock coat; he was in a gala spirit, ceremonial and majestic. Esposito was an old man with a gray very-pointed Vandyke and young black vivacious eyes that gaily looked out from under thick gray eyebrows. He spoke very poor Russian and that made him shy and rather at a loss for how to start. One of us, anxious to relax the old gentleman, prompted, “Have you seen the productions of commedia dell’arte? What was their character? How did the masks behave in those performances?” Suddenly Esposito changed in front of our eyes: the shyness and the gala look were thrown off. Recalling the behavior of Tartaglia, Truffaldino, and Pantalone onstage he burst out laughing. “Tartaglia in that spot . . .” He could not continue because laughter was choking him. Recovering, the old man went on, “And Truffaldino answered him . . .” Here Esposito was completely under the spell of a rush of memories of performances he had seen. He laughed so much that tears came into his eyes, and it was becoming quite impossible for us to distinguish one word from another—all we heard was his continuous laughter. The old Italian charmed us with his naturalness, simplicity, inner candor and free young temperament. We finally joined him in his mirth, infected by his gaiety and love for life. He spent an hour with us and left accompanied by fervent and friendly applause. Vakhtangov addressed us with the following words: “You saw the way Esposito behaved in front of us; you saw his spontaneity, his sincerity. This is a key to the complex character of masks, and it is foreign to us who are used 205

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to working with the given text of an author. Absorb and remember that fire and charm, and the loving heart of the old Italian musician.”32

Such an interpretation of the masks was alien to the modernist interpretation of the commedia, as Vakhtangov sought to recreate the comic mood of the original Italian genre. The Third Studio’s applause for the Italian musician, who barely spoke Russian, and their immediate fascination with his reenacting of commedia characters echoed the first arrival of the Italian performers in Russia, when Anna Ioannovna and her courtiers applauded the Italian comedians without being able to understand their dialogues. Words here were secondary. Maestro Esposito’s reenactment of the commedia contributed to a rapprochement and mutual understanding between the two cultures, igniting a new spark of artistic inspiration. At the very beginning of the production, the four masks would announce in unison: “The presentation of Carlo Gozzi’s fairytale Princess Turandot begins!” (Представление сказки Карло Гоцци Принцесса Турандот—Начинается!) This announcement imitated the traditional beginning of the Italian improvised plays and simultaneously signaled to the audience that the performers would be relying on the theater of representation (predstavlenie, which in Russian means both “performance” and the school of representation [shkola predstavleniia] used by the Moscow Art Theatre). During the prologue, the cast sang a song that, like in the Italian scenario, would give the spectators an overview of the plot. “We are ready,” Truffaldino would inform the audience: Here we begin With our simple song. In five minutes China Will become our rough platform.

32



Ruben Simonov, Stanislavsky’s Protégé: Eugene Vakhtangov, trans. Miriam Goldina (New York: DBS Publications, 1969), 158–59. 206

The Commedia dell’Arte in Vakhtangov’s Princess Turandot

All of us in this tale, Your servants and your friends Among us four “masks” It is I, I, I and I.33

Following the tradition of Italian commedia performances, the scenario was posted in the wings of the stage and the actors would occasionally inform the audience about what they were about to see: We will open the curtain And under the storm of rags Show you how the hero fell in love I and I (confiding in us, Adelma and Turandot) Here we are beginning With our most simple song In five minutes China Will become a rough platform.34

At the very end of the production the actors would take off elements of their costumes and say farewell to the audience with a slight bow of their heads, nothing more:

Figure 15: Tsetsiliia Mansurova as Princess Turandot

Figure 16: Iurii Zavadsky as Prince Kalaf

Under the accompaniment of the already familiar music—sounding now not so joyous as before but with a lyric sadness—is composed the final mise en scène: actors without make-up holding each others’ hands, and with only an inclination of their heads, leave the audience and slowly move behind the curtain. Thus takes place the parting between actors and

33



Ibid., 171.

34



Ibid., 171–72.

Figure 17: Ruben Simonov as Truffaldino

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audience who during the three hours of the spectacle have become friends.35

At the end of the play, creating a circular structure, the masks would announce that “The performance is over”—echoing the famous Italian “Finita la commedia!” Throughout the entire rehearsal period, Vakhtangov was dying of cancer. The actors living in postrevolutionary Moscow were suffering from food deprivation and exhaustion, yet they still managed to produce a play that was an optimistic hymn to life, love, and art that could overcome historical turmoil. The play was the last bow of a dying director to the ideal theatrical convention—the commedia dell’arte, whose festivity was a striking juxtaposition to the reality outside the theater. After the last rehearsal, Vakhtangov was unable to attend the premiere since his health was dramatically deteriorating. The leading proponent of stage realism, Stanislavsky, was so impressed by Vakhtangov’s production that, after the first act, he drove to Vakhtangov’s house to express his admiration—the actors had to wait for his return to continue the show.36 The success of the production was sensational, and one of the early reviewers, Boris Gusman, defined the genre of this production as “grotesque neorealism,” giving Vakhtangov the title of “Sacchi of a new theater,” a man who had built a contemporary theater based on a foundation of Italian comedy.37 Evidently, this comparison with Antonio Sacchi was due to the fact that Turandot was performed for the first time in 1762 in Venice by the Sacchi company.38 In his 1924 article “The Animals’ Theater,” Evreinov defines Vakhtangov’s last productions as an artistic

35

Ibid., 167–68.

36

See Teatr imeni Vakhtangova (Moscow: Russkaia kniga, 1996), 14.

37

As mentioned in the previous chapter, Antonio Sacchi came to Russia with a commedia dell’arte troupe and was admired by Goldoni as the best performer of a Truffaldino mask.

38

Gozzi, Five Tales for the Theater, 126.





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The Commedia dell’Arte in Vakhtangov’s Princess Turandot

Figure 18: Actors’ farewell to the audience.

rebellion, writing that the director had shaken off Stanislavsky’s realist chains for the sake of a precious tribute to theatricality.39

Vakhtangov’s Legacy: Fantastic Realism In the midst of revolutionary turbulence, Vakhtangov dreamed of a popular theater for the masses that would touch the souls of people exhausted by the hardships of revolution and the Civil War. His concept of popular theater was not of a proletarian nature that would eulogize Bolshevik ideology, but rather he was drawn to the carnivalistic spirit of the commedia dell’arte, its democratic nature, and its popularity among different strata of Italian society. While producing Princess Turandot, Vakhtangov was searching for eternal masks and saw transcendental features in the commedia. His Princess Turandot was a victory of art over death. On April 10 and 11 of 1922, just six weeks before his death, Vakhtangov defined his artistic method as fantastic realism in

39



Nikolai Evreinov, “Teatr u zhivotnykh,” in Original o portretistakh (Moscow: Sovpadenie, 2005), 267.

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discussions with his pupils Kseniia Kotlubai and Boris Zakhava. In this stenographic discussion, Vakhtangov draws clear distinctions between his directorial style and those of Stanislavsky and Meyerhold: For Meyerhold “theatricality” means a spectacle during which the audience doesn’t forget that it is at the theater, nor do they cease for a moment to perceive the actor as a master playing a role. Stanislavsky demanded the opposite, i.e., that the audience forget they are at the theater, that they feel they are part of the atmosphere and milieu in which the play’s characters live.40

Vakhtangov argued that in trying to eliminate any theatrical banality and striving to recreate an atmosphere of real life onstage, Stanislavsky was ignoring the fact that theater is a convention in which the actors are just playing their roles. Stanislavsky rejected everything that would remind him of the old theater and, as a result, the term “theatrical” became a swear word for the Art Theatre.41 Continuing his comparison, Vakhtangov says, Carried away by real truth, Stanislavsky brought naturalist truth to the stage. He sought theatrical truth in life’s truth. Meyerhold arrived at genuine theatre through stylized theatre, which he now rejects. But in his enthusiasm for theatrical truth, Meyerhold did away with emotional truth, and there should be truth in both Meyerhold’s theatre and in Stanislavsky’s theatre.42

Discussing Princess Turandot, Vakhtangov noted that “the methods are both contemporary and theatrical. The content and form are as harmonious as a chord. This is fantastic realism, this is

40

Lyubov’ D. Vendrovskaia, ed., Evgenii Vakhtangov: Dokumenty i svidetel’stva, trans. Doris Bradbury (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982), 151.

41

Vakhtangov, Evgenii Vakhtangov, 2:578. Vendrovskaya, Evgenii Vakhtangov, 153.



42

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a new direction in theater.”43 To draw a clearer distinction between naturalism, realism, and fantastic realism, Vakhtangov pointed to Gogol’s art as a literary equivalent of his directorial style, saying that “Gogol’s world is the world of fantastic realism.”44 To better understand the nature of this term, it is important to note that, simultaneously with staging Princess Turandot, Vakhtangov was producing in the Jewish Habimah studio in Hebrew the mystical play The Dybbuk by the Jewish author Shloyme Rappaport, who wrote under the pseudonym of S. An-sky. Based on an ancient Jewish legend about the afterlife of the human soul, The Dybbuk premiered on January 31, 1922, while the premiere of Princess Turandot was on February 28 of the same year. The two productions, created almost simultaneously, reflected the quest of an artist who had united East and West in his final works—Kabbalah, the world of Jewish mysticism, and belief in the reincarnation of souls, combined with a fairytale about a strong-willed Chinese princess produced in the commedia dell’arte style. These productions vividly reflect the eclecticism and cosmopolitanism of Russian modernism—the search for new symbols of spiritual life and, at the same time, the search for new forms of theater. Undoubtedly, while defining his method Vakhtangov had in mind these two latest productions, which had brought him overnight fame. Tragically, fame and death knocked on his door almost simultaneously.45 In The Dybbuk, earthy love was doomed, and only death united the lovers for eternity, while frightening masks created an atmosphere of a fantastical nightmare on stage. In Princess Turandot, everything ended with the couple’s happy wedding, while the Italian masks entertained the audience with their mischievous jokes. Both productions became syntheses of the arts in which agile pantomimes were inseparable from the musical scores and the acting was melded with the costume and

43



44 45



Ibid., 436. Ibid. Olga Simonova-Partan, Ty prava, Filumena! Vakhtangovtsy za kulisami teatra (Moscow: PROZAiK, 2012), 145.

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stage design. The spectators of both productions confessed that they had sensations that one can only experience from contact with the miracle of theater—Vakhtangov’s productions had carried them to other dimensions. The Dybbuk was ecstatic and transcendental, and Princess Turandot was festive and theatrical. In this transcendental theatricality lies the key to understanding Vakhtangov’s directorial method of fantastic realism. His creations went to a hereafter, beyond the borders of the physical world, and each time a unique microcosm was created onstage.46 The Habimah Studio left Soviet Russia, and The Dybbuk became one of the most famous productions of the National Theatre of Israel, while the Third Studio was transformed into the Vakhtangov State Theater, in the heart of old Moscow’s Arbat Street, with the Princess Turandot method, with its improvisation, irony, and vivid theatricality, becoming the cornerstone of the Vakhtangov acting school. The 1923 edition of Vakhtangov’s Princess Turandot, published a year after the director’s death and now a bibliographical rarity, contains a detailed history of this production as well as several contemporaneous critical essays submitted by Vakhtangov’s close friends and collaborators.47 This volume, edited less than a year after Vakhtangov’s death, brings the reader into the atmosphere of worship felt for him among his pupils, colleagues, and friends. Published long before socialist realism became the only acceptable artistic method in all spheres of cultural life, these articles were not yet affected by strict ideological censorship. The atmosphere

46

Simonova-Partan, Ty prava, Filumena!, 146.

47

Gozzi, Printsessa Turandot. The critical articles in this volume represent a kaleidoscopic overview on Vakhtangov’s Princess Turandot. The articles include “Vakhtangov’s Turandot,” by Nadezhda Bromlei, actress, playwright, director, Vakhtangov’s close friend, and an active member of the Anthroposophical Society; “Printsessa Turandot i sovremennyi teatr,” by the theater critic and historian Pavel Markov; “Printsessa Turandot,” by art historian and philosopher Fedor Stepun; and “Gozzi and Vakhtangov,” by the writer and translator Mikhail Osorgin, The book includes Osorgin’s translation of the play, excellent illustrations of the costume and stage design, photos of the production chronologically organized, and even the musical score by Sizov and Kozlovsky.



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of mourning Vakhtangov’s premature death affected the reminiscences, and the genuine reactions of eyewitnesses of the first performance recreate for us the features of this magical production, contributing to a deeper understanding of the notion of fantastic realism. Moreover, the recollections of these productions create a striking contrast with the Soviet-era scholarship on Vakhtangov. In his discussion of one of the 1923 articles, written by Pavel Markov, Andrei Malaev-Babel astutely observes, “Reading Markov’s article today highlights how deeply some of Vakhtangov’s contemporaries understood his intentions, and how hopelessly Vakhtangov’s heritage has been forgotten and misunderstood in the years since.”48 Nadezhda Bromlei’s spiritual reflections on Vakhtangov’s Princess Turandot are well balanced by Markov’s sober and sometimes skeptical critical analysis. Bromlei the anthroposophist saw in Princess Turandot its transcendental message—the victory of art over death—and defines the production as a smile of eternity.49 Her reminiscences as one of the original Princess Turandot spectators illustrate how Vakhtangov’s directorial method of fantastic realism affected the audience: Bromlei describes Princess Turandot soaring in the air, overcoming gravity, as light as music and thought itself. Vakhtangov was known for making the actors’ souls radiate with light and making his pupils rise into the air.50 Bromlei notes the Italian masks were the last source of inspiration for the director— “dying, he was performing Tartaglia,” and “giving the last service to Pantalone”: “This is a little prophecy about the transformation of the world, since the destiny of art [is that it] should within a certain time surpass all other spiritual instructions and disenchant the tragedy of man’s solitude and blindness.”51

48



Andrei Malaev-Babel, Yevgeny Vakhtangov: A Critical Portrait (London: Routledge, 2013), 1.

49



Nadezhda Bromlei, “Turandot Vakhtangova,” in Gotstsi, Printsessa Turandot, 35.

50



Ibid., 38.

51



Ibid., 39.

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Pavel Markov places Princess Turandot in the context of the new Russian (not yet Soviet) theater of the two postrevolutionary years—1920 and 1921.52 Markov perceives Princess Turandot as a synthesis of the previous experimentation by Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, and Tairov, and he writes that Vakhtangov was breaking the theatrical forms of his predecessors, rearranging them according to his directorial whim.53 Despite the eclectic nature of Princess Turandot, Markov sees the “transparent harmony of a play.”54 Stepun, like Bromlei, commented on the spirituality of the play: “In addition to its theatricality, the Princess Turandot production is saturated all the way through with truthful interior life and is filled to the brim with spirituality.”55 There is a serious discrepancy between how Vakhtangov’s production was perceived by its first spectators and how it was presented under the layers of ideological makeup that camouflaged his artistic personae during the era of socialist realism. Vakhtangov the audacious modernist was presented by his favorite pupils under the mask of a realist and follower of Stanislavsky’s teaching. Vakhtangov’s disciples started to cultivate the concept of fantasy and imagination, while purposely denying that there was anything fantastic, mystical, or otherworldly about his art. After Vakhtangov’s death, many of his pupils dedicated their lives to acting and directing, with some becoming teachers of the Shchukin Theater Institute, affiliated with the Vakhtangov Theater, which educated several generations of leading Soviet stage and film stars. After Vakhtangov’s death, his two closest disciples, Ruben Simonov and Boris Zakhava, who for various reasons became bitter rivals and barely spoke to each other, tried to reinterpret his directorial style. In doing so, they sought to distance his name from any connections with modernism, formalism, expressionism, and

52

Pavel Markov, “Printsessa Turandot i sovremennyi teatr,” in Gotstsi, Printsessa Turandot, 43.

53

Ibid., 47.

54

Ibid., 50.

55

Fedor Stepun, “Printsessa Turandot,” in Gotstsi, Printsessa Turandot, 58.



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mysticism, as any association with such terms, which lay outside the narrow frame of socialist realism, could have jeopardized his legacy. Ironically, while protecting themselves, their fellow actors, and their theater and acting school, they deprived Vakhtangov of his artistic identity that could be defined by those –isms.56 Ruben Simonov eventually became an artistic director of the Vakhtangov Theater, while Zakhava led the Shchukin Theater Institute, which was affiliated with the theater. Zakhava became the main theoretician trying to fit his teacher’s creative life into the framework of realist theater. Vakhtangov’s term “fantastic realism” was reinterpreted as “imaginative realism” and presented as being based on imagination rather than fantasticality or transcendental theatricality.57 Most important, Vakhtangov’s revolt against Stanislavsky’s antitheatricality was conveniently forgotten and carefully camouflaged as well. Simonov writes, “I never heard one word of approval from him of either modernistic or expressionistic movements. Instead, he often spoke ardently about the significance of Stanislavsky’s teaching and realistic school of the Moscow Art Theatre in the development of Russian dramatic art.”58 There is no doubt that the fantasticality of the horrific atmosphere of Stalinist terror and harsh ideological censorship affected Simonov’s 1952 writing on Vakhtangov’s fantastic realism. Simonov had been appointed as the artistic director of the Vakhtangov Theater in 1939, at the height of

56



See Boris Zakhava, Sovremenniki (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1969), 289; and Simonov, Stanislavsky’s Protégé, 10.

57



Fantastic realism is translated as “imaginative realism” in some influential English-language scholarship on this topic. See Nick Worall, Modernism to Realism on the Soviet Stage: Tairov-Vakhtangov-Okhlopkov (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 78 and Rose Whyman, The Stanislavsky System of Acting: Legacy and Influence in Modern Perfomance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 167. Recently, several notable Russian and English publications have shed new light on Vakhtangov’s creative career as well as his public and private personae. The two 2011 volumes edited by Vladislav Ivanov provide access to Vakhtangov’s uncensored writings, while Andrei Malaev-Babel’s inspiring work introduces the modernist director to the English-speaking world.

58



Simonov, Stanislavsky’s Protégé, 10.

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the Stalinist terror, and he led the theater until his death in 1968. By the time he decided to write a book about his teacher, he had been deeply traumatized by the arrests and executions of close colleagues and by the closure of some modernist theaters.59 The history of the performing arts on the eve of cinematography, before the age of television or video cameras, is elusive since, unlike with the history of visual arts or literature, we can no longer experience direct contact with a work of art and need to rely on recreating a performance through the subjective reminiscences of others. Fortunately, a “remake” of Vakhtangov’s masterwork was staged in 1963, at the end of the Khrushchev Thaw, by Ruben Simonov, one of his favorite pupils and the first performer of the Truffaldino mask in the original Princess Turandot production. Simonov’s “remake” was filmed in 1971 and is available on DVD; even as a reproduction of the original, the 1963 version of Princess Turandot provides a sense of the production as a whole, and it survives, miraculously, as a harlequinized modernist message to posterity.60

59

Simonov, my grandfather, demonstrated extraordinary courage by not signing the collective letter that condemned Meyerhold and started his persecution and arrest in 1939. In 1948, Simonov was shaken by the assassination of Solomon Mikhoels, and after the 1950 shutdown of the Kamerny Theater, Simonov invited the disgraced and unemployed Aleksandr Tairov and Alissa Koonen to work at the Vakhtangov Theater. These events are but a biographical sketch that sheds light on the necessity to protect the teacher’s name and the theater of his name from possible extermination. See Simonova-Partan, Ty prava, Filumena!, 22–38.

60

Vakhtangov’s production had two revivals: the first in April of 1963, by Ruben Simonov, and the second in November of 1991 by Garri Cherniakhovsky for the celebration of the theater’s seventieth anniversary. The latter was not very successful. See Teatr imeni Vakhtangova, 284–85. For the revival of the 1963 production, see Gotstsi, Printsessa Turandot. A filmed recording of the production is available on DVD: Printsessa Turandot: Teatr na ekrane SSSR (GL. Red. Liter-Dram. Progr. TsT Gosteleradiofond, 1995; OOO Master Tape International, 2009). In this discussion of Vakhtangov’s Princess Turandot, I have drawn on various critical sources, memoirs, and personal recollection of this production, as I was fortunate to see Simonov’s revival of Princess Turandot more than a dozen times.





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Harlequin and His Lath: Vladimir Nabokov’s Last Novel, Look at the Harlequins!

At the end of his literary career, the great master of textual puzzles Vladimir Nabokov titled his last novel with the exhortation Look at the Harlequins! and referred to it using the title’s acronym LATH. As Nabokov noted in one of his interviews, he liked “composing riddles with elegant solutions.”1 Following Nabokov’s exhortation in the title, this chapter traces the impact of the aesthetic and artistic principles of the commedia dell’arte on LATH, suggesting that a close textual analysis reveals that numerous allusions to the commedia are embedded within the narrative as a persistent motif, skillfully veiled by the author, not unlike the laths that are hidden under many plaster walls.2 In LATH Nabokov establishes a playful intercultural dialogue between the ancient harlequinade and modern literary production, making his final bow to the atmosphere of his youth, the era of Russian modernism with its flourishing commedia infatuation. The Nabokovian Harlequin is

1

Vladimir Nabokov, “Interview for BBC Television,” in Strong Opinions (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), 16.

2

In Webster’s Dictionary, which was frequently used by Vladimir Nabokov as a source of material for his linguistic games, one definition of lath is that of “a thin narrow strip of wood used in making a ground work (as for slates, tiles, plaster) or in constructing light framework.” While being a crucial part of a building, laths are invisible, as they are hidden under the plaster and other construction materials. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam, 1971), 1276.



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a manifestation of the endless vistas of artistic imagination and a bearer of the modernist principle of zhiznetvorchestvo—the synthesis of life and creativity that transforms life into art and vice versa.3 Much of LATH was written in Italy in surroundings that were in perfect harmony with the theme of the harlequinade that is persistent within the novel and where the rich tradition of commedia–style performances had always been palpable.4 Textual analysis of the novel through a harlequinized prism reveals that Nabokov was quite familiar with commedia iconography, and its elements were in harmony with his literary aesthetics—the theatricality of his prose, his usage of parody, deception, verbal puzzles and games, and masks that both hide and reveal. There are evident biographical connections that link Nabokov to the Silver Age harlequinades. Nabokov’s family was close to World of Art group members such as Nikolai Benois and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, who was Vladimir’s drawing teacher between 1912 and 1914.5 Andrew Field suggests that “Dobuzhinsky’s use of open stylization, using bare artifice to underscore and stress reality, should probably be taken into account as a possible formative influence upon Nabokov.”6 In one of his interviews, while answering a question about his favorite childhood reading, Nabokov mentions, among others, the French poet Paul Verlaine and Aleksandr Blok, both of whom experimented with the commedia.7 Nabokov considered Andrei Bely’s harlequinized novel Petersburg to be one of the best novels of

3

For a discussion of zhiznetvorchestvo, see Irina Paperno, Creating Life: The Aesthetic Utopia of Russian Modernism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 2–3.

4

Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 616.

5

Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 39.

6

Andrew Field, V.N.: The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov (New York: Crown, 1986), 26.

7

Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), 42–43.





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the twentieth century—in one of his letters Nabokov notes that he read the novel four times and greatly admired it.8 Petersburg is a vivid example of modernist innovation of the novelistic genre with Bely’s striking rhythmical structure taken from the world of music, and his geometrical vision of the world on the borderline between visual and literary craft. Italian motifs are persistent throughout Bely’s symphonic novel. Written between the two revolutions of 1905 and 1917, Petersburg presents a recurrent theatrical and sinister image of the blood-red Domino and black half-mask, which symbolize the death and destruction that are to come. The carnival and the Italian half-masks are reminiscent of Saint Petersburg, the Northern Venice. The strange, neurotic character of Nikolai Ableukhov has the grotesque features of Harlequin and his expressive movements (he flies, runs, and jumps, and his overcoat is described as having wings). Another tangible link between Nabokov and the Silver Age harlequinades is found with Evreinov, who experimented with the commedia and associated himself with the mask of Harlequin. Evreinov’s theory of the theatricalization of life has many affinities with the fictional universe of LATH. In 1925, Nabokov even played the part of Evreinov in a literary evening in Berlin when a mock trial of Evreinov’s 1921 play, The Most Important Thing, was presented. The local émigré newspaper wrote, “Sirin [Nabokov], who was made up to look like Evreinov, argued the case of the magician hero who wishes to make reality over into a transcendent illusion.”9 Nabokov and Evreinov lived on the same street in Paris and, despite the fact that according to Field they met only once, the biographer goes so far as to suggest that “it is fair to place Evreinov behind Nabokov as a major influence, in some respect perhaps even as important as Gogol.”10 Spencer Golub, who interviewed Evreinov’s

8

Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 42–43, 57; Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years, 151. Petersburg was first published in Russia in 1914–1915, and then again in 1916 and 1922.

9

Field, V.N., 129.





10



Ibid., 188.

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widow, notes that Anna Evreinova credited her husband with influencing Nabokov’s last novel, LATH.11 Discussing links between Nabokov and Evreinov, Vladimir Alexandrov suggests that “the most important consideration is that Evreinov’s writings and ideas were widely available and known throughout Europe at the very time when Nabokov was maturing as a writer.”12 With its title and pervasive usage of commedia dell’arte imagery, Nabokov’s LATH seems to reflect Evreinov’s notion that the ideal form of existence in a world full of hypocrisy is that of a performer or artist who constantly creates illusions to escape commonplace reality. Evreinov’s 1921 harlequinized play The Most Important Thing, which made him world famous and was very popular in Europe in the 1920s, ends with the address of a “multicolored” group of favorite characters from the harlequinade—Harlequin, Pierrot, Columbine, and Dottore—to the audience: “We are resurrected, my friends! . . . We are resurrected once again, but this time not for the theater as such but for life itself, flavorless without our pepper, salt and sugar . . . Glory to us—the eternal masks of the sunny South! Glory to the real artists, who are saving with their arts the pitiful comedies of miserable dilettantes.”13 Svetlana Boym discusses nostalgia as “the main drive” of Nabokov’s writing.14 In her discussion of LATH, Boym pays special attention to Nabokov’s description of the Soviet Russia he had never visited and the protagonist’s search for his ancestral mansion.15 LATH reflects the aging Nabokov’s nostalgia for the artistic atmosphere of his youth—Russian modernism and its

11

Spencer Golub, Evreinov: The Theatre of Paradox and Transformation (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1984), 266–67.

12

Vladimir Alexandrov, “Nabokov and Evreinov,” in The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov, ed. Vladimir Alexandrov (New York: Garland Publishing, 1995), 403.

13

Nikolai Evreinov, “Samoe glavnoe,” in Dvoinoi Teatr (Moscow: Letnii sad, 2007), 107.

14

Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 262.

15

Ibid., 272–73.







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infatuation with the commedia dell’arte and its mythological masks.16 Nabokov’s LATH represents the next in a succession of Russian harlequinized artworks that once again resurrects the vagabonding Italian masks. Written in English in 1973–1974, LATH belongs to the late fiction of Nabokov’s “American” period but is inseparable from his Russian background for several reasons.17 First, the protagonist of this first-person fictional autobiography is a Russian émigré writer, Vadim Vadimovich. From the beginning until the very end of the novel, the narrator, V.V., is “a man haunted by a writerly twin, the shadow of the creator he will never know.”18 Second, Russian literary allusions and interlinguistic puns are persistent throughout the novel. As Simon Karlinsky has cleverly observed, “In a manner reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s celebrated walk-on scenes in every one of his films, Nabokov includes some Russian literary game in almost every one of his novels.”19 Third, Nabokov’s

16



Vladimir Alexandrov also writes about Nabokov’s debt to the culture of the Russian Silver Age and convincingly argues that prominent representatives of this period—including Aleksandr Blok, Andrei Bely, and Nikolai Evreinov—had a strong influence on Nabokov’s development as a writer and poet. Vladimir Alexandrov cites Nabokov’s own statement, “I am a product of that period, I was bred in that atmosphere.” Vladimir Alexandrov, Nabokov’s Otherworld (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 213.

17



Look at the Harlequins! was translated into Russian for the first time by S. Ilyin in 1999 under the title Smotri na arlekinov! in Vladimir Nabokov: Sochineniia Amerikanskogo perioda v piati tomakh (St. Petersburg: Symposium, 1999). A second translation was made by A. Babikov and is called Vzgliani na arlekinov! (St. Petersburg: Azbuka, 2014). Both translators provide extensive endnotes containing valuable textual explanations. Nevertheless, the Russian translations are not able to capture the frequent references to Harlequin’s lath, commedia-related linguistic punning games, and other textual allusions to the harlequinade that are present in the original Englishlanguage novel.

18



Michael Wood, “Nabokov’s Late Fiction,” in The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov, ed Julian W. Connolly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 201.

19



Simon Karlinsky, “Nabokov’s Russian Games,” New York Times Book Review, April 18, 1971, 2–18.

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last Russian poem “Akh ugoniat ikh v step’, Arlekinov moikh . . .” (Ah, my Harlequins will be driven away to the steppe . . .), discussed in this chapter, has an obvious intertextual connection with LATH20 LATH is a novel-game, a novel-burlesque, traditionally defined as the “mock-biography” or “self-parody” of a master who at the end of his literary career tricks his readers and critics by creating a double of himself, called Vadim Vadimovich, to “confuse art and life, imagination and reality.”21 There is a tendency in Nabokovian criticism to decode the enigmatic meaning of LATH by focusing on the parallelism between the fictional world of the novel and Nabokov’s real life and art.22 According to Brian Boyd, LATH was

20

Vladimir Nabokov, Stikhi (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1979), 299.

21

D. Barton Johnson, “Look at the Harlequins!,” in Alexandrov, The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov, 330–40.

22

The text of LATH has been studied by such scholars as Brian Boyd in his Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years; Suzanne Fraysse in her “Look at the Harlequins! or The Construction of an Autobiography through the Reader-Writer Relationship,” Cycnos 10, no. 1 (Nice, France, 1993):143–49; Barton Johnson in his World in Regression: Some Novels by Vladimir Nabokov (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1985), and Johnson, “Look at the Harlequins!”; Richard Patteson in “Nabokov’s Look at the Harlequins! Endless Re-creation of the Self,” Russian Literature Triquaterly, no. 14 (1976): 84–98; Susan Sweeney in her “Playing Nabokov: Performances by Himself and Others,” Studies in 20th Century Literature 22, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 295–318; Herbert Grabes in his “The Deconstruction of Autobiography: Look at the Harlequins!,” Cycnos 10, no. 1 (1993): 151–15; and others. Boyd concentrates on the parallel autobiographical themes between Speak Memory and LATH. Fraysse, Patteson, and Grabes focus on the autobiographical aspects of the novel, analyzing the narrative technique and comparing LATH with other autobiographical accounts in Nabokov’s fiction. Johnson provides a detailed textual analysis of the novel focusing on the notion of the multidimensional universe. Sweeney calls the novel “an ingenious answer to the charges of autoplagiarism, solipsism, and narcissism” (307). Carl Carsten Springer perceives the novel as an example of an early postmodern fiction “more than any preceding Nabokov’s works, as a statement on life and art— indeed, of art rendering a distortion of art and life.” Carl Carsten Springer, “Nabokov’s Memory at Play: ‘Look at the Harlequins!,’” in Vladimir Nabokov at 100, special issue, Amerikastudien/American Studies 47, no. 3 (2002): 359– 74. The impact of the commedia on LATH has attracted scholarly attention



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Nabokov’s literary reply to his first biography, written by Andrew Field, which had infuriated the writer: “On February 6 [1973], the day he noted in his diary how appalled he was by Field’s ‘absurd errors, impossible statements, vulgarity and inventions,’ he began to write Look at the Harlequins!”23 Boyd writes that, tired of accusations that he was obsessed “with self-references, with doubles, with puppetlike characters whose chief function is to reveal a glimpse of the puppet-master’s hand, Nabokov offers up a parodic exaggeration of these misguided versions of himself.”24 The widespread critical view that LATH was “inspired” by Fields’s biography and therefore the novel “reflects Nabokov’s disappointment and anger, which made him take his biographer to court,” has factual support but does not provide a general key for the novel’s fictional universe, which is open to a multiplicity of interpretations.25 On November 25, 1973, Nabokov wrote to his son Dmitri: “Since 25 September I have written 250 cards (fair copies) of my Harlequins, which represent about a hundred printed pages, and there will be about three hundred in all. I work daily, five hours or so, and the writing is going very smoothly and merrily.”26 Barton Johnson observes that each Nabokov novel contains games that, “in addition to the sheer fun and delight that they introduce into the novel, have a serious purpose.”27 One such game is announced in the title—Look at the Harlequins! Surprisingly, critics have overlooked

in the past. For example, Paul Neubauer in his “The Figure of the Fool in the Master’s Later Novels: Commedia dell’Arte Adaptations in Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov’s English Novels,” in “Vladimir Nabokov at 100,” special issue, Amerikastudien/American Studies 47, no.3 (2002), 375–85, focuses on figure of the fool and the moment of folly, suggesting that in LATH Nabokov “adapts commedia dell’arte tradition more overtly” than “in any of his preceding novels” (382). 23



Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, 614.

24



Ibid., 623.

25



Springer, “Nabokov’s Memory at Play,” 369.

26



Vladimir Nabokov, Selected Letters 1940–1977 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989), 520–21.

27



Johnson, World in Regression, 3.

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many of the numerous puzzle pieces spread throughout the novel that establish a connection between the theatrical world of the Italian harlequinade and Nabokov’s literary production. Therefore, it is time to look at the Harlequins.28

Harlequinizing Nabokov’s LATH LATH is a vivid example of harlequinized literature, as it contains core elements of, and obvious allusions to, the commedia. This includes the presence of leading Italian masks, the grotesque interweaving of tragic and comic, pantomime, verbal games and puns, self-parody, and improvisation within the scenario. A close textual analysis of LATH reveals that Nabokov expected his readership, like theater audiences of the past, to be aware of the conventions and nature of the commedia. The novel is written as the autobiography of a Russian-born writer, and numerous allusions to the commedia, as well as the use of theatrical imagery, are persistent within the narrative. Harlequinized elements are used in describing all the crucial events of V.V.’s artistic and private life; from the title to one of the final scenes, in which the narrator puts on Harlequin’s mask, harlequinade motifs underlie the novel. The abbreviation of the title is not just an acronym but also refers to one of Harlequin’s essential attributes—his wooden stick.29 The Italian term for Harlequin’s wooden stick is battocchio, and the stick serves many purposes in Harlequin’s life on stage, from magically transforming reality to symbolizing sexuality.30 Nevertheless, in Webster’s International Dictionary, frequently used by Nabokov, the definition of Harlequin reads: “Harlequin . . .

28

LATH is a literary game similar to Where’s Waldo?: the multiplicity of harlequinized imagery invites the reader to reread the novel in order to find all the harlequinized pieces and create the whole picture. This device is typical for Nabokov’s major novels, including Lolita, in which the reader must become a rereader to follow Humbert Humbert in his search for Quilty’s footsteps within the novel’s fictional universe.

29

Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, 624.

30

Miklashevsky, La commedia dell’arte, 52.





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usually wears a mask and . . . carries a lath sword.”31 The text of the novel contains other indications that LATH is more than simply an acronym—that it refers to the harlequinade. For example, the narrator calls his favorite writers and their art “my dear bespangled mimes and their wands of painted lath.”32 Here lath symbolizes the magical power of artistic imagination that helps writers transform everyday reality into works of art. The writer’s essential attribute— a pen—is indeed a miniature version of Harlequin’s lath, transforming everyday reality. On the page following the title, we see a list, “Other Books by the Narrator,” that is a punning parody of the titles of Nabokov’s Russian and English novels: Pawn Takes Queen (instead of King, Queen, Knave); Camera Lucida (Slaughter in the Sun) instead of the Russian title of the novel Kamera Obskura and its English translation, Laughter in the Dark; See Under Real instead of The Real Figure 19: Harlequin with his lath (battoccio). Life of Sebastian Knight; Dr. Engraving by Guiseppe-Maria Mitelli Olga Repnin instead of Pnin; (1634–1718). and so forth. The list consists of six Russian and six English novels—a total of twelve works that later will be called “my Russian and English harlequins.”33 V.V. presents his entire artistic career as a parade of vagabonding harle-

31



Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, 1034.

32



Vladimir Nabokov, Look at the Harlequins! (New York: Vintage, 1974), 163.

33



Ibid., 228.

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quinades in which his novels are the participants: “the procession of my Russian and English harlequins, followed by a tiger or two, scarlet-tongued, and a libellula girl on an elephant.”34 Such processions were typical for theaters at fairs that attracted people from all social classes, where commedia actors performed circus acts such as “tightrope walking and acrobatics in addition to their acting.”35 This mock list of books, which represents the most important events of the writer’s career, also echoes the commedia’s short scenarios, which were traditionally posted in the wings of the stage, describing the most important elements of the plot and the crucial dramatic events in characters’ lives. The episodes of V.V.’s hectic private life would then be the interludes fleshing out his creative life scenario. The narrator compares the creative work of a writer with that of a stage actor; they both perform for “an amorphous audience, barely visible in its dark pit.”36 V.V. identifies himself with the mask of Harlequin and has many harlequinized attributes: he is a theatrical character prone to extravagant gestures and bizarre intonations, his sexual exploits are described with allusions to Harlequin’s promiscuity—he calls the women he is involved with inamoratas—and his world is ruled by imagination. Harlequin was the most enigmatic and extravagant character of the commedia. His mask evolved over several centuries from being that of a servant and simpleton to that of an elegant lover and an emblem of artistic imagination and eroticism for modernist art. In older documents, Harlequin is sometimes shown wearing a phallus, but in later incarnations his sword is used to symbolize his sexuality. His face is traditionally covered with a black mask that renders him mysterious. He wears a multicolored suit with diamond shapes, and his movements are extravagant and clownish.37 Looking at his own image in a mirror, V.V. sees himself as a Harlequin with multicolored diamond shapes: “My 34

Nabokov, Look at the Harlequins!, 228.

35

Duchartre, The Italian Comedy, 109.

36

Nabokov, Look at the Harlequins!, 86.

37

Duchartre, The Italian Comedy, 124.



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face was brown, my torso and arms caramel, a carmine equatorial belt undermargined the caramel, then came a white, more or less triangular, southward pointed space edged with the redundant carmine on both sides.”38 V.V. utilizes harlequinized images to describe the crucial events of his artistic and private life. Deserted by his parents, the narrator first encountered a harlequinized view of everyday reality at the age of seven or eight when harlequins burst into his life with the words of his great-aunt, the Baroness Bredow, in the estate of Marevo, “Stop moping!” she would cry. “Look at the harlequins!” and he replied, “What harlequins? Where?” and she exclaims, “Oh, everywhere. All around you. Trees are harlequins, words are harlequins. So are situations and sums. Put two things together—jokes, images—and you get a triple harlequin. Come on! Play! Invent the world! Invent reality.” Then the narrator adds, “I did. By Jove, I did.”39 The phrase “Look at the harlequins!” and the acronym LATH gradually become an artistic slogan for V.V. and an almost magical spell that follows him throughout his career as he invents the world, looking for imaginary harlequins. Commedia actors were famous for their verbal games and puns, making fun of regional Italian dialects. The text of the novel contains several verbal games based on nuances of English and Russian pronunciation and spelling. When solved, such puzzles reveal even more allusions to the world of the harlequinade. For example, the name Baroness Bredow is clearly descriptive— a baroness of bred: delirium. Her estate’s name, Marevo, is also symbolic: in addition to the obvious Russian meaning, “mirage,” it presents a punning literary allusion to Marivaux, the eighteenthcentury French playwright who experimented with the commedia and wrote plays with Harlequin as the protagonist.40 This illustrates

38



Nabokov, Look at the Harlequins!, 31.

39



Ibid., 8.

40



Pierre Marivaux, in full Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux (1688– 1763), French writer and dramatist.

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Karlinsky’s notion of Nabokov’s “variety of literary games involving allusions to and parody and citation of other men’s writing.”41 Not only did Marivaux draw on Italian improvisational comedy but he also created witty dialogues for his protagonists, which led to the French term marivaudage.42 The novelty of Marivaux’s plays was based on these clever and witty dialogues that reflected the juxtaposition of feelings and reason. Harlequin and other leading characters were involved in marivaudage that usually dealt with the love lives of the characters.43 If the Baroness Bredow inspired her nephew’s harlequinized world outlook, the name of her estate, Marevo, can be seen as an allusion to Marivaux’s Harlequins, who expressed their feelings through the verbal games of marivaudage. This form of self-expression on stage is mirrored in Vadim’s personality, with his tendency to play verbal games with his female partners in order to mask his real feelings. Throughout the novel, Vadim theatricalizes episodes of his amorous life, interweaving them with commedia dell’arte imagery and theater terminology. For example, he recalls his first sexual exploits as a teenager, which occurred in his great-uncle’s private theater on the Marevo estate when his tutor offered to share with Vadim his mistress, a young woman simply referred to as “the ingénue.”44 The ingénue, a naive and sweet female character, was also one of the female characters in the commedia dell’arte.45 Vadim’s meeting with his first wife, Iris, also reveals a theatrical connection, as it occurs near the village of Carnavaux (plural of the French carnaval). As performances of the harlequinade were often

41

Karlinsky, “Nabokov’s Russian Games.”

42

Marivaudage is translated from French as “1. Gallant sophisticated banter or 2. literate refined affectation (in the style of Marivaux),” and the French verb marivauder means to exchange gallant sophisticated banter. The Oxford French Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 496.

43

Christophe Martin, “Marivaudage,” in Marivaux: La double inconstance, ed. Martin Cristophe (Paris: Flammarion, 1996),116–20.

44

Nabokov, Look at the Harlequins!, 8.

45

Duchartre, The Italian Comedy, 20.





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part of carnival festivities, it is fitting that the narrator’s first love story, so full of harlequinized pantomimes, eccentricities, parodies, and deceptions, begins at the village of the carnivals. Carnavaux and Marevo are both important harlequinized geographical locations of the narrator’s youth. The key positive and negative events in V.V.’s romantic life occur in various Italian cities and hotels. For instance, his second marriage, to Annette, begins with an erotic scene in an Italian hotel, and during their honeymoon the couple travels in Italy, visiting Venice and Ravenna. Furthermore, the third wife, Louise, moves in with V.V. and his daughter after recently returning from Rome. Commedia audiences were expecting, as Miklashevsky put it, “scabrous situations” in which Harlequin, with his battoccio, symbolizing his erect flesh, would be involved in various erotic scenes. Such explicit sexuality onstage was influenced by the ancient Greek comedies and the Renaissance cult of the human body, with its ardent eroticism.46 Several erotic scenes in LATH contain explicitly naturalistic descriptions with direct allusions to the harlequinade. Looking at his naked body in a mirror and observing “man’s portable zoo” with its “animal attributes,” V.V. experiences a nervous spasm that brings back his harlequinized world outlook: “The fiends of my incurable ailment, ‘flayed consciousness,’ were shoving aside my harlequins.”47 In addition to depicting the narrator as Harlequin, LATH is filled with allusions to other commedia masks, such as the female lovers (innamorata), Isabella, the male lover (innamorato), Dottore, and Pierrot. V.V. refers to his beloved women as “inamoratas”—using the term for the leading female part in the commedia performed by actresses well educated in literature and

46



Miklashevskii wrote that onstage features such as nudity, transparent garments for women, adultery, and the use of obscene language with erotic implications, were natural for commedia performances and had been deeply rooted in the Italian sense of the comic since the era of Roman farces. Miklashevsky, La commedia dell’arte, 80–87.

47



Nabokov, Look at the Harlequins!, 31.

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art.48 One of the dramatic elements in V.V.’s life is his love for his daughter, Isabella, which has clear incestuous overtones. V.V. idolizes Isabella’s beauty, wit, and passion for belles lettres. Isabella was the name of one of the innamorati in the commedia, after the leading sixteenth-century commedia actress Isabella Andreini, who was a cultivated, well-read, and exceptionally beautiful woman. Her art was an inspiration for famous poets and artists of her time.49 Another famous mask—Dottore—appears on the pages of the novel to cure V.V.’s mysterious illness of disturbed reality. The doctor is a grotesque creature, “a double personage, consisting of husband and wife” who analyze each other every Sunday. Dottore’s last name, Junker, has a double meaning, as a narcotics addict or a member of the German Prussian aristocracy. The doctor’s advanced age, prodigious aplomb, and professional incomFigure 20: Isabella Andreini. 1601 etchings. Biblioteca Burcardo, Rome. petence mirror the Italian prototype. Mrs. Junker asked me if I liked boys or girls, and I looked around saying guardedly that I did not know what she had to offer. She did not laugh. The consultation was not a success. Before diagnosing neuralgia of the jaw, she wanted me to see a dentist when sober.50

48

Miklashevsky, La commedia dell’arte, 61.

49

Ibid., 63–64.

50

Nabokov, Look at the Harlequins!, 18.



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V.V. meets his first wife through his involvement in staging Gogol’s 1836 play, The Inspector General. During V.V.’s last year at Cambridge, he consultes Iris’s brother Ivor Black about his production of the famous satirical comedy, and that initiates their relationship. Ivor Black has obvious affinities with the modern image of Pierrot— his name is reminiscent of Pierrot’s black and white colors, and Ivor shares many character traits with the traditional role of the commedia’s Pierrot. The narrative of V.V.’s entire adult life begins with his involvement with Ivor Black’s production of Gogol, who had in turn been enamored with Italian culture and created a gallery of Russian mask-like characters. The leading character of The Inspector General, Ivan Khlestakov, exhibits many features of the European Harlequins, and in a comical fashion he incarnates the Baroness Bredow’s advice to V.V. to invent the world and reality. Khlestakov’s stage persona echoes many characteristics of the witty and cunning Truffaldino (a native of Bergamo and a variant of the Harlequin character) from Carlo Goldoni’s 1753 flamboyant comedy of errors and mistaken identity Truffaldino: The Servant of Two Masters. Truffaldino and Khlestakov share many psychological traits—they are both tricksters who are carried away by their fanciful imaginations, believe in their own inventions, and are prone to instant improvisations. Absorbed by his own lies, Khlestakov ignores the border between real and unreal, rational and irrational, inventing his life and demonstrating endless games of improvisation. Many key aspects of V.V.’s first marriage reflect elements of the commedia: he is Harlequin and she is an Inamorata, and there are deceptions, pantomimes, false identities, adultery, love triangles, and a mixture of comic and tragic episodes. V.V.’s relationship with Iris begins and ends with scenes of deception that are presented in the form of pantomimes, with the first episode having comic overtones and the second, tragic. Ivor Black falsely informs V.V. that his sister is deaf and mute, and the siblings perform an eccentric pantomime: Brother and sister conversed in sign language using an alphabet which they had invented in childhood and which

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had gone through several revised editions. The present one consisted of preposterously elaborate gestures in the low relief of a pantomime that mimicked things rather than symbolized them. I barged in with some grotesque contribution of my own but Ivor asked me sternly not to play the fool, she easily got offended.51

LATH contains the adultery and love triangles that were ubiquitous in Italian commedia scenarios. V.V.’s first wife and “inamorata,” Iris, hides her private life from him in a cloud of mystery during their eight-year marriage, at the very end of which V.V. becomes part of a love triangle. Iris’s obsessed lover is Lieutenant Starov-Blagidze, whose behavior and appearance reflect those of the traditional commedia role of the innamorato— a lover with exaggerated passion whose only purpose on stage is to be madly in love with his innamorata.52 This love triangle ends in a tragic pantomime when, after V.V. has a romantic dinner with his wife, her jealous lover attacks and shoots her. Standing a short distance away on a dark street, V.V. and Ivor Black helplessly watch a pantomime of death: By the light of a streetlamp we glimpsed the figure of a mackintoshed man stride up to her from the opposite sidewalk and fire at such close range that he seemed to prod her with his large pistol. By now our taxi-man, followed by Ivor and me, had come near enough to see the killer stumble over her collapsed and curled body. Yet he did not try to escape. Instead he knelt down, took off his beret, threw back his shoulder, and in his ghastly and ludicrous attitude lifted his pistol to his shaved head.53

In kneeling down and taking off his beret, the innamorato seems to be making his final bow—his part is complete and he must now

51

Ibid., 13.

52

Duchartre, The Italian Comedy, 286.

53

Nabokov, Look at the Harlequins!, 69.



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leave the stage. The combination of the two adjectives ghastly and ludicrous, emphasizes the interweaving of tragic and comic in this final pantomime. Later in the novel, the arrival of V.V.’s third wife, Louise, destroys the idyllic relationship that had existed between V.V. and his daughter Isabella. The first encounter between future stepmother and stepdaughter is written in the form of a miniplay, or interlude, in which the trio of characters (V.V., Louise, and Isabella) have written lines and the playwright has provided stage direction. The characters are entering a period of hatred, mutual misunderstanding, and jealousy. Louise appears in V.V.’s house as an actress playing the role of an innamorata might appear onstage— in a beam of sun, akin to stage lighting: “Louise! Louise dressed up in hummingbird mauve for church. Louise in a sloping beam of mellow October sun. Louise leaning against the grand piano, as if about to sing and looking around with a lyrical smile. I was the first to break our embrace.”54 The insertion of the miniplay could be interpreted as a mock improvisation on the Lolita theme. The format—with the names of the protagonists, their dialogues, and authorial remarks—accentuates the scene’s theatricality, and the reliance on parody establishes intertextual allusions to Nabokov’s Lolita in reverse: Louise, who is about to move in with V.V. and his daughter, plays the role of a jealous stepmother who hates her stepdaughter, which is in contrast to Lolita’s Humbert Humbert, who moves in with Charlotte Haze only to fall in love with his stepdaughter, Lolita. VADIM No, darling, no. My daughter may come down any minute. Sit down. LOUISE [Examining an armchair and then settling in it] Pity. You know, I’ve been here many times before! In fact, I was laid on that grand at eighteen, Aldy Landover was ugly, unwashed, brutal—and absolutely irresistible. VADIM Listen, Louise. I have always found your free, frivolous style very fetching. But you will be moving into

54



Ibid., 183.

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this house very soon now, and we want a little more dignity, don’t we?55

Louise introduces the next event—the appearance of V.V.’s daughter “Bel”—by saying: “Ah, Scene Two.”56 V.V.’s daughter Isabel appears nude—“Bel wearing only slippers and a cheap necklace of iridescent glass—a Riviera souvenir—comes down at the other end of the living room beyond the piano.” Here, Nabokov is playing multilayered, intertextual games, as readers who are familiar with Lolita recall that Humbert Humbert met his first love—the thirteenyear-old Annabel—at the Riviera. The sudden theatrical setting in the novel suggests that the characters are playing an improvisation on the Lolita theme. BEL [addressing me and casually squinting at my amazed visitor] Ya bezumno golodnaya (I’m madly hungry). VADIM Louise, dear, this is my daughter Bel. She is walking in her sleep, really, hence the, uh, non-attire. LOUISE Hullo, Annabel. The non-attire is very becoming. BEL [correcting Louise] Isa. VADIM Isabel. This is Louise Adamson, an old friend of mine, back from Rome. I hope we’ll be seeing a lot of her.57

This scene illustrates the playfulness of the narrative with its fluidity and illusive borders between prose and drama as well as life and fiction. The growing hatred between the two women results in an ongoing dramatic pantomime: “She and her stepmother stopped speaking to each other altogether; they communicate, if need be, by signs: Louise, for instance, pointing dramatically at the ruthless clock and Bel tapping in the negative on the crystal of her loyal little wristwatch.”58 Just as with the final pantomime of Iris’s death, this 55

Ibid.

56

Ibid., 184.

57

Ibid.

58

Ibid., 190.



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pantomime presages destruction and disillusionment for V.V.: his beloved daughter loses all affection for him, leaves him, and then marries, while his wife betrays him with another man. LATH has a circular structure: the novel ends as it began, with a reference to the imaginative world of harlequinades. V.V. has a paralytic stroke in one of the final scenes and then suddenly comes to his senses after finding on his bedside table several objects that represent a different reality—that of imagination and creativity, which are the best “medicaments” for an artist: My mind and my eye were by now sufficiently keen to make out the medicaments on my bedside table. Amidst its miserable population I noticed a few stranded travelers from another world: a transparent envelope with a non-masculine handkerchief found and laundered by the staff; a diminutive golden pencil belonging to the eyelet of a congeric agenda in a vanity bag; a pair of harlequin sunglasses, which for some reason suggested not protection from a harsh light but the masking of tear-swollen lids. The combination of those ingredients resulted in a dazzling pyrotechny of sense; and the next moment (coincidence was still on my side) the door of my room moved; a small soundless move that came to a brief soundless stop and then continued in a slow, infinitely slow sequence of suspension dots in diamond type. I emitted a bellow of joy, and Reality entered.59

With his harlequinized attributes—the pair of harlequin sunglasses (akin to a mask) and golden pencil (a miniature lath and Harlequin’s magical stick)—V.V. starts to see an “infinitely slow sequence of suspension dots in diamond type” and seems to return to Baroness Bredow’s advice: look at the harlequins, play, invent the world, and invent reality. This Reality with a capital R is open to vistas of interpretation—it could represent a return of the narrator’s ability to see the imaginary world and recreate reality under the mask of Harlequin.

59



Ibid., 250.

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LATH represents at once a bold artistic experiment and a serious challenge to its readers. To appreciate Nabokov’s textual games within LATH, the readers would have to be well-informed not only about Nabokov’s literary oeuvre but also about his biography and the theatrical conventions of the commedia. Nabokov envisioned his “good reader” as a “rereader” with “imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense.”60 Such expectations mirrored what was expected of theater audiences during commedia dell’arte performances: that they would be familiar with the major characters and their lines and also the theatrical conventions.61 On October 10, 1974, two months after the publication of LATH, Nabokov wrote his last Russian poem, “Akh ugoniat ikh v step’, Arlekinov moikh . . .” (Ah, my Harlequins will be driven away to the steppe . . .). In this poem, dedicated to his wife, Vera, written while he was awaiting the first responses of readers and critics to the newly published LATH, Nabokov expressed his concerns about the novel’s literary fate, creating a Russian afterword for his English novel: Ах, угонят их в степь, Арлекинов моих, в буераки, к чужим атаманам! Геометрию их, Венецию их назовут шутовством и обманом. Только ты, только ты все дивилась вослед черным, синим, оранжевым ромбам . . . “N писатель недюжинный, сноб и атлет, наделенный огромным апломбом . . .”

60

Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 3.

61

Adding to the confusion of some who would view the harlequins in LATH as simply butterflies, in August of 1974, when LATH was first published, Nabokov drew a colorful picture of a male butterfly called Arlequinus arlequinus and dedicated this drawing to his wife, Vera. The readers and critics who believe that the title of LATH was of a lepidopteran nature and reflected Nabokov’s passion for butterfly hunting overlook the myriad connections to the harlequinade within LATH. See illustration and comments for plate 2 in Vladimir Nabokov, Nabokov’s Butterflies: Unpublished and Uncollected Writing, ed. and annot. Brian Boyd and Robert Michael M. Pyle (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000), 338–39.



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Ah, my Harlequins will be driven away to the steppe To the gullies, to foreign atamans! Their geometry, their Venice Will be called buffoonery and deception. Only you, only you marveled looking after The black, blue and orange rhombs . . . “N is a remarkable writer, a snob and an athlete Bestowed with great self-confidence . . .” 62

The first stanza juxtaposes the theatricality of Venetian carnivals— with its masks, merry festivities, and bright multicolored Harlequin garments—with the uninviting landscape of the steppe. The aesthetics of the commedia dell’arte—with its fantasticality, grotesquery, and unpredictable improvisations—clash with commonplace, everyday reality. The image of atamans (Cossack leaders) adds a sense of hostility and alienation from the harlequinized aesthetics of Venetian carnivals. It is likely that “my Harlequins” not only applies to Nabokov’s last novel but also symbolizes the large body of his previous works. On the biographical level, the “you” of the second stanza is Nabokov’s traditional address to his wife, Vera. Nabokov first met Vera in 1923 at a Russian émigré ball in Berlin when she was wearing a half-mask, and in private he called his novel Look at the Masks!63 On the fictional level of LATH, “you” represents the protagonist’s last love, the only one who was able to appreciate his artistic process and who was his ideal reader, initiated into the mystery of creativity. The ironic attitude of the writer “N” toward his literary grandeur contributes to the image of arrogant literary snobbery. The poem was prophetic indeed: in the first review of LATH, published in the New York Times just days after the poem was written, Anatole Broyard strongly criticized the novel, accusing Nabokov of displaying an arrogant attitude toward readers and an

62



Nabokov, Stikhi, 299.

63



Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years, 213.

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obsession with his literary standing.64 Broyard wrote about the lack of “natural vocabulary,” comparing the language of LATH with “a banana split, complete with whipped cream.” The critic concluded his review by stating, “To say it plainly, the book strikes me as the production of an imagination paralyzed by vanity.” The next review, by Richard Poirier, appeared several days later in the New York Times Book Review and brought the poem’s second, self-ironic stanza to life. Viewing the novel as the failure of a snobbish, selfabsorbed writer, Poirier wrote, “Look at the Harlequins! is a novel in which Nabokov, acting as some kind of Prince of Letters, imagines what it might have been like if the kiss of love had transformed him only half-way from a frog.”65 After the initial wave of negative reviews, Nabokov expressed to his publisher Frederic W. Hills his sorrow for the fate of his last novel: “I wonder if you will resolutely resurrect the publicity for LATH . . . . I have a feeling that LATH has somehow been let down much too soon.”66 The reviewers’ attacks on the aging master of belles lettres are akin to those of the “atamans” of the steppes, who are ignorant of the foreign world of the Venetian carnival and its Harlequins.

Taking the Last Bow with the Commedia dell’Arte It would be an oversimplification to assume that interpreting LATH through the prism of the commedia dell’arte is the only suitable interpretation, and it would be an overstatement to place LATH among Nabokov’s greatest works. The aesthetic and artistic principles of the commedia represent just one of many textual layers, but they contribute to our overall understanding of Nabokov’s indebtedness to both the theatrical conventions of the commedia and the Russian Silver Age, with its commedia dell’arte

64

Anatole Broyard, “Snag in a Strip Tease,” The New York Times, October 10, 1974, 45.

65

Richard Poirier, “Nabokov as his own half-hero: Look at the Harlequins!,” New York Times Book Review, October 13, 1974, 2–4.

66

Nabokov, Selected Letters 1940–1977, 520–21.



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mania. The aesthetics of the commedia were indeed well suited for Nabokov’s poetics since, like commedia performers who sought to actively engage their audiences with their versatile skills, Nabokov invites LATH readers to be actively involved in his playful textual allusions. Nabokov’s literary gifts were based on impeccable technical skills and wild games of imagination, which mirrored the craft of the Italian actors who relied on imagination and brilliant acting technique. The commedia dell’arte is a sad comedy of human existence and includes all the hopes, vices, and disillusionment of humankind in its masks. Nabokov’s search for transcendent themes and his frequent usage of masks as a literary device come together with his choice of the ancient mask of Harlequin. By looking at the Harlequins, one comes to realize that LATH is not only a mock biography or self-parody but also a hymn to the power of artistic creativity and a tribute to the ancient commedia dell’arte, which required its actors to make their way through the endless labyrinth of imagination, inventing the world and reinventing reality.

Chapter 9

From

Empress Anna Ioannovna Empress of Popular Culture,

the

to the

Alla Pugacheva

In 1975, the year Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Look at the Harlequins! was published in the United States, the young singer Alla Pugacheva burst onto the stage of ideologically-charged Soviet estrada performing a song as a tragicomic clown called Arlekino.1 More than forty years later, millions of Russian fans are still looking at this Arlekino, who became a superstar of Russian popular culture. While the song was seen as a shocking novelty by the Soviet public and critics in 1975, it represented a continuation (if not a revival) of the deeply rooted tradition of harlequinized Russian art discussed in this book. This last chapter is dedicated to the empress Alla’s triumphant four-decades-long harlequinized reign on the throne of Russian popular culture. The political and private turbulence of the last four decades has not diminished her stardom. In recent years the post-Soviet media has frequently referred to Pugacheva as “the empress,” “Her Excellency,” and even “Alla the Great.”2 In 2000, the New York Times

1



Parts of this chapter were previously published as an article: Olga Partan, “Alla: The Jester-Queen of Russian Pop Culture,” Russian Review (July 2007): 481–500. I am grateful to Russian Review for granting permission to use passages from this article in the present book.

2



Olga Partan, “Feminism à la Russe? Pugacheva-Orbakaite’s Celebrity Construction through Family Bonds,” in Celebrity and Glamour in Contemporary Russia, ed. Helena Goscilo and Vlad Strukov (London: Routledge, 2011), 174.

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From the Empress Anna Ioannovna to the Empress of Popular Culture

Figure 21: Pugacheva’s press conference on her sixtieth birthday (2009). Courtesy of TASS Russian News Agency.

described Pugacheva as “the goddess of Russian pop, Moscow’s Tina Turner with a hint of Edith Piaf, whose songs have given voice to the yearning of millions,” adding that “there was and is only one 241

Chapter 9

superstar: Alla.”3 The Russian edition of Forbes magazine featured Pugacheva on the cover of its August 2005 issue, which rated the fifty top Russian celebrities and called her the “brightest star of the Russian pop scene” whose status as a prima donna is unshakeable.4 Despite the fact that Pugacheva is not well known outside Russia and the former Soviet Union, she is one of the top-selling music artists in the world. Her worldwide sales are comparable to those of the Beatles and Elvis Presley, and her voice is recognized in any Russian household. Pugacheva’s appearance and performing style do not fit with the aesthetics of a Western pop diva, but for decades Pugacheva has been glorified by the post-Soviet media for her distinctive Russian originality.5 Why has this popular singer had such a powerful presence in the Soviet and post-Soviet cultural landscape? Is there a key to understanding her astonishing popularity? This chapter suggests that in addition to her artistic talent, stage magnetism, and exuberant energy, there are two major driving forces behind Pugacheva’s long-lasting fame. The first is her onstage and offstage comic persona as a harlequinized female jester (shutikha)—a role that is deeply rooted in Russian cultural history—which Pugacheva has cultivated throughout her career.6 The second is her ability to master

3

Alison Smale, “A Superstar Evokes a Superpower,” New York Times, February 28, 2000.

4

Pugacheva was rated as number three in Forbes’s list of the fifty top stars of Russian cinema, sport, literature, and popular and classical music, behind only number one, tennis player Anna Sharapova, and number two, Pugacheva’s former husband, the pop star Filipp Kirkorov. Listing Pugacheva as the most highly paid female singer and the brightest star of Russian popular culture, Forbes noted that she would remain one of Russia’s most popular singers even if she never produced another album or performed in concert again. Forbes used three factors to rate the popularity of each star: their annual income, degree of media attention, and degree of public interest. See “Reiting 50 zvezd,” Forbes, Russian edition, August 2005, 50–73.

5

Partan, “Feminism à la Russe,” 173–74.

6

While female jesters (shutikhi) were not as influential and popular as male ones, they were an integral part of the well-established





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From the Empress Anna Ioannovna to the Empress of Popular Culture

and successfully leverage two core features of Soviet estrada: the multiplicity of genres and the merging of high and low cultures.7 The basis for Pugacheva’s unwavering popularity in the post-Soviet milieu is both her ongoing experimentation with new possibilities in the world of show business and, most important, her persona as a leading Russian female jester. As satirist Mikhail Zhvanetsky once quipped, “Her face changes, but her identity is unchangeable.”8 While Zhvanetsky was clearly referring to Pugacheva’s facelifts, he nonetheless defined the very nature of her post-Soviet metamorphosis: despite the many political, economic, historical, and personal changes that have affected her life, she has remained faithful to her artistic credo and her audience. Pugacheva’s 1975 song about the tragicomic clown Arlekino brought her public recognition and the prestigious socialist popsinger award the Grand Prix of the Bulgarian Zlatniyat Orfey (Golden Orpheus) festival. The music for “Arlekino” was by the Bulgarian composer Emil Dimitrov, and the Russian lyrics were

entertainment for Russian rulers until the death of Empress Anna Ioannovna in 1740, when her successor Anna Leopol’dovna forbade having jesters at the royal court. In the eighteenth century, words such as jester (shut and shutikha) and fool (durak and dura) had interchangeable meanings. Pugacheva, who is now a top member of the Russian elite and has explored various social roles, continues this tradition of highly placed jesters. On the role of jesters at the eighteenth-century court, see Anisimov, Anna Ioannovna, 75–91. 7

The root of the word estrada is from Latin strata (flooring or elevated platform or stage). Richard Stites noted in 1992 that the Russian culture of mass entertainment had not been sufficiently studied abroad, and estrada continues to be an understudied subject to this day. See Richard Stites, Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society since 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Noteworthy contributions to the study of estrada include David MacFadyen, Red Stars: Personality and the Soviet Popular Song, 1955–1991 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s, 2001), and MacFadyen, Estrada?! Grand Narratives and the Philosophy of the Russian Popular Song since Perestroika (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002); and E. D. Uvarova, ed., Estrada Rossii: XX vek: Leksikon (Moscow: Rossiiskaia politicheskaia entsiklopediia, 2000).

8

Mikhail Zhvanetskii, Moskovskie novosti, April 13–19, 1998, 1.





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written by the poet Boris Barkas, with the close involvement of Pugacheva. The lyrics reflect Pugacheva’s fascination with the entertainment of the marketplace and the circus. In an interview Pugacheva explained, “Ever since I was in circus school I have been drawn to songs with a comic twist, with juggling . . . to songs that allow me to fill myself with pain, mockery, irony, and sadness.”9 In her performances of “Arlekino,” Pugacheva appeared on stage with a profusion of uncontrollable red curls, her arms imitating the movements of a marionette and her singing alternating with clownish laughter. “Arlekino” was staged as a miniature play and was indeed an overwhelmingly theatrical performance. The organizer of the festival called her performance “the Pugacheva explosion.”10 By then, Pugacheva already stood apart not only by virtue of her vocal ability, which she used to convey all the contrasts of the tragicomic mood of her song, but also due to her acting skills and stage presence; even her flamboyant and clownish gestures on stage were stunningly original. Her performances were a rebellion against all the well-established canons of Soviet estrada, which was notable for dull-looking, static singers who glorified the Soviet ideological agenda with politically correct songs. In contrast, “Arlekino” presented the audience with a song about a tired clown with a foreign name who, under his merry mask, performed the tragic role of Shakespeare’s Hamlet: Смешить мне вас с годами всё трудней. Ведь я не шут у трона короля. Я Гамлета в безумии страстей Который год играю для себя.  Всё кажется, что маску я сниму И целый мир изменится со мной,

9

Aleksei Beliakov, Alka, Allochka, Alla Borisovna (Moscow: Vagrius, 1997), 140–41. In her youth, Pugacheva worked for a while as a concert master in the State Estrada and Circus School. See Uvarova, Estrada Rossii: XX vek, 480.



10



B. Serebrennikova, “Pevtsy sovetskoi estrady,” in Alla Pugacheva glazami druzei i nedrugov, ed. B. M. Poiurovskii (Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 1997), 1:43.

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From the Empress Anna Ioannovna to the Empress of Popular Culture

Но слёз моих не видно никому . . . Что ж: Арлекин я видно неплохой. It is becoming ever more difficult for me to make you laugh as time goes by, Since I am not a court jester. For many years I have played Hamlet in the madness of his passions, Performing just for myself. It often seems to me that if I take off my mask The whole world will change with me, But nobody sees my tears . . . I play Harlequin not badly, after all.11

At this point in her performance, Pugacheva would remove an imaginary mask from her face and show the audience her tears— a shocking and unexpected transformation following her exuberant laughter and pantomime. The audience saw on stage a tragic, lonely jester—a universal jester who did not belong to any temporal or geographical space and who, in the hallowed tradition of clowning, was allowed to break ideological taboos. After several emotionally charged seconds, Pugacheva would put the imaginary mask back on her face and finish her song on an optimistic note. The dissident intelligentsia interpreted Pugacheva’s song as a tribute to the plight of artists working under a totalitarian regime. The unexpected mention of Hamlet in the middle of a clownish performance was an allusion not only to Shakespeare’s tragic protagonist but also to Boris Pasternak’s poem “Hamlet” from his novel Doctor Zhivago, which was then circulating in samizdat and in smuggled foreign editions, since it had been banned from publication and distribution in the Soviet Union. Indeed, Pugacheva’s gestures—which made her look like a marionette—symbolized the puppet-like role of artists in the Soviet era when artistic expression was controlled by the ideological and personal whims of political

11



Alla Pugacheva, “Arlekino,” music by Emil Dimitrov, lyrics by Boris Barkas, 1975. Reissued on Zolotye pesni, compact disk (Moscow: Extraphone, 2000).

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leaders.12 Analyzing Pugacheva’s cultural significance for Soviet intellectuals in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, the theater critic Nina Agisheva notes, “Alla is the most stable and the most popular myth that we have inherited from the Soviet epoch. Back then we were all composing a myth about being free in a country with no freedom. In a certain sense, Pugacheva’s rebellion on the stage of Soviet estrada meant just as much for our life as the dissident movement.”13 Pugacheva’s improvisational onstage freedom, combined with the messages hidden between the lines of her song, involved risk and did not go unnoticed by Soviet censors. From their point of view, a Soviet performer should not be unhappy under her character’s merry mask and should not be allowed to dream about a change in her surroundings. Sergei Lapin, the chair of the Soviet State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting and an infamous “terminator” of “freethinkers” in the Soviet media, immediately issued his verdict on Pugacheva’s performance of “Arlekino,” saying that the nature of her success “was not Soviet.”14 As a result, Pugacheva’s victory in Bulgaria was not broadcast on Soviet television until a month later. Indeed, Pugacheva’s triumph was not Soviet but rather quintessentially Russian in nature. While “Arlekino” shocked some members of the public and critics, it represented the continuation of a deeply rooted tradition in Russian cultural history, as Pugacheva resurrected for Soviet audiences the Italian commedia dell’arte mask of Harlequin, who had been vagabonding along the roads of Russian cultural history since the pre-Petrine era. Migrating from

12

A similar view of Soviet artists as puppets that are manipulated by the Soviet rulers was expressed in the 1973 “Marionetki” (Marionettes), by the rock group Mashina vremeni, whose signature song included the lines “Harlequins and pirates, circus performers and acrobats, / And a villain whose looks are terrifying / A wolf and a rabbit, a tiger in a cage / All of them are marionettes / In skillful and hardworking hands.” Andrei Makarevich, “Marionetki,” 1973. As cited on www.lyricfind.ru.

13

Nina Agisheva, “Alla, i bol’she nichego,” Moskovskie novosti, August 24–31, 1997, 19.

14

Beliakov, Alka, Allochka, Alla Borisovna, 142–44.





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From the Empress Anna Ioannovna to the Empress of Popular Culture

high to low culture, and vice versa, Pugacheva’s Arlekino was a messenger, resurrected from the past, with links to the carnival laughter described by Bakhtin in his work on Rabelais.15 Bakhtin wrote that rogues, fools, and clowns were historically privileged in their right to ignore convention and to parody sacred cows, and that such social functions were deeply rooted in folk consciousness. Pugacheva’s appearance on the Soviet stage with her “personalized eccentricity” signaled her status as such a privileged jester.16 Her stage persona which had strong affinities with the medieval Russian minstrels, skomorokhi, and the royal jesters of both genders was appealing to the Russian cultural consciousness. With “Arlekino,” Pugacheva successfully established her stage persona as a female jester who was allowed to make artistic statements that would have been fatal for other performers who did not have the jester’s privilege to stand out from those around them.17 Indeed, like the jesters of long-standing tradition, she was sometimes vulgar and crude but always a keen observer of her surroundings. Her appearance, with her corpulent figure, which has never significantly changed despite her constant battles with weight, and her extravagant outfits, made for a different figure, effectively projected the image of a star jester. Furthermore, the improvisational nature and imaginative freedom of Harlequin befitted Pugacheva’s performing talent, making her first major success a fusion of both Western and Russian comic traditions. Pugacheva’s ascent to the throne of popular culture was aided by her ability to capture the essence of estrada—juggling various genres and simultaneously interweaving high and low

15



Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 34.

16



The expression is taken from Mikhail Bakhtin, “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel,” in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, ed. Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 158–67.

17



Ibid, 159. Here Bakhtin writes that the distinctive feature of the jester “is as well a privilege—the right to be ‘other’ in this world, the right not to make common cause with any single one of the existing categories that life makes available.”

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culture in her performances. The roots of estrada can also be traced to pre-Petrine Russia and the performances of skomorokhi at marketplace festivities, to nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury balagan performances, and to the modernist infatuation with cabarets and variety shows in which Western models were skillfully intermingled with the Russian national tradition. Soviet estrada inherited a multiplicity of genres from its prerevolutionary ancestors, with the concerts typically including diverse elements such as pop, folk, and gypsy singing; poetry readings; social satire; and dancing, pantomime, acrobatics, single-actor theater, and parodies that mocked this multiplicity of genres. Furthermore, estrada intermingled these popular entertainments with high culture, introducing star ballet dancers from the Bolshoi Theatre, renowned pianists, opera singers, and theater and movie stars who recited poetry or performed excerpts from their classical repertoire. Unlike Russian prerevolutionary shows or Western variety shows, Soviet estrada was also a powerful propaganda tool with a marked ideological function. Pugacheva has built her performance on these principles of estrada. Her music has been based on a well-balanced combination of pop, rock, folk, and gypsy songs, and her performances have also included declamation and pantomime. The merger of high and low culture is a permanent feature of her art, and she was one of the first Russian pop stars to popularize such poets as William Shakespeare, Marina Tsvetaeva, Osip Mandel’shtam, and Boris Pasternak.18 While Soviet estrada generally functioned as a powerful propaganda tool, Pugacheva used her onstage persona as a popular jester to avoid this agenda in her repertoire—which, in itself, was of course a political statement. Indeed, some of her comic songs contained subtly subversive political messages.

18



Many of Pugacheva’s songs are based on classical poems. To name just a few, the song “Shakespeare Sonnet” is based on sonnet 90 in the translation of S. Marshak; the songs “I Like That You Are Not in Love with Me” and “When I Will Become a Grandmother” are based on Marina Tsvetaeva’s eponymous poems; and “The Candle Was Burning” is based on Pasternak’s poem “Winter Night.”

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From the Empress Anna Ioannovna to the Empress of Popular Culture

For example, one of her humorous songs from the Soviet era, “Vsio mogut koroli” (Kings can do anything), was often interpreted as a cleverly disguised political joke with the underlying message that even the most powerful rulers are vulnerable and lonely human beings and that political power does not bring happiness.19 The lyrics of the song narrate a love story between the French king Louis II and a beautiful shepherdess. Their romance turns out to be an ill-fated story of love made impossible by class barriers, as the king is forced to marry an ugly bride with royal blood running in her veins. Hilariously inventive in her onstage performances of this piece, Pugacheva played numerous roles: the king, his beloved, his ugly bride, and pretentious courtiers. She wore a shapeless, multicolored garment that was instantaneously transformed from the ragged dress of a poor shepherdess into a king’s mantle. Mocking the illusionary power of political rulers, she made a crown with her hands, put it on her clownish red head, and, jumping clumsily, sang, Всё могут короли, всё могут короли! И судьбы всей земли, вершат они порой. Ну что не говори, жениться по любви Не может ни один, ни один король! Kings can do anything, kings can do anything at all! And the destiny of Earth is sometimes in their hands. But whatever you say, not a single king Can marry someone he loves!20

This refrain disturbed Soviet censors, and on several occasions Pugacheva was strongly advised not to include “Kings Can Do Anything” in her repertoire at concerts for Soviet bureaucrats and governmental officials.21 Pugacheva’s rebelliousness and

19



Alla Pugacheva, “Vsio mogut koroli,” by Rychkov and Derbenev, 1977. Reissued on Zolotye pesni, compact disk (Moscow: Extraphone, 2000).

20



Ibid.

21



Beliakov, Alka, Allochka, Alla Borisovna, 190.

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desire to shock Soviet officials were legendary, however. Ignoring the censors’ recommendation, she not only sang this song for an audience full of representatives of the Soviet secret police and militia but, approaching the first orchestra row, she even pointed a finger at the minister of internal affairs, Nikolai Shchelokov, and his deputy Iurii Churbanov (Leonid Brezhnev’s son-in-law) as she sang this provocative refrain. Pugacheva always staged her breaking of taboos as clownishness—she was, after all, singing a love song about a French king, who had nothing in common with the head of the Soviet secret police. Although the heavily controlled Soviet media was silent about the star’s politically incorrect behavior, rumors about Pugacheva’s comic revolt circulated widely among her admirers, boosting her popularity. The fact that Pugacheva was not seriously punished for her disobedience by the totalitarian state brings to mind Bakhtin’s notion of carnivalistic medieval laughter, which “was absolutely unofficial but nevertheless legalized,” as “the rights of the fool’s cap were inviolable.”22 While Bakhtin was speaking of the ancient Roman and medieval jesters, Pugacheva’s status as one of the leading jesters in a totalitarian state was akin to that of her predecessors. As she admitted in one of her interviews, “Who am I? I am a jester… a jester next to the throne. I am allowed to say anything, but kind of jokingly.”23 The full magnitude of Pugacheva’s artistry is perhaps best appreciated through her concerts since neither her television performances nor her albums can fully capture the performing talent and charisma that she presents live onstage.24 Pugacheva has always been an actress par excellence who needs a stage for her

22

Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 89.

23

Zhdi i pomni menia, videocassette, dir. Iurii Zanin, 5-part documentary (Baltic Video ORT, 1994), tape 2.

24

This chapter deals with the live performances that have been a critical part of Pugacheva’s success and are part of the history of Russian popular culture, which is often reconstructed through the reminiscences of eyewitnesses. The discussion of Pugacheva’s concerts here is based on critical reviews, my own notes, and interviews with audience members immediately after the concerts.



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performances and for whom interaction with her audience is a key element and source of inspiration. I attended three live concerts at different stages of Pugacheva’s career: first in her prime in 1983 in Moscow, and then in Boston in 2000 and 2009. In 1983, she was the first pop singer to be invited to perform onstage at the Moscow Art Theatre (MXAT), where she sang for a very unusual audience— the actors of this elite theater, some of whom came to the concert in a very skeptical mood.25 Belonging to the Pugacheva fan club was, and often still is, considered by some representatives of the intelligentsia to be a sign of bad taste. Richard Stites notes that during the Brezhnev era Pugacheva was “adored by the millions” but was also “scorned by the intelligentsia as a vulgar pop figure, and occasionally branded ‘wild’ by official commentators.”26 On December 26, 1983, however, on the prestigious MAT stage, Pugacheva performed her show The Singer’s Monologues, which consisted of twenty-six of her most popular songs. She presented many of these songs from a new perspective, with unexpected impromptus that targeted the audience and, perhaps sensing their skepticism, she worked hard to relay to her spectators her own performing style and her understanding of the actors’ métier. Her performance of “Beda” (Misfortune) was the breakthrough moment when she finally won over her audience. The lyrics and music were written by another rebel—the Russian bard and actor Vladimir Vysotsky (1938–1980), who had graduated from the Moscow Art Theatre School in 1960 and who had tragically died three years prior to this concert. Pugacheva dedicated the song to Vysotsky’s memory. “Misfortune” is one of Pugacheva’s most tragic songs, a lament on the theme of ill-fated love wherein the lyrical heroine is plagued by misfortune and slander throughout her life. After

25



The discussion of Pugacheva’s 1983 Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) concert is based on my personal recollections as a member of the MAT troupe at that time and on the reminiscences of other attendees such as MAT director Oleg Efremov and actress Angelina Stepanova, in Angelina Stepanova, “Monologi pevitsy,” Komsomol’skaia pravda, December 31, 1983, reprinted in Alla Pugacheva glazami druzei i nedrugov, ed. Poiurovskii, 1:241–42.

26



Stites, Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society since 1900, 157.

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experiencing a single brief moment of happiness in love, the heroine spends the rest of her life separated from her beloved: Он настиг меня, догнал He pursued me and caught up with me, Обнял, на руки поднял, He embraced me and took me in his arms Рядом с ним в седле Next to him, in the saddle, Беда ухмылялася . . . Мisfortune was smirking . . . Но остаться он не мог — But he could not stay— Был всего один денек, For more than one day, А Беда на вечный срок While Мisfortune dogged увязалася. my footsteps forever.27

“Misfortune” could not compete in popularity with Pugacheva’s greatest hits, but it was one of her most dramatic and original stage performances, demonstrating her interconnectedness with both Vysotsky’s art and Russian folk traditions. Vysotsky composed the lyrics and music of “Misfortune” as a stylized Russian folk love song, which provided Pugacheva with an opportunity to demonstrate her vocal and artistic capabilities in yet another genre. The song allowed her to explore the lyricism and psychological depth of female folk lament and to use her acting talent to affect her audience emotionally.28 Pugacheva then demonstrated her ability to juggle tragic and comic moods, alternating her dramatic love songs with songs that parody romantic love, providing comic relief— a tendency that can also be observed in her albums but which is most vividly demonstrated in her live concerts.

27

Vladimir Vysotsky, “Beda,” music and lyrics by Vysotsky, 1972, www. kulichki.com/vv/pesni/ya-nesla-svoyu-bedu.html.

28

My discussion of Pugacheva’s performance of “Misfortune” is based on my recollections and the notes that I made after her MXAT concert that I attended more than two decades ago. Nevertheless, my own and other spectators’ reactions to this song during Pugacheva’s February 2000 concert in the Boston Orpheum Theater were very similar—it was a magnificent performance of a great dramatic actress who emotionally exposed herself to her audience, touching the spectators’ souls.



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After this concert, the MAT troupe thanked Pugacheva with a prolonged standing ovation, and Oleg Efremov, the theater’s artistic director at the time, later told a group of young actors and actresses that they should learn professionalism from Pugacheva’s performance, especially praising her dedication to her art and her rapport with the audience. The well-known actress Angelina Stepanova, who was in attendance, later wrote, The concert was a revelation for us to a certain degree: neither movies nor television, unfortunately, had fully acquainted us with such a Pugacheva. In my opinion, this concert was further proof that art does not have low or high genres. A serious role in a serious play can become superficial and estrada can be a serious art form.29

Pugacheva often states that her sense of humor and self-irony are the two main qualities that help her survive in the post-Soviet environment. This sense of humor, along with her dedication to her profession and loyalty to her audience, including the Russian émigré one, was evident during her tour of the United States and Canada in 2000 that included a concert in Boston at the Orpheum Theater on February 23, 2000.30 The predominant mood of Pugacheva’s performances during that tour was that of self-irony, if not self-mockery. Through her songs, written during the various decades of her life as a star, she mocked her passionate youth, her endless love affairs, her approaching old age, and even her health problems.31 Pugacheva actively engaged with the audience, admitting that she had come to realize that she is a very good comedienne who likes to play humorous musical vignettes onstage.

29



Stepanova, “Monologi pevitsy,” 1:241–42.

30



The concerts of Pugacheva’s US-Canada tour in 2000 are described in Smale, “A Superstar Evokes a Superpower.” The description of Pugacheva’s Orpheum Theater concert in Boston on February 23, 2000, is also based on my notes, taken during the show and on interviews with other audience members.

31



Smale, “A Superstar Evokes a Superpower.”

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Turning her back to the audience for just a second, she changed her hairdo and launched into her hilarious mocking song “Nastoiashchii polkovnik” (A Real Colonel). Imitating the provincial Russian speech pattern of a waitress who complains to her customers about her short passionate love affair with a criminal who pretended to be a “real colonel,” Pugacheva sang, Так вот под этой личиной And under this mask Скрывался, блин, уголовник! A criminal, damn it, was hiding! Ну в жизни, понимаешь, One really couldn’t tell не скажешь Какой был мужчина . . . What kind of a man he was . . . Настоящий полковник! А real colonel!32

Here, Pugacheva stopped singing and, as the waitress, addressed the audience: “What do you want from me? Our whole country is criminal.” As the audience laughed and applauded, Pugacheva paused for a moment and continued: “What a man he was . . . A real colonel!” Pugacheva’s uncensored post-Soviet performance style was clearly demonstrated when she both addressed the audience with religious blessings and used Russian obscenities that are not included on her albums or music videos. Incorporating the richness of her entire repertoire, she sang “The Candle Was Burning,” which is based on Boris Pasternak’s poem “Winter Night,” alternating the celebrated poet’s verse with obscene jokes. The spectators—who sang along with Pugacheva and knew the lyrics to most of her songs—ranged from Russian-speaking kindergartners to senior citizens, and included many teenagers and middle-aged fans. When Pugacheva first emerged on the Boston stage wearing a typically shapeless black garment, her face resembled a wax mask: she

32



Alla Pugacheva, “Nastoyashchii polkovnik,” music by Alla Pugacheva, on Ne delaite mne bol’no, gospoda, compact disc (Moscow: Studiia SOYUZ, 1995).

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looked old, exhausted, and overweight. As soon as she started to sing, however, she underwent a transformation, releasing the same energy she had many years ago and establishing a strong rapport with the audience. She looked sincere and emotional when she admitted on several occasions that the stage is her true life and her audience is the only unfailing love of her life. At times her conversation with the public sounded almost too sentimental, but the émigré audience of her American tour greatly appreciated such sentimentality, as they were nostalgic themselves for the past that Alla reincarnated onstage. Even if her sentimentality was a clever marketing strategy, it contributed to the success of her concert, since she humorously addressed the individual and cultural memories of her audience. In the post-Soviet era, Pugacheva has maintained her status as the jester-empress of estrada both onstage and off, despite Russia’s ongoing political and economic turbulence and the ever-changing fashions of show business. The post-Soviet media have provided Pugacheva with ample opportunity to cultivate her offstage comic persona as a jester, exposing her private life to the public. The singer’s jokes about herself and her surroundings immediately become available to millions of her fans, sometimes damaging her reputation but always contributing to her popularity. When, during the celebration of her fiftieth birthday in 1999, three of Pugacheva’s four ex-husbands happened to be onstage simultaneously, she joked, “If all my lovers came on stage as well, it would definitely collapse.”33 Whether she divorces, puts crowns on her front teeth, changes her hair color, or drastically loses or gains weight, she is the first to provide her fans with humorous comments about such metamorphoses. Despite her constant complaints about the annoying paparazzi and the media’s obsession with her life, she continues to expose the various aspects of her offstage life to the public. Her rebelliousness against conventions and her physical appearance as a female jester have continued in the post-Soviet environment, as she still wears extravagant, clownish garments,

33



“Muzh’ia Ally Pugachevoi,” Argumenty i fakty (April 1999).

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exposing the imperfections of her body to the public. Since her financial prosperity would allow her to consult with Russia’s leading fashion designers and hair stylists, this suggests that her public image may be the result of a conscious strategy rather than a lack of taste. Pugacheva’s post-Soviet albums and music videos are filled with humor and playfulness, as she creates pastiches and skillfully quotes musical, visual, and literary works from diverse cultural

Figure 22: Pugacheva with Russian president Vladimir Putin (2014). Courtesy of TASS Russian News Agency.

milieus. Such quotations are characteristic for postmodernist art and literature and, using Mikhail Epstein’s term, represent “postmodernism’s self-quoting art,” in which artists endlessly “quote” others to achieve the originality of self-expression via imitation.34 Pugacheva’s 2005 album Zvezda (Star) illustrates her continual intermingling of well-established tradition with experimentation.35

34

Mikhail Epstein, “Conclusion: On the Place of Postmodernism in Postmodernity,” in Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Post–Soviet Culture, by Mikhail N. Epstein, Alexander A. Genis, and Slobodanka M. Vladiv-Glover, trans. Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover (New York: Berghahn Books, 1999), 461–62.

35

Alla Pugacheva, “Zvezda,” lyrics by Chuevskii, on Zvezda, record (Moscow : Reflex Records, 2005).





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From the Empress Anna Ioannovna to the Empress of Popular Culture

The album draws on a number of musical genres and styles, successfully targeting listeners of various age and social groups. The music interweaves jazz with stylized folkloric tunes, disco with lyrical love songs, and comic musical vignettes with convict songs. The lyrics juxtapose obscene, provincial, and criminal Russian slang with the lyrics of nineteenth-century Russian romances. The comedic mood of the album is expressed in Pugacheva’s clever, playful experimentation with different styles and genres. The presence of religious themes and stylized prayers that alternate with songs that use obscenities are new features characteristic of Pugacheva’s postSoviet art. For example, the song “Ischeznet grust” (The sadness will disappear) includes direct appeals to God in the form of a stylized prayer, while the very next song, “Sumashedshaia semeika” (Crazy family), includes the thinly veiled use of obscenities. The opening song, “Zvezda” (Star), is a musical pastiche that begins with the sound of dance steps. After singing about an urban landscape featuring a broken streetlight, Pugacheva sings the refrain to Petr Bulakhov’s well-known nineteenth-century Russian romance “Gori, gori, moia zvezda” (Shine, shine, my star!), setting it to a contemporary tune. Pugacheva then imitates Ella Fitzgerald’s vocal jazz modulations with the refrain, “Shine, shine, shine my star! / Shine, above the broken streetlight!” Pugacheva sings that despite broken illusions, one should believe that the star of hope will never vanish from the sky, unlike the Russian streetlights that people constantly smash to pieces. At the end of the song, Pugacheva refers both to the celestial star of salvation and to herself as a star who continues to shine for her audience. From the first song to the last, the album Zvezda confirms to listeners that Alla is indeed still a star capable of continually updating her style while maintaining her established performing tradition, pleasing her older fans and attracting new generations. In the hit “Nepogoda” (Bad weather) the heroine ascends to “the icy throne of love”—strongly reminiscent of the famous “Iceberg” that Pugacheva sang during the Soviet era (“And you are as cold as an iceberg in the ocean / And all of your sadness is under black water”). Pugacheva’s aesthetics of imitation and numerous selfquotations create a “postmodernist originality” that, according to 257

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Epstein, is based on “imitation and cliché, allowing the cliché itself to be perceived as a simple and unforced movement of the soul, a new sincerity.”36 In 2009, on the eve of her sixtieth birthday, Pugacheva officially announced that she was planning to finish her singing and touring career and to produce an international farewell tour, Mechty o Lubvi (Dreams about love). The tour started in Moscow and—after concerts in North America, Europe, and Israel—ended in Bulgaria, where her performance of “Arlekino” had catapulted Pugacheva to stardom in 1975. As a spectator at the Boston concert in the Cutler Majestic Theater on June 21, 2009, I perceived Pugacheva’s first appearance onstage as being clownish and grotesque. Her mask-like, botoxsmoothed, plastic-surgery–rejuvenated face was a striking contrast with a black mini-tunic exposing the swollen legs of a sixty-year-old woman. Her appearance revealed not only her mature age but her apparent foregoing of the dietary restrictions and exercise routines that are typical of Western show-business stars. Nevertheless, as soon as Pugacheva started singing, her stage magnetism electrified the audience. A gigantic screen on stage projected colorful visual effects that combined with the flowing fabric of her tunics, which eventually changed from mini- to maxi-length, covering her whole body and creating the impression that the empress of Russian pop was flying above the stage like a goddess. The concert repertoire consisted of songs from different stages of Pugacheva’s career, ranging from dramatic to comic, while she used small items to instantaneously transform herself according to the content of each song. The photographic imagery on screen reminded the spectators about various highlights of Alla’s triumphant career. Almost at the end of the program, Pugacheva performed her famous 1997 hit “Primadonna,” which echoes Canio’s aria from Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci with the lines “Laugh in your destiny’s face, primadonna!” and “You are used to a scary and funny role: to be a star.”37 The audience sang and ecstatically applauded the goddess

36

Epstein, “Conclusion,” 461.

37

Alla Pugacheva, “Primadonna,” music and lyrics by Alla Pugacheva (1997).



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From the Empress Anna Ioannovna to the Empress of Popular Culture

of pop, who would abandon the stage to walk among her fans—an effect that would have been lost in a big sports arena of the type in which Pugacheva usually performed. At the finale, Alla appeared on stage wearing a bright red tunic covered by a light red scarf, surrounded by special effects of flying stars going up toward the sky to eternity, and she, the immortal goddess sang, “Я улетаю прочь от земли / Не будите меня, умоляю! / Я вижу сны, / сны о любви” (I am flying away from the earth / Do not wake me up, I beg you! / I see dreams / dreams about love).38 The red tunic was a slight modification of her early Arlekino image and contributed to the sense that the entire era of Alla Pugacheva, the jester-empress, was disappearing forever. Since her farewell tour, Pugacheva has occasionally sung at various concerts but no longer goes on tour. The media obsession with the private life of Pugacheva, her husband Maksim Galkin, and their regular TV appearances form a type of Russian celebrity reality TV show. While Pugacheva’s views are far more progressive and liberal than those of President Vladimir Putin and his administration, her status as a jester-empress allows her to express strong opinions that go against the grain of state propaganda, despite its tight control over the media. As a guest of Vladimir Pozner on his talk show on April 9, 2012, after the Russian presidential election, Pugacheva was elegant, refined, and thoughtful, carefully choosing the words for her risqué statements to millions of her fans.39 While discussing her social and political positions, she noted that, knowing Putin personally, she was convinced that he would not seek a third presidential term in 2012.40 Pugacheva stated, “Putin could

38



“Ia uletaiu,” music by Aleksandr Ivanov, lyrics by Sergei Abrashin (2008).

39



Pozner-Alla Pugacheva, accessed June 25, 2015.

40



After learning that Putin was seeking reelection in 2012 for a third term, Pugacheva became a confidant and spokesperson for oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov in his unsuccessful presidential campaign. She demonstrated her political activism and even participated in televised debates between Prokhorov and the odious politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, another presidential candidate.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQWiUHf7fcc,

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surround himself with people of Prokhorov’s stature in order to be a president . . . and not . . . hmmm . . . how should I phrase it . . . not the underworld boss of a criminal country.”41 After a while, she added, “There was a great loss in Russia—the loss of conscience.” To the question of how she felt about Putin’s third presidential term, she replied, “It’s a mistake . . . . It’s not nice . . . . It’s humiliating for all of us. For the whole nation.” In response to Pozner’s observation, regarding the upcoming broadcast of “Alla Pugacheva—Maksim Galkin Direct Line for Communication with the People,” that the only other person who had conducted such a direct line was President Putin, Pugacheva clownishly replied, “Really? That means that I am the second one? What a shame, I thought that I was the first.” On April 15, 2012, her birthday, the jester-empress of pop culture and her fifth husband, Galkin Figure 23: Pugacheva in concert. conducted the long-anticipated Zolotoi grammofon, 2002. “Direct Line for Communication Courtesy of TASS with the People” on the televiRussian News Agency. sion channel NTV.42 Centuries had passed since Sumarokov wrote his Monsters, in which the jester Arlikin becomes a judge, and now Pugacheva the jester appeared in a TV studio to issue judgements on Russia’s social and political

41

Pugacheva used the slang word pakhan—a criminal boss, or mafia head.

42

Alla Pugacheva-Maksim Galkin. “Liniia obshcheniia s narodom.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JH-Ndpqu1Y, Accessed on June 4, 2015.



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issues. Pugacheva entered the NTV studio in a tacky and clownish purple mini-tunic with high-heeled white boots that made her look like a female clown on stilts in a circus arena. After climbing clumsily to her throne-like armchair, Pugacheva raised her fingers above her head, imitating a crown, and Galkin repeated her gesture. This behavior seemed to signify her status as the only real reigning royalty—Alla the female jester, who rebels against prevailing political orthodoxy. Once again, as Bakhtin wrote, the jester has been historically privileged in their right to ignore convention and to parody sacred cows and government officials. In response to a question about whether Russian men should be allowed to change their genders, without a moment of hesitation, Pugacheva wished happiness to all transgender individuals who are brave enough to undergo the difficult procedure. Expressing her opinion on the Pussy Riot punk-rock protest performance at the Christ the Savior Cathedral, Pugacheva noted that although in her opinion the three lead singers (Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich) were not artistically gifted and wanted to attract attention to themselves, their incarceration was too strict a punishment: “Let them spend a year in a convent with nuns, but not in a prison! What kind of Orthodox Christians are we after that? Ah? The church should guide, not punish.” In response to a question about homosexuality, Galkin enlightens the television audience by saying, “Homosexuality is not an illness. Homosexuality should never be prosecuted by the state. This is some sort of witch hunt, nothing else.” To the final, non-political question about what she dreamed of, Pugacheva answered that she dreamt about her future metamorphosis from Pugacheva the singer into Pugacheva the screen actress. In his recent satiric eulogy to Pugacheva, Zhvanetsky notes, “The country knows Putin and Pugacheva, and these two are quite sufficient for the country. Alla dearest! She sang in such a way that everyone repeated her, she lives in such a way that everyone repeats her.”43

43



M. Zhvanetskii in Alla Pugacheva—moia babushka (presentation of a biographical documentary, 2014), youtube.com/watch?v=i6m3pY0UAJI, accessed May 12, 2015.

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Figure 24: Pugacheva in concert. Christmas Meetings with Alla Pugacheva, 2012. Courtesy of TASS Russian News Agency.

Indeed, as jester-empress, Pugacheva is a cultural phenomenon not only within the context of Soviet and post-Soviet popular culture but also in the history of the Russian harlequinades. Throughout her career, Pugacheva’s stage persona as an uncensored jester has provided her with a degree of artistic and social freedom unthinkable for many other performers. The nature of her art is rooted in timeless universal laughter that has an “indissoluble and essential relation to freedom.”44

44



Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 89.

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Epilogue

The Italian Arlecchino on the Post-Soviet Stage

I would like to conclude my study of the three-century-long history of the Italian masks vagabonding through Russian culture with one more sensational appearance of the Italian Harlequin on the postSoviet stage, when a Russian audience was exposed once again to the best achievements of the Italian performing arts. In May of 2001, the Third International Theater Olympics in Moscow opened with the legendary production of Carlo Goldoni’s Arlecchino, Servitore di Due Padroni (Harlequin, a Servant of Two Masters) produced by Giorgio Strehler (1921–1997), the artistic director of the Piccolo Teatro di Milano. This production was first staged in 1947 and became an artistic emblem of Strehler’s company. The play has been revised several times and has received international acclaim; by the time of its arrival in Russia, the company had performed it with sensational success more than two thousand times in over forty countries. The Goldoni play relies heavily on the commedia dell’arte, which had been Strehler’s inspiration throughout his career.1 The plot centers on a cunning and imaginative simpleton Arlecchino from Bergamo, who finds himself hungry and without any money in Venice. In order to make some extra money and get some food, he accepts two job offers simultaneously and decides to serve two

1



My discussion of Georgio Strehler’s production is based on Carlo Goldoni, The Servant of Two Masters, adaptation by Dorothy Louise (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003), and a videotape of Giorgio Strehler’s production of Harlequin, the Servant of Two Masters, in Il grande teatro di Giorgio Strehler, vol. 2, DVD 3, Arlecchino servitore di due padroni di Carlo Goldoni. Piccolo Teatro di Milano 60. TV version, 1993.

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masters. One of his masters is the Turin noblewoman Beatrice, who is dressed as a man, and the other master is the Turin nobleman Florindo, who is in love with Beatrice but does not recognize her in her disguise. Truffaldino, in turn, falls in love with the charming and witty servant Smeraldina, who reciprocates his feelings. The comedy has a happy ending with everyone getting married. The secondary characters, based on celebrated commedia dell’arte masks, include the Venetian merchant Pantalone, the innkeeper Brighella, and the Dottore Lombardi. Strehler’s synthetic production included dancing, operatic singing, acrobatic tricks, and, most important, a revived commedia acting technique that has nothing in common with the Russian theater’s psychological truthfulness based on the Stanislavsky style of acting. When Ferruccio Soleri first appeared onstage playing the role of Harlequin, the spectators experienced delight mixed with an almost mystical fear because of the grotesque combination of Harlequin’s immobile black half-mask with his agility, unexpected jumps, dancing, and acrobatics. The spectators’ initial shock at seeing a dead face that is artificially attached to an agile body eventually disappeared, as they saw a very expressive mouth that produced joyful sounds with almost inhuman speed and a body capable of the dynamic movements of a circus acrobat. Harlequin’s movements are strongly reminiscent of a puppet being manipulated by a skillful puppeteer. Soleri’s Harlequin is more a bizarre creature than a human being, and the same could be said about the other masks, Pantalone, Brighella, and Dottore, with their exaggerated noses, caricaturized movements, and almost animalistic ways of communicating—screams, imitations of various animal sounds, and so forth. The anti-Stanislavskian nature of Strehler’s production, with its theatricality is far removed from realist psychological truthfulness. The Russian audience once again encountered foreign theater that crosses cultural and linguistic boundaries. Most of the spectators were not aware of the fact that the masked Harlequin, Soleri, had been performing this role for almost four decades and was by then in his mid-seventies. After a tenminute-long ovation at the end of the play, Harlequin took off his mask, revealing his gray hair to the Russian audience. Expressing 264

The Italian Arlecchino on the Post-Soviet Stage

their admiration for the virtuosity of the Italian performer, the audience stood up, continuing the ovation. Leading representatives of contemporary Russian theater and cinema (including the theater directors Mark Zakharov and Petr Fomenko and the film director Eldar Riazanov) along with members of the Russian government (including the mayor of Moscow and minister of culture) stood together with the rest of the spectators to applaud this new triumph of the Italian harlequinade on Russian soil.2 This standing ovation in 2001 was strongly reminiscent of the response in 1731, when Anna and her courtiers gave a standing ovation to the first Italian company in Russia, led by Ristori. The 2001 Italian harlequinade was performed in Italian without subtitles, just as Ristori’s commedia dell’arte troupe had performed without any translation for Anna and the Russian court, which had had no knowledge of the Italian language. The universal, transcultural language of the Italian commedia easily delighted the Russian audience once again. The play’s merry childishness and flamboyance took the spectators to a magical harlequinized world, far away from their disturbing everyday political and economic reality.3 The play’s merry, life-assuring mood, its theater-withina-theater stage that imitates the balagan-like structure of the marketplace, and the actors, whose acting technique and costumes seek to recreate the commedia dell’arte spirit, all hark back to the commedia’s Renaissance roots and Bakhtin’s concept of medieval laughter. Harlequin, with gray hair exposed during the final bow, seems to transcend this mask’s several-centuries-long vagabonding of the world of art from antiquity to modernity. Harlequin greatly contributes to the sense of the continuity of the ancient commedia tradition, functioning as a medium between the ancient audience and the contemporary one. The combination of a static dead face with a body full of life and the immortality of Harlequin’s character in the Western arts sends contemporary spectators a clear message: while death is inseparable from life, art is eternal.

2

Marina Murzina, “Italiantsy v Rossii,” Argumenty i fakty, no. 17 (2001): 22.

3

Ibid.



265

Bibliog raphy

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283

Index

Adashev School of Acting, 192-193 Aesthetics, 17, 30, 77, 82, 99, 184, 198, 218, 237, 239, 242, 257 Agisheva, Nina, 246 Aikhenvald, Jurii, 197 Aleksei Mikhailovich, Tsar, 36-37, 82 Alexander I, 117-119 Alexandrov, Vladimir, 220, 221n16, 222n21 Alyokhina, Maria, 261 Andreini, Isabella, 230 Andrews, Allen, 138n27 Anisimov, Evgenii, 71n45-47, 243n6 Anna Ioannovna, 18, 24-27, 30, 54-82, 84, 114, 123, 164-165, 206, 240, 243n6 Anna Leopol’dovna, 243n6 Annenkov, Pavel, 135, 148, 160 An-sky, S., see Rappaport Araja, Francesco, 76 Aristotle, 77 Arlekin, 121 Arlekin, 18, 88, 93n13, 98n23, 107, 121, 221n17, 222, 236 “Arlekino,” 240, 243-247, 258-259 Arlikin, 39, 44, 70, 83, 97, 98, 101102, 105-112, 260 Ashkinazi, Zigfrid, 165 Averintsev, Sergei, 32, 33n9 Avvakum, Protopop (Archpriest), see Petrov, Avvakum Babikov, A., 221n17 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 19, 22, 33n9, 284

82n74, 132n3, 148, 189, 247, 247n16, 250, 261, 262n44, 265 Bakst, Leon, 184, 188 Balabina, Maria, 135, 138n27, 139 Balakirev, Mily 72 Ballets Russes, 13, 184, 186-188, 190 Barkas, Boris, 244, 245n11 Arlekino

Baroque (European, Russian), 26, 81-82, 132n2 Battoccio, 51,106, 225, 229 Beatles, 242 Beliakov, Aleksei, 244n9, 246n14, 249n21 Beaumarchais, Pierre-Augustin Caron de, 18 Beardsley, Aubrey, 163 Belli, Giuseppe, 138 Belkin, Anatolii, 30n1, 32n5 Bely, Andrei, 170, 174, 218-219, 221n16 Petersburg, 218-219

Benois, Aleksandr, 18, 182, 184190 Benois, Nikolai, 218 Bentley, Eric, 168n18 Bergholtz, Friedrich Wilhelm von, 42-44 Berkov, P. N., 38n25, 98n24, 99100, 102n34, 104n41 Bermel, Albert, 198n20 Bertoldi, Andrea, 62 Biron, Ernst-Johann, 67-68, Biron, Karl, 72

Index

Bleisch, Pamela, 151n62 Blok, Aleksandr, 13, 27, 94n14, 163, 170-178, 180, 182, 187n72, 189, 195, 218, 221n16

Puppet Show, The (Balaganchik), 13, 27, 94n14, 170-175, 177-178, 180, 182, 195

Boileau, Nicolas, 77, 98-99 Boyd, Brian, 218n4-5, 219n8, 222n22, 222-223, 224n29, 236n61, 237n63 Boym, Svetlana, 220 Bradbury, Doris, 210n40, 210n42 Bragaglia, Anton Gulio, 14n1, 138, 140n29, 152n63, 157n79 Brezhnev, Leonid, 250-251 Brighella, 62, 87-93, 136, 192, 198, 203, 264 Brigozzi, Giuseppe, 126 Bristow, Eugene, 129n35 Briusov, Valerii, 167n17 Brombert, V., 133n4 Bromlei, Nadezhda, 212n47, 213214 Brothers Legat, 119-120 Broyard, Anatole, 237-238 Bulakhov, Petr, 257

“Gori, gori, moia Zvezda” (Shine, shine, my star), 257

Burlesque, 89, 96, 98, 222 Bushueva, Svetlana, 136n19-21, 137n22-23 Cafanny, Lucas, 62 Calderon, Pedro, 181 Callot, Jacques, 47 Callow, Simon, 17, 18n5 Caravaque, Louis, 64 Carnicke, Sharon Marie, 175-176, 181n53, 182 Casanova, Giacomo, 75 Castrato(s), 68 Catherine the Great, 117, 126 Chaffee, Judith, 15n1, 23n16 Chekhov, Anton, 129-130 Uncle Vanya, 129-130

Cherniakhovsky, Garri, 216n60

Chernykh, P. Ia., 147-148, 152n64 Churbanov, Iurii, 250 Cicero, 16, 157 Circus, 14, 18, 114, 119-120, 164, 177, 183, 187-188, 205, 226, 244, 261, 264 Classicism, 82, 149 Clavilier, Michele, 154n72 Clayton, J. Douglas, 23, 24n17, 162, 171, 173, 176, 177n33, 183, 202 Collins, Christopher, 176n42, 177n45 Columbine, 13, 87, 107, 129, 165, 170-173, 178-179, 185, 191196, 220 Connolly, Julian W., 221n18 Cotin, Charles, 103n35 Coulson, Jessis, 150n57 Crick, Olly, 15n1 Croce, Benedetto, 138n25 Decadence, 161n1, 163 Deich, Aleksandr, 176 Derbenev, Leonid, 249n19 Diaghilev, Sergei, 13, 184, 186-188, 190 Dictionary of Russian Biographies, The, 69 Dimitrov, Emil, 243, 245n11 Dmitriev, Iurii, 31n2, 115-116, 119-120 Dobuzhinsky, Mstislav, 218 Doctor Dapertutto, see Meyerhold Don Juan, 124-125 Dostoevsky, Fedor, 123-125, 150, Crime and Punishment, 150 Notes from a Dead House, 123-125

Dottore, 17, 79, 83, 87-89, 98, 103105, 108, 129, 159, 174, 178, 220, 229-230, 264 Drizen, Nikolai, 181, 192, 192n4 Duchartre, Pierre Louis, 15n1, 17n4, 31n3, 85n5, 96n18, 103n38, 108n47, 142, 149, 151n61, 152n67, 226n35, 228n45, 232n52 Duchefdelaville, Danielle, 154n72 285

Index

Efremov, Oleg, 251n25, 253 Eikhenbaum, Boris, 132, 146, 153, 155 Elizaveta Petrovna, Empress, 81, 114-116 Emery, Ted, 198n20 Epstein, Mikhail, 256, 258 Eroticism, 89 Estrada (Soviet), 28, 240, 243n7, 244-248, 253, 255 Evreinov, Nikolai, 18, 27, 94n14, 163, 167, 175-186, 189, 192, 193n4, 195, 208, 209n39, 219-220, 221n16

Colombine of today, A (Kolombina sego dnia), 176 Merry Death, The (Veselaia smert’) 27, 176-178, 180, 195 Most important thing, The (Samoe glavnoe), 176, 195n11, 219-220 Power of Charms, The (Sila char), 176

Evreinova, Anna, 220 Ezhegodnik imperatorskikh teatrov, 164-165 False Cuckhold, The, 63 False Dmitrii, 35 Fanger, Donald, 133n4 Fantastic realism, 209-216 Fava, Antonio, 15n2, 17, 191 Ferrazzi, Marialuisa, 24, 54n2, 63n25, 68n36-38, 166n14 Field, Andrew, 218-219, 223 Fitzgerald, Ella, 257 Fokin, Mikhail, 188 Folklore (Russian), 36, 50, 102 Fonvizin, Denis, 112 Forbes, 242 Fraysse, Suzanne, 222n22 Frederich-August III, 57 Frederick Wilhelm, Duke of Courland, 55 Furst, Otto, 41, 49n54 Gaer, 18, 39, 44-45, 50-53, 115-116 Galkin, Maksim, 259-261 Gallifet, Gaston, 148 Gallina, G., 16 286

Garnett, Constance, 143n39 Genis, Alexander, 256n34 Gibelli, Carlo, 67 Gillot, Claude, 86 Glazunov, Osvald, 204 Gogol, Nikolai, 23, 27, 96n20, 112, 131-160, 211, 219, 231 Dead Souls, 148 Inspector General, The, 231 Overcoat, The, 27, 131-160 “Peterburgskie zapiski 1836 goda,”149

Golitsyn, Nikita, 71 Goldina, Miriam, 206n32 Goldoni, Carlo, 15-16, 17n3, 18, 27, 54, 67, 108, 136-138, 157, 186, 202, 208n37, 231, 263 Locandiera, La, 186 Truffaldino: The servant of Two Masters, 231

Golovin, Aleksander, 187n72 Golub, Spenser, 179n50, 219, 220n11 Gorchakov, Nikolai, 204n29 Goscilo, Helena, 240n2 Gozzi, Carlo, 13, 28, 54, 67, 162, 191, 198, 200, 202, 206, 208n38, 212n47

Liubov’ k Trem Apel’sinam (The love for three oranges), 166, 168n21, 196 Turandot, 13, 28, 198, 208

Grabes, Herbert, 222n22 Graffy, Julian, 132n3, 133n4, 135n14, 142n34, 151n60 Gray, Camilla, 185n63 Green, Martin, 23, 24n17, 162, 174n35, 177n46, 187 Green, Michael, 167n17 Grotesque (imagery, features, combination)16-17, 19-20, 22, 28, 50, 55, 81, 95, 96n20, 133, 155-158, 161, 169, 176, 178, 180, 183, 189-190, 208, 219, 224, 230, 232, 237, 258, 264 Gusman, Boris, 208

Index

Harlequin, harlequinade , 13-14, 17-30, 37, 39, 43-48, 51-53, 57, 62-70, 79-98, 106-121, 126, 129, 143, 149, 161-164, 169-186, 191-196, 216-231, 235-242, 245-247, 262 Heck, Thomas, 23, 39n27, 133n5 Henke, Robert, 15n2 Hilferding, Johann Peter, 114-115, 117 Hills, Frederic W., 238 Hitchcock, Alfred, 221 Hoffmann, E. T. A., 183 Princess Brambilla, The, 183

Holberg, Ludvig, 18 Holquist, Michael, 247n16 Hubner, Johann, 67 Huquier, Gabriel, 86 Iakulov, Georgii, 183 Ilyin, S., 221n17 Iswolsky, Helene, 19n6, 247n15, 250n22, 262n44 Ivan the Terrible, 34 Ivanov Aleksandr, 259n38 Ivanov, Vladislav, 192n2, 193n6, 195, 215n57 Jester, 18, 30-31, 35, 44-45, 53, 63, 65, 104, 240, 245, 247-248, 250, 255, 259-261

female, 28, 63, 242-243, 247, 255, 261 royal, 38, 63, 67, 69-73, 123, 243n6, 247

Jester’s Wedding, The, 45, 47 Jewish Habimah studio, 211 Johnson, Barton, D., 222n21-22, 223 Johnson, Ben, 18 Kachalov, Vasilii, 193 Kadulska, Irene, 133n5 Kamensky, Alexander, 187n72 Kapnist, Vasilii, 98n23, 112 Karlinsky, Simon, 135, 136n16, 151n60, 121, 228 Karsavina, Tamara, 188 Kelly, Catriona, 23, 24n17, 73n50, 162n2

Kennedy, Janet, 186n68 Kirkorov, Filipp, 242n4 Komissarzhevsky, Vera, 175 Koonen, Alissa, 216n59 Kotlubai, Kseniia, 210 Kozlovsky, A., 201, 212n47 Kudriavtsev, Ivan, 204 Kulakova, L. I., 99n26 Kunst, Iogan Christian, 41, 49n54 Kurbsky, Andrey 34 Kuzmin, Mikhail, 170 Kuzmina, V. D., 115 Lacosta, 72 Lamanova, Nadezhda, 201 Lapin, Sergei, 246 Lazzi, 85 Le Fort, 58-59, 61, 63, 65 Leoncavallo, Ruggero, 163, 258 Pagliacci, 163, 258

Leonidov, Leonid, 193 Lermontov, Mikhail, 128

Hero of Our Time, A, 128

Levitt, Marcus, 83n1, 97, 98n22, 100n29, 103n40 Likhachev, Dmitrii, 32, 34 Livanova, T. N., 34n10, 36n17, 41n33 Locatelli, Giovanni Battista, 116 Lomonosov, Mikhailo, 77, 102n35, 103n35, 105 Lope de Vega, 181 Lothar, F., 183 King Harlequin, 183

Lotman, Iurii, 20-22, 47, 50, 59, 60n16, 81, 118-119, 127-128 Lubok, 33, 47-48, 50, 56, 73, 74n52 Luzhsky, Vasilii, 193 MacFadyen, David, 243n7 Maestro Esposito, 205-206 Magarshack, David, 168n18 Maguire, Robert A., 146n46 Makarevich, Andrei, 246n12 “Marionetki,” 246n12

Malaev-Babel, Andrei, 213, 215n57 Mandel’shtam, Osip, 248 Mann, Iurii, 132n3 Manstien, von, C. H., 72 287

Index

Mansurova, Tsetsiliia, 207 Marivaux, Pierre 18, 108, 123, 227-228

Island of the Slaves, The (L’ile des eslaves), 108n48

Markov, Pavel, 212n47, 213-214 Marshak, Samuil, 248n18 Martin, Christophe, 228n43 Mashina vremeni, 246n12 Masquerades, 20, 55, 57, 59-60, 68, 91, 96, 114-115, 126-127, 147 Massine, Leonid, 189 Mathiesen, Robert, 151n62 McKee, Kenneth, 88n8 McQuillen, Colleen, 169, 170n24 Menage, Gilles, 103n35 Mendeleeva, Liubov’, 170 Meyerhold, Vsevolod, 13, 18, 163, 166-170, 174-175, 181-183, 186, 189, 191, 193, 196, 210, 214, 216n59 Mikhnevich, Vladimir, 34n12 Mikhoels, Solomon, 216n59 Miklashevsky, Konstantin, 15n1-2, 17n4, 165-166, 224n30, 229, 230n48-49 Minstrel(s), 18, 25, 30-36, 247 Miro, Pietro (Pedrillo), 67, 69-75, 123-124, 165 Mitelli, Giuseppe-Maria, 225 Modernism, modernist, 13-14, 18-19, 23, 27-28, 52, 94n14, 96n20, 129, 161-195, 206, 211, 214-220, 226, 248 Molière, 18, 98n23, 101-102, 108 Femmes savants, Les, 101

Molinari, Cesare, 14n1, 17n4 Moody, Christopher, 168-169, 170n25 Mooser, Robert-Aloys, 24, 40n3132, 41n34, 55n4, 57n9-11, 58n12-13, 59n14, 61, 62n24, 63n26, 65, 66n30, 69-73, 74n52, 75n54, 84n2, 85n3, 114, 116n8, 165 Morozov, Aleksandr, 81-82 Moskovskie Vedomosti, 120 288

Moscow Art Theatre, 167-168, 186187, 191-193, 196n13, 202, 206, 215, 251 Moscow Kamerny Theater, 182 Muratov, Pavel, 166n15 Obrazy Italii (Images of Italy), 166n15

Murzina, Marina, 265n2-3 Nabokov Dmitri, 223 Nabokov, Vera, 236, 236n61, 237 Nabokov, Vladimir, 13, 23, 28, 128n32, 131, 132n3, 134n10, 217-240 Lolita, 224n28, 233-234 Look at the Harlequins!, 13, 28, 217-240

Natalia Alekseevna, Tsarevna, 41-43 Nemirovich-Danchenko, Vladimir, 167 Neoclassicism, neoclassical, 77, 99 Neorealism, 208 Neubauer, Paul, 223n22 New York Times, 237-238, 240 New York Times Book Review, 238 Nezhinsky, Vaclav, 188 Nikon, Patriarch, 35n16 Nikitenko, A. V., 119-120 Nivinsky, Ignaty, 200 Noble Infantry Cadet Corps, 99 Olearius, Adam, 36 Opera, operatic, 24, 26-27, 40-41, 56-59, 61, 65-66, 69n39, 76, 78-79, 81, 116-117, 136, 140, 163, 183, 187, 189, 248, 264 Opera buffa, 116-117 Oreglia, Giacomo, 15n1, 16, 138n25, 139, 141, 143 Orlov, Aleksandr, 38n22 Osorgin, Mikhail, 198, 212n47 Oves, L. S., 146n47, 168n21 Ozhegov, S. I., 150n56 Panchenko, A. M., 32n8 Pantalone, 17, 62-63, 65, 79, 82, 8788, 91-92, 126, 136, 147, 192, 198, 203-205, 213, 264 Paperno, Irina, 218n3

Index

Pasternak, Boris, 245, 248, 254 Doctor Zhivago, 245 “Hamlet,” 245 “Winter Night,” 254

Patteson, Richard, 222n22 Pavlov, Nikolai, 135, 136n16 “Demon, The,” 135

Pearson, Tony, 175n38, 181n53-54, 182 Pedrillo, see Miro, Pietro Pekarskii, P., 41n34, 42n38-39, 44n44-46, 49n55 Peredvizhniki (The Wanderers), 185 Peretts, Vladimir, 73, 74n52, 84, 89n9, 93n13, 164-166 Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista, 189 Pesenti, Maria Chiara, 24, 39n28, 44n43, 45n47, 49, 53 Peter the Great, 18, 25-26, 36, 3942, 49, 54-55, 70-72, 81-82, 147 Petipa, Marius, 188 Petito, Antonio, 140n29, 153, 158 Petito, Salvatore, 140, 158 Petrov, Avvakum, 35 Petrov, Vsevolod, 187n72 Petrushka, 73, 132n3, 162, 164-165, 186, 188 Pevear, Richard, 124n22 Piaf, Edith, 241 Piatnitsky, M., 201 Picasso, Pablo, 189 Pierrot, 13, 52, 94n14, 129, 162n2, 163, 170-174, 177-180, 185, 191-196, 220, 229, 231 Pirandello, Luigi, 176 Pivovarova, N. S., 38n23, 39n30 Pletnev, Mikhail 135 Pogodin, Mikhail, 136-137 Poirier, Richard, 238 Poiurovskii, B. M., 244n10, 251n25 Polichinelle, see Pulcinella Ponyrko, N. V., 32n8 Postmodernism, 256 Pozner, Vladimir, 259-260 Presley, Elvis, 242

Probst, Johann Balthasar, 87 Prokhorov, Mikhail, 259n40, 260 Pugacheva, Alla, 28-29, 240-262

“Nastoyashchii polkovnik” [The Real Colonel], 254n32 “Primadonna,” 258

Pulcinella, 14n1, 27, 79, 126, 131132, 138-143, 145-154, 157160, 164-165, 188-189 Puppet (theater, show, puppeteers), 20, 24, 31, 39, 66, 73, 77, 121, 134, 138-139, 154, 164, 170, 175, 188, 223, 245, 246n12, 264 Pushkin, Alexander, 117-120 “19th of October, The,” 118 “To the Bust of the Conqueror,” 117

Pussy Riot, 261 Putin, Vladimir, 28, 256, 259-261 Pyle, Robert Michael M., 236n61 Rabelais, François, 180, 247 Rancour-Laferriere, Daniel, 132, 147 Rappaport, Shloyme, 211 Dybbuk, The, 211-212

Rastrelli, Francesco Bartolomeo, 68, 76 Reeve, F. D., 172n29-30 Repnin, Mikhailo, 35 Repnina, V. N., 140 Reyfman, Irina, 101, 102n35, 103n35, 103n37, 104-105 Riccoboni, Luigi, 142, 143n36 Richards, Laura, 140n29, 140n31, 141 Rinaldi (Fusano), Antonio, 76 Ristori, Tommaso, 26, 31, 57-62, 66, 82, 84, 165, 265 Rovinsky, D. A., 73, 74n52 Rumnev, Aleksandr, 184 Russian Orthodoxy, 33-36, 59, 65 Russkaia starina, 164 Russkii khudozhestvennyi listok (Russian art paper), 121 Rychkov, Boris, 249n19 Sacchi, Antonio, 16, 67, 70, 157, 162, 198, 208 289

Index

Sacchi, Nina, 70 Salerno, Henry F., 88n8 Samutsevich, Yekaterina, 261 Sand, George, 145 Sand, Maurice, 138n25, 141n32, 143n36, 145n44, 158n81 Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti, 55, 57, 59-61, 63, 76-78, 80 Saprykina, E. Iu., 132n3 Sapunov, Nikolai, 170-171 Satire, satiric (satirize), 83, 98-105, 110-113, 132n3, 137-138, 170, 174, 231, 243, 248, 261 Scala, Flaminio, 87, 169 Scaramuccia, 31, 62, 82 Schnitzler, Arthur, 183, 193 Veil of Pierette, The (Colombine’s Scarf), 183, 193

Schumann, Robert, 188 Carnaval, 188

Seneca, 16, 157 Serebrennikova, B., 244n10 Severnaya pchela (Northern Bee), 120, 148, 149n54 Sexuality (sexual), 45, 51, 67, 89, 106-107, 156, 224, 226-229 Shakespeare, William, 18, 244-245, 248 Hamlet, 244-245

Sharapova, Anna, 242n4 Shapiro, Gabriel, 132n3 Shchelokov, Nikolai, 250 Shchepetkova, I. A., 182-183 Shchukin, Boris, 203-204 Shchukin Theater Institute, 214215 Silver Age, 13, 118, 162n2, 192, 218-219, 221n16, 238 Simonov, Ruben, 204-205, 206n32, 207, 214-216 Sipovsky, V. V., 121, 164 Sizov, N., 201, 212n47 Skomorokh, skomoroshestvo 18, 25, 30-38, 51, 53, 63, 82, 121, 247-248 Smale, Alison, 242n3, 253n30-31 Smeraldina, see Colombine 290

Smirnov-Nesvitskii, Iurii, 193n3, 193n5 Smirnova, N. I., 73, 124 Smith, Winifred, 17n4 Soboleva, Olga, 23, 24n17, 162 Socialist realism, 184, 212, 214-215 Solovyov, Vladimir, 166, 193, 196197 Somov, Konstantin, 184, 187n72 Speransky, Mikhail, 119 Springer, Carl Carsten, 222n22, 223n25 Staehlin, Jacob von, 78-80, 116n89, 117 Stalinist (era, terror), 184, 215-216 Stakhorskii, Sergei, 31n1, 35n15 Stanislavsky, Konstantin, 28, 167169, 182, 185-186, 190-193, 200, 208-210, 214-215, 264 Starikova, Liudmila, 24, 25n20, 38n23, 39n30, 41n35, 42n37, 46n48, 54, 55n5, 59n15, 60-62, 66, 67n33-34, 69n39, 70n44, 75n56, 76n57-58, 77-78, 80, 86n7, 99, 115n5, 116n8, 134n7-8, 165 Stepanova, Angelina, 251n25, 253 Stepun, Fedor, 212n47, 214 Stites, Richard, 243n7, 251 Stoglav, 34 Stravinsky, Igor, 188-189 Strehler, Georgio, 263-264 Strukov, Vlad, 240n2 Strutinskaia, E. I., 168n21, 182n57 Sudejkin, Sergei, 187n72 Sumarokov, Aleksandr, 26, 77, 83, 95, 97-113, 115-116, 174, 260

Epistle on Poetry, 77 Khorev, 103-104 Monsters, The / Court of Arbitration (Chudovishchi / Treteinyi sud), 26, 83, 95, 97-98, 100-103, 105, 110, 112-113, 260 Sinav and Truvor, 100, 115-116 Tresotinius, 102n36, 103n36

Symbolism, symbolist, 13, 161n1, 163, 170, 174, 182, 189

Index

Swan, John, 23, 24n17, 162, 174n35, 177n46, 187 Sweeney, Susan, 222n22 Tairov, Aleksandr, 167, 182-184, 214, 216n59 Tartaglia, 192, 198, 203-205, 213 Terras, Victor 161n1 Tikhanov, Albin, 49 Tikhonravov, Nikolai, 49n54, 50n59 Tirso de Molina, 181 Tolokonnikova, Nadezhda, 261 Tolstoy, Petr, 40 Toumanyan, A., 133n4 Translation, 14, 21, 23, 26, 3839, 49n54, 83-97, 102, 106, 134n10, 164-166, 181, 212n47, 221n17, 225, 265 Trediakovsky, Vasilii 23, 26-27, 68, 77, 83-108, 113, 161, 164-166, 174, 180-181 Four Harlequins, The (Chetyre Arlekina), 88, 92-96, 180 Harlequin’s Disguises (Pereodevki Arlekinovy), 88-92

Truffaldino, 67, 136-137, 192, 198, 203-207, 208n37, 216, 231, 264 Tsvetaeva, Marina, 248 Turner, Tina, 241 Tynianov, Uirii, 132n3 Ushakov, D. N., 147 Uvarova, E. D., 243n7, 244n9 Vakhtangov, Evgenii, 13, 23, 28, 94n14, 167, 191-216

Princess Turandot, 13, 28, 191-216

Vakhtangov Theater, 203, 214-216 Vasmer, Max, 147n49

Vendrovskaia, Lyubov’ D., 210n40, 210n42 Venetian carnival, 56-57, 237-238 Veresaev, V. V., 135n15, 136n18, 138n24, 148n52, 160n87 Verlaine, Paul, 163, 218 Fêtes galantes, 163

Vershilov, Boris, 197 Vladiv-Glover, Slobodanka, 256n34 Volkonsky, Mikhail, 71 Volkonsky, S., 201 Volkonsky, Zinaida V., 137 Volokhonsky, Larissa, 124n22 Volynsky, Artemii, 104-105 Vsevolodskii-Gerngross, V., 37n21, 69n41, 72n48, 74n53, 85n3-4, 97n21, 100n28, 165n10 Vysotsky, Vladimir, 251 “Beda” (Misfortune), 251

Wachtel, Andrew, 162n2 Welsh, David, 102, 103n36, 105, 106n44, 113 White, Eric Walter, 188n74 Whyman, Rose, 168n18, 215n57 Wood, Michael, 221n18 World of Art (Mir iskusstva), 13, 184-191, 195, 218 Worrall, Nick, 215n57 Wortmann, Christian-Albert, 64 Zakhava, Boris, 210, 214-215 Zanin, Iurii, 250n23 Zavadsky, Iurii, 207 Zenkovsky, Serge, 35n16 Zguta, Russell, 32n6, 36n18, 37 Zhirinovsky, Vladimir, 259n40 Zhvanetsky, Mikhail, 243, 261 Zotov, Nikita, 71