Anna Lisa Crone Balaganchik, Maskarad and Poema bez geroia Meierkhol'dian Expressions of theArtist's Crisis in Twentieth-century Russia

" Balaganchik," "Maskarad" and Poema bez geroia: Meierkhol'dian Expressions of the
Artist's Crisis in Twentieth-century Russia
Author(s): Anna Lisa Crone
Source: Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 36, No. 3/4, Slavic
Theatre: New Perspectives (September-December 1994), pp. 317-332
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40869669
Accessed: 14-06-2020 21:50 UTC
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Anna Lisa Crone
"Balaganchik," "Maskarad" and Poema bez
geroia: Meierkhol'dian Expressions of the
Artist's Crisis in Twentieth-century Russia
Blok's play Balaganchik (The Puppet Show, 1906) and Akhmatova's Poema bez
geroia (Poema Without a Hero, 1940-1962) are two of the most studied and
analyzed works in twentieth-century Russian literature. Each work poses
problems of comprehension, challenges the conventions of genre, and raises
probing questions about the artist's responsibility to his society and his art.
Both works convey a sense of the artist's crisis and tortured search to give it
formal expression; in Blok's case, in the fin de siècle; in Akhmatova's case, the
problems Blok posed are shown as they evolved and deepened from 1913 well
into the Stalinist period. The Puppet Show and Poema Without a Hero have
received such massive attention in their own right because scholars have sensed
that these difficult and intractable works are pivotal cultural events, revealing and
interpreting the deepest divisions, contradictions and conflicts of allegiance to art
and Russia in imperial culture as it moved inexorably into what Akhmatova
called the "Real Twentieth Century."
While these two works have been studied in isolation, more attention must
be given to the all-important connections between The Puppet Show,
particularly as it was staged by Meierkhol'd, and Poema Without a Hero, itself a
profoundly theatrical work. V.E. Meierkhol'd's pioneering work in Petersburg
theatre began in 1906 and ended with Lermontov' s Maskarad (Masquerade) which
opened in February 25, 1917 as the Revolution was raging in the streets. The
present article is a first attempt to place Meierkhol'd's The Puppet Show and his
theatrical activity in Petersburg as an important influence on Akhmatova's
treatment of the conflicts of the artist in Russian society. The tragedy of
Petersburg's great culture is chronicled and mourned in Poema Without a Hero, a
work which recalls a Meierkhol'dian theatrical extravaganza much more than a
Romantic poema. Apart from its general allusiveness and complexity one of the
main reasons Poema Without a Hero has been so hard to pigeonhole, why it has
been so frankly disturbing to scholars and ordinary readers, is its translation of
Russia's cultural and historical tragedy into a Meierkhol'dian idiom - staging,
changing sets, dynamism, music and rhythmic motion - controlled and
choreographed by Akhmatova as director and performer.
Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes Vol. XXXVI, Nos. 3-4, September-December 1994
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318
ANNAUSACRONE
POEMA WITHOUT A HERO: THE 'THEATRICALIZATION" OF A POEMA
Akhmatova scholars such as V. Zhirmunskii, Assya Humesky, Carl Proffer and
most importantly Elisabeth von Erdmann-Pandzic1 have successfully identified
the many Meierkhol'dian plays, operas and ballets alluded to in Poema Without a
Hero. More attention must be paid to the significance of The Puppet Show and
Meierkhol'd's Petersburg period and to Poema Without a Hero as a "verse play."
Akhmatova herself commented on this in 1961: "While I was working away at
what was sometimes a ballet and sometimes a screenplay, I still couldn't figure
out exactly what I was doing." Peter Viereck' s generic definition of his work The
Tree Witch: "This book can be read as a poem or a verse play," inspired her to
use this term for her work: "... [he] goes on to explain the technique of how a
poem is transformed into a play... I was doing the very same thing."2
The prominence of Meierkhol'd, one of the hero-artists of the period - in the
text of Poema Without a Hero and the allusion to his death in the prose
description of the ballet libretto is very significant: "Everyone was at this
masquerade. . . the great Stravinskii who compelled the entire twentieth century to
sound the way he heard it, the demoniacal Doctor Dapertutto [pseudonym for
Meierkhol'd in experiments outside the Imperial Theatres], and Blok the tragic
tenor of the age... Events depicted in the ballet include: Nizhinsky's last dance.
Meier'khold's departure [read: death]."3 The fact that Akhmatova describes
Meierkhol'd as "demoniacal" which could imply that she, like Blok, may not
have admired all his theatrical innovations, in no way diminishes her recourse to
his art in Poema Without a Hero for the portrayal of a truly demonic world.
Allusions to Meierkhol'd can be seen in the many visual effects produced in
Poema Without a Hero: opening Part I with a small bedchamber, blowing up the
ceiling to turn the scene into an enormous ballroom only to collapse it anew.
The use of many mirrors and mirror reflection was characteristic of Meierkhol'd's
only film Dorian Gray (1915) and his Masquerade* Akhmatova furthermore uses
Meierkhol'd's costumed stagehands called blackamoors, who were first integrated
1 The text of Poema bez geroia is quoted from the 1966 Sobranie sochinenii, edited
by Gleb Struve and Boris Filippov, vol. 2 (Munich: Inter-Language Literary
Associates, 1966) 95-133. Scholarly annotations include Viktor Zhirmunskii,
Primechaniia," in Stikhotvoreniia i poemy (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel1, 1976)
513-23. Carl Proffer,"4 A Poem without a Hero/" Russian Literature Triquarterly 1
(1971): 26-64, Elisabeth von Erdmann-Pandzid, Poema bez geroja von Anna A.
Achmatova (Köln: Bohlau, 1987).
2 Anna Akhmatova, "Prose on the Poem," in My Half Century. Selected Prose, ed.
Ronald Meyer (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1992) 138.
3 Akhmatova, "Prose on the Poem" 142.
4 Edward Braun, The Theater of Meyerhold (New York: Drama Book Specialists,
1979).
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MEIERKHOL'D, "BALAGANCHIK," "MASKARAD" AND POEMA BEI GEROIA 319
into the production in his 1910 staging of Molière's Don Juan and are prominent
in Masquerade: "Meierkhol'dovy arapchata/ Opiat* zatevaiut vozniu"
(Meierkhol'd's blackamoors are stirring up trouble again). The wild dance of the
coachmen outdoors was incorporated from Stravinskii's "Petrushka" in Fokin' s
choreography as Akhmatova pointed out in her notes for the ballet libretto.
Akhmatova's work like The Puppet Show is fraught with stage directions; many
of its characters, like the heroine, Ol'ga Glebova-Sudeikina, are actors and stage
performers. There is constant reference to Ol'ga's starring roles, to the
memorizing of lines, to orchestral conducting, to masks and the changing of
masks, to commedia dell'arte, to elaborate costumes, sets, to small theatres with
which Meierkhol'd was associated such as "Dom intermedii" and "Privai
komed'iantov," to imperial theatres and his productions for the Ballet Russe. It
must be emphasized that Akhmatova did not merely attend these performances.
She knew Meierkhol'd and published an exchange of poems with Blok which is
alluded to in Poema Without a Hero in Meierkhol'd's journal Liubov* k trem
apeVsinam (Love for Three Oranges, 1914-16).5 Ol'ga Sudeikina whose first
husband Sergei had been set designer for The Puppet Show and other Meierkhol'd
productions was Akhmatova's close personal friend. Kuzmin, who wrote the
music for The Puppet Show, figures very importantly in Poema Without a
Heroß Mention of staged genres abounds and two parts of the work are
dramatic - Intermezzo and Intermedia. Oblique reference to Shakespearean and
Sophoclean tragedy, and the satyr play are present,7 as well as poetic lines that
imply the work is staged: "Iz-za shirmy Petrushkina maska" (From behind the
screen Petrushka's mask [appears]), "Piatym aktom pakhnet" (It smells of Act
Five), "Blizka razviazka" (The denouement is near). After The Puppet Show and
Masquerade »which are treated here in detail, Meierkhol'd's productions of Don
Juan and Pushkin's Kamennyi gostx (The Stone Guest) where Don Juan is a
poet, are next in importance for Poema Without a Hero.
Akhmatova's comment in 1961 that tragedy and comedy were turned into
pantomime in Roman times and in the present age into films and ballets is
important for its central implication - that her twenty years and more of work on
Poema Without a Hero were tantamount to its theatricalization or transformation
into a dramatic or staged work. Of course it was a play for an audience of one,
5 This exchange is referred to in the poem in the description of the young
Akhmatova in a Spanish shawl which is prominent in Blok' s poem to her "Krasota
strashna."
° bee R. limenchik, V. Toporov, T. Tsivian, "Akhmatova i Kuzmin/' Russian
Literature 3 (1978): 213-305.
7 Anna Lisa Crone, "Genre Allusions in Poema bez gero ja" in Ax mat ova
Centennial Volume, ed. Sonia I. Ketchian (Berkeley: Berkeley Slavic Specialities,
1990) 45ff.
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320
ANNA
since
it
could
en-scène
of
The
two
USA
is
CRONE
hardly
not
less
Puppet
society.
being
view
by
The
these
or
have
fact
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of
by
h
in
fateful
destroyed
st
daring
Show
productions
destruction
be
c
and
Meie
societ
works,
pr
theatrical practice, exerte
Hero, which is a later trea
Meierkhol'd
staging
prompter
comment
on
to
avanstsena
traces
of
would
and
Side
to
her
the
see
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a
o
wo
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a
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the
creative
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criticism
Coin")
Without
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into
footnotes;
of
pr
hid
audience
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never
Poema
those
the
the
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in
traditionally
a
is
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in
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the illusion a
of his dram
theatricality
principal
aims
-
the
MEIERKHOL'D,
Most
scholars
directing
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life...
in
artist's
acting
."
the
and
audiences:
one
The
8
Konstantin
Ardis,
of
t
poetr
revelled
"at
i
tru
theme
of
this
in
very
Komissarzhevskaia's
Arbor:
his
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isolation
Blok
i
Rudnitsky
calling.
splendid
know
.
AN
Meierk
expressed
character.
upheld
BLOK
of
and
development.
consta
th
m
Theatr
Rudnitsky,
1981)
44.
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MEIERKHOL'D, "BALAGANCHIK," "MASKARAD" AND POEMA BEZGEROIA 321
second I took many curtain calls and was hissed and catcalled."9 Meierkhol'd,
too, understood the audience's violent demonstrations positively as conclusive
proof of the work's "true theatricality."10
Akhmatova in a very similar way revelled in the, admittedly less public,
scandal and confusion caused by her first readings of Poema Without a Hero in
Tashkent: "Thus for the first time in my life instead of streams of treacle, I
encountered my readers' true indignation and this, naturally, inspired me" (II,
98). All three were convinced by scandal that their experimentation was moving
along the right path.
Rudnitsky sees the succès de scandale of Blok' s play as owing to its
complete subordination of the work's form to the artist's perception of reality,
asserting his primacy as an observer and interpreter in a world totally
unamenable to the traditional solutions of faith and logic [Italics mine A.L.C.].11 Akhmatova calls this terrible world "the real Twentieth Century."
Jarry, Wedekind and Strindberg had sought to transform their personal
experiences into theatrical events before Blok and Meierkhol'd - inviting their
audiences to share their confusion and identify it with their own.12
A. Matskin emphasizes that the collaboration with Blok gave Meierkhol'd
the key to presentation of that world - his notion of the grotesque: "Once he had
met Blok, it became clear for Meierkhol'd that the grotesque was not merely a
means of expression, a way of heightening colors, it was no less than the
content of reality, it was that dislocated world in which he [Meierkhol'd] found
himself and which formed the subject of Meierkhol'd's art."13
The fact that Meierkhol'd made Blok' s The Puppet Show his own is
confirmed in his all-important 1912 article "Balagán." His dual role as director
and director of himself in the play can be roughly compared to Akhmatova's
complex orchestration of her own and her generation's experience in Poema
Without a Hero. Meierkhol'd's mode of acting had been new - full of abrupt
changes of mood, strange gestures, sudden switches of personality, deliberate
disruption of illusion, asides to the audience. He called for "A capacity for acting
not only the part but also acting one's attitude towards it [the part]."14 He
derived these new types of acting from the comeddia dell'arte as he points out in
Balagán:
9 Braun 72.
10 Braun 72.
il Braun 73.
12 Braun 73.
1:í Matskin s Portrety i nabliudemia translated and quoted bv Braun 74.
14 Braun 74.
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322
ANNA
USA
[Commedia
to
the
CRONE
dell'arte
creative
acting]..
artist.
"I,"
grotesque does not recognize
mixes opposites, consciously
originality... the grotesque
ceases to appear merely nat
desire to switch the spectato
which is unforeseen."15
This
traits
her
constant
of
work
much
switching
Poema
a
less
o
Without
panorama
"amenable
of
a
R
to
t
world with which Meierkhol'd and Blok dealt in 1906-1907.
Poema Without a Hero must be considered in terms of Meierkhol'd's
grotesque theatre. It has sometimes been connected with the closely related
concept of Bakhtinian carni valization.16 Just as Meierkhol'd had added his
personal view of reality to the staging and performance of The Puppet Show,
Akhmatova over twenty years later is adding her own special view of the same
crisis of the artist in Russia, incoiporating elements from Blok and Meierkhol'd
into her own experience of and knowledge of the subsequent tragic fates of those
two men and of Russian political and cultural history.
Meierkhol'd was directing himself - he was maestro and performer of his
own and Blok' s artistic dilemma; Akhmatova is in the parallel situation. There
is, however, as often in Akhmatova, an even greater element of "Acmeistic" (?)
distance from the experience that exceeds even the "ability to act the role and
one's attitude towards it" that Meierkhol'd recommended to his actors. Ironic
distance from her own suffering is found in Akhmatova's early love poetry and
distance from massive and personal tragedy is characteristic of Rekviem
(Requiem).17
In Poema Without a Hero the distance is achieved in part by an
unwillingness to take on the role of the hero-poet of Russia: ". . . kak zhe mozhet
sluchit'sia/ Chto odna ia iz nikh zhiva?" (How can it happen,/ That I alone am
alive? II, 106). It is compounded by powerful ambivalence concerning which role
15 Vsevolod Meierkhol'd, Stañ, pis'ma, rechi, besedy. ChasV pervaia 1891-1917,
ed. A.V. Fevral'skii (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1968) 225 ff.
10 On the connection of Meierkhol'd's grotesque and the Bakhtinian carni valesque,
see Timothy C. Westphalen, "The Carnival-Grotesque and Blok' s The Puppet Show"
Slavic Review 52 (1993): 49-65. On Bakhtin and PBG see Crone, "Genre
Allusions...."
17 Anna Lisa Crone, "Antimetabole in Requiem: The Structural Disposition
Themes and Motifs," in The Speech of Unknown Eyes. Akhmatova 's Readers on
Poetry, vol. 1, ed. Wendy Rosslyn (Nottingham: Astra Press, 1989) 27-^1.
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MEIERKHOL'D, "BALAGANCHIK," "MASKARAD" AND POEMA BEL GEROIA 323
she is actually playing, an effect produced by the rampant doubling and
switching of masks. Thus in places one feels Ol'ga is clearly separate from the
lyric heroine, in others the lyric ego protests that she is Ol'ga:
He cepflHCb Ha mchji, Fojiyóita,
Hto KOCHycb ñ 3Toro KyÓKa,
He Teóíi, a ce6a Ka3HK>. (II, 112)
Don't be angry with me, Dove,
Because I touched that goblet too;
I blame myself, not you. (427) 1 8
Given these distancing techniques and confusion in Poema Without a Hero, the
shorter The Puppet Show, which had the benefit of staging in 1907 and 1914,
made a more direct and powerful impact on its audiences. The artist representing
the tragedy that everyone should identify with is clear in The Puppet Show. In
Poema Without a Hero it emerges on close reading and study of the text.
Akhmatova uses irony and distance from events and artists - poets all of whom
she presents at the same time as part of herself. All the dead poets and dumb
masses of sufferers speak through her, the voice of the "sto-millionnyii narod" in
Requiem; in Poema Without a Hero she is the voice of the creative
intelligentsia.
Akhmatova here is director, maestro, actor of many parts, narrator, the
Greek chorus, the voice of conscience and of Silence, assumer of many masks.
She emphasizes this: "You are one of my doubles." Thus the Balaganchik
situation where the lampooned Mystics, Harlequin, and Pierrot, as well as the
idealized and debunked Columbine represent former selves and ideals, now
destroyed with the spiritual death this implies, reappears in a more complex
guise in Akhmatova's work. The tragic collapse of Blok, for Akhmatova the
hero-poet of the boundary of centuries, the loss of integrality of Blok's/the
artist's ego, is as important in Poema Without a Hero as it had been in The
Puppet Show. It is present in Part I and reemphasized in Chapter II in the
allusions to Blok as containing his own dilemma: "Demon sam s ulybkoi
Tamary" (The Demon himself with Tamara' s smile) and the Don JuanCommendatore aspects of his personality in "Shagi Komandora" ("Steps of the
Commendatore"). This collapse is made clearer in Akhmatova's description of
the disappearance of the hero in the ballet libretto where Blok is called out onto
the avanstsena by the voice of some invisible director and, in contradistinction to
the plot of Don Juan/Don Giovanni (where only Don Juan is swallowed up into
18 This, and other translations of extended passages from Poema hez geroia are
taken from The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova/ Anna AxMamoea: FloAHoe
coâpanue cmuxomeopeHuu, II, trans. Judith Hemschemeyer (Somerville, MA: Zephyr
Press, 1990), with page numbers noted in brackets after the translation.
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324
ANNA
Hell),
USA
both
which
CRONE
figures
reaffirms
treated
the
fall
the
heroine
throu
work's
and
her
r
the artistic personality, bu
what is treated is the artis
underpinnings,
character,
was
of
heroic
acted
with
sta
gen
The curtain fell behind Pierrot- Meierkhol'd and he was left face to face with the
audience / He stood staring at them and it was as though Pierrot was looking into the
eyes of every single person. There was something irresistible in his gaze... Then
Pierrot looked away, took his pipe from his pocket and began to play the tune of a
rejected and unappreciated heart. This moment was the most powerful in the whole
performance. Behind his lowered eyelids one sensed a gaze, stern and full of
reproach.19
It will be recalled that immediately before this all the other characters had
disappeared and the scenery had been whisked away. In my opinion Akhmatova
is repeating this situation at the end of Chapter I of Poema Without a Hero.
There she recreates a love triangle like the one in The Puppet Show, with
the roles assigned: Blok-Harlequin, Columbine-Ol'ga and Pierrot-MandelfshtamKniazev. Her resolution of it as indicated is even more destructive to both male
poet-protagonists who do not even remain visible on the stage.
Hto tk Bbi Bee yõeraeTe BMecTe
Cjiobho KaacßbiH Hameji no HeBecre... (H, 108)
Why are you all running off together,
As if each had found a bride... (419)
is a direct reference to the flight of the masked lover-pairs in The Puppet Show.
It is followed immediately by a reprise of the Pierrot scene:
OcTaBJiflii c rjia3y Ha rjia3
MeHfl B cyMpaice c nepHOH paMOH,
H3 KOTOpOH rjlnJXHT TOT CaMblH,
CTaBiuHÍí HaHropHanuien apaMOH
H eme HeonjiaicaHHbiH nac. (II, 109)
Leaving me to face
In the dusk with the black frame,
From which stares what has become
The bitterest drama,
The still unlamented hour? (419, 421)
It must be borne in mind that all the masked figures here are in one sense
incorporated into Akhmatova, who could say with Tiutchev: "My soul is an
19 Braun 72.
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MEIERKHOL'D, "BALAGANCHIK," "MASKARAD" AND POEMA BEI GEROIA 325
Elysium of shades." In addition to being a poet-hero like Blok and
Mandel'shtam, she had been, like Ol'ga, a Muse and inspirer of poets. The role
of hero-poet of Russia which the work's title implies is not being fulfilled in her
generation - one which she had sincerely felt Mandel'shtam should bear - hence
her fury that the dragoon Pierrot-Mandel'shtam-Kniazev had chosen this
particular death. He had collapsed more easily than Blok. Be that as it may, in
this passage the role of poet-hero has been foisted onto her unwilling shoulders,
and in this scene she assumes that tragic role and its isolation, just as Pierrot has
done in Meierkhol'd's remarkable scene of staring reproachfully into emptiness.
Blok is more powerful than the would-be poet-heroes of Poema Without a
Hero because he lived on after 1906 to triumph over his own several "deaths," to
create in new and powerful ways - ("Dvenadtsat"' [The Twelve], for example).
The same is the case with Akhmatova. From this relatively early point in
Poema Without a Hero (lines 139-49) throughout the remainder of the work
Russia's loss of its great poet and that poet's inner collapse, dédoublement and
self-cancelling and all the figures present/absent in the work become the content,
inner life and turmoil of the poet Akhmatova. When Blok' s hour of death comes
in "Steps of the Commendatore" Donna Anna will rise, and here Donna Anna
who sees "unearthly dreams" has risen and staged for us her most prophetic and
important one.
How does Donna Anna assume all of this? The opening of Chapter I is a
reprise of the situation of "Steps" with Donna Anna dreaming in a waking
state,20 keeping a New Year's vigil and it ends with the reprise of the finale of
The Puppet Show, as we have shown, with the all important modification that
the heroine is not cardboard - but "more iron than those others." Harlequin and
PieiTOt have collapsed. In the italicized section beginning "Eto vse naplyvaet ne
srazu" (This does not all surface at once) and ending in the distant voice "ia k
smerti gotov" (I am ready to die), all the missing cultural heroes are implied, as
scholarship has shown - Blok, Mandel'shtam, Gumilev, Kniazev and probably
Meierkhol'd also since in the ballet libretto corresponding to this very section
Akhmatova speaks of Meierkhol'd's departure/death. Akhmatova has assumed
here not only the poet's role but that of the greatest Petersburg director of her
youth. And she does what Pierrot had done - confronts starkly and with reproach
her devastated world, city, self and her Petersburg audience in the same haunting
way.
Thus she repeats the finale of The Puppet Show at a time when all it
portended has come true on a much larger and less intimate, more civic stage.
20 Anna Lisa Crone, "Blok as Don Juan in Axmatova's Poema bez geroja," Russian
Language Journal 35.121-22 (1981): 145-62.
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326
ANNA
The
USA
brutal
demise
CRONE
murder
preceded
Meierkhol'd-like
lavish
ballroom
and
repeating
the
ballroom
Zin
wri
staging
with
the
of
the
the
b
re
Venetian
shrinks
back
Akhmatova's stage direct
"Fakely gasnut, potolok o
avtora. Slova iz mraka..."
mirrors becomes once more the room of the author. Words are heard from the
darkness...). The anonymous and frightening voice alludes to the repetition of
Kirillov's suicide, highlighting the scene's ominous quality and tragedy until the
tragic plane is suddenly lightened and supplanted by the insertion of the
Intermedia "Cherez ploshchadku" ("Across the landing," lines 180-220).
In "Chapter II" the commedia dell'arte-derived triangular love plot is retold
in more sequential order and with different details, commented on, criticized and
partially explained in the lighter intermezzo "Other Side of the Coin." Chapters
III and IV and the Epilogue present the larger implications of what could be
viewed as a minor melodrama. It is a variation on the love and jealousy plot of
Lermontov' s Masquerade , where the director Meierkhol'd treated Arbenin as the
poet-hero Lermontov. Masquerade as staged in 1917 was viewed as "a requiem
for the Empire," given by contemporaries sweeping historical significance and
Poema Without a Hero, as the author confirms in prose explanations, treats all
the Petersburg tragedies: revolutions, the purges, the blockade, the death of the
monumental Petersburg culture, and of Russia. The studio-chamber quality of
Blok's production is comingled in Poema Without a Hero with the lavish
extravaganza of Masquerade, whereby Akhmatova turned it into a frantic "Feast
during the Plague," a nightmarish harlequinade of all the players in Russia's
cultural tragedy, including of course her youthful self. She eschews this youthful
Akhmatova in Part I and in the "letter to NN" and in "The Other Side of the
Coin" she decries the desire of her readers to view her narrowly as the author of
Belaia staia (White Flock) and Podorozhnik (Plaintain). As Blok made bitter fun
of his own early mysticism exemplified in The Puppet Show by the Mystics and
the cardboard fiancée, so Akhmatova, too, breaks with her past, refusing to be
defined by it. In Poema Without a Hero she opens up the The Puppet Show
situation from an artist's individual inner crisis to a national tragedy participated
in wittingly and unwittingly by all. Thus Poema Without a Hero is the best
example of her ability to make the civic intimate and lyric and the private epic
and civic upon which Brodskii and Chukovskaia have commented.
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MEŒRKHOL'D, "BALAGANCHIK," "MASKARAD" AND POEMA BEL GEROIA 327
MEIERKHOL'D'S MASQUERADE:
DESTRUCTION OF THE CREATIVE HERO FROM WITHOUT
Di rider finirai
Pria dell'aurora
(You will stop laughing before dawn.)
- Akhmatova's epigraph from Don Giovanni
Be Ab cero AHíi Taitaa HOHb
Koraa HyacHO luiaTHTb no cneTy
(This is the kind of night
When one has to settle accounts)
- The Poema Without a Hero
HecHcacTbe c BaMH 6yaeT b 3Ty HOHb
(Misfortune will visit you this night.)
- First words of the Unknown to Arbenin at the masked ball in Masquerade.
If The Puppet Show is focussed more powerfully on the inner struggle of the
artist, Meierkhol'd's interpretation of Lermontov' s drama and staging of it places
greater emphasis on the sinister forces in society which destroy the poet,
blaming the society for Arbenin' s death in the way Lermontov blamed it for
Pushkin's in "Na smert1 poeta" ("On the Poet's Death"). The Unknown one is
the henchman of those forces which stalk the creative man with the explicit aim
of destroying him. The collapse of the jealous hero-lover - be it Kniazev or
Arbenin - undeniably has its internal components but powerful mysterious
external forces seal his doom. The results for the one who feels betrayed -
Pierrot, Arbenin, Kniazev - are spiritual bankruptcy, madness and suicide.
Akhmatova, as indicated, points out that other more terrible and perhaps more
heroic deaths awaited the young poet, that he gave in to the death that was
stalking him too easily
Ckoaòko auâeAeu iuao k nosniy
FAynbiü MüAbHUK: oh ebiôpaA 9niy, -
flepßbix oh He cmepneA oóud... (II, 120)
Of all the ways for a poet to die,
Foolish boy: He chose this one -
He could not bear the first insult... (441)
In Masquerade, Arbenin, a former rake, has become vulnerable because of his
mature love for Nina. Meierkhol'd's treatment of Arbenin as victim of a society
plot must have appealed to Akhmatova as it is consonant with her own views in
the article "The Death of Pushkin,"21 where Dutch diplomat Baron Hekkeren
orchestrates just such a plot against the poet. Moreover, the persecution of
cultural figures by intrigue and entrapment had intensified in the period
21 Anna Akhmatova, "The Death of Pushkin," in My Half Century 215-30.
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328
ANNA
LISA
CRONE
immediately prior to the
elements of Lermontov'
duplicitous figures in "1
psychological
generation.
its
ubiquity
and
In
and
"Neizvestnyi"
external-p
the
in
Real
Twe
inexorable
1917.
Mor
last work as a director in December 1938 before he was arrested and shot was on
the second revival of Masquerade, a work which appeared to play a fateful role
not only in the demise of the Empire, but in Meierkhol'd's own life.
Akhmatova achieves this wider encompassment of the political
circumstances of her whole generation of artists by adopting elements from
Meierkhol'd's stage art, the use of masks and the Don Juan themes from his
Molière and Pushkin productions, which are strengthened by elements from
Lermontov' s drama in Meierkhol'd's staging. All these works, except The Stone
Guest, have lovers in masquerade costumes as part of their original texts and all
without exception have the elements of love, jealousy and betrayal leading to a
tragic outcome. Von Erdmann-Pandzic emphasizes that in Meierkhol'd's staging
of Molière' s Don Juan "there is a constellation of a Don Juan who takes a
Columbine away from Pierrot; this situation is paralleled in Poema."22 One of
Akhmatova's descriptions of this in the ballet libretto even uses the name
"neizvestnyi" reminding us of Lermontov' s character: "S maskarada
vozvrashchaetsia O., s nei Neizvestnyi..." (O.fl'ga] returns from the masquerade
ball, the Unknown one is with her...)23 All the plays have doubles, mysterious
interlopers involved in the betrayal - the double who dooms the love in The
Puppet Show, Don Juan's infidelity and deceit - a man without a name mysterious masks of both sexes are prominent in Masquerade where the sinister
Unknown One is the major force in Arbenin's undoing. In Poema Without a
Hero we have the many unidentifiable shades in demonic costume, as well as the
frightening uninvited shade "without face or name." In all of them tragedy and
often violence turn on betrayal and subsequent vengeance - be it murder, violent
death or suicide that takes the hero. The proliferation of masks bringing
ambivalence and confusion of identities makes it difficult or impossible in
differing degrees to follow events and certainly to assign cause and effect. Aie
Blok's Harlequin and the dark onlooking double not the externalization of
another side of Blok's self? Isn't the blasphemous Don Juan the architect of his
own undoing? Does not the fateful and sinister stranger rekindle a side of
22 Von Erdmann-Panzi(5 129.
23 Von Erdmann-Panzid 11 xii.
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MEŒRKHOL'D, "BALAGANCHIK," "MASKARAD" AND POEMA BEI GEROIA 329
Arbenin that is already present within him? Vague but sinister forces cause the
weak young Pierrot figure in Poema Without a Hero (Kniazev/Mandel'shtam) to
embrace a death for which he, by his own admission, is already prepared.
Destruction of the hero by external forces is aided and abetted by self-destructive
forces in all these works.
Rudnitsky traces the evolution of Meierkhol'd's use of the mask which
dominates his imagination and theatrical practice after The Puppet Show:
In the Balaganchik period the mask is interpreted with romantic irony; it covers the
suffering human face with a fixed ironic grimace and... shieldlike, protects the refined
and sensitive soul from contact with dirty, crude reality... In the period of the staging
of Don Juan and the numerous studio variations on the theme of the Italian commedia
dell'arte, masks gain a new significance... the masked actor... is a materialized call to
return to ancient forms of theatre, to its naivete, its playful nature. The mask becomes
a battle insignia of retrospection, stylization... the mask calls back to the
magnificant past... The masked figures invoke simplicity, spiritual health...
He emphasizes, however, that the second meaning of the mask was not enduring.
The three versions of Meierkhol'd's own play Harlequin the Marriage Broker
begin to show the mask as the sign of life's [and fate's] guile, falseness and
double meanings... The center of attention becomes the theme of internal
duality, the double face of the masked person... the theme of concealing man's
true face. [This] led to a sensation of the infernal and the unknowable, the
frightful and threatening dynamic of man's existence."24
These latter tendencies in the significance of the mask in Meierkhol'dian
theatre reach their apogee in Masquerade which is what makes it so important for
Poema Without a Hero. The frightening fluidity of identity of masked figures in
its mature staging in that drama is described eloquently by Rudnitsky:
[I]n Masquerade these two motifs were synthesized and obtained new meaning. The
figure of the Stranger (Neizvestnyi) entered the play as if from the world of Blok's
theatre, bringing with it the Romantic image of unalterable destiny and the fearful
inevitability of the tragic end. In the movement of the masquerade itself, in its
marvelous and multicolored play, the masks now denoted the fraudulence and
ambiguity of existence, now the chalemelon-like and inscrutable nature of each
person... the masquerade was read as the image of the illusiveness and ghostliness of
life.25
These words could easily have been written about Akhmatova's Poema Without
a Hero.
The fact that "1913" was supposed to call forth in Petersburg audiences to
whom the poema was directed the memory of Meierkhol'd's play (that opened
concomitantly with the Revolution) is strongly confirmed by the heavily
24 Rudnitsky 169.
25 Rudnitsky 239.
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330
ANNA
Venetian
from
CRONE
coloring
of
Meierkhol'd.
dominos
for
LISA
the
and
Akhm
He
had
half-masks
death
of
of
Empire
an
Hero it is significant tha
Harlequin, Pierrot and C
Hoffmaniana
recognition
it
(Meierkhol'd=
that
invaded
something
the
permeated
society sc
Masquer
with a spirit
Neizvestnyi.
We
sinister
is
inteipretation
What
fate
is
of
have
less
indica
connecte
paramount
here
i
been ignorant, that Meierk
Arbenin, but as the murder
wrote
in
Society
his
[he
Arbenin
production
avoid
for
"his
the
n
word
contempt
vengeance wrought on Arb
removal from the scene of
Poema Without a Hero. In Meierkhol'd's words: "The deaths of Pushkin and
Lermontov as we recall the evil plots of society in the 1830s, these two deaths
are the best source for clarifying the significance and mystery of the Unknown
One. Martynov [who killed Lermontov in a duel] stands behind Lermontov like a
shadow and waits for orders from his 'side."" Arbenin like the young Kniazev
figure in Poema Without a Hero who is brought to face the real twentieth
century is, in the director's notes, "tossed into the whirlwind of a masquerade so
that the web of masked intrigues and accidents envelopes him like a fly... when
there is no mask and when one is worn... is impossible to understand. Thus the
limits merge: of masquerade, frightful life, society!"29 In Akhmatova's work we
could substitute for "society" the words "political persecution."
All the elements of Meierkhol'd's staging of the Venetian masquerade are
prominent in Poema Without a Hero and in fact seem to have dictated the props
used: Meierkhol'd wrote: "Mask, candle, minor - the image of 18th-century
26 Rudnitskv 234.
27 Meierkhol'd, "Maskarad (Pervaia tscenicheskaia redaktsiia)" in Stat'i, pis'ma,
rechi, besedy I, 299.
2» Meierkhol'd, "Maskarad..." 299.
29 Meierkhol'd, "Maskarad..." 299.
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MEIERKHOL'D, "BALAGANCHIK," "MASKARAD" AND POEMA BEZGERO1A 33 1
Venice... are on the boundary of delirium and hallucination."30 Tossed into or
invaded by this world Akhmatova's lyric heroine says it is a time
Koraa Bee BoacpecaiOT ópeau,
HeTy Mepw Moeñ TpeBore,
fl caMa KaK TeHb Ha nopore,
KaMeHeio, CTbiHy, ropio... (II, 105)
A resurrection of all the ravings,
Seized by unbounded anxiety,
I myself, like a ghost in the doorway,
I turn to stone, I freeze, I burn...
A mature self is drawn into that hallucinatory world, where the young self lurks,
and yet a third self observes the first two, stressing her independence from both
and her refusal to be swallowed up by this world of her own conjuring.
3aBTpa yTpo mzuk pa36yziHT,
H HHKTO MeHfl He OCyflHT,
H B jiHuo MHe cMeflTbca 6yaeT
3aoKOHHaa CHHeBa. (II, 106)
Tomorrow morning they'll wake me,
And nobody will sentence me,
And the blue beyond the windowpane
Will laugh in my face. (415)
Meierkhol'd in like manner had staged Nina's small bedroom where Arbenin
awaits her return as well as the large ballroom of the Engel'gardt's with Venetian
glass mirrors. He dressed the Unknown One in a black Venetaian cape, gave him
a hawk's profile and a half-mask of the type to which Akhmatova refers:
Me:»tfly «noMHHTb» h «BcnoMHHTb», apyrn,
PaccTOflHHe, KaK ot Jlyra
Ao CTpaHbi aTjiacHbix 6ayr. (II, 125)
Between "remember' and "recall", friends,
The distance is like that between Luga
And the land of satin dominoes. (453)
The detailed notes on Meierkhol'd's production by Iur'ev who played Arbenin in
it emphasize the director's sense of the inexorable fate that destroys the hero.
Contemporaries describe the finale of Meierkhol'd's Masquerade as permeated
with "mystical and infernal tenor." The actor Maliutin writes:
30 Meierkhol'd, "Maskarad..." 300.
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332
ANNA
LISA
CRONE
In the interpretation of Meier
the full sense of the word. His
accompanied his appearance o
and the repulsive mask in the
Unknown One was not a man,
in
drama.-* 1
its
hands
the
course
Rudnitsky and others have made much of the reaction of contemporary
Petersburgers who should have been kept from the theatre and diverted by the
revolutionary disruption and activités in the Petrograd streets, but who in fact
still flocked to the theatre as if they wanted to see how Meierkhol'd would direct
and orchestrate the death of the Empire. Ironically, as pointed out above, he was
working on a revival of Masquerade when he was arrested. Akhmatova in Poema
Without a Hero managed to project a similar ominous masquerade scene on the
stage of the reader's consciousness. It is perhaps time that her multi-media
"tragic ballet," the danse macabre of the Petersburg cultural hero, in which
Akhmatova both mourns and brilliantly reinvokes the culture, finally be put on
the stage in St. Petersburg.
31 Braun 139.
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of
ev