" 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 REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40869669?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes This content downloaded from 8.20.127.60 on Sun, 14 Jun 2020 21:50:39 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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 This content downloaded from 8.20.127.60 on Sun, 14 Jun 2020 21:50:39 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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). This content downloaded from 8.20.127.60 on Sun, 14 Jun 2020 21:50:39 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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. This content downloaded from 8.20.127.60 on Sun, 14 Jun 2020 21:50:39 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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 two 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 in a o wo ninet epigraphs, a t the creative "w criticism Coin") Without destroy stage, into footnotes; of pr hid audience out never Poema those the the changing text, in traditionally a is an Hero in can the illusion a of his dram theatricality principal aims - the MEIERKHOL'D, Most scholars directing his 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 vulnerability isolation Blok i Rudnitsky calling. splendid know . AN Meierk expressed character. upheld BLOK of and development. consta th m Theatr Rudnitsky, 1981) 44. This content downloaded from 8.20.127.60 on Sun, 14 Jun 2020 21:50:39 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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. This content downloaded from 8.20.127.60 on Sun, 14 Jun 2020 21:50:39 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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. This content downloaded from 8.20.127.60 on Sun, 14 Jun 2020 21:50:39 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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. This content downloaded from 8.20.127.60 on Sun, 14 Jun 2020 21:50:39 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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. This content downloaded from 8.20.127.60 on Sun, 14 Jun 2020 21:50:39 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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. This content downloaded from 8.20.127.60 on Sun, 14 Jun 2020 21:50:39 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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. This content downloaded from 8.20.127.60 on Sun, 14 Jun 2020 21:50:39 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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. This content downloaded from 8.20.127.60 on Sun, 14 Jun 2020 21:50:39 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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. This content downloaded from 8.20.127.60 on Sun, 14 Jun 2020 21:50:39 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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. This content downloaded from 8.20.127.60 on Sun, 14 Jun 2020 21:50:39 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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. This content downloaded from 8.20.127.60 on Sun, 14 Jun 2020 21:50:39 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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. This content downloaded from 8.20.127.60 on Sun, 14 Jun 2020 21:50:39 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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. This content downloaded from 8.20.127.60 on Sun, 14 Jun 2020 21:50:39 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms of ev